CELSUS
_Deliquit, opinor, divina doctrina ex Judaea potius quam ex Graecia
oriens. Erravit et Christus piscatores citius quam sophistam ad
praeconium emittens,_--TERTULLIAN, _de Anima_, 3.
At the beginning of the last chapter reference was made to the spread
of Christianity in the second century, and then a brief survey was
given of the position of the old religion without reference to the new.
When one realizes the different habits of mind represented by the men
there considered, the difficulties with which Christianity had to
contend become more evident and more intelligible. Lucian generally
ignored it, only noticing it to laugh at its folly and to pass on--it
was too inconspicuous to be worth attack. To the others--the devout of
the old religion, whose fondest thoughts were for the past, and for
whom religion was largely a ritual, sanctified by tradition and by
fancy,--the Christian faith offered little beyond the negation of all
they counted dear. We are happily in possession of fragments of an
anti-Christian work of the day, written by a man philosophic and
academic in temperament, but sympathetic with the followers of the
religion of his fathers--fragments only, but enough to show how
Christianity at once provoked the laughter, incensed the patriotism,
and offended the religious tastes of educated people.
It was for a man called Celsus that Lucian wrote his book upon the
prophet Alexander and his shrine at Abonoteichos, and it has been
suggested that Lucian's friend and the Celsus, who wrote the famous
_True Word_, may have been one and the same. The evidence is carefully
worked out by Keim,[1] but it is not very strong, especially as some
two dozen men of the name are known to the historians of the first
three centuries of our era. Origen himself knew little of
Celsus--hardly more than we can gather from the quotations he made from
the book {240} in refuting it. From a close study of his occasional
hints at contemporary history, Keim puts Celsus' book down to the
latter part of the reign of Marcus Aurelius, or, more closely, to the
year 178 A.D.[2] Celsus' general references to Christianity and to
paganism imply that period. He writes under the pressure of the
barbarian inroads on the Northern frontier, of the Parthians in the
East and of the great plague. His main concern is the Roman State,
shaken by all these misfortunes, and doubly threatened by the passive
disaffection of Christians within its borders.[3] From what Turk and
Mongol meant to Europe in the Middle Ages and may yet mean to us, we
may divine how men of culture and patriotism felt about the white
savages coming down upon them from the North.
Of the personal history of Celsus nothing can be said, but the features
of his mind are well-marked. He was above all a man of
culture,--candid, scholarly and cool. He knew and admired the
philosophical writings of ancient Greece, he had some knowledge of
Egypt, and he also took the pains to read the books of the Jews and the
Christians. On the whole he leant to Plato, but, like many philosophic
spirits, he found destructive criticism more easy than the elaboration
of a system of his own. Yet here we must use caution, for the object
he had set before him was not to be served by individual speculation.
It was immaterial what private opinions he might hold, for his great
purpose was the abandonment of particularism and the fusion of all
parties for the general good. Private judgment run mad was the mark of
all Christians, orthodox and heretical,--"men walling themselves off
and isolating themselves from mankind"[4]--and his thesis was that the
whole spirit of the movement was wrong. A good citizen's part was
loyal acceptance of the common belief, deviation from which was now
shown to impair the solidarity of the civilized world. Of course such
a position is never taken by really independent thinkers; but it is the
normal standpoint of men to whom practical {241} affairs are of more
moment than speculative precision--men, who are at bottom sceptical,
and have little interest in problems which they have given up as
insoluble. Celsus was satisfied with the established order, alike in
the regions of thought and of government. He mistrusted new
movements--not least when they were so conspicuously alien to the Greek
mind as the new superstition that came from Palestine. He has all the
ancient contempt of the Greek for the barbarian, and, while he is
influenced by the high motive of care for the State, there are traces
of irritation in his tone which speak of personal feeling. The folly
of the movement provoked him.
