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“They Saw What They Said They Saw”: Sense Knowledge in Early Christian Polemic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Robert J. Hauck
Robert J. Hauck
Affiliation:
University of Oregon
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Extract

A curious parallel exists between two early Christian discussions of prophetic or divine knowledge. Both deal with the Christian problem of sense knowledge about the divine in a thought world dominated by Platonic thinking: how can Christians base their knowledge of the divine upon the reports of the apostles who claim to have seen God in a human shape? The first of these discussions arises from criticisms from outside; Celsus, the second-century Platonist critic of Christianity, calls the Christians a carnal race who say that God is corporeal and has a human form, and complains, “How are they to know God unless they lay hold of him by sense-perception?” (C. Cel. 7.27, 37). The second comes from within the Christian camp, and is to be found in the Clementine Homilies. In this rather enigmatic text Simon Magus, the arch-heretic, accuses Peter in his reliance upon his apostolic experience of “introducing God in a shape,” and opposes to apostolic sense knowledge his own visionary experiences (Hom. 17.3). The examination of these two texts demonstrates that in their common terms and the common shape of their arguments the issue of the knowledge of the apostles was common in Christian polemics. It was also a problem for philosophically minded Christians who would prefer to place the knowledge of God, even if historically mediated by Jesus, in the intelligible knowledge of the soul, rather than in the senses.

Type
Research Articles
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 81 , Issue 3 , July 1988 , pp. 239 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1988

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References

1 The English translation used is that of Chadwick, Henry, Origen: Contra Celsum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. The Greek text is that of Koetschau, Paul, ed., Origenes Werke, vols. 1–2: Contra Celsum (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1899–1919).Google Scholar

2 C. Cel. 2.55. This is something which happens only to melancholies or fools; see Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7.1.151, and Goldschmidt, Victor, Le système stoïcien et l'idée de temps (2d ed.; Paris: Vrin, 1969) 113 n. 1.Google Scholar

3 See Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 39 n. 1. It is difficult to be certain whether it is Celsus or Origen who places this argument in a Stoic context. Certainly Celsus criticizes Christian reliance on the senses.

4 See the doctrine of Zeno in Cicero Acad. quaes. 1.11.40–41.

5 For a discussion of Stoic epistemology and Academic criticism, see Goldschmidt, Le système stoïcien, and Stough, Charlotte L., Greek Skepticism: A Study in Epistemology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969).Google Scholar

6 πιθανοί and πίθανοι: Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7.1.243.

7 Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7.1.245; see also Cicero Acad. quaes. 2.16.

8 The translation used here is that of Thomas Smith, The Clementine Homilies, ANF 8. 233–345. The Greek text is found in PG 2. cols. 57–468. For an introduction to the scholarly assessment of this literature, see Jones, F. Stanley, “The Pseudo-Clementines: A History of Research,” SecCent 2 (1982) 1–33, 63–96.Google Scholar

9 Hom. Clem. 17.13: Ἔχει γρ νος αὐτο λογίσασθαι μ ἄρα ψεύδεται ἄνθρωπος ὢν τ φαινόμενον. Ἠ δ πτασία ἅμα τῷ φθναι πίστιν παρέχει τῷ ρντι, ὅτι θειότης στίν..

10 Cf. Dio Chrysostom Orat. 11, cited by Chadwick, Contra Celsum, 39 n. 2.

11 C. Cel. 2.60: ὅπερ ναρ μν πιστεύειν γίνεσθαι οὐκ λογον, ὕπαρ δ π τν μ πάντῃ κφρόνων κα φρεντιζόντων ἢ μελαγχολώντων οὐ πιθανόν Cf. Cicero Acad. quaes. 2.16; 2.33, and Sextus Empiricus Adv. math. 7.1.227, 246.

