ABSTRACT
The first two Christian apologists whose works are extant both evince some interest in, and sympathy for, the Platonists and Stoics. Nevertheless, despite his approval of Plato’s cosmogony and his insistence on human responsibility, Justin rejects his teaching on the soul’s natural affinity to God; likewise, while he admires the ethical fortitude of the Stoics, he cannot embrace their materialistic doctrine of the Logos. Athenagoras is well versed in theological and cosmological debates between Stoics and Platonists, and sides with the Platonists in his ontology of the divine.
