Ecclesiastical writer
d. c. 330 · 4th c. · 1 work
Arnobius of Sicca (died c. 330), sometimes called Arnobius the Elder or Arnobius Afer to distinguish him from a later writer of the same name, was a Latin Christian apologist of Roman Africa active during the reign of Diocletian. Before his conversion he was a distinguished and successful teacher of rhetoric at Sicca Veneria, a town on the Numidian frontier southwest of Carthage (modern El Kef, Tunisia). He had been an ardent devotee of the old gods, and he later described his former superstition vividly, recalling how he venerated oiled stones and carved images as if they held living power.
According to Jerome's Chronicle, Arnobius came to Christian faith in adult life, owing his conversion to a premonitory dream, though in his surviving work he writes dismissively of dreams. Because of his pagan past, his sincerity was doubted, notably by the local bishop, who hesitated to admit him. As a pledge of the genuineness of his new belief, Arnobius composed his sole surviving work, the seven books of the Adversus Nationes (Against the Nations), written around 303.
The Adversus Nationes was prompted in part by pagan claims that Christians had provoked the wrath of the gods and brought disaster upon Rome, arguments used to justify Diocletian's persecution. More an attack on paganism than a systematic defense of Christianity, it is classed among the apologies chiefly on the strength of its first two books; the later books describe in detail Graeco-Roman temples, idols, sacrifices, and cult practices in order to ridicule them. The work survives in essentially a single ninth-century manuscript now in Paris.
Though a vigorous defender of Christian monotheism and the divinity of Christ, Arnobius held views that were idiosyncratic and at points unorthodox. He treated the heathen gods as real beings, though subordinate to the supreme God, and taught that the human soul was fashioned not by God but by an intermediate being and was not immortal by nature, becoming immortal only as a grace. His pupil at Sicca was Lactantius, who would become a far more careful and influential Christian writer, the author of the Divine Institutes.
Sources: Catholic Encyclopedia (New Advent) — Arnobius · Encyclopædia Britannica — Arnobius the Elder · Encyclopedia.com — Arnobius the Elder