Chapter VIII: [383] Naturally it did repel highly cultured men like Celsus and
[383] Naturally it did repel highly cultured men like Celsus and Porphyry. For Celsus, see above, p. 219. Porphyry, the pagan in Macarius Magnes (IV. ix.), writes thus on Matt. xi. 25: "As the mysteries are hidden from the wise and thrown down before minors and senseless sucklings (in which case, of course, even what is written for minors and senseless people should have been clear and free from obscurity), it is better to aim at a lack of reason and of education! And this is the very acme of Christ's sojourn upon earth, to conceal the ray of knowledge from the wise and to unveil it to the senseless and to small children!"
[384] For the "perfect," see p. 216. They constitute a special class for Paul. The distinction came to be sharply drawn at a later period, especially in the Alexandrian school, where one set of Christian precepts was formed for the "perfect" ("those who know"), another for believers. Christ himself was said by the Alexandrians (not merely by the gnostics) to have committed an esoteric doctrine to his intimate disciples and to have provided for its transmission. Cp. Clement of Alexandria, as quoted in Eus., H.E., ii. 1: Iakobo to dikaio kai Ioanne kai Petro meta ten anastasin paredoken ten gnosin ho kurios, houtoi tois loipois apostolois paredokan, k.t.l. ("The Lord delivered all knowledge after the resurrection to James the Just, and John, and Peter; they delivered it to the rest of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles to the seventy," etc.).
[385] Especially chap. xix. f.
[386] 2 Clem. i. 4-6: to phos hemin echarisato . . . . peroi ontes te dianoia proskunountes lithous kai zula kai chruson kai arguron kai chalkon, erga anthropon . . . . amaurosin oun perikeimenoi kai toiautes achluos gemontes en te horasei aneblepsamen ("He bestowed on us the light . . . . we were blind in understanding, worshipping stones and stocks and gold and silver and brass, the works of men. . . . . Thus, girt with darkness and oppressed by so thick a mist in our vision, we regained our sight"). There are numerous passages of a similar nature.
[387] Cp. chap. i., chap. ii. 2 f.
[388] Cp. Justin's Apology, Tertullian's tract de Testimonio Animæ, etc.
[389] I have endeavored to expound it in my Dogmengeschichte I.(3), pp. 462-507 [Eng. trans., iii. 267 f.].
[390] See the Acta Justini, and his Apology. We know that Tatian had Rhodon as one of his pupils (Eus., H.E. v. 13).
[391] This address, even apart from its author, is perhaps the most impressive apology ever written (for its genuineness, see my Chronologie, ii. pp. 116 f., and Wendland in Philolog. Wochenschr. 1902, No. 8). It was impressive for half-educated readers, i.e., for the educated public of those days. Very effectively, it concludes by weaving together the (fabricated) prophecies of the Sibylline oracles and the (interpolated) Eclogue of Virgil, and by contrasting the reign of Constantine with those of his predecessors. The Christianity it presents is exclusive; even Socrates finds no favor, and Plato is sharply censured (ch. ix.) as well as praised. Still, it is tinged with Neoplatonism. The Son of God as such and as the Christ is put strongly in the foreground; he is God, at once God's Son and the hero of a real myth. But everything shimmers in a sort of speculative haze which corresponds to the style, the latter being poetic, flowery, and indefinite.
[392] See the gospel of John, the epistle of John, and the Didachê with its sacramental prayer.
[393] Many, of course, took umbrage at the Lord's supper as the eating and drinking of flesh and blood. The criticism of the pagan (Porphyry) in Mac. Magnes, III. xv., is remarkable. He does not attack the mystery of the supper in the Synoptic tradition, but on John vi. 53 ("Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye have no life in yourselves") he observes: "Is it not, then, bestial and absurd, surpassing all absurdity and bestial coarseness, for a man to eat human flesh and drink the blood of his fellow tribesman or relative, and thereby win life eternal? [Porphyry, remember, was opposed to the eating of flesh and the tasting of blood in general.] Why, tell me what greater coarseness could you introduce into life, if you practice that habit? What further crime will you start, more accursed than this loathsome profligacy? The ear cannot bear to hear it mentioned--and by it,' I am far from meaning the action itself, I mean the very name of this strange, utterly unheard of offence. Never, even in extraordinary emergencies, was anything like this offence enacted before mankind in the most fantastic presentations of the Erinyes. Not even would the Potidæans have admitted anything like this, although they had been debilitated by inhuman hunger. Of course we know about Thyestes and his meals, etc. [then follow similar cases from antiquity]. All these persons unintentionally committed this offence. But no civilized person ever served up such food, none ever got such gruesome instructions from any teacher. And if thou wert to pursue thine inquiries as far as Scythia or the Macrobii of Ethiopia, or to travel right round the margin of the sea itself, thou wouldst find people who eat lice and roots, or live on serpents, and make mice their food, but all refrain from human flesh. What, then, does this saying mean? For even although it was meant to be taken in a more mystical or allegorical (and therefore profitable) sense, still the mere sound of the words upon the ear grates inevitably on the soul, and makes it rebel against the loathsomeness of the saying. . . . . Many teachers, no doubt, attempt to introduce new and strange ideas. But none has ever devised a precept so strange and horrible as this, neither historian nor philosopher, neither barbarian nor primitive Greek. See here, what has come over you that you foolishly exhort credulous people to follow such a faith? Look at all the mischief that is set thus afoot to storm the cities as well as the villages! Hence it was, I do believe, that neither Mark nor Luke nor Matthew mentioned this saying, just because they were of opinion that it was unworthy of civilized people, utterly strange and unsuitable and quite alien to the habits of honorable life."
