give up the mad idea of winning the authorities over to their faith,
or of hoping to attain anything like universal agreement on divine
things.

The philosophy of Celsus

Celsus and Porphyry (q.v.) are the two early literary opponents of
Christianity who have most claim to consideration, and it is worth
noticing that, while they agree alike in high aims, in skilful address
and in devoted toil, their religious standpoints are widely dissimilar.
Porphyry is above all a pure philosopher, but also a man of deep
religious feeling, whose quest and goal are the knowledge of God;
Celsus, the friend of Lucian, though sometimes called Epicurean and
sometimes Platonist, is not a professed philosopher at all, but a man of
the world, really at heart an agnostic, like Caecilius in Minucius Felix
(q.v.), whose religion is nothing more or less than the Empire. He is
keen, positive, logical, combining with curious dashes of scepticism
many genuine moral convictions and a good knowledge of the various
national religions and mythologies whose relative value he is able to
appreciate. "His manner of thought is under the overpowering influence
of the eclectic Platonism of the time, and not of the doctrine of the
Epicurean school. He is a man of the world, of philosophic culture, who
accepts much of the influential Platonism of the time but has absorbed
little of its positive religious sentiment. In his antipathy to
Christianity, which appears to him barbaric and superstitious, he gives
himself up to the scepticism and satire of a man of the world through
which he comes in contact with Epicurean tendencies." He quotes
approvingly from the _Timaeus_ of Plato: "It is a hard thing to find out
the Maker and Father of this universe, and after having found him it is
impossible to make him known to all." Philosophy can at best impart to
the fit some notion of him which the elect soul must itself develop. The
Christian on the contrary maintained that God is known to us as far as
need be in Christ, and He is accessible to all. Another sharp antithesis
was the problem of evil. Celsus made evil constant in amount as being
the correlative of matter. Hence his scorn of the doctrine of the
resurrection of the body held then in a very crude form, and his
ridicule of any attempt to raise the vulgar masses from their
degradation. The real root of the difficulty to Platonist as to Gnostic
was his sharp antithesis of form as good and matter as evil.