EARLY CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN POLEMICS AND THE ROOTS OF PLURALISM
Celsus was a second-century eclectic of Middle Platonism, expressing both Platonist and Stoic ideas. His polemic against the early Christians reflect the tension between emerging Christian identity and the political frameworks of classical democracy and republicanism. Christianity was perceived as eroding the civic-religious foundations that those systems depended on. Christians’ refusal to participate in pagan rites looked like withdrawal from civic life, which critics like Celsus equated with undermining the state. Yet, over time, Christians adapted by creating their own forms of civic organization (parishes, councils) that mirrored classical structures. Even Christian ethics of charity, justice and communal responsibility eventually became a moral foundation for civic life, arguably strengthening republican ideals of duty and service. While Christianity’s exclusive truth claims seemed anti-pluralist, in practice, the Church later absorbed elements of Roman law, administration, and even republican collegiality into its governance; and by managing to reframe legitimacy around divine law, they eventually fused it with Roman legal frameworks, carrying forward the republican emphasis on law and order.
Origen, writing 70 years later, attempts to rebut Celsus by arguing that not only is Christianity the spiritual continuation of Mosaic law (Contra Celsum, Book I, Chapter 16-17), but adopts and elevates it. By the time Origen and the other patristic fathers were writing and critiquing the Greco-Roman mysteries and civic cults, they were no longer at their cultural peak. By the 2nd-3rd centuries, the Eleusinian, Dionysian, and Mithraic rites were still practiced but had become more esoteric, fragmented, and often commodified. Their civic role was diminished compared to the classical age. They had already begun to lose vitality, especially in the urban centers where Christianity was spreading. Christianity entered a landscape where traditional religion was weakened, making its critique more potent. Origen repeatedly argues that pagan rites are corrupt imitations of divine truth. He insists that Christianity is the authentic continuation of the archaic revelation through Moses and the prophets, whereas the mysteries are degenerate copies.
Origen also reveals in his attempt to reproduce and refute Celsus in Contra Celsum (Origen’s eight-volume work) and the mysteries of Mithra, that Celsus adopts a septenary system. A singular anti‑Christian treatise of Celsus, now lost, was written around 177 CE titled Logos Alēthēs or The True Word (Ἀληθὴς Λόγος), but like Porphyry’s fifteen-volume book The Philosophy from Oracles, both were eventually banned in 448 CE by order of Valentinian III and Theodosius II, and the True Doctrine fell out of circulation. The True Word questions the coherence of Christian theology by arguing against Christian beliefs as contradictory, illogical and pernicious, and not merely as dangerous to the state. For Celsus, Christianity was politically dangerous because it did not serve the state. Hence, Celsus argued that religion must serve the civic order, but Origen argued that religion must serve the truth.
An attempt to make Christianity serve the civic order resembles Celsus’ worldview more than Origen’s. Christianity inherited the universal truth-claims of Judaism and the imperial civic-function of pagan religion. When those two inheritances merged, Christianity became both a transcendent faith and a political instrument. All of this becomes a central issue affecting the ancient world into the Enlightenment (see The Decline of Jerusalem-Centered Historiography) and continues to shape and create problems and contradictions in this time. These problems magnify especially by not learning about or ignoring post-classical republican reactions to those failures that drove Europe knees-deep in blood.
Celsus essentially teaches that there is an ancient doctrine he called the archaios logos, which has existed from the beginning, which has always been maintained by the wisest nations and cities and wise men, suggesting that truth was ancient and widespread, not the monopoly of one culture. Celsus cites and includes in this: the Egyptians, Syrians, Indians, Persians, Odrysians, Samothracians, Eleusinians, Hyperboreans, Galactophagoi, Druids, and Getae, but excludes Moses, blaming him for corrupting the ancient religion. Origen makes note of this view of Celsus, that Moses took fragments of this universal wisdom and distorted them into a parochial, tribal law. Christianity, being built on that Mosaic foundation, therefore inherited what Celsus saw as imperfections, which leads to its exclusivity, hostility to civic cults, and a tendency to fight against the broader pagan structures of the empire.
The early Christians took Celsus’ critiques seriously, and one of the ways they responded was by absorbing and reworking pagan structures rather than rejecting them outright. This is why the Church looks, in many respects, like a pluralist and eclectic fusion of Jewish revelation with Greco‑Roman civic religion. This is one of the most central and deepest paradoxes of Western civilization: its roots are eclectic and pluralist, born from the fusion of Jewish revelation, Greco‑Roman philosophy, and pagan civic religion. Yet many Christians, and especially movements like Christian Nationalism often deny or fight against this fact, trying to separate “pure Christianity” from “paganism.”
