Gods and the One God

Library of Early Christianity

Wayne A. Meeks, General Editor
Gods and the One God
Robert M. Grant

The Westminster Press

Philadelphia
 —

© 1986 Robert M. Grant

All rights reserved —no part of this book may be reproduced in any form without
permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to
quote brief passages in connection with a review in magazine or newspaper.

Scripture quotations from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible are copy-
righted 1946, 1952, © 1971, 1973 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. and are used by
permission.

Book design by Gene Harris

First edition

Published by The Westminster Press

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( )

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

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Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Grant, Robert McQueen, 1917-

Gods and the one God.

(Library of early Christianity ; 1)

Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
1. Gods, Greek. God —History of doctrines—Early
church, ca. 30-600. 3. —
Jesus Christ History of
—
doctrines Early church, ca. 30-600. 4. Trinity
—
History of doctrines Early church, ca. 30-600.
I. Title. II. Series.
BL785.G69 1986 261. 2'2 85-11443
ISBN 0-664-21905-5
I dedicate this book to Peggy,
intrepid companion and surveyor
of the Roman world.
We know that “an idol has no real
existence” and that “there is no God but
one.” For although there may be
so-called gods in heaven or on earth as —
indeed there are many “gods” and many
“lords” —yet for us there is one God, the
Father, from whom are all things and for
whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus
Christ,through whom are all things and
through whom we exist.

1 Corinthians 8:4-6 (RSV)

 .

'
 1

Contents

Foreword by Wayne A. Meeks 13

Preface 15

PART ONE: Early Christians and Pagan Gods

1. Gods in the Book of Acts 19
Paul at Athens 19
Paul and Paganism Generally 20
Paul, Gods, and Goddesses 22

2. Mediterranean Religions Westward 29

Puteoli on the Way to Rome 29
Gods from Asia Minor to Rome 32
Gods of Egypt to Greece and Rome 34
The Advent of Dionysus 39
The Persian Mithras Westward 40
Roman Religion and Judaism 41

PART TWO: Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

3. Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry 45

and History 45
Idolatry in Conflict
Paul as Opponent of
Idolatry 46
The Theology of Paul in Acts 49
Theology in the Preaching of Peter 5
Theology in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul 52
Pagan and Christian Worship 53

4. Functions of Gods and Goddesses 54

Claims for the Gods 54
Epiphanies of the Gods 54
10 Contents

Praises of the Gods 56

What Did People Generally Think? 57
Deified Emperors 60

5. The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 62

Zeus 62
Children of Zeus 62
Heroes 66
Oriental Gods 69

PART THREE: Basic Doctrines

6. The Philosophical Doctrine of God 75

Anticipations Among the Pre-Socratics 76
Xenophanes the Critical Theologian 76
Zeus as King of Gods and Men 77
Cosmic Theology in the Treatise On the Universe 78
Plutarch’s Doctrine of God 79
Later Middle Platonists 79
Rhetoricians and Satirists 81

7. God
Christian Doctrines of 84
The Creator God of Judaism 84
The Cosmic Yahweh and Philosophy 84
Did Philo’s Basic Doctrine Come
from Philosophy? 85
Early Gnostic Theology 86
The Christian Apologists from Justin
to Theophilus 87
Irenaeus and the Influence of Xenophanes 89
Clement of Alexandria 90
Origen on God 91
A Change in Origen’s Position? 92
8. Christ: Deeds and Names 95
Miracles 95
Beginnings of Christology 98
Christology in the Second
and Third Centuries 105

9. The Cosmic Christ 112

Christ in Paul’s Creed 112
Middle Platonism, Gnosticism,
and Christianity 113
Cosmic Interpretation of Pagan Gods 114
Contents 11

Greek Gods: Sons and Daughters of Zeus 1 14

Cosmic Deeds of the Hero Gods 118
Oriental Cosmic Deities 120

10. Divergent Christologies at Antioch 124

Traces of Early “Low” Christology
at Antioch 124
“Low” Christologies Attacked by Ignatius 125
Between Ignatius and Theophilus: Tatian 126
Theophilus and the “Low” Christology 128
Serapion and the Memory of Peter 133
Paul of Samosata as Traditionalist 133
Marcellus of Ancyra 134
The “Low” Christology and the Ebionites 135
11. Also the Holy Spirit 136
The Spirit in the Bible 136
The Spirit and the Conception
of Jesus 141
Spirit in the Apostolic Fathers
and the Apologists 143
The Montanists and Ecstatic Prophecy 145
Alexandria and After 148

12. Three Gods in One 150

The Three 150
The Three in One 156

13. Creeds and Cult 164

Affirmations of Faith 164
The Trinity and the Creeds 166
The Idea of Unity Against Diversity 169

Notes 177

Reading List 201

Index 207
•>
Foreword

This series of books is an exercise in taking down fences. For

many years the study of ancient Christianity, and especially of the
New Testament, has suffered from isolation, but happily that situa-
tion is changing. For a variety of reasons, we have begun to see a
convergence of interests and, in some instances, real collaboration
by scholars across several academic boundaries: between Roman
historians and historians of Christianity, between New Testament
scholars and church historians, between historians of Judaism and
of Christianity, between historical and literary scholars.
The Library of Early Christianity harvests the fruit of such collab-
oration, in several areas in which fresh approaches have changed the
prevailing view of what the early Christians were like. Much of what
is presented here has not been brought together in this fashion

before. In order to make this information as accessible as possible,

we have not burdened the books with the sort of argument and
documentation that is necessary in scholarly monographs, in which
such new work is ordinarily presented. On the other hand, the
authors do not condescend to their readers. Students in colleges
and seminaries and at more advanced levels will find in these books
an opportunity to participate in a conversation at the growing edge
of current scholarship.
The common perspective of the series is that of social history.
Both words of the phrase are equally important. The objects of
study are the living Christian communities of the early centuries in
their whole environment: not just their ideas, not only their leaders
and heroes. And the aim is to understand those communities as they
—
believed, thought, and acted then and there not to “explain” them
by some supposedly universal laws of social behavior.
The opponents of early Christianity often denounced the new cult
as “a superstition” and its members as “atheists.” From our per-

13
14 Foreword

spective that seems odd. In what ways did the Christians fail to seem
“religious” to their neighbors? What did ordinary people believe
about the gods? What did they do about it, and what did the gods
do for them? Was the Jewish notion of the One God really so
strange to educated “pagans”? And were the angels and demons in
which many Jews and most Christians believed so different from the
polytheism of the “pagans”? Did the theology of Greco-Roman
paganism as well as of traditional Judaism contribute to the making
of the distinctive Christian doctrines of the Person of Christ and the
Trinity? Robert M. Grant has attacked these questions and others
with rare clarity.

Wayne A. Meeks
General Editor
Preface

In this book we start with the early Christian movement, espe-

cially as described in Acts, and fill in the story of religious conflict
from some of our information about other religions and their theo-
logical ideas. Finally we trace the rise of Christian theology and
some of its relations to its environment. The upshot is neither
institutional historynor doctrinal history but a mixture of both.
Members of a class who heard most of
the manuscript tended to
divide into pagans and Christians, though they might have done so
without the readings.
For the New Testament I have used, with or without modification,
the Revised Standard Version. The quotations of Plutarch and Lu-
cian are reprinted from the Loeb Classical Library by permission of
the Harvard University Press; and all translations, with or without
minor revision, of Origen’s Contra Celsum come from Henry Chad-
wick’s translation, by permission of the Cambridge University Press.
The abbreviated names of periodicals and collections generally
follow the example set by the Oxford Classical Dictionary.

R. M. G.

15
 PART ONE
Early Christians
and Pagan Gods
 1

Gods in the Book of Acts

Paul at Athens

If you lived in the Roman empire during the first century of our
era or the second, especially perhaps in the eastern half of it, you

would probably share the sentiment that Luke ascribes to the apos-
tle Paul when he stood at the foot of the Acropolis in Athens. “Men
of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious
(deisidaimones)" (Acts 17:22). The Greek word is ambiguous, but in
a character sketch on deisidaimonia the philosopher Theophrastus
defines it as “a sort of cowardice with respect to the divine” and
describes many practices that he, like us, would classify as supersti-
tious. After him the Roman Stoic Seneca wrote a dialogue, On Super-
stition, of which the Christians Tertullian and Augustine were fond

because it was in Latin and went farther in denigrating pagan reli-

gion. Plutarch too wrote to show that superstition was worse than
atheism.
On the other hand, the word could have
a descriptive or even
favorable sense, and that probably how Paul is described as using
is

it. He was trying to win the favor of his audience, not lose it, even
1

though “his spirit was provoked within him as he saw that the city
was full of idols” (Acts 17:16). The modem traveler is likely not to
be provoked but to share the awe felt by both Greeks and Romans
when they saw the magnificent buildings that expressed the reli-
gious sentiments of Greeks and foreigners alike. At the top of the
Acropolis was the fifth-century b.c. Parthenon with its statue of
Pallas Athena by Phidias —
now known only from copies or imita-
tions. Below could be noted the huge temple of Zeus Olympios,
begun in the sixth century b.c. and still not quite finished. Its 56-
foot columns owed something to foreign kings such as the famous
Antiochus Epiphanes; even Roman robbery in the last years of the
19
20 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

republic had left them largely intact. Throughout the city were
countless smaller shrines.
The ambivalence, to rate no higher, of Paul was like the ambiva-
it

lence prevalent in Greek society from the sixth century b.c. On the
one hand, religious art and architecture reached their peak in the
fifth century b.c. The Doric order, especially characteristic of Greek

temples, and the Ionic flourished in this century, and toward the end
of it Corinthian (for Zeus Olympios) was developed from Ionic.
Phidias was especially famous for his statues of the gods. On the
other hand there were sophists, philosophers, and politicians who
felt free to criticize the cults and their artistic expressions. Hera-

clitus and Xenophanes attacked anthropomorphic ideas of the gods.

Trials were held at Athens for what was in effect “heresy.” 2 Anax-
agoras and Protagoras were accused of impiety because of their
ideas about astronomy. Diagoras was under attack because he was
an atheist who revealed part of the Eleusinian mysteries. Socrates
was accused of not worshiping the city’s gods and of introducing
new ones. Within a century, however, civic “heresy” acquired a new
shade of meaning. After the death of Alexander the Great, those
who had favored deifying him or others were suspect. Demades was
fined and Aristotle fled, casting suspicion on his pupil Theophras-
tus, who was acquitted.
These ambiguities show that the situation was rather more com-
plex than the sermons of Paul against idolatry would suggest. The
Stoic Chrysippus thought that anthropomorphic sculpture was
childish, while Plutarch criticized superstitious people who had im-
ages made and dressed them and worshiped them. 3

Paul and Paganism Generally

The book of Acts tells of encounters of Paul with both Greek and
oriental paganism. First, at Salamis on Cyprus the apostle met a
Jewish magician named Bar-Jesus, or Elymas (Eleim), and blinded
him, thus producing the conversion of the Roman proconsul (Acts
13:6-12). Even more striking, when Paul cured a cripple at Lystra
in Asia Minor, astonished crowds cried out in their native
Lycaonian, “The gods have come down to us in the likeness of
men!” They identified Barnabas with Zeus (evidently he was tall and
stately), “and Paul, because he was the chief speaker, they called
Hermes.” The priest of the Zeus whose temple was before the city
joined the crowds, bringing oxen and garlands to the gates in order
to offer sacrifice (Acts 14:8-13). The two missionaries were barely
able to prevent the sacrifice, giving instead a brief homily on the
Gods in the Book of Acts 21

providence of the living creator God (Acts 14:15-17; cf. 17:22-31).

In a third case, at Philippi in Macedonia, Paul drove out “a spirit
of divination” from a slave girl who formerly had been profitable to
her owners. They stirred up a crowd to attack Paul and Silas, who
were beaten and imprisoned in spite of their Roman citizenship but
then released (Acts 16:16-40). Acts tells that when Paul was at
Athens he conversed with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers and
preached a sermon based on religiosity but aimed against idolatry.
His text came from an altar inscription supposedly reading “To an
unknown god,” and Paul proceeded to make the unknown known:
the god is the Creator who does not live in shrines. He is not “like
gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination
ofman” (Acts 17:22-31). 4
The most significant encounter took place at Ephesus, where
controversy arose because of a silversmith who attacked Paul for
winning converts and decreasing the revenues from “silver shrines
of Artemis.” There was danger, the silversmith said, not only to his
fellow craftsmen but also to the prestige of the goddess “whom all
Asia and the world worship.” The other smiths offered the shout of
loyalty “Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!” and a riot led to a mass
meeting in the theater. Two of Paul’s companions were forced to go
there, but the Asiarchs, important local officials, kept Paul from
attending. When a Jew, or perhaps a Jewish Christian, tried to
defend him, the mob drowned him out by shouting “Great is Arte-
mis of the Ephesians!” for two hours. The town clerk then asked
them, “Who does not know that the city of the Ephesians is temple
keeper of the great Artemis, and of the sacred stone that fell from
the sky?” In his view the prestige of the goddess had not been
harmed by the Christians, and they were “neither sacrilegious nor
blasphemers of our goddess.” Any legal problems that may have
existed were related only to the silversmiths’ craft (Acts 19:23-41).
Finally we are given a bit of ancient folklore in the story of a
Maltese viper that fastened on Paul’s hand but did not bite him. The
natives imagined that Paul was a murderer punished by Justice for
his crime. After Paul shook off the viper “they waited, expecting him
to swell up or suddenly fall down dead; but when they had waited
a long time and saw no misfortune come to him, they changed their
minds and said that he was a god” (Acts 28:3-6).
These six examples provide a wide geographical range through-
out the eastern Mediterranean world. They also depict diverse
forms of encounter and presumably supply a fairly representative
picture of paganism in conflict with Christianity. The motives in-
volved are varied. Cypriot magic is due simply to deceit and villainy.
22 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

The Lycaonians respond to Paul’s miracle with naive enthusiasm,

though perhaps the priest of Zeus was not so naive. The spirit of
divination at Philippi is a source of income to slave owners, and they
want to keep it. The Athenians supposedly spend their time “in
nothing except telling or hearing something new” and inadvertently
compare Paul with Socrates (Acts 17:21, 18). The Ephesians defend
Artemis for civic and financial reasons. Finally, the pagan analysis
of the Maltese viper is simply mistaken. When the Maltese get a
better idea of Paul they fall into another error however and, like the
Lycaonians, regard Paul as a god.
In these stories told by Luke there is no direct denunciation of
paganism, though magic and divination are self-evidently wrong.
The Lycaonians wrongly identify apostles with gods, but all that the
apostles need to do is insist that they are men “of like nature with
you.” The encounter at Athens begins negatively, with Paul pro-
voked by the sight of idols, and ends ambiguously, with some
Athenians converted and some not. The Ephesian silversmith who
defends his trade and the goddess is not criticized as dishonest or
particularly greedy. The story simply sets forth plausible motives for
opposition to the Christian mission and makes a distinction between
the silversmith and the ignorant and excitable crowd.
This is not to say that Luke accepted paganism any more than his
heroes did. Paul and Barnabas have clearly stated that they turned
to the Gentiles, and Luke notes that “as many as were ordained to
eternal life believed” (Acts 13:46-48). A violent attack on pagan
religion, however, could not have produced a favorable response.
Luke is setting forth an ideal pattern for pagan and Christian rela-
tions. He believes it existed in early times, for the Gentile church
—
survived which is the subject of most of his book.
It is significant that Luke keeps silent about the goddesses Aphro-

dite and Athena. Aphrodite was bom near Old Paphos on Cyprus
and worshiped in a great temple there; Luke tells only about Paul’s
encounter with a magician and with the Roman proconsul of Cyprus
at New Paphos. The Parthenon, sacred to Athena, we have seen,
stands on the Acropolis above the court of the Areopagus; Luke
discusses the Areopagus and an unknown god, not the known god-
dess. He also quotes a line about Zeus but deletes the god’s name.

Paul, Gods, and Goddesses

We now follow the sequence of stories in Acts, beginning with
Aphrodite in what was really her context in Paphos (Acts 13) and
Gods in the Book of Acts 23

Corinth. After that we shall turn toZeus and Hermes at Lystra (Acts
14), Athena at Athens (Acts 17), and Artemis at Ephesus (Acts 19).

Aphrodite

Magic at Paphos

At the western end of Cyprus lay two cities of Paphos, as we have

said: the old and the new. Old Paphos was a Mycenaean city famed
for its temple of Aphrodite, whose birthplace was found on the coast
to the east where foam still surges among the rocks. Supposedly,
veterans homeward bound from Troy had founded the temple. New
Paphos, on the other hand, was a harbor town to the north; under
the Ptolemies and the Romans it was the administrative and trading
center of the island. It was the seat of the proconsul of Cyprus.
It is significant that when Paul went to “Paphos” he obviously

went to New Paphos, where he encountered the proconsul. Luke

has nothing to say about the shrine of Aphrodite but has much to
say about a magician who tried “to turn away the proconsul from
the faith” (Acts 13:8). Paul cursed him and he became blind “for a
time,” while the proconsul “believed, when he saw what had oc-
curred, for he was astonished at the teaching of the Lord.” Luke was
laying emphasis on the triumph of Christian miracle over pagan
magic.
The of Aphrodite in Old Paphos was much criticized by the
cult
church fathers, for it involved not only what Strabo mentions, the
presence of crowds from all over the island, but also phallic myster-
ies which Herodotus says resulted in the loss of virginity. There
were also celebrations for the goddess by hermaphrodites. 5 All in
all, it was not what Paul would be likely to visit. 6

Prostitution at Corinth

When he wrote 1 Corinthians, Paul was well aware of the interest

his readers took in the gods of paganism. He reminded them that
one might imagine that there were “manv gods and many lords” (1
Cor. 8:5), and that they themselves had formerly been led astray in
the worship of mute idols (1 Cor. 12:2). But he said nothing explicit
about one of the most famous objects of worship at Corinth. This
was again the goddess Aphrodite, associated with “sacred prostitu-
tion” there.
We do not know that the Corinthian Christians were concerned
24 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

with the worship of Aphrodite, even though many were ex-pagans.

According to 1 Cor. 6:12-20, however, Paul knew converts who
believed they could justify dealings with prostitutes on religious and
philosophical grounds. They seem to have argued that sexual inter-
course was an “indifferent” and natural affair, comparable to eating
whatever one chose. This viewpoint had already been expressed by
the Cynic sage Diogenes, famous at Corinth. 7
At least in pre-Christian times the mountain called Acrocorinthus
beside the city was the site of a temple of Aphrodite, “so rich that
it owned more than a thousand temple-slaves, prostitutes, whom

both men and women had dedicated to the goddess.” Because of

them, Strabo says, the city was crowded and grew rich. A proverb
widely circulated held that “not for every man is the voyage to
Corinth,” but ship captains spent money freely there. One of the
slaves, accused of not liking her work, replied that she had “taken
down three masts in a short time,” or so Strabo says.
It is a question, however, whether the temple and its holdings

survived the destruction of Corinth by the Romans in 146 B.c.

Strabo says he visited the city and climbed the mountain, where he
found ruined walls and only a small temple of Aphrodite, not the
famous one. 8 Late in the second century Pausanias mentions a tem-
ple of Aphrodite and comments only on its art. 9 It is possible that
the sacred trade revived, for in the second century the rhetorician
Favorinus speaks of Corinth as a “most Aphroditied city,” 10 and
Aelius Aristides alludes to the same features. 11 It is not clear
whether those involved were sacred or profane. Paul obviously
made no such distinction. A Christian man was united with Christ,
not with a courtesan of either sort.
Nothing remains of Aphrodite’s temple but some early walls.
Later the site was used for a church, two mosques, a Venetian
battery, and a house. It is likely that, as in the case of other temples
where fourth-century Christians found or suspected sexual immor-
ality, the buildings were leveled and their contents smashed. 12

In any event, sacred prostitution was not a Greek practice. This

is why Herodotus and other ethnologists found it so remarkable in

the Orient. Athenaeus cites the comic poet Alexis (fourth century
b.c.) to show that at Corinth there was a special festival of Aphrodite
for prostitutes, who were accustomed to get drunk on it. 13 While
not sacred prostitution,
this is it is prostitution especially sanctioned
by a goddess. 14

The mixed population of Roman Corinth, especially Latin in ori-

gin, also enjoyed gladiatorial combats, not known elsewhere in
Greece. 15 Lenschau cites the so-called 35th letter of the emperor
Gods in the Book of Acts 25

Julian (409A), which criticizes the Corinthians’ purchase of bears

and panthers for “hunts” in theaters. If this letter really comes from
the first century, 16 more valuable for our point. In any
it is all the
event, such activities are also mentioned as Corinthian by Apuleius
and Lucian in the second century. 17 There was a certain non-Greek
flavor to life in Corinth. After all, it was a Roman colony.
Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians shows that he was well aware
of the prevalence of temples and images. He was willing to let the
stronger-minded Corinthian Christians eat meat that possibly had
been sacrificed to a pagan deity if they did not know that it had been
so “consecrated.” In that case, they had to abstain. Christians de-
nied the reality and power of these gods, but they presented a threat
to the “weaker” members.

Zeus and Hermes at Lystra

Barnabas and Paul came to Lystra in Lycaonia (Galatia) and were

hailed as Zeus and Hermes after a miracle of healing. Presumably
the natives, though they spoke Lycaonian at times, were acquainted
with the Phrygian folk tale describing the coming of Jupiter (Zeus)
and Mercury (Hermes) in mortal guise, seeking a place for rest that
they found only with the aged Baucis and her husband Philemon.
They became the priests of the temple of both gods. 18 Two inscrip-
tions show that these gods were worshiped together in this region.
One from the third century of our era, published by W. M. Calder,
describes a dedication of a statue of Hermes Megistos and a sundial
to Zeus (Helios). 19 Another, found not too far away, just below the
top of the acropolis at Isaura, provides a dedication “to Zeus Bron-
ton [the Thunderer, a title of Zeus in Phrygia] and Hermes, [by] the
priest Celer, son of Chrysanthus.” It also contains a worn depiction
of the two gods, Hermes the shorter with his caduceus, Zeus the
taller with scepter or bolt of lightning. 20 The common worship
suggests that some would be ready to hail a common epiphany.
The temple of Zeus at Lystra is described as “before the city”; that
is, outside the gates. The words practically constitute an adjective.

Temples of this sort were fairly common in Asia Minor. We can

mention Dionysus at Thera, Hecate at Aphrodisias, Artemis the
Great at Ephesus, Demeter and Dionysus at Smyrna, Dionysus and
Tyrimnus at Thyatira, and Apollo outside the same city. 21 Conceiva-
bly the temple was later than the city, hence outside, but this makes
little difference. “The priest of Zeus, whose temple was in front of

the city, brought oxen and garlands to the gates and wanted to offer
sacrifice with the people” (Acts 14:13).
26 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

The crowds had shouted (“in Lycaonian,” a touch of local color),

“The gods have come down to us in the likeness of men,” as Ovid
( Metam 8.626) had said Zeus and Hermes came specie mortali. They
.

—
thought Barnabas was Zeus, Paul “because he was the chief
—
speaker” (hegoumenos tou logou) Hermes. The latter indeed was the
principal messenger of the gods, and allegorizers, Stoic and other,
therefore understood him to be the word (logos) of the gods. 22 It is
this kind of interpretation that underlies the identification in Acts.
With it we may also compare Paul’s opponents’ comment in 2
Corinthians: His speech (logos) is “of no account” (2 Cor. 10:10).
If Luke knows this verse, he cannot believe the statement. As for the
apostles’ rejection of such an ascription of divinity, S. Loesch pro-
vided valuable parallel materials, partly from the romance about
Alexander the Great. This great king insisted on his own humanity
when he was hailed as a god. 23
Thus we find a genuine encounter between the new Christian
mission and the old ideas about the gods and their epiphanies. The
mistake of the crowd was easy enough to make. A remarkable heal-
ing might well be ascribed to some divine power or other, and they
were not well acquainted with the gospel, if at all. We might have
expected them to identify Paul or Barnabas with Asclepius or some
other god of healing, but they must have had in mind the two gods
they worshiped in the region. This exciting beginning drew atten-
tion to the new religion. In spite ofJewish pressure on the churches
there were conversions to Christianity at Lystra and nearby Derbe
(Acts 16:1-5).

Athena and the Unknown God at Athens

As Paul stood before the court of the Areopagus, he could see the
Acropolis of Athens, crowned with the world-famous temple of the
city’s patroness. When he made his defense, apparently against the

charge of religious innovation, he said nothing about Athena but

preferred to discuss an obscure and ambiguous inscription. Why did
he do so? Like Artemis, Athena was essentially a local goddess who,
however, had captivated the minds of poets, artists, and travelers
and won the attention of philosophers. Her significant role in
Homer’s Iliad meant that schoolboys knew about her and the aid she
gave the Hellenes. And according to the Eumenides of Aeschylus she
established the court of the Areopagus itself. There were thus sev-
eral reasons why Paul should have refrained from attacking the
worship of this goddess of wisdom.
Gods in the Book of Acts 27

Artemis of Ephesus

The book of Acts describes an early apostolic encounter with

Artemis, the great goddess of Ephesus whose temple dominated the
city. Her defender in the Acts story was a certain Demetrius, whose

occupation Luke gives as “making shrines.” This seems to reflect

the official temple title “shrine maker,” nedpoios, held by each of the
twelve members of a board of wardens of the temple. 24 It may be
equally significant for social history to observe that the Christians
were being blamed for financial problems. The prestige of the god-
dess might suffer and her income decline along with that of the
shrine makers. We may compare the report of a Roman governor
that after the arrest of Christians the sale of animals for sacrifice
picked up. 25
Several inscriptions from about the year 44, not long before Paul
visited Ephesus, deal with the efforts of the Roman proconsul to
straighten out the finances of the temple. The situation was bleak,
at least from the viewpoint of the temple treasury. “Many divine
abodes have been destroyed by fire or through earthquake, and the
temple of Artemis herself, the monument of the whole province
because of the size of the building and the antiquity of the worship
of the goddess and the generous income restored to the goddess by
the Augustus [Claudius], is deprived of its own funds, which would
suffice for maintenance and the adornment of the offerings. For they
are diverted for the unjust desire of those who preside over the
common wealth while they plan to make themselves rich. As often
as glad tidings come from Rome they misuse [the money] for their
own benefit,” and so on. 26 A problem about the usual sale of priest-
hoods has led to a demand for reimbursement. This is the kind of
situation in which we should expect the board of shrine makers to
be involved.
Thus the shrine makers of Artemis at Ephesus were not moved
just by “petty economic jealousy” 27 but by more serious economic
problems related to the temple of the goddess. The inscriptions
show that precisely during the reign of Claudius, when Paul visited
the city, diversion of funds from the temple to private pockets had
reached such a high level that the Roman proconsul had to inter-
vene. He was eager to preserve the fame of temple and goddess
alike, just as Demetrius was (Acts 19:27). The town clerk in the Acts
story urged plaintiffs to go to court or appeal to the proconsul (Acts
19:38), as Ephesians were doing in the case of the missing funds.
A later Ephesian inscription shows continuing difficulties in re-
28 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

gard to the worship of the goddess. About the year 160 the Roman
proconsul tried to encourage the cult, 28 presumably in decline more
because of changes in religious fashion than “the growing power of
Christianity” to which Lily Ross Taylor pointed. 29 In any event,
enthusiasm for the goddess fluctuated.
Artemis had brought great fame to Ephesus. Her temple was not
only the pride of the province of Asia but first among the Seven
Wonders of the World. Long ago King Croesus had contributed to
its construction and had dedicated the columns of which parts are

preserved in the British Museum. That temple burned down in 356

b.c. but was rebuilt with greater magnificence. The Artemis of
Ephesus, a unique local goddess unlike the Artemis known else-
where as the sister of Apollo, was also worshiped in distant ports,
such as Massilia (Marseilles), and went thence to Emporion (Am-
purias) in Spain as well as to Rome, to the Avendne temple of
Diana. 30 The goddess is portrayed in many extant works of art as
a deity of vegetation and fertility, wearing a vest with countless large
fruits attached to it. 31 A few Christians mistakenly identified these
as breasts. Minucius Felix was one; Jerome, who had seen her statue
but copied Minucius, was another. 32 Ultimately the great church of
St. John took the place, as well as much of the masonry, of the
temple at Ephesus. Only in the nineteenth century could parts of it
be rediscovered.
 2
Mediterranean Religions Westward

Puteoli on the Way to Rome

The book of Acts tells us that the apostle Paul believed he had to
visit Rome because of a divine plan (Acts 23:11; 27:24) which
confirmed his own judgment (shared with many provincials): “I
must see Rome” (Acts 19:21). From Caesarea and Sidon in Pales-
tine he sailed by way of Cyprus to Myra in Lycia, next to Crete and
Malta, then to Syracuse in Sicily and Rhegium on the Italian coast,
and finally up to Puteoli (Acts 28:13). There he found a welcome
from Christian “brothers” already in Puteoli. These events appar-
ently took place around the year 56.
Puteoli, like Corinth in Greece, lay on an important transit route
and attracted religions during the late Hellenistic age and under the
Roman empire. Some of those who brought them explicitly said
they did so by divine command, but all must have shared a similar
sense of mission.

The Religious Background in Puteoli

If Paul had preached to Gentiles at Puteoli, he might have found

an even better text than the inscription he used at Athens. This one
comes from Puteoli: “Sacred to all the immortal gods and god-
desses.” Paul could easily have described the people of the city as
1

“very religious.”
As a port leading to Rome, Puteoli had been an important reli-
gious way station for a long time. An from the year 105
inscription
b.c. refers to the temple of the Egyptian god Sarapis as a well-known
landmark. 2 Sarapis had been in motion for several centuries, as we
shall presently see.
Josephus happens to indicate that sixty years before Paul there

29
30 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

was at least onejewish community in Puteoli. A man who pretended

to be a son of Herod the Great arrived there on his way to Rome,
and the Jews, especially those who had known Herod, welcomed
him enthusiastically. 3 Evidently they manned a Jewish trading and
shipping center. We do not know whether or not such people were
also mission-minded, like the Pharisees of Matthew 23: 15, who were
said to “cross sea and land to gain one convert.”
A later magical tablet from Puteoli which uses Hebrew names tells
us nothing about Jews there, for the use of these sacred and potent
terms was widespread. The superscription begins with an attempt
to write “Sabaoth” three times. Then come the names “Iao El
Michael Nephtho,” and the wish that an individual may be afflicted
by numerous enemies, all of whom are named. 4 The table proves
no more than the high regard in which magicians held Hebrew
sacred terms.

The Baal of Sarepta to Puteoli

About twenty years after Paul’s visit another religion made its way
from the eastern shore of the Mediterranean to Puteoli. Only a
broken stone now preserved in the Kelsey Museum of the University
of Michigan bears witness to this religious transition. “Under the
consuls Lucius Caese [nnius and Publius Calvisius] and in the
Tyrian year 204, on the 1 1th of the month Artemision, the holy god
of [S]arepta sailed in from Tyre to Puteoli. One of the Eleim
brought him at the command of the god.” 5 The consul named held
office in a.d. 79, equivalent to the 204th year of the Tyrian calendar.
This was the time when the god made his journey, and indeed on
May 29, only three months before the eruption of Vesuvius that
took place across the Bay of Naples on August 24. The circum-
stances were hardly auspicious, but the god did find a home. A Latin
addition attests the loyalty of the cult to a new emperor. It reads
thus: “For the security of the emperor Domitian [Augustus], the
place permitted by decree. .
.” This implies a date on or after
.

September 14, 81, when Domitian came to the throne. 6

An undated inscription also from Puteoli refers to the priest
Siliginius and to the greatness of the city of Tyre and ends fragmen-
tarily with a dedication to “the holy god C . .
.” The word “holy”
.

occurs in other dedications from Puteoli itself: “To the most holy
god of the city” and “To the most holy god the Genius of the
colony.” 7
Mediterranean Religions Westward 31

Later Difficulties of the Tyrian Cult

Nearly a century later another inscription (in the Capitoline Mu-

seum, Rome) tells us of the Tyrian cult’s problems and shows that
religious missions were not always private, related to traders and
merchants, but were also public, with colonies seeking support from
mother cities. 8

The Tyrian colonists at Puteoli started the correspondence by

sending a letter to Tyre. The inscription contains a copy of it,
addressed “to the rulers, senate, and people of the Tyrians, of the
sacred and inviolate and autonomous metropolis of Phoenicia, ruler
of ships and supreme motherland” from “the settlers in Puteoli.”

By the gods and the fortune of our lord emperor [Marcus Aurelius],
most of you know that compared with any other station in Puteoli, ours
is superior to the others in rank and size. Formerly the Tyrian settlers

in Puteoli in charge of it were numerous and rich, but now our number
has become small. When we spend money on the sacrifices and wor-
ship of our ancestral gods enshrined in temples here, we are not able
to provide the rent for the station, annually 250 [,000] denarii, espe-
the expenses for the contest of the ox-slaughter at Puteoli
cially since
have been assigned to us.
We therefore request that you will make provision for the perma-
nent continuation of the station; it will continue if you provide an
annual allowance of 250 denarii for the rent. As for the rest of the
expenses and what is spent on the holidays of the lord emperor, we
reckon them as falling on us, so that we may not burden the city. We
remind you that the station here, unlike that in the imperial city of
Rome, receives no income from sailors or merchants. We therefore
urge and request you to take thought for your own fortune and this
matter. Written at Puteoli on 23 July in the consulship of Gallus and
Flaccus Cornelianus [174].

Within four months the city fathers in Tyre gave their answer.

From the acts of the senate, enacted 18 November of the year 300
[= 174], Gaius Valerius Callistrates president pro tern, Pausanias
presiding. The letter of the Tyrian settlers was read, submitted by one
of them named Laches, in which they asked [here the content of
. . .

the petition is repeated]. After the reading Philocles son of Diodorus

said: “The settlers in Rome have always been accustomed to provide
those in Puteoli with 250 denarii out of their income. Now the settlers
in Puteoli ask for this sum
be preserved for them, or that if those
to
in Rome are unwilling to provide it for them, they may make the two
stations into one.” Shouts of: “Philocles said it well. The petition of
those in Puteoli is just. It has ever been thus, let it be so now. This
helps the city. Keep the old custom.” The document submitted by
32 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

Laches [son of] Primogeneia and Agathopus, Tyrian settlers of the

Tyrian station in the imperial colony of Puteoli, was read, in which they
explained that our native city has two stations, one in imperial Rome,
the other [in Puteoli . .].
.

Tyre is evidently not going to contribute to expenses in Italy.

The settlers’ request seems modest enough, and we note that they
intend to keep paying for the sacrifices and worship of the ancestral
gods, no doubt including the Baal of Sarepta.
The alteration of circumstances at Puteoli after nearly a century
is than the report of Pliny around the year 110 that
less surprising
persons accused of being Christians (in Bithynia) claimed to have
given the religion up “two or more years previously, some of them
even twenty years ago.” 9 Religious allegiance is not always immuta-
ble. More important, the Tyrians at Rome seem not to have been
as generous as the Christians there. By 160 the Roman church was
well known for its support of other churches. We know about the
practice from the church of Corinth, to which, as to others, the
Roman church did make grants. 10 Corinth was a colony of Rome
just as the Tyrians in Italy were settlers from Tyre. The Tyrians
expected support that they were not receiving.

Gods from Asia Minor to Rome

Puteoli was not the only port of entry for religions moving west.
Examples from the third and second century b.c. show the Roman
republic importing gods from the east hi time of need, during an
epidemic or a potentially disastrous war. The gods came in response
to official action taken by the consuls or the Roman senate. Those
invited were thus officially approved, while other foreign deities
were usually not made welcome.

Asclepius to Rome 293 b.c.

The historian Livy tells us that in a time of pestilence “the [Sibyl-

line] books were consulted to find what end or remedy would be
given from the gods. It was found in the books that Aesculapius had
to be summoned from Epidaurus to Rome, but nothing was done
about it during that year because the consuls were engaged in war,
except that a supplication to Aesculapius was held for one day.” 11
The ancient summary of Livy’s lost eleventh book gives a fuller
account. “When the city was burdened with a pestilence envoys sent
to bring the image of Aesculapius to Rome from Epidaurus brought
Mediterranean Religions Westward 33

over a snake which had got into their ship and was regarded as
containing the divine being itself. When the snake came out on the
Tiburtine island a temple to Aesculapius was erected there.” 12
Such a manifestation was not confined to the remote past. In the
second or third century of our era the well- publicized healing of a
blind man at Rome brought rejoicing “that living miracles took
place under our Augustus Antoninus.” 13

The Great Mother of the Gods, 204 b.c.

Livy also says that the Sibylline books were once more consulted
during a critical period in the war with Hannibal of Carthage, when
“stones” kept falling from the sky. They were understood to say that
“if a foreign enemy should ever invade the land of Italy he could be
driven out and defeated if the Idaean Mother were brought from
Pessinus [in Asia Minor] to Rome.” Roman envoys brought a gift
to Delphi and, when they offered sacrifice, reported favorable
omens, as well as a voice from the shrine that “a much greater
victory was in prospect for the Roman people than the one from
whose spoils they were bringing gifts.” 14
A temple to the goddess on the Palatine was not dedicated until
191, but two centuries later Augustus was proud of having restored
it.
15 (It now lies in ruins.) The orgiastic cult, however, was forbidden

to Roman citizens, primarily because in myth Attis, the youthful

consort of the goddess, castrated himself and so in ritual did some
of her devotees. Under Claudius the cult of Attis entered the Pala-
tine. 16
Three centuries after that, the emperor Julian was on his way to
Persia when in Pessinus he composed a hymn to the Mother of the
Gods. He began with a semihistorical account of how her cult came
from Phrygia to Athens and Rome (apologizing for it as perhaps
“unworthy of a philosopher or theologian”). He then turned to
identify Attis with “the substance of generative and creative Mind
which generates everything down to the lowest level of matter,” the
Mother of the Gods as “the source of the intellectual (noeroi) and
creative gods, who in turn guide the visible gods.” She is “en-
throned by the side of King Zeus.” He concludes with a prayer to
her for human happiness, for the Roman religion and empire, and
for hisown fortune in politics and war, with a painless and glorious
death at the end as he journeys to the gods. The Great Mother has
now transcended her primitive origins and entered the world of
Greek allegory and mysticism.
34 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

Gods of Egypt to Greece and Rome

The gods of Egypt did not come to Rome by official invitation but
were imported by traders and merchants who privately found them
meaningful and/or advantageous. The Roman government gave no
encouragement to these cults.

Isis to Athens

As early as the fourth century b.c., Isis had crossed the Mediterra-
nean to Greece. She reached Athens (Piraeus) before 333, for mer-
chants from Citium, asking permission to found a shrine of Aphro-
dite, relied on the precedent given by an Egyptian shrine for Isis. 17
An Attic decree of that year ends thus: “It seemed good to the deme
[only, not senate and deme]: Lycurgus, Lycophron, Butades said:
‘In regard to what the merchants of Citium considered it legitimate
to request, asking the deme for the acquisition of an area in which
they will build the temple of Aphrodite, just as the Egyptians built
”
the temple of Isis.’

Isis to Rome
Attempts to bring Isis into Rome during the first century b.c. were
not successful. Tertullian mentions that the Egyptian gods Sara-
pis, 18 Isis, and Harpocrates were prohibited and tells of consuls who
overturned altars erected to them and checked the vices characteris-
tic of “disgusting and pointless superstitions.” Though by the end

of the second century a.d. Sarapis had become a Roman 19 (obvi-

ously Isis and Harpocrates had received the citizenship too), there
had been a lengthy struggle over admitting such alien gods.
At various times between 59 and 48 b.c. the Roman Senate took
action to keep the worship of Isis away from the Capitol, 20 but
during the year after the murder of Caesar the triumvirs provided
a temple for her, 21 presumably as a sop to the dead leader’s popular
partisans. Sixty years later a scandal led to the destruction of a
temple, perhaps this one, and the crucifixion of Isiac priests with
whom a Roman knight had connived in order to seduce a sim-
pleminded Roman matron. He pretended to be the Egyptian god
Anubis, who “loved her.” 22
—
Note that this woman who, according to Josephus, was of noble
—
ancestry, rich, and beautiful believed that the god wanted her to
share his bed; her husband approved; her friends marveled.
Whether or not the Roman knight convinced her of his identity by
Mediterranean Religions Westward 35

wearing the jackal mask of Anubis, the affair obviously set the Isiac
mission back.
The story was evidently famous. Josephus correlates it with a case
of fraud in the Jewish community at Rome, while Tacitus refers very
briefly to both cases, speaking of “superstition” and “profane
rites.” 23 Both religions survived and flourished, however, in spite of
remaining prejudices or new ones. The satirist Juvenal, expressing
older Roman attitudes, describes women as meeting admirers “near
the shrine of the wanton Isis” and tells how the goddess can order
her worshipers to make pilgrimages to Egypt, while Anubis stands
by to procure pardon from Osiris for sexual sins. 24
We see the earlier fears of the consuls realized to some extent at
Pompeii, where as a group the devotees of Isis took part in town
politics and wrote on walls to promote their candidates for office. 25
Like the Christians they were unquestionably loyal to the empire.
Apuleius tells how the “scribe” read prayers for the emperor, the
senate, the equestrian order, and the whole Roman people, as well
as for safe sailing throughout the Roman world. 26

The Invention of Sarapis

Sarapis is significant because he was a deity invented, or at least

discovered and named, during the Hellenistic age. In spite of his
artificial character he was immensely successful. His statue was
brought to Alexandria by one of the Ptolemies, presumably in an
attempt to unite Greeks and Egyptians in a common worship. He
became one of the great savior gods but differed from the others in
that he really had no divine origin. Historians took pleasure in
describing how he came to Egypt, if not into existence.
The only moderately reliable date we have for the beginning of
the cult of Sarapis occurs in the Chronicle of Eusebius as revised by
Jerome. 27 There the arrival of Sarapis at Alexandria is set in the last
year of the reign of Ptolemy I Soter (286 b.c.); that is, just before
the accession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
The Roman historian Tacitus offers many details about the ori-
gins of the god, discussing it in relation to cures wrought by the
emperor Vespasian at Alexandria on persons whom the god Sarapis
had inspired to ask for aid. He relies on medical testimony to show
that the cures could have taken place naturally, though he admits
that something miraculous happened. Reliable eyewitnesses were
stillproviding testimony in his time (Tacitus, Histories 4.81).
He does not explain the role of the Egyptian god in the cures but
calls Sarapis the god worshiped by Egypt, “this most superstitious
36 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

of all nations.” Egyptian priests have told him that “a young man

from heaven” appeared in a dream to Ptolemy I and told him to

send for his statue from Pontus. Thus he would ensure the prosper-
ity of the Ptolemaic kingdom and the city of Alexandria. Egyptian

priests at the time could not explain the vision, but fortunately the
king had brought an Athenian from Eleusis to be overseer of sacred
rites (antistes caerimoniarum); this man was able to identify the statue
as one of Jupiter Dis, a god of heaven and the underworld wor-
shiped at Sinope with Proserpina. (This explains why Sarapis looks
like Zeus.) The king’s envoys to Pontus passed through Delphi,
where Apollo instructed them to bring Jupiter but leave Proserpina
behind 28 The Pontic ruler, reluctant to part with the statue, finally
.

yielded after he received a terrifying vision accompanied by disas-

ters. The statue then spontaneously went aboard an Egyptian ship
and reached Alexandria in two days. There a temple was built in the
Rhacotis quarter where “a shrine had been consecrated to Sarapis
[presumably Osiris] and Isis from ancient times.”
Tacitus calls this ‘‘the best known account of the origin and arrival
of the god,” though he knows other versions in which the statue
came from Seleuceia under Ptolemy III Euergetes or from Mem-
phis 29 Tradition about the origin of Sarapis was obviously not
.

uniform or well controlled by priests.

Plutarch, Tacitus’ Greek contemporary, offers an even richer as-
sortment of conflicting materials. First comes a bit of antiquarian
lore about the god. ‘‘Pluto is none other than Sarapis and Per-
sephone is Isis, as Archemachus of Euboea and Heraclides Ponticus
have said .” 30 A second account is fairly close to Tacitus. ‘‘Ptolemy
(I) Soter saw in a dream the colossal statue of Pluto in Sinope

. . and the statue ordered him to bring it with all speed to Alex-
.

andria. When it had been brought to Alexandria and exhibited

. . .

there, Timotheus the exegete and Manetho of Sebennytus [in

Egypt] and their associates conjectured that it was the statue of
Pluto, basing their conjecture on the Cerberus and the snake with
it, and they convinced Ptolemy that it was the statue of no other god

but Sarapis .” 31
Third comes an etymological exercise based on names in the
myths. This might have reached the true solution had Plutarch been
willing to stop looking for etymologies. Unfortunately he goes on
into philosophical fantasy. The temple of Sarapis at Memphis, he
says, was built over the shrine of the sacred bulls and his name is
undoubtedly composed from Osiris and the bull Apis. “Phylarchus
writes that Dionysus was the first to bring two bulls from India to
Egypt. The name of one was Apis and the other Osiris; but Sarapis
Mediterranean Religions Westward 37

is the name of him who order (onoma tou to pan

sets the universe in
kosmountos), and it is sweep, which some say
derived from sairein, to

means to beautify (kallunein) and to put in order (kosmein). More . . .

moderate is the statement of those who say that the derivation is

from seuesthai, to shoot, or sousthai to scoot, in reference to the
,

whole movement of the universe .” 32 None of the Greek etymologies

make any sense.
The on Plutarch at
Christian author Clement probably relied
god he supplies four
times, but in his description of the origin of the
different accounts, none from Plutarch, in order to show how dis-
cordant the tradition was 33 First, some say the god “was sent by the
.

people of Sinope as a thank offering to Ptolemy Philadelphus king

of Egypt, who had earned their gratitude by sending them grain
from Egypt when they were worn out by hunger; this image was a
statue of Pluto. When he received it he set the image on the prom-
ontory now called Rhacotis, where the temple of Sarapis is honored;
the spot is near the tombs.” Second, “others say that Sarapis was
an image from Pontus, conveyed to Alexandria with the honor of a
solemn festival.” Third, “Isidore alone states that the statue was
brought from the people of Seleuceia near Antioch when they too
had been suffering from lack of grain and had been supported by
—
Ptolemy.” Fourth a bit of art history “Athenodorus the son of
—
Sandon says that the Egyptian king Sesostris, after subduing
. . .

most of the nations of Greece, brought back a number of skilled

craftsmen to Egypt. He ordered them to make a statue of Osiris his
own ancestor. The artist used a mixture of various materials.
. . .

. He stained the mixture dark blue (and therefore the statue is

. .

nearly black) and, mingling the whole with the pigment left over
from the funeral rites of Osiris and Apis, he molded Sarapis, . . .

‘Osirapis’ being a compound from ‘Osiris’ and ‘Apis.’ ” Much of

what Clement reports seems to be true, but he was in no position
to differentiate one thing from another.
The later Christian theologian Origen rightly concludes:

Concerning Sarapis the story is lengthy and inconsistent. It was only

recently that he appeared through some trickery of Ptolemy, who
wanted to show a visible god, as it were, to the Alexandrians. We have
read in Numenius the Pythagorean about the construction of [the
statue of] Sarapis, where he says that he [the god] partakes of the being
of all the animals and plants cared for by nature 34 .

What Numenius said was probably not worth quoting as far as

origins were concerned.
In all probability, then, Sarapis was the invention of Greek theolo-
38 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

gians at the court of Ptolemy I. He flourished in the Hellenistic

world, in large measure because of frequent miracles and assiduous
propaganda related to them. The orator Aelius Aristides claims that
it would take forever to collect all the stories of the works of Sara-

pis. 35 We shall later discuss some examples.

Sarapis and the Ptolemies 258/7 b.c.

“When I was serving the god Sarapis for your health and success
with the king,” writes a certain Zoilus of Aspendos, “Sarapis warned
me in dreams should sail to you and give you this oracle: that
that I

a temple of Sarapis and a grove must be erected for him in the Greek
quarter by the harbor, and a priest must oversee it and sacrifice for
you.” To be sure, someone else proposed to build such a temple
and even gathered stones for the task. “Later the god told him not
to build and he went away.” The letter, preserved incompletely on
papyrus, is from Zoilus to the finance minister of Ptolemy II. It looks
as if the cult was being spread in the same way that it began, though
it is not certain where it was going. 36

Sarapis to the Island of Delos

An inscription from Delos, carved about 200 b.c., allows us to see

something of the establishment and growth of the cult of Sarapis on
the island. The historical narrative was written by the priest Apol-
lonius “at the god’s command.”

Our grandfather Apollonius, an Egyptian of priestly origin, had the

god [’s statue] with him
as he arrived from Egypt as his servant and
continued custom; he seems to have lived 97 years.
in ancestral
When my father Demetrius succeeded him in line and served the
god, he was rewarded by the god for his piety with a bronze image,
which was placed in the god’s temple. He lived 61 years. When I
took over the sacred rites and constantly contemplated the services,
the god revealed to me in a dream that his own Sarapeium had to be
provided for him and that he would not be in rented quarters as
before, and that he himself would find a place where we had to build
and would signify the place. This happened. For this place was full of
dung and was advertised for sale at the passage through the forum.
By the will of the god the purchase was completed and the temple
was rapidly constructed in six months’ time. But when certain people
opposed us and the god, and brought a public suit against the tem-
ple and me, claiming punishment or damages, the god announced to
Mediterranean Religions Westward 39

me dream that we would win. When the contest was finished and
in a
we won in a manner worthy of the god, we praised the gods by re-
turning proper thanks. Maiistas writes on behalf of the temple on
this subject.

