The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire
TextIn this way Celsus surveys the main points of Christian history and teaching. They have no real grounds beneath them. The basis of the church is "faction (stásis) and the profit it brings, and fear of those without; – those are the things that establish the faith for them."[756] Faction is their keynote, taken from the Jews at first; and faction splits them up into innumerable sects beside the "great church,"[757] – "the one thing they have in common, if indeed they still have it, is the name; and this one thing they are ashamed to abandon."[758] When they all say "'Believe, if you wish to be saved, or else depart'; what are those to do who really wish to be saved? Should they throw the dice to find out to whom to turn?"[759] In short, faction is their breath of life, and "if all mankind were willing to be Christian, then they would not."[760]
Gods and dæmons
But Celsus is not content merely to refute; he will point out a more excellent way. "Are not all things ruled according to the will of God? is not all Providence from him? Whatever there is in the whole scheme of things, whether the work of God, or of angels, or other dæmons, or heroes, all these have their law from the greatest God; and in power over each thing is set he that has been counted fit."[761] "Probably the various sections are allotted to various rulers (epóptais) and distributed in certain provinces, and so governed. Thus among the various nations things would be done rightly if done as those rulers would have them. It is then not holy to break down what has been from the beginning the tradition of one and another place."[762] Again, the body is the prison of the soul; should there not then be warders of it – dæmons in fact?[763] Then "will not a man, who worships God, be justified in serving him who has his power from God?"[764] To worship them all cannot grieve him to whom they all belong.[765] Over and over Celsus maintains the duty of "living by the ancestral usages," "each people worshipping its own traditional deities."[766] To say with the Christians that there is one Lord, meaning God, is to break up the kingdom of God and make factions there (stasiáxein), as if there were choices to be made, and one were a rival of another.[767]
Ammon is no worse than the angels of the Jews; though here the Jews are so far right in that they hold by the ways of their ancestors – an advantage which the Jewish proselytes have forfeited.[768] If the Jews pride themselves on superior knowledge and so hold aloof from other men, Herodotus is evidence that their supposed peculiar dogma is shared by the Persians; and "I think it makes no difference whether you call Zeus the Most High, or Zeus, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Amun, like the Egyptians, or Papaios like the Scythians."[769]
The evidence for the ancillary dæmons and gods he finds in the familiar places. "Why need I tell at length how many things prophets and prophetesses at the oracles have foretold, and other men and women possessed by a voice of a god within them? the marvels heard from shrines? revelations from sacrifices and victims, and other miraculous tokens? And some have been face to face with visible phantoms. The whole of life is full of these things." Cities have escaped plague and famine through warnings from oracles, and have suffered for neglecting them. The childless have gained children, and the crippled have been healed, while those who have treated sacred things with contempt have been punished in suicide and incurable diseases.[770] Let a man go to the shrine of Trophonius or Amphiaraus or Mopsus, and there he may see the gods in the likeness of men, no feigned forms (pseudoménous) but clear to see, "not slipping by them once, like him who deceived these people [the Christians], but ever associating with those who will."[771] "A great multitude of men, Greeks and barbarians, testify that they have often seen and still do see Asklepios, and not merely a phantom of him, but they see himself healing men, and doing them good, and foretelling the future."[772] Is it not likely that these "satraps and ministers of air and earth" could do you harm, if you did them despite?[773] Earthly rulers too deserve worship, since they hold their positions not without dæmonic influence.[774] Why should not the Christians worship them, dæmons and Emperors? If they worshipped no other but one God, they might have some clear argument against other men; but, as it is, they more than worship the person who lately appeared, and reckon that God is not wronged by the service done to his subordinate,[775] – though in truth he is only a corpse.[776] In any case, "if idols are nothing, what harm is there in taking part in the festival? but if there are dæmons, it is clear they too are of God, and in them we must trust, and speak them fair, according to the laws, and pray that they may be propitious."[777]
It is characteristic of the candour of Celsus that he lets slip a caution or two about the service of dæmons. Christians are as credulous, he says in one place, as "those who lightly (alogôs) believe in the roaming priests of Cybele (metragúrtais) and wonder-seers, Mithras and Sabadios and the like – phantoms of Hecate or some other female dæmon or dæmons."[778] Again, he has a word of warning as to magic, and the danger and injury into which those fall who busy themselves with it – "One must be on one's guard, that one may not, by being occupied with these matters, become entangled in the service of them [literally; fused with them, syntakê], and through love of the body and by turning away from better things be overcome by forgetfulness. For perhaps we should not disbelieve wise men, who say (as a matter of fact) that of the dæmons who pervade the earth the greater part are entangled in 'becoming' (genesei syntetekós) – fused and riveted to it – and being bound to blood and smoke and chantings and other such things can do no more than heal the body and foretell future destiny to man and city; and the limits of their knowledge and power are those of human affairs."[779]
The rescue of the empire
At the last comes his great plea. Human authority is of divine ordinance. "To the Emperor all on earth is given; and whatever you receive in life is from him."[780] "We must not disbelieve one of old, who long ago said —
Let one be king, to whom the son of wise Kronos has given it.
