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

certain mysterious ceremonies.

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 With the same secret polemical aim Porphyry and Jamblichus

embellished the life of Pythagoras, and set him forth as the highest model of wisdom, even a divine

being incarnate, a Christ of heathenism.

These various attempts to Christianize paganism were of course as abortive as so many

attempts to galvanize a corpse. They made no impression upon their age, much less upon ages

following. They were indirect arguments in favor of Christianity: they proved the internal decay

of the false, and the irresistible progress of the true religion, which began to mould the spirit of the

age and to affect public opinion outside of the church. By inventing false characters in imitation

of Christ they indirectly conceded to the historical Christ his claim to the admiration and praise of

mankind.

§ 35. Porphyry and Hierocles

See the Lit. in § 34.

One of the leading Neo-Platonists made a direct attack upon Christianity, and was, in the eyes

of the church fathers, its bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Towards the end of the third century

Porphyry wrote an extended work against the Christians, in fifteen books, which called forth

numerous refutations from the most eminent church teachers of the time, particularly from Methodius

of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea. In 448 all the copies were burned by

order of the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., and we know the work now only from

fragments in the fathers.

Porphyry attacked especially the sacred books of the Christians, with more knowledge than

Celsus. He endeavored, with keen criticism, to point out the contradictions between the Old

Testament and the New, and among the apostles themselves; and thus to refute the divinity of their

writings. He represented the prophecies of Daniel as vaticinia post eventum, and censured the

allegorical interpretation of Origen, by which transcendental mysteries were foisted into the writings

of Moses, contrary to their clear sense. He took advantage, above all, of the collision between Paul

and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11), to reproach the former with a contentious spirit, the latter with

error, and to infer from the whole, that the doctrine of such apostles must rest on lies and frauds.

Even Jesus himself he charged with equivocation and inconsistency, on account of his conduct in

John 7:8 compared with verse 14.

Still Porphyry would not wholly reject Christianity. Like many rationalists of more recent

times, he distinguished the original pure doctrine of Jesus from the second-handed, adulterated

doctrine of the apostles. In another work

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 on the "Philosophy of Oracles," often quoted by Eusebius,

and also by Augustin,

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7 he says, we must not calumniate Christ, who was most eminent for piety,

but only pity those who worship him as God. "That pious soul, exalted to heaven, is become, by a

sort of fate, an occasion of delusion to those souls from whom fortune withholds the gifts of the

86

Comp. the account of the resemblance by Baur, l.c. pp. 138 sqq.

87

Περὶ τῆς ἐκ λογίων φιλοσοφίας. Fabricius, Mosheim, Neander, and others, treat the work as genuine, but Lardner denies

it to Porphyry.

88

De Civit. Dei, l. XIX. c. 22, 23; Comp. also Eusebius,Demonstr. Evang. III. 6.

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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gods and the knowledge of the immortal Zeus." Still more remarkable in this view is a letter to his

wife Marcella, which A. Mai published at Milan in 1816, in the unfounded opinion that Marcella

was a Christian. In the course of this letter Porphyry remarks, that what is born of the flesh is flesh;

that by faith, love, and hope we raise ourselves to the Deity; that evil is the fault of man; that God

is holy; that the most acceptable sacrifice to him is a pure heart; that the wise man is at once a

temple of God and a priest in that temple. For these and other such evidently Christian ideas and

phrases he no doubt had a sense of his own, which materially differed from their proper scriptural

meaning. But such things show how Christianity in that day exerted, even upon its opponents, a

power, to which heathenism was forced to yield an unwilling assent.

The last literary antagonist of Christianity in our period is Hierocles, who, while governor

of Bythynia, and afterwards of Alexandria under Diocletian, persecuted that religion also with the

sword, and exposed Christian maidens to a worse fate than death. His "Truth-loving Words to the

Christians" has been destroyed, like Porphyry’s work, by the mistaken zeal of Christian emperors,

and is known to us only through the answer of Eusebius of Caesarea.

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 He appears to have merely

repeated the objections of Celsus and Porphyry, and to have drawn a comparison between Christ

and Apollonius of Tyana, which resulted in favor of the latter. The Christians says he, consider

Jesus a God, on account of some insignificant miracles falsely colored up by his apostles; but the

heathens far more justly declare the greater wonder-worker Apollonius, as well as an Aristeas and

a Pythagoras, simply a favorite of the gods and a benefactor of men.

§ 36. Summary of the Objections to Christianity.

In general the leading arguments of the Judaism and heathenism of this period against the new

religion are the following:

1. Against Christ: his illegitimate birth; his association with poor, unlettered fishermen, and

rude publicans: his form of a servant, and his ignominious death. But the opposition to him gradually

ceased. While Celsus called him a downright impostor, the Syncretists and Neo-Platonists were

disposed to regard him as at least a distinguished sage.

2. Against Christianity: its novelty; its barbarian origin; its want of a national basis; the

alleged absurdity of some of its facts and doctrines, particularly of regeneration and the resurrection;

contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, among the Gospels, and between Paul and

Peter; the demand for a blind, irrational faith.

3. Against the Christians: atheism, or hatred of the gods; the worship of a crucified

malefactor; poverty, and want of culture and standing; desire of innovation; division and sectarianism;

want of patriotism; gloomy seriousness; credulity; superstition, and fanaticism. Sometimes they

were charged even with unnatural crimes, like those related in the pagan mythology of Oedipus

and his mother Jocaste (concubitus Oedipodei), and of Thyestes and Atreus (epulae Thyesteae).

Perhaps some Gnostic sects ran into scandalous excesses; but as against the Christians in general

this charge was so clearly unfounded, that it is not noticed even by Celsus and Lucian. The senseless

89

To this may be added the extracts from an unnamed heathen philosopher (probably Hierocles or Porphyrius) in the apologetic

work of Macarius Magnes (about 400), which was discovered at Athens in 1867, and published by Blondel;, Paris 1876. See L.

Duchesne, De Marcario Magnete et scriptis ejus, Par. 1877, and Zöckler in Herzog, ed. II. vol. IX. 160.

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Philip Schaff

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

Christianity. A.D. 100-325.

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