Then there are sixty-five hexameters in praise of the “countless

marvelous deeds” of Sarapis and his temples, not only on Delos but
everywhere else. 37

The Advent of Dionysus

Dionysus at Alexandria

Dionysus was a god highly favored by the various Ptolemies,

especially at Alexandria. Athenaeus describes a great procession
arranged by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in honor of the god about the
year 270 b.c. His son Ptolemy III Euergetes claimed descent from
Dionysus through a remote ancestor, while his son Ptolemy IV
Philopator “was called Dionysus” 38 and had Egyptian Jews branded
with the ivy leaf of the god (3 Macc. 2:28-29). No wonder, then, that
he gave the first rank to the Dionysiac tribe in Alexandria; all the
demes of the tribe bore names connected with the stories about
Dionysus. The biographer Satyrus, who tells us about this, also
traces the king’s ancestry back to Dionysus. 39
The close watch kept over Dionysiacs by the king (presumably
Philopator) is plainly indicated in a decree preserved on papyrus. 40
“Persons who perform the rites of Dionysus in the interior” are to
be registered at Alexandria and to “declare from whom they derived
the sacred rites for three generations back and to hand in the sacred
book (hieros logos) sealed, with each inscribing his own name on it.”
This may be some religious book or, as A. D. Nock suggested, an
account book of the cult. In either case, the concern of the Ptolemies
for Dionysiac affairs is evident.
Much Mark Antony in the east identified himself with
later,
Dionysus, triumphally entering Ephesus as Dionysus Charidotes
(“giver of joy”) and Meilichios (“beneficent”). Others had other
names When he came to be associated with Cleopatra, the
for him.
New he was called the New Dionysus. 41 The Roman senator
Isis,

and historian Dio Cassius notes that this sort of behavior was “alien
to the customs of his country.” 42 During the Hellenistic age most
Romans had little use for Dionysus or his cult.
40 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

Dionysus in Italy

In Italy the cult was not officially accepted before the end of the
Roman republic. Its gradual movement into Roman circles was due
to private initiative, not to public approval. It may have arrived
when Greek prisoners taken by the Romans at Tarentum in 208 b.c.
brought the Greek cult of Dionysus to south Italy in a secret and
dangerous form. 43 Within two decades it became clear that the
Bacchanalia were not compatible with the Roman character. In 186
b.c. the consuls put down the Dionysiac rites, practiced by slaves
and some others, because they were secret and dangerous, not
controlled by reason or authorized by the state. It may have been
Julius Caesar who first authorized the cult. In the second century it
was fully respectable. An inscription from Campania, now in the
Metropolitan Museum, names a Roman lady of high rank, Julia
Agrippinilla, as the patroness of nearly five hundred Dionysiac initi-
ates, including her slaves and freedmen. 44 The religion was now
legitimate because it was under stronger social control and higher
social auspices. A generation after Agrippinilla the Latin Christian
Tertullian could note that although under the republic the consuls
and the senate had driven “Liber pater’’ with his mysteries not only
from the city but from all Italy, in his time offerings were being made
to the same god, Bacchus, “now Italian.” 45

The Persian Mithras Westward

According to Plutarch, the Cilician pirates who dominated the
Mediterranean in the early first century b.c. had more than a thou-
sand ships and captured four hundred cities. They were hostile to
traditional Greek religion, attacking such oracles as those at Claros,
Didyma, and Samothrace as well as other temples of Chthonian
Earth, Asclepius, Poseidon, Apollo, and Hera. “They offered
strange sacrifices on [Mount] Olympus and celebrated certain secret
rites. Those of Mithras which they instituted are continued to the

present time.” 46
We
do not know whether or not Mithras was known at Rome at
that time. He is next mentioned by Tiridates, king of Armenia, who
paid a state visit to Nero in a.d. 66 and addressed him with the
words, “I have come to you, my god, to worship you as I do
Mithras.” 47 Franz Cumont claimed that Tiridates initiated the em-
peror into the mysteries of Mithras, but this is mere conjecture.
There is no trace of Mithraism at Pompeii and none at Rome before
the second century. From that point the evidence is extensive, not
Mediterranean Religions Westward 41

least in the Christian apologists. Mithras is mentioned by the Greeks

Justin, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Clement, and Origen and
the Latins Minucius Felix, Tertullian, and Firmicus Maternus. Justin
at Rome already knows of bread and a cup of water in his mysteries,
of his birth from a rock, and of initiations in caves. 48
By the early fourth century the emperors were already called Iovii,
under the auspices of Jupiter, and Herculii under the auspices of
,

Hercules. In a further search for divine aid the embattled tetrarchs

restored a Mithraeum at Carnuntum near Vienna and set up an
inscription to “the god the unconquered Sun Mithras, defender of
their empire, from the Iovii (Diocletian, Galerius, Licinius) and the
Herculii (Maximian, who was not present), the most religious
Augusti and Caesars.” 49 Neither the Iovius Maximin nor the Her-
culius Constantine attended the conference, and nothing came of
the inchoate plan, if there was one. In distant London, however, the
Mithraists of the Walbrook erected an inscription (now in the Lon-
don Museum) probably expressing and addressed to
their loyalty
the four Augusti who held Soon afterward, these
office in 310. 50
Mithraists began burying their treasures to preserve them from
Christian looting. Initiations continued at Rome during most of the
fourth century. The end came with the death of Julian. 51

Roman Religion and Judaism

Judaism was fairly well known to Hellenistic writers, who usually

did not admire it because of its exclusiveness and its lack of linkage
with philosophy. By the end of the second century b.c., however,
Jews at Alexandria had translated much of their Bible into a rather
exotic Greek; some had begun to advocate using allegorical exege-
sis to remove difficulties; and some apparently began the revision

of history in order to contrast ideal Judaism with its current form.

Allegorism is advocated by Aristobulus and in the so-called Letter of
Aristeas. The revision is reported in Strabo’s Geography. There we
learn that the Egyptian priest Moses founded an imageless cult at
Jerusalem. Originally it lacked any idiosyncrasies, but Moses’ super-
stitious and tyrannical successors captured Canaan and introduced
circumcision for males, excision for females, and dietary laws for
all. The theory aroused little interest among Gentiles.
52

The Roman politician Cicero did not much care for Judaism. In
his view what was wrong with it was not just its peculiar rites or its
lack of statues but the very fact of being different. He says that “each
state has its own religio we have ours.” 53 This “chauvinism” per-
vades Roman religiosity. Seneca, writing “on superstition” (as
42 Early Christians and Pagan Gods

quoted by Augustine), regrets that the customs of this “highly crimi-

nal people” have been received in all parts of the world. “The
conquered have given laws to the conquerors.” He grudgingly ad-
mits that “they know the reasons for their rites” whereas most
people do not 54
.

The most peculiar feature of the temple at Jerusalem was that it

contained no statues. This lack made possible the inventions of
Greco-Roman writers, who variously describe what was “really”
inside. Tacitus tells us that they had a statue of the ass which sup-
posedly guided them in the wilderness. He is not even consistent
with himself, elsewhere stating that “the Jews conceive of one god
and that with the mind alone.” He adds that “they set up no statues
in their cities, still less in their temples .” 55 According to a tale
related by Diodorus Siculus, when the Syrian king Antiochus IV
“entered the innermost sanctuary of the god’s temple” he found “a
marble statue of a heavily bearded man seated on an ass, with a book
in his hands” and concluded that this was Moses 56 A little later the
.

anti-Jewish author Apion claimed that the king had found a golden
ass’s head 57 A further fiction concerned the king’s discovery of a
.

kidnapped Greek who was being fattened in the temple so that the
Jews could eat him 58 As Josephus points out, all this is incredible.
.

Christianity too would exclude images, and presumably this atti-

tude encouraged the pagan notion that Christians were “godless.”
 PART TWO
Praise and Denunciation
of the Gods
 3
Christian Missionaries
Against Idolatry

The Christian movement went out into a world that as we saw was
“full of idols.” Even when modern archaeologists try to restore
Greco-Roman cities, they cannot bring back the full glory of the
ancient gods. Temples dedicated to gods and goddesses were every-
where, and so were statues of the deities. One might, with the Cynic
Oenomaus, 1 guess that there were thirty thousand of them, but
Oenomaus is merely paraphrasing Hesiod for the figure. 2 In any
event, countless statues were lost or destroyed after the triumph of
Christianity, in spite of the efforts of many, pagan and Christian
alike, topreserve them. Temples were usually preserved. A decree
of the year 408 ordered the removal of statues from the temples
while admitting that “this regulation has very often been decreed by
repeated sanctions.” 3 They were destroyed because of the early
Christian denunciation of idolatry.

Idolatry in Conflict and History

The model for the New Testament view of idols was set in the Old
Testament, which tells how the Israelites emerged from the desert
to attack not only the Canaanites but also their deities. The books
generally reflect an ideal determination to remain free from the cult
of alien gods. This general Old Testament picture is not confirmed
by archaeology or the passages that point toward assimilation. Per-
haps the most significant evidence of deviation comes from the
Jewish shrine at Elephantine in Egypt, where the god Yahu is accom-
panied by two consorts, one female. (We shall discuss these deities
in more detail; see chapter 8.) Though popular faith, as at Elephan-
tine, did not always maintain a conservative monotheistic or at least
monolatrous attitude, the Bible as a whole does stand firm against
idolatry.

45
46 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

Bodo von Borries devoted a few pages of his dissertation on idols

to the “commonplaces” about idolatry that Jews and Christians
shared. 4 Idolatry was treated as fornication, breaking the covenant
with God which was like a marriage covenant. Though pagans
claimed that the statues were made “in God’s honor,” an-
thropomorphic statues have nothing to do with the real god. Their
very attractiveness leads men astray—or so said Jewish authors;
some Greeks favored such statues. It was a matter of debate whether
the statues were or were not thought to be the gods themselves. 5
Jews (notably the Hellenistic author of Wisdom) and Christians
attacked the idols as impotent, notably unable to defend themselves
from robbers or animals; the satirist Lucian naturally made the same
point. Since the idols lack sense perception, they are “dead” and
“false.” They are made of matter, whether expensive or cheap; they
are made by human sculptors and do not deserve worship because
of the bad characters of their makers or priests. Demons inspire
them and give the illusion that they work miracles.
Such a bill of attainder meant that compromise between defend-
ers and attackers of idols was virtually impossible.

Paul as Opponent of Idolatry

We find idols denounced in the early letter of the apostle Paul to

the Thessalonians. He them what he thinks has happened to
tells

them as converts. Perhaps withsome exaggeration he says that all

the believers in Macedonia and Achaea report how the Thes-
salonian Christians “turned to God from idols, to serve a living and
real God, and to await his son from the heavens, the one whom he
raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come”
(1 Thess. 1:9-10). Every item in this statement requires amplifica-
tion and proof, and presumably received it in the apostle’s preach-

ing. His Greco-Roman converts cannot have accepted it passively.

Why was his God living? Why real? What son? Which heavens, and
why there? What resurrection? Who was Jesus? How does he de-
liver? What wrath? Why due? Every item would raise questions and
require the apostle to develop some fairly systematic thought, to
move toward consistent theology in combating the worship of idols.
Paul’s statement has an implicit logical structure and context, and
we attempt to indicate some possibilities before passing on. There
is obviously a contrast between the God described first as living,
next as real, and the idols who are on the one hand dead (like the
gods they represent) and on the other hand “nothing.” 6 Conversion
has brought the converts from the realm of death and unreality to
Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry 47

the realm of the life and reality of God. Presumably the reality of
the living God was inferred from his miraculous creation and gov-
ernance of the existing world as well as by his continuing revelation
through his prophets. Above all it was expressed when he raised his
son from death and exalted him even to the heavens, where he now
is. The story of the resurrection must have been a cornerstone,

presumably the cornerstone, of Paul’s preaching, and so it was,

according to 1 Corinthians 15. It showed that God’s work had not
come to an end but continued into the very recent past. This work
would continue further, for God would send his son Jesus again to
deliver Christians from the wrath due to sinners for their disobedi-
ence. The name “Jesus” (mentioned after a pause as “Jesus Christ”
is in Rom. 1:3-4) implies that Paul’s converts knew something,

perhaps a good deal, about Jesus’ life and teaching. From this teach-
ing, as from the prophets, they would learn about God’s moral
demand and his anger, to be expressed at the final judgment,
against those who neglected it.

At the least, then, we find in this brief summary statements about

God’s reality and power, his revelation through the son whom he
raised from the dead, and his continuing moral demand. In all these
regards God was different from the gods of contemporary pagan-
ism. They were not really powerful, for stories about their immoral
behavior and their vulnerability or even death gave the lie to other
stories about their creative activities. If they had sons they usually
fought them and never protected them. And neither fathers nor
mothers, neither sons nor daughters, generally gave divine sanc-
tions to morality.
Elsewhere Paul tells the Corinthians that when they were pagans
they were under the control of mute idols, whereas as Christians
they are now able to say, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “Jesus is
Lord” (1 The contrast is obvious between the silence
Cor. 12:2-3).
of the idols and the creative speech of the divine Spirit.
Paul also speaks of the invisible attributes of God as visible in the
creation (Rom. 1:20) and refers to sinners who “changed the glory
of the imperishable God into the likeness of an image of a perishable
man [not to mention] birds, quadrupeds, and reptiles” (Rom. 1:23).
Once more he has idolatry in mind. He follows Jewish precedents
when attacking the human images of the Greeks and Romans as well
as the birds, animals, and reptiles conspicuously adored by the
Egyptians. He denounces those who “although they knew God did
not honor him as God or give thanks to him.” They “exchanged the
truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature [crea-
tion] rather than the Creator.” What went wrong? “They became
48 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.”

Once more, Paul’s ideas are basically Jewish. Philo describes the
same On the Creation (45). Men came to be
situation in his treatise
“intenton what looked probable and plausible, with much in it that
could be supported by argument, but would not aim at sheer truth.”
In consequence “they would trust phenomena more than God.” As
is often the case, Paul writes as a Hellenistic Jew. Some have argued
that when he God’s “invisible attributes” ( ta aorata autou
says that
i.e., “his eternal power and
deity”) have been “clearly perceived
from the creation of the world ” (apo ktiseds kosmou ), the last expres-
sion has to do with the time of creation, not the existence of the
world as such. For us the distinction makes no difference, for in
either case he goes on to say that the attributes were “clearly per-
ceived in [or by] the things that were made.” Paul is on the verge
of presenting the cosmological argument, though he gives none of
its details and is concerned with consequences rather than ar-

gumentation. We conclude that some of the basic elements of his

theology emerge from his confrontation with idolatry.
This is notably the case when we find a creedal or semicreedal
utterance arising out of such an encounter. Paul is discussing meat
sacrificed to idols and then sold in the market to all, and he insists
upon his own fundamental theological position as taught to the
Corinthians. “We know that an idol is nothing in the world and that
there is no God but one.” He then modifies and expands the state-
ment. “And this is so even if there are so-called gods either in
—
heaven or on earth as indeed there are many gods and many
lords

but for us there is one God, the Father,

from whom everything comes, for whom we exist,
and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom everything exists, through whom we exist.”
(1 Cor. 8:4-6)

It is hard to what Paul means when he accepts, even for a

tell

moment, “many gods and many lords.” Perhaps

the existence of the
he carried over “so-called” in his mind. In similar fashion, however,
the Platonist rhetorician Maximus of Tyre says there is “one God
the king and father of all” and there are “many gods, sons of God,
co-rulers (synarchontes) with God.” 7 According to Maximus, this is a
doctrine universally accepted, held by both Greeks and barbarians.
Perhaps Paul had something like it in mind when he made his own
affirmation. In his thought we see Christian theology being worked
out in relation to polytheistic idolatry, idolatry which Paul includes
Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry 49

in lists of vices (Gal. 5:20) Cor. 5:10). A Christian

and the vicious (1

must avoid idolatry (1 Cor. 10:14) as well as those within the church
who may have leanings toward it (1 Cor. 5:1 1). The temple of God
(= the Christian himself) has no “agreement” with idols (2 Cor.
6:16). He
has to insist that abhorrence of idols does not justify
robbing pagan temples (Rom. 2:22).
We shall later see how important the step taken in 1 Corinthians
was for the development of Christian theology (chapter 8).

The Theology of Paul in Acts

The best way to approach some of Paul’s sermons in Acts is to

consider the rhetorical models they were probably following. In a
rhetorical school the pupils would be trained in the exercise entitled
“Whether the gods exercise providential care for the cosmos.”
There is a good outline of this topic in the Progymnasmata of the
second-century rhetorician Theon. 8 Theon begins thus: You should
state how easy it is for the gods to perform the task and how dae-
mons, heroes, and other gods help them. Second, all men whether
Greeks or barbarians share this belief, and it is confirmed by the
existence of votive altars. You then invoke the authority of “the
wise,” such as Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno, not to mention the tradi-
tional “legislators,” none of whom advocated irreligion (asebeia).
The most famous rulers have also believed in providence. More
theological arguments should follow at this point. “Since God is just
he would not overlook his worshippers without providential care;
moreover, the nature of the universe testifies that everything comes
into existence by providence for the sake of what is in the universe.”
The examples are taken from the changing seasons, with a reference
to the much-anthologized Memorabilia of Xenophon (4.3.5). Provi-
dential care suits the gods, who are not lazy or weak. Indeed, it is
necessary for providence to exist. Denying its existence means de-
stroying our idea of the gods and of their very existence. Moreover,
the world would not have come to be had there been no providence.
The house implies the builder. It would be ridiculous to suppose
this most beautiful and most valuable world could have come into
existence without some “most beautiful and most divine Demi-
urge.” We compare the governance of the world with the work of
a steward or a pilot or a general or a political ruler and conclude
that God must govern. Then it can be argued a fortiori that since
heroes and daemons care for cities, the gods must care for the whole
world. Next, without providence there would be no justice or piety
or keeping of oaths or courage or temperance or friendship or favor
50 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

or indeed anything related to virtue. If one goes, many go; and

intelligent people do not intend to destroy the virtues.
It is clear that not all the arguments are equally persuasive, but
the rhetorician or homilistwho used them was aiming at a cumula-
tive effect like theone a Christian missionary would have had in
mind when giving addresses at Lystra and Athens or any other
Hellenized town in the eastern Mediterranean world.
There is not a great deal of explicit theology in the book of Acts,
but in the two keynote addresses against idolatry we find materials
that resemble popular rhetorical models like the one in Theon’s
work, as well as the religious discussions by philosophers such as
Epictetus or, for that matter, the basic ideas we have already found
in Paul’s letters. In these addresses the arguments favoring the gods
are used on behalf of the one God.
First we look at what is ascribed to Paul as he denies being the
hero or daemon Hermes (Acts 14:15-17). He urges his hearers to
“turn from these vain things [i.e., idols] to a living God,’’ described
as the Demiurge, the one “who made the heaven and the earth and
the sea and all that is in them.’’ Though this God allowed previous
generations of pagans to “walk in their own ways’’ and only now
presented his gospel through the mission of the apostles, there were
always testimonies to his care for humanity “for he did good and
offered you rains and fruitful seasons from heaven, satisfying your
hearts with food and gladness.’’ In other words, God’s eternal provi-
dential care was obvious from the goodness of the creation that he
made. The positive notes found in Romans 1:19-20 recur. So do
those of Greek rhetoric.
The account in Acts 17 goes farther. First, Luke has created a
highly sophisticated setting for his report. In the opening chapters
of Acts he had used Pythagorean terms to describe the similar
common sharing of property, so now he thinks of the trial of Socra-
tes as he sets Paul before the court of the Areopagus. The key verse
is Acts 17:18: “Others said, ‘He seems to be a preacher of foreign

divinities (xena daimonia),' since he was proclaiming Jesus and the

resurrection.” The charge against Socrates was very close to that.
He was accused of proclaiming “new divinities (kaina daimonia). ” 9
—
Luke clearly is thinking of popular philosophy and thinking favor-
ably of its hero.
Paul then launches into a discourse much like that at Lystra but
somewhat fuller. He attacks Athenian idolatry by speaking of “the
God who made the world and everything in it,” the one who “gives
to all men life and breath and everything [else].” This God made
Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry 51

all human beings “from one’’ (a tacit reference to Adam) and set
them and boundaries (rise and fall of empires?
in allotted periods
different climates?) and encouraged them to seek after him —and
find him. Luke, perhaps after Paul, is perfectly willing to cite the
Greek poet Aratus as a witness; it was he who wrote “We are indeed
his offspring.’’ Obviously poets making statements like this belong
among the “wise’’ of whom the rhetorician spoke. But this is not to
say that Luke, much less Paul, knew Aratus either directly or
through the anthology in which the opening lines of his poem are
still found. For the point of the Athenian address it is necessary to

hold that we are the offspring of God, not (as in Aratus) of Zeus.
And just this correction had been made by the Jewish apologist
Aristobulus, perhaps a century earlier. 10 As his offspring we know
that God is not like the idols but is “a living and real God.”
The audience, described as including Epicurean and Stoic
philosophers (Acts 17:18), gives a mixed response to Paul’s address,
though some join him, notably a certain Dionysius, a member of the
court (Acts 17:34).
The sermon at command to repent and
Athens ends with God’s
a reference to the last judgment. God
“has fixed a day on which he
will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has ap-
pointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him
from the dead.” This conclusion leads us back to Thessalonica.
Surely the situation of an Athenian convert too would be one of
waiting, like the Thessalonians, “for his Son from heaven, whom he
raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to
come.” The two parts fit together and give us the context not only
for the early doctrine about the Father but also, to some extent, for
the doctrine about the Son.

Theology in the Preaching of Peter

The book of Acts and the apocryphal Preaching of Peter are cer-
tainlysecondary sources for the theology of either of these apostles.
Some of Paul’s ideas, however, are reflected in the sermons in Acts,
and no doubt Peter would not have disagreed entirely with the
theological notions ascribed to him in the so-called Preaching of Peter.
This representation of what Peter could have said when he spoke
to Gentiles included his proclamation that “God is one, who made
the beginning of everything and has power over the end.” Then it
went on with typically Middle Platonic statements about God (see
chapter 6). “He is the invisible who sees all, the uncontained who
52 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

contains all, the one without needs whom all need and for whom
they exist; incomprehensible, eternal, imperishable, unmade who
made allby the word of his power [cf. Heb. 1:3].' n “Peter” then
proceeded to denounce Greek forms of worship because they in-
volved idolatry. “Influenced by ignorance and not knowing God as
we do (in accordance with perfect knowledge), they gave shapes to
what he gave them to use, wood and stone, bronze and iron, gold
and silver, forgetting the material and its use, they raised up what
belonged to them as possessions and worshiped them; as well as
—
what God gave them for food the birds of the air and the fish of
the sea and the reptiles on land, along with four-footed beasts of the
field, weasels and mice and dogs and monkeys. They offered their
own food as sacrifices to mortals, dead things for dead men as to
gods and thus displeased God by denying his existence.” 12 An at-
tack on Jewish worship follows. It is wrong because it follows a
regular calendar and implies worship of sun and moon. According
to Clement, Peter is saying that both Greeks and Jews worship “the
one and only God” in their own fashion. This is not what the
Preaching of Peter really teaches. It says that all should worship him
in the Christian way, not that there is anything of value in their
indigenous usages.
What is important for our purposes here is the way in which
idolatry and theriolatry (i.e., worship of deities in animal form) are
contrasted with the true monotheistic theology. The crude material-
ity of the idols and of the animals sometimes worshiped is an affront

to the one creator God. In mission preaching no distinction was

made between the twin errors which others ascribed to Greeks and
Egyptians.

Theology in the Apocryphal Acts of Paul

As an example of “popular” preaching later ascribed to Paul we

offer the apocryphal Acts of Paul from the latter half of the second
century. It gives much the same picture. Paul urges his hearers at
Ephesus to “repent and believe that there is only one God and one
Christ Jesus, and there is no other. For your gods are of bronze and
stone and wood; they cannot take food or see or hear or even stand
up. Make a good decision and be saved, so that God may not be
angry and burn you up in unquenchable fire.” 13 The “popular”
faithperhaps expressed in the Acts of Paul thus agrees with the more
learned assaults of the apologists on idolatry and to their presenta-
tion of monotheism.
Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry 53

Pagan and Christian Worship

There was a strong emphasis on worship throughout the ancient
world.We have mentioned the impressive ruins of temples all over
the Greco-Roman world. Often these shrines manifested religious
continuity by being converted to Christian use, as in the cases of the
Parthenon and the Pantheon, or by losing their stone columns to
newly erected churches. Before Christianization the temples per-
formed different functions. Originally they were built for the delimi-
tation of “sacred space,” for the housing of great statues of gods
and goddesses, for the offering of sacrifices to the deities, and for
the culmination of sacred processions in their honor. Common
prayers and initiatory rites were also conducted by priests and
priestesses on particular holy days. Certain shrines might also pro-
vide the performance of miracles through “incubation,” sleeping
inside in order to receive divinely inspired dreams or when awake
to receive oracles from the gods. In the fourth century the closing
of the temples marked the real end of pagan religion.
Among Christians, worship was at first relatively simple, partly
because it was conducted by laymen (and women) in houses used
by the faithful. The baptismal rite, in which converts were united to
Christ and became members of the community, did not take place
in the house church but wherever water was available for immer-
sion. At first, baptisms took place in the name of the Lord Jesus,
later in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Worship led to
doctrine and was based on it as well. Persons seeking baptism were
asked for affirmations of belief before they were baptized and took
part in the eucharist. The eucharist-agape was a common meal
more than a common meal, to be sure, but involving eating and
drinking together. These basic rites may have united Christians
more fully than any pagan cult united worshipers of the gods.
 4
Functions of Gods and Goddesses

Claims for the Gods

Worshipers of the gods naturally rejected the Jewish and Chris-

tian claim that theywere ineffective. The gods and goddesses who
won or retained popular devotion in the Greco-Roman world were
those who gave or promised benefits to their devotees. Deities of
this kind could cure diseases and other ailments and rescue from
any kind of danger. They saved life in the face of threatening cir-
cumstances. For kings they kept thrones; for others their property;
for all they protected marriages and children. In addition, many
gods provided oracles and sent dreams through which the future
could be known and right decisions taken. They often encouraged
moral behavior and rewarded it with a blessed life for the soul after
the death of the body. They could save from fate and, so to speak,
short-circuit the stars .
1

Stories about the deeds of gods and goddesses naturally deal with
supernatural and striking events, works in which their extraordinary
power is made manifest. If the event were not striking there would
be no reason to report it, since it would not prove anything. Simi-
larly, unless the god (or his oracle or prophet) predicted some
startling reversal in the future there would be no reason to pay
attention. This is why miracle stories and predictions of the future
play a prominent part in religious traditions. Miracles and predic-
tions are what the gods provide for humanity.

Epiphanies of the Gods

Appearing and power were closely related. The gods manifested

themselves for the benefit of individuals or groups, and their
manifestations or epiphanies were recorded on stone and in books.
54
Functions of Gods and Goddesses 55

Thus there were books entitled Epiphanies of Apollo, On the Epiphanies

of Zeus, and The Epiphanies of the Virgin Goddess. An inscription de-
2

scribing epiphanies of Athena at Lindos even includes references to

historical authorities for the miracles 3 . The epiphanies themselves
involved a magistrate’s dream and a rainfall that helped the Lindi-
ans against the Persians, the instructions of the goddess about a
corpse in the temple, and her order to a magistrate to ask King
Ptolemy for help against an invader from Macedonia.
Other inscriptions refer to the epiphanies of such deities as
Apollo, Artemis, Asclepius, Athena, and Zeus. second-century A
papyrus contains “the praises of Imouthes-Asclepius’’ and ends
with a reference to the god’s “wondrous epiphanies, the greatness
of his power, and the gifts of his benefits .’’ 4
The anti-Christian author Celsus devotes more space to oracles
than to epiphanies, and indeed the oracles of the Greco-Roman
world had a certain reliability about them that appealed to defend-
ers of paganism. Celsus insists that at shrines of heroes “gods are
tobe seen in human form, not deceitful but plainly evident.’’ They
do not merely make “a single appearance in a stealthy and secretive
manner like the fellow who deceived the Christians, but are always
conversing with those who are willing .’’ 5 A little later he insists on
the importance of such revelations.

Why need I list all the events which on the ground of oracles have been
foretold with inspired utterance both by prophets and prophetesses
and by other inspired persons, both men and women? or all the won-
derful things that have been heard from the shrines themselves? or all
the revelations by means of victims and sacrifices? or all those in-
dicated by other miraculous signs? To some persons there have been
plainly evident appearances. The whole of life is full of these experi-
ences.

Celsus then proceeds to note the effect of oracles on the history of

citiesand colonies, on rulers and people, and on the health of
individuals 6 It is an argument from “consensus .’’ 7 Similarly a Stoic
.

speaker in Cicero’s On the Nature of the Gods began his defense of

divination with public examples and went on to those taken from
private life 8.

A less “realistic’’ view

expressed by a Stoic representative in
is

Cicero’s treatise On He cites examples of oracular re-

Divination.
sponses but later adds this significant comment: “Do we expect the
immortal gods to converse with us in the forum, on the street, and
in our homes? While they do not, of course [ quiden ], present them-
selves to us in person, they do diffuse their power far and wide,
56 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

sometimes enclosing it in caverns of the earth and sometimes im-

parting it to human beings.” 9 In this kind of thought there is room
for divination but not for real epiphanies.

Praises of the Gods

During the reign of Hadrian, the rhetorician Alexander, son of a
certain Numenius, explained how to set forth the praises of the
gods. 10 He began his discussion with the supreme or first god, then
turned to the ‘‘younger gods,” who are concerned with the affairs
of mortals.
A speaker should praise such a god on the ground that he is
worshiped by all nations, or at least the most famous or strongest
ones, and he is visible in statues made by famous sculptors. One
should praise ‘‘the sovereignty of the god and the subjects of his
rule in the sky, in the sea, and on earth.” What art does he teach?
(Athena teaches all the arts, while Zeus and Apollo teach divina-
tion.) What relationship does he have to other gods? (Zeus has
primacy of power, while Hermes deals with heralding.) ‘‘Then how
he appeared to men, and his love for them” (no examples are
given). Finally one should discuss animals, trees, and special places
sacred to him, as well as his association with other deities, as in the
case of Apollo and the Muses.
Three points deserve emphasis in Alexander’s outline. First, he
claims that ‘‘some gods are older while some are younger.” This
statement points to the importance of mythology as a substitute for
theology in much Greek thought about the gods. Asclepius was a
powerful healer, but his father Apollo also could achieve healings.
To call Zeus ‘‘father of gods and men” was not an idle statement,
for one could trace genealogies not only among heroes and kings
but among the gods themselves. To be sure, mythographers some-
times disagreed with one another over these relationships. The
general principle that there were relationships remained intact.
Indeed, it had been intact for many centuries, ever since the
Theogony of Hesiod provided a helpful analysis of the gods’ family
relationships. It was Hesiod who explained that Athena was the

daughter of Zeus and Metis ( Theogony 886), Apollo and Artemis the
children of Zeus and Leto ( Theogony 918), Hermes the son of Zeus
and Maia (Theogony 938), Dionysus the son of Zeus and Semele
(Theogony 940), Heracles the son of Zeus and Alcmene (Theogony
950). In the Eoiae he probably described Asclepius as son of Apollo
and a certain Arsinoe, not the more usual Coronis, 11 but it was his
divine father who made the difference. The relationship of aliens
Functions of Gods and Goddesses 57

like Isis, Sarapis, and Mithras to the Greek gods depended on how
they were identified with the Greek deities.
Second, the statues of the gods were important. In the dream
visions of Aelius Aristides, the various gods appeared to him as
depicted in art. How else would he know who they were? Athena
appears “with her aegis and the beauty and size and the whole form
of the Athena of Phidias at Athens” ( Orations 48.41, tr. Behr). As-
clepius too sometimes appears “in the posture in which he is repre-
sented in statues” ( Orations 50.50).
Third, it was necessary to speak of the god’s “power dynamis ], [<

what it is and what works prove it what things have been rectified
through the art which he practises and established whatever
. . .

works he has done among the gods or for the gods ... in what way
he appeared to men, and his love for mankind.” Here there would
be discussions of epiphanies made not just for the sake of divine
manifestation but for the benefit of gods or human beings. (Under
“art,” one would naturally mention the medical skill of Asclepius.)

What Did People Generally Think?

It ishard to find out what ordinary people thought the gods did
for them. Dio Chrysostom says that “you might reasonably expect
(and people report) that founding heroes or gods would often visit
the cities they have founded, invisible to others both at sacrifices
and at festivals.” He refers to Heracles as attracted by a magnificent
funerary pyre built in his honor. 12 But the gods would be “invisible
to others” (whoever they were), and the statement proves nothing
about the more random appearances of the gods to aid even their
devotees. Literary figures gain and hold the center of the stage, and
only an occasional papyrus letter proves what others had in mind.

Cases from Letters and Inscriptions

Often the letters too are highly stereotyped. In the sampling

given by A. S. Hunt and
C. C. Edgar, people regularly inform their
correspondents that “before all” they are praying for their health
either “with all the gods of this place” or “with the Lord Sarapis.”
They give thanks to Sarapis for rescue from shipwreck or pray to
him about health; they pray to “ancestral gods,” especially when
they are away from home. Does “stereotyped” mean “insincere”?
Probably not. When a woman in deep trouble with her husband
says, “Every day and evening I make supplication on your behalf
before [the hippopotamus goddess] Thoeris who loves you,” she
58 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

must be writing what she believes. 13 Oracles could give personal

advice: inscriptions from Dodona show Zeus and his consort Dione
being asked about the legitimacy of prospective offspring, about
sickness, about real estate, about raising sheep, and about prospec-
tive travel. 14

Some Important Witnesses

Plutarch

Early in the second century the philosopher Plutarch placed the

lesser gods between gods and men. Following the Platonic philoso-
pher Xenocrates, he held that between the two groups there were
daimones usually beneficent but sometimes harmful. Second-cen-
,

tury Christians who discussed such beings invariably had evil dai-
mones in view; Plutarch recognized both kinds but laid emphasis on
the good. Another Middle Platonist, Albinus, treated them as
created by God the Demiurge. 15
Plutarch thus discusses the meaning of Isis as a good daimon
before she became a goddess.

She was not indifferent to the contests and struggles she had endured,
nor to her wanderings or her many deeds of wisdom and courage, and
she would not accept oblivion and silence for them. With the most holy
rites she mingled portrayals and suggestions and imitations of her
sufferings at that time, and sanctified them as a lesson in piety and an
encouragement for men and women who are overpowered by like
disasters .
16

Oddly enough, as we shall see in chapter 9, Plutarch also called Isis

in some sense a cosmic deity.

Artemidorus

To avoid undue concentration on what philosophers said, we turn

to the second-century Dream Book of Artemidorus, even though it
too is a learned treatise, classifying the gods as well as describing
them. The advantage his work has for us is that some people must
have dreamed the kinds of dreams he interprets. He reveals a
thoroughly religious world.
Artemidorus classifies gods in several ways. 17 They can be divided
into the many known by the mind ( noetoi a term later used by ,

Neoplatonists) and the few known to the senses. They can be

treated as Olympian or etherial, heavenly, earthly, sea and river,
Functions of Gods and Goddesses 59

subterranean, and “outside these categories.’’ Olympians are self-

evidently gods like Zeus, Hera, Heavenly Aphrodite, Artemis,

Apollo, Etherial Fire, and Athena; heavenly are Sun and Moon, and
so forth (“all these are known to the senses’’). On earth there are
also gods known to the senses, such as Hecate, Pan, Ephialtes
(“nightmare’’), and Asclepius (he is mentally known too), as well as
gods perceived by mind such as the Dioscuri, Heracles, Dionysus,
Hermes, Nemesis, Ordinary Aphrodite, and so forth. Among the
subterranean deities he names not only the Eleusinian gods Pluto,
Persephone, Demeter, Kore, and Iacchus but also (without making
any distinction) the Egyptians Sarapis, Isis, Anubis, and Harpok-
rates. At the end he mentions the primordial gods who go beyond
classification: Oceanus, Tethys, Kronos, the Titans, and the Nature
of the universe.
The difference between gods perceived by mind and gods per-
ceived by sense is most obscure. The heavenly gods in the sky are
obviously perceived by sight. Apart from that, the classifications
break down. Artemidorus soon turns to different kinds of distinc-
tions 18 When the Olympians appear they confer benefits upon the
.

highest class of men and women, while the heavenly gods aid the
middle class and the earthly gods help the poor. The subterranean
gods are usually good only to farmers and those who are trying to
escape detection. Sea and river gods aid sailors and others who work
with water. The unclassified gods are harmful to all except philoso-
phers and seers, those who stretch their minds to the limits of the
universe.
What kind of help can one expect from the gods according to
Artemidorus’ book? Just what one would hope for: wealth, health,
skill in one’s work or profession, happy marriage and safe child-

birth, maintenance of family relationships, emancipation from slav-

ery, safe journeys. According to Artemidorus, the Egyptian deities
are especially powerful 19 Dreams about them “and their shrines
.

and mysteries, and everything that has to do with them and those
who share temples and altars with them, mean troubles, dangers,
threats, and conspiracies —
from which they provide security beyond
expectation and hopes. For the gods are thought to be saviors of
those who have tried every means and have come to the ultimate
danger; they are especially the saviors of those who are in such
circumstances. Their mysteries are notably predictive of grief; if the
physical explanation of their story contains something else, the
show this.’’
mythical and the historical interpretations
Thus the gods about whom stories were most often told were not
the supreme gods of either Greece or Rome but the deities who in
60 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

some sense had lived among humans before and were likely to
appear and give aid now. With the passage of time and the develop-
ment of theology these lesser gods assumed additional roles that
brought them close to the Olympians or the Twelve Gods of Rome.

Galen

Not everyone was so devoted to the gods. If we lookthrough the

multivolumed works of the physician Galen, we find remarkably
little said about the gods of popular mythology. For Galen only

Asclepius is important, especially because in myth Apollo gave the

gift of healing to him and in turn he revealed it to humanity. 20 He
hardly ever mentions the other gods, though he refers to some of
them as legislators for particular peoples. 21 Though he firmly be-
lieves in providential formation and governance by the Demiurge of
Plato’s Timaeus, whom he calls “Nature,” he does not believe in the
wonder stories about divine aid or harm. Those who believe them
rely on “so-called histories” and do not try to understand causes. 22
He is willing to allegorize Athena’s birth from the head of Zeus and
here follows the lead of the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus. 23 The
stories about the birth of Zeus are merely etymological. 24 Aphrodite
was born from foam (aphros), but this too is a myth. 25 Ordinarily
Galen discusses aphrodisiacs rather than Aphrodite.

Deified Emperors

Before turning to the beneficent works of the divine sons of gods,

we note that on the borderline between gods and men there also
stood not only daimones of varying rank but also great human heroes
or benefactors such as the emperor Augustus. As early as 9 b.c. the
Greek cities of Asia hailed his birthday in religious language: “Since
the providence that has ordained everything in our life .the. .

birthday of the god was the beginning of the good news (euangelion)
for the world on his account.” 26 A coin issued in Spain to honor his
wife Julia Augusta (Livia) calls her “mother of the world,” genetrix
orbis 27 Suetonius tells a tale of his last visit to the Bay of Naples.
.

When an Alexandrian ship met him, passengers and crew alike put
on white clothing and crowns. They offered incense and shouted
that “through him they lived, through him they sailed, through him
they enjoyed freedom and fortune.” He responded with a gift of
—
gold not to the Alexandrians but more practically to his compan-
ions, whom he asked to spend the money on Alexandrian goods. 28
The language shows that there was no rigid distinction between
Functions of Gods and Goddesses 61

gratitude and cosmic affirmation. There was good news for the
world at Augustus’ birth 29 His wife could be called the world’s
.

mother. The Alexandrians owed their very existence to him. If such

was the case with a heroic emperor, the gods could obviously be
described in similar terms 30 .

Hellenistic rulers had sometimes been deified, especially in

Egypt, but under the Roman empire the senate regularly deified
deceased emperors who had cooperated with it. During the first
century there was some resistance to the process. Tiberius was not
deified. Seneca ridiculed the idea of Claudius as a god. Vespasian
on his deathbed exclaimed, “Alas! I think I am turning into a
god .” 31 By the second century the situation had been regularized
and much pomp and circumstance accompanied the ceremonies.
Christians, Jews, and others remained skeptical 32 When they criti-
.

cized older emperors, however, they confined their attacks to those

who had not been deified, Nero and Domidan. (Caligula, generally
regarded as crazy, was not worth naming .) 33
The practice of deification in the Hellenistic age and in the
Roman empire led scholarly Greeks and Romans to suppose that all
the gods were originally heroes, deified after death because of their
aid to humanity. The theory was usually ascribed to an early Helle-
nistic novelist named Euhemerus, who claimed to have visited an
island in the Indian Ocean where he found a golden column with
records of the deeds of Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus. These had been
kings, deified by grateful subjects like the Hellenistic peoples of
Euhemerus’ own time. This confirmation of a widespread suspicion
about the gods was made popular by the historian Diodorus Siculus,
while the Latin poet Ennius relied on Euhemerus for his own prose
study, which included the Roman god Jupiter Optimus. Obviously
the theory was useful to Christian opponents of paganism. The first
Christian apologist to mention Euhemerus was Theophilus of Anti-
och, who unfortunately confused him with the atheist Diagoras.
More fortunately, the later Latin apologist Lactantius used Ennius’
version.
 5
The Deeds of Individual
Gods and Heroes

Zeus

We begin with Zeus, not Zeus the supreme father in heaven, who
did not usually manifest himself to individuals, but Zeus the local
deity of Stratoniceia in Caria, Zeus Panamaros. When the city was
under probably in 40 b.c., flames from the temple drove the
attack,
enemy away by night, and fog and rain followed the next day. An
inscription ascribes the miracle to the local Zeus. 1 Martin P. Nilsson
notes other “political” miracles of the time. 2
Another event related to Zeus is the “rain miracle” on the Danube
under Marcus Aurelius. Various parties claimed credit for it. The
column of the emperor in Rome depicts Jupiter Pluvius with wings
outspread and rain falling on thirsty Roman soldiers. Dio Cassius
refers to “Arnuphis, an Egyptian magician who was with Marcus,”
who invoked various deities and especially “the aerial Hermes.”
Contemporary Christians assigned it to God and his response to the
prayers of a whole legion of Christian soldiers. 3
Beyond this there is of course “the epiphany that never was,”
when Barnabas and Paul were misidentified as Zeus and Hermes
(see chapter 1).

Children of Zeus

We now turn to the most important “sons and daughters” of Zeus

and some of the other gods, to see how they helped humanity.

Apollo

The god Apollo, son of Zeus, was associated with many of the arts
and identified with the sun as early as the fifth century b.c .
4 He was
62
The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 63

best known, however, as inspirer of oracles, especially the one at

Delphi. This was the principal Greek oracle, presided over by a
priestess called the Pythia. She sat on a tripod and in a state of
ecstasy delivered brief speeches, usually enigmatic, which were put
into verse by a “prophet.” Before the Hellenistic age many ques-
tions came from the rival Greek city-states, though also from in-
dividuals and in regard to morality. On the temple walls were in-
scribed “Know and “Nothing too much.” It may be that in
thyself’
the Hellenistic period the shrine was a center where slaves were
fictitiously sold to the god until they had worked off the full price
paid their masters, but the arguments of F. Bomer have weakened
5

the case for such a practice. 6

The oracle at Delphi lost influence and wealth in a period when
religious cults were generally growing. Cicero stated that the oracle
was in decline, and Strabo noted that “at present the temple at
Delphi is very poor.” 7 Apparently the oracle had favored the Greek
cities and kings in their struggle with Rome, and in consequence the
Romans rarely consulted it. 8 Augustus venerated Apollo not at Del-
phi but at Actium, where he had won the empire. Nero’s attitude was
ambivalent. On one occasion he “abolished the oracle,” filling with
corpses the fissure from which the vapor of prophetic inspiration
supposedly arose. For a possibly favorable oracle, however, he gave
a fairly large sum. His successor Galba was able to recover it for the
imperial treasury. 9
Plutarch discussed the decline of Delphi in two famous dialogues,
one on the failure of the oracles, the other on the reason the oracles
were not given in verse. Soon afterward the emperor Hadrian, de-
voted to Greek traditions, tried to revive the oracle. From about the
same time, however, come the fragments of the Refutation of the
Charlatans by the Cynic critic Oenomaus of Gadara. These denun-
ciations of oracles, especially at Delphi, were preserved only by the
Christian author Eusebius. 10 Christians like Origen, who vigorously
criticized the priestess (see chapter 11), were of course hostile to the
oracle, but their attacks suggest that the oracle was still active and
highly regarded by many. The pious pagan emperor Julian naturally
denounced Oenomaus’ work. 11
Apollo did not give oracles just however. At Miletus
at Delphi,
and Didyma his shrines flourished throughout the third century. 12
The politically inept oracle at Miletus advised Diocletian to perse-
cute Christians and apparently was forced to recant later. 13
Apollo was also associated with wisdom, philosophy, and the arts.
There were those who even regarded him as the divine father of
Plato. According to Origen, the story ran that Plato was the son of
64 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

Apollo and a human mother. 14 Jerome went even farther. Not only
Plato’s nephew and successor Speusippus, he relates, but also the
Peripatetic Clearchus and Anaxilides, author of a treatise On Philoso-
phers, mother was overcome by a vision of
insisted that Plato’s
Apollo. They thought he would not have been the greatest of
philosophers unless born of a virgin mother. 15 Since a closely simi-
lar report provided by Diogenes Laertius (3.2) lacks the reference
to a virgin mother, it probably comes from Jerome himself. He has
“Christianized” the story.
Christians were not the only ones to collect such information,
carefully preserved among Platonists in the second century and
later. Plutarch, Apuleius, and Olympiodorus refer to the story, tell-

ing how the god as an apparition had intercourse with Plato’s

mother and then commanded his father not to approach her until
the child was born. 16

Athena

Athena was a daughter of Zeus and Metis, although the god swal-
lowed Metis because he feared her destiny to produce Athena and
then a god to rule the gods. In consequence, Athena was born out
of the top of his head. The story seems rather confused and presum-
ably combines a swallowing motif with an allegory. 17 Christians took
a special interest in the story of her birth, which as we shall see was
often treated allegorically by those interested in philosophy and
therefore led to a cosmic interpretation.
She was the great patroness of the city of Athens and its art. Many
of the gods were concerned with the foundation of Athens, says
Aelius Aristides, but Athena above all “granted the city superiority
in wisdom.” 18 She is the goddess to whom belong both reason
(logos) and the city itself. 19
As noted earlier, in Luke’s story of Paul at Athens there is no
mention of Athena. Perhaps for him the philosophical setting of his
story excluded such a local goddess. In any case there was no reason
to mention her if no conflict arose. The goddess was present and
—
known as a miracle-worker elsewhere, however for example at
Lindos, where there is a temple chronicle with lists of gifts and
another list with three of her epiphanies. Each one (490 b.c., fifth
to fourth century b.c., and 305 b.c.) is confirmed by a bibliograph-
ical note. The longest now extant states that the events were nar-
rated by no fewer than seven authorities. The listing of these literary
references suggests that some may have raised questions about such
accounts, but in spite of any doubts the temple adornment was still
The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 65

paid for because of “the epiphany of the goddess.” 20 Another Helle-

nistic inscription tells of an epiphany of Athena Bringer of Victory. 21

Dionysus

Ancient authors do not seem to have made anything of the fact

that Zeus’s daughter Athena was born out of his head and Dionysus
out of his thigh. Even allegorizers kept silence. The resemblances
were more important: both gods were uniquely close to their father
and both helped humanity. The difference in the kind of help was
more important. Dionysus was conspicuous for his association with
wine, revelry, and ecstasy. In art he was often accompanied by satyrs
and maenads. A Silenus from the London Mithraeum depicts the
Dionysiac circle as giving vitam hominibus vagantibus “life to wander-
,

ing men,” and it is not clear whether they are drunk or seeking for
deeper meanings or both. Similarly, the beautiful frescoes on the
wall of the Villa Item at Pompeii depict the wedding of Dionysus and
Ariadne, thus pointing toward the marital bliss often mentioned by
Roman writers. A veiled phallus and a young woman being beaten
with rods do not necessarily point to a deeper, mystical Dionysiac
cult.
Some of the ancients even supposed that the god’s name was
derived from oinou dosis , of wine.” At festivals his gift was
“gift
repeated. Priests at Teos, north of Ephesus, claimed that he was
bom there, for at fixed times, as late as the first century b.c., a
fountain of wine gushed forth spontaneously from the ground.
Competitors on the island of Andros, north of Delos, claimed that
the water from a spring in the temple of Dionysus always tasted like
wine on January 5, the day they called Theodosia “gift of the god.”
,

For Elis near Olympia, Pausanias gives more details. He did not visit
Elis in time for the festival, but “the most respected citizens of Elis”
and others as well swore to the truth of a miracle. Dionysus himself
attended the festival, at which the priests put three empty pots in
the temple and sealed the doors. The next day they broke the seals
and went in to find the pots full of wine. 22

Hermes

In the Cratylus (407E), Plato explains that the name Hermes is

derived from hermeneus “interpreter”; he was also “a messenger,
,

wily and deceptive in speech, and rhetorical.” Hermes presided

over thieves and businessmen and gave aid to both. He was a fast
talker whom the Romans honored as Mercury. Stoics used the alle-
66 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

gorical method to identify him as the logos or speech of Zeus, whose

messenger he was. In the first century Cornutus called him “the
Logos, which the gods sent to us from heaven,” though he was not
considered an agent in creation, as far as we know, before the fourth
century. 23 Justin Martyr had heard of him as “the interpretive Logos
and teacher of all.” 24 We have seen in chapter 1 that in Lycaonia
villagers could suppose that he had come down to them from
heaven.