If you invalidate this thought (dógma), probably the Emperor will punish you. For if all men were to do as you do, nothing will prevent the Emperor being left alone and deserted,[781] and all things on earth falling into the power of the most lawless and barbarous savages, with the result that neither of your religion nor of the true wisdom would there be left among men so much as the name.[782] You will hardly allege that if the Romans were persuaded by you and forsook all their usages as to gods and men, and called upon your 'Most High' or whatever you like, he would descend and fight for them and they would need no other help. For before now that same God promised (as you say) this and much more to those who served him, and you see all the good he has done them and you. As for them [the Jews], instead of being masters of all the earth, they have not a clod nor a hearthstone left them; while you – if there is any of you left in hiding, search is being made for him to put him to death."[783] The Christian sentiment that it is desirable for all who inhabit the Empire, Greeks and barbarians, Asia, Europe and Libya, to agree to one law or custom, is foolish and impracticable.[784] So Celsus calls on the Christians "to come to the help of the Emperor with all their might and labour with him as right requires, fight on his behalf, take the field with him, if he call on you, and share the command of the legions with him[785] – yes, and be magistrates, if need be, and to do this for the salvation of laws and religion."[786]
It will be noted that, so far as our fragments serve us, Celsus confines himself essentially to the charges of folly, perversity, and want of national feeling. An excessive opinion of the value of the human soul and an absurd fancy of God's interest in man are two of the chief faults he sees in Christianity.[787] He sees well, for the love of God our Father and the infinite significance of the meanest and commonest and most depraved of men were after all the cardinal doctrines of the new faith. There can be no compromise between the Christian conception of the Ecclesia of God and Celsus' contempt for an "ecclesia of worms in a pool"; nor between the "Abba Father" of Jesus and the aloof and philosophic God of Celsus "away beyond everything." These two contrasts bring into clear relief the essentially new features of Christianity, and from the standpoint of ancient philosophy they were foolish and arbitrary fancies. That standpoint was unquestioned by Celsus.
The failure of Celsus
Confident in the truth of his premisses and the conclusions that follow from them, Celsus charged the Christians with folly and dogmatism. Yet it would be difficult to maintain that they were more dogmatic than himself; they at least had ventured on the experiment of a new life, that was to bring ancient Philosophy to a new test. They were the researchers in spiritual things, and he the traditionalist. As to the charge of folly, we may at once admit a comparatively lower standard of education among the Christians; yet Lucian's book Alexander, with its curious story of the false prophet who classed them with the Epicureans as his natural enemies, suggests that, with all their limitations, they had an emancipation of mind not reached by all their contemporaries. If they did not accept the conclusions of Greek thinkers as final, they were still less prepared to accept sleight-of-hand and hysteria as the ultimate authority in religious truth.[788] Plutarch, we may remember, based belief in immortality on the oracles of Apollo; and Celsus himself appeals to the evidence of shrines and miracles. If we say that pagans and Christians alike believed in the occurrence of these miracles and in dæmonic agency as their cause, it remains that the Christians put something much nearer the modern value upon them, while Celsus, who denounced the Christians as fools, tendered this contemptible evidence for the religion he advocated.
