GakuseiDon

An "earthly being" means mortal man. Christians claimed that Roman gods were mortal, since they had their beginnings with their births. But they also said that Christ was different, since he was a pre-existent being.

My second article has a section on that called "Spot the mythicist!". I point out that Tertullian in Ad nationes makes the same kinds of claims as M Felix:

"mortal beings (come) from mortals, earthly ones from earthly...

... as we know all those gods of yours to have been instituted by men, all belief in the true Deity is by this very circumstance brought to nought; because, of course, nothing which some time or other had a beginning can rightly seem to be divine...

It is a settled point that a god is born of a god, and that what lacks divinity is born of what is not divine...

Men like Varro and his fellow-dreamers admit into the ranks of the divinity those whom they cannot assert to have been in their primitive condition anything but men; (and this they do) by affirming that they became gods after their death... if they were able to make gods of themselves after their death, pray tell me why they chose to be in an inferior condition at first?

Remember, this is someone who believed that Christ incarnated on earth speaking! If "earthly beings come from earthly ones", then Christ couldn't have been an earthly being. For Tertullian, Christ was divine, even while he was on earth.

krosero

I'm quoting you on this because I need some clarification. You say that Felix is definitely not telling the pagans that they worship wicked men, and that because of this much of my post could no longer stand. On your website you say something -- which I had noted many days ago because I wanted to work with your premises -- that seems to imply something else. From your response to Don:

“What Felix does say is that the pagans are wrong to think that a criminal deserved to be worshiped as a god..."

In his last post, responding to me, TedH has said:

"Octavius is responding to the charge that Christians worship a criminal and his cross and also slamming the pagans who equally worshipped a criminal" (Ted's example being Saturn).

Now I don't think that your position and TedH's are identical or in lockstep. You two can have varying arguments. I just need clarification on your position. If your latest statement is true, what did you mean on your website?

TedH, I will have a reply to your post shortly. I appreciate the compliments and the acknowledgment that this a worthwhile debate.

TedM

MF doesn't tell us what his version of Christianity worships. Doesn't that seem odd? Surely if he worshipped someone who had never been a man at all or who he believed had been wicked--man or not--he would have felt a tremendous need to explain both misconceptions by Caecilius--not only to correct the pagan viewpoint, but also to correct any erroneos competing Christian viewpoint which might have bothered him. The fact that he says neither is for me evidence that he at the least honored a man who had been crucified for his goodness. This is consistent with his utter rejection point by point of the accusation that Christians were immoral and sinful and that their worship "glories in crimes" which were EXPLAINED by a wicked crucified man. It is also consistent with his comments regarding the cross, and the imagery of a man affixed to it as being one who "adores God" "hands outstretched". How could he possibly feel this way if he believed that at the center of the Christian ceremony was belief in a man or even a being who had been crucified due to truly having been wicked?

The tricky part is why he doesn't explain what his Christianity believed about that man. He does say what they don't believe: A man is God. It appears that he is repeating what he says earlier, and provides the Egyptian example to say "We don't worship a man as a god like you do". Well, that is not contrary to current orthodox Christianity, which worships a RISEN Savior who had once been a man. While on earth his divine nature was not equal to that of God--which is why he died--the very point MF uses to explain how a man cannot be God. What is odd is that he doesn't go on to explain what he does believe about the man while he was on earth or afterwards, nor how/who/what Christians do worship.

There are many scenarious that can explain his various silences, but a focus soley on what he does say seems to support belief in a real man who had been righteous who was inspirational, but who wasn't being worshipped as God himself since THAT MAN was dead.

Your "hence" doesn't follow because Christians don't worship an earthly being. They worship a risen savior who they believe had once been a historical man.

ted

krosero

You say my argument has no leg to stand on for two reasons, as far as I can see: that I postulate hypothetical sets which are unnecessary to postulate, and that I'm throwing up smoke by bringing in the original language which I have no knowledge of.

I certainly erred in saying that Octavius was "laying out" for his friend the sets of earthly beings and mortal men. What I meant is very simple. He was just evoking such sets in the mind of his listener -- the way that if you said to me, "a chair," I would think of one chair out of all possible chairs, and if you told me, "the chair," I would of just one chair and no other. You asked me to cite passages. The phrases are right there. First Octavius asks Caecilius to think whether Christians could worship "a criminal," or "an earthly being." Then he says how miserable it is to worship one kind or subset of earthly beings, "mortal man." He then moves on to an Egyptian man, a further subset.

Doherty seems to be in agreement with this. Repeatedly he has told us that we don't know what Felix thought of the man Caecilius was referring to, and that we should think of Octavius as saying, "It's ridiculous to claim that we worship ANY earthly being. It's ridiculous to claim that ANY of our bishops beat their wives. It's ridiculous to claim that we do ANY of the things (such as we hear are done in the Waco cult)." Repeatedly Doherty has said that we need not think of this denial as even having to refer with any specificity to the Waco cult, just to the set of any (or all) practices being alleged. For Doherty, Octavius is saying, "Caecilius, you think we could worship a criminal, but we don't; we could never worship ANY criminal."

