History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene Christianity. A. D. 100-325

Refutation, has faithfully preserved considerable fragments.

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 These represent their author as an

eclectic philosopher of varied culture, skilled in dialectics, and familiar with the Gospels, Epistles,

and even the writings of the Old Testament. He speaks now in the frivolous style of an Epicurean,

now in the earnest and dignified tone of a Platonist. At one time he advocates the popular heathen

religion, as, for instance, its doctrine of demons; at another time he rises above the polytheistic

notions to a pantheistic or sceptical view. He employs all the aids which the culture of his age

afforded, all the weapons of learning, common sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style,

to disprove Christianity; and he anticipates most of the arguments and sophisms of the deists and

infidels of later times. Still his book is, on the whole, a very superficial, loose, and light-minded

work, and gives striking proof of the inability of the natural reason to understand the Christian

truth. It has no savor of humility, no sense of the corruption of human nature, and man’s need of

redemption; it is full of heathen passion and prejudice, utterly blind to any spiritual realities, and

could therefore not in the slightest degree appreciate the glory of the Redeemer and of his work. It

needs no refutation, it refutes itself.

Celsus first introduces a Jew, who accuses the mother of Jesus of adultery with a soldier

named Panthera;

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 adduces the denial of Peter, the treachery of Judas, and the death of Jesus as

contradictions of his pretended divinity; and makes the resurrection an imposture. Then Celsus

himself begins the attack, and begins it by combating the whole idea of the supernatural, which

forms the common foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The controversy between Jews and

Christians appears to him as foolish as the strife about the shadow of an ass. The Jews believed, as

well as the Christians, in the prophecies of a Redeemer of the world, and thus differed from them

only in that they still expected the Messiah’s coming. But then, to what purpose should God come

down to earth at all, or send another down? He knows beforehand what is going on among men.

And such a descent involves a change, a transition from the good to the evil, from the lovely to the

hateful, from the happy to the miserable; which is undesirable, and indeed impossible, for the divine

nature. In another place he says, God troubles himself no more about men than about monkeys and

flies. Celsus thus denies the whole idea of revelation, now in pantheistic style, now in the levity of

Epicurean deism; and thereby at the same time abandons the ground of the popular heathen religion.

In his view Christianity has no rational foundation at all, but is supported by the imaginary terrors

of future punishment. Particularly offensive to him are the promises of the gospel to the poor and

miserable, and the doctrines of forgiveness of sins and regeneration, and of the resurrection of the

body. This last he scoffingly calls a hope of worms, but not of rational souls. The appeal to the

omnipotence of God, he thinks, does not help the matter, because God can do nothing improper

and unnatural. He reproaches the Christians with ignorance, credulity, obstinacy, innovation,

division, and sectarianism, which they inherited mostly from their fathers, the Jews. They are all

uncultivated, mean, superstitious people, mechanics, slaves, women, and children. The great mass

of them he regarded as unquestionably deceived. But where there are deceived, there must be also

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See the restoration of Celsus from these fragments by Dr. Keim, quoted above.

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Πάνθηρ, panthera, here, and in the Talmud, where Jesus is likewise called 

אָריִדְנַףּ נֵב יּשֶׁי

is used, like the Latin lupa, as a type of ravenous lust hence as a symbolical name for 

μοιχείρ. So Nitzsch and Baur. But

Keim (p. 12) takes it as a designation of the wild rapacious (

πᾶν θηρῶν) Roman soldier. The mother of Jesus was, according to

the Jewish informant of Celsus, a poor seamstress, and engaged to a carpenter, who plunged her into disgrace and misery when

he found out her infidelity.

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History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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deceivers; and this leads us to the last result of this polemical sophistry. Celsus declared the first

disciples of Jesus to be deceivers of the worst kind; a band of sorcerers, who fabricated and circulated

the miraculous stories of the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus; but betrayed

themselves by contradictions. The originator of the imposture, however, is Jesus himself, who

learned that magical art in Egypt, and afterwards made a great noise with it in his native country.

But here, this philosophical and critical sophistry virtually, acknowledges its bankruptcy.

The hypothesis of deception is the very last one to offer in explanation of a phenomenon so important

as Christianity was even in that day. The greater and more permanent the deception, the more

mysterious and unaccountable it must appear to reason.

Chrysostom made the truthful remark, that Celsus bears witness to the antiquity of the

apostolic writings. This heathen assailant, who lived almost within hailing distance of St. John,

incidentally gives us an abridgement of the history of Christ as related by the Gospels, and this

furnishes strong weapons against modern infidels, who would represent this history as a later

invention. "I know everything" he says; "we have had it all from your own books, and need no

other testimony; ye slay yourselves with your own sword." He refers to the Gospels of Matthew,

Luke, and John, and makes upon the whole about eighty allusions to, or quotations from, the New

Testament. He takes notice of Christ’s birth from a virgin in a small village of Judaea, the adoration

of the wise men from the East, the slaughter of the infants by order of Herod, the flight to Egypt,

where he supposed Christ learned the charms of magicians, his residence in Nazareth, his baptism

and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove and the voice from heaven, the election

of disciples, his friendship with publicans and other low people, his supposed cures of the lame

and the blind, and raising of the dead, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the principal

circumstances in the history of the passion and crucifixion, also the resurrection of Christ.

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It is true he perverts or abuses most of these facts; but according to his own showing they

were then generally and had always been believed by the Christians. He alludes to some of the

principal doctrines of the Christians, to their private assemblies for worship, to the office of

presbyters. He omits the grosser charges of immorality, which he probably disowned as absurd and

incredible.

In view of all these admissions we may here, with Lardner, apply Samson’s riddle: "Out of

the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."

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0

§ 33. Lucian.

Edd. of Lucian’s works by Hemsterhuis and Reiz (1743 sqq.), Jacobitz (1836–39), Dindorf (1840

and 1858), Bekker (1853), Franc. Fritzsche (1860–’69). The pseudo-Lucianic dialogue

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Keim (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, I. 22) says of Celsus: "Von der Jungfraugeburt bis zum Jammer des Todes bei Essig

und Galle, bis zu den Wundern des Todes und der Auferstehung hat er unsere Evangelien verfolgt, und anderen Quellen,welche

zum Theil heute noch fliessen, hat er den Glauben an die Hasslichkeit Jesu und an die Sündhaftigkeit seiner Jünger abgewonnen."

Comp. Keim’s monograph on Celsus, pp. 219-231. On the bearing of his testimony on the genuineness of the Gospel of John,

see vol. 1. p. 708.

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Judges xiv. 14. Comp. Lardner’s Works, vol. VII. pp. 210-270. Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Leland made good use of Celsus

against the Deists of the last century. He may with still greater effect be turned against the more radical theories of Strauss and

Renan. For Keim’s estimate, see his Celsus, 253-261.

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Philip Schaff

History of the Christian Church, Volume II: Ante-Nicene

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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