[Sidenote: The Christian propaganda]
This, he says, is the language of the Christians: "'Let no cultured
person draw near, none wise, none sensible; for all that kind of thing
we count evil; but if any man is ignorant, if any is wanting in sense
and culture, if any is a fool, let him come boldly.' Such people they
spontaneously avow to be worthy of their God; and, so doing, they show
that it is only the simpletons, the ignoble, the senseless, slaves and
women-folk and children, whom they wish to persuade, or can
persuade."[5] Those who summon men to the other initiations
(_teletas_), and offer purification from sins, proclaim: "Whosoever has
clean hands and is wise of speech," or "Whosoever is pure from
defilement, whose soul is conscious of no guilt, who has lived well and
righteously." "But let us hear what sort these people invite;
'Whosoever is a sinner, or unintelligent, or a fool, in a word,
whosoever is god-forsaken (_kakodaimon_), him the kingdom of God will
receive.' Now whom do you mean by the sinner but the wicked, thief,
house-breaker, poisoner, temple-robber, grave-robber? Whom else would
a brigand invite to join him?"[6] But the Christian propaganda is
still more odious. "We see them in our own houses, wool dressers,
cobblers, and fullers, the most uneducated and vulgar persons, not
daring to say a word in the presence of their masters who are older and
wiser; but when they get hold of the children in private, and silly
women with them, they are wonderfully eloquent,--to the effect that the
children must not listen to their father, but believe _them_ and be
taught by _them_; ... that they alone know how to live, and if the
children will listen to them, they will be happy themselves, and will
make {242} their home blessed. But if, while they are speaking, they
see some of the children's teachers, some wiser person or their Father
coming, the more cautious of them will be gone in a moment, and the
more impudent will egg on the children to throw off the
reins--whispering to them that, while their father or their teachers
are about, they will not and cannot teach them anything good ... they
must come with the women, and the little children that play with them,
to the women's quarters, or the cobbler's shop, or the fuller's, to
receive perfect knowledge. And that is how they persuade them."[7]
They are like quacks who warn men against the doctor--"take care that
none of you touches Science (_episteue_); Science is a bad thing;
knowledge (_gnosis_) makes men fall from health of soul."[8] They will
not argue about what they believe--"they always bring in their 'Do not
examine, but believe,' and 'Thy faith shall save thee'"[9]--"believe
that he, whom I set forth to you, is the son of God, even though he was
bound in the most dishonourable way, and punished in the most shameful,
though yesterday or the day before he weltered in the most disgraceful
fashion before the eyes of all men--so much the more believe!"[10] So
far all the Christian sects are at one.
And the absurdity of it! "Why was he not sent to the sinless as well
as to sinners? What harm is there in not having sinned?"[11] Listen
to them! "The unjust, if he humble himself from his iniquity, God will
receive; but the just, if he look up to Him with virtue from beginning
to end, him He will not receive."[12] Celsus' own view is very
different--"It must be clear to everybody, I should think, that those,
who are sinners by nature and training, none could change, {243} not
even by punishment--to say nothing of doing it by pity! For to change
nature completely is very difficult; and those who have not sinned are
better partners in life."[13] Christians in fact make God into a
sentimentalist--"the slave of pity for those who mourn"[14] to the
point of injustice.
[Sidenote: The ecclesia of worms]
Jews and Christians seem to Celsus "like a swarm of bats--or ants
creeping out of their nest--or frogs holding a symposium round a
swamp--or worms in conventicle (_ekklesiaxiousi_) in a corner of the
mud[15]--debating which of them are the more sinful, and saying 'God
reveals all things to us beforehand and gives us warning; he forsakes
the whole universe and the course of the heavenly spheres, and all this
great earth he neglects, to dwell with us alone; to us alone he
despatches heralds, and never ceases to send and to seek how we may
dwell with him for ever.'" "God is," say the worms, "and after him
come we, brought into being by him (_hup' autou gegonotes_), in all
things like unto God; and to us all things are subjected, earth and
water and air and stars; for our sake all things are, and to serve us
they are appointed." "Some of us," continue the worms ("he means us,"
says Origen)--"some of us sin, so God will come, or else he will send
his son, that he may burn up the unrighteous, and that the rest of us
may have eternal life with him."[16]
The radical error in Jewish, and Christian thinking is that it is
anthropocentric. They say that God made all things for man,[17] but
this is not at all evident. What we know of the world suggests that it
is not more for the sake of man than of the irrational animals that all
things were made. Plants and trees and grass and thorns--do they grow
for man a whit more than for the wildest animals? "'Sun and night
serve mortals,' says Euripides--but why us more than the ants or the
flies? For them, too, night comes for rest, and day for sight and
work." If men hunt and eat animals, they in their turn hunt and eat
men; and before towns and communities were formed, and tools and
weapons made, man's supremacy was even more questionable. "In no way
is man better in God's {244} sight than ants and bees" (iv. 81). The
political instinct of man is shared by both these creatures--they have
constitutions, cities, wars and victories, and trials at law--as the
drones know. Ants have sense enough to secure their corn stores from
sprouting: they have graveyards; they can tell one another which way to
go--thus they have _logos_ and _ennoiai_ like men. If one looked from
heaven, would there be any marked difference between the procedures of
men and of ants?[18] But man has an intellectual affinity with God;
the human mind conceives thoughts that are essentially divine (_theias
ennoias_).[19] Many animals can make the same claim--"what could one
call more divine than to foreknow and foretell the future? And this
men learn from the other animals and most of all from birds;" and if
this comes from God, "so much nearer divine intercourse do they seem by
nature than we, wiser and more dear to God." Thus "all things were not
made for man, just as they were not made for the lion, nor the eagle,
nor the dolphin, but that the universe as a work of God might be
complete and perfect in every part. It is for this cause that the
proportions of all things are designed, not for one another (except
incidentally) but for the whole. God's care is for the whole, and this
Providence never neglects. The whole does not grow worse, nor does God
periodically turn it to himself. He is not angry on account of men,
just as he is not angry because of monkeys or flies; nor does he
threaten the things, each of which in measure has its portion of
himself."[20]
[Sidenote: The God of the philosophers]
Celsus held that Christians spoke of God in a way that was neither holy
nor guiltless (_ouch hosios oud' euagos_, iv, 10); and he hinted that
they did it to astonish ignorant listeners.[21] For himself, he was
impressed with the thought, which Plato has in the _Timaeus_,--a
sentence that sums up what many of the most serious and religious
natures have felt and will always feel to be profoundly true: "The
maker and father of this {245} whole fabric it is hard to find, and,
when one has found him, it is impossible to speak of him to all
men."[22] Like the men of his day, a true and deep instinct led him to
point back to "inspired poets, wise men and philosophers," and to Plato
"a more living (_energesteron_) teacher of theology"[23]--"though I
should be surprised if you are able to follow him, seeing that you are
utterly bound up in the flesh and see nothing clearly."[24] What the
sages tell him of God, he proceeds to set forth.
