Translated from Philip Schaff's History of The Christian Church

第三章 基督教与犹太教及异教的文献论争

目录

§ 28. 参考文献

§ 29. 文献中对基督教的反对

§ 30. 犹太人的反对：约瑟夫斯与《塔木德》

§ 31. 异教的反对：塔西佗与普林尼

§ 32. 直接攻击：塞尔苏斯

§ 33. 琉善

§ 34. 新柏拉图主义 (Neo-Platonism)

§ 35. 波菲利与希罗克勒斯

§ 36. 反对基督教的论据概述

§ 37. 基督教的护教文献

§ 38. 反对犹太教的论证

§ 39. 针对异教的辩护

§ 40. 正面的护教论证

§ 28. 参考文献

I. 史料

塔西佗 (Tacitus，97年任执政官，约117年卒)：《编年史》(Annal.) xv. 44。参比较他在《历史》(Hist.) v. 1–5中对犹太人的描写。

普林尼 (Plinius，约114年卒)：《书信集》(Ep.) x. 96, 97。

塞尔苏斯 (Celsus，约150年活跃)：Ἀληθὴς λόγος^*。残篇保存在俄利根 (Origen) 的《驳塞尔苏斯》（8卷，Κατὰ Κέλσου^*）中；特奥多尔·凯姆 (Theodor Keim) 加以重构、翻译并作解说，题为《塞尔苏斯的真道：古代世界观反对基督教的最早学术论战著作》(Celsus’ Wahres Wort, Aelteste wissenschaftliche Streitschrift, antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum)，苏黎世，1873年（293页）。

琉善 (Lucian，约180年卒)：Περὶ τῆς Περεγρίνου τελευτῆς^*，第11–16章；以及Ἀληθὴς ἱστορία^* I. 30；II. 4, 11。

波尔菲里乌斯 (Porphyrius，约300年)：Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν λόγοι^*。仅存残篇，由霍尔斯坦 (Holstein) 汇编，罗马，1630年。他最重要的著作均已失传。现存著作由 A. 瑙克 (A. Nauck) 于1860年编订。

II. 研究著作

纳撒尼尔·拉德纳 (Nath. Lardner)：《古代犹太人与异教徒见证基督教真理文献集》(Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion)（伦敦，1727–1757年），收入其《著作集》(Works) 第VI、VII卷，基皮斯 (Kippis) 编，伦敦，1838年。极有价值。

莫斯海姆 (Mosheim)：其德译本《俄利根驳塞尔苏斯》(Origen against Celsus) 的导论。汉堡，1745年。

宾德曼 (Bindemann)：《塞尔苏斯及其反对基督徒的著作》(Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen)，载伊尔根 (Illgen) 的《历史神学杂志》(Zeitschr. für hist. Theol.)，莱比锡，1842年，第2期，第58–146页。

阿德·普朗克 (Ad. Planck)：《琉善与基督教》(Lukian u. das Christenthum)，载《研究与评论》(Studien u. Kritiken)，1851年，第4期；英译载《圣经文库》(Bibliotheca Sacra)，安多弗，1852年。

F. Chr. 鲍尔 (F. Chr. Baur)：《最初三个世纪的基督教》(Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh.)，图宾根，第2版，1860年（及1863年），第370–430页。

尼安德 (Neander)：《基督教与教会通史》(General History of the Christian Religion and Church)；托里 (Torrey) 英译，第I卷，第157–178页。（波士顿第12版。）

理查德·冯·德·阿尔姆 (Richard von der Alm)：《最初四个世纪异教与犹太作家对耶稣及最早基督徒的评断》(Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten Jahrh. ueber Jesus und die ersten Christen)。莱比锡，1865年。（一部不信派著作。）

H. 凯尔纳 (H. Kellner，罗马天主教徒)：《希腊文化与基督教，或古代异教对基督教的思想反抗》(Hellenismus und Christenthum oder die geistige Reaction des antiken Heidenthums gegen das Christenthum)。科隆，1866年（454页）。

B. 奥贝 (B. Aubé)：《论第二世纪的基督教护教：哲学家与殉道者圣游斯丁》(De l’ Apologétique chrétienne au II^e siécle. St. Justin, philosophe et martyr)，第2版，巴黎，1875年。同一作者：《教会受逼迫史》(Histoire des Persecutions de l’église)。第二部分亦题为《第二世纪末的异教论战》(La polémique païenne à la fin du II^e siécle)。巴黎，1878年。

E. 勒南 (E. Renan)：《马可·奥勒留》(Marc-Aurèle)（巴黎，1882年），第345页（《塞尔苏斯与琉善》，Celse et Lucien），第379页及后（《新的护教著作》，Nouvelles apologies）。

J. W. 法勒 (J. W. Farrar)：《寻求上帝的人》(Seekers after God.)。伦敦，1869年，新版1877年。（论塞涅卡、爱比克泰德〔Epictetus〕与马可·奥勒留〔Marcus Aurelius〕的论文，并将他们与基督教作比较。）

参见§ 12所引文献，尤其是乌尔霍恩 (Uhlhorn) 与凯姆 (Keim，1881年) 的著作，以及论殉道者游斯丁 (Justin M.)、德尔图良 (Tertullian)、俄利根及其他护教士的专著；这些著作将在论述各位作者的各节中介绍。

§ 29. 文献中对基督教的反对

除了我们在第二章考察过的外部冲突之外，基督教还蒙召经历了一场与古代世界之间同样重要的思想与文献斗争；它也从这场斗争中凯旋而出，并意识到自己乃是适合人类的完备宗教。我们将在本章看到，现代不信派反对基督教的大多数异议，早已由最初那些在著述中反对基督教的人提出，而古代护教士也已针对当时教会的需要，有力而成功地予以驳斥。不信与信仰，正如人性与上帝的恩典一样，在各时代、各民族中，其本质始终相同，只是形式各异；因此，每一时代既产生自身特有的反对形式，也必须形成自身的辩护方式。

基督教起初在文学艺术界代表人物那里得到的好感，与在君王和政治家那里一样少。在第一世纪后期和第二世纪初期的世俗文献中，我们所能找到的，几乎只是些出于无知、漫不经心而怀有敌意的零星言论，把基督教看作一种新形式的迷信；当时它已开始引起罗马政府的注意。从这一点来看，基督的国也不属于这世界，不得不冲破重重艰难而前行；然而，最终它却孕育出一种在智识与道德上远胜希腊罗马文化的文化，能够无止境地进步，并充满永葆青春的活力。

拜占庭皇帝狄奥多西二世 (Theodosius II.) 和瓦伦提尼安三世 (Valentinian III.) 出于虔诚的野蛮，下令销毁波尔菲里乌斯及其他所有反对基督教者的著作，以免招致上帝的忿怒；然而，仍有相当数量的残篇保存在教父们的驳论中，尤其是俄利根、优西比乌 (Eusebius)、亚历山大的区利罗 (Cyril of Alexandria，驳斥尤利安〔Julian〕) 的著作，以及哲罗姆 (Jerome) 和奥古斯丁 (Augustin) 的零星记述中。

§ 30. 犹太人的反对：约瑟夫斯与《塔木德》

犹太文士和法利赛人对福音的敌意，是我们从《新约》中熟知的。约瑟夫斯 (Josephus) 在他的《犹太古史》中曾一次提到耶稣，但措辞十分赞许，与他的犹太立场颇不相称，因此使这段文字受到后人插入或篡改的怀疑。¹ 然而，他的著作包含许多宝贵的见证，证实福音历史的真实性。他的《犹太古史》全书，就其阐明基督生平的社会与政治环境而言，可说是一部第五福音书。² 尤其是他的《犹太战争史》，无意间成了救主预言的鲜明注解：这些预言涉及耶路撒冷城与圣殿的毁灭，当时犹太民族所遭受的极大困苦与患难，饥荒、瘟疫和地震，假先知与骗子的兴起，以及这些灾难临近时门徒的逃离。³

后来的犹太人对基督教的攻击，实质上不过是重复福音书所记载的那些攻击——否认耶稣是弥赛亚，并对承认他的人施以可怕的辱骂。我们从游斯丁与犹太人特利丰 (Trypho) 的对话中，最能了解这类攻击的性质。塞尔苏斯最早提及的那篇虚构的雅孙 (Jason) 与帕皮斯库斯 (Papiscus) 论基督的辩论，自第七世纪以后便已失传。⁴ 它似乎是一位犹太基督徒，或许是佩拉的阿里斯托 (Aristo of Pella)，为反驳犹太人的异议而写的一篇颇为薄弱的基督教辩护。

《塔木德》(Talmud) 是那与基督教分离并敌视基督教的犹太教的圣经，但除了间接涉及之外，几乎不提基督教。它使犹太人与其他一切民族的隔离臻于完全。

§ 31. 异教的反对：塔西佗与普林尼

第一世纪的希腊罗马作家，以及第二世纪的某些作家，如塞涅卡 (Seneca)、老普林尼 (Pliny)，甚至温和而高尚的普鲁塔克 (Plutarch)，或出于无知，或出于轻蔑，根本不曾提及基督教。

与图拉真 (Trajan) 皇帝同时代并为其友人的塔西佗和小普林尼，是最早提到基督教的作家；他们只是偶然论及它，并带着斯多葛式的鄙夷与反感，称它为“有害的迷信”(exitiabilis superstition)、“邪僻而过度的迷信”(prava et immodica superstitio)、“不可动摇的顽固”(inflexibilis obstinatio)。这些著名的罗马作家，就其自身而言，原是完全值得尊重的；但他们显然由于无知，在基督徒身上所看到的，无非是迷信的狂热者，把他们与遭人憎恨的犹太人相提并论；事实上，塔西佗还指责他们“仇恨人类”(odium generis humani)。由此可以略知，这一新宗教在公众舆论中，尤其在罗马帝国有教养的阶层中，遭遇了何等巨大的障碍。第二世纪的基督教护教著作也表明，民间流传着针对基督徒的极其恶毒而毫无根据的诽谤，甚至指控他们乱伦、吃人肉；⁵ 这些指控可能部分出于误解，误解了基督徒之间亲密的弟兄之爱，以及他们在夜间举行的圣餐与爱筵。

他们对基督教的间接见证

然而，另一方面，塔西佗和普林尼对基督教那些寥寥无几、带着轻蔑的言论，却为福音历史中的一些事实作了见证。塔西佗叙述尼禄逼迫基督徒时，顺带证实了以下事实：基督在提庇留 (Tiberius) 统治期间，被本丢·彼拉多 (Pontius Pilate) 当作罪犯处死；他是基督教这一教派的创始者；这一教派发源于犹太，尽管基督遭受了屈辱的死亡，尽管它在帝国各地受到仇恨与轻蔑，却仍然传播开来，以至于早在64年，仅在罗马城就有“极多的人”(multitudo ingens) 被极其残酷地处死。他在《历史》第五卷中，还与约瑟夫斯一同，为基督关于耶路撒冷毁灭及犹太神权政体倾覆的预言之应验，提供了宝贵的见证；他的记述主要取自约瑟夫斯，虽非完全取自他。

至于普林尼约于107年写给图拉真的那封著名书信，则证实了当时基督教在小亚细亚社会各阶层中的迅速传播，信徒们在残酷逼迫中普遍表现出的道德纯洁与坚定，他们敬拜的方式与时间，他们敬拜基督为上帝，他们遵守某个“指定的日子”——无疑就是星期日——以及早期教会史上其他一些重要事实。图拉真答复普林尼询问的敕函，为基督徒的无辜提供了证据；除了他们不敬拜诸神之外，他未提到对他们的任何指控，并禁止搜捕他们。马可·奥勒留在一处简短而不友善的言论中，见证了他们对殉道冠冕的渴望。

§ 32. 直接攻击：塞尔苏斯

以专门著作为手段直接攻击基督教，始于第二世纪中叶；一位名叫塞尔苏斯的希腊哲学家极有才干地主持了这场攻击，除此之外，我们对他的情况并无所知。据俄利根说，他是一个具有许多柏拉图思想的伊壁鸠鲁派 (Epicurean)，也是琉善的朋友。他在马可·奥勒留实行逼迫的统治时期写作。⁶

塞尔苏斯尽管对这一新宗教表现出或真或假的种种轻蔑，却仍认为它重要到值得写一部篇幅颇长的著作来反对，题为《真道》(A True Discourse)；俄利根在他的驳论中，忠实地保存了这部著作相当多的残篇。⁷ 这些残篇表明，作者是一位折衷派哲学家，学养广博，精于辩证，并且熟悉福音书、使徒书信，甚至《旧约》的著作。他时而以伊壁鸠鲁派轻浮的笔调发言，时而又采用柏拉图派 (Platonist) 严肃庄重的语气。他一时维护民间的异教信仰，例如其中关于鬼神的教义；一时又超越多神教观念，转向泛神论或怀疑论的观点。他动用当时文化所能提供的一切助力，运用学识、常识、机智、讥讽，以及文风中戏剧般生动有力的一切武器，来驳斥基督教；后世自然神论者和不信派的大多数论点与诡辩，他都已先行提出。然而，总的说来，他的书仍是一部极其肤浅、松散而轻率的作品，鲜明地证明了天然理性无力理解基督教真理。它毫无谦卑的气息，既不认识人性的败坏，也不认识人对救赎的需要；它充满异教的激情与偏见，对一切属灵的实在全然盲目，因此丝毫不能领会救赎主及其工作的荣耀。这部书不需要驳斥，它自己就驳倒了自己。

塞尔苏斯 (Celsus) 首先让一名犹太人出场，指控耶稣的母亲与一名叫潘特拉 (Panthera) 的士兵通奸；⁸ 又举出彼得的不认主、犹大的背叛和耶稣的死亡，作为反驳他所谓神性的证据，并把复活说成骗局。随后塞尔苏斯亲自展开攻击，首先反对整个超自然观念，而这正是犹太教与基督教的共同基础。在他看来，犹太人与基督徒之间的争论，就像为驴影而争执一样愚蠢。犹太人与基督徒一样，相信关于世界救赎主的预言；二者的差别，只在于犹太人仍在等候弥赛亚的降临。然而，上帝究竟为什么要降到地上来，或差遣另一位下来呢？他早已知道人间发生的一切。而且，这样的降临意味着改变，意味着从善转向恶，从可爱转向可憎，从幸福转向悲惨；对于神性而言，这既不可取，实际上也不可能。他在另一处说，上帝关心人类，并不比关心猴子和苍蝇更多。塞尔苏斯就这样否定了整个启示观念，时而采用泛神论的方式，时而采用伊壁鸠鲁派自然神论的轻浮口吻；他也因此同时放弃了民间异教的立场。在他看来，基督教全无理性基础，只靠对来世刑罚的虚妄恐惧来维持。尤其令他反感的，是福音对贫穷困苦者的应许，以及赦罪、重生和身体复活的教义。他讥笑这最后一项是蛆虫的盼望，而非有理性之灵魂的盼望。他认为，诉诸上帝的全能也无济于事，因为上帝不能行任何不合宜、违反自然的事。他斥责基督徒无知、轻信、顽固、标新立异、彼此分裂、结党成派，而这些大多是从他们的先祖犹太人那里承袭来的。他们全是没有教养、卑微而迷信的人，是工匠、奴隶、妇女和儿童。他认为，他们中的绝大多数无疑是受了骗。然而，有受骗者，就必有行骗者；这就把我们引向了这番论战诡辩的最后结论。塞尔苏斯宣称，耶稣最初的门徒是最恶劣的骗子，是一伙术士，他们捏造并传播福音书中的神迹故事，尤其是耶稣复活的故事，却因自相矛盾而露了马脚。然而，这场骗局的始作俑者乃是耶稣自己；他在埃及学得那套法术，后来回到本国，便借此大肆炫耀。

但到了这里，这套哲学与批判的诡辩实际上已承认自己破产了。要解释基督教这样一种即使在当日也已如此重要的现象，最不应提出的就是欺骗假说。骗局越大，延续越久，在理性看来便越发神秘，越发无法解释。

金口约翰 (Chrysostom) 曾中肯地指出，塞尔苏斯为使徒著作的古老年代作了见证。这位异教攻击者生活的时代，与圣约翰几乎近到可以彼此呼应；他在无意间为我们提供了福音书所记基督生平的梗概，这就成为反对现代不信派的有力武器，因为他们竟要把这段历史说成后人的杜撰。他说：“这一切我都知道；我们全是从你们自己的书中得知的，无须别的见证；你们正用自己的刀剑杀死自己。”他提及《马太福音》《路加福音》和《约翰福音》，总计约有八十处涉及或引用《新约》。他注意到基督在犹太的一个小村庄由童女所生，东方博士的朝拜，希律下令屠杀婴孩，逃往埃及——他以为基督在那里学会了术士的咒法——以及他住在拿撒勒、受洗、圣灵形状仿佛鸽子降下、从天上传来的声音、拣选门徒、与税吏及其他卑微之人交往、他所谓医治瘸子与瞎子并使死人复活的事、犹大的背叛、彼得的不认主、受难与钉十字架经过中的主要情节，还有基督的复活。⁹

诚然，他歪曲或滥用了这些事实中的大部分；但照他自己的陈述，这些事当时为基督徒普遍相信，而且一直都是如此。他提到基督徒的一些主要教义、他们私下举行的敬拜聚会，以及长老的职分。他没有提及那些更为粗鄙的败德指控，大概是因为他认为这些指控荒谬而不可信。

