andrewcriddle

I've been trying to access and read some of the scholarly works on the date of the Octavius. Because of limited familiarity with some of the languages my progress has been slow but I have come across one interesting argument.

In the Attic Nights of Aulus Gellius (online in Latin at http://www.forumromanum.org/literature/gellius.html no complete English translation apparently free online.) Book 18 has Many scholars hold that the common elements (friends from Rome holidaying at Ostia walking along the beach, two speakers with opposing views about ultimate questions thrashing it out with a third as umpire) between this passage from the Attic Nights and the plot of the Octavius cannot be accidental and the Octavius is in all probability to some extent modelled upon the Attic Nights.

If so this has implications for the date. The Attic Nights used to be dated in the early 160's but currently it is dated in the late 170's. (One piece of evidence is what amounts to an obituary of the famous sophist Herodes Atticus in Book 19 'Herodem Atticum, consularem virum, Athenis disserentem audivi Graeca oratione, in qua fere omnes memoriae nostrae universos gravitate atque copia et elegantia vocum longe praestitit'. Herodes Atticus died shortly after 175.)

This would not establish a date for the Octavius after Tertullian but it would require a date after the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Andrew Criddle

krosero

So you choose, for lack of time, not to engage the shortest and clearest of my disproofs. You have had time to engage the longer ones, though. As for your assertion that "things slip behind us and are lost sight of," well yes, that can happen; but I did ask specifically for you to comment on my disproof. If you did somehow forget it, I suggest when you debate that you keep a note of all direct requests or questions that are asked of you.

So we cannot test the proposition that your interpretation is impossible. I will, however, be drawing your attention to one thing I did prove in the post you won't reply to, and it's something you must agree with: that a rejection of guilty criminals and earthly beings as objects of worship is the only thing explicitly in the text. There is no rejection of worshipping God crucified.

I think it was TedM who first said plainly that Christians worship God crucified, rather than saying that Felix could worship a crucified man who was God. I agree with both ways of stating it, but the latter might be confusing to the mythicist side of the debate here, because a "crucified man" certainly sounds like an earthly being. But that is not the way an orthodox or gnostic Christian would have put it: they would not have said that Christ was a crucified man. He was, first and foremost, a heavenly being; and in orthodox Christianity, that heavenly being incarnated into the flesh and blood that earthly beings have, and to that extent became an earthly being, Jesus. But Christ remained what he always was, a heavenly being, or God.

I can't find TedM's exact quote, though, so my apologies if someone else actually said it.

Mr. Doherty, though you have not engaged my challenge, I will be posting a reply to yours.

Amaleq13

Why is the man assumed to be wicked? Because he was crucified.

Unless they can be shown to be concepts Felix held, I fail to see the relevance.

He certainly does NOT! He says that his opponent is wrong to claim that Felix's beliefs involve worshipping a crucified criminal. He neither says nor even suggests that he, instead, worships an innocent crucifixion victim. You can't read something into the text and then claim it is clearly stated, Don.

Felix is implying that a) he does not worship a crucified criminal and b) he does not worship a mortal. There is no suggestion here that he, instead, worships an innocent godman who was crucified. In fact, given that he combines the criminal and his cross as the reason his opponent has gone so far from the truth, one would certainly be justified in thinking both notions are, together, the reason for the distance from truth.

Yes but I think you have deviated from the original to obtain what you want. A more accurate rewrite would read like this:

For in that you believe that Christ was a crucified criminal, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a wicked man deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God.

Based on what Felix actually says, you simply cannot separate the criminal from his cross. He is protesting against the claim that Christians worship a crucified criminal not just a criminal and he does not claim or even suggest that he worships an innocent crucifixion victim.

Again, please note that the above clearly does not represent a view that is "far from the neighbourhood of the truth" with regard to orthodox Christianity so it would be entirely misleading for Felix to say it is. In fact, they would have been quite close to "the truth" and would only need to know that Christians believed Christ to have been innocent to be comfortably in the neighborhood of truth.

Felix does NOT say the man was innocent and the need for a formalized doctrine is a red herring. The innocence of the sacrificed Christ is a central belief from the beginning (ie Paul).

Felix presents a criminal and his cross not just a criminal. He is identified as a wicked criminal because he was crucified. He offers no apology or differentiation between innocent/guilty crucifixion victims and then goes on to describe how a cross might become reverenced without any connection to crucifixion.

Sounds like a focus on a crucified criminal and an attempt to distance the symbol of the cross from the execution tool to me.

