In the earliest centuries of the church, the burgeoning Christian movement had its fair share of critics. And their complaints were wide and varied. Christians worshipped a criminal crucified by the Romans. Christians were a threat to the empire because of their refusal to pay homage to the gods. Christian books were filled with errors and contradictions. Jesus was a magician who learned his dark arts in Egypt. And so on.
Of all the early critics (and there were many), Celsus was undoubtedly the most strident. Writing in the latter half of the second century, Celsus was a Greek Philosopher who penned one of the earliest sustained critiques of Christianity called True Doctrine. So impactful were his criticisms, the later church father Origen felt compelled to write a full-length response.
The reason Celsus was so effective in his criticism is because he actually knew quite a bit about early Christians and their doctrines. He clearly knew the canonical Gospels and drew from them heavily. And he was intimately aware of Christian beliefs and practices. Unlike some other critics of the time, Celsus was relatively well-informed about what Christians were actually like.
While I have interacted with Celsus quite a bit over the years, I was recently reading through his True Doctrine again. And I was surprised by one of his critiques that I had never really noticed before.
Celsus did not reject Christianity merely because he found historical problems in the Gospels or found the idea of incarnation to be incoherent. He found the Christian religion to be problematic also because of the degree to which Christians fought and argued with one another.
For Celsus, these were no minor squabbles. He saw the early Christian movement as characterized by their in-fighting. Here are Celsus’s own words:
At the start of their movement, they [Christians] were very few in number, and unified in purpose. Since that time, they have spread all around and now number in the thousands. It is not surprising, therefore, that there are divisions among them-factions of all sorts, each wanting to have its own territory. Nor is it surprising that as these divisions have become so numerous, the various parties have taken to condemning each other, so that today they have only one thing-if that-in common: the name “Christian.”
From Celsus’s perspective, it seems that Christians began as a more unified and coherent movement, only to devolve into a movement of division and disputes. And, for Celsus, this was a major reason to reject the Christian movement: “Now, it will be wondered how men so disparate in their beliefs can persuade others to join their ranks.”
In other words, the lack of unity among Christians is, at least in Celsus’s mind, a reason why people might not want to join them, himself included.
Now, to be clear, some of Celsus’s perceptions are driven by the existence of heretical groups within the early Christian movement that caused some of these divisions and discord. The orthodox Christians were (rightly) fighting against Gnostics or Marcionites for the soul of Christianity, and Celsus probably witnessed some of these disagreements. He would not have understood that some fights between Christians are necessary.
Moreover, we should remember that Celsus was no fair-minded critic. He was always looking for ways to pile onto Christianity and was well known for his tendency toward exaggeration and rhetorical flourish.
Even so, we know from sources other than Celsus that Christians in these early centuries were divided over a great many things. And these were not always weighty issues of “heresy” vs. “orthodoxy.” One notable example comes from the very century in which Celsus wrote. Debate raged among Christians throughout the second century over the proper date of Easter. At one point it became so heated that Victor, the bishop of Rome, even tried to excommunicate churches who disagreed with his side (thankfully, he was unsuccessful).
Thus, it seems Celsus’s perception of Christian in-fighting may be driven by more than merely the existence of genuine heresies. From his perspective, it seemed that Christians fought over, well, just about everything.
But there’s another statement by Celsus that may provide even greater clarity about why he finds Christian in-fighting so bothersome. Again, he writes:
Christians, it is needless to say, utterly detest each other; they slander each other constantly with the vilest forms of abuse, and cannot come to any sort of agreement in their teaching.
Here is where we come to the nub of the matter, I think. Celsus was concerned not merely about the degree to which Christians disagreed (though he was), but the manner in which they disagreed. For him, Christians really didn’t seem to like each other very much. Indeed, they detested each other. They even mistreated each other.
Regardless of what we make of Celsus, this was his perception of Christians. And if perception is even marginally accurate, then it nearly the opposite of what Jesus taught when he told the disciples, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
Perhaps, then, there is something to be learned from the story of Celsus. As wrong as he was about a great many things, he was certainly right about one thing: the witness of Christianity is affected by the way Christians treat each other.
Simply put, Celsus reminds us that the world may be watching more than we think.
The point here is not that Christians should just cease all theological debate and pretend differences don’t matter. No, as already noted, some truths are so central to faith that they are worth battling over.
At the same time, it is also true that the way we engage those battles makes an enormous difference to our public witness. It’s hard to convince someone the love of Christ is real, if the love of Christians for one another is not.