鉴于这些承认，我们在此可以与拉德纳 (Lardner) 一同引用参孙的谜语：“吃的从吃者出来，甜的从强者出来。”¹⁰

§ 33. 琉善

琉善 (Lucian) 著作的版本有：赫姆斯特豪斯 (Hemsterhuis) 与 赖茨 (Reiz) 编本（1743年及后），雅科比茨 (Jacobitz) 编本（1836–39年），丁多夫 (Dindorf) 编本（1840年及1858年），贝克尔 (Bekker) 编本（1853年），弗朗茨·弗里切 (Franc. Fritzsche) 编本（1860–69年）。伪托琉善的对话录《爱国者》(Philopatris，φιλόπατρις^*，意为爱自己的国家、爱国者)，讥嘲基督徒，并谴责他们是罗马帝国的敌人；此书的年代要晚得多，可能出自背道者尤利安 (Julian the Apostate) 在位期间（363年）。参见格斯纳 (Gesner)：《〈爱国者〉的年代与作者》(De aetate et auctore Philopatridis)，耶拿 (Jen.)，1714年。

雅各布 (Jacob)：《琉善的特征》(Charakteristik Lucians)。汉堡，1822年。

G. G. 贝尔奈斯 (G. G. Bernays)：《琉善与犬儒派》(Lucian und die Cyniker)。柏林，1879年。

参较凯姆 (Keim)：《塞尔苏斯》(Celsus)，第143–151页；Ed. D. 策勒 (Ed. D. Zeller)：《亚历山大与佩雷格里努斯》(Alexander und Peregrinus)，载《德意志评论》(Deutsche Rundschau)，1877年1月号；亨利·科特里尔 (Henry Cotterill)：《佩雷格里努斯·普罗透斯》(Peregrinus Proteus)（爱丁堡，1879年）；Ad. 哈纳克 (Ad. Harnack) 载于赫尔措格 (Herzog) 编书（第II版）第VIII卷，第772–779页的文章；以及§ 28所引文献。

同一时期，修辞家琉善（约120年生于叙利亚的撒摩撒他〔Samosata〕，200年以前卒于埃及或希腊），这位希腊文学中的伏尔泰 (Voltaire)，用机智与嘲讽这些轻巧的武器攻击基督教；在他众多文笔优雅的著作中，他也用同样的武器，攻击古老的民间信仰与崇拜、从东方传入的神秘主义狂热、当时斯多葛派 (Stoics) 和犬儒派 (Cynics) 的庸俗生活，以及帝国这一动荡时期现存的大多数风俗习惯。他是伊壁鸠鲁派，是世俗之徒，也是不信者；这样的人在基督教中所能看到的，不过是人类种种怪想与愚行中的一种；在神迹中所能看到的，不过是戏法；在不朽的信仰中所能看到的，不过是空梦；而对于基督徒蔑视死亡和弟兄相爱——这些都是他不得不承认的——他所能看到的，不过是愚蠢的狂热。

他在一部叙述当代犬儒派哲学家佩雷格里努斯·普罗透斯 (Peregrinus Proteus) 生死的历史传奇中，就是这样描绘此事的；他借此人来讽刺基督教，尤其是犬儒主义。在这部书中，佩雷格里努斯被描绘为一个全然可鄙的人；他犯下通奸、鸡奸、弑父等最卑鄙、最粗鄙的罪行之后，加入巴勒斯坦那些轻信的基督徒中间，狡猾地欺骗他们，很快就在他们中间享有极高声望；后来他在狱中成为认信者之一，基督徒便送给他大量礼物，实际上几乎把他当作神来敬拜；但随后他因吃了某种禁食之物（可能是祭偶像的肉）而被逐出教会。于是，他投入犬儒派的怀抱，以该派最污秽的方式四处游荡；最后，约在165年，为了哲学的胜利，他在奥林匹亚 (Olympia) 城聚集的民众面前，因疯狂渴求名声而投入火葬柴堆的烈焰中。这一自焚的虚构故事，无疑意在戏仿基督徒的殉道，也许特别影射了坡旅甲 (Polycarp)，他在此前数年于士每拿 (Smyrna) 被火烧死（155年）。¹¹

琉善对待基督徒，与其说怀有仇恨，不如说带着怜悯的微笑。他从未在任何地方鼓动逼迫。他从不像塞尔苏斯那样称基督为骗子，而称他为“被钉十字架的智者 (sophist)”；他使用这个词时，用于褒义与用于贬义同样频繁。然而归根到底，在他看来，基督教与异教都不过是骗局；只因他抱持伊壁鸠鲁派的冷漠态度，便认为不值得费力追溯这类现象的终极根源，并试作哲学的解释。¹²

这位机敏的、一切宗教的嘲弄者所持的纯粹否定立场，对异教的损害比对基督教更大，但面对二者中的任何一个，这种立场都无法长久维持；因为宗教因素植根于人性的本质之中，实在太深了。伊壁鸠鲁主义和怀疑主义也相继让位于柏拉图主义，让位于信仰或迷信。为了抵挡基督教稳步向前的进展，异教奋力谋求自身的更新，以保住自己的阵地。然而，旧宗教本身也不免越来越深地感受到新宗教无声的影响。

§ 34. 新柏拉图主义 (Neo-Platonism)

I. 史料

普罗提诺 (Plotinus)：《全集》(Opera Omnia)，牛津 (Oxf.) 1835年版，3卷；基尔霍夫 (Kirchhoff) 编，莱比锡 (Lips.)，1856年；迪多 (Didot) 编，巴黎 (Par.)，1856年；H. F. 米勒 (H. F. Müller) 编，柏林，1878–80年。

波菲利 (Porphyrius)：Κατὰ Χριστιανῶν λόγοι^*（残篇辑录于霍尔斯坦〔Holstein〕：《波菲利生平与著作论》〔Dissert. de vita et scriptis Porphyr.〕，罗马〔Rom.〕，1630年）。他所著的毕达哥拉斯 (Pythagoras) 传、普罗提诺传及其他著作，由 A. A. 瑙克 (A. A. Nauck) 于1860年编刊。

希耶罗克勒斯 (Hierocles)：Λόγοι φιλαλήθεις πρὸς Χριστιανούς^*（残篇见于优西比乌〔Euseb.〕：《驳希耶罗克勒斯》〔Contra Hierocl. lib.〕，可能也见于马卡里乌斯·马格尼斯〔Macarius Magnes〕：Ἀποκριτικὸς ἢ Μονογενής^*，巴黎，1876年）。

菲洛斯特拉图斯 (Philostratus)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯传八卷》(De Vita Apollonii Tyanensis libri octo)（希腊文与拉丁文），威尼斯 (Venet.)，1501年；韦斯特曼 (Westerman) 编，巴黎，1840年；凯泽 (Kayser) 编，苏黎世，1853年、1870年。另有德文、法文和英文译本。

II. 研究著作

福格特 (Vogt)：《新柏拉图主义与基督教》(Neuplatonismus u. Christenthum)。柏林 (Berl.)，1836年。

里特尔 (Ritter)：《哲学史》(Gesch. der Philos.)，第4卷，1834年（莫里森〔Morrison〕英译本，牛津，1838年）。

尼安德 (Neander)：《论普罗提诺〈九章集〉第二集第九篇》(Ueber das neunte Buch in der zweiten Enneade des Plotinus)。1843年。（见尼安德《学术论文集》〔Wissenschaftl. Abhandlungen〕，雅科比〔Jacobi〕编刊，柏林，1851年，第22页及后。）

乌尔曼 (Ullmann)：《基督教对波菲利的影响》(Einflusz des Christentums auf Porphyrius)，载《研究与评论》(Stud. u. Krit.)，1832年。

基尔希纳 (Kirchner)：《普罗提诺的哲学》(Die Philosophie des Plotin)。哈雷，1854年。

F. Chr. 鲍尔 (F. Chr. Baur)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯与基督》(Apollonius von Tyana u. Christus)。图宾根 (Tüb.)，1832年；后由 Ed. 策勒 (Ed. Zeller) 重刊于《古代哲学史及其与基督教关系三论》(Drei Abhandlungen zur Gesch. der alten Philosophie U. ihres Verh. zum Christenthum)。莱比锡，1876年，第1–227页。

约翰·H. 纽曼 (John H. Newman)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯》(Apollonius Tyanaeus)。伦敦 (Lond.)，1849年（《大都会百科全书》〔Encycl. Metropol.〕第X卷，第619–644页）。

A. 沙桑 (A. Chassang)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯：其生平、游历与奇迹》等 (Ap. de T., sa vie, ses voyages, ses prodiges, etc.)。巴黎，1862年。译自希腊文，附解释性注释。

H. 凯尔纳 (H. Kellner)：《波菲利及其与基督教的关系》(Porphyrius und sein Verhültniss zum Christenthum)，载图宾根《神学季刊》(Theol. Quartalschrift)，1865年，第I期。

阿尔贝·雷维尔 (Albert Réville)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯：第三世纪的异教基督》(Apollonius of Tyana, the Pagan Christ of the third century)，译自法文。伦敦，1866年。

K. 门克贝格 (K. Mönkeberg)：《提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯》(Apollonius v. Tyana)。汉堡 (Hamb.)，1877年。

Fr. 于伯韦格 (Fr. Ueberweg)：《哲学史》(History of Philosophy)（英译本，纽约，1871年），第I卷，第232–259页。

Ed. 策勒 (Ed. Zeller)：《希腊人的哲学》(Philosophie der Griechen)，第III卷，第419页及后。

直接或间接出自新柏拉图主义 (Neo-Platonism) 的反对，更为严肃而庄重，但也正因如此，更为持久而危险。这一体系代表希腊哲学的最后阶段，可以说是它的落日余晖；它是垂死的异教面对朝气蓬勃的基督教不可抗拒的进展，企图使自己复苏的一次徒劳努力。它是一种泛神论的折衷主义，也是一种哲学与宗教的混合主义，力求调和柏拉图和亚里士多德的哲学与东方的宗教和神智学，调和多神论与一神论、迷信与文化，并仿佛以痉挛般的紧握，把旧有的民间宗教保持在一种精炼而理想化的形式中。它也不自觉地吸收了一些零散的基督教观念；基督教已经如此充满时代的空气，实在无法将它完全排除在外。正如人们所能预料的，这种哲学与宗教的混合物，是一种夸诞、怪异、驳杂的东西，与同时代的诺斯替主义 (Gnosticism) 相似；后者与它的区别，在于正式将基督教纳入自己的混合体系。多数新柏拉图主义者，尤其是扬布利柯 (Jamblichus)，既是哲学家，也是秘仪祭司和神术士；他们致力于占卜和魔法，并夸耀自己得到神的启示和异象。他们的著述不是富有独创性、健康而自然的产物，而是一种畸形的余生枝蔓。

在内心纷乱、精神瓦解的时代，人的心灵便搜寻陈旧过时的体系与观念，或诉诸魔法和神术。迷信紧随不信之后，无神论也常与惧怕鬼魂和崇拜邪灵密切相连。开明的皇帝奥古斯都 (Augustus)，若早晨先穿左脚的鞋而不是右脚的鞋，便会感到不安；博学的老普林尼 (Pliny) 也佩戴护身符，以防雷电。在他们的时代，早已被遗忘的毕达哥拉斯主义 (Pythagoreanism) 被从坟墓中召回，并加以理想化。行邪术的西门 (Simon Magus)、以吕马 (Elymas)、阿波诺提库斯的亚历山大 (Alexander of Abonoteichos)，以及提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯 (Apollonius of Tyana，卒于公元96年) 等术士，甚至在那些嘲笑诸神传说的上层人士中，也大受欢迎。人们满怀向往地转向过去，尤其转向神秘的东方，那原始智慧和宗教的故乡。叙利亚的祭仪受到追求；各式各样的宗教，古代一切有理的和荒谬的东西，都在罗马汇聚。甚至从第二世纪末的塞普蒂米乌斯·塞韦鲁斯 (Septimius Severus)，直到亚历山大·塞韦鲁斯 (Alexander Severus)，一连几位罗马皇帝都接受了这种宗教混合主义；它不但未能扶持古老的罗马国教，反而助长了它的崩溃。¹³

第三世纪开始以后，这种倾向在新柏拉图主义中获得了哲学的表达，并转向改革。人们以为，那能够使这些不同成分重新获得生命、归于和谐，并赋予古老神话以深刻意义的神奇力量，就是神圣的柏拉图 (Plato) 的哲学。这哲学在本质上确实具有神秘性质；有学问的犹太人，如斐洛 (Philo)，以及基督徒，如奥利金 (Origen)，在力图将《圣经》理想化，并随意以寓意解释其中令人反感的经文时，也曾采用这种哲学。从这一观点看，我们可以在异教作家中，发现一位堪称新柏拉图主义者先驱的人物，就是波奥提亚 (Boeotia) 那位虔诚而心志高尚的柏拉图主义者普鲁塔克 (Plutarch，卒于120年)。他也在民间多神信仰的神话中看出更深的意义；总的说来，他在人物比较传记和出色的道德论著中，着眼于希腊罗马古代最美好、最高尚的一面，却也常常游离到无路可循的幻想境域之中。

新柏拉图主义真正的创始人，是亚历山大的阿摩尼乌斯·萨卡斯 (Ammonius Saccas)。他的父母是基督徒，但他后来背弃信仰，死于243年。他更为著名的学生普罗提诺 (Plotinus，204–269年) 也是埃及人，他将新柏拉图主义的观念发展为系统的形式，使之站稳脚跟并广泛流传，尤其是在他讲授哲学的罗马。这一体系由他的学生、同样在罗马授课的推罗人波菲利 (Porphyry，卒于304年)，以及柯勒叙利亚 (Coelo-Syria) 的卡尔基斯人扬布利柯 (Jamblichus，卒于333年) 和君士坦丁堡的普罗克洛 (Proclus，卒于485年) 加以传播。它在后期异教世界受过教育的阶层中取代了民间宗教，一直维持到第五世纪末，随后因其自身内在的虚妄和矛盾而灭亡。

这一体系由于爱慕理想、超自然和神秘的事物，便与原始的柏拉图主义一样，可能成为许多哲学心灵通向信仰的桥梁；甚至对圣奥古斯丁 (Augustin) 而言也是如此：它使他摆脱怀疑主义的束缚，使他心中充满对真理与智慧的炽烈渴慕。但它也可能成为反对基督教的力量。事实上，新柏拉图主义是较有见识、较为严肃的异教所作的一次直接尝试，要集结自身一切较高尚的力量，尤其是希腊哲学和东方神秘主义的力量，建立一种普世宗教，作为基督教的异教对应物。普罗提诺在反对诺斯替主义时，也攻击了其中所包含的基督教成分，尽管没有明言。依照其混合主义原则，新柏拉图主义者固然可以尊崇基督为伟大的圣哲和德行的英雄，却不能尊他为上帝的儿子。他们把异教世界的智者与他并列。皇帝亚历山大·塞韦鲁斯（卒于235年）在自己家中的神龛 (lararium) 里，将俄耳甫斯 (Orpheus) 和提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯的像，置于耶稣的半身像旁边。

约在220年，老修辞学家斐洛斯特拉托 (Philostratus) 应尤利娅·多姆娜 (Julia Domna) 的请求，将毕达哥拉斯学派的异教术士和占卜者阿波罗尼乌斯的生平加以理想化，把他塑造成一位苦修的圣人、受神启示的哲学家、宗教改革者和行神迹者。尤利娅是塞普蒂米乌斯·塞韦鲁斯的妻子，也是异教改革的热心赞助者。人们通常认为，尽管没有直接证据，这样做的目的，是要把阿波罗尼乌斯树为基督的对手，声称他同样有资格受人敬拜。¹⁴

两者相似之处主要如下：耶稣是上帝的儿子，阿波罗尼乌斯是朱庇特 (Jupiter) 的儿子；基督诞生时有天使显现以示庆贺，阿波罗尼乌斯诞生时则有一道闪电；基督使睚鲁的女儿从死里复活，阿波罗尼乌斯则使一位年轻的罗马少女复活；基督赶逐污鬼，阿波罗尼乌斯也如此行；基督从死里复活，阿波罗尼乌斯则在死后显现。阿波罗尼乌斯还被赋予使徒们的若干特征，例如说方言的神奇恩赐，因为他通晓世上一切语言。他像圣保罗一样，早年在大数 (Tarsus) 受教育，在安提阿 (Antioch)、以弗所 (Ephesus) 等城劳作，并遭到尼禄的逼迫。他又像早期基督徒一样，被诬告以某种神秘仪式献儿童为祭。¹⁵ 波菲利和扬布利柯也怀着同样隐而不宣的论战目的，润饰毕达哥拉斯 (Pythagoras) 的生平，将他描绘为智慧的最高典范，甚至是神明的化身，是异教的基督。

这些使异教基督教化的种种尝试，当然都归于失败，正如一次次以电流刺激死尸、妄图使它复生的尝试一样。它们对当时的时代尚且没有产生影响，更不用说后世了。它们反倒成为间接支持基督教的论据：它们证明了虚假宗教内在的衰败，以及真实宗教不可抗拒的进展；后者已经开始塑造时代的精神，并影响教会以外的舆论。他们仿效基督而虚构人物，也就间接承认，历史中的基督理当获得全人类的钦佩与赞美。