None of your response addresses the primary concern with Felix including a misunderstanding of actual beliefs along with a list of complete falsehoods. How does that make sense? Was he just a really, really poor writer?

Amaleq13

Why is the man assumed to be wicked? Because he was crucified.

Unless they can be shown to be concepts Felix held, I fail to see the relevance.

He certainly does NOT! He says that his opponent is wrong to claim that Felix's beliefs involve worshipping a crucified criminal. He neither says nor even suggests that he, instead, worships an innocent crucifixion victim. You can't read something into the text and then claim it is clearly stated, Don.

Felix is implying that a) he does not worship a crucified criminal and b) he does not worship a mortal. There is no suggestion here that he, instead, worships an innocent godman who was crucified. In fact, given that he combines the criminal and his cross as the reason his opponent has gone so far from the truth, one would certainly be justified in thinking both notions are, together, the reason for the distance from truth.

Yes but I think you have deviated from the original to obtain what you want. A more accurate rewrite would read like this:

For in that you believe that Christ was a crucified criminal, you wander far from the neighbourhood of the truth, in thinking either that a crucified criminal deserved, or that an earthly being was able, to be believed God.

Based on what Felix actually says, you simply cannot separate the criminal from his cross. He is protesting against the claim that Christians worship a crucified criminal not just a criminal and he does not claim or even suggest that he worships an innocent crucifixion victim.

Again, please note that the above clearly does not represent a view that is "far from the neighbourhood of the truth" with regard to orthodox Christianity so it would be entirely misleading for Felix to say it is. In fact, they would have been quite close to "the truth" and would only need to know that Christians believed Christ to have been innocent to be comfortably in the neighborhood of truth.

Felix does NOT say the man was innocent and the need for a formalized doctrine is a red herring. The innocence of the sacrificed Christ is a central belief from the beginning (ie Paul).

Felix presents a criminal and his cross not just a criminal. He is identified as a wicked criminal because he was crucified. He offers no apology or differentiation between innocent/guilty crucifixion victims and then goes on to describe how a cross might become reverenced without any connection to crucifixion.

Sounds like a focus on a crucified criminal and an attempt to distance the symbol of the cross from the execution tool to me.

None of your response addresses the primary concern with Felix including a misunderstanding of actual beliefs along with a list of complete falsehoods. How does that make sense? Was he just a really, really poor writer?

krosero

1) A denial of worshipping guilty criminals and earthly beings.
2) A denial of worshipping the innocent and heavenly victim whom Felix, we all agree, had heard about.

Mr. Doherty, which of these is explicitly in the text?

Which one has to be implied from the text?

Which one can be said to be read into the text?

These are not rhetorical questions. They require answers, and I'm asking for yours.

You may have remaining arguments for your interpretation, but your repeated insistence that we are imagining things that are not in the text, that we are not sticking to the explicit text, is sounding increasingly hollow, and self-indicting. Best to stay away from the whole question of what is in the text and what is not.

I ask the questions above because your construction of Felix as a Christian who rejected Christ is a leap, and a huge one. As I said to TedH, it converts Felix, without his explicit permission, from a man who can worship Christ into a man who cannot abide that worship and must condemn it. It actually converts him into the first Christian who rejects all veneration of Christ. The orthodox interpretation keeps him in a known category, although there is sometimes uncertainty as to which known category fits him best (orthodox, gnostic, docetist). Your interpretation is a whole new category: and the only reason you may not regard Felix as being alone in it is that you throw other Fathers in, too, as men who rejected Christ. But I doubt you have anything other than circumstantial evidence for them, too.

Perhaps Don could help here. What is the most explicit statement in the Fathers for a category of Christians who reject Christ and stick to a worship of heavenly categories (i.e., God, Logos, a heavenly "Son")?

So your interpretation multiplies entities unnecessarily, going against Occam's Razor. If a historian took Felix out of sects where his explicit statements fit (and his explicit rejection of worshipping guilty criminals and earthly beings is something that known Christians of a wide variety would have shared), and put him into a new category, he would be asked by his colleagues why he'd set Felix against all the known veneration of Christ without an explicit reason.

There is a category of people who rejected Christ in all forms. Two categories, actually. They're called Jews and pagans. Which one would you like to make Felix?

If you're going to multiply entities, it has to make sense. I'm not going to call Felix a Jew or pagan. He calls his own people "Christians." Yet you say he rejected Christ. Let me try to make sense of this if you won't. We need a description of what your proposal means, in a positive sense.

