- Apologie, II, 13.
[The reference should read: Justin Martyr Apologie 2.13.—Trans.] - Apologie, I, 44, 59; Tatian, Oratio ad Graecos, 40; Minucius Felix, [Octavius,] 34; Tertullian, Apologeticum, 47; Clément d’Alexandria, Stromates, I, 28; VI, 44; VI, 153; VI,
159. - Justin Martyr, Apologie, II, 13, 8, 10.
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue avec Tryphon 16, 17, 108, 122, etc.; Apologie, I, 31–36. [The English title of the former work is Dialogue with Trypho.—Trans.]
- Dialogue with Trypho, 63 and sq
B. The Resistance
At the same time, forms of resistance were also developing. We know, besides, of Tertullian’s contempt regarding all pagan thought. Tatian84 and Hermias85 are also apostles of this particularist movement. But Christianity’s most natural tendency is to extend itself, so the resistances of which we speak are those of the pagans. We can say without contradiction that these resistances contributed a great deal to the victory of Christianity. P. de Labriolle86 strongly insists on the fact that the pagans at the end of the second century and at the beginning of the third apply themselves to diverting the religious enthusiasm of the period toward figures and personalities reproduced on the model of Christ.87This idea had already occurred to Celsus when he opposed Asclepius, Hercules, or Bacchus to Jesus. But this soon became a polemical system. At the beginning of the third century, Philostratus wrote the marvelous history of Apollonius of Tyana, which seems on many points to imitate the Scriptures.88Afterward, Socrates, Pythagoras, Hercules, Mithra, the sun, and the emperors would divert the favor of the Greco-Roman world and represent alternatively a pagan Christ. The method had its dangers and its advantages, but nothing better shows how well the Greeks had understood the strength and the appeal of the new religion. But this christianization of a decadent Hellenism also proves that the resistances were ingeniously made. And here again we see the necessity for Christianity to use its angles, to show to advantage its great dogmas on eternal life and the nature of God, and also to introduce in them metaphysics. That, in short, was the role of the Apologists. Moreover, they are not mistaken about it. This attempt at assimilation came from the highest levels. It goes back to Paul, born in Tarsus, a university and
- Oratio ad graecos (165).
[Address to the Greeks.—Trans.] - Irrisio gentilium philosophorum (IIIe siècle). [Mockery of the Heathen Philosophers.—Trans.] 86. La Réaction païenne, second part, ch. II.
- Cf. Boissier, La Religion romaine, preface, vol. I, IX: “Paganism tries to reform itself on the model of the religion that threatens it and which it combats.”
[The title of Boissier’s work is La Fin du paganisme.—Trans.] - Compare above all the episode of Ja’irus’s daughter (Luke 7:40) and the Vie d’Apollonius, IV, 45 (p. 184 of Chassaing’s translation).
[The reference to the story in Luke should read: Luke 8:40. The Latin title of the latter text is Vita Apollonii, or in English, The Life of Apollonius.—Trans.]
Hellenic city. In Philo it is particularly clear, but he takes a Jewish point of view. We have noted it in the Apologists alone because this is the first time in history that this movement assumes a coherent and collective form. Let us look only at the resulting problems.
C. The Problems
From this combination of evangelical faith with Greek metaphysics arose the Christian dogmas. Moreover, steeped in the atmosphere of religious tension, Greek philosophy gave rise to Neoplatonism.
But the thing was not made in a day. If it is true that the oppositions between Christian and Greek ideas were softened by the cosmopolitanism that we have noted, nevertheless some antinomies indeed remained; it was necessary to reconcile creation “ex nihilo,” which excluded the hypothesis of matter, with the perfection of the Greek god, which implied the existence of this matter. The Greek spirit saw the difficulty of a perfect and immutable God creating the temporal and imperfect. As Saint Augustine wrote about this problem much later: “So then it is difficult to contemplate and have full knowledge of God’s substance, which without any change in itself makes things that change, and without any passage of time in itself creates things that exist in time.”89 In other words, history made it necessary that Christianity deepen itself if it wanted to be universalized. This was to create a metaphysics.
