Such seem to have been the chief forms of religious thought existing among the heathen to whom Christianity presented itself, on which were founded the preparation of heart which led to the acceptance of its message, or the prejudices which rejected its claims;—viz. among the masses, a sensuous unintelligent belief in polytheism;—among the educated, disorganization of belief; either materialism, the total rejection of the supernatural, and a political attachment on the principle of expedience to existing creeds; or philosophy, ethical, dualistic, pantheistic, despising religions as mere organic products of national thought, and trying [pg 048] to seize the central truths of which they were the expression; or a mystical craving after the supernatural, degrading its victims into fanatics. The further analysis of these tendencies would show their connexion with the threefold classification before given of the tests of truth into sense, reason, and feeling.
We have thus prepared the way for interpreting the lines of argument used in opposition to Christianity, and shall now proceed to sketch in chronological succession the history of the chief intellectual attacks made by unbelievers.
It is not until the middle of the second century that we find Christianity becoming the subject of literary investigation. Incidental expressions either of scorn or of misapprehension form the sole allusions in the heathen writers of earlier date ([12]); but in the reigns of the Antonines, the Christians began to attract notice and to meet with criticism. We read of a work written against Christianity by a Cynic, Crescens, in the reign of Antoninus Pius;[137] and of another by the tutor of Marcus Aurelius, Fronto of Cirta,[138] in which probably the imperial persecution was justified.
It is at this time too that we meet with an attempt to hold the Christians up to ridicule in a satire of Lucian,[139] which well exemplifies the views belonging to [pg 049] the sceptical of the four classes into which we have divided the religious opinions of the heathens. His tract, the Peregrinus Proteus, it can hardly be doubted, is intended as a satire on Christian martyrdom ([13]). Peregrinus[140] is a Cynic philosopher, who after a life of early villainy is made by Lucian to play the hypocrite at Antioch and join himself to the Christians, “miserable men” (as he calls them), “who, hoping for immortality in soul and body, had a foolish contempt of death, and suffered themselves to be persuaded that they were brethren, because, having abandoned the Greek gods, they worshipped the crucified sophist, living according to his laws.”[141] Peregrinus, when a Christian, soon rises to the dignity of bishop, and is worshipped as a god; and when imprisoned for his religion is visited by Christians from all quarters. Afterwards, expelled the church, he travels over the world; and at last for the sake of glory burns himself publicly at Olympia about A.D. 165. His end is described in a tragico-comic manner, and a legend is recounted that at his death he was seen in white, and that a hawk ascended from his pyre.
Lucian has here used a real name to describe a class, not a person. He has given a caricature painting from historic elements. There seems internal evidence to show that he was slightly acquainted with the books of the early Christians.[142] It has even been conjectured that he might have read and designed to parody the epistles of Ignatius.[143] With more probability [pg 050] we may believe that he had heard of and misunderstood the heroic bearing of the Christian martyrs in the moment of their last suffering. Pope Alexander VII. in 1664 placed this tract in the index of prohibited books: yet even beneath the satire we rather hail Lucian as an unconscious witness to several beautiful features in the character of the Christians of his time:[144] viz. their worship of “the crucified sophist,” who was their adorable Lord; their guilelessness; their brotherly love; their strict discipline; their common meals; their union; their benevolence; their joy in death. The points which he depicts in his satire are, their credulity in giving way to Peregrinus; their unintelligent belief in Christ and in immortality; their factiousness in aiding Peregrinus when in prison; their pompous vanity in martyrdom, and possibly their tendency to believe legends respecting a martyr's death. His satire is contempt, not anger, nor dread. It is the humour of a thorough sceptic, which discharged itself on all religions alike; and indicates one type of opposition to Christianity; viz. the contempt of those who thought it folly.
Very unlike to him was his well-known contemporary Celsus. If the one represents the scoffer, the other represents the philosopher. Not despising Christianity with scorn like Tacitus, nor jeering at it with humour like Lucian, Celsus had the wisdom to apprehend danger to heathenism, measuring Christianity in its mental and not its material relations; and about the reign of Marcus Aurelius wrote against it a work entitled Λόγος ἀληθής, which was considered of such importance, that Origen towards the close of his own life[145] wrote a large and elaborate reply to it.
We know nothing of Celsus's life.[146] There is even an uncertainty as to the school of philosophy to which he belonged. External evidence seems to testify that he was an Epicurean; but internal would lead us to classify him with the Platonic. Unscrupulous in argument, confounding canonical gospels with apocryphal, and Christians with heretical sects, delighting in searching for contradictions, incapable of understanding the deeper aspects of Christianity, he has united in his attack all known objections, making use of minute criticism, philosophical theory, piquant sarcasm, and eloquent invective, as the vehicle of his passionate assault.
It is impossible to recover a continuous account of the work of Celsus from the treatise of his respondent; but a careful study of the fragments embedded in the text of Origen will perhaps restore the framework of the original sufficiently to enable us to perceive the points of his opposition to Christianity, and the manner in which his philosophy stood in the way of the reception of it. ([14])
Celsus commences by introducing a Jewish rabbi to attack Christianity from the monotheistic stand-point of the earlier faith.[147] The Jew is first made to direct his criticism against the documents of Christianity, and [pg 052] then the facts narrated.[148] He points out inconsistencies in the gospel narratives of the genealogy of Christ;[149] utters the most blasphemous calumnies concerning the incarnation;[150] turns the narrative of the infancy into ridicule;[151] imputes our Saviour's miracles to magic;[152] attacks his divinity;[153] and concentrates the bitterest raillery on the affecting narrative of our blessed Lord's most holy passion. Each fact of deepening sorrow in that divine tragedy, the betrayal,[154] the mental anguish, the sacred agony,[155] is made the subject of remarks characterized no less by coarseness of taste and unfairness, than to the Christian mind by irreverence. Instead of his heart being touched by the majesty of our Saviour's sorrow, Celsus only finds an argument against the divine character of the adorable sufferer.[156] The wonders accompanying Christ's death are treated as legends;[157] the resurrection regarded as an invention or an optical delusion.[158]
After Celsus has thus made the Jew the means of a ruthless attack on Christianity, he himself directs a similar one against the Jewish religion itself.[159] He goes to the origin of their history; describes the Jews as having left Egypt in a sedition;[160] as being true types of the Christians in their ancient factiousness;[161] considers Moses to be only on a level with the early Greek legislators;[162] regards Jewish rites like circumcision to be borrowed from Egypt; charges anthropomorphism on Jewish theology,[163] and declines allowing the allegorical interpretation in explanation of it;[164] examines Jewish prophecy, parallels it with heathen oracles,[165] and claims that the goodness not the truth of a prophecy ought to be considered;[166] points to the ancient idolatry of the Jews as proof that they were not better than [pg 053] other nations;[167] and to the destruction of Jerusalem as proof that they were not special favourites of heaven. At last he arrives at their idea of creation,[168] and here reveals the real ground of his antipathy. While he objects to details in the narrative, such as the mention of days before the existence of the sun,[169] his real hatred is against the idea of the unity of God, and the freedom of Deity in the act of creation. It is the struggle of pantheism against theism.