My suggestion for a new Wikipedia entry:

Minucians, an obscure sect of Christians formerly thought to worship Christ. The evidence for their existence comes entirely from a second-century work called the Octavius of Felix, after its author, Minicius Felix, the only known adherent of the sect. In his work, Minicius speaks of two other men belonging in his group, but there is no reason to believe that these two men were real people, given the didactical nature of the dialogue in which they appear. Felix speaks in general terms of many others of his group, and calls them "Christians," but it is believed that he made no distinction in his work between his own sect and all the other forms of Christianity, which did accept Christ in one form or another. We know this from one of his statements in his work, where he denies worshipping criminal men and earthly beings.

And we have good evidence that some Christians of the time saw Christ as a fully mortal and criminal man. That attitude had formerly been thought to be confined to Jews and pagans, but a search of other Church Fathers of the time reveals evidence -- none of it as strong as Felix's evidence, unfortunately -- for a whole stripe of Christianity that rejected Christ. This we know from the absence in their work of a embrace of Christ, and the emphasis in their works on other theological constructs like the Logos.

No evidence yet has been found of early Church Fathers debating whether Christ should be accepted. A possible explanation may be that Felix's original work did not speak of Christians, but rather of something else that would normally be categorized as pagan, and that the later Church changed Felix's text so that it referred in those several places to "Christians". According to this solution, the debate between Felix's two friends was entirely inter-pagan, and while that makes nonsense of much of the dialogue, which speaks at length about deciding between pagan polytheism and Christian monotheism, there is no reason to suppose that some pagans were not monotheistic, too. Variously, we can suppose that the later Church added those long passages.

The later Church made no change to the passage rejecting the worship of criminal men and all earthly beings, because the passage agreed with nearly all other Christian views from the time of Christ, including theirs.

It is supposed that the later Church Furthers understood that Felix would have rejected their views as readily as Jews and pagans would have, though it can be supposed that the later Church simply did not know.

As for the mysterious question of why Felix's text shows clear signs of separation from Jews and antipathy toward pagans, the solution is simple. Felix says in his text that Jews were rejected by God, and he scorns all the pagan religions, and he scorns all Christians other than himself, because he belongs to a hitherto ignored Minucian sect. There he, in common with other Church Fathers, can reject Christ, but still reject Jews and pagans.

But a serious dispute has begun over whether someone can reject all veneration of Christ and still be properly termed a Christian.

This is a serious attempt at a definition, by the way, and not mere sarcasm. If you can give me a positive definition that makes more sense, by all means, please be my guest.

We can speak about how the entire category of ancient mythicists has nothing explicit, nothing unambiguous, behind it, but that would require another thread.

Now to your challenge.

"They must reflect his own thinking"? This is ridiculous. Felix is constructing the calumnies, of course. His style appears there. But he is constructing the calumnies in order to refute them. How can they represent his own thinking? Octavius represents his thinking. How can Felix mean to say, as you state above, that the Christians really are wicked? (Maybe if he explained to Felix that these Christians were not his, okay, but no distinction is made for Felix, who cannot be supposed to make these distinctions on his own).

You have made the argument again and again that the calumnies were rejected in toto. Why are you saying that Felix did not reject the part about wicked worshippers? I know your reason, of course: because of the smoking gun passage. But you can't have it both ways. You can't have Felix rejecting criminal-worshipping criminals as wicked, and say in the next paragraph that Felix rejected the calumnies without distinction: clearly in your model he thinks, just like Caecilius in his calumny, that the criminal-worshippers are wicked.

You need something else, other than the argument that Felix constructed parts of the dialogue from invention. First, I don't know why he would invent a calumny out of nothing. Secondly, you say there's no evidence that pagans would have regarded Christians as wicked for worshipping a wicked man. What about Tacitus and Celsus? What about the simple proposition that if you see an executed criminal being worshipped, there's a natural suspicion that the worshippers are wicked, too? If I see Hitler or Timothy McVeigh being worshipped, that's exactly what I suspect. Tacitus seems to think that Roman justice did not miscarry, and that the execution of the sect's leader only checked the ugly movement temporarily. Why would commoners who respected Roman justice, and saw it applied toward Christians in tortures and executions, not think at times that these victims really must have deserved it?

I consider Number One soundly refuted.