Notice I have used only the English translation. If throwing in the Latin phrases throws up "smoke," let me also note that every time I have quoted the Latin phrases, I have been up front that I could not make a judgment beyond my sense that they they do not support Doherty's interpretation; and I have always asked folks competent in Latin to come in and clear up the "smoke," if you will. If you want, I can withdraw the Latin phrases and still go with the English translations. "A criminal" is what the translation says, not "this criminal."

Why do I think this important? Because Doherty was the first to make the distinction important. You write:

The first to quibble over the denotations was Doherty in his online reply to Don:

One is not justified in turning that statement inside out and declaring that he means to say that the man was not a criminal and was not a mortal. Rather, in straightforward fashion, Felix is saying that this "criminal" and this "mortal" is not to be worshiped as a god.

By the way, when I read this many days ago it sounded to me like Felix really does believe that the man existed, for that is the natural meaning of "this man." Doherty has since corrected us several times to say that we cannot be sure what Felix thought of the man's existence, and has told us to think of Felix saying, "We don't worship any criminal", rather than thinking that Felix is saying, "We don't worship this criminal." So I suggest he change the argument on his website, which is misleading.

So Doherty insisted once on "this criminal" (without analyzing the Latin). He tells us now that we are to think of Felix as saying that Christians could never worship "any criminal," and think of him as not even referring to anyone specific. But obviously Doherty, in his previous statements online, sounded like he was painting a slam-dunk case in which Octavius was just agreeing with Caecilius that the man he was thinking of was wicked and not worthy of worship. My argument is that with the phrase, "a criminal," Octavius was asking Caecilius to think of all possible criminals, and asking him whether a guilty criminal could really be the Christian God. Don had insisted some time ago that Felix was referring to an innocent/guilty distinction, and Doherty rejected that distinction by insisting on the reading of "this man."

I don't think, by the way, that we're going to get much by haggling over these distinctions. Both sides of the debates are arguing that Felix was saying, "We don't worship any criminal or any earthly being." For historicists, that means that Christians don't worship any guilty criminal (and the Latin supports this, because from what I've heard in these debates, hominem noxium does not denote someone merely charged with crimes), and they don't worship men who spring from the earth and return to the earth. For mythicists, it means that Felix's Christians don't have any kind of man, regardless of origin or ultimate fate, at the center of worship. I think the debate really lies on what Felix could have meant with the phrases "a criminal" and "an earthly being."

You're absolutely right, but the historicist camp is saying the same thing: Christians do not worship criminals or earthly beings. You're right to refer to the "whole alleged" set of earthly beings: that's really where the key question lies. Did Christians believe Christ to belong to the set of earthly beings? Did they really believe Christ to be a man who sprang from the earth and returned to the earth? Do you have any instance in Christian literature of Christ referred to as "an earthly being"?

You're reaching when you think I assumed this. I used the phrase "who delivered redemption" because you used it. This is just a misunderstanding.

This is an extremely important point. The text says unequivocally that Felix rejected the deification of guilty criminals and earthly beings. We have permission from Felix to say this about him. We have no permission from Felix's text to say that he rejected any instance of worshipping a crucified man. The leap seems small, but look at what a difference it makes in Felix's religion. He goes from a man who can worship a crucified man, to someone who cannot abide that worship and must condemn it. There's the speculation: you and Doherty read it there because you want to read it there.

It will be said that making Felix an orthodox historicist, based on his rejection of deifying criminals and earthly beings, is an equal assumption. But it isn't. Felix simply fits into a Christian sect already postulated with evidence. I think Andrew Criddle suggested in this thread that Felix's language borders on docetist, and if so, that's okay, too: docetists were real; we have evidence that their philosophy was held by real people. But you're asking us, from something not explicit in Felix's text, to multiply the entities of Christian sects. You're asking us to postulate a new Christian philosophy in which an adherent, when he is told that he worships a crucified wicked criminal, insists that he cannot worship that which is fully mortal. Some Christians thought of Christ as fully mortal (Ebionites, "adoptionist" Mark, etctera) -- but they did not deny him as the center of their cult. So Felix is by himself. Without his permission, we've changed his religion from any one of the sects already accounted for, to something not accounted for anywhere. We've multiplied entities without necessity.

(I doubt that any historian, fair-minded toward all models, would do this. He would only be able to produce suspicion -- which is fine in itself -- not evidence).

And what's worse, we've taken Felix as further evidence, a further buttress, to postulate that other Church Fathers could very well have rejected an HJ, too. That, I take it, is the point of saying that he gives us a "smoking gun."

Or perhaps the argument is that Felix is not alone, because other Church Fathers rejected an HJ, too. I can only say that I doubt you have explicit permission from them, either, to place them outside known categories -- though I do not have the time to enter into a wider discussion. If you want to say something about other Fathers, I will have to leave it unchallenged. I can only say I doubt you have permission, because Felix is the "smoking gun." Everything else, I take it, is circumstantial evidence -- silences about an HJ and lots of emphasis on a spiritualized religion like the Logos, etc.

I'm tempted to stop right there, because that argument is really the one I'd want to ultimately stand on (since proofs and disproofs are notoriously difficult to pull off). But you did write other things.

My evidence that “good man� is very much a modern way of looking at Christ, is first of all that so many of us say so in the modern world. In the ancient world, I don't know of any Christian literature that refers to Christ as "a good man." What evidence do you have that he was referred to as "a good man"?

I do.

Yes.

