Journal articles on the topic 'Contra Celsum (Origen)'

AbstractIn summary, both Celsus and Origen were confronted with dilemmas. On the one hand, Celsus had to demonstrate that the Christians erred in leaving Judaism and that the Jews provide a credible anti-Christian witness; but, at the same time, he had to denigrate Judaism. In effect, Celsus asked the Christians why they had severed themselves religiously from the Jews if, indeed, they claimed continuity with Judaism, and why they had severed themselves socially from the pagans, inasmuch as they were predominantly of pagan origin. On the other hand, Origen's dilemma was that the only way that he could establish Christianity's legitimacy was to give it a historical basis by demonstrating continuity with Judaism; and yet, the raison d'être of Christianity was, paradoxically, its break with Judaism. Indeed, this is precisely the kind of ambivalence toward Judaism which characterizes so much of early Christian thought. It is not that Celsus is such a lover of the Jews that he apparently abstains from repeating the vilest canards against the Jews, though by his day, in the second century, there were a number of writers, such as Numenius, who genuinely admired the Jews' wisdom. Rather, it would seem, he felt that he would lose in credibility if he exaggerated the case against the Jews. However, when it came to the connection between the Jews and the Christians, whereas Celsus had sought to undermine the national legitimacy of the Christians by insisting that Christianity was a new religion which had severed its links with Judaism, Origen might have gone the way of the Marcionites in severing all links with Judaism and with the Hebrew Scriptures, but he realized that the result of such an approach would have been to fall prey to the charges of Celsus that Christianity was an upstart religion. Consequently, Origen felt that it was particularly important to establish the legitimacy of the Jewish people, with whom the Christians claimed to have a direct link. Christological theology was not of paramount concern to Celsus in his polemic; rather the attack focused upon Jesus the innovator, whose religion lacks respectability because it has no continuity in tradition. Manetho and his successors, as summarized in Josephus' treatise Against Apion, had charged Moses with being a rebel, a perverter of traditional Egyptian religion and customs; similarly, Celsus alleged, Jesus was a rebel, a perverter of traditional Jewish religion and customs. The Christians were, moreover, particularly suspect because they met in secret associations and hence would seem to constitute a danger to the state. By maximizing the common heritage and beliefs of Judaism and Christianity and by minimizing the issues that separated them Origen sought to blunt these attacks. Toward this end Origen found Josephus' treatise Against Apion, the original title of which, apparently, was Concerning the Antiquity of the Jews, useful, particularly in establishing the antiquity and wisdom of the Jews and of Moses (a particularly effective argument inasmuch as the Romans felt so self-conscious about their own recent appearance on the scene of history), in defending the Jews against the charges of unoriginality, of undue credulity, of appealing to uneducated and stupid people, of hatred of mankind, and of atheism, as well as in explaining the apparently degraded state of the Jews. When he departs from Josephus, as he does in dating Moses in the very beginning of civilization, he does so for purposes of argumentation, since Apion, with whose work Celsus was acquainted, imputed such an early date to the Exodus. Again, just as Origen was confronted with a dilemma as to which attitude to adopt toward the Jews, so was he confronted with a similar dilemma in connection with the Egyptians. On the one hand, the Egyptians had a reputation for antiquity and wisdom that was unrivalled in antiquity; on the other hand, the Jews had revolted against the Egyptians; and as the historic heirs of the Jews the Christians were thus associated with rebels. Origen adopts Josephus' argument that the Jews cannot have been a seditious multitude of Egyptians since, if so, they would not have regarded the Egyptian ways so lightly. In a novel argument, Origen then adds that the Jews have an antiquity of their own, as seen by the fact that even non-Jews seek to attain miracles by invoking the names of Abraham and his descendants. Furthermore, since both Celsus and Origen had such a profound respect for Plato, it is important to note that Origen repeats Josephus' view that Plato had been deeply influenced by the Bible; indeed, he adds to Josephus by noting that he was influenced not only by the Torah but also by the Hebrew prophets and not only in the Republic but also in the Symposium, the Phaedrus, the Timaeus, and the Phaedo. Origen goes further than Josephus in answering certain charges made by Celsus that had not been made by the anti-Jewish writers cited by Josephus. In particular, he felt especially sensitive to Celsus' charge that Moses was a charlatan and an impostor, sorcerer, and magician, especially since a similar charge had apparently been made against Jesus. Of course, we must not discount the possibility that rhetoric led both Celsus, in his defense of Egyptian wisdom, and Origen, in his defense of Jewish laws, to champion views that they might not otherwise have held. In both cases they seem to be forced to embrace these views only because of the necessity of assuming that "the more ancient something is, the better." It is surprising to find how sophisticated Origen is. Ultimately, his Hellenic education in general and Platonic training in particular made him a formidable foe of Celsus and a more subtle apologist than Josephus, even if he does depend on much of the latter's work. This is particularly clear when one compares Origen's use of Josephus and more generally his defense of the antiquity and wisdom of ancient Judaism with that of Eusebius in the following century in his apologies directed toward pagans.38