- If Christians insist Christianity is the only pure revelation, they erase the Roman and Greek contributions that shaped Western institutions.
- If nationalists insist Western civilization is only Christian, they deny the pluralist roots that gave rise to democracy, law, and philosophy.
- In both cases, they refute themselves: Western civilization is eclectic by definition. To deny that is to deny the very foundations of the culture they claim to defend.
This is the issue between Celsus and Origen that filters into this period of history. Christianity inherited from Judaism a logic of exclusivity: one God, one truth, one covenant. That exclusivity was powerful in resisting pagan pluralism, but once Christianity became the civic religion of empire, it collided with the very pluralist and eclectic structures it had absorbed. In effect, Christians were fighting against the logic they had inherited. Early Christians never expected to face the same problems as the pagans and thought they were escaping the “degeneration” of pagan institutions and structures, but once Christianity became the dominant civic religion, it faced the same structural problems that pagan philosophers like Celsus had wrestled with. The pre-Christian institutions facilitated order and wisdom and guided the civic order, and Christians as outsiders saw themselves as not responsible for the decline of this order, which fed into anti-polytheistic polemics. This history proves that the problem is structural, not doctrinal, and any religion that becomes the civic foundation of empire, whether pagan or Christian, inherits the same vulnerabilities of bureaucracy, politicization, decline in vitality, and tension between truth and utility. When modern movements like Christian Nationalism claim Christianity can be a pure civic identity, they repeat the same cycle Celsus originally was fighting when the early Christian cult was gaining ground.
Post-classical republicanism into the Enlightenment period was deeply conscious about the failures of antiquity. Thinkers saw how both pagan civic religion and Christianized empire had eventually fallen into degeneration, and they deliberately sought a new foundation for political order. Instead of returning to civic religion (pagan or Christian), they turned to secularism and reason as the basis for civic life. These are our foundations.
Christian Doctrine compared to That of the Greeks
In this excerpt, Celsus compares the Christian doctrines to the ancient Greek religion, detailing the nascent religion desperate to increase converts at the time. Celsus leads us to study these worships and communities he references and compares to Christian theology, invalidating the belief in the “Uniqueness of Christ.”
“Celsus’s philosophy invites us to reject fear-based dogma and embrace a rational, compassionate approach to understanding the divine. In doing so, we honor not only the legacy of Celsus but also the potential for human beings to rise above superstition and embrace the light of reason.”
BISHOP RAY TAYLOR, CELSUS AND HIS CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIANITY: A SCHOLARLY ANALYSIS
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“I WONDER THAT CHRISTIANS AND JEWS ARGUE SO FOOLISHLY WITH ONE ANOTHER — their contest over whether Jesus was or was not the Messiah reminding me rather of the proverb about the shadow of an ass. In fact, there is really nothing of significance in their dispute: both maintain the quite non-sensical notion that a divine savior was prophesied long ago and would come to dwell among men. All they disagree on is whether he has come or not. The Christians say yes, and cite the miracles of Jesus as proof of his identity. The Jews say that any sorcerer could put forward such proofs, and that the circumstances of Jesus’ death prove him an imposter. I am slightly inclined to the latter view myself, since miracles and wonders have indeed occurred everywhere and in all times: Asclepias did mighty works and foretold the futures of cities that kept his cult Trikka, Epidaurus, Cos, and Pergamum; then there is Ansteas the Proconnesian, or the case of a certain Clazomennian — or of Cleomedes the Astypalean. Yet I am also bound to say that the Jews have a knack of generating such nonsense. By race, they are Egyptian-like folk, and after revolting against their Egyptian cousins and being in turn disinherited by the leaders of Egypt, they struck out on their own, only to experience the same sort of rejection from the Christian cult that arose in their midst. In both instances apostasy bred apostasy, rejection led to rejection.
“The Christians use sundry methods of persuasion, and invent a number of terrifying incentives. Above all, they have concocted an absolutely offensive doctrine of everlasting punishment and rewards, exceeding anything the philosophers could have imagined.”
Now the Christians are just as proud as the Jews. They profess to seek converts, but thrive on martyrdom. I rather suspect that if all men desired to become Christians, the cult would immediately shut the door to converts. At the start of their movement, they were very few in number, and unified in purpose. Since that time, they have spread all around and now number in the thousands. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are divisions among them — factions of all sorts, each wanting to have its own territory. Nor is it surprising that as these divisions have become so numerous, the various parties have taken to condemning each other, so that today they have only one thing — if that — in common: the name “Christian.” But despite their clinging proudly to their name, in most other respects they are at odds. I suppose, however, that it is more amazing that there are any points of agreement at all, given the fact their belief rests on no solid foundation. They are agreed, for instance, that outsiders are not to be trusted and that they themselves must remain perpetual apostates from the approved religions.