This is where you lose me. There's just too much to debate about here, and it's pointless. All I said was that readers will see a dialogue between two men and two faiths. There is no evidence in the dialogue of a third group being referred to -- this can be said to be another form of multiplying entities without necessity. In this case, "necessity" IMHO would come from somebody saying something explicit or unavoidable. But when there is a reading of the smoking gun passage which allows Octavius and Caecilius to remain opposed on all the questions rather than agreeing on one of the calumnies, and allows Octavius to speak for a wide range of Christianities credibly, why is there a need to postulate a separate group of Christians and an undisputed calumny?

Of course not.

A pre-existent god who incarnates never becomes an earthly being. That God becomes flesh and blood. But he remains something that springs from heaven and returns to heaven. An earthly being is someone who, unlike the God, springs from earth and returns to earth.

What can you mean when you say I don't propose an HJ? If you mean that I'm proposing a pre-existent Christ who could never be an earthly being, I think I just covered that.

GakuseiDon

In order to lessen the amound of clutter, I'm going to largely bow out of the debate, other than the odd comment where I feel my meagre knowledge of Second Century literature may be useful. Krosero is doing a much better job than I ever could. I must admit that I'm close to changing my mind from "M Felix is not incompatible to orthodox Christianity" to "M Felix is ONLY compatible to orthodox or gnostic Christianity".

EarlDoherty

You are misinterpreting here. The word “ceremonias� is not meant to apply to all of the accusations, as though Caecilius is saying, he who explains all these practices of worshiping asses and killing children by reference to a man…� The “ceremonies� refers to, shall we say, church services, ceremonies of worship, which is why other translations have rendered this sentence such as: “And anyone who says that the objects of their worship are a man…�

This is too subtle a reading. Just because the sentence has been structured to make the point that wicked people worship wicked men (i.e., criminals) doesn’t mean that there is somehow a lack of emphasis on worshiping a man. These kinds of minute distinctions are regularly used to draw equally subtle and minute conclusions which can hardly be considered secure.

But what are we to conclude from these speculative exercises? Something “sounds like� as though it might be possibly this, or possibly that…What do these ruminations prove? And I have already demonstrated that the references to honor and love to an illustrious and good man has no direct connection back to the crucified man. You would first have to show how that demonstration was wrong. No one has yet done that, and a few have admitted that my analysis is correct.

This is a prime example of how such microscopic examination of the text leads one off on erroneous tangents and equally erroneous conclusions. He adds the point in bold because he is throwing back Caecilius’ accusation at him. You say we worship a man crucified on a cross, well, your trophies are not only cross-like, they also have the appearance of a man affixed to it. We don’t know what the latter refers to, whether a man-like shape or an actual representation of a man (I don’t know of any Roman trophies that have men affixed to cross-like elements.) But there is no special or hidden significance in this remark. Octavius is simply trying to parallel the pagan accusation with an equivalent rejoinder (not too efficiently done, I have to say).

I’m going to paraphrase someone here, I can’t remember who, and I’m too tired to look back through all the posts of the last couple of days. Whoever it was, asked why, if Felix condemns the pagan for accusing him of worshiping a crucified man and denying that he does so, why doesn’t he tell us just WHAT it was he worshipped? This is part of that misunderstanding of what constituted Christianity and its diversity during this period. The simple answer to your question is that he didn’t WORSHIP anything. As far as I can see, members of a Logos religion did not worship the Logos, any more than Philo worshiped his earlier version of the Logos, and I think I may have used that word misleadingly in my long post on the “intermediary Son� expressions of the time.

None of the apologists, such as Athenagoras and Theophilus, ever say that they “worship� the Logos. The object of their worship is God himself. Theophilus: “But God, the living and true God, I worship, knowing that the king is made by him.� (Bk.I, Ch.11). When he speaks of the word in Bk.2, Ch.10, he calls the Word “holy�, but describes it as begotten of God, but there is no question of worshiping the Word itself in distinction from God. The same is true of Athenagoras. Chapter 10 gives an account of God and his Son, the Logos, but there is no worship of the Logos.

This point is, ironically, best laid out by Justin, in the recounting of his conversion experience with the old man, which you may remember I claimed made no mention of an earthly Jesus (much to Don’s chagrin). In chapter 7, the old man is describing how the ancient Hebrew prophets, inspired by the Holy Spirit, revealed the truth: “they both glorified the Creator, the God and Father of all things, and proclaimed His Son, the Christ…� Note the distinction. God gets glorified, the Son (Logos) gets proclaimed. The old man concludes: “…for these things cannot be perceived or understood by all, but only by the man to whom God and his Christ have imparted wisdom.� The focus is not on worship, but on knowledge. All the apologists declare that God is the one true deity, and to him they give worship, but the Logos is the channel, the mechanism of transmission, of knowledge, creation, etc. Thus there is no parallel with those sects which worship a crucified man, and reading some significance into the fact that Felix is silent on exactly what he worships is misguided. I don’t remember offhand if Felix anywhere says that he “worships� God, but he certainly spends a lot of time expounding on him and praising him. I suppose he might have said, in answer to Caecilius’ accusation, something like “we worship God alone,� but that would be a foregone conclusion. In any case, what everyone is overlooking is that the Logos religion had no object of worship that was equivalent to the worship of the crucified man. Paul’s mythical Christ faith did; there is no question that Paul worshiped his Christ. But that too was yet another expression of the wildly varying “intermediary Son� trend of belief during those first two centuries of our era.

