Celsus

Celsus, a Platonic philosopher, but tinged with Epicureanism, who lived in the 2d century after Christ, was a friend of Lucian, and wrote, about 176-180, during the persecution of Marcus Aurelius, under the title Logos Alêthês ('true word'), the first notable polemic against Christianity. The book itself has perished; but considerable fragments have been preserved as quotations given by Origen in his answer, Contra Celsum, in eight books. In the fragments—which are very interesting, as showing the views of a heathen philosopher in regard to Christianity—Celsus, with great acuteness and wit, but without depth or earnestness of thought, prefers against the new religion charges of unphilosophicalness and blind credulity; and especially endeavours to convict Christians of self-contradiction in their spiritual doctrine contrasted with their anthropomorphic representations of Deity; in their religious arrogance contrasted with their confession of sinfulness; and in their views of the necessity of redemption. He also reproaches Christians with their party divisions and ever-varying opinion, and ridicules them as worms in a corner who think they occupy the centre of the world. Celsus holds that the Supreme God can have no contact with the material world, the creation of which is the work of inferior deities or demons. He regards evil as an essential property of the material world; he says: 'There neither has been in former times, nor is there now, nor ever shall be, an increase or diminution of evil. The nature of the universe is ever identical, and the production of evil is not a variable quantity. . . . It is evident that those who sin by nature and by habit cannot be changed in any respect either by punishment or by pardon.' He charges Christians with having 'remodelled "The Gospel" from the "first writing" three times, four times, and many times.' However, as Origen remarked, almost everything of an historical kind to which Celsus refers is to be found in our Gospels, especially the Synoptics. See Keim, Celsus' Wahres Wort (1873); Aubé, La Polémique Païenne in Les Persécutions de l'Église (1878); Pélagand, Étude sur Celse (1878); Froude's Short Studies, vol. iv.; and the article on ORIGEN.