Now, it will be wondered how men so disparate in their beliefs can persuade others to join their ranks. The Christians use sundry methods of persuasion, and invent a number of terrifying incentives. Above all, they have concocted an absolutely offensive doctrine of everlasting punishment and rewards, exceeding anything the philosophers (who have never denied the punishment of the unrighteous or the reward of the blessed) could have imagined. I have heard that before their ceremonies, where they expand on their misunderstanding of the ancient traditions, they excite their hearers to the point of frenzy with flute music like that heard among the priests of Cybele. In the old religions of Egypt, I recall, a man would be seduced by the magnificence of the shrines — the sacred gardens, the great entrance, the temple surrounded by splendid tents, not to mention the hypnotic effect of the rites themselves, made to be swallowed by the gullible. But once inside, what did the worshiper find? A cat or a monkey; a dog, crocodile, or goat. The design of the old religion was to impress upon the initiate that he had learned a secret knowledge — that the significance of these animals was given to him and him only. But at least the religion of Egypt transcended the worship of the irrational beasts: the animals were symbols of invisible ideas and not objects of worship in themselves. The religion of the Christians is not directed at an idea but at the crucified Jesus, and this is surely no better than dog or goat worship at its worst.
The Christians ignore the good offices of the Dioscuri, of Herakles, Asclepias, and of Dionysus, and say that these men are not gods because they were humans in the first place. Yet they profess belief in a phantom god who appeared only to members of his little club, and then, so it seems, merely as a kind of ghost. Now in the case of Asclepias, many men, Greeks as well as barbarians, confess that they see him — not a mere phantom, but Asclepios himself, doing his customary good works and fore-telling the future. Or take Aristeas, who vanished from men’s sight miraculously, then appeared again, and later on visited many parts of the world and recounted his wanderings. Such was his power that even Apollo is said to have commanded the Metapontines to regard Aristeas a go? I hasten to say: nobody any longer believes in Aristeas as a god. So too with Abaris the Hyperborean who according to Herodotus carried an arrow over the whole world without stopping to eat. Yet even such power did not cause people to make him a god. And the Clazomennian whose soul is said to have left his body from time to time and wandered around on its own. A stupendous wonder indeed — yet no one thinks him a god. And Cleomedes the Astypalean: he got into a chest, shut the lid, and was not to be seen inside when it was broken to bits by those seeking to arrest him. Perhaps he vanished by some act of providence: but it is certain his vanishing did not cause the people to declare him a god.
I emphasize that the Christians worship a man who was arrested and died, after the manner of the Getae who reverence Zamolxis, or those Sicilians who worship Mopsus, the Aracarnanians who worship Amphilochus, or the Thebans who worship Amphiarus and the Lebadians who worship Trophonius. The honor they pay to Jesus is no different from the sort paid to Hadrian’s favorite boy, Antinous. Yet they brook no comparison between Jesus and the established gods, such is the effect of the faith that has blurred their judgment. For only a blind faith explains the hold that Jesus has of their imagination. For they stress that he was born a mortal-indeed, that his flesh was as corruptible as gold, silver, and stone. By birth, he shared those carnal weaknesses that the Christians themselves regard as abominable. They will have it, however, that he put aside this flesh in favor of another, and so became a god. But if apotheosis is the hallmark of divinity, why not rather Asclepias, Dionysus, or Herakles, whose stories are far more ancient? I have heard a Christian ridicule those in Crete who show tourists the tomb of Zeus, saying that these Cretans have no reason for doing what they do. It may be so; yet the Christians base their faith on one who rose from a tomb.
Even the more intelligent Christians preach these absurdities. Their injunctions are like this: “Let no one educated, no one wise, no one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils. But as for anyone ignorant, anyone stupid, anyone uneducated, anyone childish, let him come boldly.” By the fact that they themselves admit that these people are worthy of their god, they show that they want and are able to convince only the foolish, dishonorable and stupid, and only slaves, women and little children.”1
- An excerpt from the chapter, “Christian Doctrine compared to that of the Greeks,” Celsus, ed. R.J. Hoffmann, On the true doctrine a discourse against the Christians, pp. 69-73, Oxford University Press, 1987. ↩︎