apostolicfathers0201clem - Carmel Apologetics

530 EPISTLE OF S. POLYCARP.
It would be impossible to give all the passages from this writer which are quoted
or referred to by Origan c. Celsuvi ; and a selection would be unsatisfactory. I have
therefore contented myself with a single sentence bearing on the persecutions.
The date of Celsus is uncertain. He has been placed by one critic as early as
Nero, and by another as late as a.d. 240. This last date is plainly impossible,
since he
wrote many years before Origen {c. Cels. praef. 4 ijS koI naXa.i veKpov). Keim {Celsus'
Wahres IVori p. 261 sq, 1873) dates the work a.d. 176—178; and this view has found
considerable favour with subsequent writers, e.g. Funk T/ieol. Quartahch. 1886,
Ixviii. p. 302 sq (see below, p. 535). It is accepted in the main for instance by Aube
{La Polemupie Paiennc p. 164 sq, 1878), who places it
during the joint reign of
M. Aurelius and Commodus (a.d. 176—180). Renan also [Marc-Aurele p. 345 sq)
takes this view. The chief ground for this date is the identification of this Celsus
with the Celsus to whom Lucian dedicates his Alexander, written after the death of M.
Aurelius (a.d. 180). Pelgaud however [Etude siir Celse p. 151 sq, Lyon 1878), while
rejecting this identification, nevertheless adopts substantially the same date. Is there
adequate ground for this identification
Origen declares himself wholly ignorant who the writer of the work before him
was. He had not seen it before it was sent to him by his friend Ambrosius with a
request that he would answer it (praef.).
He knows of only two literary persons
bearing the name Celsus who can come under consideration, both Epicureans,
the one
under Nero, the other under Hadrian and subsequent emperors (K-ara 'AdpLavbv Kal
KaTWTipui, i. 8). As the former was too early, he assumes that the latter must be the
person in question. In fact, he arrives at this result by a process of exhaustion. This
latter Celsus is doubtless the same to whom Lucian dedicates his work, and whom we
may infer from Lucian's language to have been an Epicurean (Alexander 25, 43, 61).
Origen speaks of him as having written against magic {c. Cels. i. 68) ;
and in like
manner Lucian ascribes such a work to his friend Celsus [Alexander 21). But the
writer of the 'True Word' is anything but an Epicurean.
He may be described
roughly as a Platonist eclectic. Moreover, so far from deriding magic, he evidently
regards it with favour [c. Cels. i. 68). All this puzzles Origen exceedingly (e.g. iv.
54), He can only suppose that Celsus is playing a part, that he may
assail Christianity
from the vantage ground of a more respectable philosophy. This supposition
however is highly incredible. A man known to be an Epicurean would have fatally
discredited himself as a controversialist, if he had feigned himself a Platonist for the
purposes of controversy.
This identification therefore must be discarded ;
and we must regard Celsus as an
otherwise unknown person.
We are thus left without any direct clue to the date.
In the absence of decisive evidence, great stress has been laid by three of the writers
already mentioned, Keim, Aube, and Pelgaud, as well as by several others, on a reference
which they discover to a divided sovereignty. Celsus writes (viii. 71),
ov ixrjv om
eKelvo dveKTOv aov XiyovTos ws, dv oi vvu pacri\etjovT€s 7]/j.Qi> coi ireLdOivTes oKwai,
Tovs au^ts ^aaiXevovTas TraVeis. This, it is supposed, can only refer to a jointempire
such as that of M. Aurelius and L. Verus a few years earlier (a.d. 161— 169),
and that of M. Aurelius and Commodus at the time when this treatise is
supposed
to have been written (a.d. 177—180). If the passage had stood alone, the argument
might have had a certain very slight value. But elsewhere Celsus uses the
sino-ular (viii. 73 TrpoTpiireTaL tj/jloLs 6 KAcros dpriyeiv t 1$ /SairtXeZ Travrl adivei).
This language however might be explained on the ground that M. Aurelius alone was
in command of the army at the time. But there are other passages which will not