Heroes

Asclepius

Asclepius was a son of Apollo and the nymph Coronis, according

to myths, and was noted for the cures he performed. He was origi-
nally a man, however, as Homer makes plain. Zeus later killed him
with his thunderbolt because he raised a mortal from the dead and
might have done so for all humanity. The account does not seem
highly consistent, and the Skeptic Sextus Empiricus takes pleasure
in listing the contradictory and “false” explanations given by vari-
ous poets and historians. 25 The Christians had no difficulty in fol-
lowing up this line of attack, but in spite of criticisms Asclepius was
widely venerated well into the fourth century.
The public setting of Asclepian religion was extremely important.
Without the propagandistic records of healings at Asclepius* shrine
at Epidaurus, the history of Hellenistic religion would be much
poorer. The inscriptions (about 300 b.c.) record healings per-
formed by the god for pilgrims who slept in the shrine. The god
could perform healings elsewhere, as we learn from the orations of
Aelius Aristides. When one asks what the gods were supposed to be
doing for humanity, these inscriptions provide the kind of definite
answer often lacking elsewhere.
Strabo, writing in the Augustan age, says that at Epidaurus “As-
clepius, who is believed to cure diseases of every kind, always has
his temple of the sick and of the votive tablets on which the
full
treatments are recorded.” Nearly two centuries later, Pausanias tells
us that old votive tablets still stood within the enclosure at Epidau-
rus. my time six remained, but earlier there were more. On them
“In
were inscribed the names of the men and women healed by As-
clepius, the disease from which each one suffered, and the mode of
the cure; they were written in Doric.” 26 At the end of the nineteenth
century two of the six were found complete, part of a third, and a
piece of a fourth. 27
The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 67

The title given the narratives is Healings of Apollo and Asclepius ,

even though Apollo is not mentioned in what we have. O. Weinreich

suggests that “epiphanies” would be a more correct title, but em-
phasis is being laid on the results of the epiphanies. The cures
always took place, though the sleeping suppliant did not always have
to dream, nor did the god always have to appear. More often than
not, however, the sleeper “saw a vision” (opsis) or the equivalent
“dream” (enypnion). Often “it seemed to him” or “her” that the god
was present. More tangibly, the god could extract the head of a
spear or an arrow and put it into the hands of the patient. Some
of the stories clearly suggest that when asleep the patients under-
went surgery performed by the priests. However the cures were ef-
fected, all could agree upon the power of Asclepius to perform
them. The priests insisted on advertising the power of the
god.
Such healings continued at Epidaurus and elsewhere (notably at
Pergamum and at Aegae in Cilicia) for more than six hundred years.
In his Life of Constantine, Eusebius says of Aegae that “thousands
were excited over [Asclepius] as over a savior and physician who
sometimes was manifest to sleepers and sometimes healed the dis-
eases of those who were sick.” The god led their souls astray, how-
ever, and therefore Constantine ordered the temple destroyed.
“Not a trace of the former madness remained there.” 28 As late as
355 a “hierophant and priest of the Savior, instructed by a dream,”
still could dedicate an altar at Epidaurus to the Asclepius of

Aegae. 29
Seven years after that, Julian mentioned Asclepius at Aegae in his
treatise Against the Galileans (200B), and a priest of the god from that
shrine asked him to have the pillars of the temple given back by the
Christian church there. One column was brought as far as the door-
way of the church by the time the emperor died. The Christian
bishop then moved it back into the church. 30
The practice of “incubation” was not confined to the temples we
have mentioned. Many other shrines of Asclepius could provide
dreams and cures, while other gods and goddesses had similar
powers. For the western provinces we mention only the shrine of
Nodens (Mars) in Gloucestershire and that of the goddess Sequana
near Dijon. 31
There were also relations of a more private and personal sort
between Asclepius and some of his worshipers. Fortunately we pos-
sess the six “sacred orations” produced by the hypochondriac
Aelius Aristides in the latter half of the second century. These
provide an invaluable picture of a personal attitude toward the god
68 Praise and Denunciation of the God
!?

and his powers 32 as well as materials for a medical and psychopatho-

logical analysis. 33

Heracles

The hero Heracles was regarded as a son of Zeus and a human

mother, Alcmene. Zeus’s jealous wife Hera persecuted Heracles
throughout his life, beginning by sending two serpents to kill him
as an infant; he escaped by strangling them. Later he was forced to
serve Eurystheus and at his command achieved the famous Labors,
many further adventures, his wife Deianeira
twelve in number. After
got him to wear a garment poisoned with the blood of a centaur.
This caused him frightful pain and he had himself brought to the
top of Mount Deta and burned on a pyre. His divine part ascended
to heaven, where he was reconciled with Hera and married her
daughter Hebe. 34
The Christian apologist Justin supplies a clear and brief summary
of Heracles’ career. “They say that Heracles was strong and wan-
dered over the whole earth; he was born to Zeus by Alcmene, and
when he died he ascended to heaven.’’ 35 In the Apology he had said
that “to escape from pain he delivered himself to fire.” 36 Justin
simply reports the myth and seems to know nothing of any allegori-
cal interpretation.
About the time of Justin, however, Stoics were treating Heracles
as a greatexample of moral struggle. Dio Chrysostom idealized his
labors, which he supposedly undertook “for virtue’s sake,” and said
that he was considered son of Zeus “because of his virtue.” Alex-
ander the Great was thought to be descended from him. 37 Epictetus
used him as a model of effort. “What would Heracles have
amounted to without his labors? They revealed him and trained
him.” The effort led to deification. “With him he had no dearer
friend than God. This is why he was believed to be, and was, son
of Zeus. In obedience to him he went about eradicating injustice and
lawlessness.” 38
Another example: “Heracles was ruler and leader of the whole
land and sea, purging them of injustice and lawlessness and intro-
ducingjusdce and righteousness; and he did these things naked and
alone.” 39
Epictetus not only provides the moral meaning of the story of
Heracles but also explains away difficult episodes. He explains Her-
acles’ wanderings thus: “It was the lot of Heracles to traverse the
entire world, ‘seeing the wanton behavior of men and the lawful’
(Od. 17.487), casting out and purging the one and introducing the
The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 69

other for it.” Then he turns to the difficult problem of Heracles’

incessant promiscuity. “He was in the habit of marrying [!] on
occasion and begetting children and deserting them, not groaning
or yearning for them or leaving them as orphans. For he knew that
no human being is an orphan but for all always and constantly there
is the Father who cares for them.” Now, past the difficulty raised by
mythology, Epictetus is ready to turn to the relation of Heracles to
the Father Zeus. He concludes triumphantly that “to him it was no
mere story that Zeus is father of men, for he always thought of him
as his own father and called him so and looked to him in all he did.
Therefore he had the power to live happily in every place .” 40

Oriental Gods

Isis

The worship of Isis

(and Osiris) originated in Egypt and in both
art and preserved an Egyptian atmosphere. Isis was not wor-
ritual
shiped for the sake of local color, however. She performed many
functions for her devotees and these are listed notably in the so-
called Praises of Isis found in the Greek islands and elsewhere. The
version in some manuscripts of Diodorus Siculus 41 suggests that the
were sent out from Memphis, but this may be part of the
Praises
framework for the work, which indicates that they were
fictitious
found on hieroglyphs at Nysa in Arabia 42 .

I am Isis, the queen of every land, and whatever laws I ordained no

one can dissolve. I am the eldest daughter of the youngest god Cronus.
I am wife and sister of King Osiris. I am the first inventor of crops for

mankind. I am the mother of King Horus. I am she who rises in the

star in the constellation Sirius. For me the city of Bubastis was built.
Rejoice, rejoice, Egypt that nursed me.

The fullest version of the Isis aretalogy, from Cyme, lists no fewer
than fifty-three virtues, powers, or achievements of the goddess and
recalls the “praisesof Yahweh” to be found in the Old Testament 43 .

If we analyze these materials, we find that almost all are basically

religious rather than related to philosophical theology. They deal
with the myth about the goddess and her achievements for human-
ity, especially for the women who may have been her principal

devotees.
Isis is Queen goddess, eldest daughter of Cronus
the supreme
and of Osiris, brought up in Egypt and given instruction by
sister
the wise god Hermes. She differentiated the hieratic language from
demotic and also became the wife of King Osiris and mother of
70 Praise and Denunciation of the Gods

Horus. She founded the city of Bubastis (and is therefore superior

to the lioness goddess of that name). She is no merely Egyptian
deity, however, for she has complete control over world events and
indeed over fate.
A brief cosmological section found in these Greek versions but
not well attested in Egyptian sources (lines 10-12) identifies Isis as
the divider of earth from heaven and the guide to the stars, sun, and
moon on their courses. (We shall discuss these lines in chapter 9
when we come to the cosmic meaning of Isis.) Elsewhere in the
Praises she appears in the rays of the sun and accompanies it on its
course, while in Diodorus and on Cyme she rises as a star in the
constellation Sirius. 44 In other words, in the Praises, apart from lines
10 to 12, she is not a true creator, though she does rule over rivers,
winds, rains, and storms as well as the sea and the islands in it. As

a sea goddess she is also concerned with navigation and seaman-

ship.
She cares for the lesser gods and established their initiations,
shrines, and sacred groves as well as her own. More to the point,
she is concerned with human beings. She gave them agriculture and
trade by sea; she founded cities, hence civilization; and she liberates
prisoners. She brings down tyrants and rules over war. Her legisla-
tion determines the basic principles of morality, and she strength-
ens what is right.
Most important in regard to the women who worshiped her (she
is called God by women), she created their sexual attractiveness,

instituted marriage contracts to protect them, designed the nature

of pregnancy and birth, and established binding ties between chil-
dren and parents.
Items repeatedly mentioned must point to essential claims of the
Isiac religion. There are repeated references or allusions to Isis’
strengthening of what is right, her encouragement of sexual attrac-
tion, and her concern for navigation. These must have been key
elements in the appeal of the goddess to men, to women, and to
humanity generally. Hers was a universal message, based on an
Egyptian foundation but pointing toward the whole Mediterranean
world. As we have indicated, in the Praises there is little philosophi-
cal theology or none. For fully cosmic interpretations we must wait
for philosophers like Plutarch and rhetoricians like Apuleius.

Sarapis

We have already discussed the origin of Sarapis (chapter 2). In all

probability, Greek theologians at the court of Ptolemy I gave shape
The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes 71

to the cult of Sarapis. He lacked the allure of antiquity, but he was

a famous wonder-worker and benefactor of humanity. He saved
people from illness and shipwreck and was known as a friend of
sailors. This is shown in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus XI 1382, where a pilot
— —
recounts a miracle unfortunately now lost which is so spectacu-
lar that it is to be “ recorded in the library of Mercury.” Those who
hear about it will cry out “There is one Zeus Sarapis.” The little
account has a title: “Miracle of Zeus Helios the great Sarapis in
regard to the pilot Syrion.”
Weinreich argued that since the god had “neither myth nor
genealogy .miracle stories took the place of mythology.” 45 Aelius
. .

Aristides would probably have agreed. He said in one speech that

the genealogy of Asclepius is irrelevant when compared with his
miracles of healing and in another pointed out that it would take
forever to collect all the stories of the works of Sarapis. 46 The latter
sentiment obviously resembles John 21:25, on the deeds of Jesus:
“If they were recorded one by one, I think the world itself could not
hold the books that could be written.”
Some worshipers of Sarapis may have been especially devout.
There were men who lived at the principal shrines in Egypt and
were called katochoi. They “seem to have considered themselves
bound to the temple precincts until the god should set them free.” 47
Evidence for their existence comes from the papyri. 48 These per-
sons were probably men “possessed” by the god. 49 In the third
century of our era there were katochoi of Uranian Zeus near
Apamaea. At first, Dittenberger thought they simply owned prop-
erty in the village, but later he changed his mind. 50
Of course one could add discussions of many other gods and
many other forms of myth and ritual. These will suffice, however,
to give a picture of the background current in New Testament times
and immediately afterward. Now we turn to the theological consid-
erations present among pagans and Christians alike.
 PART THREE
Basic Doctrines
4
The Philosophical Doctrine of God

We have discussed the forms of religion that had to do with local

or personal relationships between gods and human beings, whether
in epiphanies or oracles or divination or cult. In the following chap-
ters we turn to universalizing statements about the gods and their
complete power and providence; that is, statements of a theological
nature.
A papyrus containing popular “sayings of Sansnos” begins with
the counsel to “revere the divine” and to “sacrifice to all the gods.” 1
This advice made good sense in a world full of religions. The multi-
plicity of gods in Greco-Roman paganism is nowhere more evident
than in the lists of names that scholarly ancient authors provided. 2
These lists attract attention especially when used by Christians
against the gods. Theophilus, for example, inquires “how many
kinds of Zeus there are,” and relies on a semi-alphabetical list for
the names Olympios, Latiaris, Kassios, Keraunios, Propator, Pan-
nychios, Poliouchos, and Kapitolinus, as well as the son of Kronos,
buried on Krete (Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.10). Clement mentions
three Zeuses, five Athenas, and six Apollos (Clement, Exhortation to
the Greeks 28.1-3).
Philosphers and rhetoricians, on the other hand, gave lists that
emphasized the beneficent activities of particular gods under vari-
ous aspects. Examples for Zeus occur in On the Universe ascribed to
Aristotle (401 A) and in two orations by Dio Chrysostom (1.39-41);
12.75-76). The content of such lists was similar to theologians’ list
of the names and attributes of God. 3
Against polytheism stood those who, usually following philoso-
phers, developed ideas about the unity of God or, as it is sometimes
called, the divine monarchy. This idea was supported more often
not by rejecting other gods in favor of one but by insisting upon the
virtual identity of one god with others. There might be one god or

75
76 Basic Doctrines

goddess, but he or she transcended all the names that could be

applied to his or her local manifestations. Isis, for example, was
called “myriad named” because of the number of such equations 4 .

Apuleius tells that in various places she is known as Mother of the

Gods, Minerva, Venus, Diana, and so on 5 We now turn to the
.

doctrines by which philosophers justified such syntheses.

Anticipations Among the Pre-Socratics

There were anticipations of philosophical theology in the first

attempts to coordinate and systematize Greek mythology, not to
mention the earlier essays of Orientals in regard to their own myths.
Later Greeks often thought that Homer and Hesiod were responsi-
ble for such systematization and that they had made it popular by
expressing it in poetic form. Later philosophers preserved the mem-
ory of the pioneers, notably Xenophanes, who was to be highly
regarded by Christians 6 .

Xenophanes the Critical Theologian

Xenophanes described Homer as the poet “from whom all men

have learned since the beginning,” but he did not agree with what
Homer taught about the gods. Instead, “One god is the greatest
among gods and men; in neither form nor thought is he like mor-
tals.” Indeed, he “ever abides in the selfsame place without moving;
nor is it fitting for him to move hither and thither, changing his
place.” His creative and formative activity is mental, not physical:
“But effortlessly he sets all things astir By the power of his mind
alone .” 7 Werner Jaeger compares a similar idea in Aeschylus about
the way the gods work: “Gods act without effort: high from their
hallowed seats they somehow make their own thinking come all at
once to pass .” 8
Against this background we can readily see why Xenophanes was
so hostile toward the old poets, who were providing textbooks for
Greece. The problem is first of all moral. “Homer and Hesiod say
that the gods perform countless most disgraceful actions: adultery,
stealing, deceiving one another.” In addition, “mortals suppose
that the gods undergo generation; they dress them with clothing
like their own, as well as voice and form.” Xenophanes therefore
denounced anthropomorphic depictions of the gods. “If cattle [and
horses] and lions had hands, or could paint with their hands and
fashion such pictures as men do, then horses would pattern the
The Philosophical Doctrine of God 77

forms of the gods after horses, and cattle after cattle, giving them
just such bodies as the shapes which they find in themselves.”
Thus, he says, [the gods of] the Ethiopians are black with snub
noses, while [those of] Thracians are blond, with blue eyes and red
hair.” 9
This whole attitude passed into later Greek criticism of the tradi-
tional gods and was eagerly appropriated by Christian authors. We
have just referred to several fragments of Xenophanes. Indeed,
Fragment 23 about the one God comes from Clement of Alex-
andria, who immediately proceeds to quote Fragments 14 and 15
and elsewhere cities Fragment 16, all directed against anthropo-
morphism. 10 We may add that even if Clement was using antholo-
gies, the fact (if it is a fact) makes no difference in the theological
impact.The negative side of Xenophanes’ thought was immensely
popular among later philosophers and notably with Plato, who re-
jected poetry from his ideal Republic simply because itwas harmful
to true theology. We shall later see how influential Xenophanes’
positive doctrine of God was with some early Christians.

Zeus as King of Gods and Men

A. B. Cook has traced the history of Zeus from ‘‘god of the bright
blue sky” through his control over various weather phenomena, as
a god of the most powerful, and wisest of
earth, then the strongest,
the gods. 11 In Homer and was a tendency to exalt him,
later there
in spite of the many myths about him that are “early and gro-
tesque.” 12 Myths and cults can be contrasted with what Zeus meant
to “poets and thinkers.” 13 A movement toward monotheism is evi-
dent even in Homer, who calls Zeus “father of gods and men.” 14
Hesiod too reveres him, and the works of both poets continued to
influence schoolboys throughout antiquity. Some of the great tragic
poets encouraged thought about Zeus and his mysterious workings
in human life. A fragment of Aeschylus preserved by Clement of
Alexandria says that “Zeus is ether, Zeus is earth, Zeus is heaven;
and Zeus is everything beyond these.” 15
Christians, however, could also cite a line of Euripides from Mela -
nippe the Wise 16 In it Euripides referred to “Zeus, whoever he is, for
.

I know him only by report plen logoi].” The word logos permitted
[

different kinds of exegesis. The more pious Stoics took logos to

mean “reason”; one knew God only by this means. 17 Epicureans, on
the other hand, took the word as “report” or “hearsay” and viewed
Euripides as their own forerunner. 18 Plutarch tells a story (from the
78 Basic Doctrines

prologue to the play) about how the poet changed his mind and
later substituted the line “Zeus, as he is called by the voice of
truth.” 19 In any event, Zeus was a cosmic power for Euripides, not
a god active in human affairs.
Hellenistic philosophers often gave praise to Zeus. The devout
Stoic Cleanthes invoked Zeus in two hymns, one quoted in an an-
thology, the other by later Stoics such as Seneca and Epictetus. 20
The poem of Aratus on weather prediction begins with the praise
of Zeus. Cornutus, theorist of allegory in Roman times, devoted
much space to Zeus, his names and his deeds. He explains that
Homer calls Zeus “father of gods and men” because the nature of
the world was the cause of the existence of these beings, “just as
fathers generate children.” 21 Plutarch is more precise, noting that
they were not made through semen. The language is analogical;
“God begot in matter the principle of generation.” 22
The praise of Zeus continues in the rhetorician Aelius Aristides,
who has a hymn explicitly directed to him. 23 We shall return to
Aristides later in this chapter.

Cosmic Theology in the Treatise On the Universe

A treatise from the early years of the Christian era, wrongly

handed down among Aristotle’s works, is entitled De Mundo, or On
the Universe. Its philosophical origins are not readily identifiable, and

it thus reflects the interrelationships of the schools in Roman times.

It also shows how one could move from “God” to “Zeus” or the
reverse.
The basic theological doctrine is set forth in chapter 6 On the

Universe 24 . “All things are from God and were constitued for us by
God.” Indeed, “God is the preserver soter of all things and the
creator genetor of everything in this universe, however it is brought
to completion.” He is Supreme, because Homer says he dwells “on
the highest peak” of the whole heaven. The primary purpose of
Pseudo- Aristotle is thus to lay emphasis on God’s transcendence.
On ends with a brief but climactic statement about
the Universe
God and his functions. 25 “God being one yet has many
names and
names, being called after all the various conditions which he himself
inaugurates. We call him Zen [here understood as derived from the
verb “to live”] and Zeus, using the two names in the same sense,
as though we should say ‘him because of whom we live.’ ” He is the
god known in mythology and from natural phenomena and his
participation in human affairs. After a list of examples we see that
he “derives his names from all natural phenomena and good for-
The Philosophical Doctrine of God 79

tune, since as he is the cause (aitios) of all things.” A quotation from

“the Orphic Hymns” 26 confirms the point, and the author goes on
to simplify the theological tradition by identifying God with Neces-
sity, Fate, Destiny, Lot, Nemesis, Adrasteia, and Dispensation and

explaining that the names of the three FatesGod’s actionsrefer to

in past, future, and present. Quotations from Plato round out the
account. “God, as the old story has it, holding the beginning and
the end and the middle of all things that exist brings them all . . .

to accomplishment; and with him ever follows Justice.” 27 This pic-

ture of Zeus as the “cause” of all obviously carries his transcendence

beyond the simple assertions of supremacy and power to be found
in mythology. The Orphic hymn makes it especially clear that he is
above all else.

Plutarch’s Doctrine of God

Plutarch’s Platonic doctrine of God is set forth in the treatise On
the E at Delphi 28
. We quote only the beginning, though all of the
work is relevant.

God exists, if one needs to say so, and he exists for no fixed time but
for the everlasting ages which are immovable, timeless, and undeviat-
ing, inwhich there is no earlier or later, no future or past, no older
or younger. He being one has completely filled “forever” with one
“now”; and being is really being only when it is after his pattern,
without having been or about to be, without a beginning and not
coming to an end. Therefore in our worship we ought to hail him and
address him with the words “Thou art,” or even, by Zeus, as some of
the ancients did, “Thou art one.”

Plutarch goes on to explain that the name of Apollo, god of the

Delphi, denies multiplicity. There is really one god, the god of
Platonic theology.

Later Middle Platonists

By the middle of the second century, Middle Platonic doctrine

about the supreme transcendent God was being expressed by a
number of teachers, among whom we may mention Albinus,
Apuleius, and Atdcus.
Albinus, who taught Platonism toward the middle of the second
century, has left an introductory manual in which the gods are
discussed (ch. 8), in a section “on first principles (archai) and the
theological theorems,” specifically in relation to what Albinus calls
80 Basic Doctrines

“the third principle” (ch. 10). The gods have nothing to do with the
world of sense perception, and since Mind is even better than Soul,
the transcendent cause of Mind is the First God, who works un-
moved (the Aristotelian principle). He always knows himself and his
own thoughts, and this activity is called Form. 29

The First God is eternal, ineffable, self-sufficient —that is, without

needs, ever-sufficient —that is, always perfect, all-sufficient —that is,

completely perfect; Deity, Substantiality, Truth, Symmetry, Good. I

mention these aspects not as providing definitions but as naming
aspects in every respect characteristic of the one under consideration.
And he is Good because he benefits all things as he is able, being the

cause of every good thing; beautiful, because his form is by nature

perfect and symmetrical; Truth, because he is the source of all truth
as the sunis of all light; he is Father because he is the cause of all and

sets inorder the heavenly Mind and the soul of the universe toward
himself and toward his own thoughts.
For in accordance with his will he filled everything with himself,
raising up the soul of the universe and turning it toward himself as
being the cause of its Mind. The Mind, arranged by the Father, in turn
arranges the whole of nature in this world. It is ineffable and appre-
hensible only by Mind, as was said, since it has neither genus nor form
nor distinction; nothing has happened to it, nor any evil, for it would
not be right to say this; nor any good for this will involve participation
in something, notably good.

Albinus goes on to offer further exercises in negative theology.

Obviously they were popular in the philosophical or theosophical
circles where religious thinkers sought philosophical support. For
instance, the rare word ousiotes appears not only here but also in the
contemporary Corpus Hermeticum (12.1), where we read that “the
Nous is not cut off from the substantiality of God but is deployed,
so to speak, from this source like light from the sun.” Here we also
find ourselves in the imagery used by the Christian apologists in
speaking of the generation of the Son from the Father or the Logos
from God. From a Hermetic fragment we learn that “ the soul is an
incorporeal substance which when in a body does not depart from
its own substantiality.” 30 Again, this was a doctrine which Christians

and others found attractive.

In chapter 15, 31 God as maker of the whole
Albinus speaks of
universe, including gods and daemons. He sustains the whole by his
will. The beings called his sons do what they do by his command
and in imitation of him; they are responsible for divination. They
also took part with him in the making of man. 32
Apuleius 33 says that in Plato’s doctrine, God is “incorporeal, one,
The Philosophical Doctrine of God 81

immeasurable, begetter of everything, blessed and beneficent,

. . .

the best, in lack of nothing, himself bearing all things, celestial,

ineffable, unnameable, and as he himself says, ‘invisible, uncon-
—
querable’^ ‘whose nature is difficult to find and if found cannot be
expressed among the many’ (Tim. 28E).”
Similar teaching is expressed by Atticus, head of the school at
Athens around 176. 34 “Plato connects everything to God and from
God. For he says he ‘holds the beginning and middle and end of
everything that exists and completes his circuit in a straight course’
(Leg. 715E). And again he says he is good, but for the good there
is no grudging about anything.”

Such a monotheistic emphasis did not keep Platonists after Plu-

tarch from differentiating the supreme God fromDemiurge or
the
Creator. Albinus treats “the God in the heavens” as different from
“the God above the heavens,” who like Philo’s Demiurge does not
possess virtue but is above it. 35 Numenius (wrongly) claims that
Plato made such a distinction. “As Plato knew that among men only
the Demiurge is known, while the first Mind, called Being in itself,
is entirely unknown among them, for this reason he spoke like one

who might say this: ‘O men, he whom you conjecture as Mind is not
the First; another, older and more divine Mind is before him.’ ” It
was not Plato who said this but Numenius himself. 36
For authors like these there were thus at least two gods, not just
one. Numenius, for example, writes that “if it is not necessary for
the First to create, one must consider the First God as the Father
of the one who creates.” He then works out the implications of this
thought. 37

Rhetoricians and Satirists

Similar doctrines appear in the writings of rhetoricians such as

Aelius Aristides and Maximus of Tyre, as well as those of the satirist
Lucian and of Celsus, the critic of Christianity. We look at Aristides
first.

There is a close connection between Aristides’ prose hymn to

Zeus (Or. 43) and the theories of the fourth-century rhetorician
Menander. Aristides produces praise of Zeus; Menander tells us
how it should be done. 38 The points to be treated are essentially the
same. After briefly discussing the divisions of rhetoric, Menander
turns to “hymns to the gods.” Some are invocations, some the
reverse; there are hymns “natural” or physical, or mythical, or
genealogical, or fictitious. Finally, some hymns are petitions for
favor, some the reverse. Menander provides examples by naming
82 Basic Doctrines

poets who favored one form or another. Thus among the “natural”
or physical hymns are poems by Parmenides, Empedocles, Or-
pheus, Plato, and the Pythagoreans. They deal with the nature
(physis) of Apollo or Zeus. Fictitious hymns, on the other hand,
associate personified abstractions with the gods (Flight the friend of
Fear, Sleep the brother of Death; Reason the brother of Zeus). The
analyses are rather mechanical and do not reflect lively concern for
the gods.
At the end of the second century, Maximus of Tyre deals with
theological topics in several of his essays. The titles themselves
show what he has in mind. The best examples are Oration 2: whether
shrines should be built for the gods; Oration 4: poets and philoso-
phers on the gods; Oration 5: whether to pray; Orations 8-9: the
daimonion of Socrates; Oration 11: God according to Plato; Oration
17: should Plato have expelled Homer from the Republic; and
finally Oration 41: since God does good things, whence come evils?
The subjects and the manner of treatment are completely tradi-
tional. 39
Oration 2 ends with the statement that “God, the Father and
Demiurge of what exists, older than the sun, older than the heaven,
superior to time and the age and every transient nature, is anony-
mous for any legislator and ineffable to voice and invisible to the
eyes. We have no means of ascertaining his nature.” For this reason
“we use words and names and animals and products of gold and
ivory and silver and plants and rivers.” The same doctrine recurs in
Oration 1 1

Cynic philosopher Menippus, a figure in the Icarome -

Finally, the
nippns (ch. 9) of the satirist Lucian, discusses divergent views about
the gods just as if he were a Christian apologist. He relies on the
lists of theories to be found in the doxographical literature (lists of

opinions) used in schools.

To some [Pythagoreans] a number was god, while others [Socrates]

took oaths by geese and dogs and plane-trees. And some banished all
other gods and assigned the rule of the world to one only [Jews?
Christians?], so that it made me a little disgusted to hear that gods
were so scarce. Others [Numenius] again lavishly declared them to be
many and drew a distinction between them, calling one a first god and
ascribing to others second and third rank in deity. Some thought the
divine was without form and substance, while others defined it as a
body.
They did not all think that the gods exercise providence in our
affairs; there were some who relieved them of all responsibility as we
are accustomed to relieve old men of public duties. ... A few went
The Philosophical Doctrine of God 83

beyond all this and did not even believe that there were any gods at
all, but left the world to run on unruled and ungoverned.

Lucian’s contemporary the Christian bishop and apologist The-

ophilus provided a similar list of opinions in his treatise To Autolycus .

From doxographical sources he listed the inconsistent and pointless

opinions of various philosophers on God (To Autolycus 2.4) and
providence (3.7). He also ridiculed Socrates’ oath “by dog and
goose and plane-tree” (3.2). In such similar settings we expect to
find similar theological ideas.
 7
Christian Doctrines of God

The Creator God of Judaism

We expect Jewish authors to play an important part in the discus-
sion ofGod as creator. Emphasis on the universal rule of God was
expressed among Jews, who reverentially read Adonai (Lord) for
the more sacred name Yahweh or in the Greek translation rendered
Adonai as kyrios. Above all, the whole structure and content of the
Old Testament revolves about the power and goodness of the God
of Israel, who was also the Creator. The Bible begins with his act
of creation.
By the early first century a.d., even Greek authors recognized that
Moses painted a sublime picture of divine creativity at the beginning
of Genesis. The rhetorical treatise On the Sublime discusses the point
(9.9). “The lawgiver of the Jews, no ordinary man, since he had
formed a proper conception of divine power, expressed it at the
—
outset of his laws where he says, ‘God said’ what? ‘Let there be
**
light, and there was light. Let there be earth, and there was earth.*

The author regards the picture as sublime, of course, because it

agrees with his own viewpoint. He is a typical first-century rhetori-
cian influenced by increasing emphasis on absolute divine power.
Similarly, Jews like Josephus insisted on the solitary oneness of the
God who “created . . . not with assistants of whom he had no need.’* 1

The Cosmic Yahweh and Philosophy

Such Jewish philosophers were eager to explain Old Testament
ideas in relation to the highest levels of Greek theology, notably in
Middle Platonism. Thus Philo’s treatise On the Creation of the World
tells us that according to Moses “the active cause is the perfectly
pure and unsullied Mind of the universe, transcending virtue, tran-

84
Christian Doctrines of God 85

scending knowledge, transcending the good itself and the beautiful

itself’ (On the Creation 8). This is God, the Father and Maker, who
first made “an incorporeal heaven and an invisible earth and the
essential forms (‘ideas’) of air and void” (On the Creation 29). Philo
concludes that Moses teaches the eternity of God, his unity, the
created nature of the world, its unity, and God’s exercise of provi-
dential care (On the Creation 170-72). In this work, however, he
refers to mediators as implied by Genesis 1:26: “Let iis make . .

and elsewhere he lays emphasis on the work of such subordinates

as Logos and Sophia.

Did Philo’s Basic Doctrine Come from Philosophy?

Philo was thus a Jewish philosopher who taught about the creative
activity of the supreme God. He should have done so, for the Old
Testament insists that God is the sole creator. John Dillon and
others, however, have supposed that Philo was relying on Eudorus,
a Pythagorizing Platonist of the first century b.c 2 The Neoplatonist.

Simplicius ascribed to Eudorus the doctrine that the One was “the
causal principle of matter,” and Dillon finds such a doctrine re-
flected in Philo. It is by no means certain, however, that Philo had
ever read Eudorus, whom he never mentions, any more than other
philosophers just before his time.
Admittedly some Middle Platonist did come to lay emphasis on
the creative power of God. In the Timaeus (28C), Plato had already
called “the supreme god” the “father and maker of all things.” In
the second century of our era Plutarch explained that this god is not
only father of engendered gods and men, as in Homer, “but maker
of irrational beings and of inanimate things.” Whose exegesis of
Plato is According to Cherniss, the statement formulated Plu-
this?
tarch’s “own theology and
theodicy.” 3 Plutarch proceeded to criti-
cize “most students of Plato,” those who try to conceal his true
doctrine about “the generation and composition of the universe
and its soul, which have not been compounded from everlasting or
in their present state for infinite time.” People who speak of an
eternal world or soul “confuse or rather utterly ruin the reasoning
of Plato’s case for the gods.” Plutarch’s own doctrine is that “the
universe was brought into being by God, whereas the substance and
matter out of which it came into being did not come to be but was
always available to the artificer for the source of generation is
. . . ,

not what is non-existent ( ek ton me ontos) but what is not in good

. .

and sufficient condition.” 4 Plutarchwas defending his own view, not

Plato’s, against what he thought was majority opinion.
86 Basic Doctrines

We know that this was his own special view, because later Neo-
platonists who discussed the origin of the world named not Eudorus
but Plutarch himself and a few later second-century Platonists as
holding this doctrine. 5 Cherniss notes that “the ‘creation’ in the
Timaeus had already been taken literally by Aristotle and a few oth-
ers but so far as is known not by anyone regarded as a Platonist.’’
—
Plutarch himself—and his contemporaries? thus significantly
heightened emphasis on divine power.

Early Gnostic Theology

The first Christian theologians after Philo to echo and use Middle
Platonic theology (after Philo) were the Gnostic teachers who, like
the major Middle Platonists, flourished in and after the reign of
Hadrian. 6
The theology of the earliest teachers such as Simon and Menan-
der did not amount to much, but in the advanced doctrine of Basi-
lides and the Apocryphon ofJohn we encounter full statements about
God’s transcendence. Basilides goes so far along the via negativa as
to speak, at least according to Hippolytus, of the nonexistent god
making the nonexistent universe out of nothing. 7 From the Apocry-
phon we learn that God is the Monad, more than a god, completely
perfect, illimitable, unsearchable, immeasurable, invisible, eternal,
ineffable, unnameable. He has no definable attributes. 8
There are clear reflections of Platonic theology in Gnostic doctors
such as these, and notably in the theologian and biblical critic Mar-
cion, who was in Rome in 137 and was expelled in 144. Marcion
differentiated the just (dikaios) Demiurge of the Old Testament
from the truly Good (agathos) who was the Father proclaimed by
Jesus. Tertullian commented that Marcion’s God was “the better for
A distinction not unlike Marcion’s had already
his tranquillity.’’ 9
been drawn by Philo in order to explain the major divine names in
the Old Testament. In Philo’s view, “God’’ (theos) referred espe-
cially to God’s goodness, whereas “Lord’’ (kyrios) usually involved
his justice. 10 He was certainly wrong, but he supposed that theos
came from tithemi (“to place’’ or “to put’’) and therefore associated
the name with the creation. Marcion as an opponent of Judaism
maintained the distinction but increased the confusion by transpos-
ing Philo’s terms (with the rabbis!) and making a philosophical or
Gnostic distinction between the Highest God and the inferior crea-
tor. The distinction is not based on the Old Testament but is essen-
tially Middle Platonic, as we have seen.
Christian Doctrines of God 87

The Valentinian teacher Ptolemaeus, introducing a certain

“Flora” (whether a Christian woman or the church at Rome) to his
doctrine, also differentiates “God the Father” or “the perfect God”
from the Adversary, the devil, ascribing the basic moral law to an
intermediary, “the Demiurge and Maker of this universe.” The per-
fect God is the Father of All; that is, of the Gnostic aeons. He is

“good” and “unbegotten,” and his essence is “imperishability and

light-in-itself, simple, uniform.” 11
These examples show how Gnostic teachers appro-
suffice to
priated the basic Middle Platonic doctrine in the second century. As
we have already suggested, the most important difference between
their teachings and those of the Christian apologists lies in the
Gnostic refusal to accept the simple and obvious teaching of the
Bible. In spite of their inadequate semiphilosophical theology, the
apologists did maintain much of the biblical teaching.

The Christian Apologists from Justin to Theophilus

The first was Justin Martyr, who

significant Christian apologist
wrote at Rome around the year 150. Alongside his biblical doctrine
he set forth a high view of divine transcendence evidently related
to Middle Platonism. L. W. Barnard has listed the basic points. God
is “the eternal, immovable, unchanging Cause and Ruler of the

Universe, nameless and unutterable, unbegotten, residing far above

the heavens, and is incapable of coming into immediate contact with
any of his creatures, yet is observant of them although removed
from them and unapproachable by them.” 12 In addition, as in Gnos-
ticand philosophical thought, Justin says that the titles God bears,
such as Father, God, Creator, Lord, and Master, refer to his activi-
ties,not to his essence. 13
Both Tatian and Athenagoras express similar ideas about the
nature of God, although Tatian’s doctrine seems strangely ex-
pressed when we find him using the term “the perfect God” and
speaking of the Logos as “the God who suffered.” As we have seen,
the Gnostic Ptolemaeus used the former term; he also spoke of
Sophia as “the Aeon who suffered.” 14 Athenagoras conveniently
and conventionally summarizes: God is “uncreated, eternal, invisi-
ble, impassible, incomprehensible, and infinite.” He “can be ap-
prehended by mind and reason alone.” He is “encompassed by
beauty, spirit, and indescribable power.” He created and
light,
adorned the universe and now rules it. 15
Other orthodox authors made use of categories both Platonic and
88 Basic Doctrines

Stoic. Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, illustrates such a combina-

tion. He
lists “negative attributes” of God in Platonic fashion while

he treats the Logos, or Son of God, in a Stoic manner, differentiat-

ing the logos endiathetos within God from the logos prophorikos ex-
pressed by him. His Logos doctrine will be discussed in chapter 10,
on Antiochene Christology.
Here we note that in To Autolycus 1.3, Theophilus insists on the
transcendence of God and points out that all of God’s “appella-
tions” refer to his characteristics, attributes, or activities, not to his
nature in itself.

If I call him (God) Light, I speak of his creature;

if I call him Logos, I speak of his beginning [or first principle];
if I call him Mind, I speak of his intelligence;
if I call him Spirit, I speak of his breath;
if I call him Sophia, I speak of his offspring;
if I call him Strength, I speak of his might;
if I call him Power, I speak of his energy;
if I call him Providence, I speak of his goodness;
if I call him Kingdom, I speak of his glory;
if I call him Lord, I speak of him as judge;
if I call him Judge, I speak of him as just;
if I call him Father, I speak of him as all things;
if I call him Fire, I speak of his wrath.
(To Autolycus 1.3)

All these terms are symbolic because they refer to the ineffable
transcendent —
God who, unlike Marcion’s God, is just as well as
good.
Similar teaching is to Albinus and the Corpus Her-
be found in
meticum (2.14). But like Justin, Theophilus is not an orthodox Plato-

nist philosopher. His list of names and attributes ends on a biblical

note. “If I call him ‘fire’ I speak of his wrath.” The interlocutor asks,
“Will you tell me that God is angry?” Against the overwhelming
majority of philosophers, not to mention the Marcionites, 16 The-
ophilus replies, “Certainly: he is angry with those who comipit evil

deeds but good and merciful toward those who love and fear him. 17
For he is the instructor of the pious and father of the just, but judge
and punisher of the impious.” Here he is on firm Stoic ground, at
least: Plutarch notes that in the Stoic view “God punishes evil and
does much to punish wicked men.” 18
Theophilus then returns to philosophy and continues with school
and etymologies (To Autolycus 1.4). “God has no begin-
definitions
ning because he did not come into existence; he is immutable be-
Christian Doctrines of God 89

cause he is immortal. He is called ‘God’ (theos) because he has set

(tetheikenai) everything on his own stability (Ps. 103:5), and because
of theein, which means to run, to move, to energize, to nourish, to
exercise forethought, to govern, and to give life to everything. He
is Lord because he lords over everything, Father because he is
before everything, Demiurge and Maker because he is the founder
and maker of everything, Most High because he is above everything,
All-controlling because he controls and surrounds everything.” The
section ends with a string of Old Testament passages illustrating
God’s creative power. “Most High” and “All-controlling” probably
reflectTheophilus’ close relationship to Hellenistic Jewish thought,
but the rest of the discussion contains nothing specifically Jewish.
The derivation of theos from tithemi though found in Philo, is as old
,

as Herodotus (2.52), while that from theein comes from the Cratylus
(397D) of Plato, where it refers to star gods. It hardly fits a Jewish
or Christian context, but Theophilus’ additional verbs change the
meaning entirely. In any case, given such insistence on divine tran-
scendence, the Christian apologist could then denounce the stories
about the all too human gods as found in mythology —and so he
does (To Autolycus 1.9-10; 2.3; etc.). 19

Irenaeus and the Influence of Xenophanes

One fragment of Xenophanes (B24) was especially popular in the

Greco-Roman period. God “sees as a whole, understands as a
whole, and hears as a whole.” In other words, as Christians were to
take the doctrine, his functions cannot be divided and there is no
place for any Gnostic divisions in the Godhead. Irenaeus of Lyons
found this it no fewer than
language so attractive that he referred to
four times, ascribing it and to “religious men” as
to the scriptures
well. Irenaeus is not concerned with pagan idolatry as much as with
Gnostic idolatry, but the arguments are somewhat similar and the
appeal to philosophy by a Christian theologian is the same.
In the first example, Irenaeus describes the Gnostic emanations
— from Bythos (Depth) to Ennoia (Thought) and Thelesis (Will),
then to Monogenes (Only Generated) and Aletheia (Truth) and —
rejects such a way of speaking about God; for God perfects what he
wills he
as thinks. Everything is simultaneous. For “He is all

Thought, all Will, all Intellect, all Eye, all Hearing, all Source of all
good things.” 20 In the second example he contrasts divine and
human psychology and criticizes the Gnostics for confusing the two.
“If they had known the scriptures and if they had been taught by the
90 Basic Doctrines

truth, they would know that God not like men and that the
is

thoughts of God are not like human

thoughts.” The first allusion is
to Numbers 23: 19 and is employed by Philo (On Immutability 53); the
second has no parallel in Philo but comes from Isaiah 55:8-9. Ire-
naeus goes on to say that God is “simple, not complex, without
diversity of members [1 Cor. 12?], completely like and equal to
himself, for he is all Mind, all Spirit, all Intellection, all Thought, all
Logos, all Hearing, all Eye, all Light, and all Source of all good
things, as it is and pious men to say of God.” 21
right for religious
“Religious” is Irenaeus’ term for those who, though not always
Christians, share Christian attitudes or doctrines; Plato was one of
them. 22 In the third example Irenaeus claims that the Gnostics are
simply using human psychology for their pictures of the spiritual
world. In the case of human beings it is quite legitimate to differenti-
ate faculties. “But since God is all Mind, all Logos, all active Spirit,
all Light, always identical with and similar to himself —as it is right
for us to think of him, and as we learn from the scriptures —pro-
cesses and distinctions of this kind could not exist in him.” 23
Irena-
eus’ mention of the scriptures is striking. Perhaps what he means is
that the terms “Logos” and “Spirit,” which he has just brought into
the formula, come from scripture. Surely he does not imagine that
any definition like this occurs there. It may also be the case that he
has in mind Paul’s remarks about human beings and the body of
Christ in 1 Cor. 12:17: “If the whole body were an eye, where would
be the hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the
sense of smell?” So it is with man, not with God. 24
Much later in his work, and quite unexpectedly, Irenaeus brings
in the definition again. He is speaking of the law, which offered
human beings the opportunity to grow in maturity, and he turns
aside to contrast humanity with God. God creates, man is created.
God gives benefits, man receives them. God is perfect in every
respect, equal and similar to himself, “all Light, all Mind, all Sub-
stance and Source of all good things,” while man “receives progress
and growth toward God.” 25 In these passages, then, we see a pagan
theological formula being baptized into Christian service.

Clement of Alexandria
Clement of Alexandria has an even higher doctrine of the tran-
scendence and ineffability of God. 26 For him, God is incorporeal,
formless, and possesses no attribute. He transcends the world of
sense perception and is above space and time. As One, he is even
Christian Doctrines of God 91

above the monad. He is also above virtue; that is, beyond goodness.
He cannot be comprehended by the human mind and thus he is
“unknown” and he is ineffable. The best way the human mind has
to approach him is the negative process kat' aphairesin.
All these points are closely paralleled in Philo, whose works Clem-
ent knew and copied. They are also present in Middle Platonism and
often in Gnostic thought.
S. R. C. Lilia God recalls, under many
notes that “Clement’s
There are two differences, however,
aspects, the ‘one’ of Plotinus.”
between the two ideas of God. Clement identifies the supreme God
as a Mind, the locus of Ideas, 27 but Plotinus sets the One above
Mind as its source. The Mind God of Clement thinks the Ideas,
whereas for Plotinus the One has no noetical activity. 28 Lilia traces
Clement’s doctrine to that of Ammonius Saccas, better known as a
teacher of Plotinus and two Origens, one the Christian theologian.
We thus see that at every turn Christian Alexandria was closely
related to currents in pagan thought.
deep influence of Gnostic ideas on Clem-
Lilia also points to the
ent, an influence later overcome by Origen because of his emphasis
on scripture and church teaching and firmer grasp on philosophy.

Origen on God
Origen himself is probably our best witness to early Christian
theology because of the relatively systematic nature of his treatise
On First Principles. He begins precisely with scriptural problems,
criticizing thosewho suppose that God is a body because “our God
is consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24) and “God is spirit” (John 4:24).
a
Origen explains that “light” is spiritual and so, therefore, are “fire”
and “spirit.” There is nothing corporeal about God. Indeed, “God
is incomprehensible and it is impossible to think of him.” As H.

Crouzel points out after Jean Danielou, this is “a commonplace of

Judaism and Christianity as of Gnosticism and Middle Platonism.”
We are in an area, and a time, in which “the religious” share com-
mon ideas.
God transcends all his works, for he is “a simple intellectual

nature without any admixture.” He is “entirely a monad or, I might

say, a henad, a Mind and a Source from which proceeds the begin-
ning of the whole intellectual nature or mind.” (This reiterates the
doctrine of Clement.) God needs no place, just as our intelligence
needs no place. As Intelligence, God is invisible. Someone may
object that “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”
92 Basic Doctrines

(Matt. 5:8). But what is not understanding

seeing with the heart if

with the intelligence? “Frequently the names of organs of sense are

referred to the soul.”
Book II of On First Principles Origen explicitly states that here-
In ,

tics read the Old Testament and criticize its pictures of God as angry
or repenting or experiencing some other human passion. They
think they are attacking the orthodox, since all share the belief that
God is “absolutely impassible and free of all feelings of this sort.”
We know, however, that the anger of God in either Testament must
not be taken literally. This is not to say that the passages referring
to it should be deleted, but there must be an interpretation worthy
of God (On First Principles 2.4.4). He has allegorization in mind.
In Book IV, where Origen deals with scriptural exegesis as such,
he explains that “the Word of God intentionally inserted in the law
and the history something like stumbling blocks and passages
shocking and impossible, to keep us from being drawn away by the
style with its faultless charm.” (This is what philosophers said poets
added to truth.) In that case “we might learn nothing worthy of God
and would therefore abandon the doctrines; or else we might not
be moved by the literal meaning and would learn nothing more
divine.” We must “look for a meaning worthy of God in the scrip-
tures inspired by him” (On First Principles 4.2.9).
About twenty-five years later, in the treatise Against Celsus Origen
,

referred to “the doctrine ofjews and Christians which preserves the

unchangeable and unalterable nature of God” (Against Celsus 1.21)
— as based on “Thou art the same” (Ps. 102:27) and “I change not”
(Mai. 3:6). This is Philonic; we have already referred to Philo’s
treatise on immutability. In the Jewish-Chrisdan tradition, Origen
also upheld the doctrine of the Creator and vigorously attacked
idolatry (Against Celsus 3.40), though he was not far from his oppo-
nent at either point.

A Change in Origen’s Position?