His Greek training was in some degree the cause of this. The immeasurable vanity of the Greeks did not escape the Romans. A sense of indebtedness to the race that has given us Homer, Euripides and Plato leads us to treat all Greeks kindly – with more kindness than those critics show them whose acquaintance with them has been less in literature and more in life. The great race still had gifts for mankind, but it was now mainly living upon its past. In Plutarch the pride of race is genial and pleasant; in Celsus it takes another form – that of contempt for the barbarian and the unlettered. The truism may be forgiven that contempt is no pathway to understanding or to truth; and in this case contempt cut Celsus off from any real access to the mind of the people he attacked. He read their books; he heard them talk; but, for all his conscious desire to inform himself, he did not penetrate into the heart of the movement – nor of the men. He missed the real motive force – the power of the life and personality of Jesus, on which depended the two cardinal doctrines which he assailed.
The extraordinary blunders, to which the very surest critics in literature are liable, may prepare us for anything. But to those who have some intimate realization of the mind of Jesus, the portrait which Celsus drew of him is an amazing caricature – the ignorant Jewish conjuror, who garbles Plato, and makes no impression on his friends, is hardly so much as a parody. It meant that Celsus did not understand the central thing in the new faith. The "godhead" of Jesus was as absurd as he said, if it was predicated of the Jesus whom he drew; and there he let it rest. How such a dogma could have grown in such a case he did not inquire; nor, finding it grown, did he correct his theory by the fact. Thus upon the real strength of Christianity he had nothing to say. This was not the way to convince opponents, and here the action of the Christians was sounder and braver. For they accepted the inspiration of the great men of Greece, entered into their spirit (as far as in that day it was possible), and fairly did their best to put themselves at a universal point of view.[789] They had the larger sympathies.
Yet for Celsus it may be pleaded that his object was perhaps less the reconversion of Christians to the old faith than to prevent the perversion of pagans to the new. But here too he failed, for he did not understand even the midway people with whom he was dealing. They were a large class – men and women open to religious ideas from whatever source they might come – Egypt, Judæa, or Persia, desirous of the knowledge of God and of communion with God, and in many cases conscious of sin. In none of these feelings did Celsus share – his interests are all intellectual and practical. Plutarch before him, and the Neo-Platonists after him, understood the religious instincts which they endeavoured to satisfy, and for the cold, hard outlines of Celsus' hierarchy of heavenly and dæmonic beings they substituted personalities, approachable, warm and friendly (ho phílos Apóllon). Men felt the need of gods who were Saviours, – of gods with whom they might commune in sacraments – as the rise of Mithra-worship shows. They sought for salvation from sin, for holiness – the word was much on their lips – and for peace with God. To Celsus these seem hardly to have been necessities; and whether we say that he made no effort to show that they were provided for in the old religion, or that he suggested, tacitly or explicitly, that the scheme he set forth had such a provision, the effect is the same. He really had nothing to offer.
The victory of the Christians
Celsus did not bring against the Christians the charges of "OEdipodean unions and Thyestean banquets" familiar to the reader of the Apologists[790] – and to the student of the events that preceded the Boxer movement in China. While he taunted Jesus with being a bastard and a deceiver, and roundly denounced Christians generally for imposing upon the ignorance of men with false religion and false history, he did not say anything of note against ordinary Christian conduct. At least the fragments do not show anything of the kind. Later on the defenders and apologists of paganism had to own with annoyance that Christians set their fellow-citizens an example; Maximin Daza and Julian tried vigorously to raise the tone of pagan society. Here lies an argument with which Celsus could not deal. The Fatherhood of God (in the sense which Jesus gave to the words) and the value of the individual soul, even the depraved and broken soul, are matters of argument, and on paper they may be very questionable; but when the people, who held or (more truly) were held by these beliefs, managed somehow or other to show to the world lives transformed and endowed with the power of transforming others, the plain fact outweighed any number of True Words. Whatever the explanation, the thing was there. Christians in the second century laid great stress on the value of paper and argument, and to-day we feel with Celsus that among them, orthodox and heretical, they talked and wrote a great deal that was foolish – "their allegories were worse than their myths" – but the sheer weight of Christian character carried off allegories and myths, bore down the school of Celsus and the more powerful school of Plutarch, Porphyry and Plotinus and abolished the ancient world, and then captured and transformed the Northern nations.
