Renan, MA, Celsus and Lucian
The population of Galilee, as the name indicates, was very mixed. This province reckoned amongst its inhabitants, in the time of Jesus, many who were not Jews (Phoenicians, Syrians, Arabs, and even Greeks). The conversions to Judaism were not rare in mixed countries like this. It is therefore impossible to raise any question of race here, or to try to discover what blood flowed in the veins of him who has most of any contributed to efface the distinctions of blood in humanity.
Celsus believes that every nation has its gods, who protect it in proportion as it adores them as they wish to be adored. To abandon its gods is, for a nation, the equivalent of suicide.
The mother of Jesus had committed adultery with the soldier, Pantherus; she had been rejected by her husband, the carpenter.
“Jews and Christians present to me the effect of a lot of field mice or pismires leaving their hole, or frogs settled in a marsh, or worms in the corner of a ditch . . . . . and saying among themselves: ‘It is to us that God reveals and announces everything; he has no concern for the rest of the world; he leaves the heavens and the earth to roll on at their own fancy, to occupy himself with us alone. We are the only beings with whom he communicates by his messengers, the only ones with whom he desires to have society, for he has made us like himself. Everything is subordinated to us, the earth, the water, the air, and the stars, all has been done for us and destined for our service, and it is because it has so happened that certain among us have sinned that God himself will come or will send his own Son to burn up the wicked, but to make us enjoy eternal life with him.’”
What hurt him[Celsus] was the extreme social meanness of the Christians, and the small intelligence of the means by which they exercised their propaganda; those whom they wished to gain were base people—slaves, women, and children. Like charlatans, they avoided as much as they could honest people who would not allow themselves to be deceived, taking into their nets the ignorant and the foolish, the ordinary provender of knaves.
“What harm is it then to be well educated, to love fine learning, to be wise, and to pass for such? Is that an obstacle to the knowledge of God? Are they not rather helps to attain to the truth? What are these fair-runners, these jugglers doing? Do they address themselves to men of sense, to tell them their good news? No, but if they see somewhere a group of children, of street porters, or low people, it is there they ply their industry and cause themselves to be admired. It is the same way inside families; here are some wool-carders, some shoemakers, some fullers, some people of the lowest ignorance, and quite destitute of education. Before masters, men of experience and judgment, they dare not open their mouths; but if they surprise the children of the house, or women who have no more reason than themselves, they set themselves to work wonders. Only such can believe; the father and the preceptors are fools who do not know the true good and are incapable of understanding it. Those preachers alone know how they ought to live; the children are found following them, and through them good fortune will come to all the family. If while they are speaking some serious person, one of the preceptors, or the father himself, come in unexpectedly, the more timid keep silence; the bolder are not allowed to excite the children to shake off the yoke, insinuating in a low voice what they would not say before their father or preceptor, so as not to expose themselves to the brutality of those corrupted people who would chastise them. Those who want to know the truth have only to brave the father and preceptors, and go with the women and brats to their part of the house, or to the bootmakers’ stall, or the
fullers’ shop, to understand the absolute! See how they act to gain converts… Whoever is a sinner, whoever is without understanding, whoever is weak in mind, in a word whoever is miserable, let him draw near; the kingdom of God is for him.”
“What harm is there in being free from sin? Let the unjust, they say, humble himself by the feeling of his misery, and God will receive him. But if the righteous, trusting in his virtue, raises his eyes towards God, what! will he be rejected? Conscientious magistrates do not suffer the accused to melt into lamentations, lest they should be seduced into sacrificing justice to pity. God, in his judgments, is then accessible to flattery? Why has he such a preference for sinners? . . . Did these theories come from the desire of drawing around him a more numerous clientèle? Will it be said that it is proposed by this indulgence to improve the sinners? What an illusion! The nature of people does not change; the bad are not improved either by force or gentleness. Would God not be unjust it he showed himself complaisant to sinners, who know the art of affecting him, and if he abandon the good, who have not the talent for that?”