At the same time, Origen seems to have been reconsidering his

basic position. In the late Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew he
wrote of the divine Logos that “as loving mankind the impassible
one suffered with compassion.” 29 More than that, in his Homilies on
Ezekiel (6.6) he came to ascribe emotions to God the Father himself
because of the sufferings of the Son. This marks a striking change.
The material cause of it, so to speak, must be sought in Origen’s
discovery of the letters of Ignatius. In his earlier writings he men-
tions neither them nor their author, but later he explicitly approves
Christian Doctrines of God 93

what he calls the letters of the martyr Ignatius and indeed defends
Ignatius’ statement that —
“My Eros has been crucified” a statement
he understands as referring to Christ. 30 This is from Ignatius’ letter
to the Romans, where there is a reference to “the passion of my
God” which Origen would not have liked when younger, though
now he apparently accepted it.
Origen is proving the passibility of God and he begins with a
human example. If one makes a petition to a human being, the
recipient, if not a merciful person, is unsympathetic (nihil patitur)
The Savior, however, “came down to earth, taking pity on the
human race, and experienced our passions before he suffered the
cross and condescended to assume our flesh. For if he had not
suffered he would not have entered into human life.” The point is
quite clear: the Savior experienced suffering in his divine, preincar-
nate state, not just during his earthly life. Origen carefully adds,
“First he suffered, then he came down and was seen.” The idea may
be verbally based on Ignatius ( Epistle to the Ephesians 7.2), who says
that Jesus Christ our Lord was “first passible and then impassible,”
with reference to the incarnate Lord and the risen Lord (cf. 1 Cor.
15:42-44). Origen prefers to speak of the time before the incarna-
tion. Conceivably he has in mind Galatians 2:20: He “loved me and
gave himself for me.”
“What is that passion which he experienced for us?” Origen asks.
It is the passion of love (caritas) for which he cites Psalm 103:8, a
y

reference to God’s mercy and love (Ex. 34:6-7 would have done as
well). As for God’s experiencing caritas as a passio, this may be
related to his notion that Eros in Ignatius (Epistle to the Romans 7.2)
means Christ. “Or don’t you know that when God deals with human
affairs he experiences human passion?” This is proved by
Deuteronomy 1:31: “The Lord your God put up with you, as a man
puts up with his son.” Philo allegorized this analogy, 31 but Origen
now prefers to take it literally. Therefore, he concludes, God puts
up with our ways just as the Son of God puts up with our passions.
“The Father himself is not impassible. 32 If he is asked, he takes pity
and commiserates, he suffers something of love and enters into
circumstances in which by the greatness of his nature he cannot
enter, and for us human beings endures passions.” 33
Apparently the threat of Patripassianism (see chapter 8) did not
bother Origen, at least at this point. We have already seen that in
his work On First Principles he did not hold a rigid doctrine of divine
impassibility. Since Origen advised the exegete to look for a
spiritual understanding of passages ascribing emotions to God
“in order to think worthily of God,” he must have believed that
94 Basic Doctrines

there are realities in God

corresponding to these emotions 34 .

Our is to show that even

point in discussing this evident change
in the third century Christian doctrine was still fluid and able to
admit contradiction on the part of theologians. We usually think of
struggles between orthodox and heretics, or vice versa. Here is
something of a struggle between Origen and Origen, and over a
crucial problem.
 8
Christ: Deeds and Names

Miracles

Jesus was well known in his lifetime as a healer and a wonder-

worker who said that the God he worshiped, and whose Son some
claimed he was, was at work through him. “If I by the finger of God
cast out demons, then the reign of God has come upon you” (Luke
1 1 :20). He set forth his teaching about the reign of God in enigmatic

parables, but his adherents were strongly impressed by the miracles

and kept repeating stories about them. 1
Jesus* career as a prophetic and charismatic figure ended in
Jerusalem, where the Temple authorities cooperated with the
Roman governor to have him put to death. His followers held that
he then rose from the dead and appeared to many of them.
It is sometimes claimed that there is an authentic proclamation of

Jesus without the superfluous miracles and that the apostle Paul
speaks of this when he describes the Jews as demanding signs and
—
the Greeks seeking wisdom “but we preach Christ crucified” (1
Cor. 1:22-23). This is unlikely exegesis, since in the next verse
Paul speaks of Christ as both the power and the wisdom of
God. Even the signs of a true apostle involved “signs and wonders
and mighty works” (2 Cor. 12:12). Miracle was an essential aspect
of the gospel.

Miracles in the Gospels

Gospels written about Jesus and generally accepted

All four of the
by about his resurrection and all
his followers include narratives
contain other miracles. (The so-called Gospel of Thomas contains
nothing but sayings and dialogues and is not really a “Gospel.”)
The three Synoptic Gospels, ascribed to Mark, Matthew, and Luke,
95
96 Basic Doctrines

contain many accounts of the exorcism of demons (apparently pop-

ular in Palestine); healings, including the raisings of dead persons;
and stories about the multiplication of bread and fish and walking
on the Lake of Tiberias. 2 Rudolf Bultmann assigns twenty synoptic
stories to this group. Thirteen of them are miracles of healing. Out
of these, four are exorcisms, eight are healings, and one is the
raising of a dead man (Luke 7:1 1-17). The other seven are “nature
miracles,” with the stilling of a storm, the walking on the water, two
feedings (five thousand and four thousand), a miraculous catch of
fish, finding a coin in the mouth of a fish, and the cursing of a fig

tree for not giving miraculous fruit. Few of these stories find exact
counterparts among stories told of the Greek and Roman gods or
even heroes. None is necessarily based on a pagan original. The
similarities, as Bultmann points out, indicate the “atmosphere” in
which such stories were told. 3
It must be confessed that we cannot trace such stories to alien

areas whether Jewish or Christian, and we must assume that those

who told them were convinced that the miracles took place. On the
other hand, the freedom with which later evangelists retell earlier
stories shows that their idea of reliable narrative did not involve
vouching for every detail.

Miracles in the Gospel of John

Unlike the Synoptics, the Gospel ascribed to John contains no

exorcisms. Instead, the author uses seven startling wonders, called
“signs,” as key points in Jesus’ career. “The of his signs” took
first

place at Cana in Galilee, where “he manifested This was

his glory.”
the transformation of water into wine at a wedding. The story occurs
4
only in John (2: 1-11). It is the only account of Jesus’ miracles in
John, or indeed in any of the Gospels, 5 for which a fairly striking
pagan parallel has been found. The exception is thus all the more
important, for once more it points toward environments through
which such stories might pass, no matter how they may have origi-
nated. The second sign in John was the cure (at a distance) of an
official’s son (John 4:53), the third a healing of a man paralyzed for
thirty-eight years (John 5:5).
The fourth sign was Jesus’ multiplication of bread and fish to feed
fivethousand people (John 6: 10) and the fifth was his walking on the
surface of the sea to meet the disciples who were in a boat (John
6:19). Versions of these two miracles are also to be found in the
Synoptic Gospels, and they are perfectly attuned to the circum-
stances of Mediterranean life. “Mediterranean man,” writes Fer-
Christ: Deeds and Names 97

nand Braudel, “gains bread by painful effort.’’ The same

his daily
social historian notes the dangers of travel by sea during the winter,
and during other seasons as well. 6 The miracle of the loaves and
fishes also corresponds to the realistic petition of the Lord’s Prayer,
“Give us this day our daily bread.” Only in a mistakenly futurist
context, as in the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, could the petition
be changed to ask for “the bread of tomorrow.”
The sixth sign was the healing of a man bom blind (John 9:1-17),
and the seventh, climactic, sign was the raising of Lazarus, who had
been dead for four days (John 11:39). The evangelist tells all the
stories in an allusive, mysterious manner in order to indicate that
they point beyond themselves; they are not “mere” miracle stories
but lead to belief in Jesus. “Jesus did many other signs in the
presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but
these are written that you may believe . . (John 20:30-31).

Various Approaches to Miracles

The make the point so definitely. Mark,

other evangelists do not
as Martin Dibelius said, “a book of secret epiphanies.” 7 “Who is
is

this that wind and waves obey him?” (Mark 4:41). The point that all
are making is much the same. They tell the stories in order to lead
hearers to faith. A century later the apologist Justin was aware how
closely some of these stories resembled stories about the gods. He
notes that Jesus’ crucifixion is overwhelmed
like the disasters that
several sons of Zeus, while his birth from a virgin is like the birth
of Perseus. His healings of people who were lame and paralyzed or
blind from birth, or even already dead, are like what Asclepius was
said to have done. 8 Still later, Tertullian says that some people
supposed Jesus was a magician because of his power: he drove out
demons, healed the blind, lepers, and paralytics, raised the dead,
—
and controlled the elements showing himself to be the Son and
Logos of God. 9 Around the year 248, Origen argues that these
stories are not fictitious, because if they were there would have been
more of them. 10 These three analyses reflect the controversies that
the miracle stories naturally aroused. Some critics could see nothing
new beyond pagan parallels. They might think of magic or imagina-
tive storytelling.
The basic point of telling miracle stories is given in the words of
John which we have already quoted. enough, they seem
Significantly
to be the “signs” for which, according to Paul, Jews were seeking.
Their presence in this Gospel at least reflects a variety in Christian
approaches to the mission. John ends his statement about “signs”
98 Basic Doctrines

with the words “That you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the
Son of God.”
Who was Jesus? Which titles among those given him, such as
Messiah or Christ, were best suited to the story and the continuing
experiences? How could they be coordinated in relation to an in-
creasingly logical theology?

Beginnings of Christology

The Earlier Names Given Jesus

The word “Christology” indicates our starting point, for it is

based on Christos, the Greek and Christian translation of the Hebrew
term meshiach, meaning someone “anointed”; that is, with oil. There
were various meanings of unction in biblical antiquity, but essen-
tially an anointed one was an agent of God for rule or message or

both. As G. F. Moore long ago noted,

“Messiah” is essentially an adjective meaning consecrated or ap-

pointed by God, and was not the prerogative title of any single person
until later than the time of Christ. It was applied in various forms of
literature to expected scion of the house of David, to the supernatural
Son of Man, and to the High Priest; but its use does not show that these
figures were habitually identified with each other in Jewish thought. 11

While “Christ” became a second name for Jesus of Nazareth, the

one whom early Christians considered to be God’s agent in the
world, the revealer of God’s will to them, it was not a term used by
the earliest disciples. Indeed, an early sermon in Acts suggests that
it was first employed after the resurrection of Jesus. The reference

is to the way “God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus

whom you [the house of Israel] crucified” (Acts 2:36). To put it

rather crudely, as later Adoptionists did put it, Jesus finally became
Christ. In the earliest Gospel, Jesus is called Messiah (Christ), but
the messiahship is treated as a secret (cf. Mark 8:29-30). This kind
of Christology recur at Antioch (see chapter 10).
will
Another term sometimes employed, though not by Paul, is “Son
of Man.” Essentially the term means nothing but “man,” or “human
being.” It occurs in Daniel 7:13, where a dream shows Daniel “one
like a son of man” who is presented before God and given everlast-
ing world power. The human figure, Israel, is contrasted with the
beastlike nature of other nations. The meaning of the term is clear
from two addresses to the prophet himself in Daniel 8:16-17. First
he is called “man,” then “son of man.” 12 More specifically, those
Christ: Deeds and Names 99

who receive world power are “the people of the of the Most
saints
High” (Dan. 7:27). The Son of Man
idea that there was a particular
is based partly on Gospel expressions, partly on the parables of

Enoch, chs. 37-71 of the apocalypse called 1 Enoch. As a whole this

work may come from the first century B.c., but in spite of the discov-
ery of several imperfect copies at Qumran (evidence for the first
century a.d.), no pieces of chapters 37-71 have turned up. Their
absence supports the thesis that this section is later. We are proba-
bly dealing with a Christian interpolation, based on the Gospels, not
prior to them. In another apocalypse, 2 Esdras (4 Ezra), we also find
“as it were the likeness of a man” (2 Esdras 13:3), but this is no
individual Son of Man figure.
Sometimes another title later used ofjesus was employed “corpo-
rately.” This was “Son of God.” In Exodus 4:22, the Hebrew people
collectively are called the Son of God. The king too could be called
God’s son (Ps. 2:7-8), for he not only had a unique status in relation
toGod but also represented the people as a whole. Later, the wise
man as well could be called son of God, as is the case in Wisdom
of Solomon 2:18. And angels are called sons of God in the Old
—
Testament for example, in Job 38:7 (“when the morning stars
sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy”). The term
seems not to have been used ofjesus during his ministry. Paul tells
us, perhaps expressing doctrine he knew the Romans would find
acceptable, that Jesus was “designated Son of God in power accord-
ing to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead”
(Rom. 1:4). That is to say that he became (or was recognized as) the
unique Son of God only after his death. The passage reminds us of
the statement in Acts 2:36 that Jesus became Christ. “Son of God”
sometimes points toward Christ’s special relationship with the Fa-
ther; he is God’s “own” son (Rom. 8:3, 32; Gal. 4:4; 2 Cor. 1:19)
or “the son of his love” (Col. 1:13).
The most likely sequence of the Gospels shows us a Sonship
gradually pushed back in time. 13 Mark 1:11 tells of a divine voice at
the time ofjesus’ baptism: “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I
am well pleased,” while Luke 3:22 has a variant reading: “This day
have I begotten thee.” 14 (This is the royal language of Ps. 2:7.) The
temptation stories in Matthew and Luke represent the devil as
somehow trying to identify Jesus as Son of God in relation to star-
tling works of power. Jesus refuses to supply such proofs and cites
scripture against his adversary. Both of these evangelists trace his
Sonship not to his baptism but to his conception and birth. It goes
back before the creation of the world in the Gospel of John. This
is not surprising in the light of Paul’s language about himself in
100 Basic Doctrines

Galatians 1:15 (“He who had set me apart from my mother’s

womb”) 15 and about Christ in 1 Corinthians 8:6. But there is a
tendency to meditate upon the cosmic meaning of what was later
called “the incarnation.”
The evangelists disagreed when they tried to explain the purpose
of Jesus’ mission, especially his death. Mark says that “the Son of
man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a
ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). Luke paraphrases and has Jesus
say, “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27). There is
thus no more fixity about a doctrine of atonement in the Gospels
than in the rest of the New Testament.
Indeed, there was nothing fixed about Christology, presumably
because Jesus proclaimed not himself but the coming of God’s
reign. All three Synoptic Gospels lay emphasis on his gospel of the
kingdom. John does not do so; instead, he concentrates upon the
doctrine of Jesus as Logos and Son of God. This difference arose
because John may have been later but, in any event, grew out of a
different and less historical kind of tradition.
Jesus did not clearly identify himself. Early Christians wanted to
assign titles to him and they therefore called him Messiah (Chris-
tos), Son of Man, Son of God, and so on. Other speculations about
a “man from heaven” or a “second Adam” proved to be less impor-
tant. For the future, the term to which we now turn, “Wisdom,”
proved especially meaningful.

Wisdom Christology

Wisdom in Proverbs and Later Writings

The given Christ in 1 Corinthians 1:24 and 30 is Wisdom

title

(sophia).This title goes back to the figure of Sophia as God’s per-

sonified Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-31, a passage that was to prove
remarkably fruitful for early Jewish and Christian Christological
speculation. It begins thus:

The Lord created me at

the beginning of his work, the first of his acts
of old. Ages ago was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the
I

earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth. . When he

. .

established the heavens, I was there. ... I was beside him, like a master
workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always.

This is Old Testament locus for the personified figure of

the basic
divine Wisdom, God’s aide in the work of creation. Such a picture
of the cosmic Christ explains how Paul could write to the Corinthi-
Christ: Deeds and Names 101

ans Cor. 8:6) that “for us there is one God, the Father, from
(1
whom everything comes, for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom everything exists, through whom we exist.”
He is speaking of the Lord Jesus Christ as the preexistent Wisdom
of God, the agent of creation. This personified Wisdom recurs in
the Christology of Colossians 1:15-18, where Christ, the Son of
God’s love, is described as “the image of the invisible God, the
first-born of all creation.”
The influence of the “praises of Wisdom” was very strong later,
especially on newer wisdom literature, on Philo, and on early Chris-
second century b.c., Sirach too has Wisdom describe
tians. 16 In the
her origins. She says, “I came forth from the mouth of the Most
High, and covered the earth like a mist. I dwelt in high places, and
my throne was in a pillar of cloud. ... In every people and nation
I have gotten a possession. Among all these I sought a resting place;

I sought in whose territory I might lodge. From eternity, in the

. . .

beginning, he created me, and for eternity I shall not cease to

exist.” 17
In the mid-second century b.c., the Hellenistic Jew Aristobulus
gave Greek exegesis of Genesis and pointed out that God made the
universe. He opened the way for the use of a mediator by the
supreme god, however, when he said that what was said about light
(first God said, Let there be light) might be transferred to Wisdom,

“For all light is from her.” Some Peripatetic philosophers, he

claims, hold that wisdom has “the rank of illuminator.” His main
point is that according to Solomon (Prov. 8:22) she existed before
heaven and earth. Aristobulus thus speaks of the one creator God
and refers to his use of Wisdom
as an instrument. For him, the
creative word of God was
be understood as Wisdom, not the kind
to
of word that a human being might utter.
Around the beginning of the Christian era the Wisdom of Solo-
mon moves toward philosophical language in describing the divine
Wisdom. First the author describes the “spirit” in Wisdom in terms
likethose used by the Stoic Cleanthes concerning “the good.” Then
he tells of Wisdom herself, with emphasis on light, as in Aristobulus.

She is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory
of the Almighty; therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her. For
she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of
God, and an image of his goodness. (Wisd. of Sol. 7:25-26)

In addition, “she glorifies her noble birth by living with God, and
the Lord of all loves her.” 18
In Proverbs, Wisdom is created by God and helps in the work of
102 Basic Doctrines

creation. In Sirach, and perhaps in Wisdom too, she comes forth

from his mouth — words or, more specifically, the words, “Let
like
there be light.” “God made all things by his word and by his wisdom
formed man.” 19 When Philo dealt with these matters, the passage
in Proverbs led him to think of a female agent in creation, although
his ideas were not well worked out. He called Wisdom the daughter
of God “because both in Greek and in Hebrew the word for wisdom
is of feminine gender.” 20 Her mythic function in creation must have

been more important than the grammatical point, but the passage
cited by H. A. Wolfson shows Philo meditating on her gender as
feminine and trying to differentiate it from the masculine.
For Philo, Wisdom as God’s daughter is “the first-born mother of
all things” or “the mother of all in the world,” who nourishes them

with her breasts. In On Flight and Finding he says that God is the
father, Sophia “the mother through whom all things came into
being.” In On Drunkenness he uses the term episteme (“understand-
ing,” “knowledge”), not Sophia, when he speaks of the female
principle with whom God (“not like a man”) had intercourse so that
she brought forth “the only and beloved perceptible son,” this
cosmos. A quotation of Proverbs 8:22-23 makes it clear, however,
that he has Wisdom in mind. And he goes on to refer to her as the
mysterious “nurse” and “mother” of Plato’s Timaeus. 21
We should note after John Dillon, though citing different texts,
that Wisdom is clearly analogous to the creative Athena of Greek
rhetoric and philosophy. Philo calls her “motherless” and “virgin,”
both epithets of the goddess. 22 Dillon says that “we can see Sophia
coming very close to Plutarch’s concept of Isis.” 23 This is more
especially true in regard to Athena. (See chapter 9.)

Was Wisdom Based on the Goddess Isis?

What was the context of this kind of speculation? Did it lie in

philosophy, as Aristobulus tries to suggest, or in ancient religion?
Before we look at philosophy we should discuss an attempt to relate
Wisdom to oriental religion, specifically to ideas about the Helle-
nized Egyptian goddess Isis. According to the hypothesis of W. L.
Knox, a cosmic presentation of Isis served as a model for the god-
desslike figure of Wisdom in Proverbs and related books. 24 On this
view, the creation of the world was ascribed first to Isis, then to
Wisdom. Knox’s theory is hard to prove, however, for cosmic theolo-
gizing about Isis comes almost entirely from the Greek world. The
personal opinions of Plutarch and the religious experiences of
Apuleius were not set forth until the second century of our era, when
Christ: Deeds and Names 103

the dossier of Greek texts provided by Werner Peek also arose, 25 as

did the cultic equivalences noted in Oxyrhynchus Papyrus XI 1380. All
these are much later than the Proverbs passage and reflect Greek
philosophical meditation rather than “oriental” musing.
Jan Bergman has tried to connect the aretalogies with older
“Memphitic” theology, propagated by native Egyptian priests, 26 but
the studies of D. Muller do not confirm his conclusions. 27
We do not question the reality of Isis as a cosmic goddess in
Greek circles. In the longest inscription containing her praises, the
one from Cyme on the island of Euboia, she describes herself as
“the eldest daughter of Kronos,” the one who “separated earth
from heaven, showed the stars [their] courses, ordained the path of
sun and moon.” At Cyrene she declared that she was “sole ruler of
eternity” and that “all call me the highest goddess, greatest of all
the gods in heaven.” “Nothing happens apart from me.” The god-
dess is also addressed in a hymn to Anubis from Bithynia and is
called “blessed goddess, mother, many-named, whom Uranus son
of Night bore on the marbled waves of the sea but Erebus brought
up as a light to all mortals; eldest of the blessed ones in Olympus,
bearing the sceptre,” and so on. The time sequence seems confus-
ing.
These examples suffice to show that in Greek circles Isis could be
regarded as daughter of either Kronos or Uranus, as the supreme
goddess, as one who had taken a leading part in the creation of the
universe and now ruled over heaven and earth and whatever hap-
pened in either. The last passage cited shows that she was some-
times identified with Aphrodite, and such equivalences become fully
clear in the Oxyrhynchus papyrus already mentioned. There, after
119 lines (only a part of the original) of identifications, the author
supplies nearly two hundred more on the powers and functions of
the goddess. She is “ruler of the world, . .greatest of the gods, the
.

first name ruler of heavenly things and the immeasurable.” The

. . .

author says that “you bring the sun from east to west, and all the
gods rejoice” and that “you made the power of women equal that
of men.” 28 “You are the ruler of all forever you have power over
. .
.

winds and thunders and lightnings and snows you made the
. . .

great Osiris immortal.”

One should not suppose, however, that such descriptions were
universal. Worshipers did not have to refer to cosmic activities every
time they praised the goddess. The aretalogy from Maroneia tells
us that “human life knows only you [Isis and Sarapis] as gods,” 29
but speaks of neither one as a demiurge. In addition, individuals
could provide their own philosophical interpretations. When Plu-
104 Basic Doctrines

tarch tells us that “Isis generates Horus as the image of the intelligi-
ble world” his language shows that heexpressing his own Platonic
is

view, not reporting any early Egyptian tradition. Isis as Nature

brings about the creation of the world in the manner described in
the Timaeus of Plato 30 .

A hymn from the wall of the birth house at Philae in Egypt does
refer to Isis as “the one who originated at the beginning and fills
heaven and earth with their beautiful powers of life.” She is “leader
of the gods of the earth, falcon goddess of the gods of the under-
world .” 31 This birth house is Ptolemaic and Roman, however, not
early Egyptian. Bergman’s section on “Isis — ”
die Aktive 32 does not
demonstrate that she was viewed as a creator. Indeed, ordinarily
people thought she had been created. Isis therefore cannot be seen
as a model for the Old Testament Wisdom.
A better model may perhaps be found in Jewish circles, heterodox
to be sure, at a military colony in Elephantine, Egypt, where there
was a temple of “Yahu” (Yahweh) in the fifth century b.c. Financial
accounts for this temple reveal that with Yahu two other deities were
worshiped, one named Eshem-beth-el, the other Anath-beth-el (in
another document called Anath-yahu). The names beginning with
“Anath” obviously refer to the war goddess worshiped at Ugarit
(Ras Shamra), while “Eshem” is probably “Shemesh,” the sun. Both
deities are thus subordinate to Yahweh, the supreme creator god,
though we do not know just what their roles were in the sacred cult
or history. Since the sun ruled over the day, and perhaps the uni-
verse, on Yahweh’s behalf, Anath-beth-el may have performed a
similar function. Conceivably a goddess like this, at Carthage and
elsewhere called Tanit, was the prototype of Wisdom, but this is
mere guesswork. All it shows is that some Jews sometimes thought
in pluralistic terms.

Other Christological Language

The language of the wisdom literature also leads directly to the

prologue to the Gospel of John, except for the fact that John, cor-
relating this divine principle with the obviously masculine Jesus,
feels he should change the gender of the divine principle. We have
already seen Philo treating Wisdom as God’s daughter and Logos
as God’s Son. John, making use of a Son of God doctrine in his
Gospel as a whole, inevitably uses Logos for his prologue. If he
considered the difference between creation and emanation he must
have rejected emanation, which would have implied saying that the
Logos was in God. Instead, he says that the Logos was with God.
Christ: Deeds and Names 105

A more psychological or mythological doctrine appears in Philip-

pians 2:5-11. Christ Jesus,

though in the form of God, did not consider equality with God some-
thing to be grasped, but emptied (ekenosen) himself, assuming the form
of a slave, coming to be in the likeness of men; and found in appear-
ance (schema) like a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even
to death, and that a death on a cross. Therefore God highly exalted
him and gave him the name above every name, so that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, of beings celestial and terrestrial and
subterranean, and every tongue acknowledge that jesus Christ is
lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Various expressions from this passage, perhaps a hymn, occur

among later theologians, but as a whole it did not win special favor
before the rise of the kenotic theologies of the late nineteenth
century. There may be echoes in Gnostic myths, always concerned
with the preexistent Christ. In any event, the passage makes it plain
that before Christ Jesus emptied himself he was not human but
divine.
There is a striking parallel (in reverse) to this passage in the
impiety of the hero Salmoneus as set forth by the mythographer
Apollodorus (1.9.7). He “was arrogant and wanted to make himself
equal to Zeus, and because of his impiety he was punished; for he
said that he was Zeus.” Jesus was obedient, certainly did not want
to make himself equal to God, and was exalted.

Christology in the Second and Third Centuries

Ignatius of Antioch

The most “advanced” Christology of the early second century

was advocated by Ignatius, bishop of Antioch around the year 110.
What he did was to take some of the ideas of Paul and the Paulinist
author or authors of Colossians and Ephesians and combine them
with some of the language of the Fourth Gospel. We have already
seen Paul identifying Jesus with the preexistent Wisdom of God, the
agent of creation as well as of redemption, and in Philippians using
a remarkable myth of preexistence and condescension. Colossians
and Ephesians go even farther in this direction. John, writing a
Gospel, paints a portrait of the divine Son in his human existence
but begins with a prologue in heaven. “In the beginning was the
Logos.” He links the two by means of the paradox, “And the Logos
became flesh.”
106 Basic Doctrines

A similar Christology of exaltation appears in the letters of Ig-

natius. While Paul had been reluctant God, 33 there is
to call Christ
no such reluctance in John, who could write that “the Logos was
God” (John 1:1), “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), and “my
Lord and my God” (John 20:28). Ignatius too felt free to speak
repeatedly of “Jesus Christ my God.” Though he was aware of some
of the theological difficulties, as we shall see, his determined devo-
tion combined with a love of rhetorical paradox was able to over-
come them. Writing to the Magnesians, Ignatius speaks twice of the
preexistent life of the divine Son Jesus Christ. “Before the ages he
was with (para) the Father and was manifested at the end.” He
“proceeded from (apo) the one Father and is with ( eis as in John ,

1:18) him and departed to the one.” 34

Ignatius was not much concerned with the Johannine theology of
the Logos or Word. Once he did speak of “the one God, who
manifested himself through Jesus Christ his Son, who is his Word
proceeding from silence,” but ordinarily he preferred the terms
“Father” and “Son” with their reference to personal relations.
Ignatius* Christology was so high that he used traditional God
language in regard to the Son. He thus believed that the Son, as
divine, was “above seasons, timeless, invisible, intangible, passion-
less.” But he also knew a good deal about the human life of the Son,
“truly born, baptized by John,
. . . truly nailed in the flesh.”
. . .

Obviously there was something paradoxical about the incarnation,

and Ignatius spoke ofJesus as “flesh and spirit, bom and not born,
God in flesh, real life in death,” and so on. 35 In writing to Polycarp
he pointed to the foundation of the paradox in the experience of
redemption. “Who for us became visible who for us accepted
. . .

suffering.” The language anticipates that of the “Nicene” Creed:

“Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven.”
Ignatius’ own precedent is presumably Pauline. In 2 Corinthians
8:9, Paul speaks of “our Lord Jesus Christ, how for you though rich
he became poor.” The thought, but not the language, has parallels
elsewhere in Paul. Ignatius’ language owes much to the kind of
florid rhetoric common in the second century, but rhetoric has
never been a stranger to theology.

Gnostic Christology in Ignatian Antioch

There are areas of Christological speculation into which Ignatius

does not enter, such as the role of the Son or Word in creation. After
the first few verses ofjohn’s Gospel, the evangelist does not discuss
the subject either. Perhaps Ignatius thinks of such speculations as
Christ: Deeds and Names 107

related to “angelic locations and archontic conjunctions,” which he

knows about but prefers not to discuss, 36 probably because they
come from Gnosticism.
If Ignatius knew the system of the Gnostic Saturninus, taught at
Antioch in his time, he doubtless found too much talk about angelic
and archontic activities in it. 37 This notorious heretic taught that
evil or incompetent angels produced the world and humanity, bun-
gling their copy of a heavenly image. Much later the Savior, some-
how related to the image, came to destroy the bad and help the
good, those who have the spark of life from above. He was “unbe-
gotten, incorporeal, and shapeless.” Obviously Saturninus’ Chris-
tology was extremely “high,” so high that the humanity of Jesus
evaporated.
Saturninus’ thought obviously owes something to Jewish ideas.
His picture of the angels and their work of creation does not come
from mainline Judaism, to be sure, but it is probably related to the
thought of ex-Jews who were still concerned with Genesis. His pic-
ture of Satan as the enemy of the “god of the Jews” comes from the
same source. But Saturninus put all such separate points into a
system of his own, in an anti-Jewish context. “Christ came to destroy
the god of the Jews,” he said, identifying himself as an adherent of
an extreme version of Gentile Christianity.
This was not Ignatius’ doctrine, and we shall not discuss it fur-
ther. It may have made the memory of his own doctrine suspect,
however; simple believers could find it hard to differentiate one
high Christology from another. Presumably the incorporeal Savior
of Saturninus was essentially the Christ of the Docedsts later known
to Serapion of Antioch —
or to Axionicus the Valentinian, still at
Antioch in Tertullian’s time. 38
At least one later Gnostic stood closer to Ignatius, perhaps be-
cause he read the letters. Ptolemaeus says that when the Savior came
to save the psychic man, he put on a psychic body which became
“visible and tangible and passible.” 39 This looks like an echo of
what Ignatius said in his letter to Polycarp (3.2): “visible, passible,
enduring.” Of course Ptolemaeus has a Gnostic explanation for
what Ignatius was willing to let stand as a paradox.

Ignatius and the Patripassianists

Especially important in Ignatius’ doctrine was his insistence that

Jesus Christ was God, a view emphasized in his letters to the Chris-
tians of Rome, Ephesus, and Smyrna. It may be significant that at
the end of the second century these churches were produced or
108 Basic Doctrines

tolerated theologians called Patripassianists, those who held that

the Father suffered or even died. One of them, named Noetus, came
to Rome from either Smyrna or Ephesus and claimed that his teach-
ing simply glorified Christ. 40 A he asked, “What
later critic says
harm have I done one God? I acknowledge one
in glorifying the
God, who was begotten, suffered, and died.” 41 He insisted that the
Bible, especially the Old Testament, spoke of only one God, and he
interpreted Romans 9:5 in this light.
Hippolytus summarizes the doctrine thus: “There is one Father
and God of all, who made everything. He was invisible to what was
made when he wished [to be so], and then appeared when he wished
[to do so]. He is invisible when not seen, visible when seen; unbe-
gotten when not begotten, begotten when born of a virgin; impassi-
ble and immortal when he does not suffer or die, but when he
encounters passion, he suffers and dies.” 42 This language, with its
emphasis on divine options, recalls that of Ignatius. 43 The differ-
ence is that Ignatius never held that the Father suffered, nor did he
confuse the Son with the Father.
No “orthodox” theologian of the second century referred to this
—
kind of theology, and Irenaeus, who cites Ignatius but only on
—
martyrdom 44 does not give his name. Opponents of “high” Chris-
tology insisted that “the truth of the preaching” about Christ was
maintained until Zephyrinus became bishop of Rome and was then
falsified. This picture of tradition, given by Eusebius, 45 is partly
confirmed by what Hippolytus says about Zephyrinus.
When Noetus’ doctrine reached Rome, it was more than tolerated
by Zephyrinus and his aide Callistus. According to Hippolytus, Cal-
listus persuaded the ignorant, illiterate, and avaricious bishop to
declare, “I know one God Christ Jesus, and apart from him no
other, created and passible.” At other times he would contradict
himself by saying, “It was not the Father who died, but the Son.” 46
Similar views were advocated by a certain Praxeas, who according
to Tertullian taught that the Father was crucified. What the follow-
ers of Praxeas really said, however, was that “the one who died was
of human substance, not divine The Son suffers, the Father feels
compassion.” 47

The Apologists and the Logos Doctrine: Christ as God

Quite a different emphasis appears in some of the writings of the

major apologists, who developed the Logos doctrine and found an
ecclesiastical continuator in Irenaeus of Lyons. They are often
treated as a monolithic and monotonous group, but their teachings
Christ: Deeds and Names 109

were divergent. Theophilus espouses a “low” Christology (see

chapter 10), while Melito of Sardis offers many Christological refer-
ences but hardly any to the Logos. The Logos doctrine does not
necessarily exhaust the theological ideas of any of the apologists. As
a group, they wrote in order to make Christian doctrine respectable,
not to tell everything they believed. In other words, the nonapolo-
getic works of all must have been rather different from the apolo-
gies.
An anonymous author of the late second century discusses some
of the apologists those who held doctrines like his. Since he
among
himself refers to “our compassionate God and Lord, Jesus Christ”
as well as to “the compassionate Church of the merciful Christ,” he
obviously represents a “high” Christology. He claims that Justin,
Miltiades, Tatian, and Clement spoke of Christ as God, while Ire-
naeus and Melito called him God and man. 48 He says nothing about
the Logos doctrines of these authors but notes their teaching about
Christ’s divine nature.
In Philo a Logos doctrine had bridged the gap between his tran-
scendent, abstract God and the world. It also explained how the-
ophanies could be included in the Old Testament revelation. The
point was picked up in John 1:18: “No one has ever seen God; the
Only-begotten God at the Father’s bosom has interpreted [or re-
vealed] him.” Among the apologists too the Logos is the one who
appears in the theophanies. But Justin describes this Logos as a
second God, one who proceeded from the Father before creation
in the manner of word or fire or spring water. “The Father of the
Universe has a Son, who also, being the first-born Logos of God, is
God.” Tatian too has a Logos doctrine but speaks of Christ as “the
God who suffered.” Similarly, Clement refers to Christ as God. 49
In spite of these points, the Christology of the apologies, like that
of the New Testament, is essentially subordinationist. The Son is
always subordinate to the Father, who is the one God of the Old
Testament. This is related to the fact that in the apologists there is

generally no clear distinction between Logos and Sophia or be-

tween either of them and Spirit.

Christ in Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria

A significant passage in Irenaeus’ Against Heresies sets forth his
doctrine of the incarnate Logos.

God’s only begotten Logos, who is always present with the human
race, was united and mixed with his creation by the will of the Father,
110 Basic Doctrines

and became flesh: he is JesusChrist our Lord, who suffered for us and
rose for us, and will come again in the glory of the Father to raise up
all flesh and to show forth [our] salvation. . . . He man
recapitulated
in himself, the invisible made visible, the incomprehensible made com-
prehensible, the impassible passible, and the Logos made man.
(Against Heresies 3.17.6)

The phrases near the end seem to reflect ideas expressed by Ig-
natius, but without Ignatius’ doctrine of Christ as God. 50
In Clement of Alexandria we sometimes find traces of earlier
—
Docedc ideas that Christ merely seemed to be human and suffer
— ideas we know were popular also at Antioch in his time. Thus he
provides a quotation from a letter of the Gnostic Valentinus about
Jesus’ absolute self-control which meant that he did not evacuate
any of his food, since it did not decay inside him. 51 Clement cites
this, without comment, in support of his contention that continence

involves more than avoidance of sex. Again, in his Outlines he related

a “tradition” about the beloved disciple and his discovery that
though the body of Jesus seemed solid it turned out not to be so. 52
Such notions are hardly orthodox or even intelligent. In addition
there were the interesting notions denounced by Photius, such as
the idea of the Son as a created being and the picture of two logoi
of the Father; only the inferior one of these two appeared to men.
Photius attacks a quotation that could be explained differently.
“The Son is called Logos, with the same name as the paternal
Logos, but he not the one who became flesh. It was not the
is

paternal Logos but a certain power of God, like an emanation of his

Logos, which became Mind and permeated the hearts of men.” 53
This may not be accurately quoted, but even if it is, the power
emanation could be Sophia-Wisdom as discussed by second-century
apologists and Irenaeus. Apart from these exotic notes, we agree
with Kelly that Clement’s Christology is not especially interesting. 54
He did speak of Christ as God, as we have said, though not often.

Origen and Christology

Origen’s doctrine tries to solve more problems. To be sure, it

contains a few Gnostic elements; that is to say, Origen adapts iso-

lated ideasfrom the Gnostic sphere for use in his own scheme. Like
Clement he begins with Sophia, at least in his On First Principles, but
we find some of his most important ideas in the Dialogue with Hera-
clides,
where he discusses the Father and the Son without much
philosophical baggage.
According to this conference report he agreed with the bishop
Christ: Deeds and Names 111

Heraclides that “there is one God, omnipotent, uncreated, over all

and maker of all.” Problems arose in regard to the preexistence of

Christ Jesus. When he existed “in the form of God” (Phil. 2:6),
before the incarnation, was he God or not? If so, he was distinct
from the God in whose form he was, and as Son distinct from
Father. Therefore in one sense one must affirm the existence of two
gods, in another only one. Origen insists on the importance of
holding that there are two, and he compares the unity with that in
marriage. “We must not fall into the opinion of those who have
separated from the Church for the fantasy of ‘monarchy,’ withdraw-
ing the Son [as a distinct person] from the Father and thus practi-
cally suppressing the Father, nor, on the other side, fall into another
impious doctrine, that which denies the deity of Christ.” He goes
on to the relationship of the doctrine to the eucharist and states that
“the eucharistic offering is always to be made to God almighty
through Jesus Christ,” because “the offering is made to God
through God.” 55
Even though for Origen the Son is God, there is more than a trace
of subordinadonism in his doctrine. He insists that the Father alone
is truly “the God” (ho theos) while the Son-Logos is theos as in Philo
,

and Clement. 56 He uses terms with the prefix auto “in himself,” of
,

the Father, not of the Son, thus following the precedent of

Numenius. 57
While at Antioch theologians generally insisted on maintaining
monotheism even at the expense of the divinity of the Son and the
Spirit, and at Alexandria theologians were often willing to speak of
two (or three) gods with Origen, the difference must not be exag-
gerated. All alike were trying to maintain a delicate balance between
monotheism and polytheism or at least tritheism. In the second and
third centuries, all ran the risk of dynamistic or modalistic Monar-
chianism. Instead of interurban rivalry, we seem to find intra-urban
rivalry, at least in the period we are considering. Unfortunately we
do not know just how Origen’s Christology differed from that of his
bishop Demetrius. This is why we shall presently turn to Antioch for
more evidence on Christological debates (chapter 10).
 9
The Cosmic Christ

Christ in Paul’s Creed

Several decades before the Christian Gospels were written, the

apostle Paul, who knew Jesus as one who though crucified had
revealed himself to him, made an astounding confession about the
cosmic Jesus Christ in a “creedal” passage in 1 Corinthians 8:6.
Though pagans might accept “many gods” or “many lords,” Chris-
tians believed in one supreme God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus
Christ, through whom everything, including us, has come into
being. The universe was thus created through the crucified and
exalted Messiah whom Paul proclaimed in his preaching. The su-
preme Father resembles the supreme Zeus, while the work of the
Lord Christ is of the various demiurgic gods to whom
like that
cosmic functions were assigned. Later passages, such as Colossians
1:15-20 or even John 1:1-14, make no higher claims for Christ,
though John 17:5 does speak more explicitly about his preexistent
life. Jesus possessed glory with the Father before the world was

made.
Within about two decades after the crucifixion, then, Paul was
teaching his converts that Jesus had been God’s agent in creation
and, in effect, that he was the divine Wisdom of the book of Proverbs
—or the second god of Middle Platonism. The claim might be less
surprising made in regard to Asclepius
if or some other demiurgic
demigod. When made for a man whose crucifixion was “a stum-
bling-block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles,” it is paradoxical, as
Paul was well aware. Jewish hearers would ask for attestation by
miracles, while Gentiles would ask for some kind of philosophical
insight. Paul insisted that “to those who are called, both Jews and
Greeks, Christ [is] the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1
Cor. 1:22-24).
112
The Cosmic Christ 113

Converts to Christianity could recognize that Jesus, the Son of

God, did what the cosmic gods did. But since Christians denied the
reality of these gods, he was the only Demiurge there was. Similarly,
as Christians continued to meditate on the person of Wisdom,
God’s helper in the book of Proverbs, they became aware that Christ
was not one intermediary among many (not one lord among many
lords) but the only mediator. Much of later Christology and, ulti-

mately, trinitarian theology was developed because of Christian

insistence that both the Father and the Son were active in crea-
tion.
The traditional prayer in the fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions
illustrates their belief. The prayer addresses the God who “brought
everything to existence from the non-existent” through the only-
begotten Son, who was begotten before all ages and is God the
Logos. Both powers were involved in creation. 1 So too the so-called
“Nicene” Creed says of Christ, “Through whom all things were
made,” not “by whom.” The incorrect English translation assigns
the work of the Father to the Son.

Middle Platonism, Gnosticism, and Christianity

We have already seen in chapters 6 and 7 that the formulations

of second-century Christians stood close to Middle Platonism. So
did the ideas of some Gnostic teachers. The oldest account of the
Simonians describes their view of Simon’s consort Helen as the first
—
Thought that came from him evidently his first Thought or pat-
we shall presently see, uses the same
tern for the creation. Justin, as
language speaking of the relationship between Zeus and Athena.
in
We are therefore not surprised to find that the Simonians had
statues of Zeus and Athena, evidently identifying them with their
own hero and heroine. Again, Marcion regarded the good “un-
known Father” as superior to the just Demiurge. And the Gnostic
Ptolemaeus sharply differentiated “the perfect God” from “the
Demiurge and Maker of this world.” 2
More orthodox Christians such as Justin, who spoke of the “ sec-
ond God,” were also acquainted with this kind of philosophy. Rely-
ing on scripture, however, they insisted that “there is no other God
above the Maker of all,” and they usually referred to the Father as
the Demiurge. Very occasionally they would use the term in regard
to aspects of the Son’s work. Normally, then, Gnostics agreed with
Platonists that the perfect god was above the Demiurge, while Chris-
114 Basic Doctrines

tians treated the Demiurge as supreme and his helper or helpers as

subordinate to him.

Cosmic Interpretation of Pagan Gods

The doctrine of the cosmic Christ was proclaimed in a setting
where the “many lords” were not so much related to one another
as to the supreme god Zeus. These gods could be expected
lesser
to intervene in human of humanity and in-
affairs for the benefit
dividuals. This is what epiphany and miracle mean. Beyond such
interventions we find the supreme example of beneficience, as Plato
had already intimated, in the creation of the world. (For the highest
god, Zeus, see chapters 5 and 6.) At least some among the lesser
gods came to be viewed as cosmic in nature.
In general the ideas were developed and expressed by religious-
minded rhetoricians, trying to say as much as they could in praise
of various gods. We should not suppose that they were creating a
kind of pagan orthodox theology. Erwin Goodenough used to argue
that thejewish Platonist Philo derived some ideas from the Egyptian
mysteries, because his ideas resembled those of Plutarch on the
same mysteries. A. D. Nock wrote, however, that “the similarities to
Plutarch are striking. But there is no reason to believe that initiates
were taught anything like what Plutarch says.” And he quotes Plu-
tarch himself to the effect that “the true Isiac is he who, when he
has duly received the things shown and done in reference to these
deities, searchesthem by reason and philosophizes on the truth
contained in them.” 3 Nock adds emphatically, “The mysteries, like
Judaism and Christianity, were in themselves nonphilosophical and,
if they were to be intellectually acceptable at the time, had a like

need of the application of philosophical terms and concepts.” There

was originally neither heresy nor orthodoxy in paganism, Christian-
ity, or Judaism.

Greek Gods: Sons and Daughters of Zeus

As theology, both pagan and Christian, developed in the second
century, the functions of Zeus as creator were being shared with his
children, and during the next few centuries they came to be even
more widely distributed. We now examine the cosmic functions
ascribed to some of the gods subordinate to him. We expect to find
not the source of Christian theological statements but environments
in which Christian statements might be acceptable because not un-
familiar.
The Cosmic Christ 115

Cosmic Apollo

There is a cosmic Apollo in the speech that Plutarch attributes to

his teacher Ammonius in the dialogue On the E at Delphi. After a
thoroughly Platonic discussion of deity as eternal and one, he iden-
tifies Apollo as A-pollon —
supposedly meaning “not many’’ “de-
—
nying the many and rejecting multiplicity.” Those who identify
him with the sun rightly recognize “the creative power associ-
ated with it” but fail to see that acts and experiences having to
do with change “are related to some other god or rather to a
daemon set over dissolution and generation.” Apollo is above
change and is “existent through all eternity.” 4 But he is not
really a creator.
A third-century manual of rhetoric ascribed to Menander of
Laodicea devotes a special chapter to the praises of Apollo and gives
him some creative powers. It ends with the numerous alternative
names of the god and notes that “Persians call thee Mithras, Egyp-
tians Horus, Thebans Dionysus.” 5 Apollo can even be called Sun or
Mind or Demiurge of all, for he abolished chaos and brought about
order. The contemporary powers of the god seem less impressive:
his skills in archery, prediction, medicine, and music. The author
does retain the theological notion that the universe moves in tune
with Apollo’s music. 6
The cosmic role of Apollo is often expressed in what is said of the

sun. In Tractate 16 of the Corpus Hermeticum the Sun is described as

the Demiurge, subordinate to the supreme God (ch. 18), even
though the name Apollo does not occur. The emperor Julian de-
voted a prose hymn to “King Helios” and identified Apollo with
Helios, even though he referred to Apollo by name only as “the
leader of the Muses” and said that the god looks up from below to
the triad in heaven and offers this acclamation: “One Zeus, one
Hades, one Helios is Serapis.” 7
Apollo thus maintained his role among the gods who helped
humanity, and retained cosmic functions in spite of the decay of
his oracle at Delphi. Sometimes we hear of them among schol-
ars like Macrobius. Better evidence occurs in an oracle of Cla-
rian Apollo from the third century: “Born from himself, innately
wise, without mother, unshakeable, enduring no name but many-
named, living in fire, that is god. But we are particles of god, his
messengers. Whatever persons ask god what he is, he answers,
‘Looking upon him, the Aether, the All-seeing god, pray fac-
”
ing east in the morning.’ 8 Apollo is obviously the sun and —
more.
116 Basic Doctrines

Cosmic Athena

Apollo’s sister was Athena, and we expect to find her equally

creative. In Plato’s Cratylus (407B) she is already identified as the
mind (nous) of God though we never know how seriously
( theos ),

Plato wanted his etymologies taken. It is the Stoic Chrysippus who

gives us an allegorical explanation of the birth of Athena from the

head of Zeus. He took Athena to be Zeus’s thought (phronesis),
coming out of his head. Chrysippus’ pupil Diogenes of Babylon
wrote “On Athena” and set forth the same doctrine. He was criti-
cized for it after Cicero by the Christian apologist Minucius Felix. 9
In slightly different terms the apologist Justin mentions pagans
who hold that Athena, the daughter of Zeus, was not generated from
sexual intercourse. When Zeus considered ( ennoethesis making the
world through his reason (logos), his first thought (ennoia) was
Athena. Justin comments rather feebly that “we consider it ridicu-
lous that the image of a thought should be female in form.” So too
another Christian knows that “they say Athena is thought pervading
all things.” 10
The orations To Zeus and To Athena by the late second-century
rhetorician Aelius Aristides provide excellent parallels to Christian
theology and at least indicate the environment in which the latter
was acceptable and meaningful. The rhetor states:

Zeus made everything and all things are works of Zeus; rivers and earth
and sea and heaven and whatever is within these and whatever is
beyond them, gods and men and whatever has life and whatever ap-
pears to sight and whatever one can think of. First he made himself,
not the Cretan [Zeus] brought up in sweet-smelling caverns, nor did
Kronos plan to consume him or consume a stone in his stead, nor was
Zeus ever in danger or ever will be; there is nothing older than Zeus,
for sons are not older than fathers nor things produced than those who
make them, but he is first and oldest and chief of all, himself produced
from himself One cannot say when he came to be, but he was from
the beginning and will be forever, father of himself and greater than
one coming to be from another. And as Athena derived her nature
from his head and he needed no partner to produce her, thus even
earlier he made himself from himself and needed no other for coming
to be; on the contrary, everything began its existence from him. 11

The relation of Zeus to Athena is described more fully in the

other oration. 12

He had nothing of the same rank from which to make her, but himself
withdrawing into himself generated the goddess from himself and
bore her, so that she alone is securely the genuine offspring of the
The Cosmic Christ 117

Father, coming to be from a race equal to him and acknowledged.