"Being and becoming, one is intelligible, the other visible, (_noeton,
horaton_). Being is the sphere of truth; becoming, of error. Truth is
the subject of knowledge; the other of opinion. Thought deals with the
intelligible; sight with the visible. The mind recognizes the
intelligible, the eye the visible.
"What then the Sun is among things visible,--neither eye, nor
sight--yet to the eye the cause of its seeing, to sight the cause of
its existing (_synistathai_) by his means, to things visible the cause
of their being seen, to all things endowed with sensation the cause of
their existence (_ginesthai_) and indeed the cause himself of himself
being seen; this HE is among things intelligible (_noeta_), who is
neither mind, nor thought, nor knowledge, but to the mind the cause of
thinking, to thought of its being by his means, to knowledge of our
knowing by his means, to all things intelligible, to truth itself, and
to being itself, the cause that they are--out beyond all things
(_panton epekeina on_), intelligible only by some unspeakable faculty.
"So have spoken men of mind; and if _you_ can understand anything of
it, it is well for you. If you suppose a spirit descends from God to
proclaim divine matters, it would be the spirit that proclaims this,
that spirit with which men of old were filled and in consequence
announced much that was good. But if you can take in nothing of it, be
silent and hide your own ignorance, and do not say that those who see
are blind, and those who run are lame, especially when you yourselves
are utterly crippled and mutilated in soul, and live in the body--that
is to say, in the dead element."[25]
Origen says that Celsus is constantly guilty of tautology, and the
reiteration of this charge of ignorance and want of {246} culture is at
least frequent enough. Yet if the Christian movement had been confined
to people as vulgar and illiterate as he suggests, he might not have
thought it worth his while to attack the new religion. His hint of the
propagation of the Gospel by slaves in great houses, taken with the
names of men of learning and position, whom we know to have been
converted, shows the seriousness of the case. But to avoid the further
charge which Origen brings against Celsus of "mixing everything up," it
will be better to pursue Celsus' thoughts of God.
"I say nothing new, but what seemed true of old (_palai dedogmena_).
God is good, and beautiful, and happy, and is in that which is most
beautiful and best. If then he 'descends to men,' it involves change
for him, and change from good to bad, from beautiful to ugly, from
happiness to unhappiness, from what is best to what is worst. Who
would choose such a change? For mortality it is only nature to alter
and be changed; but for the immortal to abide the same forever. God
would not accept such a change."[26] He presents a dilemma to the
Christians; "Either God really changes, as they say, to a mortal
body,--and it has been shown that this is impossible; or he himself
does not change, but he makes those who see suppose so, and thus
deceives and cheats them. Deceit and lying are evil, taken generally,
though in the single case of medicine one might use them in healing
friends who are sick or mad--or against enemies in trying to escape
danger. But none who is sick or mad is a friend of God's; nor is God
afraid of any one, so that he should use deceit to escape danger."[27]
God in fact "made nothing mortal; but God's works are such things as
are immortal, and _they_ have made the mortal. The soul is God's work,
but the nature of the body is different, and in this respect there is
no difference between the bodies of bat, worm, frog, and man. The
matter is the same and the corruptible part is alike."[28]
[Sidenote: God's anger]
The Christian conception of the "descent of God" is repulsive to
Celsus, for it means contact with matter. "God's anger," too, is an
impious idea, for anger is a passion; and {247} Celsus makes havoc of
the Old Testament passages where God is spoken of as having human
passions (_anthropopathes_), closing with an _argumentum ad
hominem_--"Is it not absurd that a man [Titus], angry with the Jews,
slew all their youth and burnt their land, and so they came to nothing;
but God Almighty, as they say, angry and vexed and threatening, sends
his son and endures such things as they tell?"[29] Furthermore, the
Christian account of God's anger at man's sin involves a presumption
that Christians really know what evil is. "Now the origin of evil is
not to be easily known by one who has no philosophy. It is enough to
tell the common people that evil is not from God, but is inherent in
matter, and is a fellow-citizen (_empoliteuetai_) of mortality. The
circuit of mortal things is from beginning to end the same, and in the
appointed circles the same must always of necessity have been and be
and be again."[30] "Nor could the good or evil elements in mortal
things become either less or greater. God does not need to restore all
things anew. God is not like a man, that, because he has faultily
contrived or executed without skill, he should try to amend the
