Humanist Heritage: Opposition to Christianity in the ancient Roman world

Christianity, the religion that was to come to dominate Britain and Europe for many centuries, began in the middle east during the Roman empire with stories of a Jewish preacher whose followers after his death referred to as Jesus Christ. They enlisted non-Jewish converts, took on some ideas of Greek philosophy and of other popular cults, and progressively grew into a significant social force.

This growth was not without difficulties. The empire was religiously diverse: it contained people with beliefs in many different gods and goddesses as well as those who believed in none. But everyone within the empire was required on request to conform to the worship of the gods and of deified emperors. This involved paying at least lip service to them with oaths when called on to do so in the course of public life. Christians, like Jews, believed in only one god and were unwilling to acknowledge any others. For the first two centuries or so of their existence they risked social exclusion and official harassment as a result of their nonconformity.

In spite of (perhaps because of) their unusual beliefs and their occasional persecution, Christians continued to win converts and their social influence continued to grow. In 313, when they could no longer be marginalised, they were granted freedom of religion by emperors Licinius (c. 263-325) and Constantine (c. 272-337). In 325 Constantine, who at some point became a Christian himself, convened a meeting of Christian leaders at Nicaea in present day Turkey to settle vexed theological disputes. They produced the systematised doctrine known as the Nicene Creed and in the decades that followed the policy of the imperial state was one of tolerance for Christianity alongside its traditional cults.

Then, in 380, Christians went from being tolerated to being dominant when emperor Theodosius (347-395) issued the Edict of Thessalonica, making it compulsory within Roman lands to be a Christian (specifically a Christian who accepted the Nicene Creed: all others were officially castigated as ‘heretics’). In under a century, Christianity had gone from being a minority sect to the state religion of a continental empire.

Britain was part of the Greco-Roman culture in which Christianity developed and that culture also contained many people who resisted and opposed Christian beliefs and values. Not many of their works survived, because they were systematically destroyed by the Christian establishment in the fifth and sixth centuries, but we still have fragments of three important works: Against the Christians by Porphyry, Against the Galileans by the emperor Julian, and The True Word by Celsus. Some of the arguments made against Christianity were based on alternative superstitions but some were made on a rational basis, or in defence of humanist values and beliefs.

Celsus, who was writing around 170-180 CE, objected to Christianity because he thought it encouraged people to be ignorant, irrational, and superstitious by ordering them to ‘not ask questions, but just believe’. He also thought that the morality of Christianity was inferior compared to the tradition of ethical thinking that originated in ancient Greek philosophy. In addition, he thought that Christianity was socially harmful because Christians were boastful and arrogant and ‘value the promotion of their own beliefs more than the common good’. Celsus believed that Christianity was made up of some Jewish ideas mixed up with eastern religious ideas from Persia and India, and that Greek philosophy was a better guide to thinking about the big questions of what to believe and how to live. Celsus’ books were ordered to be destroyed by the Christian emperor Theodosius II in 435 CE.

Porphyry, who was writing around 275-300 CE, was from what is now Syria. Far less survives of his criticisms of Christianity than Celsus’, but we know that he said that the figure of Jesus was not very impressive and that he was the same as the many other conjurers of the time who performed miracles for food and money. He also said that the ‘prophecies’ described by many Christians had been faked or mis-dated.

The emperor Julian, who was writing in 361-363 CE, was the last non-Christian Roman emperor. He attempted during his reign to break the emerging monopoly power of Christianity but was unsuccessful. His writings are the least humanistic of those that have survived, being based on his own belief in other deities and in the idea that the god of the Jews was real, but just one god among many, and that Christians are really just apostates from Judaism, a religion that Julian respected. Nonetheless, Julian’s criticisms of Christianity do contain some humanistic and rational criticisms of Christianity. For example, he points out that Christians claim that their moral rules—like not to kill or not to steal—are special, but in fact almost every society and religion has them. He also points out that many of the stories which Christians claimed were literally true in their Bible were completely unbelievable.

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Opposition to Christianity in the ancient Roman world

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