I too have noticed the stylized nature of the calumny. I have wondered why Caecilius speaks of the crucifixion in separate parts: the wicked man's punishment, and the "deadly wood of the cross." My thinking on it is that Felix wrote it this way because he had separate accusations to deal with: worshipping a man who was wicked and mortal, and worshipping the wood of the cross. I find it completely believable that in the ancient world, there may have been confusion as to whether Christians had their own idol. If real conversations stand behind Felix's dialogue, it's likely that one of the questions involved confusion over whether Christians worship the cross. Perhaps some pagans who converted to Christianity thought of the cross in an idolistic manner -- certainly in the Gospel of Peter we have a talking cross. So there's a small hint here that Felix was not one of those Christians. But indisputably, he wanted to make it clear that Christian ceremonies could not be explained by the wood, just as much as he wanted to reject the charge that they could be explained by pointing to a "a man punished by extreme suffering for his wickedness." He deals first with the worship of wicked mortal, then separately with the idea of worshipping crosses: he says that the pagans might worship wood "as parts of your gods," i.e., as idols.

He splits the calumny into its aspects -- worshipping wickedness, worshipping mortal men, idolatry of wood -- and deals with them separately. That explains his stylizations.

He does deal with it separately. "That the Christians worshipped monsters, devoured infants, mingled in incestuous banquets", he calls "fables", a word he frequently uses to describe pagan mythology. That is, he means complete fictions: or things completely pagan. These fables are listed in chapter 28, which goes on to speak "of incests, of abominations, of sacred rites polluted, of infants immolated", of the asses' head. Finally he speaks of another "fable", the charge about genital worship.

Then he makes the blanket accusation ("unless you proved that they were true concerning yourselves"), and deals with criminals, earthly beings, mortal men, Egyptians, and crosses. At no point does he use the word "fable" in this section about the criminal and his cross.

Chapter 30 returns to one of the previously named "fables," the charge of slaughtering the infant, which he finds offensive in itself, and because he knows of so many examples of infant and human sacrifice in pagan religion.

Chapter 31 returns to another of the fables, incest. No more fables are mentioned. He finishes with discussions of temples, Judaism, resurrection, etc.: and in these cases, for example the resurrection, he finds points of agreement with the pagans.

Amaleq asked earlier why the calumnies are called fables or complete lies, while one calumny, in the traditional reading, is merely a misunderstanding. The fact is that Felix does not call the criminal and his cross a fable. He says what is disgraceful: worshipping wicked mortals, and idolatry of wood. He goes on even to find a point of agreement with the pagans, on the sign of the cross: he says it's something that "we" and "your own religion" both see everywhere.

As noted above, your reading is a huge leap. Your language, "heap scorn on the accusation that Christians worship a crucified man," is valid only if Felix regarded the victim that Caecilius has heard of, as a crucified man; I have argued he called him God crucified, or God's son crucified.

You've already agreed that Felix heard of people worshipping a crucified victim. "We have all admitted that Felix was undoubtedly familiar with sects calling themselves Christian, associated with his own by the pagans, who held to a worship of a crucified man (probably, by this time, based on the Gospels)." You must agree that Felix did not hear of a cult that was worshipping a wicked man, and that Felix did not hear exclusively of Ebionite-like Christians venerating someone as just a mortal man. If you think that Felix had heard of the sect(s) which worshipped Christ as more than earthly, and as not deserving his punishment, then we have to know from Felix how he regarded this man. You call it speculation. I say, if you want to know his attitude toward the man, go with what's in the text: he definitely could accept the unearthly and innocent victim of nearly all the Christians sects (the exception being the earthly but innocent victim of the Ebionites).

Your leap to say that he could not accept this unearthly and innocent victim involves all the problems I mentioned at the beginning of the post (Occam's Razor and the Wikipedia article), which you should regard as part of my refutation of your Number Two. You cannot consider Number Two unrefuted unless you deal with those arguments about the consequences that come with leaping from a rejection of "criminal and earthly" to a rejection of "crucified."

You also need to look at what I said to Amaleq above in this post. In those comments I showed that the calumnies are not all treated, as you claim, in the same fashion. Again you're returning to using the criterion of general coherence to force a meaning upon a specific statement: why?

And let me ask you this. If you think that Felix is rejecting all crucified victims, including the one that he and Caecilius have heard about (Felix has heard the stories more accurately, as involving innocence and otherwordly attributes), why does he not list the criminal and his cross as one of the fables, or as something that is not an object of worship? Why not just put the criminal in chapter 28, and then come back as he does to two of the fables, incest and infant murder? Why does he give the criminal and his cross a separate extended treatment in which he says neither "fable" nor "not an object of worship"?

