“Let Them Not Share in the Affairs of Life”: How Ancient Christians Were Viewed as Dangerous to Society
Celsus “just can’t stand Christians.”
So, writes James O’Donnell (Pagans, 101) as he describes the vicious opposition to Christians in the earliest centuries, particularly from the second-century critic Celsus.
A few weeks ago, I began a short, three-part blog series about what people in the ancient world thought of Christians. In the prior post, we explored how Celsus viewed Christians as ignorant, uneducated simpletons.
In other words, one of the main problems with Christians was intellectual in nature.
But Celsus is by no means finished. In this post, we will see that he thinks that Christians also have a behavioral problem. Their actions are rude, anti-social, and … Continue reading...