Now there is no metaphysics without a minimum of rationalism. Intelligence is powerless to renew its themes when sentiment endlessly varies its nuances. The effort of reconciliation inherent in Christianity will be to humanize and intellectualize its sentimental themes and to restore thought from these confines wherein it was struggling. This is because to explain is to a certain extent to have influence. This effort of reconciliation will therefore diminish slightly the disproportion between God and man that Christianity had established. It seems, on the contrary, that, in its beginnings, Christian thought, under the influence of the values of death and passion and the dread of sin
- De Trinitate, I, 1, 3: “Il est difficile de comprendre la substance de Dieu qui fait des choses changeantes sans en éprouver aucun changement et des choses temporelles sans se mouvoir aucunement dans le Temps.”
[Saint Augustine, On the Trinity, 1.1, 3, in The Works of Saint Augustine, vol. 5, ed. J. E. Rotelle, trans. E. Hill (Brooklyn: New City Press, 1991), 66.—Trans.]
and punishment, had arrived at the point where, as Hamlet says, time is out of joint. Intelligence must now give Christian thought its passage.
This was the task, in rather weak measure, of the first theological systems, those of Clement of Alexandria and Origen, as well as of the councils, in reaction against heresies, and above all of Saint Augustine. But, at precisely this point, Christian thought shifts. Christianity entered into a new phase in which it was a question of knowing whether it was losing its profound originality in order better to popularize itself, whether on the contrary it would sacrifice its power of expansion to its need for purity, or whether it would finally achieve a reconciliation of these equally natural concerns. But its evolution was not harmonious. It followed dangerous paths that taught it prudence. These were the paths of Gnosticism. Gnosticism made use of Neoplatonism and its convenient structures in order to accommodate religious thought. Permanently detached from Judaism, Christianity filtered into Hellenism through the door that Oriental religions were holding open. And upon that altar of the unknown God,90 which Paul had encountered in Athens, several centuries of Christian speculation would be devoted to erecting the image of the Savior on the cross.
- Acts 17:16.
Chapter Two Gnosis
If we accept as an established fact this christianization of the Hellenic Mediterranean, we must consider the Gnostic heresy as one of the first attempts at Greco-Christian collaboration. Gnosticism is actually a Greek reflection upon Christian themes.1That is why it was repudiated both by the Greeks and by the Christians. Plotinus writes “against those who say that the . . . universe is evil.”2 And what Tertullian reproaches the Gnostics with in the Adversus Marcionem (as Saint Augustine did much later with the Manichaeans) is believing that they can attach to the Gospel a rational explanation. Nevertheless, it is true that the Gnostics were Christians. We find in them the theme of Incarnation. The problem of evil obsessed them. They have understood completely the originality of the New Testament and therefore of
- [Camus offers a similar account of Gnosticism in his discussion of the origins of metaphysical rebellion in The Rebel, 32–33. The principal difference in that analysis lies in his assessment of the movement. In The Rebel Camus argues that Gnosticism was an essentially positive attempt to overcome the arbitrariness of the Christian idea of salvation by means of the Greek notion of initiation: “The Gnostics only wanted to substitute the Greek idea of initiation, which allows mankind every possible chance, for the concept of an allpowerful and arbitrary forgiveness” (33).]
- Plotinus, Ennead, II, 9: “contre ceux qui disent que le monde est mauvais.”
[This remark, which Camus indicates is taken from Ennead 2.9, is actually an alternative title of the text which Porphyry offers in his Life of Plotinus. The full title reads as follows: “Against those who say that the maker of the universe is evil and the universe is evil.” See the introductory note of Plotinus, Ennead, 2.9, ed. T. E. Page, trans. A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), 220.—Trans.]
Redemption. But rather than considering Christ made flesh and symbolizing suffering humanity, they incarnate only a mythology. When it comes to these authentic postulates of Christianity, the Gnostics devoted themselves to the subtle games of the Greek spirit. And upon the few simple and passionate aspirations of Christianity they build, as upon so many sturdy pillars, the whole setting of a metaphysical kermess. But a difficulty arises on this historical plane.
The Gnostic schools follow one another for more than two centuries.3Several Gnostic generations have speculated in divergent directions. Valentinus and Basilides are spirits as different, relatively speaking, as Plato and Aristotle. How then are we to define Gnosticism? This is a difficulty that we have already encountered. If it is true that we can only define several gnosticisms, it is possible nevertheless to characterize one gnosis. The first Gnostic generation,4that of Basilides, Marcion, and Valentinus, created the web upon which their disciples embroidered. A small number of common themes will be sufficient in order to catch a glimpse of this heretical solution. Historically, in fact, Gnosticism is a philosophical and religious instruction, given to the initiated, based upon Christian dogmas mingled with pagan philosophy, which assimilated all that was splendid and brilliant in
