Apologetics - Notable Apologists

Notable Apologists

Tertullian was a notable early Christian apologist. He was born, lived and died in Carthage. He is sometimes known as the "Father of the Latin Church". He introduced the term Trinity (Latin trinitas) to the Christian vocabulary and also probably the formula "three Persons, one Substance" as the Latin "tres Personae, una Substantia" (itself from the Koine Greek "treis Hypostaseis, Homoousios"), and also the terms Vetus Testamentum (Old Testament) and Novum Testamentum (New Testament).

In his Apologeticus, he was the first who qualified Christianity as the vera religio ("true religion"), and symmetrically relegated the classical Empire religion and other accepted cults to the position of mere 'superstitions'.

Early uses of the term (in the first sense) include Plato's Apology (the defense speech of Socrates from his trial) and some works of early Christian apologists, such as St. Justin Martyr's two Apologies addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius and the Roman Senate.

An additional early use of the term, is Augustus Caesar's apologia or defense of his accomplishments as Roman Emperor inscribed outside of his tomb, at his death in 14 AD on pillars of bronze, called The Deeds of the Divine Augustus (in Latin: Res Gestae Divi Augusti). They were widely copied and distributed throughout the Roman Empire. It is regarded as one of the more important apologias of the ancient world.

Arngrímur Jónsson was an Icelandic scholar who wrote the book Brevis commentarius de Islandia in Latin as a "defense of Iceland" where he criticized the works of numerous authors who had written about the people and the country of Iceland.

John Henry Newman (February 21, 1801 – August 11, 1890) was an English convert to Roman Catholicism, later made a cardinal, and beatified in 2010. In early life he was a major figure in the Oxford Movement to bring the Church of England back to its Catholic roots. Eventually his studies in history persuaded him to become a Roman Catholic. When John Henry Newman entitled his spiritual autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua in 1864, he was playing upon both this connotation, and the more commonly understood meaning of an expression of contrition or regret.