The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire Part 33

hierarchy of heavenly and daemonic beings they subst.i.tuted personalities, approachable, warm and friendly (_ho philos Apollon_).

Men felt the need of G.o.ds who were Saviours,--of G.o.ds 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 G.o.d. 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 b.a.s.t.a.r.d 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 G.o.d (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.

Chapter VIII Footnotes:

[1] Keim, _Celsus' Wahres Wort_ (1873).

[2] Keim, pp. 264-273.

[3] Tertullian, _Apol._ 38, _nec ulla res aliena magis quam publica_.

Elsewhere Tertullian explains this: _laedimas Romanos nec Romani habemur qui non Romanorum deum colimus, Apol._ 24.

[4] Apud Origen, _c. Cels._ viii, 2. References in what follows will be made to the book and chapter of this work without repet.i.tion of Origen's name. The text used is that of Koetschau.

[5] _c. Cels._ iii, 44.

[6] _Ibid._ iii, 59.

[7] iii, 55. I have omitted a clause or two.

Clem A. _Strom._ iv, 67, on the other hand, speaks of the difficult position of wife or slave in such a divided household, and (68) of conversions in spite of the master of the house. Tert. _ad Scap._ 3, has a story of a governor whose wife became a Christian, and who in anger began a persecution at once.

[8] iii, 75.

[9] i, 9. Cf. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ i, 43, on some Christians who think themselves _euphusis_ and "ask for faith--faith alone and bare." In _Paed._ i, 27, he says much the same himself, _t pisteusai monon ka anagennethunai teleiois estin en zoe_.

[10] vi, 10. Clem. Alex. _Strom._ ii, 8, "The Greeks think Faith empty and barbarous, and revile it," but (ii, 30) "if it had been a human thing, as they supposed, it would have been quenched."

[11] iii, 62.

[12] iii, 62.

[13] iii, 65, _tous hamartangin pephykotas te ka eithismenous_.

[14] iii, 71.

[15] Clement of Alexandria, _Protr._ 92, uses this simile of worms in the mud of swamps, applying it to people who live for pleasure.

[16] iv, 23.

[17] iv, 74.

[18] So Lucian _Icaromenippus_, 19, explicitly.

[19] iv, 88. Cf. Clem. Alex. _Paedag._ i, 7, _t philtron endon estn en to anthropo touth' oper emphysema legetai theou_.

[20] _c. Cels._ iv, 74-99. Cf. Plato, _Laws_, 903 B, _hos to tou pants epimeloumeno prs ten soterian ka areten tou holou pant' est syntetagmena kte_, explicitly developing the idea of the part being for the whole. Also Cicero, _N.D._ ii, 13, 34-36.

[21] Of. M. Aurelius, xi, 3, the criticism of the theatricality of the Christians. See p. 198.

[22] _c. Cels._ vii, 42, _tn men oun poieten ka patera toude tou pants ehurein te epgon ka ehuronta eis pantas adynaton legein_; _Timaeus_, 28 C--often cited by Clement too.

[23] vii, 42.

[24] vii, 42.

[25] vii, 45.

[26] iv, 14.

[27] iv, 18. See Tertullian's argument on this question of G.o.d changing, in _de Carne Christi_, 3. See Plato, _Rep._ ii, 381 B.

[28] iv, 52. See _Timaeus_, 34 B ff. on G.o.d making soul.

[29] iv, 73. See Clem. Alex. _Paed._ i, ch. 10, on G.o.d threatening; and Strom, ii, 72; iv, 151; vii, 37, for the view that G.o.d is without anger, and for guidance as to the understanding of language in the O.T.

which seems to imply the contrary. For a different view, see Tertullian, _de Testim. Animae_, 2, _unde igitur naturalis timor animae in deum, si deus nan novit irasci? adv. Marc._ i, 26, 27, on the necessity for G.o.d's anger, if the moral law is to be maintained; and _adv. Marc._ ii, 16, a further account of G.o.d's anger, while a literal interpretation of G.o.d's "eyes" and "right hand" is excluded.

[30] iv, 65.

[31] iv, 69.

[32] iv, 70. Long before (about 500 B.C.) Herac.l.i.tus had said (fragm. 61): "To G.o.d all things are beautiful and good and just; but men have supposed some things to be unjust and others just." For this doctrine of the relativity of good and bad to the whole, cf. hymn of Cleanthes to Zeus:--

_alla su ka ta perissa t' epistasai artia theinai_, _ka kosmein ta kosma, ka ou phila so phila estin_.

_ode gar eis en panta synermokas esthla kakoisin_ _osth' ena gignesthai panton logon aien eonta_.

Cf. also the teaching of Chrysippus, as given by Gellius, _N.A._ vii, 1: _c.u.m bona malis contraria sint, utraque necessum est opposita inter sese et quasi mutuo adverse quaeque fulta nisu consistere; nullum adeo contrarium est sine contrario altero ... situleris unum abstuleris utrumque_. See also M. Aurelius in the same Stoic vein, viii, 50; ix, 42. On the other side see Plutarch's indignant criticism of this attribution of the responsibility for evil to G.o.d, _de comm. not. adv.

Sto._ 14, 1065 D, ff. In opposition to Marcion, Tertullian emphasizes the worth of the world; his position, as a few words will show, is not that of Celsus, but Stoic influence is not absent: _adv. Marc._ i, 13, 14; _Ergo nec mundus deo indignus: nihil etenim deus indignum st fecit, etsi mundum homini non sibi fecit, etsi omne opus inferius est suo artifice_; see p. 317.

[33] iv, 3.

[34] iv, 6.

[35] iv, 7.

[36] vii, 36.

[37] viii, 63.

[38] viii, 66.

[39] vi, 69. "Men, who count themselves wise," says Clement (_Strom._ i, 88), "count it a fairy tale that the son of G.o.d should speak through man, or that G.o.d should have a son, and he suffer."