A Plea for the Christians

In about AD 177, seven short years after Melito’s Apology, Athenagoras of Athens likewise wrote to Emperor Marcus Aurelius, requesting justice for the Christians and defending the faith in apologetic form. Notably, although he does not use a word for “Trinity” as Theophilus would do as shortly as three years subsequent to Athenagoras’ work, he aptly defends the biblical doctrine of One God in three Persons (see Ch. 10). Given that the two were contemporaries, it is evident that the doctrine of the Trinity was well established in the Church by the mid- and late-2nd century.