world."[31] In short, "even if a thing seems to you to be bad, it is
not yet clear that it is bad; for you do not know what is of advantage
to yourself, or to another, or to the whole."[32] Besides would God
need to descend in order to {248} learn what was going on among
men?[33] Or was he dissatisfied with the attention he received, and
did he really come down to show off like a _nouveau riche_ (_oi
neoploutoi_)?"[34] Then why not long before?[35]
Should Christians ask him how God is to be seen, he has his answer: "If
you will be blind to sense and see with the mind, if you will turn from
the flesh and waken the eyes of the soul, thus and thus only shall you
see God."[36] In words that Origen approves, he says, "from God we
must never and in no way depart, neither by day nor by night, in public
or in private, in every word and work perpetually, but, with these and
without, let the soul ever be strained towards God."[37] "If any man
bid you, in the worship of God, either to do impiety, or to say
anything base, you must never be persuaded by him. Rather endure every
torture and submit to every death, than think anything unholy of God,
let alone say it."[38]
Thus the fundamental conceptions of the Christians are shown to be
wrong, but more remains to be done. Let us assume for purposes of
discussion that there could be a "descent of God"--would it be what the
Christians say it was? "God is great and hard to be seen," he makes
the Christian say, "so he put his own spirit into a body like ours and
sent it down here that we might hear and learn from it."[39] If that is
true, he says, then God's son cannot be immortal, since the nature of a
spirit is not such as to be permanent; nor could Jesus have risen again
in the body, "for God would not have received back the spirit which he
gave when it was polluted with the nature of the body."[40] "If he had
wished to send down a spirit from himself, why did he need to breathe
it into the womb of a woman? He knew already how to {249} make men,
and he could have fashioned a body about this spirit too, and so
avoided putting his own spirit into such pollution."[41] Again the
body, in which the spirit was sent, ought to have had stature or beauty
or terror or persuasion, whereas they say it was little, ugly and
ignoble.[42]
Then, finally, "suppose that God, like Zeus in the Comedy, waking out
of long sleep, determined to rescue mankind from evil, why on earth did
he send this spirit (as you call it) into one particular corner? He
ought to have breathed through many bodies in the same way and sent
them all over the world. The comic poet, to make merriment in the
theatre, describes how Zeus waked up and sent Hermes to the Athenians
and Lacedaemonians; do you not think that your invention of God's son
being sent to the Jews is more laughable still?"[43] The incarnation
further carried with it stories of "God eating"--mutton, vinegar, gall.
This revolted Celsus, and he summed it all up in one horrible word.[44]
[Sidenote: The ignominy of Jesus]
The ignominy of the life of Jesus was evidence to Celsus of the falsity
of his claim to be God's son. He bitterly taunts Christians with
following a child of shame--"God's would not be a body like yours--nor
begotten as you were begotten, Jesus!"[45] He reviles Jesus for the
Passion--"unhelped by his Father and unable to help himself."[46] He
goes to the Gospels ("I know the whole story," he says[47]) and he
cites incident after incident. He reproaches Jesus with seeking to
escape the cross,[48] he brings forward "the men who mocked him and put
the purple robe on him, the crown of thorns, and; {250} the reed in his
hand";[49] he taunts him with being unable to endure his thirst upon
the cross--"which many a common man will endure."[50] As to the
resurrection, "if Jesus wished really to display his divine power, he
ought to have appeared to the actual men who reviled him, and to him
who condemned him and to all, for, of course, he was no longer afraid
of any man, seeing he was dead, and, as you say, God, and was not
originally sent to elude observation."[51] Or, better still, to show
his Godhead, he might have vanished from the gibbet.[52]
What befel Jesus, befals his followers. "Don't you see, my dear sir?"
Celsus says, "a man may stand and blaspheme your daemon; and not that
only, he may forbid him land and sea, and then lay hands on _you_, who
are consecrated to him like a statue, bind you, march you off and
impale you; and the daemon, or, as you say, the son of God, does not
help you."[53] "You may stand and revile the statues of the gods and
laugh. But if you tried it in the actual presence of Dionysus or
Herakles, you might not get off so comfortably. But your god in his
own person they spread out and punished, and those who did it have
suffered nothing.... He too who sent his son (according to you) with
some message or other, looked on and saw him thus cruelly punished, so
that the message perished with him, and though all this time has passed
he has never heeded. What father was ever so unnatural (_anosios_)?
