Celsus was concerned about the spread of the new sect called Christianity. He felt that Christianity’s view of the world and of life was so different from the ancient world order that, if accepted by the majority, it would ruin society.[1]
Cultured and learned as he was, Celsus understood the far-reaching implications of the religion’s teachings. He was particularly scandalised by the one they had made a god. It would have been acceptable if He had been a brave hero or an illustrious person; but to make a god out of an obscure Oriental like Jesus, who shrinks away from death and then dies in such a shameful way? Where would humanity go if it accepted such a personality as its supreme being?
To oppose Christianity, Celsus set about writing a book. He used all his skills as a philosopher and orator to prove what he saw as the absurdity and danger of Christianity. He called it On the True Doctrine.
On the True Doctrine
Not much is known of Celsus. He was a Roman scholar, possibly associated with the Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161-190 AD). He was well versed in Greek philosophy and had a wide knowledge of the religions of different peoples. He travelled widely[2] and was a keen observer of manners and customs. He was eclectic in his philosophical orientation, with Neoplatonism dominating his thought, with Epicurean insertions.[3]
He wrote On the True Doctrine before 180 AD. The book has not survived as such, but the famous theologian Origen later wrote a reply, Contra Celsum (c. 248), quoting his work almost in its entirety. This is therefore the first anti-Christian work from the Greco-Roman world to which we have access today. On the True Doctrine, according to Celsus, is the doctrine “held by the most ancient and pious races and the wisest of men. It has been perverted or misunderstood first by the Jews, and then by the Christians, who are only an offshoot from an already corrupted stem, Judaism.”[4]
Adhering to Platonic philosophy, Celsus believed that God was immobile, formless, impossible to name and very difficult to know. This God took care of the universe through what is called providence. Providence meant that God had given all beings, animate and inanimate, a place in the great whole for the good of the whole. He did not believe in a providence of love, because his God was above feelings. Feelings of any kind—love, anger, grief, joy, etc.—were alien to God.
Christianity brought nothing new, Celsus believed, because the Egyptians, Persians, Indians and Greek philosophers had long since brought to light many of the ideas proposed by Christianity. Plato, for example, had already said that it is wrong to take revenge on someone who has wronged you. The Scythians and Persians had long promoted the idea that images should not be worshipped. The arguments of the Christians, Celsus added, were childish and only illiterate people listened to them. They forced people to believe by promising future rewards or threatening eternal tortures. They were divided into many factions, each with its own claims, with only the name Christian in common. As such, Celsus appealed to the Christians to renounce this barbaric faith and to integrate into society, into the army, to participate in celebrations, in religion, in society, and to support the Emperor in his struggle to keep peace in the Empire.
Nothing special about Jesus
Celsus argued that the Christian accounts of Jesus were not only fairytales, but contradicted each other; and so, he suggested, some interpreters had altered them to iron out the discrepancies. Jesus was supposedly the son of an unfaithful woman and a Roman soldier, and His birth was comparable to Greek myths. The prophecies about Jesus were, in his view, applicable to many people, and His miracles were merely tricks learned in Egypt. Celsus also criticised the resurrection as a claim common to mythological figures. He also doubted the credibility of the witnesses to the resurrection, whom he described as unstable and easily deceived. Celsus also believed that if Jesus was truly divine, He should have revealed Himself first to those who condemned Him.
The pattern of Celsus’s arguments
Celsus’s arguments are a synthesis of the criticisms of Christianity by pagan culture and philosophy. His criticism reflects both the logical constructs of philosophy and the Jewish counter-arguments to the testimony of the Gospels. In addition, there is a great deal of irony, sarcasm and gossip that circulated at the expense of Christians.
The prolific Christian theologian Origen responded to Celsus’ accusations in a treatise called Against Celsus (Contra Celsum). Both Celsus’s arguments and Origen’s responses have become the basis of Christian criticism and apologetics, perpetuated and elaborated by opponents and supporters to the present day. In the preface to his work, Origen remarked that “Jesus is always being falsely accused, and there is never a time when He is not being accused so long as there is evil among men.”[5] By the historical position He adopted, Jesus forever exposed Himself to criticism.
Celsus’ contempt for Judaism and Christianity is not unique. The exponents of Greco-Roman culture had a superiority complex, believing that as a nation they had reached a higher level of civilisation. The linear logic of the philosophers, based on the thesis-antithesis-synthesis scheme, fizzled and raged against the paradoxical categories of Eastern thought. Greek thought had no place for antinomies. That is why it strove to put reality into clear and distinct categories.
