Top 30 Apologetics Books (#3): Origen, Against Celsus
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“The clearest mark of the early Church’s humanism was found not just in its support of the pagan poor but the attention and respect it paid to those on the very margins of life. The Church, for example, inherited the—to the ancient world unfathomable— Jewish prohibition on abortion and infanticide. Its attitude to that other group of marginal humans, slaves, was more ambiguous, but only slightly more so. Because slavery in the ancient world ranged from comfortable domestic employment to brutal enslavement, the initial Christian response was to ameliorate rather than abolish. The very fact that slaves and masters shared the same body of Christ in the Eucharist slowly undermined the inherent inequality of the master–slave relationship, however. In time this would underpin Gregory of Nyssa’s unequivocal and indignant denunciation of slavery in his fourth sermon on the book of Ecclesiastes in 379 and, eventually, lead to the erosion of the institution in later centuries.”
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#3: Origen, Against Celsus (AD 248)
Note: Below, Dr. Bowman continues his series on the 30 most important apologetics books in church history. See his earlier posts in the previous two weeks of Useful Things.
By far the most important Greek apologist of the third century was Origen (ca. 185-254), whose lengthy Contra Celsum (“Against Celsus”) was a reply to Celsus’s philosophical, ethical, and historical criticisms of Christianity. Celsus was a pagan philosopher whose book The True Word was written around AD 170. Celsus’s book has not itself survived, but much of it is preserved within Origen’s book, which contains generous quotations from it. Celsus drew on an earlier critique of Christianity by an unknown Jewish author, and quotations from this “Jew of Celsus,” as Origen calls him, are also preserved in Contra Celsum. Just as Luke had written his two-volume work (Luke–Acts) for a patron named Theophilus, Origen wrote his work for a Christian patron named Ambrose (or Ambrosius). In his preface, Origen explains that he intended his work not for mature believers, whom he assumed would not be shaken in their faith by arguments such as Celsus’s, but for those unfamiliar with the Christian faith or for new and weak believers. Whereas the second-century apologists had pleaded for imperial toleration of Christianity, Origen pleaded for intellectual respect for Christianity.
Origen’s book is difficult to summarize because to a great extent it is a point by point rebuttal to Celsus. It is divided into eight “books,” each of which consists of 65 to 99 “chapters” (essentially somewhat long paragraphs). We may identify three kinds of responses that Origen makes to Celsus’s criticisms. First, Origen often pointed out that what Celsus said about Christianity was simply not factually correct or was based on a strained interpretation of the facts. For example, Origen argued that Jesus did not do his miracles by sorcery, and he offered an impressive historical defense of Jesus’ resurrection against an early hallucination theory and other objections. Second, Origen turned around many of Celsus’s criticisms, showing that what Celsus thought was bad or irrational was good and reasonable. For example, Celsus had faulted Christians for not worshiping the divinity in the Roman emperor, to which Origen replied that either the emperor’s divinity was really a demon or it simply did not exist. Third, Origen argued that some of Celsus’s objections were based on a naïve, literalistic reading of the Bible. Like many other Christian intellectuals in the early church, Origen argued that some biblical stories (specifically in the Old Testament) were meant to be interpreted allegorically.
Origen’s Contra Celsum stood as the most successful and valued work of Christian apologetics for well over two centuries. It is with good reason that Origen’s book has been ranked as one of the classics of apologetics.
—Rob Bowman Jr. is an evangelical Christian apologist, biblical scholar, author, editor, and lecturer. He is the author of over sixty articles and author or co-author of thirteen books, including Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ, co-authored with J. Ed Komoszewski. He leads the Apologetics Book Club on Facebook.
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