Ah! but perhaps he wished it, you say, and that was why he endured the
insult. And perhaps our gods _wish_ it too, when you blaspheme
them."[54]
Celsus would seem to have heard Christian preaching, for beside
deriding "Only believe" and "Thy faith will save thee," he is offended
by the language they use about the cross. "Wide as the sects stand
apart, and bitter as are their quarrels and mutual abuse, you will hear
them all say their 'To me the world is crucified and I to the
world.'"[55] In one great passage he mixes, as Origen says, the things
he has mis-heard, and quotes Christian utterances about "a soul that
lives, and a heaven that is slain that it may live, and earth slain
with the {251} sword, and ever so many people being slain to live; and
death taking a rest in the world when the sin of the world dies; and
then a narrow way down, and gates that open of themselves. And
everywhere you have the tree of life and the resurrection of the flesh
from the tree--I suppose, because their teacher was nailed to a cross
and was a carpenter by trade. Exactly as, if he had chanced to be
thrown down a precipice, or pushed into a pit, or choked in a noose, or
if he had been a cobbler, or a stone-mason, or a blacksmith, there
would have been above the heavens a precipice of life, or a pit of
resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a happy stone, or the iron
of love, or the holy hide."[56]
[Sidenote: The Cross and the miracles]
The miracles of Jesus Celsus easily explains. "Through poverty he went
to Egypt and worked there as a hired labourer; and there he became
acquainted with certain powers [or faculties], on which the Egyptians
pride themselves, and he came back holding his head high on account of
them, and because of them he announced that he was God."[57] But,
granting the miracles of healing and of raising the dead and feeding
the multitudes, he maintains that ordinary quacks will do greater
miracles in the streets for an obol or two, "driving devils out of
men,[58] and blowing away diseases and calling up the souls of heroes,
and displaying sumptuous banquets and tables and sweetmeats and
dainties that are not there;"--"must we count _them_ sons of God?"[59]
There are plenty of prophets too, "and it is quite an easy and ordinary
thing for each of them to say 'I am God--or God's son--or a divine
spirit. And I am come; for already the world perisheth, and ye, oh
men, are lost for your sins. But I am willing to {252} save you; and
ye shall see me hereafter coming with heavenly power. Blessed is he
that has worshipped me now; but upon all the rest I will send eternal
fire, and upon their cities and lands. And men who do not recognize
their own guilt shall repent in vain with groans; and them that have
believed me, I will guard for ever.'"[60] Jesus was, he holds, an
obvious quack and impostor. In fact, there is little to choose between
worshipping Jesus and Antinous, the favourite of Hadrian, who had
actually been deified in Egypt.[61]
The teaching of Jesus, to which Christians pointed, was after all a
mere medley of garbled quotations from Greek literature. Thus when
Jesus said that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye
than for a rich man to go into the kingdom of God, he was merely
spoiling the Platonic saying that it is impossible for a man to be
exceedingly good and exceedingly rich at the same time.[62] The
kingdom of heaven itself comes from the "divinely spoken" words of
Plato; it is the "supercelestial region" of the _Phaedrus_.[63] Satan is
a parody of Heraclitus' conception of War.[64] The Christian
resurrection comes from metempsychosis.[65] The idea that "God will
descend, carrying fire (like a torturer in a law-court)" comes from
some confused notion of the teaching of the Greeks upon cycles and
periods and the final conflagration.[66] Plato has this advantage that
he never boasted and never said that God had "a son who descended and
talked with me."[67] The "son of God" itself was an expression
borrowed in their clumsy way by the Christians from the ancients who
conceived of the universe as God's offspring.[68]
[Sidenote: Resurrection]
Christians lay great stress on the immortality, "but it is silly of
them to suppose that when God--like a cook--brings the fire, the rest
of mankind will be roasted and they themselves will alone remain, not
merely the living, but even those who died long ago, rising from the
earth with the identical flesh they had before. Really it is the hope
of worms! For what soul of a man would any longer wish for a body that
{253} had rotted?"[69] The loathsomeness of the idea, he says, cannot
be expressed, and besides it is impossible. "They have nothing to
reply to this, so they fly to the absurdest refuge, and say that all is
possible with God. But God cannot do what is foul, and what is
contrary to nature he will not do. Though you in your vulgarity may
wish a loathsome thing, it does not follow that God can do it, nor that
you are right to believe at once that it will come to pass. For it is
not of superfluous desire and wandering disorder, but of true and just
nature that God is prince (_archegetes_). He could grant immortal life
of the soul; but 'corpses,' as Heraclitus says, 'are less useful than
dung.' The flesh is full of--what it is not beautiful even to
mention--and to make it immortal contrary to all reason (_paralogos_),
is what God neither will nor can do. For he is the reason of all
things that are, so that he cannot do anything contrary to reason or
contrary to himself."[70] And yet, says Celsus, "you hope you will see
God with the eyes of your body, and hear his voice with your ears, and
touch him with the hands of sense."[71] If they threaten the heathen
with eternal punishment, the exegetes, hierophants, and mystagogues of
the temples hurl back the same threat, and while words are equal, they
can show proofs in daemonic activities and oracles.[72] "With those
however who speak of the soul or the mind (whether they choose to call
it spiritual, or a spirit intelligent, holy and happy, or a living
soul, or the supercelestial and incorruptible offspring of a divine and
bodyless nature--or whatever they please)--with those who hope to have
this eternally with God, with such I will speak. For they are right in
holding that they who have lived well will be happy and the unjust will
be held in eternal woes. From this opinion (_dogmatos_) let not them
nor any one else depart."[73]