EarlDoherty

The reference to Saturn comes in chapter 30, in response to the accusation that Christians slaughter infants and drink their blood. In the “you do it too� portion of his response, he notes that Saturn gave the pagans an example by devouring his children. The pagans worshiped Saturn, so one can say that they worshiped someone who was wicked. But my reference was in connection with the crucified man response. I am saying that Felix does not make it a part of his argument there that the pagans worshiped wicked men. Also, Caecilius’ reference was to a “man,� and Saturn (though Tertullian was to argue that he began as a human being) would not have been treated as a man by Felix for the purposes of his argument.

Other than that, I don’t know how to respond to your question because I can’t follow it. I don’t see how my remark to you that you’ve quoted, and the excerpt from my site to Don contradict one another, or how they are incompatible.

krosero

Don thanks for the vote of confidence, and I hope you stick around and contribute as much as possible. Your 2nd century knowledge is not meagre.

TedM

The structure chosen by the writer reflects the emphasis. The pagan emphasis is on worshipping a criminal, not worship of a man. I'd like to change my own focus some: The pagans didn't emphasize any argument against the historical existence of a man whom Christians worshiped. The very existence of that man may still have been a point of contention, but MF's answer doesn't reveal that that issue was in contention either. MF does address the idea of worshipping a man, but not the very existence of that man. I would expect him to say "that man never existed" if that is what he believed.


I haven't gone back to see your argument, but I agree. There is no direct connection. There is an indirect connection (worship of man crucified which connects to worship of man falsely as a god connects by contrast to genuine honor for a good man who isn't a god). How strong or meaningbul that connection is is subjective, but the connection is real. Nevertheless we don't need to focus on that. I mentioned it along with a clear, indisputable connection between a good man and the cross:

It seems odd that MF is speaking positively about the sign of the cross and connecting it directly to the idea of man adoring God with a pure mind if he is concerned with the Logos only. What does he need a cross for? A "pure mind" signifies knowledge, and "adoring God" signifies worship. But the question is Why would a cross normally used for a criminal be used to illustrate either one of these concepts? The Logos alone doesn't provide an explanation for the importance/meaning of the cross.

As far as I saw when reading the apology late last night for the first time, there is no indication anywhere of more than one group of Christians. It appears to me that there is 1. the pagan conception of Christians and 2. the MF reality of Christians. I see no reference to MF of more than one "reality of Christians". Had MF been aware of one, why didn't he address it?

I tend to agree. However, MF doesn't deny the existence of the man, leaving the possibility that he both "worshipped God" and "proclaimed the man".

My thoughts have been evolving, and I am playing catch-up, probably covering ground already covered here. Three questions:

1. Are you saying that MF was rejecting a known Christian viewpoint (historical Jesus) in favor of his different Christian viewpoint (Logos orientation). What is the evidence for his even having knowledge of some other Christian belief? As far as I can tell he never acknowledges one, and is only correcting incorrect pagan understandings.

2. Is there a good reason to conclude that MF was denying the historical existence of a man Christians at the least proclaimed? As far as I can tell he never says that, and I don't see any good reasons to conclude that.

3. Why does MF find purity of mind and heart in the cross, something that is associated with criminals, if the focus of the faith is the Logos, emphasizing knowledge?

ted

EarlDoherty

It is becoming plain to all, I’m sure, that this debate on Minucius Felix is spinning its wheels. It has degenerated into seemingly endless speculation by the defenders of orthodoxy on what given passages could be saying or implying, based on dubious interpretation, the occasional outright mistranslation, and simply their own imaginations; such speculations are then used as though something akin to established fact. An idea is read into one passage and is then claimed to have an effect on another. More speculation is offered about the state of Christianity in the larger world of the period, and then this is allowed to impose itself on claims of what Felix could or should have meant or written. Rarely is the plain meaning of a passage accepted, or its context properly taken into account.

For Don to blithely inform us that he is withdrawing—supposedly implying that his work is done, or that others have done it for him—while claiming that he is now fully convinced of Minucius Felix’s orthodoxy, is nothing short of laughable, even if it is predictable.

Little is to be gained by continuing to pursue the same merry-go-round of argument. So I am going to cut to the chase. I am throwing down my own gauntlet and challenging Messrs. Don, Ted, Krosero and any others (like Roger Pearse) to directly address it. In the course of my contribution here and on my website, I offered three observations which I have all but called “foolproof� for revealing what Felix meant, his personal attitude toward the crucified man and his cross. If that is true, everything else is superfluous. Taken together, I consider that those three observations make the case irrefutable. Needless to say, they have been largely if not completely ignored.

So here’s my line in the sand. We don’t go any further (at least, I won’t) until the meaning and implication of these three observations have been dealt with thoroughly and honestly, until my analysis has been demonstrated false and the conclusions drawn from it invalid. These observations are based entirely on the text itself. I will go so far as to say that there is no speculation involved, no might’s, no if’s, no could’s, no “readings into� the text, no bringing in outside considerations, wider pictures, or misinterpretations of the nature of Christianity at that time, and no appeal to what other authors allegedly said or meant. This will be a closed laboratory. We will feed Minucius Felix’s own words, ideas and parallels found in the text through the test tube of logical understanding and see what is distilled from it. And I will not accept Don’s withdrawal from the field until he too has taken part in this exercise.