Celsus could not foresee all that we look back upon. But it stands to his credit that he recognised the dangers which threatened the ancient civilization, dangers from German without and Christian within. He had not the religious temperament; he was more the statesman in his habit of mind, and he clearly loved his country. The appeal with which he closes is a proposal of peace – toleration, if the Christians will save the civilized world. It was not destined that his hopes should be fulfilled in the form he gave them, for it was the Christian Church that subdued the Germans and that carried over into a larger and more human civilization all that was of value in that inheritance of the past for which he pleaded. So far as his gifts carried him, he was candid; and if sharp of tongue and a little irritable of temper, he was still an honourable adversary. He was serious, and, if he did not understand religion, he believed in the state and did his best to save it.
CHAPTER IX
CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA
Viderint qui Stoicum et Platonicum et dialecticum Christianismum protulerunt. – TERTULLIAN, de præscr. hæret. 7.
No one can allege that the Bible has failed to win access for want of metaphysics being applied to it. – MATTHEW ARNOLD, Literature and Dogma, p. 121.
Though Celsus had much to say upon the vulgar and servile character of the members of the Christian community, he took the trouble to write a book to refute Christianity; and this book, as we have seen, was written from a more or less philosophical point of view. He professed himself doubtful as to whether his opponents would understand his arguments; but that he wrote at all, and that he wrote as he did, is evidence that the new faith was making its way upward through society, and was gaining a hold upon the classes of wealth and education.
The rise of the Church
It is not hard to understand this. Though conditions of industry were not what they are to-day, it is likely that conversion was followed by the economic results with which we are familiar. The teaching of the church condemned the vices that war against thrift; and the new life that filled the convert had its inevitable effect in quickening insight and energy. The community insisted on every man having a trade and working at it. With no such end in view, the church must have numbered among its adherents more and more people of wealth and influence in spite of all defections, just as to-day Protestantism in France has power and responsibility out of all proportions to mere numbers. The Emperor Hadrian, is said to have made the observation that in Egypt, whether men worshipped Christ or Serapis, they all worshipped money.[791] The remark had probably as much truth as such sayings generally have, but we may probably infer that many Christians were punctual in their observance of the duty laid on them to be "not slothful in business."
The first four or five generations of Christians could not, on the whole, boast much culture – so far as their records permit us to judge. "Not many wise," said Paul, and their fewness has left an impress on the history of the church. A tendency to flightiness in speculation on the one hand, and a stolid refusal to speculate at all on the other, are the marks of second century Christianity. The early attempts made to come to terms with "human wisdom" were not happy, either at the centre or on the circumference of the body. The adjustment of the Gospel story to Old Testament prophecy was not a real triumph of the human mind, nor were the efforts at scientific theology any better. Docetism, with its phantom Christ, and Gnosticism with its antithesis of the just God and the good God, were not likely to satisfy mankind. Simple people felt that these things struck at their life, and they rejected them, and began to suspect the intellect. The century saw the growth of ecclesiastical system, episcopal order and apostolic tradition. Men began to speak of the "old church," the "original church" and the "catholic church," and to cleave to its "rule of faith" and "tradition of sound words." By 200 A.D. the church was no longer a new thing in the world; it had its own "ancient history" without going back to Judaism and the old covenant; it had its legends; and it could now speak like the Greeks of "the old faith of our fathers."
As it rose in the world, the church came into contact with new problems. As long as men were without culture, they were not troubled by the necessity of reconciling culture with faith, but the time had come when it must be done in earnest. Wealth was bringing leisure, and refinement, and new intellectual outlooks and interests. Could the church do with them? was the urgent question. Was it possible for a man to be at once a Greek gentleman of wealth and culture and a simple Christian like the humble grandfathers of his fellow-believers – or like his own slaves, the fuller and the cobbler of his household? We shall understand the problem better if we can make some acquaintance with the daily life and environment of these converts of the better classes.
