The theology of the dialogue is, if viewed on its negative side, the ridicule of heathen mythology and of Christian doctrines and habits; and on its positive, the proclamation of one God as the object of worship. The work exhibits internal evidence of a knowledge of Christian practices, § 20, &c., and Christian doctrines, such as the Trinity, § 12; uses Christian phraseology, § 18; and calls Christians by the name given by Julian, Galilæan, § 12.
Note 19. p. [87]. The Work Of Julian Against Christianity.
It has been already stated that our knowledge of the contents of Julian's lost book is obtained from Cyril's reply to it; the text of which is accordingly given in Spanheim's edition of Julian. It is supposed to have consisted of seven books; but Cyril replies only to three.
In the brief account given in the text of Lect. [II]. no attempt was made to form a hypothetical restoration of Julian's work from the fragments, such as that which Pressensé has attempted with regard to Celsus; but only a few of Julian's principles were presented concerning the following subjects: (1) on God; (2) on the Hebrew, and (3) the Christian religion. A few hints however toward such a scheme, may not be uninteresting. If, as seems probable, Cyril took the statements of Julian in the order in which they stood in the now lost work, the plan of Julian's work may have been somewhat as follows.
He proposed to institute a comparison between the Hebrew and Christian religions and literature on the one hand, and the Greek on the other. If we may judge from the purport of b. i. of Cyril's work, Julian laid himself open to an attack by maintaining the superior antiquity of heathenism, forgetting that the Hebrew system was older than the Greek. At least Cyril establishes this elaborately, and argues the direct derivation of many parts of the heathen system from the Jews. The argument on Julian's part seems to have been conducted by an examination of successive points in the Hebrew history and system. In the beginning the Hebrew cosmogony suggested an argument for the superiority of the Platonic theory over the Mosaic. (Cyril. b. ii.) Next he successively attacked the account of Paradise as a fable; entering upon both the probability of the story (Id. b. iii.) and the moral features of the Deity brought out in the narrative. He seems also to have passed from the idea of creation to that of providence, and to have dwelt on the inferiority of the Hebrew scheme as a theory of providence, in having an absence of inferior deities beneath the supreme one; and resists the idea of the obligation of all men to embrace one creed, inasmuch as they do not possess one character. (Id. b. iv.) Next, turning to the Mosaic moral law, he argued against its originality, except in relation to the sabbath; and passing through several of the narratives of Jewish history, he pointed out characteristics of anger in the Jewish conception of Deity; and compared by instances the Greek legislators and kings with Jewish. (Id. b. v.) Next he seems to have passed from Judaism to Christianity, and attacked the miracles, and the Christian morals and practices; challenged the reasons for prophecy; and rallied the Christians on accepting a religion derived from so insignificant a nation as the Jews. (Id. b. vi.) He seems next to have returned to the comparison of Greek and Hebrew warriors, and of Greek and Jewish science, and the educational value of the two literatures; and reverted to the subject of Christianity, by representing it as a deviation from the very religion on which it depended. (Id. b. vii.) He continued this argument by the special example of prophecy, examining several instances wherein he contended that Christians had abandoned the Jewish sense of them. (Id. b. viii.) Next he seems to have continued a similar argument with regard to the Jewish [pg 411] typical system, and the utter dissimilarity of the Christian ideas from its purpose (Id. b. ix.); next to have assailed Christianity, by trying to show that there had been a similar development in Christianity itself, and a departure from its primitive form analogous to that which Christianity bore to Judaism, alleging, incorrectly, that St. John was the first to teach the divinity of Christ; and instanced examples, objectionable in practice, such as the worship of martyrs' tombs; and alleged against Christianity an eclectic spirit which had appropriated parts of the Jewish system but not the whole. (Id. b. x.)
The reader must however be apprised that the above scheme is entirely hypothetical. The objections of Julian are facts; the lacunæ are filled up by conjecture.
The general spirit of Cyril's answer is the argumentum ad hominem; showing that the same faults, even if true, are equally true of the Greek scheme of religion.