This is a sample essay on Pagan Arguments against Christianity:
The Pagans persecuted the Christians and made many arguments against Christianity. Some pagans thought that Christians were atheists because they scorned the traditional pagan gods. The Christians either denied the existence of pagan gods or called them evil. The pagans, who believed in their gods just as strongly as the Christians believed in their god, feared that their gods would not look favorably upon the Roman Empire anymore because of the Christians’ blasphemy.
The pagans genuinely misunderstood the beliefs and practices of Christianity. A pagan historian named Tacitus was one of many who opposed Christianity because it was seen by the pagans as a bizarre new sect. Tacitus believed that Christians despised the human race. Tertullian spoke out against these accusations in support of Christianity. He specified what Christians would be willing and would not be willing to do in the company of their pagan neighbors. Tertullian said that despite the bad treatment the pagans gave them at times, the Christians had never retaliated. He stated that the pagans like to call the Christians enemies of the human race rather than enemies of human error. He said that Christians share a corporation based on consciousness of religion, unity of discipline, and a partnership in hope.
The early Christians mostly kept to themselves, and because of that the pagans developed a distrust and fear of them, seeing them as unsociable and subversive. The pagans also believed that the Christians were cannibals. They misunderstood their celebration of the Lord’s Supper were the Christians believed to eat and drink the body and blood of Jesus Christ. The pagans thought that this was an act of cannibalism the Christians participated in. This led the pagans to believe that the Christians openly took part in immoral and indecent rituals.
Pagan writers openly expressed how they felt about Christianity as a religion. One pagan writer was a man named Celsus. He wrote a literary attack on Christianity which expressed his ideas as to why he felt Christianity was a silly religion. Celsus could not understand why Christians seemed to believe their religion without questioning it. This was something the pagans would never do. The Christians did not ask questions, they just believed wholly in their religion. Celsus felt that Christians only wanted and were able to convince the foolish, dishonorable, and the stupid, or in other words, the women, children, and the slaves, to take part in such a silly religion. Celsus viewed Christianity as being a religion for the slaves or the lowly people.
The idea of the Incarnation to Celsus was utter foolishness. He could not understand why any god would want to become a man. He felt it was utterly absurd for the Christians to believe that god was going to send his Son to consume the righteous, and that the rest of the people would have eternal life with Him. He felt this was very foolish idea to believe in and that it was simply put “the hope of worms”.
Celsus denied the virgin birth of Jesus as well. He said that according to a Jew he spoke with, Jesus himself fabricated that whole story. He writes that Jesus came from a Jewish village and his mother was a poor country woman who earned her living by spinning. The carpenter she had been engaged to turned her out because she had been convicted of adultery with a Roman soldier, and it was the Roman soldier who had illegitimately fathered Jesus.
Celsus shared a Jew’s opinion in that it was very difficult to see Jesus as being a God when, as people perceived, he did not manifest anything in which he professed to do. Whenever the Jews had him convicted and condemned he was caught hiding himself disgracefully and had been betrayed by those whom he called his disciples. Celsus said that no good general, whom had been the leader of thousands, would ever be betrayed by his followers. Since they did betray him, however, this proved that Jesus neither ruled like a good general; nor when he had deceived his disciples, did he even inspire the men so deceived with goodwill, which robbers felt towards their chieftain.
Celsus said that while Jesus was alive his preaching only succeeded in winning over ten sailors and some tax-collectors which were the lowest of the low in the society. Celsus said that Jesus failed in convincing anybody while he was alive, with the exception of some of the low people in the society. Celsus could also never believe that Jesus was God because if he really was God he would have been able to save himself but he did not.
Celsus attitude towards the resurrection was one of great skepticism. He is stated that the resurrection could not have happened and nobody had been there to witness it, well no reliable witness anyway. The only witness of Jesus’ resurrection was a woman whom Celsus dismissed as being just a hysterical female under the influence of sorcery and certainly not a credible witness. Celsus believed that had Jesus really wanted to show his divine power, he would have appeared to the men who treated him despitefully, and to the men that condemned him and to everyone everywhere.
Christian men writing replies that disputed the pagan writings in support of Christianity were also common. The man who wrote a reply against Celsus was a man named Origen. In Origen’s reply, he states that Celsus criticized the teacher also for seeking the stupid. But he asks Celsus whom is it that he was calling stupid? Origen says that every bad man is stupid…but if ‘stupid’ really refers to those who are not clever but superstitious, then Origen would do everything in his power to improve these people. The cleverer minded people are able to understand the explanation of problems and of the hidden truths set forth in the law, the prophets, and the gospels. Origen points out that Celsus despised these people as if they were not important at all, but Celsus did not take the time to examine the personal meaning of these people. Origen goes on to say that the disciples would not have died for a lie and their very writings proved the devotion they all had. He explains that a man who examines the facts with an open mind would say that these men would not have given themselves up to a carefree existence for the sake of Jesus’ teaching unless they had some deep conviction which he had implanted upon them that they should not live only according to his precepts but should also influence others. Origen proves the existence of the resurrection from the argument from the behavior of the disciples, who devoted themselves to teaching which a risk to their lives was. He suggested that if they had simply made the story of Jesus rising from the dead, they would not have taught in the spirit with which they did. They also prepared others to despise death and they greatly despised it too.
Origen had a clever response to Celsus’s comment about how the disciples were unable to conceal the self-evident fact, and they got this idea by saying Jesus knew about things before they happened. He said that Celsus simply did not pay attention, nor did he want to. The writers with their honest intentions affirmed all the predictions mad by Jesus. If these writers were not honest, but writing untrue stories, as Celsus believed, they would not have recorded such things as Peter’s denial or the fact Jesus’ disciples were offended.
Origen stated that the whole human world has evidence of the work of Jesus since in it dwell the churches of God which consist of people saved by Jesus from all kinds of evils. God sent Jesus to destroy the whole conspiracy of demons and everywhere in the world so that men might be converted and reformed. He made the gospels of Jesus successful. Although there was much debate over Him, there is at least one true fact that Origen states about Him that everybody could agree on, and that was that He may have come from very humble beginnings, but he still possessed the ability to have made a massive impact on the whole human world. The impact Jesus made was greater than Themistocles the Athenian, and even more than Pythagoras and Plato, any even more than any other wise man, emperor, or general anywhere in the world.
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