So you go from saying that the pattern is the same, to saying that in the criminal's case, there is a nuance. Moreover you dismiss the nuance as not meaning anything; in fact I can't be sure what you think it means. You try to recapitulate Felix's thoughts, and I follow your drift, until you indict yourself by listing the things that Felix was going out of his way to specify as disgraceful: "Because no criminal would deserve to be so worshiped, and no mortal could get himself to be so worshiped." Yes, indeed, those are the disgraceful aspects; those are the things he rejects; they are the reasons for the nuance. They are the reasons that he does not simply say, "you stray far from the truth in thinking that we worship man instead of God. Man is sinful and wicked; we do not worship man."

Your argument: he meant not just that he rejected worshipping wicked and earthly beings, but that he rejected Christ crucified and all forms of Christian worship known to us from explicit evidence. My response: "He meant all this, even though he makes no clear statements to that effect, something he could easily have done." When someone can use your own words without any modification, you know there is something wrong with your arguments.

Fact is, everything in the historicist reading would have been perfectly clear to Caecilius and to any pagan readership. Octavius’ statement that the disgraceful things are done only by “yourselves�, without an explanation (thoroughly required by Caecilius) that “yourselves� includes the people whom Caecilius thinks were worshipping a crucified man, leaves Caecilius thinking that Octavius is condemning Caecilius’ people alone, and not the people worshipping a crucified man: he will hear succeeding statements as Christian accusations toward pagans. He will hear that pagans think a criminal deserves deification by Christians, and that pagans think an earthly being deserves deification.

Where is the evidence that Christians disputed whether to accept Christ?

Please see my arguments at the top of the post.

That's right -- and he tells the reader what is disgraceful. There is no rejection of anything but the disgraceful aspects. Show me where he rejects the worship of the innocent, otherwordly crucifixion victim that he had heard about and that had undoubtedly triggered Caecilius' false accusation of wickedness.

This is very strong language, when you are essentially using the criterion of general coherence to "impose" an "undeniable" meaning upon a specific statement. Again, I ask, why?

Changing Felix's religion from having something in common with all Christian acceptance of Christ to a rejection of Christ should require something explicit, and not the general sense, highly susceptible to opinion, that a text hangs together better if a certain passage is read a certain way.

I have never seen the "very good man" comment as referring to the crucified man. No contradiction.

That's right, he does: by telling Caecilius that Christians do not make their God out of mortal men.

It's pretty well established that a modern atheist view of Christ, and the ancient pagan or Jewish view of Christ, was that he was a mortal man wrongly worshipped. Show me that a Christian rejected Christ because he was a mortal, wicked man, or even that a Christian (apart from Ebionites) would have referred to the crucified victim as a man.

I'm glad you identify your "pattern principle" by asking for "coherence", because it's the criterion of coherence that you're using here, and it's already been shown to be used in your arguments beyond its modest and legitimate use.

Numbers One and Two were soundly refuted. Number Three consists mainly in your rejection that the "good man" should be tied to the crucified victim, with an admittedly non-essential glance at the passage on crosses. I have never made the former tie, and since the passage on crosses is non-essential to your argument and mine, I pass it over.

Amaleq13

He calls it "far from the neighbourhood of the truth" which is surely no different from calling it a fable. This differentiation has no merit and the problem remains.

TedM

Are you referring to Don, Krosero, and I in the title? (I'll do you a favor and skip on the smiley faces)..

It may be that Don and Krosero have raised every point I'm going to make, but I want to weigh in with as direct and concise a response I can make to your three points, without adding in a lot of argumentation.


NUMBER 1

You claim that B-1 was the product of the writer, and as such Felix "regarded the idea of worshiping the crucified man as reprehensible, wicked, and deserving of condemnation."

Why couldn't Felix have created B-1 as a "made up" reaction a pagan might have to the idea of the worship of a crucified man?

I see no more reason to conclude that Felix believed that the man and those who worshiped him were wicked, than to conclude that Felix believed anything he put in the mouth of the pagan. ALL of what he wrote was his "product". Some he no doubt believed, such as the comment that infant slaughter was "much to be detested", and some he didn't believe like the comment that Christianity was "a worthy and appropriate religion for such manners" as it pertained to worship of the ass's head.

I see no reason to conclude that Felix believed B-1 to be true, even if it was entirely his own creation. Therefore, there is no reason to conclude that he was referencing a difference between his beliefs and those of other Christians.

You are suggesting 2 things for which there is no evidence, about the charge that wicked "Christians" were worshiping wicked things:

1. Felix believed the ugly charge
2. Felix attributed the charge to Christians with different beliefs.

And, If EITHER of these were true--as you DO conclude--, that poses ADDITIONAL problems for you because we then would have 2 major differences between this charge and the other 4 charges you mention in NUMBER 2. In NONE of those other 4 charges do we have an inkling that Felix believed the negative charges against Christianity, nor that he attributed the charge to another group of Christians. This contrasts with your observation that the 5 charges have similarities in style close enough to be considered "parallels".