§ 35. 波菲利与希罗克勒斯

参见§ 34所列文献。

新柏拉图主义的一位主要代表，曾直接攻击基督教，在教父们看来，他是基督教最刻毒、最危险的敌人。第三世纪末，波菲利写了一部反对基督徒的长篇著作，共十五卷，引起当时最杰出的教会教师撰写大量驳论，尤其是推罗的美多迪乌斯 (Methodius)、凯撒利亚的优西比乌 (Eusebius)，以及老底嘉的亚波里拿留 (Apollinaris)。448年，皇帝狄奥多西二世 (Theodosius II.) 和瓦伦提尼安三世 (Valentinian III.) 下令将此书的所有抄本焚毁，如今我们只能从教父著作中保存的残篇得知其内容。

波菲利尤其攻击基督徒的圣书，他的知识比塞尔苏斯 (Celsus) 更为丰富。他力图以敏锐的批判指出《旧约》与《新约》之间，以及使徒们彼此之间的矛盾，藉此否定他们著作的神圣性。他将但以理的预言说成是 vaticinia post eventum，即事后写成的预言，并谴责奥利金的寓意解释，认为这种解释违背摩西著作的明白含义，硬将超验的奥秘塞入其中。他尤其利用保罗与彼得在安提阿的冲突（《加拉太书》2:11），指责前者好争辩，后者犯错误，并由此推断，这等使徒的教义必定建立在谎言和欺诈之上。他甚至将《约翰福音》7:8与第14节相比较，根据耶稣在其中的行为，指控耶稣本人言辞含混、前后不一。

然而，波菲利并不愿完全拒绝基督教。他像近代许多理性主义者一样，将耶稣原初纯正的教义，与使徒们转述而掺杂了杂质的教义区分开来。在另一部论《神谕的哲学》(Philosophy of Oracles) 的著作中¹⁶——优西比乌常常引用此书，奥古斯丁也曾引用¹⁷——他说，我们不可诽谤那位以虔诚著称的基督，只应怜悯那些把他当作上帝来敬拜的人。“那升到天上的虔诚灵魂，由于某种命运，竟成了另一些灵魂受迷惑的缘由；命运不肯将诸神的恩赐和对不朽的宙斯 (Zeus) 的认识赐给他们。”从这一角度看，他写给妻子马尔切拉 (Marcella) 的一封信更为引人注目。A. 迈 (A. Mai) 于1816年在米兰将此信刊行，却毫无根据地认为马尔切拉是基督徒。波菲利在信中说，从肉身生的就是肉身；我们藉着信、爱和盼望，使自己上升到神那里；恶是人的过失；上帝是圣洁的；最蒙他悦纳的祭是清洁的心；智者既是上帝的殿，也是这殿中的祭司。对于这些以及其他类似的、显然带有基督教色彩的观念和措辞，他无疑赋予了自己的含义，与它们在《圣经》中的本义有实质的差别。但这类事情表明，当时基督教甚至对其反对者也发挥着一种力量，使异教不得不违心地表示赞同。

本时期最后一位在著述上与基督教为敌的人，是希罗克勒斯 (Hierocles)。他在戴克里先 (Diocletian) 统治下，先后任比提尼亚 (Bythynia) 和亚历山大的总督，也曾以刀剑逼迫这一宗教，使基督徒少女遭受比死亡更悲惨的命运。他的《致基督徒的爱真理之言》(Truth-loving Words to the Christians)，与波菲利的著作一样，被基督教皇帝们出于错误的热忱而毁掉；我们只能通过凯撒利亚的优西比乌所作的答辩得知其内容。¹⁸ 他似乎只是重复了塞尔苏斯和波菲利的反对意见，并将基督与提亚纳的阿波罗尼乌斯加以比较，结论则有利于后者。他说，基督徒因为几件微不足道、被使徒们虚假渲染的神迹，就认定耶稣是一位神；但异教徒却公正得多，只把行过更大神迹的阿波罗尼乌斯，以及阿里斯提阿斯 (Aristeas) 和毕达哥拉斯，称为诸神所宠爱的人和人类的恩人。

§ 36. 反对基督教的论据概述

总的说来，这一时期犹太教和异教反对这一新宗教的主要论据如下：

1. 针对基督的指控：他是私生子；他与贫穷、没有学问的渔夫和粗鄙的税吏来往；他取了奴仆的形像，并以羞辱的方式死去。然而，对他本人的反对逐渐平息了。塞尔苏斯 (Celsus) 称他为十足的骗子，而混合主义者 (Syncretists) 和新柏拉图主义者 (Neo-Platonists) 则倾向于至少承认他是一位卓越的哲人。

2. 针对基督教的指控：它是新兴的宗教；它源于蛮族；它缺乏民族基础；它的某些事实和教义据称荒谬不经，尤其是重生与复活；新旧约之间、各福音书之间，以及保罗与彼得之间存在矛盾；它要求人盲目而不合乎理性地相信。

3. 针对基督徒的指控：无神论，或仇恨诸神；敬拜一个被钉十字架的罪犯；贫穷，缺乏教养和社会地位；好尚变革；分裂与宗派主义；缺乏爱国心；阴郁严肃；轻信；迷信和狂热。有时，他们甚至被控犯有违背人伦的罪行，如异教神话中俄狄浦斯 (Oedipus) 与其母约卡斯塔 (Jocaste) 的乱伦（concubitus Oedipodei），以及堤厄斯忒斯 (Thyestes) 与阿特柔斯 (Atreus) 的人肉宴（epulae Thyesteae）。某些诺斯替派 (Gnostic) 宗派或许曾陷入骇人听闻的放纵；但若将这一罪名加在一般基督徒身上，就显然毫无根据，甚至连塞尔苏斯和琉善 (Lucian) 都不曾提及。至于他们敬拜驴头这一荒谬的指控，正如德尔图良早已暗示的，¹⁹可能源自塔西佗所记的一则故事：一些犹太人一度由一头野驴引到清水旁，因而解除了干渴的痛苦。此事之所以值得一提，只是为了表明，在这一逼迫时期，基督教所必须抗衡的反对是何等狂热而盲目。

§ 37. 基督教的护教文献

参较第1、12节所列文献。

I. 史料包括第二、第三世纪护教士的一切著作；尤其是殉道者游斯丁 (Justin M.)：《第一、第二护教辞》(Apologia I. and II.)；德尔图良 (Tertull.)：《护教篇》(Apologeticus)；米努修斯·费利克斯 (Minucius Felix)：《屋大维》(Octavius)；奥利金 (Origen)：《驳塞尔苏斯》(Contra Celsum，κατὰ Κέλσου^*)，共VIII卷。阿里斯提德 (Aristides)：《雅典哲人的两篇演说》(Philosophi Atheniensis, Sermones duo)，威尼斯 (Venetiis)，1878年。（据亚美尼亚文译本刊行。）护教士著作全集：Apologg. Christ. Opp.，Prud. 马拉努斯 (Prud. Maranus) 编，巴黎 (Par.)，1742年；《第二世纪基督教护教士文集》(Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum seculi secundi)，Th. 奥托 (Th. Otto) 编，耶拿 (Jenae)，1847年及后；第III版，1876年及后。O. v. 格布哈特 (O. v. Gebhardt) 与 E. 施瓦茨 (E. Schwartz) 编的新版本，于1888年开始出版。

2. 法布里修斯 (Fabricius)：《捍卫基督教真理的论据选编与著者目录》(Dilectus argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Rel. Christ. asseruerunt)。汉堡 (Hamb.)，1725年。

奇尔施纳 (Tzschirner)：《护教学史》(Geschichte der Apologetik)。莱比锡 (Lpz.)，1805年（未完成）。

G. H. 范桑登 (G. H. Van Sanden)：《护教学史》(Gesch. der Apol.)，由夸克 (Quack) 和宾德尔 (Binder) 从荷兰文译为德文。斯图加特 (Stuttg.)，1846年，2卷。

泽米施 (Semisch)：《殉道者游斯丁》(Justin der Mürt)。布雷斯劳 (Bresl.)，1840年，第II卷，第56–225页。

W. B. 科尔顿 (W. B. Colton)：《从护教士至奥古斯丁的著作所呈现的基督教证据》(The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the writings of its Apologists down to Augustine)（1852年赫尔斯奖征文），1854年于波士顿重刊。

卡尔·韦尔纳 (Karl Werner，罗马天主教徒)：《基督教神学护教与论战文献史》(Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur der christl. Theologie.)。沙夫豪森 (Schaffhausen)，1861–1865年，5卷（第I卷与本节有关）。

詹姆斯·唐纳森 (James Donaldson)：《从使徒去世至尼西亚会议的基督教文献与教义批判史》(A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from, the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council)。伦敦，1864–1866年，3卷。

阿道夫·哈纳克 (Adolf Harnack)：《第二世纪希腊护教士著作在古代教会及中世纪的流传》(Die Ueberlieferung der Griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts in der alten Kirche und im Mittelalter)。第I卷，第1、2分册。莱比锡 (Leipz.)，1882年。

这些论辩与诽谤的攻击，在第二世纪激发了基督教护教文献的兴起，即以笔墨为基督教辩护，抵御犹太教的狂热者、希腊哲学家和罗马政治家。诚然，基督徒从起初就“常作准备，回答各人所问他们心中盼望的缘由”。但当异教不仅用火与刀剑，而且用论辩和诽谤向他们开战时，他们就必须在单纯的实践见证之外，加上理论上的自我辩护。针对非基督教反对者的基督教护教工作，以及针对基督教内部持错误见解者的论战工作，是神学这门学问最古老的两个分支。

护教文献在哈德良 (Hadrian) 统治时期开始出现，此后不断发展，直到本时期结束。大多数教会教师都参与了他们时代的这项工作。最早呈献给哈德良皇帝的护教著作，出自雅典主教夸德拉图斯 (Quadratus)、雅典哲人阿里斯提德 (Aristides) 和佩拉的阿里斯托 (Aristo of Pella)；稍后的著作则出自马可·奥勒留 (Marcus Aurelius) 时代的撒狄的米利托 (Melito of Sardis)、希拉波立的克劳狄乌斯·阿波利拿里 (Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis) 和米尔提亚德 (Miltiades)。这些著作或已全然散佚，或仅在优西比乌 (Eusebius) 的零星记述中留存。然而，米利托和阿里斯提德的一些有趣残篇最近已被发现。²⁰更有价值的是希腊哲人兼殉道者游斯丁 (Justin，卒于166年) 的护教著作，这些著作完整地保存至今。在他之后，希腊教会于第二世纪后半叶有塔提安 (Tatian)、雅典那哥拉 (Athenagoras)、安提阿的提阿非罗 (Theophilus of Antioch) 和赫尔米亚斯 (Hermias)，第三世纪前半叶则有其中最有才干的奥利金。

最重要的拉丁护教士，是德尔图良（约卒于220年）、米努修斯·费利克斯（卒于220至230年之间；另有人认为在161至200年之间），以及稍后的阿尔诺比乌斯 (Arnobius) 和拉克坦提乌斯 (Lactantius)；他们全都来自北非。

在这里，希腊人与拉丁人在心智上的特征性差异立刻显露出来。希腊护教著作较为博学，富于哲学意味；拉丁护教著作在内容和文体上则更注重实际，更具有法学性质。前者竭力证明基督教的真实性，以及它如何适合人类心智的需要；后者则为基督教合法存在的权利申辩，主要彰显它在道德上的卓越，以及它对社会的有益影响。拉丁护教士对异教的反对一般也更为严厉，而希腊护教士则承认希腊哲学与基督教之间有某种亲缘关系。

这些护教著作有的呈献给皇帝（哈德良、安敦宁·庇护〔Antoninus Pius〕、马可·奥勒留）或行省总督，有的则面向有识之士。它们的首要目的是驳斥针对基督教及其信奉者的虚假指控，缓和当局和民众对他们的态度。这些著作是否曾到达皇帝手中，或许令人怀疑；无论如何，逼迫仍在继续。²¹归信通常发自人的心灵和意志，而不是出于理解和知识。然而，毫无疑问，这些著作有助于消除诚实而易受感动的异教徒心中的偏见，传播对这一新宗教更为有利的看法，并将人道精神注入时代精神、道德哲学体系以及安敦宁诸帝的立法之中。

然而，这类文献的主要贡献，在于坚固信徒，并增进神学知识。它使教会对基督教独特本质的认识更加深刻、清晰，并预备教会从此在理性和哲学的法庭前为基督教辩护；而犹太教和异教却在交锋中显出无能为力，被迫诉诸谎言和谩骂的武器。塞尔苏斯和琉善之流的诡辩与嘲讽，如今只有历史上的意义；游斯丁的《护教辞》和德尔图良的《护教篇》却蕴藏着不可摧毁的真理，洋溢着炽热的虔诚，直到今日读来仍使人愉悦，得着造就。

护教士并不局限于防御，而是主动将战火推进犹太教和异教的领域。他们进一步正面证明基督教是神圣的宗教，也是全人类唯一真实的宗教，藉此完成自己的工作。

§ 38. 反对犹太教的论证

关于与犹太教的论争，我们有两种主要史料：殉道者游斯丁的《与犹太人特里丰对话》(Dialogue with the Jew Trypho)，²²此书看来以游斯丁与特里丰 (Trypho) 实际的会谈为基础；以及德尔图良反对犹太人的著作。²³另有第二世纪前半叶佩拉的阿里斯托所著《雅孙与帕皮斯库斯关于基督的辩论》(A Disputation of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ)，现已散佚。²⁴塞尔苏斯知道这部著作，并因其寓意解经而对它表示轻蔑。奥利金认为它有益于普通读者，虽不足以给学者留下多大印象。这部著作旨在表明古时的预言如何在基督身上应验，并以犹太人帕皮斯库斯 (Papiscus) 信服、接受雅孙 (Jason) 的洗礼作结。作者是佩拉的一位犹太基督徒；耶路撒冷毁灭之前，该城曾是耶路撒冷基督徒的避难所。

I. 防御性的护教论证，对犹太人的异议作了如下回答：

1. 针对基督教背离犹太宗教的指控，护教士主张：摩西律法中涉及外在礼仪和仪式的部分，只是为犹太民族设立的暂时制度，预表基督教的实体；而其中载于十诫的道德训令，惟有基督徒才按照其最深刻的属灵意义加以遵守；旧约本身就指向自身的废止和新约的建立；²⁵亚伯拉罕在受割礼之前已经称义，而不能受割礼的妇女也仍然得救。

2. 针对拿撒勒人耶稣的奴仆形像及其在十字架上的死与旧约弥赛亚观念相矛盾的说法，护教士强调：弥赛亚的显现应当分为两次来理解，先取奴仆的形像，随后在荣耀中显现；旷野的铜蛇、大卫在《诗篇》第22篇的预言、《以赛亚书》第53章和《撒迦利亚书》第13章，本身都指明基督的受苦乃是他通往荣耀的道路。

3. 针对耶稣的神性与上帝的独一性相矛盾、乃是亵渎这一异议，护教士回答说：基督徒同样只信一位上帝；旧约本身就在神的本性中作出区分；“我们要造人”²⁶这一复数表达，以及在幔利 (Mamre) 出现的三个人²⁷——其中一位公认是上帝，²⁸却又有别于创造主²⁹——都表明了这一点；一切神的显现（在游斯丁看来，都是基督的显现），以及将神的尊荣归于弥赛亚的弥赛亚诗篇，³⁰也都表明同样的道理。

2. 进攻性的护教论证，或论战神学，提出以下证据来反对犹太教：

1. 首先，也是最主要的，旧约的预言和预表都在耶稣基督及其教会中应验。游斯丁认为，福音历史的一切轮廓都已在旧约中预先说出：例如，耶稣出自大卫的后裔，见于《以赛亚书》11:1；由童女所生，见于7:14；生于伯利恒，见于《弥迦书》5:1；逃往埃及，见于《何西阿书》11:1（而不是《诗篇》22:10？）；施洗者的出现，见于《以赛亚书》40:1–17和《玛拉基书》4:5；耶稣受洗时天上的声音，见于《诗篇》2:7；旷野受试探，则由《创世记》32:24及后雅各摔跤的事作预表；我们主的神迹，见于《以赛亚书》35:5；他的受苦以及被钉十字架的种种细节，见于《以赛亚书》第53章和《诗篇》第22篇。然而，在这一努力中，游斯丁也顺着他那个缺乏批判精神的时代的趣味，陷入任意的幻想和寓意解释的奇想。例如，两只山羊，一只将罪带到旷野，另一只被献为祭，他便将它们解释为基督第一次和第二次降临的预表；他又在大祭司袍上的十二个铃铛中，看见十二使徒的预表，他们的声音传遍全世界。³¹

2. 耶路撒冷的毁灭。在这一事件中，按照耶稣明确的预言，犹太教受到上帝亲自的定罪，基督教则获得了光荣的证实。在这里，犹太祭司兼历史学家约瑟夫斯 (Josephus)，凭亲眼所见生动记述了这场悲剧，却不得不为反对他自己的宗教、证明基督教的真实性，提供了强有力的历史论据。德尔图良 (Tertullian) 概述了先知关于犹太人因拒绝基督而遭遇灾祸的预言，指出“圣经的意义与所发生的事件相吻合”。³²

§ 39. 针对异教的辩护

I. 异教徒的种种异议和指控，我们已汇集于§

1. 对于针对福音历史中神迹的攻击，护教士可以指出异教神话中也有类似的成分来回应；当然，他们这样做，仅仅是采用一种因其所信而驳之的论证（argumentum ad hominem），使反对者无权提出异议。至于福音书中神迹记载的可信性，尤其是耶稣复活的记载，俄利根 (Origen) 则诉诸叙述者的正直与虔诚、耶稣之死的公开性，以及这一事件所产生的影响。

