Opposition and the Shaping of Polemical Terminology: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and the Afterlife of Celsus’s Critique
The development of polemical vocabulary in the early Christian discourse on heresy is often a subtle negotiation between inherited language and new theological imperatives. A particularly instructive case is the emergence of the epithet “Opponents” (and cognate terms) in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis as a means of designating and condemning certain heretical groups—especially the Marcionites, who displayed a pronounced antagonism toward the Creator God of the Old Testament. The origins of this epithet and its conceptual framework can be traced in part to the language of “opposition” deployed by the pagan philosopher Celsus in his critique of Christianity, as preserved in Origen’s Contra Celsum (7.18; 7.25).
Celsus, writing in the late second century, engages with what he regards as a novel and unphilosophical religious movement. He interprets Christianity within the larger context of Judaic tradition and Greco-Roman religious norms, often with a satirical or scornful bent. In Contra Celsum 7.18, we find Celsus claiming that the Christian Savior “legislates in opposition” (antinomothetei, ἀντινομοθετεῖ) to the commandments of the Jewish God. This charge presupposes an antithesis between Jesus and Moses, and between their respective teachings: the one, supposedly aligned with wealth, power, and the violent conquest authorized by the God of the Old Testament; the other, a figure who forbids pursuit of wealth, counsel of retaliation, or even the storing up of food and clothing. Having set these two figures in conflict, Celsus insinuates that Jesus’s teaching does not merely differ from that of Moses, but that it actively opposes it. He goes so far as to label Jesus an “angel in opposition” (epi tois enantiois, ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐναντίοις) if one takes seriously the suggestion that the Son would promulgate commandments contrary to those of the Father revealed in the Law.
An illustrative instance of this interplay between Celsus’s critique and the heresiological vocabulary later employed by Clement can be seen in Contra Celsum 7.25. Here, Celsus again attempts to expose a supposed “opposition” (in line with terms like ἀντιτάσσεσθαι and its cognates) between the God of the Law and the God of the Gospel, presenting Jesus’s “turn the other cheek” ethic as antithetical to Moses’s “eye for an eye.” According to Origen, this misunderstanding stems from Christians who themselves have introduced a divide, “separating” (διαιρούντων) the divinity of the Gospel from that of the Law, thus supplying Celsus’s polemic with ammunition. It is precisely this kind of artificially constructed opposition that Clement of Alexandria will later seize upon and transform. By adapting Celsus’s language of contradiction and “opposing” stances, Clement will direct it not against Christianity as a whole—indeed, as Origen argues, the Gospel complements and fulfills the Law rather than contradicting it—but against those heretics who really do set themselves against the Creator. In other words, the rhetorical motif of “opposition” that Celsus employs to characterize Christianity’s alleged antinomian tendencies is taken up by Clement and strategically repurposed. Now the charge of “opposing” (ἀντιτάσσεσθαι) no longer hits all Christians indiscriminately, but is aimed specifically at those sects, like the Marcionites, who truly reject and counter the divine economy of the Law and the Gospel. In this way, the language that Celsus used to depict internal Christian tensions is inverted by Clement into a heresiological weapon that delineates the boundaries of orthodoxy and exposes the genuine “opponents” of God’s will.
Significantly, Celsus’s critique is not aimed exclusively at any one Christian sect; rather, it presents a sweeping indictment of what he perceives as the Christian worldview. Yet Origen, in answering Celsus’s charges, betrays an awareness that the rhetoric of “opposition”—the notion that the God of Jesus and the God of Moses are at odds—finds resonance in certain Christian heresies. While Origen’s retort is aimed at vindicating orthodox Christianity from these accusations, he concedes that Celsus might have encountered Christians who themselves drew stark lines between the Creator (the “God of the Law”) and the good Father revealed by Jesus (the “God of the Gospel”). Although Origen does not directly name the Marcionites in these passages, the theological profile of these “opponents” who separate the two gods aligns closely with Marcion’s dualistic system. Marcion taught that the righteous Creator of this world was distinct and inferior to the good Father revealed by Christ. By urging Christians to reject marriage, material goods, and the procreative mandate, Marcion’s followers enacted a deliberate repudiation of the Creator and his laws.
Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second to early third century, inherits this controversy and is more explicit in naming names. In the Stromateis—a work mixing philosophical, theological, and exegetical reflections—Clement confronts a variety of heretical schools. He singles out those who, like the Marcionites, despise the world’s creator and seek to live “against” him. The language that Clement employs is remarkable for its consistency and richness in terms of “opposition” vocabulary: antitassesthai (ἀντιτάσσεσθαι, “to oppose”), antitaxis (ἀντίταξις, “opposition”), antitetagmenos (ἀντιτεταγμένος, “having been set in opposition”), and related cognates. Beyond mere lexical choice, Clement even designates certain groups as “Antitactae” (Ἀντιτάκται), literally “Opponents,” a name that encapsulates their self-positioning as rebels against the divine ordering of creation.