The aim of this study is to outline the use of the terms airesis and airetikos according the two main representatives of the Alexandrine School, Clement and Origen. In the Stromateis the word airesis has many meanings and, first of all, it is related to “the act of choice”, then, it is also a synonym for a “school” or a “sect”, hence it signifies Christian “heresy”. The connection between human freedom and schools, mainly philosophical ones, but also the schools of medicine, points out that Clement conceives “heresy” as an error, an incorrect way of thinking due to a wrong, even malicious choice, often of an intellectual nature; it sug­gests conscious deformation of a message. Hence, Clement contrasts the Gnostic airetikos and the “true Gnostic”, the man of faith who by studying the biblical texts and the Greek disciplines is enlightened by Christ (Stromata VII 92, 7). About the Origen’s usage of the term a†resij in his Contra Celsum it is worth to note that, firstly, the word a†resij always indicates the philosophical schools of Late Antiquity (cf. Contra Celsum 4, 45; 8, 53); secondly, that Origen aims at persuading his enemy, Celsus, that Christian religion is neither a refusal of philo­sophical schools nor something very different from them, but it may be regarded as an a†resij too and, in order to argue this, he shows that not only Christian reli­gion and philosophical schools share some moral and cosmological topics (Contra Celsum 3, 66; 3, 80), but also that both Christians and philosophers are moved by the some ¥logoj for£ (Contra Celsum 1, 10). Therefore, in Origen’s Contra Celsum the a†resij means not only the philosophical schools of the II and III centuries, but also the Christian religion as long as it is accepted by the Heathens. In conclusion, this study shows, once again, that, as the two representatives of Alexandria were in dialogue with the brilliant exponents of the contemporary philosophy, they were called to explain the importance of faith on the intellectual side, using some terms and conceptions of the main schools, on the one side, and by distinguishing Christian faith from them, on the other.

The paper is to compare two parallel passages: Origen Contra Celsum VIII 30 and Porphyry De abstinentia II 42-43, which both concern meat-eating demo­nized as “demons’ feast”, and to inquire into a cause of this parallelism. The cause was a closest personal relationship between Origen and Porphyry in the years A.D. 244-249, as well as their indebtedness in a common source, hypothetically, Origen the Egyptian who published his treatise De daemonibus before A.D. 253.

This essay will address how Origen, an early Christian writer, theologian, and pastor, referred to plagues, epidemics, and misfortunes, and how he construed these phenomena in his theology, literary works, and pastoral practice. A comparison with Porphyry will be offered, who likely drew part of his daemonology from Origen. Those responsible for plagues in both Origen’s philosophical theology and in Porphyry’s philosophy are δαίμονες (demons or fallen angels for Origen, daemons for Porphyry; Origen knew and referred to the two views). Porphyry’s attribution of his daemonology to “certain Platonists” who “divulged” these theories probably alludes to Origen and situates Origen within the Platonic school. I suspect that Porphyry was influenced by Origen’s demonology in general and possibly by On Daemons, if his. Porphyry’s terminology of “divulging” corresponds to that used in his anecdote about Origen who, notwithstanding the oath not to divulge Ammonius’ esoteric doctrines, nevertheless did so in On Daemons and The King Is the Only Creator. This indirectly confirms that Porphyry was speaking of the same Origen. Porphyry’s conviction that evil daemons are responsible for plagues, epidemics, and natural disasters is the same as Origen’s in Contra Celsum, which Porphyry knew. Origen was aware that spiritual plagues are worse than physical ones, that misfortunes mostly befall the just, and took over Jesus’ criticism of the ancient view of misfortunes as divine punishments for an individual or his parents or ancestors.