NUMBER 2

I agree with your observation that all 5 charges are all dealt with similarly, with primarily 3 main parts. However, he does end the #3, #4, and #5 all with additional comments further illuminating the Christian position.

Krosero has made a good observation that the other 4 are labeled fables though the Crucified Man one isn't. The trick is in figuring out what parts he rejects as untrue and what parts he doesn't.

Much of your argument depends on the idea that Felix rejected orthodoxy. I showed above that we can't depend on that conclusion at all. To cut to the chase, I'll respond to your main conclusion and criticism:


In response to the pagan objection to the worship of a wicked, crucified criminal man, Felix says simply that even thinking that somehow a criminal would be considered(implied) worthy of worship is far from the truth. He says nothing about the man being or not being wicked. He clearly says nothing about the man having or never having existed. He says nothing about some other group of Christians expousing this belief. The best interpretation is that he is saying that a criminal is not worthy of worship. This doesn't conflict with orthodoxy.


In further response to the pagan objection, he says that it incorrect to think that a man can be God, since a man dies (implying that God cannot die). He doesn't say that the man in question (presumably Christ since he refers many times to Christians) existed or didn't exist. He doesn't say anything about worshipping Christ or others who worship Christ, or others who worship a man as though the man is an idol. He simply is unclear about his own viewpoints with regard to the existance and diety of the man. Since Christians don't worship a man, but worship a Risen Savior, his comments don't conflict with orthodoxy either.

What Felix rejected was the pagan idea that Christians worshiped "a criminal and his cross", and of thinking that a mortal man could be God. Neither idea conflicts with orthodox Christianity.



NUMBER 3

I just have a few comments and questions about the cross.

As Don said, Felix rejected the charge that Christians worshiped the cross itself. He's not rejecting the significance of the cross to the Christian faith, and refers to both it's occurrance in nature and pagan religion: "Thus the sign of the cross either is sustained by a natural reason, or your own religion is formed with respect to it". He then explains the sign of the cross by saying it occurs when "when a man adores God with a pure mind, with handsoutstretched."


Felix doesn't say whether the "prayer stance" is the origin of the sign of the cross--and if so why that would be the case, or that the prayer stance is a "sign" that represents an unmentioned origin of the cross. It appears that despite some attempts to show how the cross is found among the pagans, there is an unexplained origin for the cross that is associated with Christianity to the exclusion of other religions. What is the explanation for the cross's FIRST association wth Christianity? What significance should we place on Paul's many mentions of the cross and Christ crucified with NOT A SINGLE mention of the "prayer stance". Do we really have any reason to believe that Christians had a different "prayer stance" that was different from other religions and which preceded or inspired the crucifixion of their Christ?

Felix clearly sees the sign of the cross as meaningful to the Christian faith. Yet, surely Felix knows that the name "Christian" was derived from Christ, and that from the earliest days of Christianity Christ was taught as having been crucified. Felix links the cross with the idea of a man in a holy state, describing the man with terms Christians apply to their Christ. Yet, Felix neither glorifies Christ crucified by specifically identifying him with the sign of the cross, nor rejects the link. Is there much to be concluded by these silences?

ted

krosero

Yes, it's far from the neighborhood of truth. What is? Something about guilty criminals and earthly beings. Is there anything in there about a crucifixion being far from the truth? In the fables, there is NOTHING as a basis of fact but pagan projection. The asses head is not EVEN an object of worship. The discussion of the criminal and his cross does not contain these thoughts. It's different.

Is that conclusive by itself? No, which I why I said Number Two was refuted by my arguments at the top. What do you think? Felix condemns the worship of the wicked and earthly man that exists in Caecilius' head and in the ungenerous rumours he's heard. He speaks not a word against the Christ he did hear of (Doherty, remembers, is invoking even the Gospels here as an agent of spreading this knowledge to Felix's neighborhood), who is innocent and otherworldly (unless you have a Christian story in which Christ was wicked). Why do you think this is?

And are we on solid ground when we say that Felix does reject this man he's heard of? Are we on solid ground in making Felix into someone who calls himself a Christian and rejects Christ?

Amaleq13

The idea that Felix worships a crucified criminal and his cross is what is from the neighborhood of the truth. Your more vague answer to this question does not reflect the text.

Only in that worshipping the criminal and his cross is collectively referred to as "far from the neighborhood of the truth". It would be far from the truth if Doherty is correct about Felix's beliefs but it would not be far from the truth if Felix held "orthodox" beliefs.