2. 对于基督教是新兴宗教、出现太晚的指责，护教士以历史预备的必要性加以辩解：人类必须在这一预备过程中接受上帝的训练，以迎接基督；但他们更常强调，基督教自永恒就在上帝的旨意中存在，而且早在基督降临以前，就已有不自觉的信奉者，尤其是在虔诚的犹太人中间。护教士将摩西的记载认作自己的传统，因此在古老性方面，便远远胜过任何形式的异教，并能将他们的宗教在预备阶段的历史，追溯到洪水以前，直至乐园的门口。游斯丁 (Justin) 和他提安 (Tatian) 十分看重这一事实：摩西远比希腊的哲学家、诗人和立法者古老。雅典那哥拉 (Athenagoras) 则反过来攻击对方，指出异教诸神连名字都是近代才有的，其雕像更是昨日才造的。亚历山大的革利免 (Clement of Alexandria) 称希腊哲学家为贼和强盗，因为他们从希伯来先知那里窃取了某些真理片段，又加以掺杂败坏。德尔图良、米努基乌斯·费利克斯 (Minucius Felix) 等人也提出同样的剽窃指控。

3. 肉身复活的教义，尤其令异教徒和诺斯替派 (Gnostic) 的理智难以接受。护教士援引上帝的全能，以及世界和人的受造，来证明其可能性；又从人里面上帝的形像、身体成为圣灵之殿的崇高归宿、身体与灵魂的密切联系，以及上帝的公义和良善，论证其合宜与合理。他们也极其普遍地采用类比论证，但往往缺乏适当的辨别。因此，提阿非罗 (Theophilus) 提到四季的消逝与复归、昼夜的交替、月亮盈亏的更新，以及种子与果实的生长。德尔图良表示，面对我们出生的奥秘，以及周围自然界每日发生的事，竟还有人否认复活的可能性与可信性，实在令他惊讶。他说：“万物都藉解体而保存，藉消亡而更新；那么，人……这整个受造宇宙的主人，眼见万物死而复生，难道自己死去，却只是为了永远灭亡吗？”³³

4. 对于行为不道德和暗中作恶的指控，护教士大可以义愤加以驳斥，因为新约包含着最纯洁、最高尚的道德，而基督徒的总体行为与异教徒相比，也远为优良。他们理直气壮地喊道：“可耻！可耻！竟把你们公开犯下的罪，把属于你们和你们诸神的恶行，推到无辜的人身上！”俄利根在《驳塞尔苏斯》(Against Celsus) 第一卷序言中说：“当有人作假见证攻击我们当称颂的救主、那无玷污的耶稣时，他默然不语；受到控告时，也不作回答，因为他深信，自己在犹太人中间一贯的生活与行为，就是人所能为他作出的最好辩护。……即使如今，他仍保持同样的沉默，除了他真诚的跟随者无可指摘的生活，不作其他回答；他们是他最欣然、也最有成效的辩护者，他们的声音如此响亮，足以淹没那些最狂热、最顽固的敌对者的喧嚷。”

2. 基督徒随着必胜意识的日益增强，在自我辩护之外，又提出了直接反对异教的论据；异教在随后时期的瓦解，也在事实上证实了这些论据。

1. 异教徒的民间宗教，尤其是其诸神学说，是卑劣、矛盾、荒谬、不道德而有害的。护教士和早期教会的大多数教师，并不认为异教诸神仅仅是想象的产物、人格化的自然力量，或被神化的杰出人物，而认为他们是鬼魔或堕落的天使。他们从《诗篇》96:5的七十士译本³⁴，以及这些神祇的不道德行为，得出这一看法；这些恶行都被归于鬼魔（根据《创世记》6:2，甚至包括与人类美貌的女子交合）。

米努基乌斯·费利克斯说：“我们读到这些所谓的神，遭遇何等悲惨的命运，又有何等多的谎言、可笑之事和软弱！就连他们的形貌，也是何等可怜！武尔坎 (Vulcan) 是瘸腿的；墨丘利 (Mercury) 脚上长着翅膀；潘 (Pan) 长着兽蹄；萨图尔努斯 (Saturn) 戴着锁链；雅努斯 (Janus) 有两张脸，仿佛倒退着行走。……有时赫拉克勒斯 (Hercules) 是马夫，阿波罗 (Apollo) 是牧牛人，尼普顿 (Neptune) 是拉俄墨冬 (Laomedon) 的泥瓦匠，却被赖掉工钱。在那里，朱庇特 (Jove) 的雷霆与埃涅阿斯 (Aeneas) 的兵器，是在同一个铁砧上锻造的（仿佛朱庇特在克里特 (Crete) 出生以前，还没有天空、雷霆和闪电）；还有玛尔斯 (Mars) 与维纳斯 (Venus) 的通奸，以及朱庇特 (Jupiter) 与伽倪墨得斯 (Ganymede) 的淫乱；这一切都是替诸神编造的，好使人的罪恶得到认可。”德尔图良问道：“诗人中有谁不诋毁你们的神呢？一个叫阿波罗去牧羊；另一个把尼普顿雇去筑墙；品达 (Pindar) 宣称，埃斯库拉庇乌斯 (Esculapius) 贪图钱财，滥用医术，理当受到雷击；至于悲剧和喜剧作家，则同样以诸神的罪恶或苦难为题材。哲学家在这方面也不甘落后。他们出于十足的蔑视，竟指着橡树、山羊或狗起誓。第欧根尼 (Diogenes) 嘲弄赫拉克勒斯；罗马犬儒派 (Cynic) 的瓦罗 (Varro) 则引进了三百个没有头的朱庇特。”这位善于讽刺的非洲教父，从舞台上的种种亵慢表演中，部分根据自己从前的亲眼所见，挑出狄安娜 (Diana) 受鞭打、朱庇特死后宣读遗嘱，以及三个半饥半饿的赫拉克勒斯等例子！游斯丁则举出萨图尔努斯杀婴、朱庇特弑父、发怒与通奸、巴克科斯 (Bacchus) 酗酒、维纳斯纵欲等事，并诉诸异教徒中较高尚者的判断，他们也以这些诸神的丑闻为耻；例如柏拉图 (Plato)，就为此将荷马 (Homer) 逐出他的理想国。对于那些与旧约预言或福音历史有某种相似之处的神话，游斯丁认为，那是鬼魔滥用圣经、歪曲真理而编造的。在他富于幻想的看法中，例如巴克科斯的故事，是以《创世记》49:11及下节为根据的；珀尔修斯 (Perseus) 由童女所生的神话，以《以赛亚书》7:14为根据；赫拉克勒斯游历四方的神话，以《诗篇》19:6为根据；埃斯库拉庇乌斯施行神迹的虚构故事，则以《以赛亚书》35:1及下文为根据。

俄利根质问塞尔苏斯 (Celsus)，为什么他能在临到他的男女诸神身上的那些古怪而无意义的遭遇中，发现深奥的奥秘，尽管这些遭遇表明他们沾染罪恶，行了许多可耻之事；而摩西并未说过任何有损于上帝、天使或人之品格的话，却被当作骗子。他向任何人挑战，要他们将摩西及其律法与希腊最优秀的作家作一比较；然而，摩西超越异教最伟大的智者和立法者有多远，他不及基督也就有多远。

2. 希腊哲学虽然超越了民间信仰，却不适合大众，不能满足宗教的需要，并且因其种种矛盾而自相驳斥。所有哲学家中最有智慧的苏格拉底 (Socrates)，自己也承认一无所知。游斯丁发现，在神的事和人的事上，哲学家彼此意见分歧：泰勒斯 (Thales) 以水为万物的终极本原；阿那克西曼德 (Anaximander) 以气为本原；赫拉克利特 (Heraclitus) 以火为本原；毕达哥拉斯 (Pythagoras) 则以数为本原。即使柏拉图也时常自相矛盾：有时假定有三个根本原因（上帝、质料和理念），有时又说有四个（加上世界灵魂）；有时认为质料不是生成的，有时又认为它是生成的；有时赋予理念以实体性，有时又将其视为仅仅是思想的形式，等等。因此他得出结论：那么，谁还会把自己灵魂的救恩托付给哲学家呢？

3. 然而，另一方面，希腊护教士也承认希腊文献中有真理的成分，尤其是在柏拉图哲学和斯多葛派 (Stoic) 哲学中；他们认为，这些成分与犹太教的律法和预言一样，都是为基督教预备道路的。游斯丁将异教中一切善的成分，都归于神圣的逻各斯 (Logos)；他甚至在道成肉身以前，就已撒下真理的种子（“Logos spermaticos”，即“种子性的逻各斯”之名由此而来），并激励能够领受的心灵过圣洁的生活。因此，在基督教出现以前，就已有基督徒；他明确将苏格拉底和赫拉克利特列在其中。³⁵ 此外，他还推想，毕达哥拉斯、柏拉图和其他有学问的希腊人，在游历东方时接触了旧约著作，并从中汲取上帝独一的教义及其他类似的真理，尽管他们以各种方式误解这些真理，又将异教的谬误掺杂其中。这种认为希腊哲学与基督教之间存在某种亲缘关系，并以此作为支持这一新宗教之论据的看法，后来由亚历山大的教父革利免和俄利根作了进一步的发展。³⁶

拉丁教父对希腊哲学的评价较低；然而，就连奥古斯丁 (Augustin) 也承认，柏拉图主义者与基督教真理已如此接近，只要更改某些措辞和语句，他们就会成为真正的基督徒（在理论上）。³⁷

§ 40. 正面的护教论证

基督教的护教工作，藉着正面论证这一新宗教的神圣性而臻于完整；这同时也是对那两种旧宗教的最佳驳斥。早在这一时期，支持基督教的最有力的历史论据和哲学论据，就已被提出，或至少有所提示，尽管其中也夹杂着许多站不住脚的附带论点。

1. 不仅面对犹太人，就是面对异教徒，最重要的论据也是预言；因为对未来事件的知识只能来自上帝。护教士首先诉诸的，自然是旧约的先知著作；他们采用极为宽泛的解释，从中找出福音历史中的每一件事，以及我们救主的品格与工作中的每一项特征。除了圣经以外，甚至亚历山大的革利免 (Clement of Alexandria)，以及较为谨慎的俄利根 (Origen)、优西比乌 (Eusebius)、圣哲罗姆和圣奥古斯丁等教父，也毫不犹豫地使用伪托的预言，尤其是《西比拉神谕》 (Sibylline oracles)。这些神谕杂糅了古代异教、犹太教以及部分基督教的虚构之说，论及黄金时代、基督的来临、罗马的命运和世界的末日。³⁸ 诚然，这其中也并非全是谬误和虔诚的欺诈。事实上，整个异教世界都贯穿着一种对基督教朦胧而不自觉的预感与渴望。试想维吉尔 (Virgil) 的《牧歌》第四首，其中预言了从天而降的“virgo”（童贞女）和“nova progenies”（新的族类），以及那位“puer”（婴孩）；随着他的来临，在罪被涂抹、蛇被杀死之后，一个和平的黄金时代便要开始。因此，维吉尔成了中世纪拉丁教会最喜爱的诗人；在但丁 (Dante) 的《神曲》 (Divina Comedia) 中，他占有显著地位，担任但丁的向导，领他穿过地狱 (Inferno) 和炼狱 (Purgatorio) 的凄凉境域，直达乐园的门口。教父们（德尔图良、俄利根，以及显然还有哲罗姆）使用的另一部伪托预言书，是《十二族长遗训》 (The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs)，由一位犹太基督徒写于公元100至120年之间。这部书借雅各十二个儿子的口说出临别训言，并预言基督的来临、他的死与复活、洗礼和主餐、犹太人拒绝福音、外邦人的伟大使徒保罗的传道、耶路撒冷的毁灭，以及世界的末日。³⁹

2. 预表。人们不仅在旧约中，也在整个自然界中寻找预表。游斯丁 (Justin) 处处看见十字架的神圣形状：在伊甸园的生命树上，在雅各的梯子上，在摩西和亚伦的杖上，甚至在每一艘帆船上，在破浪的桨上，在犁上，在人的面容上，在双臂伸展的人体上，在旗帜和战利品上；因此，他在这些事物中看见了主被钉十字架而成就救赎这一奥秘的预示。⁴⁰

3. 耶稣和使徒的神迹，以及按照教父明确的见证，他们同时代的人继续奉耶稣之名所行的神迹。然而，异教徒也援引奇异的事迹和显现，为自己的宗教作证；因此，游斯丁、阿诺比乌 (Arnobius)，尤其是俄利根，便确定了若干准则，例如行神迹者在道德上的纯洁，以及他荣耀上帝、造福人类的意图，藉以区别真正的神迹与撒但的戏法。俄利根说：“倘若那些四处游荡的术士，稍有使人产生真实敬畏上帝之心、从而顾念审判之日并约束自己行为的倾向，那么塞尔苏斯 (Celsus) 将耶稣与他们相比，或许还有一些根据。但他们根本不作这样的尝试。不但如此，他们自己还犯下最严重的罪行；救主却愿意让听众因宗教本身的美，以及传授宗教之人的圣洁生活而信服，甚于因他们所行的神迹而信服。”

使徒时期以后的神迹这一问题，困难要大得多，因为既无受默示的见证，在大多数情形下，甚至也没有普通的直接见证人。从事理上推想，行神迹的能力很可能并非骤然、突然地撤去，而是逐渐撤去的；因为以这种外在而超常的证据来证明基督教神圣起源的必要性逐渐减弱，让位于真理的自然运行和道德劝服的力量。因此，第四世纪的圣奥古斯丁说：“教会建立以后，上帝并不愿意使神迹一直延续到我们这时代，免得人的心倚靠可见的神迹，或因奇事习见而变得冷淡。”⁴¹ 但我们既不可能确定神迹终止的确切时间，将它定在使徒去世之时，或使徒亲传门徒去世之时，或罗马帝国归信之时，或亚流派异端消亡之时，或此后的任何时代；也不可能在每一个个别事例中，仔细地从传说的虚构中筛出真相。

值得注意的是，尼西亚会议以前教会的真实著作，比尼西亚时期和中世纪的编年史，较少神奇和迷信的成分。修道制度的历史充斥着神迹，甚至比新约中的神迹还要大。护教士的陈述大多笼统，所指的是藉呼求耶稣之名，使鬼附之人（按当时的用语，这大概也包括精神错乱、严重忧郁和癫痫的病例）及其他病人得到非凡的医治。⁴² 殉道者游斯丁说，这类医治在罗马和全世界都时常发生；俄利根则诉诸自己亲眼所见的事，但在另一处又说神迹日益稀少，这似乎提示了尼安德博士 (Dr. Neander)、凯伊主教 (Bishop Kaye) 等人所持的神迹逐渐停止说。德尔图良将他那时代许多人的归信——即使不是大多数人的归信——归因于超自然的梦和异象；俄利根也作此说，只是更加谨慎。然而，在这类心理现象中，自然原因与超自然原因之间、上帝护理的介入与严格意义上的神迹之间，极难划出界线。论及这个问题，措辞最有力的一段文字见于爱任纽 (Irenaeus)：他在驳斥异端时，除提及预言和鬼附者得神奇医治之外，甚至将死人复活也列为当时大公教会中发生的事。⁴³ 但他并未指明任何具体事例或姓名；而且也应记得，他的青年时代仍几乎与约翰的时代相接。

4. 基督教对信奉者的心灵和生活所产生的道德影响。基督教不仅教导了人类所知最纯洁、最崇高的道德准则，而且在其创始者及其真正追随者的生活、受苦和死亡中，实际彰显了这些准则。从《致丢格那妥书》 (Epistle to Diognetus) 的作者，直到俄利根、居普良 (Cyprian) 和奥古斯丁，所有护教士都鲜明地指出，基督教伦理远远优越于异教伦理；他们的见证，也由教会实际结出的果实得到了充分证实，对此我们将在另一章有机会作更完整的说明。游斯丁说：“他们以为我们愚昧，因为我们敬拜这位在本丢·彼拉多手下被钉十字架的基督，以他为仅次于父的上帝。但他们若知道十字架的奥秘，就不会这样说了。凭着它的果子，他们可以认识它。我们从前放纵情欲，如今却致力于贞洁；我们从前行邪术，如今却将自己献给良善、非受造的上帝；我们从前爱钱财产业胜过一切，如今却甘心将财物用于众人的益处，周济每一个穷乏的人；我们从前彼此争斗残杀，如今却为仇敌祷告；对于那些因仇恨而逼迫我们的人，我们则仁慈地设法平息他们的怒气，盼望他们也能分享我们所享有的福分。”⁴⁴

5. 基督教纯粹凭借道德力量而迅速传播，尽管遭遇最大的外在障碍，甚至遭到犹太人和外邦人的残酷逼迫。属于使徒教父文献的匿名护教书信《致丢格那妥书》，早已如此强调这一点：“你没有看见，基督徒被置于野兽面前，为要迫使他们否认主，他们却仍不屈服吗？你没有看见，他们受刑的人越多，其余的人数反而越增多吗？这看来不是人的作为；这是上帝的能力，是他显现的明证。”⁴⁵ 殉道者游斯丁和德尔图良也常作类似的论述。俄利根在驳斥塞尔苏斯时，善用了这个论据；他认为，基督教在如此短暂的时间内，不用任何武力或其他属世手段，面对皇帝、元老院、总督、将军、祭司和民众的联合反对，却在希腊人和蛮族、有学问和无学问的人中取得如此巨大的成功，只有以上帝非凡的护理和基督的神性为根据，才能作出合理的解释。

6. 基督教的合理性，以及它与希腊哲学和诗歌中一切真实、美好事物的一致性。凡在基督以前按照理性生活的人，实际上都已经是基督徒，虽然他们自己并不自知。因此，凡属基督教的，都是合乎理性的；凡真正合乎理性的，也都是属基督教的。然而，另一方面，基督教当然又是超理性的（而非不合理的）。

7. 基督教适合人性最深切的需要，而这些需要惟有基督教才能满足。德尔图良诉诸“testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae;”（灵魂本性为基督徒的见证），便属于此类论据；他深刻地认为，人的灵魂就其最内在的本质和本能而言，是预定归于基督教的，也只有在其中才能找到安息与平安。他说：“灵魂虽然被禁锢在肉体的牢狱里，虽然因恶劣的教养而败坏，虽然因情欲和激情而衰弱，虽然委身服事假神，然而它一旦从沉醉和梦境中醒来，恢复健康，就会用那惟独属于上帝的名呼求他：‘伟大的上帝！良善的上帝！’——继而举目仰望的不是卡庇托山 (Capitol)，而是天上；因为它知道永生上帝的居所，它正是从他而来的。”⁴⁶

人类灵魂对在基督里的永生上帝这种深切的渴慕，后来由奥古斯丁用一句宏伟的话表达出来；德尔图良的精神在他身上重新出现，却更加纯净、更加丰富：“上帝啊，你造我们是为你自己；我们的心若不安息在你里面，就不得安宁。”⁴⁷

Original Text

CHAPTER III. LITERARY CONTEST OF CHRISTIANITY WITH JUDAISM AND HEATHENISM.