You’ve heard all three of them from me before, in separate posts, one of them in my website rebuttal to Don, but here I am going to put them under a spotlight and present them in the clearest fashion I can, undistracted from any other material. If anyone thinks they can undermine the legitimacy and logic of that layout and interpretation, we will proceed from there.

Number One

The first is in the accusation passage by Caecilius in chapter 9, and I have called this feature by the term “complementary linkage�:

[A-] “He who says that the objects of their worship are a man who suffered the death penalty for his crime, and the deadly wood of the cross, [B-] assigns them altars appropriate for incorrigibly wicked men, so that they actually worship what they deserve.�

In my earlier post in which I pointed out this feature, I presented a principle familiar to NT scholars. Certain things, such as manner of presentation, style of wording, consistent and unique theological content, plot sequences (as in the Gospels), etc., can be identified with virtual certainty as the product of the writer, and not something he has taken over from oral tradition. That principle applies here. The ideas contained in part [B-] of the passage above are literary products of Felix, not something that would have been floating about in ordinary pagan street parlance. The basic accusation that Christians worship a crucified man and his cross are straightforward enough and represent pagan impressions, but the rest is too styled and sophisticated, too literary, and can thus legitimately be seen as the author’s product. What are they? First, the metaphor of “altars� as applied to the man and cross, second—which is the crux of the matter here—the “complementary linkage� of the worshiped objects (man & cross) with the people doing the worshiping, the Christians.

The former is “appropriate for� the latter, says Caecilius. In order for one thing to be appropriate for another, they must show some common central characteristic. For X to be appropriate for Y, they must in some key element be the same; they are complementary. This element in regard to the worshiping Christians, the only element mentioned, is that they are “wicked.� It logically follows that wickedness is being assigned also to the objects of worship, the man and cross. This is virtually a mathematical equation, and just as certain. The final phrase restates the complementary linkage in a different way: “They worship what they deserve.� Evil deserves evil. X is equivalent to Y. Wicked people deserve to worship wicked things. They can hardly be said to deserve good things.

Because those ideas in [B-] are not something which Felix will have derived from outside expression (and there is certainly no evidence to show that they have been), they are his product. It has already been admitted that the debate is a literary device and that Caecilius could well be a fictional character. Thus, the author has fashioned Caecilius’ accusation himself and given it these sophisticated literary features. Thus they must reflect his own thinking, not contradict his own thinking, else he could never have chosen to put things this way. (This is supported even further by how he handles Octavius’ response to the accusation in the later chapter.) The inescapable conclusion is that Felix regarded the idea of worshiping the crucified man as reprehensible, wicked, deserving of condemnation—just as his words, when plainly read, indicate. Our trio of apologists (Don, Krosero and Ted) must demonstrate how this reasoning and its premises are incorrect, without bringing in any extraneous and irrelevant considerations. The above argument is self-contained and stands on its own, a rational and inevitable reading of the text. It must be dealt with in the same way and within the same parameters.

Number Two

I don’t remember if I’ve given this a term, but let’s call it “parallel treatment.� In general, of course, I’ve often made the point that by including the accusation of the crucified man and his cross in with his treatment of all the other accusations, which no one would deny relate to reprehensible things, Felix is indicating that he regards them all in the same light. I’ll repeat again that he didn’t have to fashion things that way, since he was the arbiter of how the debate would be set up, what questions would be dealt with, the order they would be addressed and the language brought to them. On this general point, no one has yet attempted an effective answer as to why, if he really held orthodox views on the crucified man, he would insert it among the others, with a commonality of argument and language creating the strong impression that he is equally critical of them all. There would have been nothing to prevent him from dealing with it separately and creating a far different impression than he has.

But there’s more to it than that. It is not just the inclusion itself of the crucified man in that list of abominations. I have pointed out that they are all dealt with in exactly the same way: similar—even identical—arguments, similar wording. Let me itemize these features of Felix’s response to the several accusations, though I’ll leave the crucified man until last. (a) itemizes the content, (b) is the response designed to deny it, (c) is the “back-at-ya� accusation against the pagans.

1. WORSHIPING THE ASS’S HEAD:
(a) “Thence arises what you say that you hear, that an ass’s head is esteemed among us a divine thing.
(b) Who is such a fool as to worship this? Who is so much more foolish as to believe that it is an object of worship?
(c) unless that you even consecrate whole asses in your stables…and religiously devour those same asses with Isis. Also, you offer up the worship…etc.�

2. THE PRIESTS’ GENITALS (this one is very abbreviated, but we can identify the three features):
(a) “He also who (b) fables [fabulatur] (a) against us about our adoration of the members of the priest, (c) tries to confer upon us what belongs really to himself.� (There follows an account in the Latin of alleged licentious practices on the part of the Romans which no translation I’ve seen actually translates. The ANF presents the original Latin in its place, while others leave out the passage entirely. Victorian sensibilities, extending well into the 20th century, one presumes.)

