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 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 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.
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 (teletàs), 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 (kakodaímôn), 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 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 (epistéue); Science is a bad thing; knowledge (gnôsis) 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, 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.
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 (ekklesiáxiousi) 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' autoû gegonótes), 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 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 lógos 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 (theías ennoías).[[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]]
The God of the philosophers