In this way Celsus surveys the main points of Christian history and
teaching. They have no real grounds beneath them. The basis of the
church is "faction (_stasis_) and the profit it brings, and fear of
those without;--those are the things that establish the faith for
them."[74] Faction is their keynote, taken from the Jews at first; and
faction splits them up into innumerable sects beside the "great
church,"[75]--"the {254} one thing they have in common, if indeed they
still have it, is the name; and this one thing they are ashamed to
abandon."[76] When they all say "'Believe, if you wish to be saved, or
else depart'; what are those to do who really wish to be saved? Should
they throw the dice to find out to whom to turn?"[77] In short,
faction is their breath of life, and "if all mankind were willing to be
Christian, then they would not."[78]
[Sidenote: Gods and daemons]
But Celsus is not content merely to refute; he will point out a more
excellent way. "Are not all things ruled according to the will of God?
is not all Providence from him? Whatever there is in the whole scheme
of things, whether the work of God, or of angels, or other daemons, or
heroes, all these have their law from the greatest God; and in power
over each thing is set he that has been counted fit."[79] "Probably
the various sections are allotted to various rulers (_epoptais_) and
distributed in certain provinces, and so governed. Thus among the
various nations things would be done rightly if done as those rulers
would have them. It is then not holy to break down what has been from
the beginning the tradition of one and another place."[80] Again, the
body is the prison of the soul; should there not then be warders of
it--daemons in fact?[81] Then "will not a man, who worships God, be
justified in serving him who has his power from God?"[82] To worship
them all cannot grieve him to whom they all belong.[83] Over and over
Celsus maintains the duty of "living by the ancestral usages," "each
people worshipping its own traditional deities."[84] To say with the
Christians that there is one Lord, meaning God, is to break up the
kingdom of God and make factions there (_stasiaxein_), as if there were
choices to be made, and one were a rival of another.[85]
Ammon is no worse than the angels of the Jews; though here the Jews are
so far right in that they hold by the ways of their ancestors--an
advantage which the Jewish proselytes have {255} forfeited.[86] If the
Jews pride themselves on superior knowledge and so hold aloof from
other men, Herodotus is evidence that their supposed peculiar dogma is
shared by the Persians; and "I think it makes no difference whether you
call Zeus the Most High, or Zeus, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Amun, like
the Egyptians, or Papaios like the Scythians."[87]
The evidence for the ancillary daemons and gods he finds in the familiar
places. "Why need I tell at length how many things prophets and
prophetesses at the oracles have foretold, and other men and women
possessed by a voice of a god within them? the marvels heard from
shrines? revelations from sacrifices and victims, and other miraculous
tokens? And some have been face to face with visible phantoms. The
whole of life is full of these things." Cities have escaped plague and
famine through warnings from oracles, and have suffered for neglecting
them. The childless have gained children, and the crippled have been
healed, while those who have treated sacred things with contempt have
been punished in suicide and incurable diseases.[88] Let a man go to
the shrine of Trophonius or Amphiaraus or Mopsus, and there he may see
the gods in the likeness of men, no feigned forms (_pseudomenous_) but
clear to see, "not slipping by them once, like him who deceived these
people [the Christians], but ever associating with those who will."[89]
"A great multitude of men, Greeks and barbarians, testify that they
have often seen and still do see Asklepios, and not merely a phantom of
him, but they see himself healing men, and doing them good, and
foretelling the future."[90] Is it not likely that these "satraps and
ministers of air and earth" could do you harm, if you did them
despite?[91] Earthly rulers too deserve worship, since they hold their
positions not without daemonic influence.[92] Why should not the
Christians worship them, daemons and Emperors? If they worshipped no
other but one God, they might have some clear argument against other
men; but, as it is, they more than worship the person who lately
appeared, and reckon that God is not wronged by the service done to his
subordinate,[93]--though in truth he is only a corpse.[94] In any case,
"if idols are nothing, what harm is there in taking part in the
festival? but if there are daemons, it is clear they too {256} are of
God, and in them we must trust, and speak them fair, according to the
laws, and pray that they may be propitious."[95]
It is characteristic of the candour of Celsus that he lets slip a
caution or two about the service of daemons. Christians are as
credulous, he says in one place, as "those who lightly (_alogos_)
believe in the roaming priests of Cybele (_metragurtais_) and
wonder-seers, Mithras and Sabadios and the like--phantoms of Hecate or
some other female daemon or daemons."[96] Again, he has a word of
warning as to magic, and the danger and injury into which those fall
who busy themselves with it--"One must be on one's guard, that one may
not, by being occupied with these matters, become entangled in the
service of them [literally; fused with them, _syntake_], and through
love of the body and by turning away from better things be overcome by
forgetfulness. For perhaps we should not disbelieve wise men, who say
(as a matter of fact) that of the daemons who pervade the earth the
greater part are entangled in 'becoming' (_genesei syntetekos_)--fused
and riveted to it--and being bound to blood and smoke and chantings and
other such things can do no more than heal the body and foretell future
destiny to man and city; and the limits of their knowledge and power
are those of human affairs."[97]
[Sidenote: The rescue of the empire]
At the last comes his great plea. Human authority is of divine
ordinance. "To the Emperor all on earth is given; and whatever you
receive in life is from him."[98] "We must not disbelieve one of old,
who long ago said--
Let one be king, to whom the son of wise Kronos has given it.