This development is not a haphazard coincidence. The very rhetoric of “opposition” that Celsus hurled at all Christians, and that Origen strove to neutralize, finds a polemical afterlife in Clement’s writings. Instead of dismissing Celsus’s caricature as a wholesale misunderstanding, Clement appears to reframe it: what Celsus mistakenly attributes to orthodox Christianity is in fact a defining characteristic of certain heretical sects. These heretics do not merely deviate from orthodoxy; they actively set themselves against the norms, laws, and institutions sanctified by the Creator. Through this conceptual pivot, Clement transforms Celsus’s originally indiscriminate charge into a precise accusatory category. Now, the Christians whom Celsus (wrongly, in Clement’s view) accused of antinomianism and opposition to God are exposed as a particular faction within the Christian milieu—namely, the Marcionites and those akin to them.
This polemical strategy proves elegant. By adopting the language of “opposition” from a pagan critic and applying it to “outsiders” within the Christian fold, Clement both acknowledges and refutes Celsus’s argument. He acknowledges it insofar as he concedes that there are indeed Christians who oppose the Creator’s commandments. He refutes it insofar as he demonstrates that these “opponents” are heretical outliers rather than authentic representatives of the faith. Here, Clement performs a theological triage, segregating genuine Christianity from its heretical fringe by criteria that ironically spring, at least in part, from a hostile pagan source.
This rhetorical dynamic deepens our understanding of early Christian boundary-marking. Heresiological discourse frequently adopts the language of its opponents, retools it, and applies it within a Christian framework to marginalize or discredit deviant groups. In this case, the pivot from Celsus’s blanket charge of Christian opposition to Mosaic law (and, by extension, the Creator) to Clement’s pointed description of “Antitactae” and their ilk demonstrates a subtle but decisive shift. Celsus’s polemical barbs become theological instruments in the Church Father’s hand.
We might also note that the Marcionite stance, with its refusal to engage in procreation, its disdain for material goods, and its dismissal of Old Testament moral precepts, provided the perfect foil for Clement’s theological narrative of continuity and fulfillment. Marcionites, as “opponents” of the Creator, cast in stark relief Clement’s own theological position that the same God is the author of both the Law and the Gospel, and that the “antitheses” read into Scripture by sub-Christian theologies are fundamentally misguided. Clement can thus co-opt Celsus’s language of antinomothetein—understood as legislating against the Law—and apply it discerningly to those who actually embrace a dualist theology. The charge of “opposing” divine laws is thus no longer a non-specific polemical cliché; it becomes a technical descriptor for a known theological system, forged in dialogue with a hostile pagan source.
In conclusion, the evidence from Origen’s Contra Celsum and Clement’s Stromateis strongly suggests that the epithet “Opponents” and its conceptual field—antitaxis, antitassesthai, and related forms—found a renewed and more pointed significance in Clement’s heresiological polemic through his encounter with Celsus’s critique. Clement appropriated Celsus’s blanket condemnation, refining it into a tool of theological discrimination. By doing so, he confirmed that the Christian tradition, far from internally divided on this matter, could identify and isolate those who truly merited the charge of “opposition” to God. In contrast to Celsus’s insinuation that all Christians were implicated, Clement demonstrates that only certain heretical factions—Marcionites and their sympathizers—fit such a description. Thus the movement of Clement’s thought is one of selective adoption and re-contextualization: the notion of “opposition” is taken from a hostile outsider’s critique and deployed to mark clear boundaries within the Christian movement itself.
The development of polemical vocabulary in the early Christian discourse on heresy is often a subtle negotiation between inherited language and new theological imperatives. A particularly instructive case is the emergence of the epithet “Opponents” (and cognate terms) in Clement of Alexandria’s Stromateis as a means of designating and condemning certain heretical groups—especially the Marcionites, who displayed a pronounced antagonism toward the Creator God of the Old Testament. The origins of this epithet and its conceptual framework can be traced in part to the language of “opposition” deployed by the pagan philosopher Celsus in his critique of Christianity, as preserved in Origen’s Contra Celsum (7.18; 7.25).
Celsus, writing in the late second century, engages with what he regards as a novel and unphilosophical religious movement. He interprets Christianity within the larger context of Judaic tradition and Greco-Roman religious norms, often with a satirical or scornful bent. In Contra Celsum 7.18, we find Celsus claiming that the Christian Savior “legislates in opposition” (antinomothetei, ἀντινομοθετεῖ) to the commandments of the Jewish God. This charge presupposes an antithesis between Jesus and Moses, and between their respective teachings: the one, supposedly aligned with wealth, power, and the violent conquest authorized by the God of the Old Testament; the other, a figure who forbids pursuit of wealth, counsel of retaliation, or even the storing up of food and clothing. Having set these two figures in conflict, Celsus insinuates that Jesus’s teaching does not merely differ from that of Moses, but that it actively opposes it. He goes so far as to label Jesus an “angel in opposition” (epi tois enantiois, ἐπὶ τοῖς ἐναντίοις) if one takes seriously the suggestion that the Son would promulgate commandments contrary to those of the Father revealed in the Law.