Judaism, and by implication Christianity, accepted the coexistence of opposites. The Jews related to reality not only with the mind but also with the heart (Deuteronomy 6:5; Proverbs 23:26; Matthew 22:37). The heart was for the Jews the seat of feeling and intention. Rather than being outside a reality that they judged in the abstract, the Jews were part of a reality that they actually lived. Truth is not only thought, but lived and encountered.
The incarnation, death, and resurrection of Christ were for Celsus a contradiction of the divine nature, or, as Paul puts it, a “foolishness” (1 Corinthians 1:23). The God of Celsus has nothing to do with matter; He only created it, but He is outside of it. He could not have become incarnate, much less die or need to resurrect. He is beyond life and death, for these are attributes of matter. So for Celsus it was a regression to attribute birth, life and death to God. This God had no need of theodicy because He had no feelings for the world and no specific providence. There was a general providence, which had the good of the whole in view, but in no case was God interested in whether someone had something to eat or not. Consequently, there was no sin and no need for a saviour, because people were accountable only to religious, civil and social courts, not to God. Celsus’ human being has no moral responsibility, so he has no need of salvation.
For the Jews, on the other hand, Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection were not philosophical impossibilities, but blasphemy and impiety. Paul called them “stumbling blocks” (1 Corinthians 1:23). Although he despised the Jews, Celsus did not hesitate to use their arguments to discredit Christianity. The idea that Jesus was the son of a certain Pantera is of Jewish origin: “Joshua[6] ben Pandera [sic!] is detested in certain midrashim[7] as a heretic who lived ‘a life of delusion’ and ‘led Israel astray’ by his apostasy.”[8]
Jesus is the argument
The Christ of the Gospels does not defy logic or evade verification. But neither did He set out to be logically and philosophically validated and to make a “good” impression on the elite of the time. If He had promoted concepts and theories, He would have been no different from the great philosophers. Similarly, Christianity is not a faith that hides behind the dictum “Do not ask questions; just believe,”[9] as Celsus accused. If He had used intellectual ingenuity and conceptual freshness to persuade, Jesus would have made only a quantitative contribution to the methods of validation used by other illustrious men.
In Judaism, it was the prophetic arsenal that confirmed a person’s special quality (the Jews demanded miracles, and the Greeks sought wisdom [1 Corinthians 1:22]). But Jesus, although He worked miracles and preached animated by the Spirit, did not seek recognition by these means. As Celsus himself observes, miracles could not prove anything, since the ancient world, and especially the Eastern world, was full of miracles and magicians. If He performed clear miracles, He was accused of being a sorcerer (Matthew 9:34); if He didn’t, He was accused of being incapable (Matthew 12:39-41). But Jesus performed miracles and spoke to all those who were open to His message and mission, including the leaders (Nicodemus, Jairus, the Roman centurion).
The arguments of Jesus are more than logical and more than miraculous. They are alive because He is alive. It is convenient for philosophers to promote a god who does nothing because this way He has nothing to prove. This god is a creation of the mind, built to look flawless, like a perfect ideological sphere, but good for nothing.
Jesus, as God incarnate, reveals Himself as a real god, who has come among people to show them that He loves them and cares for them. His name is Emmanuel, which means “God is with us” (Matthew 1:23). The argument of Jesus is love. That is why Jesus’s proof is not to be found in treatises on theology and philosophy, nor in dazzling demonstrations of magic and miracles. Jesus’s arguments are on the streets, in the changed lives of people. Love is the argument for God wanting to save us from suffering and death. Many and varied arguments have been made against Jesus, but so far no one has tried and dared to challenge His love for people.
The resurrection is the most criticised and contested aspect of Jesus’s life. It is within everyone’s reach to promote the immortality of the soul as the hope of mankind, because one does not have to prove anything. One can say that the soul is immortal and find out whether it is or not only after death. But in this reality, Jesus took up the challenge to show that death can be conquered through resurrection, instead of assuming the existence of an invisible being. And Jesus did rise; the Gospels provide credible evidence of this. No story designed to persuade people would use obscure and dubious characters as supporting evidence for a fantasy. The Gospels mention former fishermen and sex workers as witnesses to the resurrection precisely because that is how it happened.
In addition to divine love, which shows us that God wants to save us, Jesus offered the resurrection as proof that God can save us. Christ incarnate and risen—here is the argument for Him!
Jesus as “God with us” was a reality that troubled the Jewish world as well as Greco-Roman society. Celsus understood this and did everything he could to prevent the spread of this belief. Today, history tells us who prevailed, Celsus or Jesus, almost 2,000 years after Celsus wrote On the True Doctrine.
Iosif Diaconu makes a distinction between argument and evidence. He believes that, in matters of spiritual life, we have only arguments, not evidence. The final decision lies with the heart.