If you invalidate this thought (_dogma_), probably the Emperor will
punish you. For if all men were to do as you do, nothing will prevent
the Emperor being left alone and deserted,[99] and all things on earth
falling into the power of the {257} most lawless and barbarous savages,
with the result that neither of your religion nor of the true wisdom
would there be left among men so much as the name.[100] You will
hardly allege that if the Romans were persuaded by you and forsook all
their usages as to gods and men, and called upon your 'Most High' or
whatever you like, he would descend and fight for them and they would
need no other help. For before now that same God promised (as you say)
this and much more to those who served him, and you see all the good he
has done them and you. As for them [the Jews], instead of being
masters of all the earth, they have not a clod nor a hearthstone left
them; while you--if there is any of you left in hiding, search is being
made for him to put him to death."[101] The Christian sentiment that it
is desirable for all who inhabit the Empire, Greeks and barbarians,
Asia, Europe and Libya, to agree to one law or custom, is foolish and
impracticable.[102] So Celsus calls on the Christians "to come to the
help of the Emperor with all their might and labour with him as right
requires, fight on his behalf, take the field with him, if he call on
you, and share the command of the legions with him[103]--yes, and be
magistrates, if need be, and to do this for the salvation of laws and
religion."[104]
It will be noted that, so far as our fragments serve us, Celsus
confines himself essentially to the charges of folly, perversity, and
want of national feeling. An excessive opinion of the value of the
human soul and an absurd fancy of God's interest in man are two of the
chief faults he sees in Christianity.[105] He sees well, for the love
of God our Father and the infinite significance of the meanest and
commonest and most depraved of men were after all the cardinal
doctrines of the new faith. There can be no compromise between the
Christian conception of the Ecclesia of God and Celsus' contempt for an
"ecclesia of worms in a pool"; nor between the "Abba Father" of Jesus
and the aloof and philosophic God of Celsus "away beyond everything."
These two {258} contrasts bring into clear relief the essentially new
features of Christianity, and from the standpoint of ancient philosophy
they were foolish and arbitrary fancies. That standpoint was
unquestioned by Celsus.
[Sidenote: The failure of Celsus]
Confident in the truth of his premisses and the conclusions that follow
from them, Celsus charged the Christians with folly and dogmatism. Yet
it would be difficult to maintain that they were more dogmatic than
himself; they at least had ventured on the experiment of a new life,
that was to bring ancient Philosophy to a new test. They were the
researchers in spiritual things, and he the traditionalist. As to the
charge of folly, we may at once admit a comparatively lower standard of
education among the Christians; yet Lucian's book _Alexander_, with its
curious story of the false prophet who classed them with the Epicureans
as his natural enemies, suggests that, with all their limitations, they
had an emancipation of mind not reached by all their contemporaries.
If they did not accept the conclusions of Greek thinkers as final, they
were still less prepared to accept sleight-of-hand and hysteria as the
ultimate authority in religious truth.[106] Plutarch, we may remember,
based belief in immortality on the oracles of Apollo; and Celsus
himself appeals to the evidence of shrines and miracles. If we say
that pagans and Christians alike believed in the occurrence of these
miracles and in daemonic agency as their cause, it remains that the
Christians put something much nearer the modern value upon them, while
Celsus, who denounced the Christians as fools, tendered this
contemptible evidence for the religion he advocated.