§ 28. Literature.

I. Sources.

Tacitus (Consul 97, d. about 117): Annal. xv. 44. Comp. his picture of the Jews, Hist. v. 1–5.

Plinius (d. about 114): Ep. x. 96, 97.

Celsus (flourished about 150): jAlhqh;" lovgo" . Preserved in fragments in Origen’s Refutation (8 books Kata; Kevlsou); reconstructed, translated and explained by Theodor Keim: Celsus’ Wahres Wort, Aelteste wissenschaftliche Streitschrift, antiker Weltanschauung gegen das Christenthum, Zürich 1873 (293 pages).

Lucian (d. about 180): Peri; th'" Peregrivvnou teleuth'" c. 11–16; and JAlhqh;" iJstoriva I. 30; II. 4, 11.

Porphyrius (about 300): Kata; Cristianw'n lovgoi. Only fragments preserved, and collected by Holstein, Rom. 1630. His most important works are lost. Those that remain are ed. by A. Nauck, 1860.

II. Works.

Nath. Lardner: Collection of Ancient Jewish and Heathen Testimonies to the Truth of the Christian Religion (Lond. 1727–’57) in the VI. and VII. vols. of his Works, ed. by Kippis, London, 1838. Very valuable.

Mosheim: introduction to his Germ. translation of Origen against Celsus. Hamb. 1745.

Bindemann: Celsus und seine Schriften gegen die Christen, in Illgen’s "Zeitschr. für hist. Theol." Leipz. 1842. N. 2, p. 58–146.

Ad. Planck: Lukian u. das Christenthum, in the "Studien u. Kritiken," 1851. N. 4; translated in the "Bibliotheca Sacra," Andover, 1852.

F. Chr. Baur: Das Christenthum der 3 ersten Jahrh. Tüb. secd. ed. 1860 (and 1863) pp. 370–430.

Neander: General History of the Christian Religion and Church; Engl. trans. by Torrey, vol. I., 157–178. (12th Boston ed.)

Richard von der Alm: Die Urtheile heidnischer und jüdischer Schriftsteller der vier ersten Jahrh. ueber Jesus und die ersten Christen. Leipz. 1865. (An infidel book.)

H. Kellner (R.C.): Hellenismus und Christenthum oder die geistige Reaction des antiken Heidenthums gegen das Christenthum. Köln 1866 (454 pp.)

B. Aubé: De l’ Apologétique chrétienne au II^e siécle. St. Justin, philosophe et martyr, 2nd ed. Paris 1875. By the same: Histoire des Persecutions de l’église. The second part, also under the title La polémique païenne à la fin du II^e siécle. Paris 1878.

E. Renan: Marc-Aurèle (Paris 1882), pp. 345 (Celse et Lucien), 379 sqq. (Nouvelles apologies).

J. W. Farrar: Seekers after God. London, 1869, new ed. 1877. (Essays on Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius, compared with Christianity.)

Comp. the Lit. quoted in § 12, especially Uhlhorn and Keim (1881), and the monographs on Justin M., Tertullian, Origen, and other Apologists, which are noticed in sections treating of these writers.

§ 29. Literary Opposition to Christianity.

Besides the external conflict, which we have considered in the second chapter, Christianity was called to pass through an equally important intellectual and literary struggle with the ancient world; and from this also it came forth victorious, and conscious of being the perfect religion for man. We shall see in this chapter, that most of the objections of modern infidelity against Christianity were anticipated by its earliest literary opponents, and ably and successfully refuted by the ancient apologists for the wants of the church in that age. Both unbelief and faith, like human nature and divine grace, are essentially the same in all ages and among all nations, but vary in form, and hence every age, as it produces its own phase of opposition, must frame its own mode of defense.

The Christian religion found at first as little favor with the representatives of literature and art as with princes and statesmen. In the secular literature of the latter part of the first century and the beginning of the second, we find little more than ignorant, careless and hostile allusions to Christianity as a new form of superstition which then began to attract the attention of the Roman government. In this point of view also Christ’s kingdom was not of the world, and was compelled to force its way through the greatest difficulties; yet it proved at last the mother of an intellectual and moral culture far in advance of the Graeco-Roman, capable of endless progress, and full of the vigor of perpetual youth.

The pious barbarism of the Byzantine emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III. ordered the destruction of the works of Porphyrius and all other opponents of Christianity, to avert the wrath of God, but considerable fragments have been preserved in the refutations of the Christian Fathers, especially Origen, Eusebius, Cyril of Alexandria (against Julian), and scattered notices of Jerome and Augustin.

§ 30. Jewish Opposition. Josephus and the Talmud.

The hostility of the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees to the gospel is familiar from the New Testament. Josephus mentions Jesus once in his archaeology, but in terms so favorable as to agree ill with his Jewish position, and to subject the passage to the suspicion of interpolation or corruption.(1) His writings, however, contain much valuable testimony to the truth of the gospel history. His "Archaeology" throughout is a sort of fifth Gospel in illustration of the social and political environments of the life of Christ.(2) His "History of the Jewish War," in particular, is undesignedly a striking commentary on the Saviour’s predictions concerning the destruction of the city and temple of Jerusalem, the great distress and affliction of the Jewish people at that time, the famine, pestilence, and earthquake, the rise of false prophets and impostors, and the flight of his disciples at the approach of these calamities.(3)

The attacks of the later Jews upon Christianity are essentially mere repetitions of those recorded in the Gospels—denial of the Messiahship of Jesus, and horrible vituperation of his confessors. We learn their character best from the dialogue of Justin with the Jew Trypho. The fictitious disputation on Christ by Jason and Papiscus, first mentioned by Celsus, was lost since the seventh century.(4) It seems to have been a rather poor apology of Christianity against Jewish objections by a Jewish Christian, perhaps by Aristo of Pella.

The Talmud is the Bible of Judaism separated from, and hostile to, Christianity, but it barely notices it except indirectly. It completed the isolation of the Jews from all other people.

§ 31. Pagan Opposition. Tacitus and Pliny.

The Greek and Roman writers of the first century, and some of the second, as Seneca, the elder Pliny, and even the mild and noble Plutarch, either from ignorance or contempt, never allude to Christianity at all.

Tacitus and the younger Pliny, contemporaries and friends of the emperor Trajan, are the first to notice it; and they speak of it only incidentally and with stoical disdain and antipathy, as an "exitiabilis superstition" "prava et immodica superstitio," "inflexibilis obstinatio." These celebrated and in their way altogether estimable Roman authors thus, from manifest ignorance, saw in the Christians nothing but superstitious fanatics, and put them on a level with the hated Jews; Tacitus, in fact, reproaching them also with the "odium generis humani." This will afford some idea of the immense obstacles which the new religion encountered in public opinion, especially in the cultivated circles of the Roman empire. The Christian apologies of the second century also show, that the most malicious and gratuitous slanders against the Christians were circulated among the common people, even charges of incest and cannibalism,(5) which may have arisen in part from a misapprehension of the intimate brotherly love of the Christians, and their nightly celebration of the holy supper and love-feasts.

Their Indirect Testimony to Christianity.

On the other hand, however, the scanty and contemptuous allusions of Tacitus and Pliny to Christianity bear testimony to a number of facts in the Gospel History. Tacitus, in giving an account of the Neronian persecution, incidentally attests, that Christ was put to death as a malefactor by Pontius Pilate in the reign of Tiberius; that he was the founder of the Christian sect, that the latter took its rise in Judaea and spread in spite of the ignominious death of Christ and the hatred and contempt it encountered throughout the empire, so that a "vast multitude" (multitudo ingens) of them were most cruelly put to death in the city of Rome alone as early as the year 64. He also bears valuable testimony, in the fifth book of his History, together with Josephus, from whom he mainly, though not exclusively takes his account, to the fulfilment of Christ’s prophecy concerning the destruction of Jerusalem and the overthrow of the Jewish theocracy.

As to Pliny’s famous letter to Trajan, written about 107, it proves the rapid spread of Christianity in Asia Minor at that time among all ranks of society, the general moral purity and steadfastness of its professors amid cruel persecution, their mode and time of worship, their adoration of Christ as God, their observance of a "stated day," which is undoubtedly Sunday, and other facts of importance in the early history of the Church. Trajan’s rescript in reply to Pliny’s inquiry, furnishes evidence of the innocence of the Christians; he notices no charge against them except their disregard of the worship of the gods, and forbids them to be sought for. Marcus Aurelius testifies, in one brief and unfriendly allusion, to their eagerness for the crown of martyrdom.

§ 32. Direct Assaults. Celsus.

The direct assault upon Christianity, by works devoted to the purpose, began about the middle of the second century, and was very ably conducted by a Grecian philosopher, Celsus, otherwise unknown; according to Origen, an Epicurean with many Platonic ideas, and a friend of Lucian. He wrote during the persecuting reign of Marcus Aurelius.(6)

Celsus, with all his affected or real contempt for the new religion, considered it important enough to be opposed by an extended work entitled "A True Discourse," of which Origen, in his Refutation, has faithfully preserved considerable fragments.(7) These represent their author as an eclectic philosopher of varied culture, skilled in dialectics, and familiar with the Gospels, Epistles, and even the writings of the Old Testament. He speaks now in the frivolous style of an Epicurean, now in the earnest and dignified tone of a Platonist. At one time he advocates the popular heathen religion, as, for instance, its doctrine of demons; at another time he rises above the polytheistic notions to a pantheistic or sceptical view. He employs all the aids which the culture of his age afforded, all the weapons of learning, common sense, wit, sarcasm, and dramatic animation of style, to disprove Christianity; and he anticipates most of the arguments and sophisms of the deists and infidels of later times. Still his book is, on the whole, a very superficial, loose, and light-minded work, and gives striking proof of the inability of the natural reason to understand the Christian truth. It has no savor of humility, no sense of the corruption of human nature, and man’s need of redemption; it is full of heathen passion and prejudice, utterly blind to any spiritual realities, and could therefore not in the slightest degree appreciate the glory of the Redeemer and of his work. It needs no refutation, it refutes itself.

Celsus first introduces a Jew, who accuses the mother of Jesus of adultery with a soldier named Panthera;(8) adduces the denial of Peter, the treachery of Judas, and the death of Jesus as contradictions of his pretended divinity; and makes the resurrection an imposture. Then Celsus himself begins the attack, and begins it by combating the whole idea of the supernatural, which forms the common foundation of Judaism and Christianity. The controversy between Jews and Christians appears to him as foolish as the strife about the shadow of an ass. The Jews believed, as well as the Christians, in the prophecies of a Redeemer of the world, and thus differed from them only in that they still expected the Messiah’s coming. But then, to what purpose should God come down to earth at all, or send another down? He knows beforehand what is going on among men. And such a descent involves a change, a transition from the good to the evil, from the lovely to the hateful, from the happy to the miserable; which is undesirable, and indeed impossible, for the divine nature. In another place he says, God troubles himself no more about men than about monkeys and flies. Celsus thus denies the whole idea of revelation, now in pantheistic style, now in the levity of Epicurean deism; and thereby at the same time abandons the ground of the popular heathen religion. In his view Christianity has no rational foundation at all, but is supported by the imaginary terrors of future punishment. Particularly offensive to him are the promises of the gospel to the poor and miserable, and the doctrines of forgiveness of sins and regeneration, and of the resurrection of the body. This last he scoffingly calls a hope of worms, but not of rational souls. The appeal to the omnipotence of God, he thinks, does not help the matter, because God can do nothing improper and unnatural. He reproaches the Christians with ignorance, credulity, obstinacy, innovation, division, and sectarianism, which they inherited mostly from their fathers, the Jews. They are all uncultivated, mean, superstitious people, mechanics, slaves, women, and children. The great mass of them he regarded as unquestionably deceived. But where there are deceived, there must be also deceivers; and this leads us to the last result of this polemical sophistry. Celsus declared the first disciples of Jesus to be deceivers of the worst kind; a band of sorcerers, who fabricated and circulated the miraculous stories of the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus; but betrayed themselves by contradictions. The originator of the imposture, however, is Jesus himself, who learned that magical art in Egypt, and afterwards made a great noise with it in his native country.

But here, this philosophical and critical sophistry virtually, acknowledges its bankruptcy. The hypothesis of deception is the very last one to offer in explanation of a phenomenon so important as Christianity was even in that day. The greater and more permanent the deception, the more mysterious and unaccountable it must appear to reason.

Chrysostom made the truthful remark, that Celsus bears witness to the antiquity of the apostolic writings. This heathen assailant, who lived almost within hailing distance of St. John, incidentally gives us an abridgement of the history of Christ as related by the Gospels, and this furnishes strong weapons against modern infidels, who would represent this history as a later invention. "I know everything" he says; "we have had it all from your own books, and need no other testimony; ye slay yourselves with your own sword." He refers to the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John, and makes upon the whole about eighty allusions to, or quotations from, the New Testament. He takes notice of Christ’s birth from a virgin in a small village of Judaea, the adoration of the wise men from the East, the slaughter of the infants by order of Herod, the flight to Egypt, where he supposed Christ learned the charms of magicians, his residence in Nazareth, his baptism and the descent of the Holy Spirit in the shape of a dove and the voice from heaven, the election of disciples, his friendship with publicans and other low people, his supposed cures of the lame and the blind, and raising of the dead, the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the principal circumstances in the history of the passion and crucifixion, also the resurrection of Christ.(9)

It is true he perverts or abuses most of these facts; but according to his own showing they were then generally and had always been believed by the Christians. He alludes to some of the principal doctrines of the Christians, to their private assemblies for worship, to the office of presbyters. He omits the grosser charges of immorality, which he probably disowned as absurd and incredible.

In view of all these admissions we may here, with Lardner, apply Samson’s riddle: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."(10)

§ 33. Lucian.

Edd. of Lucian’s works by Hemsterhuis and Reiz (1743 sqq.), Jacobitz (1836–39), Dindorf (1840 and 1858), Bekker (1853), Franc. Fritzsche (1860–’69). The pseudo-Lucianic dialogue Philopatris (filovpatri", loving one’s country, patriot) in which the Christians are ridiculed and condemned as enemies of the Roman empire, is of a much later date, probably from the reign of Julian the Apostate (363). See Gesner: De aetate et auctore Philopatridis, Jen. 1714.

Jacob: Charakteristik Lucians. Hamburg 1822.

G. G. Bernays: Lucian und die Cyniker. Berlin. 1879.

Comp. Keim: Celsus, 143–151; Ed. D. Zeller: Alexander und Peregrinus , in the "Deutsche Rundschau," for Jan. 1877; Henry Cotterill: Peregrinus Proteus (Edinb. 1879); Ad. Harnack in Herzog (ed. II.), VIII. 772–779; and the Lit. quoted in § 28.

In the same period the rhetorician Lucian (born at Samosata in Syria about 120, died in Egypt or Greece before 200), the Voltaire of Grecian literature, attacked the Christian religion with the same light weapons of wit and ridicule, with which, in his numerous elegantly written works, he assailed the old popular faith and worship, the mystic fanaticism imported from the East, the vulgar life of the Stoics and Cynics of that day, and most of the existing manners and customs of the distracted period of the empire. An Epicurean, worldling, and infidel, as he was, could see in Christianity only one of the many vagaries and follies of mankind; in the miracles, only jugglery; in the belief of immortality, an empty dream; and in the contempt of death and the brotherly love of the Christians, to which he was constrained to testify, a silly enthusiasm.