12 Several scholars have noted Origen's willingness to use both Stoic and Academic arguments in his apologetic, and J. M. Rist asserts, in relation to Origen's use of the skeptical argument from the disagreement of philosophers, “[Origen] will be seen to be using the Sceptical approach to indicate not that truth is not attainable, but that new methods of enquiry and new sources of information should be sought” (J. M. Rist, “Beyond Stoic and Platonist: A Sample of Origen's Treatment of Philosophy [Contra Celsum 4.62–70],” in idem, Platonism and Its Christian Heritage [reprinted London: Variorum, 1985] 229)Google Scholar. See also Chadwick, Henry, “Origen, Celsus, and the Stoa,” JTS 48 (1947) 34–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Rist, J. M., “The Importance of Stoic Logic in the Contra Celsum,” in Blumenthal, H. J. and Markus, R. A., eds., Neoplatonism and Early Christian Thought: Essays in Honour of A. H. Armstrong (London: Variorum, 1981) 64–78.Google Scholar

13 Here Origen differs from the LXX, which reads, πίγνωσιν θεο εὑρήσεις. Origen's version is αἴσθησιν θείαν εὑρήσεις,. This variant also occurs in Clement of Alexandria Strom. 1.4.

14 See Crouzel, Henri, Origène et la “connaissance mystique,” (Paris: De Brouwer, 1961)Google Scholar. For the divine sense, see Rahner, Karl, “Le début d'une doctrine des cinque sens spirituels chez Origène,” Revue d'ascètique et de mystique 14 (1932) 113–45Google Scholar, and Harl, Marguerite, “La bouche et le coeur de l'apôtre: Deux images bibliques du ‘sens divin’ de l'homme (Proverbes 2,5) chez Origène,” in Forma Futuri: Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pelligrino (Turin: Erasmo, 1975) 17–42.Google Scholar

15 Many scholars who look for Jewish-Christian, anti-Pauline polemic in this passage make this claim. See, e.g., Cullmann, Oscar, Le problème littéraire et historique du roman pseudo-Clémentin: étude sur le rapport entre le Gnosticisme et le Judéo-Christianisme (Paris: Alcan, 1930) 248–50Google Scholar, 262, and Smith, Terence V., Petrine Controversies in Early Christianity (WUNT 2, ser. 15; Tubingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1985) 213Google Scholar. Peter, however, does not oppose prophetic knowledge to sense knowledge, but rather opposes one kind of prophetic knowledge with another.

16 For a history of the opinions concerning the sources and composition of this Grundschrift, see Jones, “Pseudo-Clementines,” 8–18.

17 Modern exponents of the Tübingen view include Oscar Cullmann, who holds that the Kerygmata Petrou, to which Homily 17 belongs, is an anti-Pauline text incorporated into the larger Grundschrift which is also Jewish-Christian, and Schoeps, who includes Homily 17 in his reconstruction of the Kerygmata Petrou, and depends on the reconstruction for information about Jewish Christianity. Strecker also uses Homily 17 to reconstruct the anti-Paulinism of the Jewish-Christian Kerygmata Petrou. (Cullmann, Le problème littéraire; Schoeps, Hans-Joachim, Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church [trans. Hare, Douglas R. A.; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969];Google ScholarStrecker, Georg, Das Judenchristentum in den Pseudoklementinen [TU 70; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1981]).Google Scholar

18 There are other, more persuasive arguments for the anti-Pauline character of the Kerygmata Petrou. For a summary of these, see G. Strecker, “The Kerygmata Petrou,” NTApoc 2. 102–11.

19 Strecker notes (Judenchristentum, 192 n. 1) that the Clementine Peter's argument against vision is unfortunate because it contradicts the apostle's experience. I have attempted to show that Peter does not argue against prophetic knowledge, but against the wrong kind of prophetic knowledge.

20 Salles represents the point of view which sees a variety of layers in Homily 17. He argues that the polemic against vision represents an earlier, more primitive anti-Paulinism, while the discussion of the kinds of prophecy come from the more sophisticated author of the Kerygmata Petrou (Salles, A., “La diatribe anti-Paulinienne dans le ‘Le roman pseudo-Clémentin’ et l'origine des ‘Kérygmes de Pierre,’“RB 64 [1957] 516–51).Google Scholar

21 For positive and negative responses to the question of whether Origen knew some form of the Clementine literature, see Cadiou, Rene, “Origène et les reconnaissances Clémentines,” RechSR 20 (1930) 506–28, and Strecker, Judenchristentum, 263–64.Google Scholar