His Greek training was in some degree the cause of this. The
immeasurable vanity of the Greeks did not escape the Romans. A sense
of indebtedness to the race that has given us Homer, Euripides and
Plato leads us to treat all Greeks kindly--with more kindness than
those critics show them whose acquaintance with them has been less in
literature and more in life. The great race still had gifts for
mankind, but it was now mainly living upon its past. In Plutarch the
pride of race is genial and pleasant; in Celsus it takes another
form--that of contempt for the barbarian and the unlettered. {259} The
truism may be forgiven that contempt is no pathway to understanding or
to truth; and in this case contempt cut Celsus off from any real access
to the mind of the people he attacked. He read their books; he heard
them talk; but, for all his conscious desire to inform himself, he did
not penetrate into the heart of the movement--nor of the men. He
missed the real motive force--the power of the life and personality of
Jesus, on which depended the two cardinal doctrines which he assailed.
The extraordinary blunders, to which the very surest critics in
literature are liable, may prepare us for anything. But to those who
have some intimate realization of the mind of Jesus, the portrait which
Celsus drew of him is an amazing caricature--the ignorant Jewish
conjuror, who garbles Plato, and makes no impression on his friends, is
hardly so much as a parody. It meant that Celsus did not understand
the central thing in the new faith. The "godhead" of Jesus was as
absurd as he said, if it was predicated of the Jesus whom he drew; and
there he let it rest. How such a dogma could have grown in such a case
he did not inquire; nor, finding it grown, did he correct his theory by
the fact. Thus upon the real strength of Christianity he had nothing
to say. This was not the way to convince opponents, and here the
action of the Christians was sounder and braver. For they accepted the
inspiration of the great men of Greece, entered into their spirit (as
far as in that day it was possible), and fairly did their best to put
themselves at a universal point of view.[107] They had the larger
sympathies.
Yet for Celsus it may be pleaded that his object was perhaps less the
reconversion of Christians to the old faith than to prevent the
perversion of pagans to the new. But here too he failed, for he did
not understand even the midway people with whom he was dealing. They
were a large class--men and women open to religious ideas from whatever
source they might come--Egypt, Judaea, or Persia, desirous of the
knowledge of {260} God and of communion with God, and in many cases
conscious of sin. In none of these feelings did Celsus share--his
interests are all intellectual and practical. Plutarch before him, and
the Neo-Platonists after him, understood the religious instincts which
they endeavoured to satisfy, and for the cold, hard outlines of Celsus'
hierarchy of heavenly and daemonic beings they substituted
personalities, approachable, warm and friendly (_ho philos Apollon_).
Men felt the need of gods who were Saviours,--of gods with whom they
might commune in sacraments--as the rise of Mithra-worship shows. They
sought for salvation from sin, for holiness--the word was much on their
lips--and for peace with God. To Celsus these seem hardly to have been
necessities; and whether we say that he made no effort to show that
they were provided for in the old religion, or that he suggested,
tacitly or explicitly, that the scheme he set forth had such a
provision, the effect is the same. He really had nothing to offer.
[Sidenote: The victory of the Christians]
Celsus did not bring against the Christians the charges of "OEdipodean
unions and Thyestean banquets" familiar to the reader of the
Apologists[108]--and to the student of the events that preceded the
Boxer movement in China. While he taunted Jesus with being a bastard
and a deceiver, and roundly denounced Christians generally for imposing
upon the ignorance of men with false religion and false history, he did
not say anything of note against ordinary Christian conduct. At least
the fragments do not show anything of the kind. Later on the defenders
and apologists of paganism had to own with annoyance that Christians
set their fellow-citizens an example; Maximin Daza and Julian tried
vigorously to raise the tone of pagan society. Here lies an argument
with which Celsus could not deal. The Fatherhood of God (in the sense
which Jesus gave to the words) and the value of the individual soul,
even the depraved and broken soul, are matters of argument, and on
paper they may be very questionable; but when the people, who held or
(more truly) were held by these beliefs, managed somehow or other to
show to the world lives transformed and endowed with the power of
transforming others, the plain fact outweighed any number of _True
Words_. Whatever {261} the explanation, the thing was there.
Christians in the second century laid great stress on the value of
paper and argument, and to-day we feel with Celsus that among them,
orthodox and heretical, they talked and wrote a great deal that was
foolish--"their allegories were worse than their myths"--but the sheer
weight of Christian character carried off allegories and myths, bore
down the school of Celsus and the more powerful school of Plutarch,
Porphyry and Plotinus and abolished the ancient world, and then
captured and transformed the Northern nations.
Celsus could not foresee all that we look back upon. But it stands to
his credit that he recognised the dangers which threatened the ancient
civilization, dangers from German without and Christian within. He had
not the religious temperament; he was more the statesman in his habit
of mind, and he clearly loved his country. The appeal with which he
closes is a proposal of peace--toleration, if the Christians will save
the civilized world. It was not destined that his hopes should be
fulfilled in the form he gave them, for it was the Christian Church
that subdued the Germans and that carried over into a larger and more
human civilization all that was of value in that inheritance of the
past for which he pleaded. So far as his gifts carried him, he was
candid; and if sharp of tongue and a little irritable of temper, he was
still an honourable adversary. He was serious, and, if he did not
understand religion, he believed in the state and did his best to save
it.