In the second and third books of his Pedagogue Clement of Alexandria deals with the daily round and deportment of Christians, for whom extravagance and luxury might be a real temptation. A few points, gathered here and there from the two books, will suffice. He recommends simplicity of diet with health and strength as its objects – the viands, which the Gospels suggest, fish and the honeycomb, being admirable for these purposes.[792] Wine provokes the passions – "I therefore admire those who have chosen the austere life and are fond of water, the medicine of temperance." "Boys and girls should as a general rule abstain from the [other] drug" – wine.[793] Good manners at table – no noisy gulping, no hiccupping, no spilling, no soiling of the couch, no slobbering of hand or chin – "how do you think the Lord drank, when he became man for us?"[794] Vessels of silver and gold, furniture of rare woods inlaid with ivory, rugs of purple and rich colours, are hardly necessary for the Christian – "the Lord ate from a cheap bowl and made his disciples lie on the ground, on the grass, and he washed their feet with a towel about him – the lowly-minded God and Lord of the universe. He did not bring a silver foot-bath from heaven to carry about with him. He asked the Samaritan woman to give him to drink in a vessel of clay as she drew it up from the well, – not seeking the royal gold, but teaching us to quench thirst easily." "In general as to food, dress, furniture and all that pertains to the house, I say at once, it should all be according to the institutions of the Christian man, fitting appropriately person, age, pursuits and time."[795]
Christian manners
Clement passes from the table to a general discussion of manners and habits. Man is a "laughing animal," but he should not laugh all the time. Humour is recommended rather than wit (charientistéon ou gelôtopoiêtéon, 45, 4). "The orderly relaxation of the face which preserves its harmony" is a smile (46, 3) – giggling and excessive laughter are perversions. Care should be taken in conversation to avoid low talk, and the scoff that leads the way to insolence, and the argument for barren victory – "man is a creature of peace," as the greeting "Peace with you" shows us. Some talkers are like old shoes – only the tongue left for mischief. There are many tricks unfit for a Christian gentleman – spitting, coughing, scratching and other things; and he would do well to avoid whistling and snapping his fingers to call the servants. Fidgetting is the mark of mental levity (symbolon kouphótetos).[796]
In the care of one's person, oil may be used; it is a sign of the luxury of the times that scents and unguents are so universally applied to such various purposes. The heathen crowned their heads with flowers and made it a reproach that Christians gave up the practice. But, as Tertullian said, they smelt with their noses; and Clement urges that on the head flowers are lost to sight and smell, and chill the brain. A flower-garden in spring, with the dew upon all its colours, and all the natural scents of the open air, is another thing. The Christian too will remember – Tertullian also has this thought – that it was another crown that the Lord wore[797] —ex spinis opinor, et tribulis. The real objection was that the custom was associated with idol-worship.
Silk and purple and pearls are next dealt with – and earrings, "an outrage on nature" – if you pierce the ear, why not the nose too?[798] All peculiarity of dress should be avoided, and so should cosmetics – or else you may remind people of the Egyptian temple, outside all splendour, inside a priest singing a hymn to a cat or a crocodile.[799] "Temperance in drink and symmetry in food are wonderful cosmetics and quite natural."[800] Let a woman work with her hands, and health will come and bring her beauty. She should go veiled to church, like Æneas' wife leaving Troy.[801] Men may play at ball, take country walks, and try gardening and drawing water and splitting billets.[802] Finger-rings are allowed for them – gold rings, to be used as seals for security against the slaves. "Let our seals be a dove, or a fish, or a ship running before the wind, or a lyre, or a ship's anchor" – not an idol's face, or a sword or a cup or something worse.[803] Men should wear their hair short (unless it is curly), grow their beards and keep their moustaches trimmed with the scissors.[804] Our slaves we should treat as ourselves, for they are men as we; "God" (as a verse, perhaps from Menander, puts it) "is the same for all, free or slave, if you think of it."[805]
All these admonitions imply an audience with some degree of wealth. The Christian artisan of Celsus had no temptation to use a silver foot-bath or to plaster himself with cosmetics. It may also be remarked that the man who gives the advice shows himself well acquainted with the ways of good society – and perhaps of society not so well gifted with taste. With all this refinement went education. The children of Christian parents were being educated, and new converts were being made among the cultured classes, and the adjustment of the new faith and the old culture was imperative. The men to make it were found in a succession of scholars, learned in all the wisdom of Greece, enthusiastic for philosophy and yet loyal to the Gospel tradition.