Thus he represents the matter in an historical romance on the life and death of Peregrinus Proteus, a contemporary Cynic philosopher, whom he make the basis of a satire upon Christianity, and especially upon Cynicism. Peregrinus is here presented as a perfectly contemptible man, who, after the meanest and grossest crimes, adultery, sodomy, and parricide, joins the credulous Christians in Palestine, cunningly imposes on them, soon rises to the highest repute among them, and, becoming one of the confessors in prison, is loaded with presents by them, in fact almost worshipped as a god, but is afterwards excommunicated for eating some forbidden food (probably meat of the idolatrous sacrifices); then casts himself into the arms of the Cynics, travels about everywhere, in the filthiest style of that sect; and at last about the year 165, in frantic thirst for fame, plunges into the flames of a funeral pile before the assembled populace of the town of Olympia, for the triumph of philosophy. This fiction of the self-burning was no doubt meant for a parody on the Christian martyrdom, perhaps with special reference to Polycarp, who a few years before had suffered death by fire at Smyrna (155).(11)

Lucian treated the Christians rather with a compassionate smile, than with hatred. He nowhere urges persecution. He never calls Christ an impostor, as Celsus does, but a "crucified sophist;" a term which he uses as often in a good sense as in the bad. But then, in the end, both the Christian and the heathen religions amount, in his view, to imposture; only, in his Epicurean indifferentism, he considers it not worth the trouble to trace such phenomena to their ultimate ground, and attempt a philosophical explanation.(12)

The merely negative position of this clever mocker of all religions injured heathenism more than Christianity, but could not be long maintained against either; the religious element is far too deeply seated in the essence of human nature. Epicureanism and scepticism made way, in their turns, for Platonism, and for faith or superstition. Heathenism made a vigorous effort to regenerate itself, in order to hold its ground against the steady advance of Christianity. But the old religion itself could not help feeling more and more the silent influence of the new.

§ 34. Neo-Platonism.

I. Sources.

Plotinus: Opera Omnia, ed. Oxf 1835, 3 vols.; ed. Kirchhoff, Lips. 1856; ed. Didot, Par. 1856; H. F. Müller, Berlin 1878–80.

Porphyrius: Kata; Cristianw'n lovgoi (fragments collected in Holstein: Dissert. de vita et scriptis Porphyr. Rom. 1630). His biographies of Pythagoras, Plotinus, and other works were ed. by A. A. Nauck, 1860.

Hierocles: Lovgoi filalhvqei" prov" Cristianouv" (fragments in Euse b.: Contra Hierocl. lib., and probably also in Macarius Magnes: jApokritiko;" h] Monogenhv" Par. 1876).

Philostratus: De Vita Apollonii Tyanensis libri octo (Greek and Latin), Venet. 1501; ed. Westerman, Par. 1840; ed. Kayser, Zürich, 1853, 1870. Also in German, French and English translations.

II. Works.

Vogt: Neuplatonismus u. Christenthum. Berl. 1836.

Ritter: Gesch. der Philos. vol. 4th, 1834 (in English by Morrison, Oxf. 1838).

Neander: Ueber das neunte Buch in der zweiten Enneade des Plotinus. 1843. (vid. Neander’s Wissenschaftl. Abhandlungen, published by Jacobi, Berl. 1851, p. 22 sqq.)

Ullmann: Einflusz des Christentums auf Porphyrius, in "Stud. u. Krit." 1832.

Kirchner: Die Philosophie des Plotin. Halle, 1854.

F. Chr. Baur: Apollonius von Tyana u. Christus. Tüb. 1832, republ. by Ed. Zeller, in Drei Abhandlungen zur Gesch. der alten Philosophie U. ihres Verh. zum Christenthum. Leipzig, 1876, pp. 1–227.

John H. Newman: Apollonius Tyanaeus. Lond. 1849 (Encycl. Metropol. Vol. X., pp. 619–644).

A. Chassang: Ap. de T., sa vie, ses voyages, ses prodiges, etc. Paris, 1862. Translation from the Greek, with explanatory notes.

H. Kellner: Porphyrius und sein Verhültniss zum Christenthum, in the Tübingen "Theol. Quartalschrift," 1865. No. I.

Albert Réville: Apollonius of Tyana, the Pagan Christ of the third century, translated from the French. Lond. 1866.

K. Mönkeberg: Apollonius v. Tyana. Hamb. 1877.

Fr. Ueberweg: History of Philosophy (Eng. transl. N. York, 1871), vol. I. 232–259.

Ed. Zeller: Philosophie der Griechen, III. 419 sqq.

More earnest and dignified, but for this very reason more lasting and dangerous, was the opposition which proceeded directly and indirectly from Neo-Platonism. This system presents the last phase, the evening red, so to speak, of the Grecian philosophy; a fruitless effort of dying heathenism to revive itself against the irresistible progress of Christianity in its freshness and vigor. It was a pantheistic eclecticism and a philosophico-religious syncretism, which sought to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy with Oriental religion and theosophy, polytheism with monotheism, superstition with culture, and to hold, as with convulsive grasp, the old popular religion in a refined and idealized form. Some scattered Christian ideas also were unconsciously let in; Christianity already filled the atmosphere of the age too much, to be wholly shut out. As might be expected, this compound of philosophy and religion was an extravagant, fantastic, heterogeneous affair, like its contemporary, Gnosticism, which differed from it by formally recognising Christianity in its syncretism. Most of the NeoPlatonists, Jamblichus in particular, were as much hierophants and theurgists as philosophers, devoted themselves to divination and magic, and boasted of divine inspirations and visions. Their literature is not an original, healthy natural product, but an abnormal after-growth.

In a time of inward distraction and dissolution the human mind hunts up old and obsolete systems and notions, or resorts to magical and theurgic arts. Superstition follows on the heels of unbelief, and atheism often stands closely connected with the fear of ghosts and the worship of demons. The enlightened emperor Augustus was troubled, if he put on his left shoe first in the morning, instead of the right; and the accomplished elder Pliny wore amulets as protection from thunder and lightning. In their day the long-forgotten Pythagoreanism was conjured from the grave and idealized. Sorcerers like Simon Magus, Elymas, Alexander of Abonoteichos, and Apollonius of Tyana (d. a.d. 96), found great favor even with the higher classes, who laughed at the fables of the gods. Men turned wishfully to the past, especially to the mysterious East, the land of primitive wisdom and religion. The Syrian cultus was sought out; and all sorts of religions, all the sense and all the nonsense of antiquity found a rendezvous in Rome. Even a succession of Roman emperors, from Septimius Severus, at the close of the second century, to Alexander Severus, embraced this religious syncretism, which, instead of supporting the old Roman state religion, helped to undermine it.(13)

After the beginning of the third century this tendency found philosophical expression and took a reformatory turn in Neo-Platonism. The magic power, which was thought able to reanimate all these various elements and reduce them to harmony, and to put deep meaning into the old mythology, was the philosophy of the divine Plato; which in truth possessed essentially a mystical character, and was used also by learned Jews, like Philo, and by Christians, like Origen, in their idealizing efforts and their arbitrary allegorical expositions of offensive passages of the Bible. In this view we may find among heathen writers a sort of forerunner of the NeoPlatonists in the pious and noble-minded Platonist, Plutarch, of Boeotia (d. 120), who likewise saw a deeper sense in the myths of the popular polytheistic faith, and in general, in his comparative biographies and his admirable moral treatises, looks at the fairest and noblest side of the Graeco-Roman antiquity, but often wanders off into the trackless regions of fancy.

The proper founder of Neo-Platonism was Ammonius Saccas, of Alexandria, who was born of Christian parents, but apostatized, and died in the year 243. His more distinguished pupil, Plotinus, also an Egyptian (204–269), developed the NeoPlatonic ideas in systematic form, and gave them firm foothold and wide currency, particularly in Rome, where he taught philosophy. The system was propagated by his pupil Porphyry of Tyre (d. 304), who likewise taught in Rome, by Jamblichus of Chalcis in Coelo-Syria (d. 333), and by Proclus of Constantinople (d. 485). It supplanted the popular religion among in the educated classes of later heathendom, and held its ground until the end of the fifth century, when it perished of its own internal falsehood and contradictions.

From its love for the ideal, the supernatural, and the mystical, this system, like the original Platonism, might become for many philosophical minds a bridge to faith; and so it was even to St. Augustin, whom it delivered from the bondage of scepticism, and filled with a burning thirst for truth and wisdom. But it could also work against Christianity. Neo-Platonism was, in fact, a direct attempt of the more intelligent and earnest heathenism to rally all its nobler energies, especially the forces of Hellenic philosophy and Oriental mysticism, and to found a universal religion, a pagan counterpart to the Christian. Plotinus, in his opposition to Gnosticism, assailed also, though not expressly, the Christian element it contained. On their syncretistic principles the Neo-Platonists could indeed reverence Christ as a great sage and a hero of virtue, but not as the Son of God. They ranked the wise men of heathendom with him. The emperor Alexander Severus (d. 235) gave Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana a place in his lararium by the side of the bust of Jesus.

The rhetorician Philostratus, the elder, about the year 220, at the request of Julia Domna, the wife of Septimius Severus, and a zealous patron of the reform of paganism, idealized the life of the pagan magician and soothsayer Apollonius, of the Pythagorean school, and made him out an ascetic saint, a divinely inspired philosopher, a religious reformer and worker of miracles, with the purpose, as is generally assumed, though without direct evidence, of holding him up as a rival of Christ with equal claims to the worship of men.(14)

The points of resemblance are chiefly these: Jesus was the Son of God, Apollonius the son of Jupiter; the birth of Christ was celebrated by the appearance of angels, that of Apollonius by a flash of lightning; Christ raised the daughter of Jairus, Apollonius a young Roman maiden, from the dead; Christ cast out demons, Apollonius did the same; Christ rose from the dead, Apollonius appeared after his death. Apollonius is made to combine also several characteristics of the apostles, as the miraculous gift of tongues, for he understood all the languages of the world. Like St. Paul, he received his earlier education at Tarsus, labored at Antioch, Ephesus, and other cities, and was persecuted by Nero. Like the early Christians, he was falsely accused of sacrificing children with certain mysterious ceremonies.(15) With the same secret polemical aim Porphyry and Jamblichus embellished the life of Pythagoras, and set him forth as the highest model of wisdom, even a divine being incarnate, a Christ of heathenism.

These various attempts to Christianize paganism were of course as abortive as so many attempts to galvanize a corpse. They made no impression upon their age, much less upon ages following. They were indirect arguments in favor of Christianity: they proved the internal decay of the false, and the irresistible progress of the true religion, which began to mould the spirit of the age and to affect public opinion outside of the church. By inventing false characters in imitation of Christ they indirectly conceded to the historical Christ his claim to the admiration and praise of mankind.

§ 35. Porphyry and Hierocles

See the Lit. in § 34.

One of the leading Neo-Platonists made a direct attack upon Christianity, and was, in the eyes of the church fathers, its bitterest and most dangerous enemy. Towards the end of the third century Porphyry wrote an extended work against the Christians, in fifteen books, which called forth numerous refutations from the most eminent church teachers of the time, particularly from Methodius of Tyre, Eusebius of Caesarea, and Apollinaris of Laodicea. In 448 all the copies were burned by order of the emperors Theodosius II. and Valentinian III., and we know the work now only from fragments in the fathers.

Porphyry attacked especially the sacred books of the Christians, with more knowledge than Celsus. He endeavored, with keen criticism, to point out the contradictions between the Old Testament and the New, and among the apostles themselves; and thus to refute the divinity of their writings. He represented the prophecies of Daniel as vaticinia post eventum, and censured the allegorical interpretation of Origen, by which transcendental mysteries were foisted into the writings of Moses, contrary to their clear sense. He took advantage, above all, of the collision between Paul and Peter at Antioch (Gal. 2:11), to reproach the former with a contentious spirit, the latter with error, and to infer from the whole, that the doctrine of such apostles must rest on lies and frauds. Even Jesus himself he charged with equivocation and inconsistency, on account of his conduct in John 7:8 compared with verse 14.

Still Porphyry would not wholly reject Christianity. Like many rationalists of more recent times, he distinguished the original pure doctrine of Jesus from the second-handed, adulterated doctrine of the apostles. In another work(16) on the "Philosophy of Oracles," often quoted by Eusebius, and also by Augustin,(17) he says, we must not calumniate Christ, who was most eminent for piety, but only pity those who worship him as God. "That pious soul, exalted to heaven, is become, by a sort of fate, an occasion of delusion to those souls from whom fortune withholds the gifts of the gods and the knowledge of the immortal Zeus." Still more remarkable in this view is a letter to his wife Marcella, which A. Mai published at Milan in 1816, in the unfounded opinion that Marcella was a Christian. In the course of this letter Porphyry remarks, that what is born of the flesh is flesh; that by faith, love, and hope we raise ourselves to the Deity; that evil is the fault of man; that God is holy; that the most acceptable sacrifice to him is a pure heart; that the wise man is at once a temple of God and a priest in that temple. For these and other such evidently Christian ideas and phrases he no doubt had a sense of his own, which materially differed from their proper scriptural meaning. But such things show how Christianity in that day exerted, even upon its opponents, a power, to which heathenism was forced to yield an unwilling assent.

The last literary antagonist of Christianity in our period is Hierocles, who, while governor of Bythynia, and afterwards of Alexandria under Diocletian, persecuted that religion also with the sword, and exposed Christian maidens to a worse fate than death. His "Truth-loving Words to the Christians" has been destroyed, like Porphyry’s work, by the mistaken zeal of Christian emperors, and is known to us only through the answer of Eusebius of Caesarea.(18) He appears to have merely repeated the objections of Celsus and Porphyry, and to have drawn a comparison between Christ and Apollonius of Tyana, which resulted in favor of the latter. The Christians says he, consider Jesus a God, on account of some insignificant miracles falsely colored up by his apostles; but the heathens far more justly declare the greater wonder-worker Apollonius, as well as an Aristeas and a Pythagoras, simply a favorite of the gods and a benefactor of men.

§ 36. Summary of the Objections to Christianity.

In general the leading arguments of the Judaism and heathenism of this period against the new religion are the following:

1. Against Christ: his illegitimate birth; his association with poor, unlettered fishermen, and rude publicans: his form of a servant, and his ignominious death. But the opposition to him gradually ceased. While Celsus called him a downright impostor, the Syncretists and Neo-Platonists were disposed to regard him as at least a distinguished sage.

2. Against Christianity: its novelty; its barbarian origin; its want of a national basis; the alleged absurdity of some of its facts and doctrines, particularly of regeneration and the resurrection; contradictions between the Old and New Testaments, among the Gospels, and between Paul and Peter; the demand for a blind, irrational faith.

3. Against the Christians: atheism, or hatred of the gods; the worship of a crucified malefactor; poverty, and want of culture and standing; desire of innovation; division and sectarianism; want of patriotism; gloomy seriousness; credulity; superstition, and fanaticism. Sometimes they were charged even with unnatural crimes, like those related in the pagan mythology of Oedipus and his mother Jocaste (concubitus Oedipodei), and of Thyestes and Atreus (epulae Thyesteae). Perhaps some Gnostic sects ran into scandalous excesses; but as against the Christians in general this charge was so clearly unfounded, that it is not noticed even by Celsus and Lucian. The senseless accusation, that they worshipped an ass’s head, may have arisen, as Tertullian already intimates,(19) from a story of Tacitus, respecting some Jews, who were once directed by a wild ass to fresh water, and thus relieved from the torture of thirst; and it is worth mentioning, only to show how passionate and blind was the opposition with which Christianity in this period of persecution had to contend.

§ 37. The Apologetic Literature of Christianity.

Comp. Lit. in § 1 and 12.

I. The sources are all the writings of the Apologists of the second and third centuries; particularly Justin M.: Apologia I. and II.; Tertull.: Apologeticus; Minucius Felix: Octavius; Origen: Contra Celsum (kata; Kevlsou) libr. VIII. Aristidis, Philosophi Atheniensis, Sermones duo, Venetiis 1878. (From an Armenian translation). Complete editions of the Apologists: Apologg. Christ. Opp. ed. Prud. Maranus, Par. 1742; Corpus Apologetarum Christianorum seculi secundi, ed. Th. Otto, Jenae, 1847 sqq. ed. III. 1876 sqq. A new ed. by O. v. Gebhardt and E. Schwartz, begun 1888.

2. Fabricius:Dilectus argumentorum et Syllabus scriptorum, qui veritatem Rel. Christ. asseruerunt. Hamb. 1725.

Tzschirner: Geschichte der Apologetik. Lpz. 1805 (unfinished).

G. H. Van Sanden: Gesch. der Apol. translated from Dutch into German by Quack and Binder. Stuttg. 1846. 2 vols.

Semisch: Justin der Mürt. Bresl. 1840. II. 56–225.

W. B. Colton: The Evidences of Christianity as exhibited in the writings of its Apologists down to Augustine (Hulsean Prize Essay, 1852), republ. in Boston, 1854.

Karl Werner (R.C.): Geschichte der apologetischen und polemischen Literatur der christl. Theologie. Schaffhausen, 1861–’65. 5 vols. (vol. I. belongs here).

James Donaldson: A Critical History of Christian Literature and Doctrine from, the Death of the Apostles to the Nicene Council. London, 1864–66. 3 vols.

Adolf Harnack: Die Ueberlieferung der Griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhunderts in der alten Kirche und im Mittelalter. Band I. Heft 1 and 2. Leipz. 1882.

