Quotes About Celsus

Celsus, in common with most of the Grecians, looked upon Christianity as a blind faith, that shunned the light of reason. In speaking of the Christians, he says: "They are forever repeating: 'Do not examine. Only believe, and thy faith will make thee blessed. Wisdom is a bad thing in life; foolishness is to be preferred.'" [272:1]

Celsus was the first known person to realize that this non-political, quietist, and pacifist community had it in its power to transform the social and political order of the empire.

The granddaddy of all countercultures, of course, was early Christianity itself. And in a polemic written in the 2nd century by the Greek philosopher Celsus, we have a marvelous document of the bewilderment and incomprehension with which Greco-Roman rationalists of the early Christian era viewed this counterculture.