Theophilus

I have recently enjoyed reading through Theophilus to Autolycus, a writing composed of three brief books, available in the second volume of the 1962 publication "The Anti-Nicene Fathers" from the Eerdmans Publishing Company. Theophilus, the bishop of Antioch, lived during the second century after Christ. Theophilus to Autolycus was an apology of the Christian faith: more specifically, it attacked the beliefs of pagan idolators and philosophers, and defended the antiquity and veracity of Holy Scripture.

The writing of Theophilus is remarkably modern, in the sense that it seems just as appropriate an apology against post-modern philosophers as it is against the ancient Greeks. For example, here an excerpt from the aforementioned publication, page 95:

Some of the philosophers of the Porch say that there is no God at all; or, if there is, they say that He cares for none but Himself; and these views the folly of Epicurus and Chrysippus has set forth at large. And others say that all things are produced without external agency, and that the world is uncreated, and that nature is eternal; and have dared to give out that there is no providence of God at all, but maintain that God is only each man's conscience. And others again maintain that the spirit which pervades all things is God. But Plato and those of his school acknowledge indeed that God is uncreated, and the Father and Maker of all things; but then they maintain that matter as well as God is uncreated, and aver that it is coeval with God. But if God is uncreated and matter uncreated, God is no longer, according to the Platonists, the Creator of all things, nor, so far as their opinions hold, is the monarchy of God established. And further, as God, because He is uncreated, is also unalterable; so if matter, too, were uncreated, it also would be unalterable, and equal to God; for that which is created is mutable and alterable, but that which is uncreated is immutable and unalterable. And what great thing is it if God made the world out of existent materials? For even a human artist, when he gets material from some one, makes of it what he pleases. But the power of God is manifested in this, that out of things that are not He makes whatever He pleases; just as the bestowal of life and motion is the prerogative of no other than God alone. For even man makes indeed an image, but reason and breath, or feeling, he cannot give to what he has made. But God has this property in excess of what man can do, in that He makes a work, endowed with reason, life, sensation. As, therefore, in all these respects God is more powerful than man, so also in this; that out of things that are not He creates and has created things that are, and whatever He pleases, as He pleases.

My initial survey of his writings indicate that Theophilus was what we would call today a confirmed "literal, six-day creationist", and that he also studied the timeline of Scripture in a similiar spirit as that of the much later Archbishop Ussher, who wrote The Annals of the World.

I would encourage my readers to familiarize themselves with these writings. They should not be difficult to find in any library, and there seems to be at least one English translation available online.