What is yet greater than this is that from the most excellent part of

himself, that is, from his head, he produced her .therefore it is not
. .

right for her ever toabandon the Father, but she is always present with
him and lives with him as being of the same origin; she breathes toward
him and is present alone with him alone, mindful of her genesis and
returning a suitable repayment for the birth pangs.

There are striking Christian parallels to this interpretation, and

we shall find the settingof Theophilus’ doctrine of Logos and
Sophia, notably in his ToAutolycus 2.10 and 22, in what Aristides says
about Athena. In other words, the Sophia of Theophilus is not only
the Sophia of Proverbs but also the Athena of Aristides. 13 F. W.
Lenz claimed that the Athena of Aristides had the Christian homo -
ousia as its model, but since the doctrine of homoousia did not as yet
exist, this cannot be right. It is as wrong to treat Aristides as an
imitator of Christian theology 14 as it would be to suggest that Chris-
tians relied on Aristides. The two interpretations reflect similar
meditations on similar bases.

Cosmic Dionysus?

At Delphi, according to Plutarch, “the theologians” spoke of

Dionysus in verse and prose, defining the god as “by nature imper-
ishable and eternal” but fated to undergo transformations above —
all into fire, but also in his form, emotions, and powers. “As to his

turning into winds and water, earth and stars, and into the genera-
tions of plants and animals, and his adoption of such guises, they
speak in a deceptive way of what he undergoes in his transformation
as a tearing apart, as it were, and a dismemberment.” 15 Plutarch is

interpreting the Dionysiac myth

cosmic manner. in a
A hymn by Aelius Aristides treats Dionysus as both male and
female and asks if he is the same as Zeus. In the way of cosmic
interpretation, however, all Aristides says is that “he watches over
the limits of night and day, becoming the initiator and leader of
sight. .Ever in motion and movement he passes through the age.
. .

He is the oldest and youngest of the gods, friend of the ever present
hour and lot.” 16 This is not fully cosmic language.
Sometimes scholars seek to find fixed theological interpretations
of the reliefs on Dionysiac and other sarcophagi, but an attack on
this kind of overexegesis has been mounted by Hugo Branden-
burg 17 and Angelika Geyer. 18 Nock too resisted the temptation to
find more be proved. 19
in the art than could
In the fourth century, however, the emperor Julian was able to
118 Basic Doctrines

allegorize the story of Dionysus’ birth, which in his view depicts all
too human events and is nonsensical as a story of the gods. What
counts is the cosmic meaning. Julian argues that “those who sought
to discover what kind of god Dionysus is, worked into a myth the
truth . and expressed in an allegory both the essential nature
. .

( ousia of the god and his conception among the ‘intelligible gods’
in his father Zeus, and further his ungenerated birth in the world .’’ 20
But what he does is not clear.

Cosmic Hermes

By the fourth century of our era there was some speculation about
Hermes not only as revealer but also as creator. According to Kore
Kosmou, a fragment of the Hermetic literature, Hermes in heaven
assured the supreme God that he would create “the nature of men”
and set Wisdom and Temperance and Persuasion and Truth in
them. He was the intermediary through whom and with whom “the
Father and Demiurge,” the “Monarch,” would work 21 .

A contemporary papyrus provides a rather similar picture, though

Hermes, not Zeus, is here the Demiurge. The father Zeus created
Hermes out of himself and “to him he gave many commands, to
make a most beautiful cosmos.” While Zeus “rejoiced to behold the
works of his illustrious son,” Hermes went forth and ordered the
elements to separate and live in peace. Then “the son of the all-
creator” provided orderly arrangement for the universe. Hermes
went through the “but not alone, for with him went Logos,
skies,
his noble son.” Instead of treating Hermes himself as Logos,
the author creates a genealogy from Zeus to Logos; the latter is
now called “the swift herald (angelos) of the father’s pure inten-
tion (noma ).” 22
We thus see that as a god subordinate to the supreme Father,
Hermes could act as his assistant in the creation of the universe.

Cosmic Deeds of the Hero Gods

Cosmic interpretation of the two hero gods Asclepius and Hera-
cleswas made difficult by the fact that stories about them depicted
both of them as mortals. Asclepius, in fact, was killed by Zeus,
jealous of his reputation as a healer. Philosophers spoke of Heracles
as a man divinized by virtue, one who finally set fire to himself to
escape the burden of the flesh. It was hard for most to see how such
semihuman beings could have been active in the creation, though
there were those who thought they were.
The Cosmic Christ 119

Asclepius

Asclepius was a son of Apollo, and like his father he was some-
times considered a cosmic god. The author of a second-century
papyrus text (P. Oxy. XI 1381) deals with the praises of Asclepius
(identified with the Egyptian god Imouthes) and is concerned pri-
marily with recording the healings for which the god was famous.
There is, however, a “physical treatise” in another book of his. It
contains “the convincing account of the creation of the world” and
thus extends “the fame of your [Asclepius’] inventiveness.” He
urges readers to come together if by serving the god they have been
cured of diseases or propose to follow virtue zealously or have been
blessed by benefits or saved from the dangers of the sea. “For every
place has been penetrated by the saving power ( dynamis soterios) of
the god.” He therefore intends to proclaim his “manifestations, the
greatness of his power, and his benefactions and gifts.” 23 Praises for
his healings are most important, but they can be supplemented by
comments on his cosmic functions.
The rhetorician Aelius Aristides says exactly what we should ex-
pect from a devotee healed by the god. 24 “Asclepius has great and
many powers, or rather he has every power, not just that which
concerns human life. And it is not by chance that the people here
[at Pergamum] have built a temple of Zeus Asclepius.” On this basis
Aristides can proceed to speak of Asclepius as if he were Zeus. “He
is the one who guides and rules the universe, the savior of the whole

and the guardian of the immortals, or if you wish to put it in the

words of the tragic poet, ‘the steerer of government,’ he who pre-
serves both what always exists and what comes into existence.” In
a dream Aristides was shown a spot in the sky which was identified
as “the soul of the universe” (Tim. 34B); when he looked at it he
saw “Asclepius of Pergamum enthroned in the sky.” 25 This means
that Asclepius is still subordinate to Zeus, though possessing pow-
ers virtually identical with his. 26

Heracles

In his discussion of the myth of Heracles, the first-century allego-

rizer Comutus treats him as “the Logos in all things, in accordance
with which Nature is strong and powerful, since it is immovable and
endlessly generative.” He
mentions the early Stoic teacher Clean-
thes, who ascribed the twelve labors not to the life of the hero but
to the work of the god. Evidently he identified him as the sun in its
heavenly journey. 27 The Neoplatonist Porphyry also identified him
120 Basic Doctrines

with the sun as defender against evils and treated the twelve labors
as his passage through the signs of the zodiac 28 But he was not a
.

cosmic creator.
One wonders how much the emperor Julian owes to his Christian
upbringing Neoplatonic allegorization) when he writes
(as well as to
that all the elements obeyed the “divine and most pure body” of
Heracles because they “served the creative and perfecting force of
his stainless and pure intelligence.” (The example he uses is Hera-
cles’ supposed ability to “walk on the sea as if it were dry land.”)
“Great Zeus, through his Forethought Athena whom he appointed
as his guardian, her whom he had brought forth whole from the
whole of himself, generated him to be savior for the world .” 29 In
this picture Athena is more clearly cosmic than Heracles, essentially
the grandson of Zeus, not his son.
Heracles becomes truly cosmic only when identified with some
other god or principle. Thus the Christian apologist Athenagoras,
at this point close to the late Neoplatonist Damascius, refers to the
Orphic doctrine that everything came first from water, thence from
slime. From both there emerged “a serpent with the head of a lion
attached, and between them the face of a god.” Its name, they said,
was Heracles and Chronos (Time), and it “generated a huge egg
which, when filled by the power of him who generated it, broke into
two through friction” and became heaven and earth 30 Though an
.

Orphic hymn applies many “cosmic” epithets to Heracles 31 he is ,

rarely named Orphic fragments.

in the
Heracles, then, was not a significant cosmic creator, even though
like other minor gods he was occasionally addressed as such. Late
Orphism provided a special environment in which rhetorical praise
in hymns was lavishly applied to many deities.
To sum up, we note that the gods and goddesses most often
credited with cosmic creativity are children of Zeus who assist their
Father. He remains above as the ultimate Demiurge; they do his
work. We shall expect the situation of oriental deities not to be very
different, since in Greco-Roman times they were ordinarily iden-
tified with the Greek gods.

Oriental Cosmic Deities

Cosmic Isis

We have discussed the earlier status of Isis. In Greco-Roman

times she acquired cosmic functions. Thus the rhetorician Apuleius
The Cosmic Christ 121

speaks of the providential care she bestows on humanity and then

explains that she does so by unweaving the web of fate and keeping
back the harmful course of the stars. “The gods above worship you;
the gods below reverence you; you turn the earth and give light to
the sun, you rule the world, you tread upon Tartarus. The stars
respond to you, the seasons return, the gods rejoice, the elements
give service. By your will the winds blow, the clouds give nourish-
ment, seeds sprout, fruits grow. My voice lacks the strength to
. . .

express what I think of your majesty, nor would a thousand mouths

or tongues continuing to speak forever .” 32 No praise can be too
high for the god or goddess.
The Christian apologist Athenagoras acquainted with this kind
is

of interpretation. He knows the “physical explanations” that inter-

pret Isis as “the origin of eternity, from whom all originate and
through whom all exist .” 33 If all comes from her, she is evidently the
supreme cause, not just a mediator.
The explanation Plutarch gives of the work of Isis, however,
makes clear that for him she is a secondary creative principle. In his
treatise On Isis and Osiris some of the basic principles
he sets forth
he uses for Egyptian myths. The stories about the
criticizing the old
cutting up of Horus and the beheading of Isis are incompatible with
“the nature of the blessed and imperishable, in accordance with
which the divine is really known.” They are not poetic imaginings,
however, but because they “contain narratives of puzzling events
and experiences ,” 34 they have meanings which the ex-
allegorical
egete can set forth. In Plutarch’s own doctrine about Isis, she is
essentially equivalent to Matter, hence not really a creator deity. He
says she is

the female principle of nature, and is receptive of every form of gener-

ation, and therefore is called by Plato “gentle nurse” and “all-recep-

tive” and by most people has been called “of countless names .” 35
Because of the force of Reason, she turns to receive all shapes and
forms. She has an innate love for the First and most dominant of all,
identical with the Good, and she yearns for this and pursues it. She
tries to avoid and reject what comes from evil. Though she provides
place and material for both good and evil, she always inclines toward
the better and offers it opportunity to create from her and sow effluxes
and likenesses in her. She rejoices in these and is glad to be pregnant
and teeming with the things generated. For genesis is the mate-
rial image of reality, and what is generated is an imitation of the

Existent 36 .
122 Basic Doctrines

Cosmic Mother of the Gods and Attis

One might speak of the Mother of the Gods from Asia Minor as
truly the mother of Zeus or “the great parent of all nature ,” 37 but
her identification with the rather shadowy Rhea, the consort of
Kronos, did not contribute to her popularity, and only late visionar-
ies like Julian and his friends tried to develop her into a cosmic
figure. Sallustius called her “the life-giving goddess” and treated
her son Attis as the Demiurge of things coming to be and passing
away. His self-castration symbolized either “the revolution of the
sun between the tropics” or “the separation of the soul from vice
and error .” 38

Cosmic Mithras?

Mithras seems cosmic in nature, but the myth about him is a story
about nowhere and never. According to Plutarch, Zoroaster taught
that Oromazes (Ahura Mazda) was like light, Areimanius (Ahriman)
like darkness. Mithras is between the two, and the Persians therefore
call him Mediator 39 .

He was only occasionally treated as a demiurge. A writer on

Mithraism cited by Porphyry called him “maker and father of the
world which he created .” 40 If, as J. Bidez and Franz Cumont
. . .

suggest, the notice comes from Numenius, the idea that he was the
Demiurge (or rather, a representative Demiurge) could be
Numenius’ own, not a testimony to Mithraic thought 41 .

In any case, making the world was not Mithras’ basic work. He was
born from a rock already in existence. As a young man he struggled
with the cosmic bull depicted on many beliefs. It is not quite clear
what this means, though Porphyry tells us that “Mithras rides the
bull of Aphrodite, since the bull is creator (demiourgos) and Mithras
is the master of creation .” 42 At the bull’s death a hostile dog and

scorpion try to get vital fluids from it, but Mithras contends with
them and then defends humanity when it comes into existence.
Finally he joins the Sun in eating the bull’s flesh, and the two ascend
into the heavens.
The importance of Mithraism should not be exaggerated. Even
toward the end of paganism, Mithras was not the chief of the gods,
and whatever fame he had was due to his assimilation to the sun-
god .
43
The Cosmic Christ 123

No Cosmic Sarapis

Though Aelius Aristides tells us that “whatever directs and pre-

serves human life is the work of Sarapis,’’ that “from the beginning
he led us to light and providentially provided his own beginning,’’
and (as usual) that “being one he is all things ,” 44 there seems to be
no cosmic myth and Sarapis cannot be considered a creator.
We thus see that the developments of cosmic theology in the
background of early Christian thought were not universal and were
related not to oriental deities but primarily to the Greek gods who
stood on a level just below Zeus. The creative powers of Zeus were
extended to them (though not to others) and the work of philosoph-
ical theology could begin. This kind of religious thought apparently

did not directly influence Christian theology, but the congenial

environment permitted theology both Christian and pagan to de-
velop.
 10

Divergent Christologies at Antioch

among various parties, all maintaining what they consid-

Struggle
ered the true Christian tradition, brought about development in the
doctrine of Christ at Antioch. We have already looked at the “high”
Christology of Ignatius of Antioch, whose roots may lie in apocry-
phal traditions about the risen Lord as well as in New Testament
notions. The defenders of “low” Christology could appeal to
equally venerable and authentic traditions, handed down from
apostles like Peter and maintained by several later bishops of Anti-
och.
From early times there were at least these two emphases in Chris-
tology at Antioch. The older was expressed in sermons of Peter as
set forth by Luke as well as in apocrypha ascribed to Peter himself.
Later it was expressed in doctrine developed by two apologists and
continued into the third and fourth centuries by Paul of Samosata
and Marcellus of Ancyra. The doctrine that is probably newer relies
more on Paul and John and states what came to be regarded as the
basic emphasis of catholic Christianity on the deity of Christ. Its
chief proponent was Ignatius of Antioch. In relation to broader
“tendencies” in early Christianity, the first was close to Hellenistic
Jewish thought while the second stood nearer to theology as devel-
oped among, or at least for, Gentiles. 1 Both doctrines, however,
contain Jewish and Gentile elements.

Traces of Early “Low” Christology at Antioch

The first emphasis should be traced back to the apostolic church

at Antioch not just because Eusebius says Luke came from there
(Ecclesiastical History 3.4.6) but because the apostle Paul tells us that
Peter was somehow associated with the Jewish or Judaizing Chris-
tians of the city (Gal. 2:1 1-13). Traditions about Peter were impor-

124
Divergent Christologies at Antioch 125

tant at Antioch, where he was later viewed as the first bishop. Antio-
chenes were devoted to his memory. Bishop Serapion, as we shall
see, proves this point.
The speeches ascribed to Peter in Acts set forth a “low” Chris-
tology, presented to Jewish Christians or prospective converts. It
appears in Acts 2:22: “Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested from
God,” in Acts 2:36: “God made him Lord and Christ, this Jesus
whom you crucified,” and in Acts 10:38: “How God anointed Jesus
from Nazareth with Holy Spirit and power, and he went about doing
good and healing. God was with him.” Modern critics insist that
. . .

Luke did not think of Jesus as “mere man,” but he certainly ac-
cepted a view of Jesus as essentially human and said nothing about
his preexistence. 2
Similarly, in the apologetic Preaching of Peter ,
perhaps first used at
Antioch, the basic Christian doctrine is that there is one God, who
was made known through the Lord and his apostles. It is not clear
whether it was “Peter” or Clement of Alexandria who identified the
“first-born Son” with the “Beginning” of the first verse of Genesis
or called the Lord “Law and Logos.” 3 In any event, our fragments
provide no developed Logos doctrine.
The author of the Preaching of Peter presents a straightforward
Middle Platonic doctrine of God, unhampered by Jewish or indeed
Christian complexities until the end of his affirmation. “There is
one God . the invisible who sees all, the uncontained who contains
. .

all, without needs whom all need, for whose sake they exist, incom-

prehensible, everlasting, imperishable, unmade, who made all by

the Word of his power.” 4 “The Word of his power” reminded von
Dobschtitz of Hebrews 1:3, but there the term refers to the Son’s
word, not the Father’s. The expression as found in these two Chris-
tian books shows that it need not be taken personally. We therefore
refrain from taking either Law or Logos as an adequate portrayal of
the Son. Probably they are references to the content of his message.
This kind of language will recur in Theophilus of Antioch.

“Low” Christologies Attacked by Ignatius

We have seen in chapter 8 something of the “high” Christology

proclaimed at Antioch by Ignatius. We do not know how much
support he received at Antioch, since no letters of his to or from the
church there have survived, if indeed they ever existed. We do find
hints of the “Jewish” Christologies which probably existed at Mag-
nesia and Philadelphia in Asia Minor. Ignatius denounces his Chris-
tian opponents there so vigorously that it is hard to tell exactly
126 Basic Doctrines

what they thought. Perhaps they were Adoptionists, perhaps not.

It is significant, however, that some of Ignatius’ most important

statements about the preexistent Son appear in his letter to the

Magnesians. Evidently he thought they needed this kind of teaching.
He speaks twice about the life of the preexistent divine Son Jesus
Christ. “Before the ages he was with the Father and was manifested
at the end.” He “proceeded from the one Father and is with him and
departed to the one.” 5
It is also important to observe that neither to the Magnesians nor

to the Philadelphians does Ignatius speak of Christ as God. Since

he does so in his other letters, even the one to the Romans whom
he does not know, presumably he is affected by the monotheistic
views of his readers.

Between Ignatius and Theophilus: Tatian

Only toward the end of the second century do we find more
information about Christology at Antioch or even about the church
there. Our lack of information does not prove anything about the
theological situation. It could be due just to Eusebius’ lack of
materials from Antioch when he was writing his influential Ecclesias-
tical History. But the situation in his time was not a new one. The
extant Christian literature of the late second century and the early
third suggests that the church of Antioch between Ignatius (about
1 10) and Theophilus (about 180) made no favorable impression, or
indeed no impression at all, on Christian writers elsewhere.
To fill the gap we venture to make use of Tatian’s Oration to the
Greeks whether it is orthodox or heretical or in between. The justifi-
,

cation for doing so is not so much Epiphanius’ remark that Tatian’s

doctrine was spread from Antioch as the fact that his Christology
seems to harmonize with the situation we can imagine at Antioch
before Theophilus. Tatian writes that he came from “the land of the
Assyrians,” and this term was sometimes used of Syria as well. 6
Herodotus says that Greeks used the word “Syrians” for people
whom barbarians called “Assyrians.” 7 We recall that Tatian insisted
that he was a barbarian. He studied with Justin at Rome before 165,
said good-by to Rome and Athens, and probably went back to Syria
after Justin’s death.
Tatian claims to have been converted to Christianity by reading
the old and divinely inspired “barbarian writings” of theOld Testa-
ment, in which he found stylistic simplicity, an intelligible account
of creation, the predictions of the prophets, “the remarkable quality
of the precepts,” and the Monarchican (monotheistic) doctrine. 8 In
Divergent Christologies at Antioch 127

other words, he combined the Jewish scripture (in Greek) with a

philosophical analysis of it.
Tatian’s teacher Justin had developed a semiphilosophical doc-
trine of God and his Logos but always gave it content by using
biblical passages, especially from the Old Testament, and speaking
of the life of Jesus. Tatian, on the other hand, did away with much
of the biblical content, certainly when addressing strangers as in the
Oration to the Greeks. What he retained seems close to what was being
presented, or was about to be presented, as Christian apologetic
theology at Antioch. If Tatian left the Roman Christian community
in 172 (so Eusebius-Jerome), Theophilus was probably bishop of
Antioch and thus would have taken notice of Tatian’s work, whether
favorably or not.
Tatian’s doctrine of God is straightforwardly Middle Platonic,
related to the New Testament only by rather forced exegesis. “God
has no constitution in time but
is alone without beginning; he is the

beginning of everything.” Thus philosophy explains the terms of

John 4:24, “God is spirit.” In addition, God is invisible and intangi-
ble. “We know him through his creation and we recognize his invisi-
ble power in his works” —an echo of Romans 1:20.
God exercised his creativepower through his Logos. He was
originally alone, but the whole power or potentiality of things visi-
ble and invisible was with him through his logical power. (Conceiva-
bly these expressions are built on Hebrews 1:3.) In response to
God’s pure will, the Logos “leapt forth” (an echo of Justin) as his
“first-born work” (cf. Col. 1:15). It originated by division, not ab-
scission. In other words, it remained essentially united with its
source. To explain this notion, Tatian relies on two analogies. First,
many fires come from one torch; he takes this image from Justin and
indirectly from Second, a speaker is not “empty” of thought
Philo.
when he expresses what is in his mind. This picture comes from
what we may call linguistic psychology.
Tatian specifically notes that the Logos, “becoming Spirit from
Spirit and Logos from logical power” or, in other words, becoming
actuality from potentiality, then made angels and, in imitation of the
Father, man. The firstborn of the angels rebelled against God, and
by following him man became mortal. By the aid of the divine Spirit,
however, the human soul can ascend and live.
The Logos is obviously derived from God, but this fact may not
have any direct bearing on Christology. Three passages tell us
something about the Christological doctrine. First, Tatian calls the
Spirit “the minister of the God who suffered” ( Oration to the Greeks
13). Similarly, the Gnostic Basilidians called the Spirit “minister,”
128 Basic Doctrines

though they did not say whose he was. 9 The idea of the suffering
God clearly recalls the devotional language of Ignatius. Second,
Tatian says, “If a man is like a temple, God wills to dwell in him
through the emissary Spirit’’ (Oration 15). This is clearly based on
Pauline thought and language: “You are the temple of God and the
Spirit of God dwells in you’’ (1 Cor. 3:16). Paul is speaking of
Christians in general but obviously includes particular individuals
in his outlook. Third, Tatian refers to the Christian message about
“God form of a man’’ ( Oration 21), presumably in allusion to
in the
Philippians 2:6-7, where Paul describes Christ Jesus as “in the form
of God’’ and “in the likeness of men.’’ 10
The upshot is that we have a theology of creation with God as
Spirit and creative Logos as Spirit, and a theology of redemption
with God as Spirit but nothing said about the Logos. In fact, Tatian
rewrote John 1:3, “Everything was made through the Logos,’’ to
read “Everything was made by God.’’ There is no contradiction, but
there is a different emphasis. He “The darkness
referred John 1:5,
did not comprehend the light,’’ to human situation generally by
the
changing the verb to the present tense. And he took Psalm 8:5, “for
a little, lower than the angels,” as referring to humanity, not the

Son. 11 In other words, in passages where other early Christians

found the incarnate Logos or the Son, Tatian found a God-man or
God in man, or simply mankind.
In Tatian ’s Oration there is no trace of Peter or Luke- Acts or a
relatively “low” Christology. He naturally used the Gospel of Luke
in the Diatessaron but treated it as less reliable than the apostolic
Matthew and John.
We conclude that Tatian may give us a Christological doctrine as
taught at Antioch around 175. Certainly it was not the only one.
Saturninus may well have had successors. There were also the fore-
bears of the Docedsts whom Serapion would later encounter. And
the bishop Theophilus must have been developing his thoughts on
these matters. A simple list of Antiochene teachers cannot do jus-
tice, however, to the diversity present in the churches. Theophilus

certainly knew most of the books in the Greek Bible. He knew and
used Hermas, probably the Preaching of Peter possibly Ignatius. Her-
,

nias, at any rate, will have broadened his theological horizons.

Theophilus and the “Low” Christology

The curtain of silence over Antiochene Christianity lifts in the

three books To Autolycus by Bishop Theophilus. They are important
Divergent Christologies at Antioch 129

because, though Theophilus used Pauline epistles and the Gospel

ofJohn, he reverted to the “low” Christology expressed by Peter in
Acts and also used Luke’s picture of Jesus in setting forth his own
doctrine. He thus anticipated much of what scholars have treated as
Antiochene in the fragments of Paul of Samosata and Marcellus of
Ancyra.
We begin with God. Theophilus resembles Philo when he sets
forth a doctrine essentially Jewish in nature eventhough expressed
in the language of Middle Platonism. He says that “we acknowledge
(1) a God, (2) but only one, (3) the Founder and Maker and Demi-
urge (4) of this whole cosmos, (5) and we know that everything is
governed by providence, by him alone” (To Autolycus 3.9). These
five points are exactly the same as those listed by Philo in a “creed”
toward the end of the treatise On the Creation of the World; in his
introduction, Erwin Goodenough pointed to Philo but not to The-
ophilus. 12 Theophilus is an heir of Hellenistic Judaism and presum-
ably reflects some of its major developments in the second century.
His doctrine of God uses biblical texts most of the time for philo-
sophical conclusions. After the Preaching of Peter he makes use of the
traditional “negative attributes.” Indeed, he insists that one can
speak only of functions or aspects of God, never of God in himself.
For example, one cannot say that God is Logos or Mind or Spirit
or Wisdom. These terms express modes of God’s working, not God.
Justin had already presented this idea in abbreviated form. 13 Be-
cause of Theophilus’ concern for scripture one might hope for a
more detailed picture of how God works, but he does not provide
one. Instead, he treats God’s Logos as equivalent to his Mind, Spirit,
Wisdom, and Forethought. 14 Like Irenaeus, he refuses to differenti-
ate mental activities within God because the Gnostics could then
offer their theories about sequential emanations. On the other
hand, he is unfortunately ready to analyze God’s internal and exter-
nal Logos, as we shall see.
Theophilus’ language is rather loose. Sometimes he treats Logos
as different from Wisdom; sometimes he identifies them. Quite in
the manner of Philo, he calls Logos and Sophia God’s hands but is
willing to speak of God’s one hand even when discussing the crea-
tion. 15
He be precise when he describes the Logos, and insists
strives to
that originally theLogos was in God. On this point he agrees with
Valentinian Gnostics, Tatian, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and
sometimes even Tertullian and Origen. Indeed, Theophilus holds
with Irenaeus and Clement that this is exactly what the evangelist
130 Basic Doctrines

John meant when he said that “the Logos was pros ton theon ” which —
must mean “with God/’ 16 Tertullian finally denounced the idea, but
followers of Paul of Samosata, as well as Marcellus of Ancyra, picked
it it won favor for a time because of thejohannine
up. 17 Presumably
emphasis on the coinherence of the Father with the Son. 18 Later
theologians saw that the notion implied that the Son was once not
distinct from the Father.
Theophilus goes into more detail than most when he describes
the generation of the Logos from God. He says that the Logos was
contained in God’s “inside parts” or “heart” and that before crea-
tion God “disgorged him,” a notion supposedly justified by exege-
sis of Psalm 45:2, “My heart overflows with a good matter.” 19 This

inelegant metaphor did not appeal to Irenaeus, who denied that

anybody knew the mode of the Son’s begetting, or to Origen, who
denied the relevance of Psalm 45:2 to the Son. 20 Unfortunately
Tertullian liked it, probably because of Theophilus’ influence on
him. 21 The Greek word for “disgorge” is sometimes used of giving
birth and for the “inside parts” of the womb. Conceivably Theophi-
lus could have used this kind of language by analogy with the hu-
man birth of the incarnate Logos, but we do not know that he did so.
A different way of describing the generation could use language
borrowed from rhetoricians and Stoic philosophers and already
applied by Philo to human thought (the Logos endiathetos) as ex-
pressed in human speech (the Logos prophorikos) 22 Theophilus goes
.

beyond Philo by applying the analogy to the divine Logos. We note

that both Irenaeus and Origen followed Philo by accepting the
distinction but reserving it for human psychology. 23
After creation the Logos appeared in Eden, just as Philo and
Justin said he did, for according to Adam he heard the voice of God,
who was walking in paradise (Gen. 3:10). God cannot be present in
a particular place.It must have been his creative Logos, called Voice

and identified as his power and wisdom (cf. 1 Cor. 1:24). The Logos
was “assuming the role” ( analambanon to prosopon) of God. Has
Theophilus really thought about the Christological implications?
More probably, he is simply playing exegetical tricks. He read in
Gen. 3:8 that Adam and Eve hid from the prosopon or “face,” of
,

God.
To be sure, Theophilus probably knows that Justin referred to the
prophets, inspired by the divine Logos, as speaking “as in the role
of God the Father and Master of all” or in the role of Christ or of
“the people replying to him or to his Father.” 24 Justin’s prophet is
much like Theophilus’ Christ, an emissary of the Father, as we shall
see.
Divergent Christologies at Antioch 131

What might have been a more suitable interpretation can be

found in Clement’s Exhortation to the Greeks:

The divine Logos, the most manifest real God [cf. John 17:3], the one
—
made equal [Phil. 2:6] to the Master of all for he was his Son and “the
Logos was in God” [John 1:2] —assuming the role of a man and
. . .

fashioned in flesh, played the saving drama of humanity. ( Exhortation

to the Greeks 110.1-2)

For Theophilus as for Logos (or Sophia, or

his predecessors, the
Spirit) inspired the prophets. God sent prophets “from among their
brothers’’ (Deut. 18:15) to “teach and remind’’ the people of the
content of the Mosaic law (To Autolycus 3.11). According to John
14:26, the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, will “teach and remind” of
everything Jesus said to his disciples. If we can rely on these allu-
sions, Jesus must have reiterated the law of Moses. This is what we
should expect to hear from a reader of the Preaching of Peter. 25 With
the Preaching Theophilus lays emphasis on the Old Testament law
,

and its complete agreement with the prophets and the Gospels (To
Autolycus 3.9-14). The Preaching says that the Jews do not under-
stand God or keep Sabbath correctly. 26 This would help explain why
Theophilus’ decalogue does not include the commandments about
the name of God and Sabbath observance (To Autolycus 3.9).
We now turn directly to the doctrine about Christ. There is some
ambiguity about the incarnation of the Word of God. Theophilus
avoided Ignatian paradox in his quest for a theology based on
philosophy and exegesis. The term “exegesis” reminds us that he
was not relying upon tradition as such but upon a Gospel collection
which he used against Marcion. This means that he must have ac-
cepted both Luke and Acts and defended the opening chapters of
Luke, regarded by Marcion as interpolations. Thus he referred to
the Lucan “Power of the Most High” as one of the names of the
Logos (To Autolycus 2.10; Luke 1:35). Justin had already taken the
angel’s words to Mary to mean that the Spirit and the Power from
God were his Logos. They came upon Mary and “overshadowed”
her and she became pregnant. 27 Is this what Theophilus thought?
It is hard to say, but it seems likely.

Did the Logos really become incarnate however? In Theophilus’

view, there was no need for such an action. He could write that
“whenever the Father of the universe wills to do so, he sends the
Logos into some place where he is present and is heard and seen,
being sent by God and [unlike the Father] being present in a place.”
The phrasing reminds us of the Johannine insistence upon Jesus as
the “one sent” by the Father. In the same chapter, when Theophilus
132 Basic Doctrines

denies the existence of “sons of gods born of sexual union” he

speaks of the Logos as “always innate ( endiathetos ) in the heart of
God” (To Autolycus 2.22).Does that mean that the Logos was not
born? We have already compared the generation before the crea-
tion with the incarnation, but that is a tenuous comparison indeed.
Whether Jesus was born of a virgin or not, Theophilus had no
reason to suggest that the Logos was born. Even John 1:14, “The
Logos became flesh,” may not have convinced him.
What did Theophilus think about the life and work of Christ? He
says nothing directly, but in his account of Adam there seem to be
echoes of the early chapters of Luke, notably the passages on Jesus*
growth, progress, and obedience to parents. God gave Adam an
“opportunity for progress” (To Autolycus 2.24; Luke 2:52). Had he
taken it, he could have ascended into heaven and become God. 28 It
is a holy duty not only “before God but also before men” (Luke 2:52

again) to obey one’s parents (cf. Luke 2:43). If children must obey
their parents, how much more the God and Father of all (cf. Luke
2:49)? As one grows in age in orderly fashion, so also one grows in
thinking. 29
Theophilus has applied to Adam, generic man, what Luke said
—
about Jesus’ infancy and for Theophilus, Adam in Eden was an
infant. So also in To Autolycus Theophilus takes the apostle’s com-
,

parison of Adam with Christ (Rom. 5:15-21) and rewrites it to

compare man then with man now.

What man acquired for himself through his neglect and disobedience
God now freely [for] gives him through love and mercy. For as by
disobedience man gained death for himself, so by obedience to the will
of God whoever will can obtain eternal life for himself. For God gave
us a law and holy commandments; everyone who does them can be
saved and attaining to the resurrection can inherit imperishability. (To
Autolycus 2.27)

Thus Christ is significant primarily as an exemplary second Adam.

The unique role of Christ virtually vanishes. 30 For Theophilus, the
essence of religion must be revelation in law, not redemption. This
is why he is eager to call Adam, Moses, and Solomon prophets.
31

Like Theophilus, Marcellus of Ancyra called them prophets, and

Eusebius ridiculed him for doing so. 32
To sum up: for Theophilus, God possesses various faculties
through which he acts and reveals himself. He thereby shows man
what is good and expects him to do it. If Jesus differed from others
it was in the obedience for which God finally rewarded him. There

is a sharp break between the incarnational Christology of Ignatius

Divergent Christologies at Antioch 133

and the reticent monotheism of Theophilus. Who could say whether

one of them was orthodox, the other not? These problems, begin-
ning in very early times, were to plague the church at Antioch for
centuries.
Christians outside Antioch may have been aware of some of these
difficulties. Irenaeus, who knew and used the work of
certainly
Theophilus (but did not mention his name) as well as the writings
of Clement, Polycarp, and Hermas, quoted part of one sentence
from Ignatius and simply called him “one of our people.” 33 Clem-
ent of Alexandria used Clement, Hermas, and Barnabas but not
Ignatius. Origen seems to have encountered the Ignatian letters
only in his last years at Caesarea (see chapter 7). On the other hand,
Theophilus’ work won some favor among Latin theologians, but
little among the Greeks.

Serapion and the Memory of Peter

After Theophilus, Serapion of Antioch expressed reverence for

Peter and the other apostles. At Antioch, doctrine handed down
from Peter was obviously authoritative. Serapion also knew Doce-
tists, obviously not orthodox, who were willing to help him under-

stand their Gospel of Peter. We cannot tell what Serapion thought

about “the true teaching of the Savior,” to which he appeals. Pre-
sumably it was found in writings rightly ascribed to the apostles. 34
To judge from contemporary authors, these would include the ser-
mons of Peter in Acts and also the Preaching of Peter. We therefore
suppose that Serapion stood in the line of Theophilus.

Paul of Samosata as Traditionalist

Half a century later, former pupils of Origen met at Antioch to

depose the bishop there, Paul of Samosata, a successor of The-
ophilus and Serapion not only in office but also in doctrine. We
need not go into details after the work of G. Bardy, F. Loofs, H. de
Riedmatten, and T. E. Pollard, 35 not to mention an excellent disser-
tation by R. L. Sample. 36
It remains hard to tell which fragments may be authentic, but

Fragment 36 Bardy 37 is very close to Theophilus.

Our Savior has become holy and righteous, having conquered the sin
of our first fathers by struggle and toil. Having thus set up virtue again,
he has been united to God, having one and the same will and energy
as God, for the progress of man in goodness. In order to preserve it
134 Basic Doctrines

inseparable, he has obtained the name above every name [Phil. 2:9]
which is given him as a reward of love.

Or this (five citations in de Riedmatten):

The Logos was not a man; he dwelt in a man, in Abraham, in Moses,

in David, in the prophets, and especially in Christ, as in a temple.

R. L. Sample shows us how much Paul’s Christology owed to Luke

and the sermons in Acts. He indicates the way in which the Samosa-
tene laid emphasis on the progress made by the Son until he finally
became “Lord and Christ,’’ and on his close relation to the proph-
ets, also inspired by the divine Word and Wisdom. He even quotes
Gregory of Nyssa (Against Apollinaris 9) for Paul’s view that “out of
heaven the Lord was made divine.” All this, and much more, is close
to what Theophilus had taught. The Lucan passages of Theophilus
recur in Paul, as indeed do ideas about the name Christ and the
“name above every name.” And the divinization of the Lord is just
what Theophilus maintained was a possibility for the First Adam as
for the Second.
Further comparison between Theophilus and Paul will show that
the later bishop was essentially maintaining what had been ortho-
dox (because episcopal) at Antioch in the old days, not the ancient
times of Ignatius but the middle ages of Serapion.

Marcellus of Ancyra

It is hard to see exactly how the position of Marcellus of Ancyra

was linked to Antioch. It is clear, however, that he used some impor-

tant terms related to this special Antiochene tradition. Kloster-
mann’s Fragment 60 38 proves our point.

Before making the world the Logos was in the Father. When the
omnipotent God proposed to make everything in the heavens and on
earth, the genesis of the world required effective energy. Therefore,
—
when there was no one else but God for it is acknowledged that
—
everything was made by him then the Logos came forth and became
maker of the world. Previously within God he mentally prepared it, as
the prophet Solomon teaches us, saying, “When he prepared the
heaven I was with him,” and “As he laid secure the springs of what is
under heaven, when he made strong the foundations of the earth, I
was with him binding them fast. I was the one in whom he rejoiced”
[Prov. 8:27-30]. For presumably the Father rejoiced with Sophia
and Power [cf. 1 Cor. 1:24] when he made everything through the
Logos.
Divergent Christologies at Antioch 135

This is essentially the doctrine of Theophilus. 39 Marcellus also calls

Solomon a prophet and cites texts that Theophilus used for the
same purpose. Danielou noted his surprising backward look to a
Jewish-Christian picture of Christ as “Day.” 40 Eusebius criticized
this Marcellan item too. 41

The “Low” Christology and the Ebionites

In some respects this Antiochene Christology was close to the
ideas of the Jewish-Christian Ebionites as discussed by Eusebius. 42

They regarded Christ as a simple, ordinary person, a man justified by

progress in character and that alone. He was bom of the intercourse
of a man with Mary. Observance of the law was absolutely necessary,
since merely faith in Christ and a corresponding way of life would not
save them.

Relying on Origen, 43 Eusebius also mentioned Ebionites who re-

garded Mary as a virgin but did not recognize Christ as “God the
Logos and Sophia.” It looks as if Theophilus stood fairly close to
these people as well as to Lucan strands in early Christian theology
and to his successor Paul of Samosata. His theology apparently
superseded that of Ignatius for a time but then was superseded
itself. This is not to say it really was Ebionite. It expressed one of

the many shades of doctrinal variety to be found within early catho-

lic Christianity.
It seems undeniable that these views were understood and ac-

cepted as “orthodox” at Antioch at least from 180 to 260, though

under pressure from Origenist bishops, synods finally condemned
them. Our point is that in the early centuries the Christian doctrines
— —
about God Father, Son, and Spirit were remarkably flexible and
that at least the emphases changed from one generation to another.
 11

Also the Holy Spirit

The Spirit in the Bible

Biblical statements about spirit or the Spirit come from various

ages and reflect divergent points of view and interests. At the begin-
ning of Genesis the Spirit, or a spirit, or the breath of God is
brooding over the chaotic waters. Something different, but called by
a similar name, appears in the story of Samson, the divinely empow-
ered fighter against the Philistines. We hear of this empowerment
in the prophets both as present and as a future gift. Such diversity
continued in Judaism and Christianity alike.
In his great study ofjudaism, G. F. Moore clarified and contrasted
the pictures of “spirit” in the Old Testament and later.

In the Old Testament superhuman strength, courage, skill, judgment,

wisdom, and the like, are attributed to “the spirit of God,” or of “the
Lord,” which suddenly comes upon a man for the time being and
possesses him, or more permanently rests upon him and endows him.
In old narratives it is more common of physical power and prowess
and the gift of leadership (not a personal agent); in the prophets it is
occasionally used of prophetic inspiration. The equivalent phrase “the
holy spirit” is very rare, and is never associated with prophecy.
In Judaism, on the contrary, the holy spirit is specifically the spirit
of prophecy. When the holy spirit was withdrawn from Israel, the age
of revelation by prophetic agency was at an end. The scribes, interpret-
ers of the word of God written and custodians of the unwritten law,
succeed 1
.

First Maccabees (14:41) tells us that Simon Maccabeus was to be

“leader and high priest for ever, until a trustworthy prophet should
arise.” In similar vein, Moore quotes Tosefta Sotah (13.2): “When the
lastprophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, died, the holy spirit
ceased out of Israel; nevertheless, it was granted them [their succes-
136
Also the Holy Spirit 137

sors] tohear [communications from God] by means of a mysterious

voice.” The outpouring of
the spirit would be a manifestation of
God’s presence in the last times (Joel 3:1), a prediction which in
Acts 2:16 is treated as fulfilled at Pentecost.
The presence of the “spirit” obviously implied that God himself
was present with his people, as in such passages as these from
prophets and a psalm. “The spirit of the Lord is upon me” (Isa.
61:1, cited by Jesus in Luke 4:18f.). “I will put a new spirit within
you; . . . they shall be my people, and I will be their God” (Ezek.
ll:19fi; cf. Rev. 21:7). “I have poured out my spirit upon the house
of Israel, says the Lord” (Ezek. 39:29). “Take not thy holy spirit
from me” (Ps. 51:11).
Two comments in New Testament books make one wonder
whether Christian ideas about the Spirit were entirely continuous
with Jewish traditions. According to Acts 19:2, Paul asked some
disciples of John the Baptist whether they had received the Holy
Spirit when they believed. They told him they had never heard of
the existence of the Holy Spirit. Again, John 7:39 states that Jesus
spoke enigmatically about the future gift of the Spirit and comments
that “there was as yet no Spirit, for Jesus had not yet been glorified.”
These statements do not seem to take the Old Testament into
account.
In the Christian Gospels themselves we can trace some develop-
ment in the teaching about the Spirit. The Spirit is prominent in the
account of Jesus’ baptism. According to all the evangelists, it de-
scended upon him like a dove (“in bodily form,” says Luke). John
insists that it “remained” on him but does not explain what he
means. The three earlier evangelists quote a “voice” which gives
their primary interpretation of the event. The Father says of the
Son, “You are [“this is,” according to Matthew] my beloved Son”
or even, according to early versions of Luke 3:22, “You are my Son;
—
today I have begotten you” a quotation from Psalm 2. Thereupon
the Spirit drives Jesus out into the desert for his temptation by the
devil.
The evangelist Luke lays strong emphasis on the presence and
work of the Spirit. Holy Spirit was responsible for the conception
ofJesus from the Virgin Mary (Luke 1:35). 2 It came upon him at his
baptism and drove him into the desert (Luke 4:1); it inspired him
to treat his life as the fulfillment of prophecy (Luke 4:18-21); he
could “rejoice in the Holy Spirit” (Luke 10:21). He gave it back to
the Father at his death (Luke 23:46). For Luke, Jesus was thus
guided by the Spirit throughout his ministry, though Jesus is not the
only person whom Luke calls “full of Holy Spirit” (Luke 4:1); there
138 Basic Doctrines

are also Elizabeth and Zacharias, the mother and father ofJohn the
Baptist (Luke 1:41, 67).
The Holy Spirit is also very prominent in Acts, filling such per-
sons as the apostle Peter (Acts 4:8), the seven “deacons” (Acts 6:3)
—among them the first martyr Stephen (Acts 6:5; 7:55) and the —
Jerusalem Christian Barnabas (Acts 1 1:24). The Spirit was “poured
forth” upon the apostles at Pentecost in a crucial experience de-
scribed in Acts 2. To be sure, the story is told in terms somehow
related to Philo’s account of the giving of the law on Sinai. 3 But what
counts in Acts is the gift of the Spirit.
The relationship of the Spirit to baptism was important for the
apostolic church. Did baptism result in the gift of the Spirit, or come
after it with the imposition of hands? Or did Spirit come first,

baptism later? All three ideas are depicted in various parts of Acts,
and we must conclude that the author was willing to accept any of
them. The letters of Paul show that problems arose within the
churches after baptism, especially when, as at Corinth, “spiritual”
experience was highly valued. Paul had to devote a whole chapter
of his first letter to the Corinthians to the question of spiritual gifts
and to the excitement they produced at worship, as well as another
chapter to the phenomenon of “glossolalia” or “uttering mysteries
in the Spirit” (1 Cor. 12; 14). Obviously there were those who under
the inspiration of a spirit, or the Spirit, would make pronounce-
ments in God’s name or identify themselves with him. It is hard to
classify those who “spoke in tongues” at Corinth and presumably
elsewhere in early churches. Paul insists that their utterances have
to be explained by others and warns that a visitor would suppose
the speakers were crazy. Ignatius sets forth God’s will about church
organization “in a loud voice, with God’s own voice.” 4 John the
author of Revelation is “in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day” when he
hears voices and sees visions.
Perhaps the best-known text along these lines comes from Celsus,
the pagan critic of second-century Christianity. He claimed to know
people in Phoenicia and Palestine who often said

I am God [or a son of God, or a divine Spirit]. And I have come.

Already the world is being destroyed. And you, O men, are to perish
because of your iniquities. But I wish to save you. And you shall see
me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has wor-
shipped me now! But I will cast everlasting fire upon all the rest, both
on and on country places. And men who fail to realize the
cities
penalties in store forthem will in vain repent and groan. But I will
preserve for ever those who have been convinced by me 5 .
Also the Holy Spirit 139

The passage seems to be partly modeled, or parodied, after some

sayings ofJesus, but the self-proclamatory note at the start found is

in pagan and Christian materials alike. 6 To D. E. Aune’s examples

we add a few oracles ascribed to the second-century prophet Mon-
tanus: “I am the Lord God omnipotent dwelling in man”; “I am
neither an angel nor an envoy, but I the Lord God the Father have
come”; and “I am the Father and the Son and the Paraclete.” Simi-
larly the prophetess Maximilla claimed to be “word, spirit, power.”
And Prisca described the Montanists’ ecstatic technique. “Conti-
nence brings harmony, and they see visions; when they bow their
heads, they also hear distinct voices, saving and mysterious.” She
was the prophetess to whom Christ appeared as a woman to inform
her about the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem. 7
A sectarian teacher could of course insist on his superiority with-
out calling himself a prophet. The Gnostic Basilides apparently
used exegesis for this purpose. “We are men, and the others are all
swine and dogs. Therefore it says, ‘Cast not pearls before swine nor
”
give what is holy to the dogs.’ 8 It is remarkable, however, how
many such teachers were influenced by “spiritual” ideas. Thus
Valentinus was said to have seen a newborn child (in a dream) and
asked who it was. The child identified itself as the Logos. Hence
came the whole Gnostic system, says Hippolytus. 9 Valentinus’
numerologist disciple Marcus also had a vision. The supreme Tet-
rad in female form (like the Christ of Prisca) came down to him and
described the origin of the world, “which she had never revealed to
any among men or gods.” 10 In addition, Marcion’s disciple Apelles
was accompanied by a virgin named Philumene, whose ecstatic reve-
lations Apelles recorded in a book called Manifestations 1 .