Celsus would have no bounty extended to false humility, to importunity, to humble prayers. His God is the God of noble and right minds, not the God of pardon, the consoler of the afflicted, the patron of the wretched. He evidently sees a great danger, from the point of view of politics and also from the point of view of his profession as a man of public instruction, that it should be permissible to say that, to be dear to God, it is good to have been guilty, and that the humble, the poor, and the minds without culture have because of this special advantages.
One is a Jew by birth; one is a Christian by choice.
“They refuse to observe the public ceremonies and to render homage to those who preside; then they renounce also the wearing of the manly robe, marriage, becoming fathers, or filling the functions of life; let them go forth altogether far from here, without leaving the least seed of themselves, and that the earth may be disembarrassed of their breed! But if they would marry, if they would have children, if they would share in the things of life, good as well as evil, it is proper that they should render to those who are charged with administering everything the proper honours. . . . We ought continually, both in word and action, and even when we do not speak or act, to have our souls raised towards God. This being granted, what harm is there in seeking the good of those who have received this power from God, and specially that of the kings r.nd the powerful of the earth? It is, indeed, not without the intervention of a divine energy that they have been raised to the rank they occupy.”
“A power more enlightened and far-seeing,” he said to them, “will destroy you root and branch, rather than perish itself through you.”
In the second half of the second century, we really only see a single man who, being above all superstition, had a good right to smile at all human follies, and to pity them likewise. That man, that mind, at once the most solid and the most charming of his age, was Lucian. Here there is more ambiguity. Lucian absolutely rejected the supernatural. Celsus admits all religions; Lucian denies them all. Celsus thinks he is conscientiously bound to study Christianity up to its sources; Lucian, who anticipates what it will lead to, takes up a very superficial notion of it. His ideal is Demonax, who, quite unlike Celsus, made no sacrifices,nor initiated himself into any mystery, had no other religion than gaiety and universal benevolence.
This entire difference in the point of departure made Lucian to be less at a distance from the Christians than Celsus. He who had the best right of any one to be severe as to the supernatural
shows himself, on the contrary, at times indulgent enough to them. Like the Christians, Lucian is a demolisher of Paganism, a subject resigned, but not loving, to Rome.
Never was there any disquieted patriotism with him, or a single one of those anxieties for the State which devoured his friend Celsus. his laugh is like that of Peres, his diasyrnios made a chorus to that of Hermias. lie spoke of the immorality of the gods, of the contradiction of the philosophers, almost like Tatian. His ideal city singularly resembled a church. The Christians and he were allied in the same war, war against local superstitions, goëtes, oracles, and thaumaturges.
It seemed, indeed, that he had thought often of them(Christians) in tracing, in the Fugitives, that picture of a society of Bohemianism, impudent, ignorant, and insolent, raising a real tribute under the name of alms, austere in words, in reality debauchés, seducers of women, enemies of the Muses, people of pale face and shaven heads, parties in shameful orgies.
what would the sage[Lucian] do in the middle of the war of religions and systems? To abstain, to smile, to preach tolerance, humanity, benevolence without pretension, that is to render a simple
service to poor humanity. The radical remedy is that of Epicurus, who destroyed at a blow religion, and its object and the evil it brings with it. Lucian appears to us like a wise man wandered in a world of fools. He hates nothing, he laughs at everything, serious virtue excepted.
But at the time when we stop this history men of this kind become rare; they may be counted. The true thinker was in some sort an isolated being, badly seen, and obliged to dissimulate. We produce with horror the history of a certain Euphronius, an obdurate Epicurean.
The overthrow of good sense was accomplished. The delicate railleries of Lucian, the just criticisms of Celsus, fell only as powerless protests. In one generation man in entering life shall have no other choice than that of superstition, and soon even that choice he shall have no longer.
Philosophy is like ones opinion everyone has one. If there must be law then there has to be philosophy and ones opinion be it good bad or indifferent. Without (1x1) there wouldn’t be (2). Without philosophy there wouldn’t be questions. Philosophy is a long journey with a short path for truth and wisdom. pljames