Where does Felix declare that there is some basis of fact in their mistaken belief that a crucified criminal and his cross are worshipped? You are simply asserting what you wish was in the text but it simply is not there.

Felix condemns the worship of the crucified criminal for two reasons: neither a wicked man nor a mortal man should be worshipped. The victim is assumed to be both by his opponents. You and Don, however, repeatedly drop the crucial reference to crucifixion to make your arguments appear more credible but that is clearly not a legitimate approach. The wicked man is assumed to be wicked because he has been crucified and Felix accepts that assumption in his defense. To ignore that fact is to refuse to deal with the text as it is written. You simply cannot separate out "wicked" from "crucified" because Felix unapologetically presents them as connected.

Why would he speak out against the "orthodox" Christ? Isn't he responding to false allegations against his own beliefs? "Orthodox" Christianity doesn't actually threaten his position since, according to Doherty, they are ultimately preaching the same general message (ie God's salvation through an intermediary Son). They differ with regard to how they describe that intermediary Son but how does that difference suggest they would oppose one another? In fact, those holding an "orthodox" Christianity could use his argument to support their position by adding precisely what you and Don want to add to Felix's defense. They would simply assert that the figure of their worship was neither guilty nor merely mortal. According to Doherty, Felix has no need to deny the assumption of guilt and add those claims because his beliefs don't require it. He doesn't have to bother with explaining the subtle mistake made by his opponent because the mistake isn't subtle for him. It is just as much a mistake as all the other accusations which he clearly indicates by grouping it with them and making no distinction from them.

No, IMO he is rejecting the offered depiction as an accurate description of his beliefs. It is not true of "orthodox" Christianity and it is not true of Felix's beliefs but it is not true for different reasons as is shown by his defense. It is completely untrue of Felix's beliefs because he worships nothing like a crucified criminal or a mortal man. It is a misunderstanding of "orthodox" beliefs because they worship an innocent crucifixion victim who wasn't merely mortal. Felix's defense makes it pretty clear that he does not feel this is just a misunderstanding of his position.

He doesn't reject Christ. He rejects the offered depiction of his beliefs.

If Doherty is correct about Felix's beliefs, I see no reason for him to complain against "orthodox" Christianity simply because it dresses up the Logos in a fancy party hat. The fundamental message, all that someone with Felix's beliefs would be concerned about, would be the same. Likewise, I'm not sure how "heretical" Felix's beliefs would appear to the "orthodox" Christians given this fundamental commonality. On that note, I think I was incorrect earlier when I argued that Felix considers all crucifixion victims to be wicked. I think Don is correct that this cannot be obtained from the text. His opponent's depiction assumes that the crucified man is wicked and Felix accepts this assumption in his defense. This unapologetic acceptance of that connection, however, is still problematic for any argument that Felix held "orthodox" beliefs.

Ted Hoffman

UNFOUNDED DISTINCTIONS AND SETS

I think that this debate has become quite unreasonable. I really dont know what can come out of it when people feel comfortable to impose anything they want on the text and present spurious points, with a straight face, as arguments.

Specifically, GDon insists that MF rejects “worshiping a wicked man�, NOT “worshiping a crucified man�. I think this is really unreasonable. At no point does MF make any such distinction and at no point does MF indicate that the "criminal" was not wicked but was crucified. But Doherty has already dealt with that.

Krosero writes:
I want to focus on this.
I have specifically rebutted krosero's contention that MF was presenting a set and subset of beings. First, krosero argued that "Octavius was laying out for his friend the sets of earthly beings"
I rebutted this. Vigorously. krosero then admitted that he "certainly erred in saying that Octavius was "laying out" for his friend the sets of earthly beings and mortal men. "

But instead of abandoning this false argument, he shifted it from what Octavius was "laying out", to what MF was doing in the minds of the readers. He now argues that MF "evoking sets in the mind of his listener". This is the same refuted argument but it has been moved further into darker recesses that krosero hopes the sword of reason wont reach: the minds of the readers. Like a cockroach hiding in a narrow crevice, the argument has moved further from the light and out of reach. It is harder to inspect, harder to refute. But this is a familiar challenge. The argument must be dragged out and dissected.