[394] By the end of the second century, at the very latest, the disciplina arcani embraced the sacraments, partly owing to educational reasons, partly to the example of pagan models. It rendered them still more weighty and impressive.
[395] Not quite the last, for Marcion and his disciples do not seem to have been sacramental theologians at all.
[396] This construction is common to them and to the idealist philosophers of their age.
[397] For a considerable length of time one of the charges brought by Christians against the Jews was that of angel-worship (Preaching of Peter, in Clem. Alex., Strom., vi. 5; Arist., Apol., xiv. Celsus also is acquainted with this charge, and angel-worship is, of course, a note of the errorists combated in Colossians). Subsequently the charge came to be leveled against the Christians themselves, and Justin had already written rather incautiously (Apol. I. vi.): [ton theon] kai ton par' autou huion elthonta kai didaxanta hemas tauta kai ton ton allon hepomenon kai exomoioumenon agathon angelon straton, pneuma te to prophetikon sebometha kai proskunoumen ("Both God and the Son who came from him and taught us these things, also the host of the other good angels who follow and are made like to him, and also the prophetic Spirit--these we worship and adore"). The four words pneuma te to prophetikon are supposed by some to be an interpolation.
[398] As to the "descent" and "ascent" of the soul, cp. Anz., "Zu Frage nach dem Ursprung des Gnosticismus" (Texte u. Unters. xv. 4, 1897).
[399] The necessity of priests and sacrifices was an idea present from the first in Gentile Christianity--even at the time when Christians sought with Paul to know of spiritual sacrifices alone and of the general priesthood of believers. Cp. Justin's Dial., cxvi.: ou dechetai par' oudenos thusias ho theos, ei me dia ton hiereon autou ("God receives sacrifices from no one, save through his priests").
[400] Jewish Alexandrian philosophers had been the pioneers in this direction, and all that was really needed was to copy them. But they had employed a variety of methods in their attempt, amongst which a choice had to he made. All these attempts save one were childish. One was quite appropriate, viz., that which explained the points of agreement by the sway of the same Logos which worked in the Jewish prophets and in the pagan philosophers and poets. One attempt, again, was naïve, viz., that which sought to expose the Greek philosophers and poets as plagiarists--though Celsus tried to do the same thing with reference to Christ. Finally, it was both naive and fanatical to undertake to prove that all agreements of the philosophers with Christian doctrine were but a delusion and the work of the devil.
[401] These included the distinction between the god of creation (the demiurgus) and the god of redemption (redemption corresponding to emanation, not to creation), the abandonment of the Old Testament god, the dualistic opposition of soul and body, the disintegration of the redemptive personality, etc. Above all, redemption to the syncretist and the gnostic meant the separation of what had been unnaturally conjoined, while to the Christian it meant the union of what had been unnaturally divided. Christianity could not give up the latter conception of redemption, unless she was willing to overturn everything. Besides, this conception alone was adequate to the monarchical position of God.
[402] With this comparative appreciation of speculation in early Christianity, we concede the utmost that can be conceded in this connection. It is a time-honored view that the richest fruit of Christianity, and in fact its very essence, lies in that "Christian" metaphysic which was the gradual product of innumerable alien ideas dragged into contact with the gospel. But this assertion deserves respect simply on the score of its venerable age. If it were true, then Jesus Christ would not be the founder of his religion, and indeed he would not even be its forerunner, since be neither revealed any philosophy of religion nor did he lay stress on anything which from such a standpoint is counted as cardinal. The Greeks certainly forgot before very long the Pauline saying ek merous ginoskomen . . . . blepomen gar arti di' esoptrou en ainigmati ("We know in part . . . . for now we see in a mirror, darkly";), and they also forgot that as knowledge (gnosis) and wisdom (sophia) are charismatic gifts, the product of these gifts affords no definition of what Christianity really is. Of the prominent teachers, Marcion, Apelles, and to some extent Irenæus, were the only ones who remained conscious of the limitations of knowledge.
[403] Cp. my Dogmengeschichte (third ed.) i., especially pp. 516 f. [Eng. trans., iii. 275 f.].
[404] Yet cp. Justin., Dial. cxxiv., a parallel to the great section in John. x. 33 f.
[405] Hippol., Philos. x. 34. Cp. pseudo-Hippolytus, Theoph., viii.: ei athanatos gegonen ho anthropos, estai kai theos ("If man become immortal, he shall also be divine"). __________________________________________________________________