The first of these, whose name we know, was Pantænus; but beyond his name there is little to be known of him. Eusebius says that he began as a Stoic philosopher and ended as a Christian missionary to India.[806] His pupil, Clement, is of far greater importance in the history of Christian thought.
His classical training
Of Clement again there is little to be learnt beyond what can be gathered from his own writings. He alludes himself to the death of the Emperor Commodus as being "194 years, 1 month and 13 days" after the birth of Christ (it was in 192 A.D.); and Eusebius quotes a passage from a contemporary letter which shows that Clement was alive in 211 A.D., and another written in or about 215, which implies that he was dead.[807] We have also an indication from Eusebius that his activity as a teacher in Alexandria lasted from 180 to 202 or 203.[808] We may then assume that Clement was born about the middle of the century.
Epiphanius says that Clement was either an Alexandrine or an Athenian. A phrase to be quoted below suggests that he was not an Alexandrine, and it has been held possible that he came from Athens.[809] It also seems that he was born a pagan.[810] Perhaps he says this himself when he writes: "rejoicing exceedingly and renouncing our old opinions we grow young again for salvation, singing with the prophecy that chants 'How good is God to Israel.'"[811]
It is obvious that he had the usual training of a Greek of his social position. If his code of manners is lifted above other such codes by the constant suggestion of the gentle spirit of Jesus, it yet bears the mark of his race and of his period. It is Greek and aristocratic, and it would in the main command the approval of Plutarch. He must have been taught Rhetoric like every one else, – his style shows this as much as his protests that he does not aim at eloquence (euglôttía), that he has not studied and does not practise "Greek style" (helleíxein).[812] He has the diffuse learning of his day – wide, second-hand and uncritical; and, like other contemporary writers, he was a devotee of the note-book. No age of Greek literature has left us so many works of the kind he wrote – the sheer congeries with no attempt at structure, no "beginning, middle and end," – easy, accumulative books of fine miscellaneous feeding, with titles that playfully confess to their character. Like other authors of this class, Clement preserves for us many and many a fragment of more interest and value than any original piece of literature could have been. He clearly loved the poetry of Greece, and it comes spontaneously and irresistibly to his mind as he writes, and the sayings of Jesus are reinforced by those of Menander or Epicharmus. The old words charm him, and he cannot reject them. His Stromateis are "not like ornamental paradises laid out in rows to please the eye, but rather resemble some shady and thickly-wooded hill, where you may find cypress and plane, bay and ivy, and apple trees along with olives and figs"[813] – trees with literary connotations. Such works imply some want of the creative instinct, of originality, and they are an index to the thinking of the age, impressed with its great ancestry. It is to be remarked that the writers of our period care little for the literature of the past two or three centuries; they quote their own teachers and the great philosophers and poets of ancient Greece.[814] Few of them have any new thoughts at all, and those who have are under the necessity of clothing them in the hallowed phrases of their predecessors. This was the training in which Clement shared. Later on, he emancipated himself, and spoke contemptuously of the school – "a river of words and a trickle of mind";[815] but an education is not easily shaken off. He might quarrel with his teachers and their lessons, but he still believed in them. It may be noted that in his quotations of Greek literature his attention is mainly given to the thought which he finds in the words – or attaches to them – that he does not seem to conceive of a work of art as a whole, nor does he concern himself with the author. He used the words as a quotation, and it is not unlikely that many of the passages he borrowed he knew only as quotations.