3. SLAUGHTERING AN INFANT:
(a) “Next, I should like to challenge the man who says or believes that the rites of our initiation are concerned with the slaughter and blood of an infant.
(b) Do you think it possible that so tender and so tiny a body could be the object of fatal wounds? That anyone would murder a babe, hardly brought into the world, and shed and sip that infant blood?
(c) No one could believe this, except one who has the heart to do it. In fact, it is among you that I see newly-begotten sons at times exposed to wild beasts and birds…�

4. THE INCESTUOUS BANQUETS - This one conforms a little less rigidly to the pattern, but the elements are still there:
(a) “And of the incestuous banqueting,
(b) the plotting of demons has falsely devised an enormous fable against us, to stain the glory of our modesty, by the loathing excited by an outrageous infamy...
(c) For these things have rather originated from your own nations. Among the Persians, a promiscuous association between sons and mothers is allowed...�

5. THE CRUCIFIED MAN - Between Nos. 2 and 3 above, as he has done in fashioning Caecilius’ accusation passage in chapter 9, Felix inserts his response to the crucified man charge:
(a) “Moreover [Nam], when you ascribe to us the worship of a malefactor [hominem noxium: criminal, man guilty of a crime] and his cross,
(b) you are traveling a long way from the truth, in assuming that an evil-doer deserved, or a mortal could bring it about, to be believed in as God. That man is to be pitied (ANF: “miserable�) indeed, whose entire hope rests on a mortal man, at whose death all assistance coming from him is at an end.
(c) I grant you that the Egyptians choose a man for their worship…But this man… (I will be examining this passage in more detail as my Number Three item; here we can note that it is in the same vein as the other (c) points in the rest of the list.)

Thus we can see that in all five cases, Felix’s response pattern and the nature of its elements are the same. After (a) itemizing the accusation, he makes (b) a scoffing remark about how stupid, foolish, outlandish or outrageous such an accusation is, how erroneous (a fable, a lie, a wandering far from the truth) it is to think that we are guilty of this, that it is simply not credible, followed by (c) the comeback accusation that the pagans are guilty of doing those very things themselves. (In all this, the author shows surprisingly little imagination; he really is a one-trick pony.)

It should be self-evident that if Felix has imposed the same pattern of response and ideas on all five, that he means the same thing in all five cases, that he has the same attitude—as he has spelled it out—in all five cases. It is simply too bizarre to think or to claim that in one of these cases, he has a precisely opposite attitude, that he does not intend to heap scorn on the accusation that Christians worship a crucified man.

No matter how you read (b) in the crucified man case, it is doing the same thing as the others, regardless of whether he has opted for a little different way of expressing the (b)-type of thought. With the ass’s head, it’s a straight scoff: who is such a fool as to worship an ass’s head? That’s all that is needed. It’s self-evident in his eyes, he expects it to be so in the pagan’s eyes, and it certainly is in ours. In regard to the priests’ genitals, he’s even briefer: this is a fable, he says. When he gets to the slaughter of an infant, he expresses the same incredulity: how can you believe such a thing? How could one possibly be guilty of such an abomination? Regarding the incestuous banquets, it's a fable, an outrageous infamy. As I said in an earlier post, he is reacting to the offensiveness of the activity involved in the charge. When he addresses the charge of worshiping a crucified man, he is still reacting in exactly the same way, but now he adds a nuance to his standard (b)-type response. Unfortunately, that nuance has been responsible for 1800 years of misunderstanding, and given meat for the apologist’s mill. Instead of just calling it an insult, or saying something like: how foolish do you think we are to worship a criminal and his cross, how could you think we would do something like that? he evidently decides that this would not be enough, probably because the point isn’t quite as blatantly self-evident as it is in the other cases. And so he fashions his (b) to include the reasons why it is foolish for anyone to worship a crucified man and for the pagans to think that they would. And what are those reasons? Because no criminal would deserve to be so worshiped, and no mortal could get himself to be so worshiped. These are the reasons why it would be so foolish to do so, reasons Felix felt constrained to supply. It is Felix’s way of highlighting and driving home his dismissal of the validity of the accusation.

To our great chagrin (though the passage would probably not have survived otherwise), what Felix has said also turned out to create the impression of a veiled ambiguity, and this is how the passage has been read ever since. Every Christian commentator who has ever read it has chosen to look behind the lines and find something that is not there. Felix’s valid and very powerful justification for regarding the worship of a man and his cross as foolish and unthinkable—just as the other accusations are foolish and unthinkable—has been turned 180 degrees to mean the opposite. Since Felix declares it is foolish because no criminal deserves to be worshiped, lo! this means he meant to say that the man wasn’t a criminal! Glory be! Since Felix declares it is foolish because a mortal could never get himself to be thought a god, lo! this means he meant to say that the man wasn’t a mortal! Hallelujah! He meant all this, even though he makes no clear statements to that effect, something he could easily have done. This is a totally unnecessary and invalid imposition of meaning on the passage, because, as I’ve shown, the other meaning is there on the surface, in plain sight, fully understandable. It is fully in keeping with the pattern he has established throughout his set of responses. All the charges are the same. They are foolish and unthinkable. The only difference is, in the case of the crucified man, Felix has expanded his (b) response to show why it is foolish and unthinkable.

