The Oldest Religion

But so that no one may suspect that his teaching is new and foreign, as though it had been put together by a man of recent date, no different from other men, let us briefly take up this point too. It is admitted that when the coming of our Savior Jesus Christ had recently shone out on all people, a new nation suddenly appeared, at appointed times beyond all telling. It was not small, not weak, not settled in some corner of the earth; it was the most populous and most pious of all nations, and indestructible and unconquerable for this reason, that it always has help from God. It is the nation honored everywhere with the name of Christ. [a] One of the prophets, seeing beforehand with the eye of the divine Spirit what was to be, was so astonished by it that he cried out: “Who has heard of such things, and who has ever spoken this way? Has the earth gone into labor in one day? Has a nation been born all at once?” The same prophet also hints at the name by which it would be called, when he says: “Those who serve me will be called by a new name, which will be blessed on the earth.” [b]

Plainly we are new, and this truly new name of Christians has only lately become known among all nations. Even so, our life and our way of conduct, together with our teachings about piety, were not invented by us recently. From the first creation of man, so to speak, they were carried out rightly by the natural understanding of the men of old whom God loved. We will show it in the following way. Everyone knows that the Hebrew nation is not new but is honored among all people for its antiquity. Its books and writings tell of ancient men, rare indeed and few in number, yet outstanding in piety and righteousness and every other virtue. Some of them lived before the flood; others, among the sons and descendants of Noah, lived after it; and among these was Abraham, whom the Hebrews boast of as their own founder and forefather. If anyone were to say that all those who have been attested for their righteousness, going back from Abraham himself to the first man, were Christians in fact if not in name, he would not stray from the truth. [c] For what the name means to show is that the Christian, through the knowledge and teaching of Christ, is distinguished by self-control and righteousness, by steadfastness of life and courage in virtue, and by confessing his piety toward the one and only God over all. All of this they pursued as earnestly as we do. They did not care about circumcision of the body, nor do we. They did not care about keeping Sabbaths, nor do we. Nor did they observe the avoidance of certain foods, or the other distinctions that Moses was the first to hand down to later generations, to be carried out as symbols; nor do Christians do such things now. But they plainly knew the very Christ of God, since it has already been shown that he appeared to Abraham, gave oracles to Isaac, spoke with Israel, and conversed with Moses and the prophets who came after. [d] So you will find that those men whom God loved were even counted worthy of the title of Christ, as the saying about them puts it: “Do not touch my christs, and do no harm to my prophets.” [e] So we must plainly regard the piety lately proclaimed to all nations through the teaching of Christ as the first, the oldest, and the most ancient of all: the very piety that was discovered by those men around Abraham whom God loved.

If someone says that Abraham received the command of circumcision long afterward, our answer is that before this he is declared to have been attested as righteous through faith, as the divine word says: “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” [f] And to Abraham, being such a man before his circumcision, an oracle was given beforehand by the God who showed himself to him—and this was Christ himself, the Word of God. It concerned those who in later times would be counted righteous in the same way he was, and its very words were: “And in you all the tribes of the earth will be blessed.” And again, that “he will become a great and numerous nation, and in him all the nations of the earth will be blessed.” [g] We may notice that this has been fulfilled in us. For Abraham was counted righteous by faith in the Word of God, the Christ, who appeared to him. He had turned away from the superstition of his fathers and the error of his former life; he had confessed the one God over all; and he served him with deeds of virtue, not with the worship of the law of Moses, which came later. It was to a man of this kind that it was said that all the tribes of the earth and all the nations would be blessed in him. And at the present time this very way of piety that Abraham had has reappeared among Christians alone, throughout the whole world, practiced in deeds that speak more plainly than words. What, then, could keep us from confessing that we who belong to Christ and the men of long ago whom God loved share one and the same life and one and the same way of piety? So it is shown that the right practice of piety handed down to us through the teaching of Christ is not new and foreign, but—to speak the truth—the first, the only, and the true one. Let that be enough on this subject. [h]