I asked him for phrases that show these sets. He responded "The phrases are right there." And what are these phrases? krosero says: "a criminal," or "an earthly being"
He explains: This is really desperate. But lets deal with it. I will show below that the expression "mortal man" is a descriptive attribute that embodies a characteristic of the entity referred to, and not an invocation of sets. I do this by defining a set, showing characteristics of a set, showing how one can invoke a set and showing how the use of the indefinite article "a" before a noun, does not itself invoke a set, but convey other meaning.
I take krosero's garbled "I would of just one chair and no other." to mean "I mean just one chair and no other." Though in the context and the way he contrasts it with "a chair", he actually means "I mean just one chair and not a set of chairs". I hope the obscure expression has actually proceeded from a clear thought process.

A set is a group of things of the same kind that belong together and are so used for example, a chess set. Now, krosero is arguing that MF is "invoking sets in our minds" by employing the expressions "a criminal," or "an earthly being."
First of all, I am a reader, and MF has invoked no set in my mind. MF has therefore failed to invoke any set in this specific reader's mind.

So, we need to evaluate whether krosero's claim can be illustrated objectively from the passages in question. In order to invoke a set, one has to bring out a common pattern accross groups of things. If I am a prison warden and I call one prisoner "a murderer" and another "a rapist", it would be obvious that I am calling them that because they are either rapists or murderers. Even if there is only one murderer in the prison, the meaning would be clear: one of them comitted rape and the other comitted murder. It is not necessary that if I say "I cant stand a murderer", then it means that I actually mean that there is a group of people called murderers and I cannot stand an instance of that set of people.

How to Invoke a Set

The expression "a murderer" then, would simply mean that I cannot stand someone who kills people even if he is the only one on earth. But If I want to mean that I cannot stand murderers (a set of people), then I would say "I cannot stand murderers". Then I would have invoked a set by using the plural expression "murderers".

If I say I cannot stand a ten foot tall man, it means I cannot stand any man that meets that description. If I say I cannot stand the seven foot tall man, it also means I cannot stand the seven foot tall man that you (the reader) know about. The definite article "the" is employed for specificity and does not itself negate the existence of a set as krosero implies. It means that if I say I want this chair, the expression "this chair" does not itself rule out that there is no set of things called chairs. "This" is used to refer to the person or thing present, nearby, or just mentioned. It simply refers specifically to an instance of a chair. This means krosero is wrong to argue that because "the translation says "a criminal" and not "this criminal.", MF is therefore invoking a set in the minds of readers.

In the same fashion, when MF says Christians cannot worship "a criminal," or "an earthly being", he means exactly that the Christians cannot worship a person who has comitted crimes or a being that live on earth. Period. MF does not say that Christians cannot worship earthly beings or that they cannot worship criminals as krosero claims. MF uses the expression "a criminal" because he is referring to a specific criminal and he uses the expression "an earthly being" to refer to a being that lives/lived on earth.

If he wanted to invoke a set of beings he could have said Christians cannot worship [the] earthly beings. But he does not say that. He refers to a specific being that lives or lived on earth. Therefore he does not invoke a group of [a set] of beings in the minds of readers.

If I said that I cannot love a woman with a forked tongue, that would NOT mean that there exists a set of women with forked tongues and that I cannot love a member of that set. It would simply mean I cannot love a woman that meets that description, whether there is a set of beings that meet that description or not is not discernible from that expression alone.

krosero is therefore guilty of trying to impose meanings upon the text. Meanings that the text is clearly devoid of.

About A Chair

The example "a chair" is an unsuitable analogy because we already know that there are sets of things that fit that set. You are like one trying to draw the target where the arrow has hit. In addition "chair" could be used in the expression to refer to a set of things called chairs (your meaning), or it could refer to something that meets the definition of a chair, even if there is only one chair in the universe.

This latter meaning is better and straightforward because it is more parsimonious but your meaning demands that the reader have some additional knowledge about the existence of a group of entities called chairs. This additional knowledge is not present in Octavius about the existence of a set of beings.

Because of this ambiguity, your interpretation of the expression "a chair" is not secure and therefore cannot be used as an illustration of your point because your argument is that the usage of the article "a" invokes a set. The expression "a pink elephant" falsifies your argument instantly.

About The Latin

If you cannot demonstrate the argument using Latin, you have no argument. Just be decent and drop that argument. Confessing your ignorance in Latin cannot make up for an argument that does not exist. It is like saying "I know that in Greek, Mark meant to show that the demon was Jesus' half brother, its just that I dont know Greek well enough". This is a very lugubrious approach to argumentation and it cannot help understand anything because using that argument, I can also argue: "I know MF refers to the mythical Jesus when he says 'an earthly' being. It's just that I dont know any Latin, but anyone who know Latin can confirm this"

Is that what you want us to do now? Make arguments we cannot support? Please lets be reasonable.