Let’s see if we can draw even more out of that (b) passage, why he may have chosen to express such thoughts and what it might tell us. 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). Felix thought it was poppycock, and could never bring himself to associate it with the faith of his own group, his own Logos-belief. Why? For the reasons he states to Caecilius. They are clearly emotional reasons, he is viscerally against the thought of worshiping a criminal. (If the man was crucified for a crime, then the assumption is he was a criminal.) He is against the thought of turning a mortal into a god. And so he put those emotional reasons into his response to Caecilius—and there they stand, a witness to how some who called themselves Christians would have no truck with others of the same name who had adopted doctrines that were offensive and philosophically repugnant.

(I might point out in passing that the early documentary record shows all sorts of examples of this kind of diverse, incompatible, antagonistic expressions among the various sects that fall under the general “intermediary Son� umbrella: Ignatius’ condemnation of those who don’t preach a Jesus conforming to his convictions, the author of 1 John referring to certain apostles whom some Christians accept into their homes who are nevertheless “antichrist,� Paul himself rejecting and condemning other apostles of the Christ as agents of Satan, masses of heretics and Gnostics and docetists on the second century scene, each one a ‘son of Satan’ in the eyes of another. The picture presented in Minucius Felix represents another one of these differences, and is completely understandable in that context.)

Before leaving Number Two, I’ll will point out, as I have before, the effect created by the insertion of his general comment after his responses about the ass’s head and the priests’ genitals, and before his responses about the crucified man, the slaughter of infants and the incestuous banquets:

�These and similar indecencies we do not wish to hear; it is disgraceful having to defend ourselves from such charges. People who live a chaste and virtuous life are falsely charged by you with acts which we would not consider possible, except that we see you doing them yourselves.�

Why he chose to insert this in the midst of his list instead of before or after it we don’t know, but the comment cannot be regarded as applying only to the preceding cases. It must also apply to those following, since Felix would have no reason not to have it refer to the infant slaughtering and incestuous banquets charges (it clearly does, and would be covered in his mind by the word “similar�), and because those following the comment show the same pattern of response as the first two—indeed, they are the same as the comment itself reflects, which follows the same pattern of (a) the reference to charges he labels as “indecencies�, (b) calling them false and disgraceful, and (c) the counter-accusation. He has ipso facto labeled the crucified man accusation an “indecency� with all the others, “disgraceful� and something to be defended against.

This multi-faceted pattern of common, parallel thought imposes its necessary meaning on all of the accusations involved: all are to be regarded and treated in the same way. To think that Felix would have fashioned his writing this way and yet meant something entirely different in regard to the one accusation, would be to attribute to him some form of schizophrenia or sheer idiocy. Nothing in the document indicates either. It is this principle of “parallel treatment� and the conclusion to be drawn from it, that I regard as undeniable. It has been done simply through a reading of the text itself, and thus it is irrefutable that the author of Minucius Felix rejected the idea of worshiping a crucified man and was in no way orthodox in his brand of Christianity. To dispute this, Don & Co. would have to demonstrate the invalidity of my analysis here, not through speculative if’s or could’s, not by appealing to extraneous allegations, but by direct examination of the text and my contentions about that text. When an equation is demonstrated as valid on a blackboard, the student who wishes to dispute it must approach the blackboard and use the chalk to demonstrate otherwise, not bring up what the professor had for breakfast, or whether the sweater he was wearing might have affected his markings, nor appeal to what the student heard or understood about what some other professor in a different department wrote on his blackboard.

Number Three

This has been discussed by many of us in the past, so I’ll reduce it to its barest elements.
After (a) itemizing the accusation and (b) giving his reasons for why it is foolish to worship a criminal and put one’s hope in a dead mortal, Felix provides (c) his counter by discussing the case of the Egyptians. What does he say here? He has just expressed the thought that the pagan accusation that Christians worship a crucified man is wrong (far from the truth), because no criminal deserves, and no mortal is able, to be believed a god, and foolish is the person who places his hope in such a figure. Then:

“I grant you that the Egyptians choose a man for their worship; they propitiate only him, they consult him on all matters, they slay sacrificial victims in his honor. Yet, though he is a god in the eyes of others, in his own he is certainly a man, whether he likes it or not, for he does not deceive his own consciousness, whatever he does to that of others…�

So far, he has said, ‘Now I know that the Egyptians have chosen to worship a man as a god, but the truth is he is not a god.’ The clear implication here is that Felix disapproves of the Egyptian practice, simply because it’s based on a falsehood and makes a man something he isn’t, and which he knows he isn’t.

“…The same applies to princes and kings, who are not hailed as great and outstanding men, as would be proper, but overwhelmed with flatteries falsely praising them as gods; whereas, honor would be the most fitting tribute to a man of distinction, and affection the greatest comfort to a benefactor.�

Here Felix offers a further example of the practice of deifying men, in this case princes and kings. Again he is disapproving. He states outright that “praising them as god� is the wrong thing to do. They should simply be “hailed as great and outstanding men.� Enlarging on this last recommendation, he says that the best thing to give to “a man of distinction� is “honor,� and to a “benefactor� it would be “affection.� (Using the ANF translation Don prefers, I would phrase it: the best thing to give to “an illustrious man� is “honor,� and to “a very good man� it would be “love�.)