Paul himself, like Origen later, “would rather speak five words
with his mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words
in a tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19). Prophecy is better than ecstasy. He
does not deny that all Christians received the Spirit when they
believed, but he insists that they must “walk” by the Spirit and its
moral requirements (Gal. 3:2; 5:16). The Holy Spirit motivates
them to say, “Jesus is Lord,” not “Jesus be cursed!” (1 Cor. 12:3).
At the same time Paul comes close to treating spiritual experience
related to paganism as analogous to similar experience in the
church. “You know that when you were heathen you were led astray
to mute idols, however you may have been moved. Therefore I want
you to know” about the utterances made under the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12:2-3).
The kind of “prophetic” or oracular ecstasy Paul was trying to
avoid appears clearly in the case of the oracle of Apollo at Delphi.
140 Basic Doctrines

In Greek views the spirit of inspiration was involved in the utter-

ances of the priestess there. She sat on a tripod near a crevice in the
earth from which vapor was said to come up. 12 Then, says the author
of the first-century treatise On the Sublime she “becomes pregnant
,

from the divine power and is inspired to utter oracles” (13.2). Such
pregnancy was obviously metaphorical, but in a malicious attack
Origen took it literally, claiming that the spirit of Apollo entered her
womb before she gave oracles. 13 Two centuries later John Chrysos-
tom added the fantasy that on such occasions she would become
drunk and crazy. 14 Presumably pagans neither provided nor ac-
cepted such explanations. 15
In the Roman world her counterpart was the Sibyl of Cumae near
Naples. Virgil gives the classic description of her inspiration. “She
goes mad in the cavern so as to shake the god [Apollo] from her
breast, and all the more he wearies her raving mouth, taming her
wild heart, and moulds her by his control.” When she speaks “she
sings from the shrine her fearful enigmas, and echoes from the
cavern, wrapping true predictions in obscure sayings.” 16
A famous collection of written oracles, used by the Roman state,
was ascribed to the Sibyl, but there were so many oracles available
that lists of Sibyls had to be compiled. There was the “official” Sibyl
from Cumae near Naples, whose books, bought by King Tarquin,
were consulted only by order of the senate. Destruction led to new
compilations, as well as to official attempts to keep such oracles
under control. Augustus had about two thousand of them burned
in 13 b.c., while Tiberius made another investigation in a.d. 19 and
later looked into the case of a supposedly official volume. 17 The
Christian apologist Justin is the only author to claim that the death
penalty has been imposed on readers of the books of Hystaspes
(supposedly a Persian prophet) or the Sibyl or the prophets. No
other testimony confirms this fantasy. Both Jews and Christians
regularly read the prophets, not to mention the oracles forged by
Jews and Christians in the Sibyl’s name. Theophilus calls her “a
prophetess for the Greeks and the other nations,” while Clement
says “the prophetic and poetic Sibyl” is “the prophetess of the
Hebrews.” 18 Origen had sense enough not to use them.
In this context Paul had to insist on correlation with the Christian
gospel as well as rational guidelines. He accepted his converts’
emphasis on freedom but insisted on theological content. He was
quite willing to say that “the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit
of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). He thus spoke of
“Spirit” in the context of “Lord,” and indeed could define “Spirit”
as “Spirit of the Lord” or even as “Lord.” Another famous passage
Also the Holy Spirit 141

provides further interpretations of the work of the Spirit. “You are

not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if the Spirit of God dwells in you.
If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to
him. If Christ is in you, the body is dead on account of sin but the

Spirit because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised

is life

Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the
dead will also make your mortal bodies alive through his Spirit
indwelling in you” (Rom. 8:9-1 1). Paul thus identifies the Spirit of
God with the Spirit of Christ and, in turn, with the inward Christ.
He is concerned with correlations, not distinctions, for he does not
believe in a Spirit unrelated to Christ and the gospel.
The evangelist John tries to make a distinction between the minis-
try ofjesus, in which the Spirit was not active (in spite of its “remain-
ing” on him after his baptism) and the time after his glorification
(crucifixion) (John 7:39; cf. 12:23). Jesus predicts the coming of the
Paraclete, the divine intercessor or helper identified with the Holy
Spirit (John 14:26). The Spirit is once called “another Paraclete”
(John 14:16) and is therefore not different in category from Jesus
Christ himself, who is called the Paraclete in 1 John 2:1. After the
resurrection, the Lord “breathes” Holy Spirit upon the disciples
(John 20:22).

The Spirit and the Conception of Jesus

The account of the conception ofjesus by the Holy Spirit was not
completely alien to Greek converts. The Gospels of Matthew and
Luke, as well as Ignatius of Antioch, stated that Jesus Christ was
begotten by the Spirit. How was this to be explained? The apologist
Justin gave a rather inadequate explanation when he stated that the
Logos became a man when, as “Spirit and power” (Luke 1:35), he
himself came upon Mary from God. 19 Presumably he was fusing the
account in Luke, to which he referred, with the “becoming flesh”
of John 1:14. Justin’s difficulty was due to two problems he had in
view. On the one hand, he had to admit the parallel between the
Gospel stories and the Greek tale of how Zeus begot Perseus from
Danae. 20 On the other hand, he insisted that the Christian account
had nothing in common with poets’ stories of how Zeus came upon
women for the sake of sexual pleasure.
Justin’s older pagan contemporary Plutarch discussed similar
cases but made points that Christians would not have accepted. In
his Table-talk (8.1) he set forth his own view as well as that of “the
Egyptians.” Through a Platonist speaker he says, “I do not consider
it strange if the god does not approach [a woman] like a man but
142 Basic Doctrines

alters mortal nature and by another kind of contact or touch,

through other means, makes it pregnant with a more divine off-
spring.” He then refers to the Egyptians, who hold that a male god
can have intercourse with a mortal woman, but a mortal man cannot
“provide a female divinity with the principle of birth and preg-
nancy.” The substance of the gods consists of “air and breath
(
pneumata and certain heats and moistures,” evidently incapable of
giving birth.
Plutarch, in his Life of Numa (4.4), apparently written later, says
again that according to the Egyptians a male mortal could not have
sexual intercourse with a goddess, but “a spirit of a god could
approach a woman and insert in her certain principles of genera-
tion.” He personally rejects this distinction between god and god-
dess, for sex involves participation and sharing by both parties.
There were whose ideas about the Spirit and the
also Christians
origin of Jesus did not win broad favor. These people, especially in
Egypt, read the Gospel of the Hebrews which expresses a singular
,

doctrine of the work of the Spirit, notably in fragments that came

down in Coptic or were cited by Jerome or Origen. 21 The Coptic
fragment —not necessarily primitive—reads thus:
When Christ wished to come upon the earth to men, the good Father
summoned a mighty power in heaven, which was called Michael, and
entrusted Christ to the care thereof. And the power came into the
world and it was called Mary, and Christ was in her womb seven
months.

This kind of story leaves no place for the work of the Holy Spirit.
A more trustworthy fragment of Hebrews from Jerome reads thus:
And it happened that when the Lord was come up out of the water the

whole fount of the Holy Spirit descended upon him and rested on him
and said to him, “My Son, in all the prophets I was waiting for you that
you might come and I might rest in you. For you are my rest; you are
my first-begotten Son who reigns forever.”

This text makes it clear that Christ is the son of the Holy Spirit.
Finally, both Origen and Jerome provide this fragment: “Even so
did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry
me to the great mountain Tabor.” Origen, in his Commentary on the
Gospel of fohn (2.12), inquires how the Holy Spirit, owing its exis-
tence to the Logos, can be called the mother of Christ. He suggests
that since anyone who does Christ’s will can be called his mother
(Matt. 12:50), this could apply to the Holy Spirit. Here and in a
homily on Jeremiah (15.4) he tends to accept the saying just because
Also the Holy Spirit 143

it cannot be taken literally. It should be added that in the Nag

Hammadi Apocryphon of James the risen Lord says to the apostles,
“Become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy
Spirit,” probably like himself. 22
Scholars have often suggested that the background of this saying
lies in a Semitic language in which the word for “spirit” was ruack ,

a feminine noun. This would make the identification as “mother”

easier. We may find this strange, but to call the Spirit “he” is no
more satisfactory; the word spiritus is masculine in Latin, but its
Greek original, pneuma, is neuter.

Spirit in the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists

Christians only gradually worked out what the Holy Spirit meant.
In the relatively popular religion of the Shepherd of Hermas, the
Holy Spirit is Son of God or is called “the preex-
identified with the
istent Holy which created the whole creation, which God
Spirit
made dwell in flesh.” 23 Martin Dibelius said Hermas has no theol-
ogy. Thus our text may mean no more than what we find in the
contemporary sermon called 2 Clement (9.5): “If Christ, the Lord
who saved us, was at first spirit and became flesh and thus called us,
so also we shall receive our reward in this flesh.”
Ignatius provides vivid pictures of the work of the Spirit. In his
view the Old Testament prophets were Christ’s “disciples in the
Spirit,” which must have inspired them as it did the bishop. In a
vivid metaphor Ignatius refers to the Spirit as the “rope” that car-
ries Christians to the heights of the temple of which they are
stones. 24 Presumably he refers to the force and direction the Spirit
gives. Justin too speaks of prophetic inspiration and the conception
of Christ, as we have seen, and explicitly states that “we honor the
prophetic Spirit in the third rank, with the Logos.” 25
The late second-century apologists Tatian and Theophilus try to
work out a doctrine of the Spirit. Tatian emphatically rejects the
Stoic view of God as spirit (he has to be emphatic in view of John
4:24, “God is Spirit”) and says that while God is spirit, he does not
pervade matter but is the “constructor of material spirits.” If he
pervaded matters he would “turn up in sewers and worms and doers
of things unmentionable.” Thus “the spirit that pervades matter is
inferior to the more divine spirit.” The lower one “is called soul”
while the superior one “is the image and likeness of God.” The
latter was “originally the soul’s companion, but gave it up when the
soul was unwilling to follow it.” 26 Evidently Tatian is using Genesis
as a base for his speculations.
144 Basic Doctrines

He goes farther with a doctrine much like that of the “world

soul’’: “There exists spirit in luminaries, spirit in angels, spirit in
plants and waters, spirit in men, and spirit in animals; though it is
one and the same it possesses differences within itself.’’ 27 He is
trying to bring order out of the chaotic doctrine of the Spirit found
in his predecessors —
for example, in Hermas, but not only there.
Theophilus speaks of the Spirit as inspirer of prophets and evan-
gelists as well as that which separated darkness from light at crea-
tion. 28 He also seems to equate Spirit with Logos and thus remains
in some confusion. He clearly has Genesis in mind. “If I call God
Spirit speak of his breath’’ (To Autolycus 1.3) the breath first
I —
breathed at creation (Gen. 1:3). God “gave a spirit to nourish the
earth; his breath gives life to everything; if he held his breath every-
thing would collapse’’ (alluding to Job 34:14f.), and humankind
breathes God’s breath (To Autolycus1.7). More than that, “the whole
creation is enclosed by the spirit of God, and the enclosing spirit
together with the creation enclosed by the hand of God’’ (To
is

—
Autolycus 2.5). The picture Theophilus adds a comparison with a
—
pomegranate seems to imply something rather definite and even
material.
When we reach his exegesis of the creation story the point
becomes clear. “The ‘spirit borne over the water’ was the one given
by God man, when he
to give life to the creation, like the soul in
mixed subtle elements together and water is
(for spirit is subtle
subtle) 29 so that the spirit might nourish the water and the water
with the spirit might nourish the creation, penetrating it from all
sides.’’ This spirit, he adds, “was situated between the water and the
heaven.’’ It was obviously material in essence. When Theophilus
elsewhere notes the Stoic doctrine, “The spirit extended through
everything is God,’’ he does not deny its truth but simply points out
that other philosophers disagree. 30 The philosopher Numenius
took the text in Genesis as a reference to souls in generation settling
upon water animated by the divine breath. 31 This is not exactly
Theophilus’ doctrine but the approach is similar. Clement of Alex-
andria, on the other hand, gives explicitly Christian exegesis of the
verse. For him it proves that the Spirit participates in creation
(genesis = birth) as in rebirth. Origen too refers the verse to the Holy
Spirit. 32
Irenaeus knew and used the work of Theophilus, but he tried to
clear up the apologist’s ambiguities by setting forth the more tradi-
tional Christian faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Though in his
struggle against Gnosticism he usually spoke only of the Father and
the Son, he clearly affirmed the faith of the church in the one
Also the Holy Spirit 145

omnipotent God, in the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, and “in
the Spirit of God, who gives knowledge of the truth [cf. John 16:13],
who has explained the divine plans of the Father and the Son before
men in every generation as the Father wills.” All Christians, he says,
recognize the same gift of the Spirit. 33
The church’s situation around 170 to 180 was one in which theo-
logical ideas about the Spirit had not been carefully worked out, and
in facing the Gnostic danger leaders had neglected the problems of
popular piety.

The Montanists and Ecstatic Prophecy

Just at this time, in the third quarter of the second century, new
problems arose in regard to the inspiration of the prophets, both
ancient and modern, and of church leaders. It may be significant
that the eruption took place in the mountains of Phrygia. The sec-
ond-century Roman historian Arrian says that the Phrygians “go
mad for Rhea [the Great Mother] and are possessed by the Cory-
bants [her demonic helpers]. When the deity possesses them they
are driven and shout and dance as they predict the future, inspired
and crazed.” 34 It was a Christian in Phrygia named Montanus (“the
—
mountain man”) a recent convert from paganism, said his critics
— who believed in a fresh outpouring of the Spirit, beginning with
himself. The gift did not, then, belong to the bishops as a gift passed
down from one generation to the next, as Bishop Irenaeus said it
was. Instead, Montanus believed that the Spirit produced prophetic
ecstasy. He was able to persuade two married women (both, oddly,
with Latin names like his) to leave home and become prophetesses;
they then practiced exorcism and predicted the imminent end of the
age.
Much excitement resulted in the province of Asia, especially in
the area where their activities were centered. The conservative
bishop of nearby Hierapolis convoked synods and produced literary
works against them, but their final enemy was time, which took away
much of the force of their predictions. Irenaeus, who did not like
them, disliked their opponents more and referred back nostalgically
to the great days when Paul was at Corinth and the Spirit was
manifest in the church.
The idea that prophecy takes place in a trance was common not
only among oriental prophets but also at Greek oracles and is ex-
pressed by many early Greek writers, notably Democritus and
Plato. 35 Indeed,
Origen describes as Greek the view that “the art of
poetry cannot exist without madness.” 36 The problem of ecstatic
146 Basic Doctrines

utterance and talking in tongues gives us some understanding of the

controversy. Some of the most important Old Testament prophets
did make pronouncements when in an ecstatic state. 37 The stories
about Jesus suggest that his disciples regarded him as one who
spoke thus, as some of them did. The accounts of the baptism, the
temptation, the transfiguration, and the resurrection point toward
ecstatic experience, as does the ascension, especially when com-
pared with Paul’s language about his own ascent to the third heaven
or paradise. 38 In Acts we have the stories of Pentecost, the work of
the Spirit with Philip, and the visions of Paul and Peter. As we saw,
Paul was eager to keep this kind of experience from getting out of
control. “I would rather say five words in church with my mind than
ten thousand with a ‘tongue.’ ” He was against abuses, however, not
the phenomenon as such. The bishop Ignatius claimed that he could
speak with “a loud voice, God’s own voice” and could rely on special
information given him by the Spirit. 39 Around 150, Justin did not
hesitate to refer to the ekstasis of the Old Testament prophets. 40
Evidently he followed an authority like Philo of Alexandria, who
similarly insisted on the irrationality of ecstasy 41 but viewed it as
above reason, not below it.
Montanus’ ‘‘new prophecy” was hard to handle in this environ-
ment. His opponents had to insist upon rather new distinctions as
they tried to keep the movement within limits. They admitted that
he was moved by some kind of spirit or other, but claimed that ‘‘he
suddenly fell into a state of ‘possession’ and abnormal ecstasy, and
became frenzied (enthousian) and began to babble and utter strange
sounds.” His prophesying was different from the traditional prac-
tice found in the church, says an anonymous opponent. 42 In addi-
tion, he filled the two women already mentioned with the same
‘‘spurious spirit” so that they ‘‘chattered in a frenzied, inopportune,
and unnatural manner.” Critics reported “the spirit that speaks
through Maximilla” as saying, “I am driven away like a wolf from
the sheep; I am not a wolf; I am word and spirit and power.”
Appropriate stories were circulated about the women’s demise: “A
maddening spirit drove both of them to hang themselves, though
not at the same time.”
As for another Montanist leader, rumor held that “on being lifted
and raised heavenwards, he fell into abnormal ecstasy and, entrust-
ing himself to the spirit of error, was whirled to the ground and so
met a miserable end.” The anonymous critic referred to his own ally
Mildades as having shown “that a prophet must not speak in ec-
stasy” and claimed, presumably following this source, that no
Also the Holy Spirit 147

prophet under either the Old Covenant or the New had ever spoken
thus. These false prophets moved from voluntary ignorance to in-
voluntary madness and abnormal ecstasy and ended in license and
boldness. When the African church leader Tertullian became a
Montanist he wrote seven books “on ecstasy” but none of them
survive. It is fairly clear that the opponents of Montanism were
developing Paul’s attack on the tongue- talkers of Corinth. Paul had
more tactfully suggested that outsiders coming upon Christians
speaking in tongues would think they were crazy, whether they were
or not.
Notall Christian leaders joined the attack, however. The apolo-

gist Athenagoras wrote shortly after the rise of Montanism and was
willing to speak of the prophets as God’s musical instruments, spe-
cifically flutes. W. R. Schoedel notes the same imagery in Philo and

Plutarch. 43 Irenaeus severely criticized those who drove the gifts of

prophecy out of the church (though he does not seem to have
expressed a view on Montanus himself) and noted that Paul “knew
men and women in the church who prophesied.” 44
Even churchmen could speak ecstatically at times. In his paschal
sermon, Melito bishop of Sardis speaks in the name of the risen
Lord, ascribing novel sayings to him. “I released the condemned;
I brought the dead to life; I raise up the buried,” he begins.
45 This

is not the individualistic prophecy of the Montanists, however. Mon-

tanists could tell the difference. In Tertullian’s Montanist treatise
On “he criticized Melito’s mind as elegant and rhetorical and
Ecstasy
said that he was considered a prophet by many Christians.” 46 Obvi-
ously the Montanists did not so regard him.
We must be careful, however, not to draw dividing lines too
sharply. Irenaeus denounced not the Montanists but those who
rejected the Gospel of John (against the Montanists) and prophetic
grace at the same time. He supposed that they would not accept Paul
either, for in 1 Corinthians he spoke of prophetic gifts and knew
men and women in the church who prophesied. People who thus
drive out prophecy “sin against the Spirit of God and fall into
unforgivable sin.” 47 According to Tertullian, a bishop of Rome had
already sent conciliatory letters to the churches on Montanism when
a certain Praxeas persuaded him to recall them. If “Praxeas” is a
pseudonym for Callistus, 48 the bishop may have been Zephyrinus,
though he could have been as early as Victor, who we know dealt
with the churches of Asia. Whoever he was, the Montanists were
convinced that at one time he favored their view.
148 Basic Doctrines

Alexandria and After

In scholastic Alexandria, on the other hand, Christian critics

tended to denounce ecstasy and favor rationality. Clement claimed
that only false prophets spoke “in ecstasy” and appealed to the
eleventh Mandate of Hermas to prove that the divine Spirit works
in the church while a false, earthly spirit works in self-willed “proph-
ets.” 49 Origen similarly differentiated spirits, finding the worse kind
among the insane people cured by the Savior or in Judas Iscariot
and the better one in the prophets and the apostles, who spoke
“without a disturbance of the mind.” 50 He did not share the view
that poetry required ecstasy.
Interestingly enough, legend tells us that Origen’s father recog-
nized this kind of inspiration in his son. “Often he would stand over
the sleeping boy and uncover his breast as if a divine spirit were
enshrined in and kissing it with reverence would consider himself
it,

happy in hisnoble offspring.” 51 Latin poets use similar language

when they use expressions like dens inpectore of divine inspiration. 52
The divine spirit of the boy Origen was that of divination or poetic
creation, well known among philosophers after Democritus. 53
In Origen’s treatise On First Principles (preface 4) he discusses
some of the difficulties in regard to the Spirit.
The apostles handed down the tradition that the Holy Spirit is as-
sociated with the Father and the Son inhonor and rank. It is not so
clear whether it was generated or not and whether it is to be consid-
ered Son of God or not. But we must inquire into all that as we are
able, beginning with holy scripture and investigating wisely. This
Spirit inspired all the holy prophets and apostles: the ancients did not
possess another Spirit than did those who were inspired at Christ’s
coming; this is most clearly proclaimed in the Church.

Later Origen explains that the Holy Spirit works only in beings that
are animate, capable of speech, rational, and good (On First Principles
1.3.5). It is the “principle of sanctity,” delivered by the Savior to the
apostles (John 20:22) and transmitted by their hands to believers
“after the grace and renewal brought by baptism” (On First Principles
1.3.7). Still later, a very brief section in his work discusses the one
Holy Spirit as the Paraclete in the Gospel of John, as the inspirer
of the allegorical method of exegesis, and as the donor of various
spiritual gifts —though not among the Montanists, who are unintel-
ligent and quarrelsome (On First Principles 2.7). The Spirit thus
works in thechurch but not among outsiders or heretics.
The doctrine of the Spirit was fairly important to Origen, but we
are not surprised to find that his Dialogue with Heraclides was subtitled
Also the Holy Spirit 149

—
On the Father, the Son, and the Soul without mention of the “third
person.” The passage in 1 Corinthians which we earlier called
creedal or at least semicreedal shows Paul trying to bring order out
of chaos in regard to the one God the Father and the one Lord Jesus
Christ (1 Cor. 8:6), but not the Holy Spirit. As late as 325 the Nicene
Creed ended abruptly with the words, “Also the Holy Spirit,” 54 but
by the end of the fourth century the subjects of theological debate
included the Spirit as well as the Son, and in 381 the creed of
Constantinople contained a fairly elaborate statement of belief on

the subject. “And Holy Spirit, the Lord and the Lifegiver,
in the
proceeding from the Father, worshipped and glorified together with
the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets.” Shortly
before that date, there were those who emended the text of 1 Corin-
thians in order to provide a more definite notice about the Spirit.
Some manuscripts refer to the Father and the Son and then add
mention of “one Holy Spirit, in whom are all things and we in him.”
One might regard the theological development as based on at-
tempts to rationalize spiritual phenomena. Some of the biblical
texts treat “spirit” not as personal but as a force, or even an experi-
ence, not clearly definable. Such difficulties do not mean that the
doctrinal goal was wrong. The category of personal divine being
shared by the Father and the Son is not quite the same as that shared
with the Spirit, and this is one reason why Eastern theology speaks
of the Spirit as “proceeding from the Father” and in the West we
hear of “proceeding from the Father and the Son.” We may not
share the speculations of some of the fathers about triads or be able
to understand exactly what they meant by coequality.
On the other hand, we should not try to reduce doctrines to their
presumed origins and assume that the nature of the Spirit must be
limited to force or experience. We do not suppose that the Gospel
of the Hebrews was right when it spoke of the Holy Spirit as Christ’s
mother. Like the Father and the Son, the Spirit transcends our
limited powers of description and analysis as well as our experience.
Three Gods in One

As Jews, the earliest Christians believed there is one God. Jesus

himself asserted that there were two commandments, requiring first
of all love of the one God, then love of one’s neighbor (Mark
12:29-31 and parallels). In the early second century the Jewish-
Christian Shepherd of Hermas, later often regarded as scripture,
insists on the primacy of monotheistic belief. “First of all, believe
that there is one God who founded and created all things and made
everything exist from the non-existent, and contains everything,
alone being not contained.’’ Hermas is on the direct line of belief
that goes from Hellenistic Judaism to many of the Fathers. 1
It should also be noted that Hermas never mentions Jesus or

Christ.

The Three

The New Testament

In the early church we do not hear of baptism“in’’ or “into’’ the

name of this one God. ofJohn the Baptist was in the name
If the rite
of anyone, it would have been in this name (cf. Acts 18:25). But
Christian baptism, as we meet it in Paul and the book of Acts, is in
the name of Jesus. 2 There was obviously a close relation between
the God worshiped by Christians and the Jesus in or into whose
name they were baptized. The various Christological titles we dis-
cussed earlier attempt to explain this relation. Indeed, the “creedal
formula’’ of 1 Corinthians 8:6 looks like such an explanation. For
— —
us that is, for baptized Christians there is one God, and there is
one Lord. This looks like an interpretation of the Shema of
Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, OIsrael, the Lord our God, the Lord, is

150
Three Gods in One 151

one.” Christians could find both the one God and the one Lord in
this crucial verse.
Such musings may have been satisfactory as long as most converts
came from Judaism and already believed in the one God. Christians
simply explained that there was also one Lord, who (as, for example,
in 1 Corinthians and the Gospel of John) was God’s agent in crea-
tion. In a Jewish environment they could also speak of the Holy
Spirit in the rather unspecific manner to which we have referred.
The movement toward triadic formulas in Pauline rhetoric does
not explain the nascent doctrine of the Trinity, but we note that.
Paul likes threes, such as “apostles, prophets, teachers” (1 Cor.
12:28) or “faith, hope, love” (1 Cor. 13:13); or “the grace of the
Lordjesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy
Spirit” (2 Cor. 13:14). Only at the end of Matthew (28:19), however,
is the risen Lord depicted as saying, “Go and make disciples of
. . .

all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit.” The passage is important because the three
names are given equal status. Now for the Gentiles three names are
needed. They must be baptized in the name of the Father as well
as in the name of the Lord Jesus and of the Spirit. The passage is
also important for what it does not say. Three names are provided,
but no explanation of the plurality is supplied. This is not a trinity
(though not excluded) but a triad.
trinity is
A somewhat later passage in 1 John (5:6-8) also reflects a liking
for threes. The author begins with Christology and passes on to a
doctrine of the Spirit, essentially relying on themes found in the
Fourth Gospel.

This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the
water [of his baptism] only but with the water and the blood [of his
crucifixion]. And the Spirit is witness, because the Spirit is the truth.
There are three witnesses, the Spirit, the water, and the blood; and
these three agree.

To mysterious but not theologically useful passage a Spanish

this
the late fourth century added explicitly trinitarian
Priscillianist in
language so that it would mention three witnesses “on earth” and
end thus: “And there are three witnesses in heaven, the Father, the
Word, and the Spirit, and these three are one.” The addition is
suitable in a Johannine context, for it refers to Logos as John does
and is ultimately based on “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
Unfortunately it is not genuine, since it appears in no old manu-
scripts or versions or in any early fathers.
152 Basic Doctrines

After the New Testament

Justin Martyr

We must be content with listings of the three persons as long as

we are in the New Testament or early patristic period, and even with
a certain incoherence of order. Thus the apologist Justin claims that
Christians are not godless and states that “we confess
the most true
God, the Father of righteousness and chastity and the other virtues,
untouched by wickedness [as contrasted with the pagan gods]; we
honor and worship him and the Son who came from him and taught
us these things, and the army of good angels who follow and resem-
ble him, and the prophetic Spirit” (Apology 1.6.2). What is the army
of good angels doing here? 3 Apparently the Spirit is less significant
than this army.
In another passage about the God whom Christians worship,
however, Justin explicitly states that worship is due to Jesus Christ
the Son of God in the second place and to the prophetic Spirit in
the third place (Apology 13.3). When he describes Christian baptism
and eucharist he says that in both rites the names of Father, Jesus
Christ, and Holy Spirit are invoked, though in different ways. Bap-
tism is “in the name” of all three (Apology 61.3), whereas at the
eucharist praise and glory are offered to the Father of all “through
the name of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Apology 65.3). The
irregularity over the army of angels, while surprising, is therefore
not as important as the movement toward uniformity.

Justin and Numenius

In the second century the most prominent advocates of triadic

doctrine were the Neopythagoreans and the Middle Platonists. Jus-
tin already recognized the possibility of an alliance when he could
claim that Plato was relying on Moses order to assign second
(!) in
and third places to the Son and the Spirit. Plato found the soul of
the universe like a chi (the cross) in the universe (Tim. 36BC). This
world soul was the Logos, said Justin, and Plato ascribed the place
after the first God to it, as well as the third place to the Spirit, which
in Genesis was said to be borne above the waters. All this was
supposedly indicated in a bit of mystification in the so-called Second
Epistle of Plato (312E) which was much admired by Platonists and
early Christians. 4 The text is this: “All things are related to the King
of all, and they exist for him and he is the cause of all good things. 5
Three Gods in One 153

And the second are related to the Second, and the third to the
Third.” Later the apologist Athenagoras provided exegesis of the
passage {Leg. 23.7) and insisted that Plato ‘‘came to understand the
eternal God apprehended by mind and reason.” The parallel does
not really prove anything.
There is an important alternative set of categories in an allegori-
cal exercise by Philo. The Jewish exegete is discussing the names
‘‘father” and ‘‘mother,” and he finds that ‘‘the Demiurge who made
this universe was also the Father of what came into existence, while
its Mother was the knowledge which the Maker possessed. God had

intercourse with her (in no human fashion) and sowed coming-to-

be. After Knowledge received the seeds of God and completed her
birth-pangs she bore the only and beloved Son, this world.” Philo
finds the scriptural source of his notion in the book of Proverbs:
‘‘God obtained me [wisdom] first of all his works and founded me
before the age.” He continues by interpreting it Platonically: ‘‘Ev-
erything that came into existence had to be younger than the
Mother and Nurse of the hard to
All.” It is tell what Philo thought

was literal, what figurative, in this picture of creation, but in it there

is obviously a triad of Father, Mother, and Son. The Mother is the

divine Wisdom and also the ‘‘nurse of becoming” as in the Timaeus 6 .

None of the early Christian apologists paid any attention to a doc-

trine like this.
A Platonic anticipation or parallel of Christian belief can be found
of Numenius, the most prominent Plato-
in the influential theology
nistand Pythagorean of the second century. His date is often set in
the late second century, but if he taught around 150 as is quite —
—
possible he could have influenced Justin, especially since he prob-
ably taught at Rome. 7 Numenius was the source for much of Ploti-
nus’ thought, according to ancient critics, 8 but the Christian authors
Clement and Origen knew him as well. He evidently influenced both
Neoplatonism and Christianity. 9
In his thought, there is a combination of monotheism and
polytheism, of the one and the many, which is quite similar to what
we find among Numenius reserved the term ‘‘good in
Christians.
himself (< supreme First God, who does not
autoagathos )” for the
create but is the Father of the Second God, the Demiurge or creator.
The First is Father, the Second Creator (poietes ), and the Third what
is created poiema ). ‘‘The First God is at rest, while the Second, on
(
the contrary, is in motion; the First is concerned with the intelligible
realm, the Second with both the intelligible and sensible. ... In
place of the motion inherent in the Second, I declare that the stabil-
154 Basic Doctrines

ity (stasis ) inherent in the First is an innate motion, from which

derives the order of the cosmos and its eternal permanence, and

preservation is poured forth upon all things.” 10

When Numenius relates the First to intelligibles and the Second
to both intelligibles and sensibles, we are reminded of Origen’s
speculations about the Father as source of being, the Son as source
of rationality, and the Spirit as source of sanctity. 11 In Origen’s view,
Greek philosophers could and did acknowledge “one unbegotten
God who created and governs the universe and is ‘the Father of the
universe,’ . and that everything was created by the Logos of
. .

God.” 12 H. Crouzel notes that “Origen evidently refers to the sec-

ond God of the Platonic triad,” and refers to Epistle 2.3 12E and to
Numenius. But he also points out that the Holy Spirit is not really
comparable to the anima mundi of Platonic thought. 13 In this regard,
Origen’s scheme is virtually the reverse of Numenius’.
The Christian authors insist that the Father is the Creator, but
since they treat the Son or Logos as the mediator of creation, the
consequence is that for them the Creator, as far as human knowl-
edge goes, even if given by revelation, is really the Son. The role
of the Holy Spirit in creation is limited to the giving of breath and
life. But Numenius cannot have criticized the Christian triadic

scheme too harshly. John Dillon notes that his own scheme is
“rather forced” and suggests that “those who adopted it were fol-
lowing some model,” imperfectly adapted. 14 Is it possible that
philosophers followed Christians?
Numenius went farther into speculation than did the earlier
Christians. “If the Demiurge of Generation is good, then in truth
the Demiurge of Being will be the Good Itself, this being inherent
in his essence. For the Second, being double, creates his own Ideal
Form and the universe, being a demiurge. But the first is wholly
contemplative.” 15 The quotation shows the difficulty of locating the
functions of the Third.
We should add that two more passages in Justin’s Apology may be
related to Numenius’ thought. Plato spoke of the “Third,” says
Justin, because he had read that “the spirit of God was borne over
the waters” (Gen. 1:2), and he assigned the second place to the
Logos, in the whole in the shape of the letter chi (Apology 60.5-7).
Numenius himself interpreted “the prophet” (i.e., Moses) as refer-
ring to souls settling upon the water which is god-infused. His exe-
gesis, at least as Porphyry described it, had to do with the nymphs
or Naiads, powers presiding over waters. 16 The exegesis was ob-
viously not Christian, but it showed a concern for the sacred text.
One may compare this with the discussion of the verse in Clem-
Three Gods in One 155

ent’s Excerpts from Theodotus 47, where archangels and angels of

archangels come from the “psychic and luminous substance,”
forth
a mixture of the “pure” substance “borne above” the waters and the
heavy and material substance (“earth”) borne below. Numenius is
not responsible for the Gnostic details, but he may have pointed
toward this kind of allegorization.
Perhaps in relation to such a view, Justin complains about those
who erect statues of Kore (Athena), the daughter of Zeus, at springs.
“They said that Athena was the daughter of Zeus not from inter-
course, but when the god had in mind the making of the world
through a word {logos) his first thought was Athena” (Apology 64.5).
The underlying exegesis is clearly related to what Plato wrote in the
Cratylus (407B), that Athena is mind and intellect or even “mind of
God.” But it is also related to something Jewish or Christian with
the idea of creation by a word. It is Porphyry, not provably
Numenius, who similarly identifies Athena with “forethought.” 17
But Numenius could have spoken thus; compare his reference to
“more noble souls who are nourished by Athena” (frag. 37).
One more passage may help us to assess the place of Numenius
in relation to the Christians. 18

Since Plato knew that among men the Demiurge is the only divinity
known, whereas the Primal which is called Being-in-Itself, is
Intellect,
completely unknown to them, for this reason he spoke to them, as it
were, as follows: “O men, that Intellect which you imagine to be
supreme is not so, but there is another Intellect prior to this one which
isolder and more divine.”

This passage expresses an attitude toward Platonic theology much

like that found in Athenagoras. Plato anticipated the Christian doc-
trine of God. 19
Numenius was no Jew or Christian, even though he admired
Moses and Jesus and took the Bible allegorically. As a good Py-
thagorean or Platonist, he remained a polytheist. Johannes Lydus,
a sixth-century pagan, preserves a fragment on the gods which was
neglected by Christian writers. “Numenius says that the god at
Jerusalem is without communion with others but is father of all the
gods and is unwilling that anyone should share in his honor” (frag.
56). Three more fragments from Lydus and one from Macrobius
show Numenius using the usual allegorical explanations of the
gods, though another from Macrobius tells how the Eleusinian god-
desses (Demeter, Persephone, Kore) reproached him for giving
publicity to the rites (frags. 55, 57-59).
Finally, a statement in Lucian’s Icaromenippus (ch. 9) shows how
156 Basic Doctrines

the satirist may have viewed Numenius’ speculations. “Some lav-

ishly declared the gods to be many and differentiated them. They
called one a first god and assigned to others the second and third
ranks of deity.” We dimly discern the text which Middle Platonists
took from the Second Epistle of Plato.
What we see in all these passages is the attempt to systematize the
earlier triadic doctrine, on the part of pagans and Christians alike.
These first steps cannot be viewed as successful, but at least they
were being taken.
A passage in Theophilus of Antioch is sometimes invoked for the
doctrine of the Trinity, but it proves nothing. He is offering symbol-
ical exegesis of the “days” of creation in Genesis and suggests that
as the sun is a figure of God and the moon of humanity, “similarly
the three days prior to the luminaries are figures of the triad of God
and his Logos and his Sophia. In the fourth place is man, who is in
—
need of light so that there might be God, Logos, Sophia, Man. For
this reason, the luminaries came into existence on the fourth day”
(To Autolycus 2.15). The passage is an exercise in numerology and
4 is just as important as 3.
What we find in these early authors, then, is not a doctrine of the
Trinity —a term we reserve for a doctrine that tries to explain the
relation of the three Persons to the one God —but a depiction of the
three Persons. In other words, we find the materials for such a
doctrine but not a doctrine as such.
Indeed, it might not be completely wrong to suggest that the
Christian triad developed out of three different categories of being:
the Father who creates, preserves, redeems, judges; the Son, the
historical and human revealer and redeemer who somehow tran-
scends humanity; and the Holy Spirit, essentially a spiritual experi-
ence that came to be personified. Even if this could be viewed as a
correct picture of the earliest stages of doctrinal development, the
meaning of the doctrine was not necessarily or one might say —
—
“necessarily not” expressed in its initial stages. We cannot apply
some sort of cultural primitivism to the history of Christian doc-
trine. To be sure, trinitarian doctrine has continued to provide
difficulties, but again, simplicity is not the criterion we should wish
to apply in dealing with them. 20

The Three in One

The not a product of the earliest
doctrine of the trinity in unity is

Christian period, and we do not

carefully expressed before
find it

the end of the second century. When the Gnostic author of the
Three Gods in One 157

Apocryphon ofJohn reports a revelation of one who said, “I am the

Father, I am the Mother, I am the Son,” the relationships of the
three to the one are left in paradox. 21

The Trinitarianism of Athenagoras

The first Christian author to deal with the specific problems of

trinitarian doctrine was Athenagoras, an apologist from either
Athens or Alexandria, whose work was later known only to Me-
thodius and therefore was not very influential. Athenagoras knew
Justin’s Apology and apparently tried to make some of its arguments
more convincing. His thought is notable for its philosophical con-
cerns.
Athenagoras uses rational arguments support of his various
in
claims and begins with a proof of the unity of God. Two or more
gods, he says, would be either in the same category or in different
categories. They would not be in the same category, for gods, being
uncreated, would be dissimilar. And they would not be in different
categories (or places), for there is no place in or over which two
gods could rule. After proving this point to his own satisfaction, he
adds proof texts from scripture (Embassy for the Christians 8-9) and
concludes that “we have brought before you a God who is un-
created, eternal, invisible, impassible, incomprehensible, and infi-
nite, who can be apprehended by mind and reason alone, who is
encompassed by light, beauty, spirit, and indescribable power, and
who created and now rules the world through the Logos who issues
from him” (10.1). In Embassy 16.1 he adds that “God is himself all
things to himself: inaccessible light, a complete world, spirit, power,
reason.” These Platonic statements call to mind Aelius Aristides’
description of Zeus.
Next Athenagoras explains what Christians mean by “Son of
God.” He is “the Logos of the Father in ideal form (idea) and
energizing power (energeia); for like him (pros autou) and through
him (di autou) all things came into existence [John 1:3], since the
Father and the Son are one [John 10:30]. Now since the Son is in
the Father and the Father in the Son [John 10:38] by a powerful
unity of spirit, the Son of God is the mind (nous) and reason (logos)
of the Father” (Embassy 10.2).
As the “first offspring” of the Father, the Son came into existence
thus (Embassy 10.3-4):

“God, who is eternal mind, had in himself his Logos from the begin-
ning, since he was eternally logical.” The Son “came forth to serve as
158 Basic Doctrines

ideal form and energizing power for everything material which as an

entity without qualitiesand 22 underlies things in a state characterized
by the mixture of heavier and lighter elements. 23 The prophetic Spirit
also agrees with this account. ‘For the Lord,’ it says, ‘made me the
beginning of his ways for all his works” [Prov. 8:22].

Finally, “this same Holy Spirit, which is active in those who speak
prophetically, we regard as an effluence of God (Wisd. 7:25) which
flows forth from him and returns like a ray of the sun.” Christians
“bring forward God the Father and God the Son and the Holy Spirit
and proclaim both their power in the unity and their diversity in
rank.” In addition, God through the Logos set “a host of angels and
ministers in their places.” These are “concerned with the elements
(or, planets), the heavens, and the world with all that is in it and the
good order of all that is in it” ( Embassy 10.4-5; cf. 24.2).
What is especially noticeable here is the use of the terms “ideal
form” and “energizing power” to explain the functions of the Son.
The former clearly relates to Platonic philosophy, while the latter
is the kind of Aristotelian term that turns up in Middle Platonism

after the late second century b.c. After that time, the Platonic ideas
often turn out to be the thoughts of God. Thus Athenagoras views
the “thoughts” as the one thought, or the sum total of the ideas,
“identified .with the Stoic Pneuma-Logos.” 24 Athenagoras by-
. .

passes the doctrine of the incarnation as he argues that Christian

theology sets forth “a plural conception of deity.” 25
This is to say that in beginning to develop the doctrine of the
Trinity Christians made use of the methods already worked out
among Platonists and Pythagoreans for explaining their own philo-
sophical theology, in harmonious accord with pagan polytheism.
Theologians less intelligent than Athenagoras sometimes used
more anthropomorphic models. Theophilus refers to the “two
hands” of God. His doctrine, as we have seen, provides a strange
mixture of literal interpretation and symbolism.

The First Book on the Trinity: Novation

From Theophilus we move to one of the first writers to use his

work: Novatian of Rome, author of the earliest treatise explicitly
concerned with the Trinity. 26 Perhaps Novatian employed The-
ophilus’ work because he had heard he used the word trias. A six-
teenth-century copyist of Theophilus seems to have reproduced all
of Book III under the mistaken impression that it dealt with the
three Persons. 27
Three Gods in One 159

Novatian’s work was preserved only because it was handed down

among the writings of Tertullian. It relies on the church’s “rule of
truth” for its God the Father and laying
outline, beginning with
emphasis on transcendence with language taken from The-
his
ophilus. The same rule teaches us about the Son, who in the incar-
nation became both God and man. For these chapters Tertullian
seems to be a primary source, even for the rather unusual discussion
of Philippians 2:5-1 1, a passage taken to involve the assumption of
limits by the divine Son. 28 The discussion of the Holy Spirit, as
always before the fourth century, is very brief and, oddly enough,
says that the work of the Spirit in the prophets consisted of making
accusations against the Jewish people.
In the last two chapters of the book, Novatian finally justifies the
title On the Trinity by discussing the unity of God and the three

Persons. 29

The belief that Christ is God does not contradict the belief that there
is one God, even though heretics have wrongly used logical arguments
to prove him either God the Father or mere man. [Thus the true Christ
is once more crucified between two thieves!] They are blind to the

plain statements of scripture. We hold that there is one God, maker

of heaven and earth, but since we may not neglect any portion of
scripture, we rely on plain scriptural proofs of Christ’s deity. A mixture
of reverence and logic will reconcile apparent contradictions. There
is only one God; yet Christ was addressed as “My Lord and my God”

[John 20:28]. Think of analogous situations. Scripture states that there

is one Lord [Deut. 6:4], yet Christ is Lord; one Master [Matt. 23:8],

and yet the apostle Paul is called Master [2 Tim. 1:11]; one God alone
is good [Matt. 19:17], yet Christ is good [“in the scriptures”]. If appar-

ent contradiction is reconciled in those cases, why not also in the

question of deity?

Novatian now passes beyond argument to affirmation.

God the Father is the creator of all, without origin, invisible, im-
measurable, immortal, eternal, one God. When he willed it he gener-
ated the Logos. The secret of generation is known to none but Father

and Son. He is always in the Father. The Son is before all time; the
Father is always Father, without origin and therefore prior to the Son,
who is generated by him and therefore less than him.
Through that divine being, the Logos, all things were made. The
Son is therefore before all things but after the Father. He is God
proceeding from God, the Second Person as being the Son. His deity
does not deprive the Father of the glory of being the one God. Christ
is God, not as a being unborn, unbegotten, without origin. He is not

the Father, invisible and incomprehensible. To give him these attri-

160 Basic Doctrines

butes would be to affirm the existence of two gods. The Son is what
he is not of himself but from the Father. He is the Only-begotten (John
1:14) and First-begotten (Col. 1:15), the Beginning of everything, who
attests the one God as First Origin of being. He does nothing of his
own counsel but serves the will of the Father, by obedience proving
the truth of the one God.
Christ, then, is God begotten
be God and Lord and Angel. There
to
is no discordance of attributes would imply the existence of two
that
gods. The divine virtue of the one God bestowed on the Son returns
upon himself in the community of the divine substance (substantiae per
communionem ) The Son is Lord and God of all else, by his authority
.

received from the Father. Thus the Father is rightly proved to be the
one and only and true God (cf. John 17:3).

Novatian finally ends his treatise with allusions to the passage in

1 Corinthians (15:24-28) that speaks of the final subjection of the
Son to the Father, “that God may be all in all.” His own stance is
thus subordinationist and can be explained in reference to his reli-
ance on biblical passages. Apparently the work is difficult to inter-
pret toward the end because a later orthodox reviser has tinkered
with the text.

Arianism

Before Nicaea, Christian theology was almost universally subordi-

nationist.Theology almost universally taught that the Son was sub-
ordinate to the Father (see, for example, chapter 8), but Arius
expressed this kind of Christology in a provocative way. It was
especially offensive at Alexandria, where Origen had tried to over-
come subordinationism even though he shared many aspects of it.
Presumably Arius’ true views can be seen in his letter to his ally
Eusebius of Nicomedia. 30 He objected to the slogans of his own
bishop, Alexander of Alexandria, such as

Ever God ever Son, together Father with Son, the Son exists unbegot-
tenly with God, ever begotten, unbegotten in kind, not by a thought
or a moment does God precede the Son, ever God ever Son, from God
himself the Son.

Arius vigorously criticized contemporaries who called the Son a

“belch” (presumably in reference to Ps. 45:2; see chapter 10) or an
“emanation” 31 or “alike [to the Father] ungenerated.”
More soberly, Arius claimed to “say and think and have taught
and teach that the Son is not ungenerated nor a portion of anything
ungenerated in any way or out of any substratum. Instead, by choice
Three Gods in One 161

and will he originated before times and before ages, fully God, only
begotten, immutable. And before he was begotten [Ps. 2:7] or
created [Prov. 8:22] or defined [Rom. 1:4] or founded [Prov. 8:23],
he was not. He was not ungenerated. We are persecuted because we
say, The Son has a beginning but God is without beginning.” The
bishop of Nicomedia agreed with him. “It is obvious to anyone that
what has been made was not before coming into existence. What
comes into existence has a beginning of being.” The slogan of Arius
and his allies soon came to be this: “There was when he was not.”
Whether or not the theology of Origen was still Alexandrian
orthodoxy (Peter of Alexandria seems to have criticized it, but he
was martyred in 311), the great theologian had expressed his dia-
On First Principles (1.2.9),
metrically opposite opinion in his treatise
in reference to theSon as Wisdom. “Non est quando nonfuerit. ” Later
in the treatise he had insisted that even the words “when” and
“never” had a temporal meaning that could not be used in regard
to the Trinity (On First Principles 4.4.1). Here, as H. Crouzel notes,
he follows Plato (Tim. 37E). In any event, Arius’ ideas were not
acceptable to the bishop of Alexandria.
The Council of Nicaea in 325 saw the Alexandrian bishop and his
allies decisivelywin a battle (though not a war) over the theology
of Arius, heir and more than heir of the traditional doctrine that the
Son was subordinate to the Father. We need not enter into all the
theological details or even the political ones. It is important, how-
ever, to note that the bishops who met at Antioch in the winter of
324-325 issued a creed in which they already rejected Arius’ Chris-
tology. Both Antioch and Nicaea used creeds for the first time as
doctrinal tests. Kelly quotes C. H. Turner: “The old creeds were
creeds for catechumens, the new creed was a creed for bishops.” 32
At Antioch the majority insisted (several times) that the Son was
begotten from the Father and that the mode of the generation was
incomprehensible. “We anathematize those who say or think or
preach that the Son of God is a creature or has come into being or
has been made and is not truly begotten, or that there was when he
was not.” 33 Similar but more fully worked out statements occur in
the creed of Nicaea itself. The section concerning the Lord Jesus
Christ runs as follows:

And one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten from the
in
Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God,
begotten not made, homoousios with the Father, through whom all
things came into being, things in heaven and on earth, who because
of us men and because of our salvation came down and became incar-
162 Basic Doctrines

nate,becoming man, suffered and rose again on the third day, as-
cended to the heavens, and will come to judge the living and the dead.