These assaults of argument and calumny called forth in the second century the Christian apologetic literature, the vindication of Christianity by the pen, against the Jewish zealot, the Grecian philosopher, and the Roman statesman. The Christians were indeed from the first "ready always to give an answer to every man that asked them a reason of the hope that was in them." But when heathenism took the field against them not only with fire and sword, but with argument and slander besides, they had to add to their simple practical testimony a theoretical self-defence. The Christian apology against non-Christian opponents, and the controversial efforts against Christian errorists, are the two oldest branches of theological science.

The apologetic literature began to appear under the reign of Hadrian, and continued to grow till the end of our period. Most of the church teachers took part in this labor of their day. The first apologies, by Quadratus, bishop of Athens, Aristides, philosopher of Athens, and Aristo of Pella, which were addressed to the emperor Hadrian, and the later works of Melito of Sardis, Claudius Apollinaris of Hierapolis, and Miltiades, who lived under Marcus Aurelius, were either entirely lost, or preserved only in scattered notices of Eusebius. But some interesting fragments of Melito and Aristides have been recently discovered.(20) More valuable are the apologetical works of the Greek philosopher and martyr, Justin (d. 166), which we possess in full. After him come, in the Greek church, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, and Hermias in the last half of the second century, and Origen, the ablest of all, in the first half of the third.

The most important Latin apologists are Tertullian (d. about 220), Minucius Felix (d. between 220 and 230; according to some, between 161 and 200), the later Arnobius and Lactantius, all of North Africa.

Here at once appears the characteristic difference between the Greek and the Latin minds. The Greek apologies are more learned and philosophical, the Latin more practical and juridical in their matter and style. The former labor to prove the truth of Christianity and its adaptedness to the intellectual wants of man; the latter plead for its legal right to exist, and exhibit mainly its moral excellency and salutary effect upon society. The Latin also are in general more rigidly opposed to heathenism, while the Greek recognize in the Grecian philosophy a certain affinity to the Christian religion.

The apologies were addressed in some cases to the emperors (Hadrian, Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius) or the provincial governors; in others, to the intelligent public. Their first object was to soften the temper of the authorities and people towards Christianity and its professors by refuting the false charges against them. It may be doubtful whether they ever reached the hands of the emperors; at all events the persecution continued.(21) Conversion commonly proceeds from the heart and will, not from the understanding and from knowledge. No doubt, however, these writings contributed to dissipate prejudice among honest and susceptible heathens, to spread more favorable views of the new religion, and to infuse a spirit of humanity into the spirit of the age, the systems of moral philosophy and the legislation of the Antonines.

Yet the chief service of this literature was to strengthen believers and to advance theological knowledge. It brought the church to a deeper and clearer sense of the peculiar nature of the Christian religion, and prepared her thenceforth to vindicate it before the tribunal of reason and philosophy; whilst Judaism and heathenism proved themselves powerless in the combat, and were driven to the weapons of falsehood and vituperation. The sophisms and mockeries of a Celsus and a Lucian have none but a historical interest; the Apologies of Justin and the Apologeticus of Tertullian, rich with indestructible truth and glowing piety, are read with pleasure and edification to this day.

The apologists do not confine themselves to the defensive, but carry the war aggressively into the territory of Judaism and heathenism. They complete their work by positively demonstrating that Christianity is the divine religion, and the only true religion for all mankind.

§ 38. The Argument against Judaism.

In regard to the controversy with Judaism, we have two principal sources: the Dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Trypho,(22) based, it appears, on real interviews of Justin with Trypho; and Tertullian’s work against the Jews.(23) Another work from the first half of the second century by Aristo of Pella, entitled "A Disputation of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ," is lost.(24) It was known to Celsus who speaks contemptuously of it on account of its allegorical interpretation. Origen deems it useful for ordinary readers, though not calculated to make much impression on scholars. It was intended to show the fulfillment of the old prophecies in Christ, and ends with the conviction of the Jew Papiscus and his baptism by Jason. The author was a Jewish Christian of Pella, the city of refuge for the Christians of Jerusalem before the destruction.

I. The defensive apology answered the Jewish objections thus:

1. Against the charge, that Christianity is an apostasy from the Jewish religion, it was held, that the Mosaic law, as far as it relates to outward rites and ceremonies was only a temporary institution for the Jewish nation foreshadowing the substance of Christianity, while its moral precepts as contained in the Decalogue were kept in their deepest spiritual sense only by Christians; that the Old Testament itself points to its own dissolution and the establishment of a new covenant;(25) that Abraham was justified before he was circumcised, and women, who could not be circumcised, were yet saved.

2. Against the assertion, that the servant-form of Jesus of Nazareth, and his death by the cross, contradicted the Old Testament idea of the Messiah, it was urged, that the appearance of the Messiah is to be regarded as twofold, first, in the form of a servant, afterwards in glory; and that the brazen serpent in the wilderness, and the prophecies of David in Psalm 22, of Isaiah 53, and Zech. 13, themselves point to the sufferings of Christ as his way to glory.

3. To the objection, that the divinity of Jesus contradicts the unity of God and is blasphemy, it was replied, that the Christians believe likewise in only one God; that the Old Testament itself makes a distinction in the divine nature; that the plural expression: "Let us make man,"(26) the appearance of the three men at Mamre(27) of whom one was confessedly God,(28) yet distinct from the Creator,(29) indicate this; and that all theophanies (which in Justin’s view are as many christophanies), and the Messianic Psalms,(30) which ascribe divine dignity to the Messiah, show the same.

2. The aggressive apology or polemic theology urges as evidence against Judaism:

1. First and mainly that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament are fulfilled in Jesus Christ and his church. Justin finds all the outlines of the gospel history predicted in the Old Testament: the Davidic descent of Jesus, for example, in Isa. 11:1; the birth from a virgin in 7:14; the birth at Bethlehem in Micah 5:1; the flight into Egypt in Hosea 11:1 (rather than Ps. 22:10?); the appearance of the Baptist in Is. 40:1–17; Mal. 4:5; the heavenly voice at the baptism of Jesus in Ps. 2:7; the temptation in the wilderness under the type of Jacob’s wrestling in Gen. 32:24 sqq.; the miracles of our Lord in Is. 35:5; his sufferings and the several circumstances of his crucifixion in Is. 53 and Ps. 22. In this effort, however, Justin wanders also, according to the taste of his uncritical age, into arbitrary fancies and allegorical conceits; as when he makes the two goats, of which one carried away the sins into the wilderness, and the other was sacrificed, types of the first and second advents of Christ; and sees in the twelve bells on the robe of the high priest a type of the twelve apostles, whose sound goes forth into all the world.(31)

2. The destruction of Jerusalem, in which Judaism, according to the express prediction of Jesus, was condemned by God himself, and Christianity was gloriously vindicated. Here the Jewish priest and historian Josephus, who wrote from personal observation a graphic description of this tragedy, had to furnish a powerful historical argument against his own religion and for the truth of Christianity. Tertullian sums up the prophetic predictions of the calamities which have befallen the Jews for rejecting Christ, "the sense of the Scriptures harmonizing with the events."(32)

§ 39. The Defense against Heathenism.

I. The various Objections and Accusations of the heathens, which we have collected in §

1. The attack upon the miraculous in the evangelical history the apologists could meet by pointing to the similar element in the heathen mythology; of course proposing this merely in the way of argumentum ad hominem, to deprive the opposition of the right to object. For the credibility of the miraculous accounts in the Gospels, particularly that of the resurrection of Jesus, Origen appealed to the integrity and piety of the narrators, to the publicity of the death of Jesus, and to the effects of that event.

2. The novelty and late appearance of Christianity were justified by the need of historical preparation in which the human race should be divinely trained for Christ; but more frequently it was urged also, that Christianity existed in the counsel of God from eternity, and had its unconscious votaries, especially among the pious Jews, long before the advent of Christ. By claiming the Mosaic records, the apologists had greatly the advantage as regards antiquity over any form of paganism, and could carry their religion, in its preparatory state, even beyond the flood and up to the very gates of paradise. Justin and Tatian make great account of the fact that Moses is much older than the Greek philosophers, poets, and legislators. Athenagoras turns the tables, and shows that the very names of the heathen gods are modern, and their statues creations of yesterday. Clement of Alexandria calls the Greek philosophers thieves and robbers, because they stole certain portions of truth from the Hebrew prophets and adulterated them. Tertullian, Minucius Felix and others raise the same charge of plagiarism.

3. The doctrine of the resurrection of the body, so peculiarly offensive to the heathen and Gnostic understanding, was supported, as to its possibility, by reference to the omnipotence of God, and to the creation of the world and of man; and its propriety and reasonableness were argued from the divine image in man, from the high destiny of the body to be the temple of the Holy Spirit, and from its intimate connection with the soul, as well as from the righteousness and goodness of God. The argument from analogy was also very generally used, but often without proper discrimination. Thus, Theophilus alludes to the decline and return of the seasons, the alternations of day and night, the renewal of the waning and waxing moon, the growth of seeds and fruits. Tertullian expresses his surprise that anybody should deny the possibility and probability of the resurrection in view of the mystery of our birth and the daily occurrences of surrounding nature. "All things," he says, "are preserved by dissolution, renewed by perishing; and shall man ... the lord of all this universe of creatures, which die and rise again, himself die only to perish forever?"(33)

4. The charge of immoral conduct and secret vice the apologists might repel with just indignation, since the New Testament contains the purest and noblest morality, and the general conduct of the Christians compared most favorably with that of the heathens. "Shame! shame!" they justly cried; "to roll upon the innocent what you are openly guilty of, and what belongs to you and your gods!" Origen says in the preface to the first book against Celsus: "When false witness was brought against our blessed Saviour, the spotless Jesus, he held his peace, and when he was accused, returned no answer, being fully persuaded that the tenor of his life and conduct among the Jews was the best apology that could possibly be made in his behalf .... And even now he preserves the same silence, and makes no other answer than the unblemished lives of his sincere followers; they are his most cheerful and successful advocates, and have so loud a voice that they drown the clamors of the most zealous and bigoted adversaries."

2. To their defence the Christians, with the rising consciousness of victory, added direct arguments against heathenism, which were practically sustained by, its dissolution in the following period.

1. The popular religion of the heathens, particularly the doctrine of the gods, is unworthy, contradictory, absurd, immoral, and pernicious. The apologists and most of the early church teachers looked upon the heathen gods not as mere imaginations or personified powers of nature or deifications of distinguished men, but as demons or fallen angels. They took this view from the Septuagint version of Ps. 96:5,(34) and from the immorality of those deities, which was charged to demons (even sexual intercourse with fair daughters of men, according to Gen. 6:2).

"What sad fates," says Minucius Felix, "what lies, ridiculous things, and weaknesses we read of the pretended gods! Even their form, how pitiable it is! Vulcan limps; Mercury has wings to his feet; Pan is hoofed; Saturn in fetters; and Janus has two faces, as if he walked backwards .... Sometimes Hercules is a hostler, Apollo a cow-herd, and Neptune, Laomedon’s mason, cheated of his wages. There we have the thunder of Jove and the arms of Aeneas forged on the same anvil (as if the heavens and the thunder and lightning did not exist before Jove was born in Crete); the adultery of Mars and Venus; the lewdness of Jupiter with Ganymede, all of which were invented for the gods to authorize men in their wickedness." "Which of the poets," asks Tertullian, "does not calumniate your gods? One sets Apollo to keep sheep; another hires out Neptune to build a wall; Pindar declares Esculapius was deservedly scathed for his avarice in exercising the art of medicine to a bad purpose; whilst the writers of tragedy and comedy alike, take for their subjects the crimes or the miseries of the deities. Nor are the philosophers behindhand in this respect. Out of pure contempt, they would swear by an oak, a goat, a dog. Diogenes turned Hercules into ridicule; and the Roman Cynic Varro introduces three hundred Joves without heads." From the stage abuser the sarcastic African father selects, partly from his own former observation, those of Diana being flogged, the reading of Jupiter’s will after his decease, and the three half-starved Herculesses! Justin brings up the infanticide of Saturn, the parricide, the anger, and the adultery of Jupiter, the drunkenness of Bacchus, the voluptuousness of Venus, and he appeals to the judgment of the better heathens, who were ashamed of these scandalous histories of the gods; to Plato, for example, who for this reason banishes Homer from his ideal State. Those myths, which had some resemblance to the Old Testament prophecies or the gospel history, Justin regards as caricatures of the truth, framed by demons by abuse of Scripture. The story of Bacchus, for instance rests in his fanciful view, on Gen. 49:11 sq.; the myth of the birth of Perseus from a virgin, on Is. 7:14; that of the wandering of Hercules, on Ps. 19:6; the fiction of the miracles of Esculapius on Is. 35:1 sqq.

Origen asks Celsus, why it is that he can discover profound mysteries in those strange and senseless accidents, which have befallen his gods and goddesses, showing them to be polluted with crimes and doing many shameful things; whilst Moses, who says nothing derogatory to the character of God, angel, or man, is treated as an impostor. He challenges any one to compare Moses and his laws with the best Greek writers; and yet Moses was as far inferior to Christ, as he was superior to the greatest of heathen sages and legislators.

2. The Greek philosophy, which rises above the popular belief, is not suited to the masses, cannot meet the religious wants, and confutes itself by its manifold contradictions. Socrates, the wisest of all the philosophers, himself acknowledged that he knew nothing. On divine and human things Justin finds the philosophers at variance among themselves; with Thales water is the ultimate principle of all things; with Anaximander, air; with Heraclitus, fire; with Pythagoras, number. Even Plato not seldom contradicts himself; now supposing three fundamental causes (God, matter, and ideas), now four (adding the world-soul); now he considers matter is unbegotten, now as begotten; at one time he ascribes substantiality to ideas, at another makes them mere forms of thought, etc. Who, then, he concludes, would intrust to the philosophers the salvation of his soul?

3. But, on the other hand, the Greek apologists recognized also elements of truth in the Hellenic literature, especially in the Platonic and Stoic philosophy, and saw in them, as in the law and the prophecies of Judaism, a preparation of the way for Christianity. Justin attributes all the good in heathenism to the divine Logos, who, even before his incarnation, scattered the seeds of truth (hence the name "Logos spermaticos"), and incited susceptible spirits to a holy walk. Thus there were Christians before Christianity; and among these he expressly reckons Socrates and Heraclitus.(35) Besides, he supposed that Pythagoras, Plato, and other educated Greeks, in their journeys to the East, became acquainted with the Old Testament writings, and drew from them the doctrine of the unity of God, and other like truths, though they in various ways misunderstood them, and adulterated them with pagan errors. This view of a certain affinity between the Grecian philosophy and Christianity, as an argument in favor of the new religion, was afterwards further developed by the Alexandrian fathers, Clement and Origen.(36)

The Latin fathers speak less favorably of the Greek philosophy; yet even Augustin acknowledges that the Platonists approach so nearly to Christian truth that with a change of some expressions and sentences they would be true Christians (in theory).(37)

§ 40. The Positive Apology.

The Christian apology completed itself in the positive demonstration of the divinity of the new religion; which was at the same time the best refutation of both the old ones. As early as this period the strongest historical and philosophical arguments for Christianity were brought forward, or at least indicated, though in connection with many untenable adjunct.

1. The great argument, not only with Jews, but with heathens also, was the prophecies; since the knowledge of future events can come only from God. The first appeal of the apologists was, of course, to the prophetic writings of the Old Testament, in which they found, by a very liberal interpretation, every event of the gospel history and every lineament of our Saviour’s character and work. In addition to the Scriptures, even such fathers as Clement of Alexandria, and, with more caution, Origen, Eusebius, St. Jerome, and St. Augustin, employed also, without hesitation, apocryphal prophecies, especially the Sibylline oracles, a medley of ancient heathen, Jewish, and in part Christian fictions, about a golden age, the coining of Christ, the fortunes of Rome, and the end of the world.(38) And indeed, this was not all error and pious fraud. Through all heathenism there runs, in truth, a dim, unconscious presenti-ment and longing hope of Christianity. Think of the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, with its predictions of the "virgo" and "nova progenies" from heaven, and the "puer," with whom, after the blotting out of sin and the killing of the serpent, a golden age of peace was to begin. For this reason Virgil was the favorite poet of the Latin church during the middle ages, and figures prominently in Dante’s Divina Comedia as his guide through the dreary regions of the Inferno and Purgatorio to the very gates of Paradise. Another pseudo-prophetic book used by the fathers (Tertullian, Origen, and apparently Jerome) is "The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs, "written by a Jewish Christian between a.d. 100 and 120. It puts into the mouth of the twelve sons of Jacob farewell addresses and predictions of the coming of Christ, his death and resurrection, of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the rejection of the gospel by the Jews, and the preaching of Paul, the great apostle of the Gentiles, the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of the world.(39)

2. The types. These, too, were found not only in the Old Testament, but in the whole range of nature. Justin saw everywhere, in the tree of life in Eden, in Jacob’s ladder, in the rods of Moses and Aaron, nay, in every sailing ship, in the wave-cutting oar, in the plough, in the human countenance, in the human form with outstretched arms, in banners and trophies—the sacred form of the cross, and thus a prefiguration of the mystery of redemption through the crucifixion of the Lord.(40)

3. The miracles of Jesus and the apostles, with those which continued to be wrought in the name of Jesus, according to the express testimony of the fathers, by their contemporaries. But as the heathens also appealed to miraculous deeds and appearances in favor of their religion, Justin, Arnobius, and particularly Origen, fixed certain criteria, such as the moral purity of the worker, and his intention to glorify God and benefit man, for distinguishing the true miracles from Satanic juggleries. "There might have been some ground," says Origen, "for the comparison which Celsus makes between Jesus and certain wandering magicians, if there had appeared in the latter the slightest tendency to beget in persons a true fear of God, and so to regulate their actions in prospect of the day of judgment. But they attempt nothing of the sort. Yea, they themselves are guilty of the most grievous crimes; whereas the Saviour would have his hearers to be convinced by the native beauty of religion and the holy lives of its teachers, rather than by even the miracles they wrought."