Look at the words, look at the sequence of ideas. Don and others have completely twisted the meaning and implications of this passage. Felix is saying only this: ‘The Egyptians worship a man as a god, but they shouldn’t; he’s certainly not fooling himself. One should never turn even princes and kings into gods, but instead give them honor and love.’ This is totally incompatible with the orthodox meaning imposed on the crucified man remarks: that the man was not a criminal, that he was not a man but a god and therefore it’s OK that we worship him. How is this compatible with Felix then going on to say that it is not OK for the Egyptians to worship a man as a god? How is the admonition that princes and kings should simply be loved and honored as men compatible with the claim that Felix means that the crucified man was a god and it is OK to treat him as such? That would make the two elements of the passage completely contradictory. Again, Felix would have to be schizophrenic, he would have to fail to see the incompatible dichotomy created by what he has said. There are no if’s, might’s, or could’s involved here. This is seeing the passage for what it says, for the only thing it can be saying.

Appealing to our previous item of discussion (Number Two), if the passage about the Egyptians represents the (c) portion of his response to the accusation, which it does in conformity to the universal pattern, then it represents something he is counter-accusing the pagans of doing, namely worshiping a man. Here, as in my discussion of the (b) portion earlier, Felix has added a dimension of explanation to this comeback: ‘you are the ones who do it [worship a man], but you shouldn’t do it, and here’s why.’ If he is critical of the practice for the Egyptians and condemns it, then he must be condemning it for the crucified man. In this way, it conforms to the “parallel treatment� pattern in all the other charges.

Looking at it from another angle, condemning the practice for the pagans can hardly serve to imply that it’s OK for Christians to do it. That makes zero sense. Since the pattern principle demonstrates that Felix is using his (c)’s as a follow-up and aid to the denials in his (b)’s, then the passage about the Egyptians and princes and kings is logically serving the same purpose here. Otherwise, what is he doing? Is this a stream of consciousness writing? Is there no internal coherence present or intended by the author? That is hardly the case. If he is saying it is not proper to worship men as gods, not proper to give them such praise, but only proper to treat them as men, how can this serve to turn the crucified man into a god, how can it serve to make it proper to worship him, which is what Don and his compatriots are claiming is the relationship between the two parts of the passage? It is quite clearly the very opposite. He condemns the Egyptians’ worship of a man as a god as an enlargement on his view that the Christians don’t (or shouldn’t) do so because of the reasons he’s given in his (b) response. The appearance in the (c) portion of a reference to “a good man� is simply a coincidence. It serves as part of the point Felix is making about how one should treat a man as a man. It is Don and others who, donning their atomistic hats, have once again cried “Hallelujah! This ‘good man’ is a reference back to the crucified man, and shows that the alleged criminal was really regarded as good!� At that point, of course, the atomistic usage breaks down, because the “good man� has been specified as a man, not as a god. But, equally of course, they will take what they can get and run with it.

This analysis of the passage, the relationship between the (c) and the (b) and how one elucidates the other, is undeniable. It is there in the text. The marks are on the blackboard. It, too, is virtually a mathematical equation. To refute it, Don or Krosero or Ted would have to demonstrate how my reading of the sequence of thought, the content of the ideas, was erroneous and give us a better sequence, a better reading of the passage. Place your own marks on the board, and do it without speculation, without extraneous “what if’s� or appeals to other writers, or any of the other paraphernalia of tactics that have been employed.

While it is not a necessary part of my demonstration here, we could glance at the subsequent reference to crosses, just to cover all bases. This, too, conforms to his regular response pattern. First comes the denial (b): “Crosses, moreover, we neither worship nor wish for.� Then the (c) portion. He starts out true to form by accusing them of doing that very thing: “You who consecrate gods of wood, adore wooden crosses perhaps as parts of your gods.� Then he goes on to broaden the topic and adds several examples of the simple appearance of the cross symbol in Roman artifacts, in ships, and in the prayer stance. These additions, of course, he is no longer being critical of. His motive for adding them is simply to point out that the cross is also a natural and common phenomenon, perhaps to make the point that Christians would hardly worship something so universal. (His point is not completely clear here.) But the two together are offered to counter the accusation that Christians worship crosses, and they illustrate—again true to the pattern—the (b) statement that “we neither worship crosses nor wish for them.� Since all of this makes logical sense and consistently shows that the latter phrase means what it says on the surface, in plain fashion, there is no reason for Don & Co. to twist the whole thing into an opposite meaning. As in the case of the phrase “a good man� in regard to the Egyptians, the reference to the prayer stance is simply happenstance. Felix has brought it up to serve as one example of the natural occurrence of the cross sign, nothing more. It cannot with any logic or justification be claimed to have some kind of reference back to the accusation about the cross, to legitimize it for the Christians or reverse the plain meaning of “crosses we neither worship nor wish for.� This is again Don and his supporters thinking—and wishful thinking—under their atomistic hats.

I challenge anyone to demonstrate, with a thorough and logical explanation we can all understand, that each of these three observations on the text is not to be taken the way I have laid them out, and that—especially when all three contribute their collective weight—the conclusion I have drawn from them is not irrefutable.

I will end with another suggestion. There is little doubt that Don and the others will fail to see or admit my case. What exactly they will come up with to counter it remains to be seen. But I would urge others on the sidelines who have been following this debate to weigh in, give us your opinions on the strength of the matter on either side, whether the various arguments have convinced you or not. Otherwise, what we have here (with myself supported by Ted Hoffmann), are two viewpoints shouting at each other from across a divide, an east and a west in which “never the twain shall meet.