Abstract
This paper presents the anthropological issues of the Arnobius' work Adversus nationes as captured in the first two books of that work. Arnobius of Sikka, African rhetorician of the time of Diocletian, is an author of a comprehensive apologia known as Adversus nationes.
He focuses in it on a famous controversy with pagan cults and also on some aspects of contemporary philosophy and Christian theology. Pivotal are in this respect the sections of the second book in which he presents his conception of man and a totally unique concept of soul whose basic characteristic is qualitas media, ergo mediocrity, which represents Arnobius' attempt to deal with the ancient philosophical and theological ideas and it is also a specific of the author.
Proceeding primarily from the Arnobius' text itself and from the historical context of his life and work, we shall attempt to analyze the author's theological position on this matter, an attention will be further paid to the motives and methods of Arnobius' argumentation. These specific aspects of Arnobius' thinking give an unusual nature to his apologetical method, constisting, inter alia, in the degradation of the significance of pagan philosophy in its relation to faith and in highlighted conception of the Christian God.
Arnobius therefore also in philsosophical consideration pursues primarily an apologetic intent and so his conception of the soul as qualitas media is not a philosophical speculation, but an apologetic instrument. Just the reflections of the human soul are in theological perspective closely associated with Arnobius' conception of Christ, and therefore we consider it is appropriate to examine them in detail.