Almost every word of this formulation needs exegesis, though the

anti-Arian thrust is obvious. “Begotten from the Father” speaks of

the Son’s origin in generation (presumably eternal, as in Origen’s

working out of the doctrine), and “begotten not made” makes the
point fully clear. This is to say that for the creation language about
Sophia in Proverbs 8:22 we now firmly substitute the generation
language required by the metaphor “Son.” In the first chapter of
Hebrews, God addresses the preexistent Son with the text, “Thou
art my son, this day have I begotten thee” (Ps. 2:7; Heb. 1:5). In
consequence, it could be said that the Son as Son “sprang from the
Father’s substance ( ousia as Theognostus of Alexandria had put
it.
34

“True God from true God” involves rejection of the old philo-
sophical distinction between the perfect God (a term shared by
Tatian, Clement, and the Valentinian Ptolemaeus and implied by
Numenius), and the subordinate Demiurge. The phrase also rejects
distinctions between “God” and “the God” and between “God”
and “the only true God” of John 17:3.
The term homoousios was of course not scriptural, 35 though Origen
had long ago shown that nonscriptural terms could represent scrip-
tural ideas, aswhen he discussed the word “incorporeal.” 36 He
himself had used the word in reference to the Father and the Son,
explaining that an “emanation or vapor” (terms from Wisdom of
Solomon 7:25-26) was “of one substance with that body from which
it an emanation or vapor.” Dionysius of Alexandria had used
is

similar language for the same purpose. According to Athanasius,

the bishops who condemned Paul of Samosata also condemned the
use of the term because of the way Paul used it. H. C. Brennecke
has argued, however, that this was an error based on the confusion
of the views of Paul with those of Marcellus of Ancyra, a confusion
fostered by Eusebius of Caesarea, hostile toward both. 37 Athanasius
himself militantly defended the term and, as G. W. H. Lampe notes,
regarded it as defining the “full and absolute deity of the Son” and
also implying the “substantial identity of Father and Son as the
solution of the problem of the divine unity.”
According to Eusebius of Caesarea, whose orthodoxy had been
approved by the emperor Constantine, the emperor himself pro-
posed the term homoousios to the Nicene synod. He explained that
it did not refer to corporeal passions and did not mean that the Son

originated from the Father by any division or abscission. “The im-

Three Gods in One 163

material and intelligible and incorporeal nature could not undergo

any corporeal passion, and such matters must be understood as
bearing divine and ineffable meanings.” Eusebius concludes his
description thus: “So our most wise and pious king philoso-
phized.” 38 It is unlikely that Constantine himself discovered the
term, and ancient authors preferred to blame or praise others for
it. The Arians generally blamed Ossius of Cordoba; Philostorgius

apparently named both Ossius and Alexander; Hilary mentioned

Athanasius. All agree that though Constantine was a Christian, he
was not a theologian.
What the Nicene Creed did was maintain the picture of trinitarian
theology as nonrational, not irrational but beyond reason, and
based firmly on selected complexities of scripture and tradition. It
rejected the position of Arius with its evident use of logic, in favor
of a more traditional or flexible logic that had been employed since
the time of the apostle Paul onward through Ignatius, Tertullian,
and the later Origen.
What the classical and patristic scholar Benedict Einarson said is
generally true: “An early Christian was not often considered
unorthodox if he maximized claims made for Christ.” References to
Christ’s human life occur in very few early creeds. At Caesarea,
Eusebius included the note that the Son “lived among men,” while
half a century later the Apostolic Constitutions (7.41) state creedally
that he “lived in holy fashion according to the laws of God his
Father.” 39 In the Nicene Creed nothing specific is said of the hu-
manity of Christ.
In chapters 8 and 10 we traced aspects of the Logos Christology
which was highly regarded in the second and third centuries. In the
creed of Nicaea, however, there was no use of the term “Logos,”
presumably because it did not really explain what it purported to
explain. It raised more problems than it solved. The council pre-
ferred the metaphors of personal relation (Son-Father) to those of
linguistic analysis (Word-Thought). In a way, it recapitulated the
work of the evangelist John, who began his Gospel with Logos but
then turned to Father and Son and ended (as he had begun) with
God.
In our final chapter we shall be concerned with the creeds in their
broader outlines and with the question why early Christians, unlike
adherents of other religions in their time, made use of creeds at all.
Answering this question will bring us back to the conflicts with
non-Christian religions with which our study began.
 13

Creeds and Cult

Our consideration of the gods and God cannot end with the
complexities of trinitarian philosophical theology. Paganism and
Christianity alike were based on foundations of religious faith and
experience as well as on the logical or illogical speculations of the
learned minority. The philosophical theologies acquired strength
from their rootage in the faith and worship shared with priests and
peoples alike. In Christianity itself speculation could be checked in
relation to basic affirmations of faith that gradually developed into
creeds.

Affirmations of Faith

The earliest affirmations of imply the future existence of

faith
creeds. To say with Peter “You are the Christ” (Mark 8:29) means
that Jesus is the Christ and that other possible Christs are being
rejected. Similarly, to be baptized in or into the name ofjesus means
turning away from other names. The explicit purpose ofJohn is the
implicit purpose of all the Gospels. “This is written so that you may
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and by believing may
have life in his name” (John 20:31).
We have repeatedly referred to 1 Corinthians 8:6, with its affirma-
tions about the one Father and the one Lord, the former as ultimate
ground of creation, the latter as mediating Demiurge. From the
Pauline epistles we can reconstruct something like the statements of
the future creeds concerning the nature and mission of Christ. The
hymn in Philippians 2:5-1 1 tells us that he was “in the form of God
[and] emptied himself, assuming the form of a slave, coming to be
in the likeness of men and found in fashion as a man; he humbled
himself and became obedient unto death.” Another way of describ-
ing his incarnation occurs in Galatians 4:4: “When the fulness of
164
Creeds and Cult 165

time came, God sent his Son, bora of a woman, bora under the law,
to redeem those under the law so that we might receive adoption.”
Or this: “Though he was rich he impoverished himself for you, that
you might become rich by his poverty” (2 Cor. 8:9). These state-
ments use different metaphors to convey a basic notion of the divine
condescension.
Paul says about Jesus’ ministry or teaching, chiefly because
little

he was concerned with problems within the churches with which

much of the teaching was not concerned. He does cite sayings about
marriage (1 Cor. 7:10, 12, 25) and sets forth “from the Lord” the
tradition about the Last Supper as the model for the Lord’s Supper
(1 Cor. 11:23-25). He describes another such tradition, or cluster

of traditions, as “the gospel” which is necessary for salvation. It

consists of a summary of the purpose of Christ’s death “in accord-
ance with the [Old Testament] scriptures” and accounts of the
burial and the resurrection appearances, ending with one to Paul
himself (1 Cor. 15:1-8). Beyond this lies a “word of the Lord” in
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17: “The Lord will come down from heaven

with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound
of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then
we who are left alive shall be caught up together with them in the
clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with
the Lord.” Similarly, in 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, Paul tells his con-
verts a “mystery,” a secret of revelation: “We shall not all sleep, but
we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at
the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be
raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.” Scholars often note
that the musical accompaniment is typical of Jewish apocalyptic.
Paul and his converts accepted it as part of the picture whatever its
source may have been.
In these materials we find an outline of the saving mission and
ultimate return of Christ which anticipates much of the language of
the Apostles’ Creed. Some of it is explicitly treated as “gospel” or
“tradition,” but Paul must have considered all of it as authoritative
Christian doctrine. He was not accustomed to idle speculation. This
must have been the gospel for him. “If we, or an angel from heaven,
should preach to you a gospel contrary to that which we preached
to you, let him be accursed. As we have said before, so now I say
again, If any one is preaching to you a gospel contrary to that which
you received, let him be accursed” (Gal. 1:8-9; cf. 1 Cor. 15:1-2).
There is thus a standard of “orthodoxy” in Paul’s thought. It is
his gospel, for which indeed he claims a divine origin. “I would have
you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is
166 Basic Doctrines

not man’s gospel. For I did not receive it from man, nor was I taught
it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11-12).

This is to say that all must accept it without raising questions.

In the later pastoral epistles we find a modification of the first
Pauline formula. “There is one God, and there
is one mediator

between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as
a ransom for all.” This is the message for which Paul was “ap-
pointed a preacher and apostle” (1 Tim. 2:5-7) and therefore it is
a basic expression of “the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:4).
Around the same time, or perhaps a little later, the author ofJude
urges his readers to “contend for the faith which was once for all
delivered to the saints” (Jude 3). This is hardly a novelty in view of
the firmness and intensity of the Pauline message. The author of 2
Peter goes a little farther when he predicts the rise of “destructive
heresies” (2 Peter 2:1), criticizes those who “scoff’ at the promise
of the second coming and the last judgment (2 Peter 3:3-4) and
“twist” passages in the letters of Paul and “the other scriptures” (2
Peter 3:15-16). The
reference to the Pauline epistles as in a collec-
tion and as scripture shows that 2 Peter is rather late. It does not
show that its doctrine on orthodoxy is markedly different from what
came earlier.
Finally, at the end of the Revelation to John (Rev. 22:18-19) we
find the book itself pure and original state.
being maintained in its

A curse is provided for anyone who either adds to the words of the
prophecy or subtracts from them. Precedent for such a curse could
be found in the book of Deuteronomy (Deut. 4:2; 13:1). It reinforces
the authority of the Revelation, though quite a few Christians later
rejected the whole book.
What we have said about these New Testament authors is hardly
surprising. If we say that they defended “orthodoxy,” we say no
more than that they meant what they said and were sure they were
right. We may add that they had no idea that Christian doctrine
would have a history or that their thought would be part of it.

The Trinity and the Creeds

According to the evangelist Matthew, the risen Lord Jesus com-
manded baptism in the threefold name: “All authority has been
given me in heaven and on earth. Therefore go forth and make
disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to keep all the
commandments I gave you. And behold, I am with you always, until
the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20).
Creeds and Cult 167

Within a few centuries the formulas used in baptism were ex-

panded and developed into what was called the Apostles’ Creed.
According to a picturesque legend relayed by Rufinus, each apostle
“contributed the clause he judged fitting.” 1 In fact, the creed is
closely related to the baptismal promises made in the church at
Rome. There is another creed, commonly called Nicene but really
promulgated by the Council of Constantinople in 381 in order to
set forth the Nicene faith. 2 We have already discussed significant
points in it.

These creeds and their antecedents in “rules of truth” or “rules

of faith” were highly important from the time when churches began
testing the beliefs of their members. We see the process in effect at
Rome at least by the year 140, when Marcion’s predecessor Cerdo
got into difficulties. Irenaeus tells us that under Hyginus (a.d. 1 38—
141) Cerdo “often came into the church and made a confession but
ended up thus: sometimes he taught in secret, sometimes he made
a renewed confession, but sometimes he was convicted of false
teaching and removed from the assembly of the brethren.” 3 Appar-
ently what Cerdo “confessed” was the common faith of the Roman
church. Elsewhere Irenaeus explains the deviation. Cerdo, like Mar-
cion, taught that the known and just God of the Old Testament was
not the good but unknown Father of Christ. 4 (For this kind of
doctrine, see chapter 7.) In this instance the baptismal formula
seems to have served as a doctrinal test.
No doubt among the Marcosian Gnostics the baptismal formula
served a similar function, for it is similar to those in use among more
orthodox Christians. “Into the name of the unknown Father of
everything, into Truth the mother of all, into the one who de-
scended to Jesus; for unity and redemption and communion with
the powers.” A Syriac formula which Irenaeus calls “Hebrew” (and
misunderstands completely) might mean, “In the name of Wisdom,
Father and Light, called Spirit of Holiness, for the redemption of
the angelic nature,” 5 and thus stands farther away from Christianity.
Do the baptismal formulas and creeds set forth a doctrine of the
Trinity? Those we have thus far described do not. A literal transla-
tion of the Apostles’ Creed reads thus:

I believe in (1) God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth;
and Son, our Lord, who was conceived by
in (2) Jesus Christ, his only
the Holy Spirit, bom from the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius
Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. On the
third day he rose again from the dead, ascended to heaven, sits at the
right hand of God the Father Almighty, thence he will come to judge
the living and the dead. I believe in (3) the Holy Spirit . . .
168 Basic Doctrines

In spite of Rufinus’ claim, 6 the creed contains no explicit reference

and in fact does not support it. 7
to trinitarian belief
The Apostles’ Creed is a simple proclamation of a triad, as is the
formula at the end of Matthew and in the Didache, not an interpreta-
tion of the relationships of the persons, much less a philosophical
or theological analysis. The Father is God, and the risen Lord sits
at his right hand. The section about Jesus Christ confirms this point.
It is a reflection of the apostolic preaching about the life of Christ,
with a few additions. These additions do not bear upon the purpose
of the mission of Jesus, whether the proclamation of the kingdom
of God or the redemptive sacrifice of the cross. Earlier scholars
sometimes supposed that this section was especially andheretical
and that the conception and birth were mentioned in opposition to
Marcion. He held that Christ came down from heaven as a saving
spirit. More probably, however, the miraculous events were men-

tioned because they seemed striking and important.

It should be noted that the first section of the creed serves a

secondary apologetic purpose. Many pagans interested in theology

shared the belief in a god who could be called Father and Maker of
heaven and earth.
Eastern creeds, on the other hand, emerged out of theological
and Christological conflict. “We believe in (1) one God the Father
almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and
invisible; and in (2) one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son
of God, begotten from the Father before all ages, light from light,
true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with
(homoousios) the Father; through whom all things came into exis-
tence, who because of us men and because of our salvation came
down from the heavens, and was made flesh from the Holy Spirit
and the Virgin Mary and was made man, and was crucified for us
under Pontius Pilate and suffered and was buried, and rose again on
the third day according to the scriptures and ascended to the heav-
ens and sits at the right hand of the Father and is coming again with
glory to judge living and dead; of whose kingdom there will be no
end; and in (3) one Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver, who pro-
ceeds from the Father, who together with Father and Son is wor-
shiped and glorified, who spoke through the prophets .’’ 8
. .

The Apostles’ Creed had spoken of God the Father and of his Son
Jesus Christ. The Nicene Creed, on the other hand, lays emphasis
on the one God and the one Lord as in 1 Corinthians 8:6, but now
not so much against polytheism as against various heresies. 9 In
Greek there are 44 words about Father and Spirit, 110 about the
Son. Emphasis is laid on the origins and interrelationships of all
Creeds and Cult 169

three Persons. The Father is the source of absolutely everything that

is, including both Son and Spirit. The Son as Son, however, is
eternal (“before all ages”) and homoousios with the Father —they
—
have the same “substance” or “essence” as “light from light” (an
analogy favored by the apologists from Justin onward) and “true
God from true God” (language intended to exclude Eusebius’ ex-
egesis of John 17:3). The Son was also the instrument of creation,
as Paul indicated in 1 Corinthians 8:6. The statement that his king-
dom will have no end comes from Luke 1:33 and is directed against
the exegesis of 1 Corinthians 15:23-28 maintained by Marcellus of
Ancyra. The language about the Holy Spirit also deals with origins:
the Spirit proceeds from the Father, as in John 15:26 (cf. 1 Cor.
2:12), and is worshiped and glorified with Fatherand Son, as both
Athanasius and Basil of Caesarea had stated. 10
If we compare the two creeds a little more generally, we find
Constantinople more philosophical and more theological, farther
away from the more primitive Christian doctrines, frequently echo-
ing biblical language but doing so in order to promote fourth-
century emphases. Nearly half the article about the Son is con-
cerned with his preexistence, a topic not mentioned in the Apostles*
Creed.
The
creed of Constantinople, like the Nicene before it, was
trinitarian not only in intent but in actuality. J. N. D. Kelly has
defined the difference between West and East, between Constan-
tinople (and others) and Apostles’ (and others) thus: “In Western
creeds the centre of interest is the primitive kerygma about the

Saviour, whereas in Eastern creeds the cosmic setting of the drama

obtrudes itself more obviously.” 11 In addition, cosmological con-
cern almost inevitably leads to trinitarian doctrine.
The Nicene Creed and its tributaries, as C. H. Turner said, were
intended to test the orthodoxy of bishops, not the simpler faith of
persons being baptized. From the fourth century onward, creeds
likeit were used for just this purpose, and in some places they were

introduced to the eucharist a century later.

The Idea of Unity Against Diversity

We have now traced the passage from religion to theology in the

Greco-Roman pagan world and in early Christianity and have seen
the similar use of cosmic terms in the interpretations of the divine.
Philosophical theology was no Christian invention but was com-
monplace, along with rhetoric, in Greco-Roman religious thought.
Even the doctrine of the Trinity was to some extent anticipated in
170 Basic Doctrines

Platonic circles.Does this mean that early Christian theology was

“nothing but” paganism with a biblical accent? Or, to paraphrase
Numenius, was Christianity no more than Plato with a faint Pales-
tinian accent? Here we must differentiate our historical analysis of
origins from the more durable images of the transcendent, not fully
dependent on circumstances of time and place. The rise of Christian
theology took place under strong pressures from the leading
philosophies of the time. We should not say that it was “no more
than” the sum of its parts, but the reality of the pagan environment
cannot be neglected.
As Christians dealt with this environment they tried to achieve a
certain fixity in their intellectual position. This was made necessary
by two factors. First, and most important, Christians were trying to
present a relatively unified front to the outside world, especially the
world of the state and its sporadic persecutions. Second, for the sake
of church discipline and harmony it was necessary to limit the range
of opinions. The more peculiar aberrations had to be disavowed.
During the second century, emphasis was laid on the history of the
church as a “pure virgin’’ later led astray by heretics. The search for
the original dream was conducted by all sides. My one true faith or
orthodoxy was prior to heterodoxy, your diverse and inconsistent
developments.
Such a picture was soon associated with similar treatments of the
history of philosophy, if it did not develop out of them. The first
Christian to sketch the history of philosophy was the sometime
Platonist Justin, who in his Dialogue with Trypho found original unity
followed by complexity. According to him,

originally therewere no Platonists or Stoics or Peripatetics or Theo-

reticsor Pythagoreans, since this knowledge was one. I wish to state
why it became manifold. It happened that those who first touched on
philosophy and therefore became famous had successors who did not
investigate the truth but, merely impressed by the constancy and self-

control and novel terminology of their teachers, regarded their teach-

ing as true and handed down to their own successors such doctrines
and others like them. Therefore they were called by the name of the
father of the doctrine .
12

Justin’s account resembles Numenius’ description of post-Pla-

tonic Platonism. In his view, later Platonists departed from the pure
doctrine of Plato himself. Naturally Numenius supposed that he was
restoring the pure doctrine 13 School succession lists like those
.

provided by Clement of Alexandria 14 and Diogenes Laertius served

to show who were the “orthodox’’ members. The Christian episco-
Creeds and Cult 111

pal lists make the same point. Gnostics too went back through
correct successions to the beginning. The Valentinian Ptolemaeus
speaks of his school’s “apostolic tradition, received by succession,”
while Valentinus himself traced his spiritual genealogy back
through a certain Theodas to Paul, and Basilides went through
Glaukias to Peter. 15 As for the “unity” of true philosophy, the Mid-
dle Platonist Atticus argues that Plato was the great teacher of a
philosophy combining all the virtues of the pre-Socratics. 16 Disunity
came later.
A different and highly critical picture is given by Diodorus Sicu-
lus.“The Greeks, aiming at the profit to be made out of the busi-
ness, keep founding new schools and, wrangling with one another
over the most important matters of speculation, bring it about that
their pupils hold conflicting views, and that their minds, vacillating
throughout their lives and unable to believe anything at all with firm
conviction, simply wander in confusion.” This is the line that Ire-
naeus takes against the Gnostics. He says they claim to have found
something new every day. 17
Another way of dealing with heresies was to explain that whereas
“the tradition of all the apostles has been one and the same, the
heresies derived their names sometimes from a founder, or a place
of origin, or a nationality, or a practise, or peculiar opinions, or
from admired personages, or immoralities.” Clement of Alexandria
gives this analysis. It is almost exactly the same as the classification
used for philosophical schools by Diogenes Laertius. 18
Diversity to a philosopher or a Christian is wrong in itself, while
unity is right. Given this basic axiom, it was simple enough to attack
heretics who followed various teachers. Justin explains that all here-
sies arose after the ascension of Christ, when Simon, Menander, and
Marcion came to the fore. 19 Hegesippus goes farther by explaining
that one heterodoxy led to another. There were no heresies in
Christianity before a certain Thebuthis, around the year 62, intro-
duced one or more out of the seven sects in Judaism. 20 Irenaeus too
believes that the way to attack complex heresies like Valentinianism
is to start with the simpler errors of Simon, Menander, Saturninus,

and their immediate successors. 21

All these discussions are based on the axiom that there was an
original unified Christianity, later spoiled when diversity came in. At
Alexandria, only Origen seems to have opposed this view. He
conceded that the apostles delivered a uniform message, but he
held that they left the philosophical analysis of its content to later
exegetes, of whom he was the chief. 22
Later theologians were quite sure there were clear and sharp lines
172 Basic Doctrines

between orthodoxy and heresy, and they insisted on their own or-
thodoxy.An unusual exception occurs in the case of the unbaptized
emperor Constantine, who severely criticized both Arius and his
bishop Alexander, not only for raising in public the theological
questions that divided them but for raising them at all. 23 The subse-
quent Council of Nicaea did not take up this problem.
At the beginning of his reign, Julian was eager to restore pagan
religion and he therefore recalled from exile the bishops and other
Christian leaders who had been exiled by Constantine’s son Con-
stantius, a loyal Arian. He restored churches to Novatianists and
rights to the Donatist clerics. He urged heretics to express their
beliefs freely, so that as Christians fought among
themselves they
could not unite against him. He “knew from experience that no wild
animals are so hostile to mankind as most Christians are in their
deadly hatred of one another.” 24
By the year 374, Epiphanius, the bishop of Salamis on Cyprus,
was composing an enormous treatise against the eighty heresies he
believed he could find. His virulent work provides extensive quota-
tions and paraphrases based on much older sources, but his own
judgments are usually mistaken. A principal value of his work is for
studying lore about snakes, since he lists and describes eighty spe-
cies of them. 25
Church battles continued with outsiders as well as insiders. The
church was on the verge of a complete victory over the forces of
paganism. In 384, when Christians were removing treasure and
ornaments from the temples, the pagan orator Symmachus, prefect
of the city of Rome, defended toleration without convincing the
emperors or other Christians. 26 He first asked the emperors to
restore Roman religious institutions, venerated by earlier rulers and
not abolished by the later (Christian) ones. Indeed, though the
emperor Constantius “followed other rites, he preserved estab-
lished rites for the empire.” “ Suus cuique mos ,
suns ritus est,” says
Symmachus, echoing the words of Cicero more than four centuries
earlier (see chapter 2). “Everyone has his own customs, his own
religious practises.” This is Symmachus’ argu-
the foundation of
ment. “Man’s reason moves entirely in the dark,” he continues.
“His knowledge of divine influences can be drawn from no better
source than from the recollection and the evidences of good fortune
received from them.” This is the traditional popular and Stoic argu-
ment based on the use of historical examples to prove the case for
the gods as well as on the avoidance of rigorous logical proofs.
Symmachus also adheres to tradition when he suggests that
“whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the
Creeds and Cult 173

same.” And he asks, ‘‘What does it matter what practical system we

adopt in our search for the truth?” This is so because ‘‘not by one
avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret” (uno itinere non
potest perveniri ad tarn grande secretum Some have claimed that Sym-
.

machus suffers from mixed motives and that he is trying to persuade

the emperors to pay for pagan worship. Such a charge neglects the
extent to which human motives are always mixed, even among the
Christians of the fourth century 27 .

The return to Ciceronian sentiment is interesting because among

educated Christians a similar return was under way. We find it in
both Ambrose and Augustine, but for our purposes most notably in
the early fifth century, in the Commonitorium of Vincent of Lerins.
Vincent was trying, at long last, to set forth a theoretical basis for
orthodoxy that might go beyond personal prejudices and whims. He
found it in the idea of consensus as developed in Cicero’s Tusculan
Disputations. The ultimate authority was ‘‘the divine law,” inter-
preted by ‘‘the tradition of the Catholic church.” Opposing Augus-
tine’s doctrine of predestination, Vincent naturally rejected diver-
sity in favor of ‘‘the norm of the ecclesiastical and Catholic
understanding,” and he quoted Stephen of third-century Rome as
having said, ‘‘No innovation except what is handed down.” There
may have to be development (profectus ), but not alteration (per-
mutatio )
What of Cicero? Vincent clearly relies on the Tusculan Disputations
when he writes provocatively that he would rather be wrong with
Origen than right with others. Cicero had said this about Plato, and
in the section of the disputations where he was discussing antiquity
and consensus 28 Again, Vincent clearly had in mind the consensus
.

not of a majority of Christians but of ‘‘the holy fathers.” He thus

followed Cicero’s idea of appealing to the agreement of philoso-
phers, not people in general 29 .

Whether or not consensus as promoted by either Cicero or Vincent

isworkable, we see from this important example that in order to
escape from the morass of accusations and slanders provided by
men like Epiphanius the church had to try to recover the higher
ground of classical moderation. By the fifth century it could often
afford to do so.
The pagan appeal for diversity and toleration was opposed, at
least superficially (for the moment we neglect the grand continuities
inMediterranean religious history), by Christian insistence on the
and of the church itself. The emphasis
unity of God, of faith, of cult,
on the one God had been made in opposition to the many gods of
paganism, whether in remote Old Testament times or in the Greco-
174 Basic Doctrines

Roman world itself. The Second Isaiah makes the point vigorously:
“I am Yahweh [the Lord], and there is no other, besides me there
is no God. ... I form
and create darkness, I make weal and
light
create woe, I am who do all these things” (Isa. 45:5-7).
the Lord,
Or again, in the Decalogue: “You shall have no other gods but me”
(Ex. 20:3). And in Deuteronomy 6:4 once more: “The Lord our
God, the Lord, is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with
all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”

There is an exclusiveness about Old Testament religion. The Gnos-

tics imagined that statements about Yahweh and his jealousy proved

that he was ignorant of the real plethora of gods. Both Jews and
Christians strongly disagreed. As an obvious example we cite 1
Timothy 2:5: “There is one God, and there is one mediator between
God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” Or again, in Ephesians 4:4-6:
“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the
one hope that belongs to your call, one Lord, one faith, one bap-
tism, one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all
and in all.” The unity of God found its earthly counterpart in the
unity of believers, bound together against a hostile world. John puts
the motif of exclusiveness as strongly as anyone. “No one has ever
seen God; the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made
him known” (John 1:18). He insisted that no one comes to the
Father but through Jesus (John 14:6). And Christians had to be
right, because the Johannine Christ had promised that the Holy
Spirit would lead them into the whole truth (John 16:13).
The Latin author Tertullian understands this kind of leading not
as a continuing search (typical, he thought, of Gnostics) but as an
appropriation of truth already obtained. He expresses the view of
most patristic theologians, and points the way to Cyprian’s state-
ment that outside the church there is no salvation.
Other religions had no creeds. As far as we can tell, they had no
councils with debates over philosophical theology. Oddly enough,
the Christian debates were deeply influenced by the training of the
—
debaters in rhetoric and philosophy as we have tried to show
—
throughout this book but the influence was usually denied or neg-
lected. As we saw, even Origen refrains from quoting the philoso-
phers who influenced his thought so much. 30
Christianity took the faith traditional in the second century
largely derived from the Old Testament but reinterpreted in the
light —
of the experience of Jesus and the Spirit and insisted that
persons seeking baptism had to express it, especially in opposition
to their native “idolatry.” As time went by, the logical implications
of the faith were worked out on the basis of the leading philosophies
Creeds and Cult 175

of the time, often in ways remarkably similar to such workings out

in other religions. The religious impulses and their expressions
turned out to be much the same. The various Christian syntheses
as they emerged were different because of the unique synthesis of
revelation by God the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
We began with militant opposition to idolatry and then moved
through the thicket of religious and philosophical analysis and inter-
pretation of various pagan gods. The upshot was that the develop-
ment of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity was, to say the least,
not alien to philosophical or even rhetorical statements made by
pagans about the pagan gods. We have no intention of equating
Christian theology with pagan analysis of the various pagan deities.
Nevertheless, it is clear that there were resemblances. If we move
into the sphere of temples and churches, what we have observed in
the intellectual realm corresponds remarkably well with the almost
universal Mediterranean urge to preserve the temples of the old
gods and with a few modifications use them as churches of the new
religion. The result was eminently satisfactory both for the grand-
parents who had preserved the temples and for the new generation
which regarded the gods as outmoded or, for that matter, false. In
most cases, the marvelous religious buildings of the Greco-Roman
world could be preserved and redirected for the new worship.
Notes

Chapter 1: Gods in the Book of Acts

1. Cf. P. J. Koets, Deisidaimonia (Purmerend, 1929).

2. Cf. E. Derenne, Les proces d'impitte intentes aux philosophes a Athenes au Ve

et au IVe siecles avant J.-C. (Liege and Paris, 1930).

3. SVF II 1019; Plutarch, On Superstition 167D; Bodo von Borries, Quid

veteres philosophi de idololatria senserint (Gottingen, 1918), 90.

4. This is strikingly similar in outline to 1 Thess. 1:9-10; see chapter 3.

5. Strabo 14.683; Herodotus 1.199; Plutarch, Theseus 20.

6. Cf. M. P. Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religioser Bedeutung (repr. Darm-

stadt, 1957), 364-74.

7. Cf. Diogenes Laertius 6.46.

8. Strabo 8.378-79.

9. Pausanias 2.5.1.

10. In Dio Chrysostom, Orations 37.34.

11. Aelius Aristides, Orations 46.25, p. 370, 11-12 Keil.

12. C. W. Blegen et al., Corinth, IILi (Cambridge, Mass., 1930), 20-21;

cf. G. Roux, Pausanias en Corinthie (Paris, 1958), 129.

13. Athenaeus 13.574BC (see the whole passage beginning 573C); cf. E.
Will, Korinthiaka (Paris, 1955), 232.

14. On festivals of Aphrodite, see Nilsson, Griechische Feste von religioser

Bedentung, 362-82, and also note the experiences of Lucius at Corinth in
Apuleius, Golden Ass 10.19ff.

15. Lenschau, “Korinthos,” RE Suppl. IV (1924), 1034.

16. B. Keil, “Ein LOGOS SYSTATIKOS,” Nachrichten . . . Gottingen,

Philol.-hist. Kl. (1913), 1-41.

177
178 Notes

17. Apuleius, Golden Ass 10.18; Lucian, Demonax.

18. Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.620-724.

19. W. M. Calder, “A Cult of the Homonades,” Classical Review 24 (1910),

76-81; “Zeus and Hermes at Lystra,’’ Expositor VII, 10 (1910), 1-6.

20. F. Knoll, Denkmaler aus Lykaonien, Pamphylien und Isaurien ,

Deutsche
Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und Kiinste fur die Tschechoslowakische
Republik in Prag (Briinn, 1935), 72-73, no. 146.

21. CIG 2462, 2796, 2963c, 3194, 3211 (= IGR IV 1415), 3493; BCH 1

(1877), 136; 11 (1887), 464, no. 29; T. Wiegand, SAB 1906, 259; Calder
as above; IGR IV 1406.

22. SVF II 1024, 1079; III 90; Comutus 16, p. 20, 18 Lang; Justin, Apology
1.21.2; 22.2; Clement, Stromata 6.132.1.

23. S. Loesch, Deitas Jesu und antike Apotheose (Rottenburg, 1933), 30-34,
42-46.

24. H. J. Cadbury, The Book of Acts in History (New York, 1955), 5f.;

examples in OGI 9, 5; 10, 15; cf. H. Bellen in KP IV 56f.

25. Pliny, Epistles 10.96.10.

26. H. Wankel, ed., Die Inschriftenvon Ephesos, la (Bonn, 1979), nos. 17-19
(p. 115, tr. p. 120).

27. A. Wardman, Religions and Statecraft Among the Romans (Baltimore,

1982), 128.

28. SIG 867.

29. F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, eds., The Beginnings of Christian-
ity, V (London, 1933), 255.

30. Strabo 3.4.8, 160; 4. 1.4-5, 179.

31. On a relief, cf. E. Akurgal, Ancient Civilizations and Ruins of Turkey

(Istanbul, 1973), 165.

32. Minucius Felix, Octavius 22.5; Jerome, Commentary on Ephesians, Pro-

logue ( PC 26.270BC); cf. R. Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos and verwandte Kult-
statuen aus Anatolien und Syrien (Leiden, 1973), 74-88.

Chapter 2: Mediterranean Religions Westward

1 .C/LX 1552.

2. ILS 5317, 6.

3. Josephus, Antiquities 17.328.

4. IGR I 422; A. Audollent, Defixionum tabellae (Paris, 1904), 278-80.

Notes 179

5. For the translation, see C. C. Torrey, “The Exiled God of Sarepta,”

Berytus 9 (1949), 45-49.

6. OGI 594.
7. CIL X 1601, 1553, 1563-64.

8. OGI 595.

9. Pliny, Epistles 10.96.6.

10. Dionysius of Corinth in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.23.10.

11. Livy 10.47.6f.

12. Livy, Book XI, summary; for later accounts, cf. Emma and Ludwig
Edelstein, Asclepius I,431-50 (Test. 845-54). For Delphic participation, H.
W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, II (Oxford, 1956), 142f.
(no. 355).

13. Ibid., 250f. (Test. 43B = SIG 1173 = IGR I 41).

14. Livy 29.11.7; cf. 38.18.9.

15. Augustus, Monumentum Ancyranum 4, 19.

16. Lydus, On the Months 4.59; cf. K. Latte, Romische Religionsgeschichte

(Munich, 1960), 261; M.J. Vermaseren, The Legend of Attis in Greek and Roman
Art (Leiden, 1966).

17. SIG 280, 32-45.

18. Greeks generally called the god Sarapis; Romans, Serapis. We follow
Greek usage.

19. Tertullian, Apology 6.8.10.

20. G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Romer, 2d ed. (Munich, 1912),
351-53.

21. Dio Cassius, 47.15.4.

22. Josephus, Antiquities 18.65-80.

23. Tacitus, Annals 2.85; so also Suetonius, Tiberius 36.

24. Juvenal 6.489, 526-41. Like other Roman authors, Juvenal goes on
to speak of Jewish superstition: 6.542-47.

25. ILS 6419f, 6420b.

26. Apuleius, Golden Ass 11.17.

27. Eusebius-Jerome, Chronicle p. 129 Helm.

28. Cf. Parke and Wormell, The Delphic Oracle, II, 117, no. 286.

29. Tacitus, Histories 4.83f.

180 Notes

30. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 36 IE.

31. Ibid., 361F-362A.

32. Ibid., 29, 362c.

33. Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks 48.

34. Origen, Against Celsus 5.38; Numenius, frag. 53 Des Places.

35. Aelius Aristides, Orations 45.29-30.

36. Text and translation in A. Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, rev.
ed. (New York, 1927), 152-57; A. D. Nock, Conversion, 49f.

37. O. Weinreich, Neue Urkunden zur Sarapis- Religion (Tubingen, 1919),

19f., 31-33 ;/G XI 4 1299 = SIG 663 (without the hymn); Nock, Conversion,
5 If.; H. Engelmann, Die delische Sarapisaretalogie (Meisenheim am Gian,
1964).

38. Athenaeus V.196A; OGI 54, 5-6; Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks
54.2.

39. The fragment is preserved by Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.8, and in an

Oxyrhynchus papyrus (XXVII 2465). Cf. P. Perdrizet in REA 12 (1910),
217-47.

40. BGU 121 1; A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri, II (Cambridge,

Mass., 1934), no. 208.

41. Plutarch, Antony 24.3-4; 54.6; 60.3.

42. Dio Cassius 48.39.2; cf. 50.5.3, 25.3-4.

43. F. Cumont, Les religions orientals dans lepaganisme romain, 4th ed. (Paris,
1929), 197.

44. A. Vogliano and F. Cumont, “La grande iscrizione bacchica del Met-
ropolitan Museum,’’ AJA 37 (1933), 215-31, 232-63.

45. Tertullian, Apology 6.7, 10.

46. Plutarch, Pompey 24.5.

47. Dio Cassius 63.5.2.

48. Justin, Apology 1.66.4; Dialogue with Trypho 70.1; 78.6.

49. ILS 659, of the year 308.

50. I read thus: (au)GGGG / (deo soli i)NVICTO / (mithrae — ab

oriente) AD / (occide)NTEM.
51. Perhaps the last inscription was ILS 4197, the restoration of a Mith-
raeum at Noricum (Klagenfurt) in 361.

52. Strabo 16.2.34-36.

53. Cicero, On Behalf of Flaccus 69.

Notes 181

54. Augustine, City of God 6.11.

55. Tacitus, Histories 5.3-5.

56. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library, Books 34/35.1.3.

57. Josephus, Against Apion 2.80.

58. Ibid., 92-96.

Chapter 3: Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry

1. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 5.36.2; cf. Ramsay MacMullen, Pa-
ganism in the Roman Empire, 31.

2. Hesiod, Works and Days 252.

3. Codex Theodosianus 16.10.21.

4. Bodo von Borries, Quid veteres philosophi de idololatria senserint, 88-106.

5. Aelius Aristides, Apology 13.3 as against Celsus in Origen, Against Celsus

7.62.

6. Didache 6.3; 2 Clement 3.1; cf. 1 Cor. 8:4; 10:19.

7. Maximus of Tyre, Orations 11.5a.

8. L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, II (Leipzig, 1854), 126,2-128.1.

9. Plato, Apology 24B; Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.2; Favorinus in Dioge-

nes Laertius 2.40.

10. Frag. 4 in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 13.12.6-7.

11. Clement, Stromata 6.39.2-3.

12. Ibid., 6.40-41.

13. C. Schmidt, PRAXEIS PAULOU (Hamburg, 1936), 24, Seite 1, 17-22;

cf. p. 30, Seite 2, 32-34.

Chapter 4: Functions of Gods and Goddesses

1. The expression comes from W. W. Tam, Hellenistic Civilisation, 3d ed.

(London, 1952), 351; he used it of Gnosis.

2. M. Rostowzew, “Epiphaneiai,” Klio 16 (1920), 203.

3. C. Blinkenberg, Die lindische Tempelchronik (Bonn, 1915), 34-40; F. C.

Grant, Hellenistic Religions, 9-13; compare the epiphanies of Vesta in
Dionysius of Halicarnassus 2.68-69.

4. P. Oxy. XI 1381, 219; E. and L. Edelstein, I, 172, no. 331.

5. Origen, Against Celsus 7.35.

182 Notes

6. Ibid., 8.45.

7. See chapter 13, section “The Idea of Unity Against Diversity.”

8. Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.162-67; cf. On Divination 1.84.

9. Cicero, On Divination 1.37f., 79.

10. L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci , III (Leipzig, 1856), 4-6; F. C. Grant,

Hellenistic Religions , 166-67.

11. Pausanias 2.26.7.

12. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 33.47.

13. A. S. Hunt and C. C. Edgar, Select Papyri ,

I (London, 1932), nos.
111-12, 120-21, 133-34, 136-37; 125.

14. SIG 1160-66; F. C. Grant, Hellenistic Religions ,

34-35.

15. Albinus, Introduction to Plato 15, p. 171, 18 Hermann.

16. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 36 ID.

17. Artemidorus, Dream Book 2.34, p. 157, 4 Pack.

18. Ibid., p. 158, 14.

19. Ibid., 2.39, p. 175, 8.

20. Whether or not Galen wrote the Physician (XIV 674, 676 Kuhn), the
sentiment is like what he expresses elsewhere.

21. Galen, Whether the Embryo Is Animate 5, XIX 179.

22. Galen, Commentary on the Prognostic of Hippocrates ,

I. 4, XVIII B 17.

23. Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato 3.8, V 348.

24. Galen, On the Composition of Drugs According to Place 9.4, XIII 271.

25. Galen, On Sperm 1.5, IV 531.

26. OGI 458, 31-45.

27. J. P. V. D. Balsdon, Roman Women (London, 1962, 1974), 301, n.
112 .

28. Suetonius, Augustus 98.2.

29. For later stories about it, see Suetonius, Augustus 94.3-6.

30. Cf. S. Loesch, Deitas Jesu und antike Apotheose (Rottenburg, 1933); L.
Bieler, THEIOS ANER (Vienna, 1935).

31. Suetonius, Vespasian 23.4.

32. Cf. Justin, Apology 1.29.4; J. Beaujeu, “Les apologetes et le culte du

souverain,” Entretiens Fondation Hardt, 19 (Geneva, 1972), 101-42.
,

33. Cf. Melito of Sardis in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.26.9.

Notes 183

Chapter 5: The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes

1. P. Roussel in BCH 55 (1931), 70-116.

2. M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion ,

II, 2d ed. (Munich,
1961), 227.

3. Dio Cassius 71.8.4; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.5. 1-4.

4. See the learned discussion in Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.17.

5. Cf. 1 Cor. 7:23-24 and W. L. Westermann, “The Freedmen and the

Slaves of God,’’ Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 92
(1948), 55-64.

6. See F. Bomer, Untersuchungen zur Religion der Sklaven, Abhandlungen

der Akademie der Wissenschaften, Mainz, Geistes- und Socialwiss. Kl.
(1960), 133-41.

7. Cicero, On Divination 1.38; Strabo 9.420.

8. H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic Oracle ,

I (Oxford, 1956),
274-82.

9. Dio Cassius 63.14.2; Suetonius, Nero 40.3.

10. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 5.18-36; 6.7.

11. Julian, Orations 6.199A; 7.209B.

12. L. Robert, “Trois oracles de la Theosophie,” Comptes-rendus de

l’Academie des Inscriptions 1968, 568-99.

13. Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum 11.7; Eusebius, Preparation for the

Gospel 4.2.1 1.

14. Origen, Against Celsus 1.37; 6.8; cf. H. Chadwick, Origen Contra Celsum
(Cambridge, 1953), 321.

15. Jerome, Against Jovinian 1.42, PL 23, 285.

16. Plutarch, Table-talk 8.2-3, 717D; Apuleius, On Plato 1.1; Olympi-

odorus, Life of Plato 1, p. 191 Hermann.
17. Cf. H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York, 1929), 50.

18. J. H. Oliver, The Civilising Power ,

Trans. Amer. Philos. Soc. 58. 1

(Philadelphia, 1968), 50 (sec. 39).

19. Ibid., 194 (sec. 276).

20. C. Blinkenberg, Die lindische Tempelchronik (Bonn, 1915), 4 (A 3),

34-40; SIG 725.

21. OGI 331, IV 52.

22. Diodorus Siculus 3.66.2; Pliny, Natural History 2.231; Pausanias

6.26.2.
184 Notes
%

23. SVF II 1024, 1079, III (Diogenes) 90; Cornutus 16, p. 20, 19 Lang.

24. Justin, Apology 1.21.2; cf. 22.2; cf. Clement, Stromata 6.132.1; Hip-
polytus, Refutation of All Heresies 4.48.2; 5.7.20.

25. Sextus Empiricus, Against the Schoolmasters 1.260-62.

26. Strabo 8.374; Pausanias 2.27.3.

27. R. Herzog, Die Wunderheilungen von Epidauros (Leipzig, 1931), 2.

28. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.56; cf. Sozomen, Ecclesiastical History 2.5;

E. and L. Edelstein, I, 419-20.

29. IG 4th ed. 2, 1, 438.

30. Zonaras 13.12C-D; E. and L. Edelstein, I, 420-21.

31. For the latter, cf. P. MacKendrick, Roman France (London, 1971),
178-80.

32. A.-J. Festugiere, Personal Religion Among the Greeks 85-104; C. A. Behr, ,

Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales.

33. G. Michenaud andj. Dierkens, Les reves dans les “Discours sacres" d'Aelius
Aristide (Brussels, 1972).

34. For all this, cf. Apollodorus, Library 2.4.8 — 7.8.

35. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 69.3; cf. Apology 1.54.9.

36. Justin, Apology 1.21.2.

37. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 8.28-35; 31.16; 2.78.

38. Epictetus, Discourses 1.6.32-36; 2.16.44. On his complete obedience,

3.22.57.

39. Ibid., 3.26.32.

40. Ibid., 3.24.13, 16 for the moral meaning; in between, the problem of
Heracles’ offspring.

41. Diodorus Siculus, Historical Library 1.27.2-4; cf. 22.2-6.

42. Cf. F. C. Grant, Hellenistic Religions, 130-31.

43. Ibid., 131-33.

44. C. H. Oldfather on Diodorus notes that according to Pseudo-Eratos-

thenes, Catasterismi 33 (p. 40 Olivieri), Isis is a bright star in the head of the
Dog constellation.

45. O. Weinreich, Neue Urkunden zur Sarapis- Religion (Tubingen, 1919),

10f.; cf. M. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 2d ed. (Tubingen,
1933), 93; J. Amann, Die Zeusrede des Ailios Aristeides (Stuttgart, 1931), 19.

46. Aelius Aristides, Orations 42.4-5 Keil; 45.29-30.

47. T. A. Brady and P. M. Fraser, “Sarapis,” OCD (2d ed.) 951; cf. F.
Notes 185

Cumont, Les religions orientales dans lepaganisme romain, 4th ed. (Paris, 1929),
260f., n. 68.

48. E.g., Wilcken, Chrestomathie 97, a letter to a man en katochei in the

Sarapieion at Memphis.

49. For the last meaning, cf. Vettius Valens, Anthology, p. 73, 24 Kroll.

50. OGI 262, 25.

Chapter 6: The Philosophical Doctrine of God

1. Wilcken, Chrestomathie 116.

2. Cf. A. S. Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum, II (Cambridge,

Mass., 1958), 1092-94.

3. For example, Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.3-4; Corpus Hermeticum 2.14.

4. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 372E; ILS 1859, 4361, 4376a.

5. Apuleius, Golden 11.5; cf. P. Oxy. XI 1380.

6. For the background, cf. W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philoso-
phers.

7. Diels-Kranz 21 B (fragments) 10, 23, 26, 25.

8. Aeschylus, Suppliant Women 100-3.

9. Xenophanes, B 12, 14, 15, 16.

10. Clement, Stromata 5.109.1; 7.22.1.

1 1. A. B. Cook, Zeus: A Study in Ancient Religion, I-III (Cambridge, 1 914—

1940).

12. H. J. Rose, A Handbook of Greek Mythology (New York, 1929), 47.

13. K. Ziegler, “Zeus,” in W. H. Roscher, ed., Ausfiihrliches Lexikon der

griechischen und romischen Mythologie, VI (Leipzig and Berlin, 1937), 685-702.

14. Homer, Iliad 1.544.

15. Clement, Stromata 5.114.4.

16. Frag. 480 Nauck; cf. N. Zeegers-Vander Vorst, Les citations des poetes
grecs chez les apologistes chretiens du He siecle (Louvain, 1972), 90-91, 98, 166.

17. Pseudo-Justin, On the Unity of God 5.

18. Lucian, Zeus the Tragic Poet 41; Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians
5.2.

19. Plutarch, The Amorous Man 13, 756B-C.

20. SVF I 527, 537.

21. Cornutus 9, p. 9, 1 Lang.

186 Notes

22. Plutarch, Table-talk 8.3, 718A.

23. Aelius Aristides, Orations 43; cf. J. Amann, Die Zeusrede des Ailios Arist-
eides (Stuttgart, 1931).

24. Pseudo- Aristotle, On the Universe 397B-401A.

25. Ibid., 7, 401AB.
26. O. Kern, Orphicorum fragmenta (Berlin, 1922), F 21a.
27. Plato, Laws 4.715E-716A.

28. Plutarch, On the E at Delphi ,

ch. 20, 393Bff.

29. Ibid., ch. 10, p. 164, 27 Hermann.

30. Frag, xvi = Stob. 1.41.4.

31. Albinus, Introduction to Plato p. 171, 18.

32. Ibid., ch. 16, p. 172, 2.

33. Apuleius, On the Teaching of Plato 1.5.

34. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 15.5.3.

35. Albinus, Introduction to Plato 28, p. 181, 36 Hermann.

36. Numenius, Frag. 17 Des Places; of. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists ,

366-67f.

37. Numenius, Frag. 12; cf. E. des Places, Numenius: Fragments (Paris,
1973), 10-14. See Chapter 12 on the Trinity.

38. Text in L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci ,

III (Leipzig, 1856), 331-67, 368-
446; rev. by C. Bursian, Der Rhetor Menandros und seine Schriften, Abhandlun-
gen der koniglichen bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philoso-
phisch-philologische Kl., 16, 3 (1882), 30-151.

39. Cf. G. Soury, Apergus de philosophie religieuse chez Maxime de Tyr (Paris,
1942).

Chapter 7: Christian Doctrines of God

1. Josephus, Against Apion 2.192.

2. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists ,

128.

3. Plutarch, Platonic Questions 2, 1000E; Chemiss, note ad loc.

4. Plutarch, On the Procreation of the Soul in Timaeus 4, 1013E-14B.

5. E.g., Philoponus, On the Eternity of the World 211, 11 Rabe (Plutarch and
,

Atticus); 529, 22ff.

6. On this, cf. G. Stroumsa, “The Incorporeality of God,” Religion 13

(1983), 345-58.
Notes 187

7. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 7.20.

8. Nag Hammadi Codex II 1, 25-3, 35.

9. Tertullian, Prescription of Heretics 7.3.

On the Special Laws 1.307; cf. N. Dahl and A. F. Segal,

10. E.g., Philo,
“Philo and the Rabbis on the Names of God,’’ JfS 9 (1978), 1-28.

11. Epiphanius, Against Eighty Heresies 33 in G. Quispel, PtolemSe: Lettre d,

Flora (Paris, 1949), ch. 7.

12. L. W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge, 1967),
79-84.

13. Justin, Apology 2.6. 1-2.

14. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.3.1, 3, 4.

15. Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 10.1, tr. W. R. Schoedel.

16. The Marcionite Marcus taught that “the Good does not condemn
those who have disobeyed him” (A. von Hamack, Marcion. Das Evangelium
vom fremden Gott, 2d ed. [Leipzig, 1924], 265*).

17. Cf. Ex. 20:5-6; Deut. 5:10; 7:9.

18. Plutarch, Conspectus of the Essay on “ The Stoics ” 35, 1050E = 5FF II

1176.

19. Compare Pseudo- Aristotle and Dio Chrysostom as cited in chapter

6 .

20. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.12.2.

21. Ibid., 2.13.3, partly repeated in 8.

22. Ibid., 3.25.5, because of what Plato said in the Laws, 715E, and the
Timaeus, 29E.

23. Ibid., 2.28.4.

24. Cf. Sources chretiennes 293, 240-44.

25. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.11.2.

26. Cf. S. R. C. Lilia, Clement of Alexandria: A Study in Christian Platonism and

Gnosticism (Oxford, 1971), 212-26.

27. Clement, Stromata 4.155.2.

28. Lilia, Clement of Alexandria, 221-22.

29. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 10.23, p. 33 Klostermann.