The subject of post-apostolic miracles is surrounded by much greater difficulties in the absence of inspired testimony, and in most cases even of ordinary immediate witnesses. There is an antecedent probability that the power of working miracles was not suddenly and abruptly, but gradually withdrawn, as the necessity of such outward and extraordinary attestation of the divine origin of Christianity diminished and gave way to the natural operation of truth and moral suasion. Hence St. Augustin, in the fourth century, says: "Since the establishment of the church God does not wish to perpetuate miracles even to our day, lest the mind should put its trust in visible signs, or grow cold at the sight of common marvels."(41) But it is impossible to fix the precise termination, either at the death of the apostles, or their immediate disciples, or the conversion of the Roman empire, or the extinction of the Arian heresy, or any subsequent era, and to sift carefully in each particular case the truth from legendary fiction.

It is remarkable that the genuine writings of the ante-Nicene church are more free from miraculous and superstitious elements than the annals of the Nicene age and the middle ages. The history of monasticism teems with miracles even greater than those of the New Testament. Most of the statements of the apologists are couched in general terms, and refer to extraordinary cures from demoniacal possession (which probably includes, in the language of that age, cases of madness, deep melancholy, and epilepsy) and other diseases, by the invocation of the name of Jesus.(42) Justin Martyr speaks of such cures as a frequent occurrence in Rome and all over the world, and Origen appeals to his own personal observation, but speaks in another place of the growing scarcity of miracles, so as to suggest the gradual cessation theory as held by Dr. Neander, Bishop Kaye, and others. Tertullian attributes many if not most of the conversions of his day to supernatural dreams and visions, as does also Origen, although with more caution. But in such psychological phenomena it is exceedingly difficult to draw the line of demarcation between natural and supernatural causes, and between providential interpositions and miracles proper. The strongest passage on this subject is found in Irenaeus, who, in contending against the heretics, mentions, besides prophecies and miraculous cures of demoniacs, even the raising of the dead among contemporary events taking place in the Catholic church;(43) but he specifies no particular case or name; and it should be remembered also, that his youth still bordered almost on the Johannean age.

4. The moral effect of Christianity upon the heart and life of its professors. The Christian religion has not only taught the purest and sublimest code of morals ever known among men, but actually exhibited it in the life sufferings, and death of its founder and true followers. All the apologists, from the author of the Epistle to Diognetus down to Origen, Cyprian, and Augustin, bring out in strong colors the infinite superiority of Christian ethics over the heathen, and their testimony is fully corroborated by the practical fruits of the church, as we shall have occasion more fully to show in another chapter. "They think us senseless," says Justin, "because we worship this Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, as God next to the Father. But they would not say so, if they knew the mystery of the cross. By its fruits they may know it. We, who once lived in debauchery, now study chastity; we, who dealt in sorceries, have consecrated ourselves to the good, the increate God; we, who loved money and possessions above all things else, now devote our property freely to the general good, and give to every needy one; we, who fought and killed each other, now pray for our enemies; those who persecute us in hatred, we kindly try to appease, in the hope that they may share the same blessings which we enjoy."(44)

5. The rapid spread of Christianity by purely moral means, and in spite of the greatest external obstacles, yea, the bitter persecution of Jews and Gentiles. The anonymous apologetic Epistle to Diognetus which belongs to the literature of the Apostolic Fathers, already thus urges this point: "Do you not see the Christians exposed to wild beasts, that they may be persuaded to deny the Lord, and yet not overcome? Do you not see that the more of them are punished, the greater becomes the number of the rest? This does not seem to be the work of man: this is the power of God; these are the evidences of his manifestation."(45) Justin Martyr and Tertullian frequently go on in a similar strain. Origen makes good use of this argument against Celsus, and thinks that so great a success as Christianity met among Greeks and barbarians, learned and unlearned persons in so short a time, without any force or other worldly means, and in view of the united opposition of emperors, senate, governors, generals, priests, and people, can only be rationally accounted for on the ground of an extraordinary providence of God and the divine nature of Christ.

6. The reasonableness of Christianity, and its agreement with all the true and the beautiful in the Greek philosophy and poesy. All who had lived rationally before Christ were really, though unconsciously, already Christians. Thus all that is Christian is rational, and all that is truly rational is Christian. Yet, on the other hand, of course, Christianity is supra-rational (not irrational).

7. The adaptation of Christianity to the deepest needs of human nature, which it alone can meet. Here belongs Tertullian’s appeal to the "testimonia animae naturaliter Christianae;" his profound thought, that the human soul is, in its inmost essence and instinct, predestined for Christianity, and can find rest and peace in that alone. "The soul," says he, "though confined in the prison of the body, though perverted by bad training, though weakened by lusts and passions, though given to the service of false gods, still no sooner awakes from its intoxication and its dreams, and recovers its health, than it calls upon God by the one name due to him: ’Great God! good God!’—and then looks, not to the capitol, but to heaven; for it knows the abode of the living God, from whom it proceeds."(46)

This deep longing of the human soul for the living God in Christ, Augustin, in whom Tertullian’s spirit returned purified and enriched, afterwards expressed in the grand sentence: "Thou, O God, hast made us for thee, and our heart is restless, till it rests in thee."(47)

Original Footnotes

(1; original 71): Joseph. Antiqu. l. XVIII.c. 3, sect. 3. Comp. on this much disputed passage, vol. I., p. 92.

(2; original 72): It is the special merit of Keim to have thoroughly utilized Josephus for the biography of Jesus.

(3; original 73): These coincidences have been traced out in full by Lardner, Works, ed. Kippis, vol. VI. p. 406 ff.

(4; original 74): JIavsono" kai; Papivskou a[ntilogiva peri; Cristou'. D. Origenes Contra Cels. IV. 51. Celsus says, that he read the book which defends the allegorical interpretation, with pity and hatred. Comp. Harnack, Altchristl. Literatur, vol. 1. (1882). p. 115 sqq.

(5; original 75): Oijdipovdeioi mivxei", incesti concubitus; and questei'a dei'pna, Thyesteae epulae

(6; original 76): Origen (I. 8) indefinitely assigns him to the reign of Hadrian and the Antonines; most historians (Mosheim, Gieseler, Baur, Friedländer) to a.d. 150 or later; others (Tillemont, Neander, Zeller) to about 160 or 170; Keim (1. c. p. 267) to a.d. 178. As the place of composition Keim (p. 274) suggests Rome, others Alexandria. He ably defends his identity with the friend of Lucian (p. 291), but makes him out a Platonist rather than an Epicurean (p. 203 sqq.).

(7; original 77): See the restoration of Celsus from these fragments by Dr. Keim, quoted above.

(8; original 78): Pavnqhr, panthera, here, and in the Talmud, where Jesus is likewise called y<vY ben �'nÒdiyr;a

is used, like the Latin lupa, as a type of ravenous lust hence as a symbolical name for moiceivr. So Nitzsch and Baur. But Keim (p. 12) takes it as a designation of the wild rapacious (pa'n qhrw'n) Roman soldier. The mother of Jesus was, according to the Jewish informant of Celsus, a poor seamstress, and engaged to a carpenter, who plunged her into disgrace and misery when he found out her infidelity.

(9; original 79): Keim (Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, I. 22) says of Celsus: "Von der Jungfraugeburt bis zum Jammer des Todes bei Essig und Galle, bis zu den Wundern des Todes und der Auferstehung hat er unsere Evangelien verfolgt, und anderen Quellen,welche zum Theil heute noch fliessen, hat er den Glauben an die Hasslichkeit Jesu und an die Sündhaftigkeit seiner Jünger abgewonnen." Comp. Keim’s monograph on Celsus, pp. 219-231. On the bearing of his testimony on the genuineness of the Gospel of John, see vol. 1. p. 708.

(10; original 80): Judges xiv. 14. Comp. Lardner’s Works, vol. VII. pp. 210-270. Dr. Doddridge and Dr. Leland made good use of Celsus against the Deists of the last century. He may with still greater effect be turned against the more radical theories of Strauss and Renan. For Keim’s estimate, see his Celsus, 253-261.

(11; original 81): Harnack, l.c. denies a reference to Polycarp.

(12; original 82): Berneys (l.c. p. 43) characterizes Lucian very unfavorably: "ein anscheinend nicht sehr glücklicher Advocat, ist er ohne ernste Studien ins Literatenthum übergegangen; unwissend und leichtfertig trägt er lediglich eine nihilistische Oede in Bezuq auf alle religiösen und metaphysischen Fraqen zur Schau und reisst alle als verkehrt und lächerlich herunter." Berneys thinks that the Peregrinus Proteus is not directed against the Christians, but against the Cynic philosophers and more particularly against the then still living Theagenes.

(13; original 83): The oldest apostle of this strange medley of Hellenic, Persian, Chaldean and Egyptian mysteries in Rome was Nigidius Figulus, who belonged to the strictest section of the aristocracy, and filled the praetorship in 696 a.u.c. (58 b.c.) He foretold the father of the subsequent emperor Augustus on the very day of his birth his future greatness. The system was consecrated by the name of Pythagoras, the primeval sage of Italian birth, the miracleworker and necromancer. The new and old wisdom made a profound impression on men of the highest rank and greatest learning, who took part in the citation of spirits, as in the nineteenth century, spirit-rapping and tablemoving exercised for a while a similar charm. "These last attempts to save the Roman theology, like the similar efforts of Cato in the field of politics, produce at once a comical and a melancholy impression. We may smile at the creed and its propagators, but still it is a grave matter when all men begin to addict themselves to absurdity." Th. Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. IV. p. 563 (Dickson’s translation. Lond. 1867.)

(14; original 84): Philostratus himself gives no intimation of such design on his part, and simply states that he was requested by the empress Julia Domna (a.d. 217), to draw up a biography of Apollonius from certain memoranda of Damis, one of his friends and followers. The name of Christ is never mentioned by him; nor does he allude to the Gospels, except in one instance, where he uses the same phrase as the daemon in St. Luke (viii. 28): "I beseech thee, torment me not (mhv me basanivsh/" .). Vita Apoll. IV. 25. Bishop Samuel Parker, in a work on the Divine Authority of the Christian Religion (1681), Lardner, Neander (K G. I. 298), and J. S. Watson (in a review of Re’ville’s Apoll. of T., in the "Contemporary Review" for 1867, p. 199 ff.), deny the commonly received opinion, first maintained by Bishop Daniel Hust, and defended by Baur, Newman, and Re’ville, that Philostratus intended to draw a parallel between his hero and Christ. The resemblance is studied and fictitious, and it is certain that at a later date Hierocles vainly endeavored to lower the dignity of Christ by raising this Pythagorean adventurer as portrayed by Philostratus, to a level with the eternal Son of God.

(15; original 85): Comp. the account of the resemblance by Baur, l.c. pp. 138 sqq.

(16; original 86): Peri; th'" ejk logivwn filosofiva". Fabricius, Mosheim, Neander, and others, treat the work as genuine, but Lardner denies it to Porphyry.

(17; original 87): De Civit. Dei, l. XIX. c. 22, 23; Comp. also Eusebius,Demonstr. Evang. III. 6.

(18; original 88): To this may be added the extracts from an unnamed heathen philosopher (probably Hierocles or Porphyrius) in the apologetic work of Macarius Magnes (about 400), which was discovered at Athens in 1867, and published by Blondel;, Paris 1876. See L. Duchesne, De Marcario Magnete et scriptis ejus, Par. 1877, and Zöckler in Herzog, ed. II. vol. IX. 160.

(19; original 89): Apol.c. 16:"Somniastis caput asininun esse deum nostrum. Hanc Cornelius Tacitus suspicionem ejusmodi dei inseruit,"etc.

(20; original 90): See on the works of these Apologists, lost and partly recovered, Harnack, l.c. pp. 100 sqq.; 240 sqq.; and Renan, L’egl. chrét. p. 40 sqq. We shall refer to them in the chapter on Christian literature.

(21; original 91): Orosius, however, relates in big Hist. vii. 14, that Justin M., by his Apology, made the emperor Antoninus Pius "benignum erqa Christianos."

(22; original 92): Diavlogo" pro;" Truvfwna jIoudai'on. .

(23; original 93): Adverus Judaeos. Also Cyprian’s Testimoni adv. Judaeos.

(24; original 94): jIavsono" kai; Papivskou ajntilogiva peri; C ristou'. Comp. the discussion of Harnack, l.c. pp. 115-130. He assigns the book to a.d. 135 or soon after. It disappeared in the seventh century.

(25; original 95): Is. 51:4 sqq.; 55r> sqq.; Jer. 31:31 sqq.

(26; original 96): Gen. 1:26; Comp. 3:21

(27; original 97): Gen. 18:1 sqq.

(28; original 98): Gen. 21:12.

(29; original 99): Gen. 19:24.

(30; original 100): Ps. 110:1 sqq.; 45:7 sqq.; 72:2-19, and others

(31; original 101): Ps. 19:4; Comp. Rom. 10:18..

(32; original 102): Adv.Jud. c. 13

(33; original 103): Apolog. c. 43. Comp. his special tract De resurrectione Carnis, c. 12, where he defends the doctrine more fully against the Gnostics and their radical misconception of the nature and import of the body.

(34; original 104): Pavnte" oiJ qeoi; tw'n eqnw'n daimovnia. Comp. 1 Cor. 10:20.

(35; original 105): Also the Stoics and some of the poets as far as their moral teaching went, Comp. Just. Apol. II.c. 8, and 13.

(36; original 106): See the introduction of E. Spiess to his Logos spermatikos, Leipz. 1871.

(37; original 107): De Vera Religione IV. 7: "Proxime Platonici a veritate Christiana absunt vel veri Christiani sunt paucis mutatis verbis atque sententiis." Retract. I. 13: "Res ipsa quae nunc religio Christiana nuncupatur, erat apud antiquos, nec defuit ab initio generis humani., quousque Christus veniret in carnem, unde vera religio, quae jam erat, coepit appellari Christiana." Comp. Lactantius, De Falsa Religione, I. 5; De Vita Beata, VII. 7; Minucius Fel., Octav. 20

(38; original 108): Comp. Dr. Friedlieb:Die Sibyllinischen Weissagungen vollständig gesammelt, mitkritischem Commentare und metrischer Übersetzung. Leipz. 1852. Another edition with a Latin version by C. Alexandre, Paris 1841, second ed. 1869, 2 tom. We have at present twelve books of crhsmoiv sibulliakoivin Greek hexameter, and some fragments. They have been critically discussed by Blondel (1649), Bleek (1819), Volkmann (1853), Ewald (1858), Tübigen (1875), Reuss, and Schürer (see Lit. in his N. T. Zeitgesch. p. 513). The Sibyl figures in the Dies Irae alongside with King David (teste David cum Sibylla), as prophesying the day of judgment.

(39; original 109): Best edition by Robert Sinker from the Cambridge MS., Cambridge, 1869, and an Appendix, 1879; an English translation by Sinker, in the "Ante-Nicene Library," vol. XXII. ( Edinb. 1871). Discussions by Nitzsch (1810), Ritschl (1850 and 1857), Vorstmann (1857), Kayser (1851), Lücke (1852), Dillmann (in Herzog, first ed. XII. 315), Lightfoot (1875), and Warfield (in "Presbyt. Review," York, January, 1880, on the apologetical value of the work for its allusions to various books of the N. T.).

(40; original 110): Apol. l.c, 55; Dial. c. Tryph. c. 91.

(41; original 111): On the other hand, however, St. Augustin lent the authority of his name to some of the most incredible miracles of his age, wrought by the bones of St. Stephen, and even of Gervasius and Protasius. Comp. the treatise of Fr. Nitzsch (jun.) on Augustin’s Doctrine of Miracles, Berlin 1865; and on the general subject J. H. Newman’s Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles, third ed. London 1873; and J. B. Mozley’s Bampton Lectures On Miracles. Oxford and Lond. (1865), fifth ed. 1880, Lect. VIII. which treats of false miracles.

(42; original 112): They are analogous to the "faith-cures, " real or pretended, of our own age.

(43; original 113): Adv. Haer. II. 31, (S) 4: ]Hdh de; kai; nekroi; hjgevrqjsan kai; parevmeinon su;n hJmi'n iJkanoi'" e{tesi. These two passages can hardly be explained, with Heumann and Neander, as referring merely to cases of apparent death.

(44; original 114): Apol. l.c. 13 and 14.

(45; original 115): Ad Diogn. c. 7.

(46; original 116): Tert. Apolog. c. 17. Comp. the beautiful passage in De Testim Animae, c. 2: "Si enim anima aut divina aut a Deo data est, sine dubio datorem num novit, et si novit, utique et timet .... O testimonium veritatis, quae apud ipsa daemonia testem efficit Christianorum."

(47; original 117): Aug. Confess. I. 1: "Fecisti nos ad Te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in Te."

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