In the article we investigate the Christian – pagan polemic of Origen's treatise “Contra Celsum” in fragment 7.53-58, where the problem of the correlation of irony and heroism reveals the contrast between false and true deeds, for which divine honours are given. The irony that Celsus uses to attack Christians serves as a kind of “divide” that marks a contrast between pagan ideas about heroism, as a principle of deification of people, and the principles on which, from Celsus’ point of view of, Christians consider Jesus to be God. A special subject of the article is Celsus’ reflection on the ironic motive of the Book of Jonah, the story of the gourd (Jonah 4, 5-11), and the salvation of the prophet Daniel from the lion's den (Dan. 6, 16-23). Origen’s response to Celsus’ speech shows a certain similarity to the text of a pagan author in structural, stylistic and lexical aspects. Such factor reveals a rhetorical content of the response of Origen. In the field of rhetorica, Origen uses irony against his opponent: pagan heroes and philosophers now appear funny or not serious enough, whereas the Old Testament prophets are revealed as genuinely great and as a source of miracles. In light of this, Origen’s response to Celsus replaces Celsus’ ironic allusion to the gourd story from the fourth chapter of the Book of Jonah with the first verse of the second chapter, which opens the episode of Jonah’s stay in the belly of the whale. An analysis of this substitution, based on the hermeneutic principles of Origen, shows the role of Biblical irony as a specific aspect of the spiritual meaning of the sacred text. It is hypothesized that the essence of this specificity is the creation of a contrast that sets any feat of any person in the light of the historical life of Jesus Christ, who completely and exceptionally realized God's providence. This reveals a pattern or principle of going beyond the limits of human virtue to the sphere of divine being. To compare any feats with the earthly life and the death of the Saviour renders the opposition of ironic and heroic no longer a contrast between false and true: any heroism, even the exploits of the Old Testament prophets, becomes ironic / ridiculous. Thus Origen’s Christian irony is not only an instrument of rhetorical discourse, but a philosophical and literary device that allows transcending, or elevating to an unattainable level, the heroism of the life and death of the Saviour.

Damis is a character in, and his memoirs the putative source of, Philostratus' Life of Apollonius of Tyana. Many scholars have doubted the existence of these memoirs, some the very existence of the man. Against the latter party Graham Anderson has advanced an ingenious argument, which attempts to prove that the Damis whose existence has been doubted is identical with a bearer of the same name to whom existence has hardly ever been ascribed. His evidence comprises: (1) Lucian's dialogue Zeus the Tragedian, in which a certain Damis appears as the Epicurean tormentor of the popular divinities; (2) a tale now extant in mediaeval Persian, in which a philosopher named Dini performs a similar function; (3) the testimony of Origen that Moiragenes numbered among the men seduced by Apollonius ‘the illustrious Euphrates and a certain Epicurean’ (Contra Celsum 6.41). Between these reports he detects the following parallels:

Orygenes z Aleksandrii († 253), jeden z najwybitniejszych pisarzy wczesno­chrześcijańskich, w apologii Contra Celsum podjął rozważania nad teologiczną wizją państwa. Dominuje w niej idea afirmacji oraz wola współpracy dla wspólne­go dobra. W myśl nauczania biblijnego Adamantios podkreśla Boskie pochodze­nie władzy, której należy się szacunek i lojalność. W przypadku jednak nadużycia kompetencji państwa w kwestii sumienia i wyznania obywateli, chrześcijanin wi­nien bardziej słuchać Boga. Religia domaga się wolności i uszanowania jej zasad. Chrześcijaństwo nie tylko nie przeciwstawia się w swojej doktrynie założeniom państwa i jego celom, lecz może mu służyć na wielu płaszczyznach. Państwo pełniąc rolę służebną względem obywateli, do których należą chrześcijanie, sza­nując ich zasady życia, zyska przez to Boże błogosławieństwo, jak również naj­lepszych i najwartościowszych obywateli. Ideałem, który kreśli Orygenes, byłoby zbudowanie instytucji państwa na wartościach Chrystusowych, z chrześcijańskim władcą na czele. Świat rzymski, a szczególnie jego elity, muszą zrozumieć, iż chrześcijaństwo, które ciągle jest jeszcze w ogromnej mniejszości, jest pragma­tycznie potrzebne Imperium, a Imperium chrześcijaństwu. Rzym, jeśli chce oca­leć i zwyciężyć swoich wrogów, winien stać się chrześcijański. Kościół, według Scholarchy z Aleksandrii, może być źródłem scalenia i unifikacji społeczeństwa, co zawsze stanowi podstawę siły i trwałości państwa. W tym miejscu historii myśl taka była jedynie teoretycznym marzeniem. Jednak w niedługim czasie cesarz Konstantyn, który przejdzie do historii z przydomkiem Wielki, podejmie próbę urzeczywistnienia tego ideału.

The medieval dispute over the absolute and the ordered, power of God (poten­tia Dei absoluta et potentia Dei ordinata) began with a tract by Peter Damian entitled De divina omnipotentia. One of the questions posed in this work was whether God could indeed do everything, including those things that God did not in fact do. The same question, and a similar answer, appears in Origen’s work Contra Celsum: God can do everything except that which is evil. The impossibi­lity of doing evil, however, does not diminish the omnipotence of God, because evil, is by its very nature, non-being. Beyond that, Origen, in numerous statements appearing in his exegetical works, distinguishes between the absolute power of God, which is infinite, and the power of God that creates the world and operates within it, which has a certain God-given limit – that is, this power is adapted to the abilities of the creatures who receive it. The purpose of this article is to show that, in the light of the distinction of the potentia Dei absoluta and the potentia Dei or­dinata, fragments of De principiis (II 9.1 and IV 4.8), in which a finite world and finite power of God are posited, can be interpreted in a new way. Many contem­porary scholars, on the basis of these fragments, conclude that Origen inherited from the Greek philosophers a negative understanding of infinity as something imperfect, but the analysis carried out in this article shows something different. In talking about a certain range of God’s power, which is available to creatures, or in which creatures participate only partially, Origen does not actually exclude the proposition that, in God himself, power – existing in an absolute way – can be infinite.

AbstractIn spite of the efforts of prominent scholars there still remain a considerable number of textually disputed passages in Origen’s Contra Celsum. In the paper five of these are discussed, with proposals of new emendations: CC 1.57, 2.28, 3.16, 4.91, Celsus fr. VIII 28.

Abstract This paper studies the links between exegesis and polemic in Origen, focussing on the exegetical and polemical use of ἀκολουθία in two contemporary works: Commentary on Matthew and Against Celsus. After a short survey of the different meanings of the word ἀκολουθία, we will see how the pagan polemicist uses this notion. Then we will study Origen’s answer in a more thorough fashion. We will show that, as in the Commentary on Matthew, Origen uses the notion of ἀκολουθία to re-establish the dignity of the Gospels; but he also criticizes the inability of Celsus to correctly understand a text – in other words, his “lack of ἀκολουθία”. In the end, it will be clear that in Origen, the notion of ἀκολουθία is crucial both in exegesis and in polemics, and that it helps us to better understand the unity of his thought and of his works.

The Tol'doth Yeshu is a medieval Jewish antigospel which exists in various forms. Basically it says that Jesus was born illegitimate, learned the Name of God in the temple, performed miracles by pronouncing the Divine Name and finally was executed by the Jews. His body was stolen from the tomb by Yehuda the gardener, an act which led to the assertion by the disciples that he had arisen from the dead and had ascended into heaven.The date of the Tol'doth Yeshu is assigned by Krauss to c. 500 CE; it is assigned by Klausner to the tenth century. Some of the traditions it draws upon are much older since they are reflected in such writings as the Talmud and Origen's Contra Celsum.