30. Origen, Homilies on the Gospel of Luke 6; Exposition of the Song of Solomon,
Prologue.

31. Philo, On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 101.

188 Notes

32. Compare the analogies in Matt. 7:9-11; Luke 11:11-13.

33. The expression “for us” recalls Ignatius, Epistle to Polycarp 3.2.

34. Cf. H. Crouzel, Origene: Traite des principes, II (Paris, 1978), 165-66.

Chapter 8: Christ: Deeds and Names

1 Cf. W. Bauer, Das Leben Jesu im

. Zeitalter der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen
(Tubingen, 1909), 360-68.

2. On miracle stories, cf. the “classical” analyses by R. Bultmann, Die

Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 2d ed. (Gottingen, 1931), 223-60; M.
Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 2ded. (Tubingen, 1933), 49-53,
66- 100 .

3. Bultmann, Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition, 253.

4. Compare the discussion of Dionysus in chapter 4.

5. Except for the folk tale of the coin in the fish’s mouth, Matt. 17:27.

6. F. Braudel, The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of

Philip II (New York, 1976), I, 241, 255-67.

7. Dibelius, Die Formgeschichte des Evangeliums, 232.

8. Justin, Apology 1.22.

9. Tertullian, Apology 21.17.

10. Origen, Against Celsus 2.48.

Foakes Jackson and H. J. Cadbury, The Beginnings of Christianity,

11. F. J.
I.i (London, 1922), 362.

12. Compare the book of Ezekiel, where the prophet is addressed as “son
of man.”

13. Even if the sequence is wrong, there was a development of some sort.

14. Codex Bezae; Old Latin; Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 103.6; Clement,
Tutor 1.25.2.

15. It recalls similar expressions in Isa. 49:1 and Jer. 1:5.

16. On what follows, see “The Book of Wisdom at Alexandria,” in R. M.

Grant, After the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1967), 70-82; “Les etres inter-
mediates dans lejuda'isme tardif,” Le Origini dello gnosticismo, Supplements
to Numen), XII, ed. U. Bianchi (Leiden, 1967), 141-57.

17. Sirach 24:3-4, 6-7, 9; cf. 1 Enoch 42.

18. Wisd. of Sol. 7:22-23; SVF I 557, cited by Clement of Alexandria;

Wisd. of Sol. 7:25-26, 8:3.
Notes 189

19. Wisd. of Sol. 9:1-2. Are the events depicted as consecutive or paral-
lel?

20. H. A. Wolfson, Philo ,

I, 256, citing Philo, On Flight and Finding, 50-52.

21. Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 4.97; Quod detenus potiori insidiari
solet 1 15-16; On Flight and Finding 109; On Drunkenness 30-31; Plato, Timaeus
49A, 51 A.

22. Philo, Questions and Answers on Genesis 4.145; Questions and Answers on
Exodus 2.3.

23. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 164.

24. W. L. Knox, “The Divine Wisdom JTS 38 (1937), 230-37; cf. also
H. Conzelmann, “Die Mutter der Weisheit,” Zeit und Geschichte, ed. E. Din-
kier (Tubingen, 1964), 225-34.

25. W. Peek, Der Isishymnos von Andros und verwandte Texte (Berlin, 1930).

26. J. Bergman, Ich bin Isis, Studien zum memphitischen Hintergrund der grie-
chischen Isis-Aretalogien, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Historia religionum,
3 (1968).

27. D. Muller, “Agypten und die griechischen Isis-Aretalogien,’’ Abhand-

lungen der sachsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Phil. -hist.
KI., 53, 1 (1961); review of Bergman in Orientalische Literaturzeitung 67
(1972), 117-30.

28. The editors of P. Oxy. XI note Diodorus Siculus 1.27 on Isis and the
power of Egyptian women.
29. Y. Grandjean, Une nouvelle arttalogie dTsis a Maronee (Leiden, 1975),
120f.

30. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 373B, 372E.

31. Bergman, Ich bin Isis, 169f.

32. Ibid., 289-92.

33. Only in Rom. 9:3, if there.

34. Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians 6.1; 7.2.

35. Ibid., 8.2; Epistle to theSmymeans 1.2; Epistle to Polycarp 3.2; Epistle to
the Ephesians 7.2 as cited by Athanasius, On the Synods of Arminium and Seleucia
47.1.

36. Ignatius, Epistle to the Trallians 5.

37. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.24.1-2.

38. Tertullian, Against Valentinians 4.3.

39. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.6.1.

190 Notes

40. Hippolytus, C. Noet. 1; for a sermon, cf. E. Schwartz, Zwei Predigten

Hippolyts ( SBAW ,
Philol.-hist. Kl. 1936, 5), 5-18.

41. Epiphanius, Against Eighty Heresies 57.1.8.

42. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 10.17.1-2.

43. Cf. E. Kroymann, Tertullian Adversus Praxean (Tubingen, 1907), ix-xiii.

44. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.28.4.

45. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.28.3.

46. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 9.7. 1-2; 11.3.

47. Tertullian, Against Praxeas 1.5; 29.3, 5.

48. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.28.4-5, 11-12.

49. Justin, Apology 1.63.15; Tatian, Oration to the Greeks 13, p. 15, 5
Schwartz; Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks 110.1.

50. See also A. Houssiau, La christologie de saint lrfrnte (Louvain, 1955),

230-32.

51. Clement, Stromata 3.59.3.

52. Frag. 24, Clemens Alexandrinus, III, p. 210 Stahlin.

53. Frag. 23, Vol. Ill, p. 202 Stahlin.

54. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines ,

153-54.

55. J. Scherer, Entretien dVrigene avec Heraclide (Paris, 1960), 54-62.

56. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel ofJohn 2. 1-2; Philo, On Dreams 1.229;
Clement, Stromata 3.81.6.

57. Numenius, frags. 16, 20 Des Places.

Chapter 9: The Cosmic Christ

1. Apostolic Constitutions 8.12.6ff.; F. E. Brightman, Liturgies Eastern and

Western ,
I (Oxford, 1896), 14ff.; my note in ATR 30 (1948), 91-94= Chris-
tian Beginnings (London, 1983), art. 19.

2. Justin, Apology 1.26.3; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.23.4; Epiphanius,

Against Eighty Heresies 33.7.3-4.

3. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 352C; A. D. Nock, Essays on Religion and the

Ancient World ,
ed. Z. Stewart (Oxford, 1972), 460.

4. Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 39 IF, 393C, 394 A, C.

5. L. Spengel, Rhetores Graeci, III 446, 2.

6. Ibid., 43B, 11; 441, 1; 442, 30.

7. Julian, Orations 4, 136A; cf. Macrobius, Saturnalia 1.18.18.

Notes 191

8. R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire 12-13 (from Oenoanda).

,

9. SVF II 908-9; Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 1.41; Minucius Felix,
Octavius 19.12.

10. Justin, Apology 1.64.5; Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 22.8.

11. Aelius Aristides, Orations 43.7-9, p. 340, 14-30 Keil.

12. Ibid., 37.2-4, pp. 304-5.

13. Cf. R. M. Grant, After the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1967), 66f.; for
further speculations, 70-82.

14. F. W. Lenz, “Der Athenahymnos des Aristides,” Rivista di Cultura

Classica e Mediaevale 5 (1963), 329-47, esp. 339-40.

15. Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 388E, 389A.

16. Aelius Aristides, Orations 41.4, p. 13 Keil.

17. H. Brandenburg, “Meerwesensarkophage und Clipeusmotiv,” JDAI

82 (1967), 195-245.

18. A. Geyer, Das Problem des Realitatsbezuges in der dionysischen Bildkunst der

Kaiserzeit (WUrzburg, 1977).

19. A. D. Nock, “Sarcophagi and Symbolism,’’ AJA 50 (1946), 140-70.

20. Julian, To the Cynic Heraclides 220D, 22 1C.

21. Kore Kosmou 23, 29-30 Nock-Festugiere.

22. D. L. Page, Greek Literary Papyri ,

I (London, 1942), no. 136.

23. Cf. E. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the

Testimonies ,
I, 169-75 (no. 331).

24. Aelius Aristides, Orations 42.4 Keil; E. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius, 156,
159-60 (no. 317); cf. no. 303 and II, 106-7.

25. Aelius Aristides, Orations 50.56; E. and L. Edelstein, Asclepius 150 (no.
302).

26. See also C. Bonner, “Some Phases of Religious Feeling in Later

Paganism,’’ HTR 30 (1937), 1 19-40, and C. A. Behr, Aelius Aristides and the

Sacred Tales.

27. Comutus 31, p. 62, 23; p. 64, 15 Lang; SVF I 514, emending “logos’’
to “tonos”; cf. P. Decharme, La critique des traditions religieuses chez les grecs
(Paris, 1904), 33-34.

28. Porphyry, On the Worship of Images, in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel
3.11.25.

29. Julian, To the Cynic Heraclides 219D-220A.

30. Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 18.4-5; O. Kern, Orphicorum
fragmenta (Berlin, 1922), F 57 (Athenagoras), F 54 (Damascius).
 31. Orphic Hymns 12, pp. 13-14 Quandt.

32. Apuleius, Golden /Iss 11.25. Such “mouths and tongues,” ultimately
derived from Homer, are often mentioned by rhetoricians, e.g. Aelius Aris-
tides ( Orations 45.16; 47.1) praising Sarapis or Asclepius, or the Christian
Theophilus praising the creation in Genesis (To Autolycus 2.12).

33. Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 22.8.

34. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 358EF.

35. As at Philae, OGI 695.

36. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 372EF.

37. G. Showerman, The Great Mother of the Gods (Madison, 1902), 234.

38. Ibid., 289-92.

39. Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 369E.

40. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 6, p. 60, 7 Nauck 2; J. Bidez and
F. Cumont, Les mages hellenises (Paris, 1938), II 29.

41. Frag. dub. 60 Des Places.

42. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 24, p. 73, 4.

43. M. Simon, “Mithra, rival du Christ?” Etudes mithmiques (Teheran and

Liege, 1978), 457-78.

44. Aelius Aristides, Orations 45.16f., 24.

Chapter 10: Divergent Christologies at Antioch

1. Cf. W. A. Meeks and R. L. W liken, fews and Christians in Antioch; D. S.

Wallace-Hadrill, Christian Antioch: A Study of Early Christian Thought in the East
(Cambridge, 1982).

2. The only possible exception is the ambiguous Acts 20:28; cf. H. Con-
zelmann, Die Apostelgeschichte (Tubingen, 1963), 119.

3. Cf. P. Nautin, “Les citations de la ‘Predication de Pierre’ dans Clement

d’Alexandrie,” fTS 25 (1974), 98-105, with a reference to C. Andresen,
Logos und Nomos (Berlin, 1955), 189, n. 1.

4. Clement, Stromata 6.39.2-3.

5. Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians 6.1; 7.2.

6. Tatian, Oration to the Greeks 42; notably by Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess

1, etc.; cf. C. Clemen, Lukians Schrift iiber die syrische Gottin (Leipzig, 1938),
7.

7. Herodotus 7.63.

8. Tatian, Oration to the Greeks 29, tr. Whittaker.

Notes 193

9. Clement, Excerpts from Theodotus 16; Stromata 2.36.1.

10. Both Marcion and P46 read the text as “the likeness of a man.’’

11.1 Clem. 61.2 also took the psalm in reference to humanity; cf. R. M.
Grant and H. H. Graham, First and Second Clement (New York, 1965), 95.

12. Philo, On the Creation of the World 170-72; E. Goodenough, Introduction

to Philo Judaeus ,
2d ed. (Oxford, 1962), 37f.

13. Justin, Apology 2.6.1; Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.3; cf. Corpus Her-
meticum 2.14.

14. Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.7; 2.22.

15. Ibid., 1.4-5, 7; 2.10, 16, 18, 22.

16. Valentinians in Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.8.5; Clement, Excerpts from

Theodotus 6.3; Tatian, Oration to the Greeks 5, p. 5, 21; Irenaeus, Against
Heresies 3.8.3; Clement, Exhortation to the Greeks 7.3; 110.1; Tutor 1.62.4;
Tertullian, Against Praxeas 5.2; Origen, Commentary on the Gospel ofJohn 1.17,
p. 22, 9 Preuschen.

17. Tertullian, Against Praxeas 21.2; Paulinists in Epiphanius, Against

Eighty Heresies 65.1.5; Marcellus, frag. 60 Klostermann.

18. Note the timeless present participle in John 1:18: “being in (eis) the
bosom of the Father.”

19. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.10, 22.

20. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.28.6; Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of

John 1.24, p. 29, 23; cf. R. Cadiou, Commentaires inedits des Psaumes (Paris,
1936), 77.

2 1 Tertullian, Against Hermogenes 18.6; Against Praxeas

. 7. 1 ;
Against Marcion
2.4.1.

22. Cf. M. Mtihl, “Der Logos endiathetos und prophorikos in der alteren
Stoa bis zur Synode von Sirmium,” Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 7 (1962),
7-56; for rhetoric, Hermogenes, 2.7, pp. 352-62 Rabe.

23. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 2.12.5; 13.8; Origen, Against Celsus 6.65.

24. Justin, Apology 1.36.

25. Cf. G. Quispel and R. M. Grant, “Note on the Petrine Apocrypha,”

VC 6 (1952), 3 If.

26. Frag. 4 von Dobschutz; cf. Matt. 12:1-15.

27. Justin, Apology 1.33.6.

28. Cf. Acts 1:9; Luke 24:51.

29. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.25, with allusions to Luke 1:80; 2:40, 52.

30. Contrast Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.21.10.

194 Notes

31. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.10, 28, 30, 35, 38; 3.13.

32. Eusebius, Against Marcellus 1.2.25ff.

33. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.28.4 (from Ignatius, Epistle to the Romans
4.1).

34. Serapion in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.12.

35. G. Bardy, Paul de Samosate 2d ed. (Louvain, 1929); F. Loofs, Paulus

,

von Samosata (Leipzig, 1924); H. de Riedmatten, Les Actes du proces de Paul

de Samosate (Fribourg, 1952); and T. E. Pollard, Johannine Christology and the
Early Church (Oxford, 1970).

36. R. L. Sample, The Messiah as Prophet: The Christology of Paul of Samosata ,

diss.Northwestern, 1977; directed by D. Groh. See also F. W. Norris, “Paul

of Samosata: Procurator Ducenarius," JTS 35 (1984), 50-70.

37. From Doctrina Patrum 41, VI.

38. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical Theology 3.3.43-44.

39. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.10, 22.

40. J. Dani£lou, Thtologie du Judto-Christianisme (Toumai, 1958), 222f.

41. Eusebius, Against Marcellus 1.2.23f.

42. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.27.

43. Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew 16.12.

Chapter 11: Also the Holy Spirit

1. G. F. Moore, Judaism, I (Cambridge, Mass., 1927), 42 If.

2. Luke’s narrative owes something to the story of the birth and spirit
empowerment of Samson (Judg. 13ff.); compare the summaries (Luke 2:40,
52) with Judg. 13:24 and 1 Sam. 2:26. Matthew also mentions the Holy
Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 21) in this regard.

3. Cf. H. Conzelmann, Die Apostelgeschichte (Tubingen, 1963), 27, citing

Philo, On the Decalogue 33.46.

4. Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians 7.1.

5. Origen, Against Celsus 7.9, tr. Chadwick.

6. Cf. D. E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christianity and the Ancient Mediterranean

World 70-72.
,

7. Cf. R. M. Grant, Second-Century Christianity (London, 1946), 95-96.

8. Ibid., 21.

9. Ibid., 27.

10. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.14.1.

Notes 195

1 1 . A. von Hamack, Marcion. Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott, 2d ed.

(Leipzig, 1924), 177, 405*.

12. Cf. Plato, Laws 4.7 19C: “When a poet is seated on the Muses’ tripod
he is not in his senses but resembles a fountain.”

13. Origen, Against Celsus 3.25; 7.3.

14. Chrysostom, in Homily on I Corinthians 29.1, PG 61, 242.

15. For the vapor, cf. L. B. Holland, “The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi,”
AJA 37 (1933), 201-14. There is no trace of it today.
16. Virgil, Aeneid, 6.77-80, 98-100.

17. Suetonius, Augustus 31.1; Dio Cassius 57.18.4; Tacitus, Annals 6.12.

1 8. Justin, Apology 1.44.12; Theophilus, ToAutolycus 2.36, Clement, Exhor-

tation to the Greeks 27.5; 71.4.

19. Ignatius, Epistle to the Ephesians 18.2; Justin, Apology 1.32.10; 33.6.

20. Justin, Apology 1.22.5.

21. E. Hennecke, W. Schneemelcher, and R. McL. Wilson, New Testament

Apocrypha, I (Philadelphia, 1963), 158-65.

22. J. M. Robinson, ed., The Nag Hammadi Library (San Francisco, 1977),
32.

23. Similitudes 9.1.1; 5.6.5.

24. Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians 9.2; Epistle to the Philadelphians 7;

Epistle to the Ephesians 9.1.

25. Justin, Apology 1.13.

26. Tatian, Oration to the Greeks, pp. 5, 2; 4, 3; 5, 10; 12, 18; 14, 26
Schwartz.

27. Ibid., p. 13, 28.

28. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.9, 13.

29. Theophilus has in mind air and water among the four elements.

30. Theophilus, To Autolycus 2.4; SVF II 1033.

31. Numenius, Frag. 30 Des Places.

32. Clement, Selections from the Prophets 7.1; Origen, On First Principles

1.3.3.

33. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 4.33.7; 5.20.1.

34. Arrian, Bithyn. frag. 9, p. 199 Roos.

35. Cf. R. M. Grant, The Letter and the Spirit, 2-6.

36. Origen, On First Principles 3.3.3.

196 Notes

37. E.g., Isa. 6: Iff.; Ezek. Dan. 7:1; cf. Rev. 1:10.

38. 2 Cor. 12:14; cf. 1 Cor. 14:13-14; Gal. 1:15-16; 2:20.

39. Ignatius, Epistle to the Philadelphians 7.1-2.

40. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 1 15.3.

41. Philo, The Heir of Divine Things 249-65.

42. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.16.3-17.4.

43. Athenagoras, Embassy for the Christians 7.3; 9.1; W. R. Schoedel,

Athenagoras (Oxford, 1972), 21.

44. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9.

45. Melito, Homily 101 (-3), tr. Hall.

4. 46. Jerome, On Illustrious Men 24.

47. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.11.9.

48. Cf. T. D. Barnes, Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), 278-79.

49. Clement, Stromata 1.85.3.

50. Origen, On First Principles 3.3.4.

51. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.2.11.

52. Cf. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.641; Virgil, Aeneid 6.46-48; Statius, Thebais
542.

53. EPS 68 B 18 = Clement, Stromata 6.168.2; G. Verbeke, L'evolution de

la doctrine du pneuma , 271.

54. A. and L. Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der alien Kirche,
3d ed. (Breslau, 1897), 161.

Chapter 12: Three Gods in One

1. R. Joly, Hermas: Le Pasteur (Paris, 1958), 144.

2. 1 Cor. 1:12-14; 6:11; Rom. 6:3; Gal. 3:27; Acts 2:38; 8:16; 19:5.

3. Cf. F. Andres, Die Engellehre der griechischen Apologeten des zweiten Jahrhun-
derts (Paderborn, 1914), 13-16; W. Michaelis, Zur Engelchristologie im Urchris-
tentum (Basel, 1942), 146f.

4. Cf. Numenius in Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 11.18.3; 14.5.6;

Clement, Stromata 5.103.1; Origen, Against Celsus 6.18; see Lucian as cited
below.

5. This may be the source of the Platonizing addition to Xenophanes to

be found in Irenaeus; see chapter 6.

6. Philo, On Drunkenness 30; Plato, Timaeus 49a, 52d, 88d.

Notes 197

7. J. Dillon, The Middle Platonists, 361-62

8. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 1 7.

9. For Numenius’ influence on Clement and perhaps Tatian, cf. J. H.

Waszink, “Some Observations on the Appreciation of ‘The Philosophy of
the Barbarians’ in Early Christian Literature,” Melanges offerts a Mile C.
Mohrmann (Utrecht, 1963), 41-56, esp. 53-56.

10. Numenius, frag. 15 Des Places; tr. Dillon, 368.

11. Origen, On First Principles 1.3. 5-8.

12. Ibid., 1.3.1.

13. H. Crouzel, Origene: Traitt des principes, II (Paris, 1978), 57-58.

14. Dillon, The Middle Platonists ,

367.

15. Numenius, frag. 16; tr. Dillon, revised, 369.

16. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 10, p. 63, 7 Nauck 2d ed.;
Numenius, frag. 30.

17. Porphyry, On the Cave of the Nymphs 32, p. 78, 14.

18. Numenius, frag. 17; tr. Dillon, 363; possibly a paraphrase of Plato,
Timaeus 28C.

19. Cf. A. D. Nock, “The Exegesis of Timaeus 28C,” VC 16 (1962), 79-86.

20. See C. C. Richardson, The Doctrine of the Trinity (New York and Nash-
ville, 1958); see Chapter 10 above.

21. W. C. Till, Die gnostischen Schriften des koptischen Papyrus Berolinensis

8502, TU 60 (Berlin, 1955), 82; M. Krause and P. Labib, Die drei Versionen

des Apokryphon des Johannes (Wiesbaden, 1962), 112, 201.

22. Here there is a gap in the manuscript tradition.

23. Heavier: water, earth; lighter: air, fire.

24. Cf. Dillon, The Middle Platonists , 95.

25. W. R. Schoedel, Athenagoras (Oxford, 1972), xviii; cf. JTS 31 (1980),

356-67.

26. Irenaeus and Tertullian also used Theophilus.

27. See R. M. Grant in VC 6 (1952), 152, reprinted in Christian Beginnings:

Apocalypse to History (London, 1983).

28. Cf. J. Gewiess, “Zum altkirchliche Verstandnis der Kenosisstelle,”

Theologische Quartalschrift 128 (1948), 463-87.

29. 1 follow and modify the summaries of W. Y. Fausset, Novatiani Roma-

nae vrbis presbyteri De trinitate liber (Cambridge, 1909), 111, 115f.

30. Epiphanius, Against Eighty Heresies 69.6; H. G. Opitz, Urkunden zur

Geschichte des arianischen Streites (Berlin, 1935), no. 1.
198 Notes

31. Tertullian defended the term, Against Praxeas 8, but Origen rejected
it, On First Principles 4.4.1.

32. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London, 1950), 205, 209f.

33. Ibid., 210.

34. Athanasius, On the Decrees of the Synod of Nicaea 25.2, p. 21, 2 Opitz;
Theognostus used the old analogies of light and water and spoke of “ema-
nation of the ousia of the Father.”

35. What follows is based largely on the article in G. W. H. Lampe, A

Patristic Greek Lexicon 959; on Gnostic usage, Kelly, Early Christian Creeds,
245.

36. Origen, On First Principles, preface 8-9.

37. “Zum Prozess gegen Paul von Samosata,” ZNW 75 (1984), 270-90.

38. Urkunden 22 Opitz.

39. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 182, 186.

Chapter 13: Creeds and Cult

1. Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Rufinus: A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed, lOOf.

2. Cf. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 296-331; see also A. and L.

Hahn, Bibliothek der Symbole und Glaubensregeln der alten Kirche, 3d ed. (Breslau,
1897).

3. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.4.2.

4. Ibid., 1.27.1.

5. Ibid., 1 .2 1 .3; F. Graffin in A. Rousseau and L. Doutreleau, IrenSe de Lyon

Contre les Heresies Livre I, I (Paris, 1979), 270.

6. Kelly, Rufinus, 71, 134.

7. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 372.

8. Ibid., 297-98.

9. Cf. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.3.6.

10. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, 341-42.

11. Ibid., 194.

12. Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 2.1-2.

13. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 14.5; on “restoration,” see R. M.

Grant, The Letter and the Spirit, 15-30.

14. Clement, Stromata 1.63.2-64.4; 6.57.3.

15. Epiphanius, Against Eighty Heresies 33.7.9; Clement, Stromata 7.106.4.

Notes 199

16. Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 11.2.2.

17. Diodorus Siculus 2.29.6; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.21.5.

18. Clement, Stromata 7.108; Diogenes Laertius 1.17.

19. Justin, Apology 1.26.

20. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.22.5, 7.

21. Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.22-23.

22. Origen, On First Principles, 1, preface.

23. Eusebius, Life of Constantine 2.64.

24. Ammianus Marcellinus, 22.5.3f.; cf. J.Bidez and F. Cumont, Ivliani

imperatoris epistvlae et leges (Paris, 1922), 50-52.

25. Cf. J. Dummer, “Ein naturwissenschaftliches Handbuch als Quelle fur

Epiphanius von Constantia,” Klio 55 (1973), 289-99.

26. Symmachus, Relation 3; R. H. Barrow, Prefect and Emperor (Oxford,

1973), 32-47; for the context, cf. A. H. Armstrong, “The Way and the
Ways: Religious Tolerance and Intolerance in the Fourth Century a.d.,”
VC 38 (1984), 1-17.
27. Cf. Grazia Lo Menzo Rapisarda, La personalita di Simmaco e la III relatio

(Catania, 1967).

28. Vincent of Lerins, Commonitory XVII (23); Cicero, Tusculan Disputations

1.39.

29. Cf. A. S. Pease, M. Tulli Ciceronis De Natura Deorum , I (Cambridge,

Mass., 1955), 294f.

30. Cf. also E. Ivanka, Hellenisches und christliches im friihbyzantinischen Geistec-

leben (Vienna, 1948).
Reading List

Students and others may wish to look up some of the ancient authors
cited, since have generally tried to base my statements on such primary
I

evidence. The easiest way for most will be to rely on the volumes of the
Loeb Classical Library for non-Christian authors, and some Christians as
well, such as the apostolic fathers and some works by Clement, Tertullian,
Minucius Felix, Eusebius, and Augustine. It is customary to criticize the
texts printed in Loeb as somewhat outmoded, but advances in either classi-
cal or patristic philology are less common than one might suppose.
Thus readers are not led far astray when using the Ante-Nicene Christian
Library of 1867-1897 or the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of 1886-1900
(both reprinted since), though the translations in the Library of Christian
Classics, edited by John John T. McNeill, and Henry P. van Dusen,
Baillie,
are generally better. One
should also mention the series Ancient Christian
Writers and its rival Fathers of the Church, both usually of high quality. In
addition, there are texts and translations of some important authors in the
series edited by Henry Chadwick, Oxford Early Christian Texts: Acts of the
Christian Martyrs Athanasius, Athenagoras, Cyprian, Melito
, ,
Tatian, Theophilus.
One cannot do without Chadwick’s annotated translation, Origen Contra
Celsum (Cambridge, 1953), or G. W. Butterworth, Origen on First Principles
(London, 1936). The “apocryphal New Testament’’ is translated by R. McL.
Wilson after W. Schneemelcher and E. Hennecke, 2 vols. (Philadelphia,
1963, 1965), while James M. Robinson edited translations of The Nag Ham -
madi Library (San Francisco, 1977). Other Gnostic documents are translated
by me in Gnosticism: An Anthology (New York, 1961) or by R. McL. Wilson
after W. Foerster, Gnosis, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1972, 1974). For a good survey,
see K. Rudolph, Gnosis (Edinburgh, 1983).
The reading list that follows is no more than that. It is limited to works
in English and does not correspond to the works used in preparing this
volume. More work is published on the church fathers, for example, in
French and German, not to mention Italian, than in English. The list is
arranged by chapters, though obviously there is some overlapping. Much
gratitude goes to my colleague Dr. Arthur Droge for his help in preparing
the list.

201
202 Reading List

I should add that F. C. Grant, Roman Hellenism and the New Testament

(Edinburgh, 1962), not only gives an admirable introduction to the subject

but also provides a chronological table and a more complete bibliography
up to that time, while there is an inclusive bibliography on Greco-Roman
religion in Ramsay MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven,
1981).

Chapter 1: Gods in the Book of Acts

F. J. Foakes Jackson and Kirsopp Lake, eds., The Beginnings of Christianity,
I (London, 1920-1933) (there never was a II), remains the largest and best
commentary in English. The most useful volumes are the fourth (commen-
tary on Acts) and the fifth (short essays on various topics). Also recom-
mended is E. Haenchen, The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary (Philadelphia,
1971). A few studies of special subjects include C. F. Edson, “The Cults of
Thessalonica,’’ Harvard Theological Review 41 (1948), 153ff.; B. Gaertner,
The Areopagus Speech and Natural Revelation (Uppsala, 1955); D. E. Aune,
“Magic in Early Christianity,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Well,
II. 23. 2, edited by H. Temporini and W. Haase (ongoing).

Chapter 2: Mediterranean Religions Westward

The studies of Franz Cumont remain basic for introductory purposes and
stimulus, even though they are out of dateand wrong in several regards (as
Ramsay MacMullen has pointed out in his equally basic Paganism in the
Roman Empire). Cumont’s Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism is translated
from the second edition of 191 1, not the fourth of 1929 (where the notes
are what matter), while The Mysteries of Mithra is well out of date. A. D. Nock,
Conversion (Oxford, 1933), is not out of date; for detailed discussion of
many points, see Nock’s Essays on Religion and the Ancient World, 2 vols.
(Oxford, 1972), edited by Zeph Stewart. In general, J. Ferguson, The Reli-
gions of the Roman Empire (Cornell, 1970); also J. Teixidor, The Pagan God:
Popular Religion in the Graeco- Roman Near East (Princeton, 1977). On west-
ward routes, compare P. Beskow, “The Routes of Early Mithraism” in
Etudes mithraiques (Leiden, 1978), 7ff.

Two collections of translated texts are especially useful. These are F. C.

Grant, The Age of Syncretism (New York, 1953), and Ancient

Hellenistic Religions:
Roman Religion (New York, 1957).
For particular cults, see above all B. F. Meyer and E. P. Sanders, eds.,
Self- Definition in the Graeco-Roman World, Vol. 3 of Jewish and Christian Self-
Definition (Philadelphia, 1983), an admirable collection of essays. Here is

an alphabetized list for various gods: Emma and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius:
A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, 2 vols. (Baltimore, 1945); A.
Vogliano and F. Cumont, “The Bacchic Inscription in the Metropolitan
Museum,” American Journal of Archaeology 37 (1933), 215ff.; M. P. Nilsson,
“The Bacchic Mysteries of the Roman Age,” Harvard Theological Review 46
Reading List 203

(1953), 175ff.; M. J. Vermaseren, Cybele and Attis: The Myth and the Cult
(London, 1977); R. E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (Cornell, 1971);
S. K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis Among Women of the Hellenistic- Roman World
(Leiden, 1975); Michael Grant, The Jews in the Roman World (London, 1973);
M. J. Vermaseren, Mithras, the Secret God (London, 1963); R. L. Gordon,
“Mithraism and Roman Society: Social Factors in the Explanation of Reli-
gious Change in the Roman Empire,” Religion 2 (1972), 92fF.; J. E. Stam-
baugh, Sarapis Under the Edrly Ptolemies (Leiden, 1972).

Chapter 3: Christian Missionaries Against Idolatry

On some of the problems, see Edwyn Bevan, Holy Images: An Inquiry Into
Idolatry and Image Worship in Ancient Paganism and in Christianity (London,
1940), and N. H. Baynes, ‘‘Idolatry and the Early Church,” in Byzantine
Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), 1 16-43. See also Martin Dibelius,
Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (London, 1956); P. E. Corbett, ‘‘Greek Tem-
ples and Greek Worshippers: The Literary and Archaeological Evidence,”
Bulletin of the Institute for Classical Studies 17 (1970), 149ff.; and J. E. Stam-
baugh, ‘‘The Functions of Roman Temples,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der
romischen Welt , II. 16.2, 554ff.

Chapter 4: Functions of Gods and Goddesses

On relations to the gods, see Martin P. Nilsson, Greek Popular Religion

(New York, 1940), and Greek Piety (Oxford, 1948); A.-J. Festugiere, Personal
Religion Among the Greeks (Berkeley, 1954); H. J. Rose, Religion in Greece and
Rome (New York, 1959); F. Brenk, In Mist Apparelled: Religious Themes in
Plutarch's Moralia and Lives (Leiden, 1977); J. G. Griffiths, ed., Plutarch's De
Iside et Osiride (University of Wales, 1970). For a contrast with Christians,
R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (Oxford, 1949). On miracles, there
is my Miracle and Natural Law
Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought
in
(Amsterdam, 1952), as well as the more sociological study by H. C. Kee,
Miracle in the Early Christian World (New Haven, 1983). See also much of the
literature noted for Chapter 2, above.
There are helpful articles on deification in English by E. Bickerman, F.
Millar, and G. W. Bowersock in the symposium of the Fondation Hardt
( Entretiens Vol. 19 [Geneva, 1972]) on Le culte des souverains dans I'empire
,

romain. For more extensive studies, see Lily Ross Taylor, The Divinity of the
Roman Emperor (Middletown, Conn., 1931), and J. R. Fears, Princeps a diis
electus: The Divine Election of the Emperor as a Political Concept at Rome (Rome,

1977).

Chapter 5: The Deeds of Individual Gods and Heroes

Here Zeus is the most important. On Zeus, see A. B. Cook, Zeus: A Study
in Ancient Religion, 3 vols. in 5 (Cambridge, 1914-1940), to be supplemented
204 Reading List

by L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, 5 vols. (Oxford, 1896-1909). On

other figures, see H. Engelmann, The Delian Aretalogy of Sarapis (Leiden,
1975), and J. G. Griffiths, ed., Apuleius of Madauros: The Isis-Book (Leiden,
1975). Especially significant is C. A. Behr, Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales

(Amsterdam, 1968).

Chapter 6: The Philosophical Doctrine of God

On the pre-Socratics see Werner Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek
Philosophers (Oxford, 1947). He viewed them as beginning a process ulti-
mately continued in Christianity. For a different view see F. M. Cornford,
Principium Sapientiae: The Origins of Greek Philosophical Thought (Cambridge,
1952). Perhaps I should mention my own essay, “Early Christianity and
Pre-Socratic Philosophy,” in the Wolfson Jubilee Volumes (Jerusalem, 1965),
357ff. On critics of religion see H. W. Attridge, “The Philosophical Critique
of Religion Under the Early Empire,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen
Welt, II. 16.1, 45ff. For the treatise On the Universe ( De mundo), see J. P.
Maguire, “The Sources of Pseudo- Aristotle De Mundo,” Yale Classical
Studies 6 (1939), 11 Iff. For the immediate philosophical background of
Christian thought in Middle Platonism, R. E. Witt, Albinus and the History of
Middle Platonism (Cambridge, 1937), is not as helpful as John Dillon, The
Middle Platonists (Cornell, 1977); see also H. A. Wolfson, Philo, 2 vols.
(Cambridge, Mass., 1947), and H. D. Betz, ed., Plutarch's Theological Writings
and Early Christian Literature (Leiden, 1975). Highly important for the back-
ground is G. W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in theRoman Empire (Oxford,
1969).

Chapter 7: Christian Doctrines of God

The best and most thorough treatment remains that of G. L. Prestige,
God in Patristic Thought (London, 1936); see also my James W. Richard
lectures on The Early Christian Doctrine of God (Charlottesville, 1966).

Chapter 8: Christ: Deeds and Names

The questions raised here are not new, and A. E. J. Rawlinson, The New
Testament Doctrine of the Christ (London, 1926), is still valuable. One should
also useOscar Cullmann, The Christology of the New Testament (Philadelphia,
1959), and the New Testament Theology books by more recent authors
such as Hans Conzelmann.

Chapter 9: The Cosmic Christ

For this kind of analysis not much is written in English. See Martin P.
Nilsson, “The High God and the Mediator,” Harvard Theological Review 56
(1963), 101-20. For this and succeeding chapters see J. N. D. Kelly, Early
Reading List 205

Christian Doctrines (New York, 1958); R. P. C. Hanson, Tradition in the Early

Church (London, 1962); and Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the

Classical Tradition (Oxford, 1966).

Chapter 10: Divergent Christologies at Antioch

The student should look at W. Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest

Christianity (Philadelphia, 1971), since this chapter is partly directed against
his basic theory. See also R. V. Sellers,Two Ancient Christologies (London,
1940). On Antioch, see Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L. Wilken, Jews and
Christians in Antioch,SBL Sources for Biblical Study, 13 (Missoula, Mont.,
1978). The principal problem is raised by the doctrinal move from Ignatius
(W. R. Schoedel, Ignatius of Antioch, Philadelphia, 1985) to Theophilus (my
textand translation, Oxford, 1970); see also “Scripture, Rhetoric and The-
ology in Theophilus,” Vigiliae Christianae 13 (1959), 33ff.

Chapter 11: Also the Holy Spirit

Edwyn Bevan, Sibyls and Seers (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), gives a good
introduction to the practice and theory of revelation and inspiration; more
philosophically, G. Verbeke (in French), L'evolution de la doctrine du pneuma
(Paris and Louvain, 1945); see also my study of allegorical interpretation,
The Letter and the Spirit (London, 1957). Specifically on the Holy Spirit see
G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit (London, 1951). On activities of the
Spirit in the church and outside it see D. E. Aune, Prophecy in Early Christian-
ity and the Ancient Mediterranean World (Grand Rapids, 1983).

Chapter 12: Three Gods in One

Again we turn back to A. E. J. Rawlinson, who edited Essays on the Trinity
and the Incarnation (London, 1928); see also J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines (New York, 1958), and W. R. Schoedel, “A Neglected Motive for
Second-Century Trinitarianism, ” Journal of Theological Studies 31 (1980),
356ff. Readers of German should consult G. Kretschmar, Studien zur frii-
christlichen Trinitatstheologie (Tubingen, 1956).

Chapter 13: Creeds and Cult

Here we recommend J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (London, 1950),

and Rufinus: A Commentary on the Apostles' Creed (Westminster, Md., 1955).
The whole subject really demands going into early Christian history, for
which the best study is W. H. C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia,
1984).
 ‘m
.
 Index

Acts of Paul, 52 Asclepius, 32-33, 55, 57, 60,

Aelius Aristides, 24, 38, 57, 64, 66-69, 118-119
66, 67-68, 71, 78, 81, 116-117, Athanasius, 162-163, 169
119, 123, 157 Athena, 21-22, 26, 55, 57, 60,
Aeschylus, 77 64-65, 115-117, 120, 155
Albinus, 58, 79-80, 81, 88 Athenagoras, 41, 87, 120-121,
Alexander (rhetorician), 56 147, 153, 155, 157, 158
Alexander of Alexandria, 160, Atticus, 81, 171
172 Augustine, 19
Ammonius Saccas, 91 Augustus, 60-61, 63, 140
Anubis, 34-35, 103 Aune, D., 139
Apelles (Marcionite), 139
Aphrodite, 22-25, 60 baal of Sarepta, 30
Apion, 42 baptism, 137-138, 150-152,
Apocryphon of James, 143 166-168
Apocryphon of John, 156-157 Bardy, G., 133
. Apollo, 55, 62-64, 115 Barnabas, 133
Apollodorus, 105 Barnard, L. W., 87
Apologists, Christian: see Basil of Caesarea, 169
Athenagoras; Justin; Melito; Basilides (Gnostic), 86, 127-128,
Minucius Felix; Tatian; 139, 171
Tertullian; Theophilus Bergman, Jan, 103, 104
apologists, Jewish: see Aristobulus; Bidez, J., 122
Josephus; Philo Bomer, F., 63
Apostolic Constitutions, 113, 163 Borries, Bodo
von, 46
Apuleius, 25, 64, 76, 80, 120-121 Brandenburg, Hugo, 117
Aratus, 51, 78 Braudel, Fernand, 96-97
Arians, Arius, 160-163, 172 Brennecke, H. C., 162
Aristobulus, 51, 101 Bultmann, Rudolf, 96
Arrian, 145
Artemidorus, 58-59 Calder, W. M., 25
Artemis, 21-22, 27-28 Caligula, 61

207
208 Index

Callistus, 108, 147 Dillon, John, 85, 102, 154

categories of gods, 58-59 Dio Cassius, 39, 62
categories of hymns, 82 Dio Chrysostom, 57, 68, 75
Celsus (anti-Christian), 55, 138 Diocletian, 63
Cerdo (Gnostic), 167 Diodorus Siculus, 42, 61, 69, 171
Cherniss, H., 85-86 Diogenes Laertius, 64, 170-171
Christ, biblical texts: see Diogenes of Babylon, 116
Colossians; Corinthians, First; Dionysius of Alexandria, 162
John, Gospel of; Philippians; ^^Dionysus, 39-40, 65, 117-118
Proverbs; Sirach; Wisdom Dittenberger, W., 71
Christ, titles of, 98-101; see also Dobschiitz, E. von, 125
Wisdom Domitian, 61
Chrysippus, 20, 60, 116
Cicero, 41, 55-56, 63, 116, Ebionites, 135
172-173 Edgar, C. C., 57
Cleanthes, 78, 101, 119 Egyptian gods, 59
Clement (of Alexandria), 37, 41, Einarson, Benedict, 163
75, 77, 90-91, 129, 131, 133, Ennius, 61
140, 144, 148, 154-155, 162, Epictetus, 68, 78
170, 171 epiphanies of gods, 54-56
Clement (of Rome) (1 Clement), Epiphanius, 126, 172
133 Eudorus, 85
Clement (2 Clement), 143 Euhemerus, 61
Colossians, 101, 112, 127 Euripides, 77-78
Constantine, 41, 162-163, 172 Eusebius (of Caesarea), 35, 63, 67,
Constantius, 172 127, 135, 162-163, 169
Corinthians, First, 48, 100-101, Eusebius (of Nicomedia), 160
112, 150, 168-169
Cornutus, 65, 78, 119 Favorinus, 24
Corpus Hermeticum: see Hermetic Firmicus Maternus, 41
literature
Creed, Apostles’, 167-168 Galba, 63
Creed, Nicene, 113, 149, 161-163, Galen, 60
168-169 Geyer, Angelika, 1 1

creed of Antioch, 161 Gnostics, 86-87, 106-107, 113,

creed of Constantinople, 149 129, 139, 154-155, 156-157,
Cronus (Kronos), 61, 69, 103 167, 171; see also Apelles;
Crouzel, H., 91, 154, 161 Basilides; Marcion; Marcus;
Cumont, Franz, 40, 122 Ptolemaeus; Saturninus;
Valentinus
Damascius, 120 Goodenough, Erwin, 114, 129
Danielou, Jean, 91, 135 142-143
Gospel of the Hebrews,
Delphic oracle, 63, 79, 139-140 Gregory of Nyssa, 134
Democritus, 145, 148
Diagoras, 61 Hadrian, 63
Dibelius, Martin, 143 Hegesippus, 171
Index 209

Heracles, 57, 68-69, 119-120; see Kelly, J. N. D., 161, 169

also Hercules Knox, W. L., 102
Heraclitus, 20
Hercules, 41 Lactantius, 61
“heresy” in Athens, 20 Lampe, G. W. H., 162
Hermas, 128, 133, 143, 148, 150 Lenz, F. W., 117
Hermes, 20-23, 25-26, 50, 62, R. C., 91
Lilia, S.

65-66, 118 Logos, 104, 106, 108-110, 118,

Hermetic literature, 80, 115, 119, 127-131, 134, 135,
118 156-158, 163
Hesiod, 56 Loofs,F., 133

Hilary (of Poitiers), 163 Lucian, 25, 46, 82, 83, 155-156
Hippolytus, 86, 108, 139 Luke- Acts, 19-28, 49-51,
Homer, 76-78 124-125, 131, 132, 134,
Hunt, A. S., 57 137-138, 146
Hyginus, 167
Hystaspes, 140 Macrobius, 115, 155
Magic, 20-21, 29
idolatry, 45-51 Marcellus (of Ancyra), 132,
Ignatius (of Antioch), 92-93, 134-135, 162, 169
105-108, 124-126, 128, 138, Marcion (Gnostic), 86, 113, 131,
143, 146, 163 139, 167
Irenaeus (of Lyons), 89-90, 109, Marcus (Gnostic), 139
129, 130, 133, 144-145, 147, Marcus Aurelius, 62
167 Maximilla (Montanist), 139, 146
Isis, 34-35, 69-70, 76, 120-121 Maximus of Tyre, 48, 82
Melito (of Sardis), 109, 147
Jerome, 28, 142 Menander (two rhetoricians), 81,
Jesus, 95-100, 137-138, 146, 115
150 Mercury, 65; see also Hermes
Johannes Lydus, 155 Middle Platonism, 51, 84-87, 113,
John, First Epistle of, 151 127, 129, 152-156; see also
John, Gospel of, 104-105, 112, Albinus; Apuleius; Atticus;
128-129, 130-132, 137, 141, Eudorus; Numenius; Philo;
143, 162-163, 164, 169, 174 Plutarch
John Chrysostom, 140 Minucius Felix, 28, 41, 116
Josephus, 29, 34-35, 42, 84 Miracles, 62-71, 95-98, 120, 168
Judaism, 41-42, 84-86, 136-137, Mithras, 40-41, 122
173-174 Montanists, 139, 145-148; see also

Julian, 33, 63, 67, 115, 117-118, Maximilla; Prisca

120, 122, 172 Moore, G. F., 98, 136
Jupiter, 61, 62; see also Zeus Mother of the Gods, 33, 122, 145
Justin, 41, 66, 68, 87, 97, 109, Muller, D., 103, 104
113, 116, 126-127, 130, 140,
141, 143, 152-155, 170, 171 Nero, 40, 61, 63
Juvenal, 35 Nilsson, Martin P., 62
210 Index

Nock, A. D., 39, 114, 117 Praxeas, 108, 147

Nodens (Mars), 67 Preaching of Peter, 51-52, 125,
Novatian, 158-160 128-129, 131, 133
Numenius, 37, 81, 111, 122, 144, Prisca (Montanist), 139
152-156, 162, 170 prophets, prophetesses, 131, 132,
134, 136, 139, 145-147
Oenomaus (Cynic), 45, 63 Proverbs, 100-102, 134, 161-164
Olympiodorus, 64 Ptolemaeus (Gnostic), 87, 107,
On the Sublime, 84, 140 113, 162, 171
On the Universe, 78-79
Origen, 37, 41, 63-64, 91-94, 97, rhetoric in Acts, 49-51
110-111, 129, 130, 135, 139, Riedmatten, H. de, 133-134
140, 142-145, 148-149, 154,
161-163, 171, 175 Sallustius, 122
Orphic literature, 79, 120 Sample, R. L., 133, 134
Osiris, 35 Sarapis, 29, 35-39, 57, 70-71,
Ossius (of Cordoba), 163 123
Satuminus (Gnostic), 107
Patripassianists, 107-108 Schoedel, W. R., 147
Paul, apostle, 19-29, 46-51, Seneca, 19, 41-42, 61, 78
97-100, 106, 112, 132, Sequana, 67
138-141, 146, 147, 150-151, Serapion (of Antioch), 133
164-166 Sextus Empiricus, 66
Paul (of Samosata), 133-134, 162 Sibyl, 140
Pausanias, 24, 65, 66 Sirach, 102
Peek, Werner, 103 Socrates, 50
Perseus, 97, 141 Sophia: see Wisdom
Peter, apostle, 124-125 Spirit, 127-128, 136-149, 158,
Peter (of Alexandria), 161 159
Philippians, 105, 128, 131, Strabo, 24, 41, 63, 66
133-134, 159, 164 Suetonius, 61
Philo of Alexandria, 48, 84-86, Symmachus, 172-173
89, 90, 91, 92-93, 109, 114,
127, 129, 130, 138, 146, 147, Tacitus, 35-36, 42
153 Tatian, 41, 87, 109, 126-129,
Philostorgius, 163 143-144, 162
Philumene (Gnostic), 139 Taylor, Lily Ross, 28
Plato, 63-65, 79, 80-81, 82, 85, Tertullian, 19, 34, 40, 41, 86, 97,
90, 116, 119, 121, 145, 108, 129-130, 147, 159, 163,
152-156, 161, 171 174
Plotinus, 91, 153 Theognostus of Alexandria, 162
Plutarch, 19, 20, 36, 37, 40, 58, Theon (rhetorician), 49
63, 64, 77-79, 85-86, 114, 115, Theophilus (of Antioch), 41,
117, 121, 122, 141 61, 75, 83, 87-89, 109, 117,
Pollard, T. E., 133 127, 128-135, 140, 144, 156,
Porphyry, 119-120, 122, 154-155 158
Index 211

Theophrastus, 19 Wisdom (Sophia), 100-104, 129,

Thoeris, 57 134, 135
Tiberius, 61, 140 Wolfson, H. A., 102
Turner, C. H., 161, 169 worship, 53, 175
Tyre, religion of, 30-32
Xenocrates, 58
Uranus, 61 Xenophanes, 20, 76-77, 89-90
Xenophon, 49
Valentinus (Gnostic), 139, 171
Vespasian, 61 Yahu and consorts, 45, 104
Victor (of Rome), 147
Vincent of Lerins, 173 Zephyrinus (of Rome), 147
Zeus, 20-23, 25-26, 58, 61, 62,
Weinreich, O., 67, 71 66, 68-69, 75, 77-79, 97,
Wisdom, 101, 158, 162 114-120, 141, 157
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