Pagan Romans feared not a violent revolution but something far
more sinister, a political coup exactly like we are seeing today …
Third
century the proto-Orthodox christian scholar Origen went to a lot of
effort to argue away second century Pagan critic Celsus’ portrayal of christians and christianity as one of anti-social seditionists bent on
the destruction society, as a caricature of his movement.
Celsus’ book was called The True Doctrine (‘alethès logos). Celsus
himself was a Pagan Roman intellectual and Platonist, and he was very
concerned about the threat posed to his world, to his culture and
society and to its families, by christianity.
Little is known of Celsus otherwise, and Origen, who produced his
counter-polemic Contra Celsum (Against Celsus) in CE 248, or some 50-70
years after Celsus wrote, was able to learn little about him.
We know only that Celsus’ book was important enough and influential
enough to pose a real threat in turn to the christian movement. Celsus
painted a bleak picture of his era’s christians, saying that they suffer
from the “disease of sedition.”
They refuse to serve in the military, he says, and also to hold
political office, and when Celsus talks of sedition and revolution, he
is not talking about a violent coup but a political coup, something far
more sinister, something much more along the lines we have seen since
the religio-wingnuts began to infiltrate and take control of the repugican cabal following Goldwater’s defeat.
Two other symptoms of christianity as Celsus identifies them are
still readily apparent today in the religio-wingnuts: xenophobia and
separatism. Celsus was also troubled by another element very familiar to
us today: the idea that the earth was made for christians alone. “He
has made us entirely like god,” they proclaim, “and all things have been
put under us, earth, water, air, and stars; and all things exist for
our benefit, and have been appointed to serve us…”
With thinking like this, it was perhaps no surprise that the christians felt that the cult was above the state, yet another cry we
are familiar with today as we see the bible put above the Constitution
time and again.
A low intellectual bar was something else noted by Celsus. “Let the
stupid draw near!” was their appeal, he says. Their favorite expression
are, he says, “Do not ask questions, just believe!” and “Your faith will
save you!” More, he relates, the christians teach nothing new: “There
is nothing new or impressive about their ethical teaching; indeed, when
one compares it to other philosophies, their simplemindedness becomes
apparent.” They are simpleminded, he says, because they will believe
anything (again, one is reminded of the religio-wingnuts and the many
bizarre claims they make on a daily basis).
Today’s teabangelicals (I am thinking of Rand Paul, Rick Santorum,
Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and others) sound very much like Celsus’ christians:
“Now I would not want to say,” Celsus writes,
that a man who got into trouble because of some eccentric
belief should have to renounce his belief, or pretend that he has
renounced it. But the point is this, and the christians would do well
to heed it: One ought first to follow reason as a guide before
accepting any belief, since anyone who believes without testing a
doctrine is sure to be deceived.
“If only they would undertake to answer my question,” Celsus laments,
which I do not ask as one trying to understand their
beliefs (there being little to understand!). But they refuse to answer,
and indeed, discourage asking questions of any sort.” Instead, they prey
on the ignorant and shy away from debate with the educated: “Make sure
none of you obtains knowledge, for too much learning is a dangerous
thing: knowledge is a disease of the soul, and the soul that acquires
knowledge will perish.
Nor were early christians seen as embracing anything like family
values; rather, they were family wreckers, said Celsus, infiltrating
families and destroying them by turning children against fathers and
luring away daughters; christianity is thus, believes Celsus, a
rebellion against the state but against the very fabric of society and
culture, and thus “harmful to the life of mankind.” They also attack the
day’s education system, just as they attack today’s, calling it
“corrupt” just as they call it corrupt today, because it does not teach
those things christians want it to teach.
Celsus explains that “religious innovation stems from social causes,”
which, as one modern scholar says, is “a perhaps surprisingly ‘modern’
and rationalist view’” and “quite common in classical religious,
philosophical, and political thought.” We have certainly seen this with
the religio-wingnuts and their manufactured culture war.
Celsus, writes this scholar, “depicts the christians as genuine
enemies of humanity, a conscious conspiracy (at least on the part of its
leaders) of the intellectually doltish, the socially inferior, and the
morally bankrupt. The success of such a movement would spell the end of
his civilization.”
Far from saving it, what Celsus believed is true today as well. The religio-wingnuts will not save our civilization but will destroy it, and
for the same reasons. One wonders what Origen would say were he alive
today to see what had become of his movement. The religio-wingnuts seem
determined to make a mockery of Origen’s defense and make true Celsus’
accusations.
Origen said all christians should not be judged by the examples of a
few, and this is certainly as true of christians as of any other group, a
lesson the religio-wingnuts have forgotten in its xenophobic reactions to
the religious Other, muslims especially, but also Pagans and
historically, jews. It is, perhaps, no surprise that Origen himself
became the Other after his death, when he was declared by the later
orthodox church to be heretical.
The christians Celsus most feared were those who personal charismatic
authority and prophecy and these christians today are those we also
should most fear, the dominionists who drive the religio-wingnuts and the
Sarah Palins and Ted Cruzes of the world. Celsus did not overstate the
threat they represented to his world, for they did, in fact, destroy it,
and we should not underestimate the threat they pose to ours.
Warning:
this story might make sensitive people a little queasy. Jonathan D.
Allen is an invertebrate biologist, so when he started noticing a rough
patch in his mouth moving around, he knew it was a parasite inside his
cheek. He documented the symptoms he observed as well as you would
expect a trained scientist to, and went to his doctor, who referred him
to an oral surgeon. 