An illustrative instance of this interplay between Celsus’s critique and the heresiological vocabulary later employed by Clement can be seen in Contra Celsum 7.25. Here, Celsus again attempts to expose a supposed “opposition” (in line with terms like ἀντιτάσσεσθαι and its cognates) between the God of the Law and the God of the Gospel, presenting Jesus’s “turn the other cheek” ethic as antithetical to Moses’s “eye for an eye.” According to Origen, this misunderstanding stems from Christians who themselves have introduced a divide, “separating” (διαιρούντων) the divinity of the Gospel from that of the Law, thus supplying Celsus’s polemic with ammunition. It is precisely this kind of artificially constructed opposition that Clement of Alexandria will later seize upon and transform. By adapting Celsus’s language of contradiction and “opposing” stances, Clement will direct it not against Christianity as a whole—indeed, as Origen argues, the Gospel complements and fulfills the Law rather than contradicting it—but against those heretics who really do set themselves against the Creator. In other words, the rhetorical motif of “opposition” that Celsus employs to characterize Christianity’s alleged antinomian tendencies is taken up by Clement and strategically repurposed. Now the charge of “opposing” (ἀντιτάσσεσθαι) no longer hits all Christians indiscriminately, but is aimed specifically at those sects, like the Marcionites, who truly reject and counter the divine economy of the Law and the Gospel. In this way, the language that Celsus used to depict internal Christian tensions is inverted by Clement into a heresiological weapon that delineates the boundaries of orthodoxy and exposes the genuine “opponents” of God’s will.
Significantly, Celsus’s critique is not aimed exclusively at any one Christian sect; rather, it presents a sweeping indictment of what he perceives as the Christian worldview. Yet Origen, in answering Celsus’s charges, betrays an awareness that the rhetoric of “opposition”—the notion that the God of Jesus and the God of Moses are at odds—finds resonance in certain Christian heresies. While Origen’s retort is aimed at vindicating orthodox Christianity from these accusations, he concedes that Celsus might have encountered Christians who themselves drew stark lines between the Creator (the “God of the Law”) and the good Father revealed by Jesus (the “God of the Gospel”). Although Origen does not directly name the Marcionites in these passages, the theological profile of these “opponents” who separate the two gods aligns closely with Marcion’s dualistic system. Marcion taught that the righteous Creator of this world was distinct and inferior to the good Father revealed by Christ. By urging Christians to reject marriage, material goods, and the procreative mandate, Marcion’s followers enacted a deliberate repudiation of the Creator and his laws.
Clement of Alexandria, writing in the late second to early third century, inherits this controversy and is more explicit in naming names. In the Stromateis—a work mixing philosophical, theological, and exegetical reflections—Clement confronts a variety of heretical schools. He singles out those who, like the Marcionites, despise the world’s creator and seek to live “against” him. The language that Clement employs is remarkable for its consistency and richness in terms of “opposition” vocabulary: antitassesthai (ἀντιτάσσεσθαι, “to oppose”), antitaxis (ἀντίταξις, “opposition”), antitetagmenos (ἀντιτεταγμένος, “having been set in opposition”), and related cognates. Beyond mere lexical choice, Clement even designates certain groups as “Antitactae” (Ἀντιτάκται), literally “Opponents,” a name that encapsulates their self-positioning as rebels against the divine ordering of creation.
This development is not a haphazard coincidence. The very rhetoric of “opposition” that Celsus hurled at all Christians, and that Origen strove to neutralize, finds a polemical afterlife in Clement’s writings. Instead of dismissing Celsus’s caricature as a wholesale misunderstanding, Clement appears to reframe it: what Celsus mistakenly attributes to orthodox Christianity is in fact a defining characteristic of certain heretical sects. These heretics do not merely deviate from orthodoxy; they actively set themselves against the norms, laws, and institutions sanctified by the Creator. Through this conceptual pivot, Clement transforms Celsus’s originally indiscriminate charge into a precise accusatory category. Now, the Christians whom Celsus (wrongly, in Clement’s view) accused of antinomianism and opposition to God are exposed as a particular faction within the Christian milieu—namely, the Marcionites and those akin to them.
This polemical strategy proves elegant. By adopting the language of “opposition” from a pagan critic and applying it to “outsiders” within the Christian fold, Clement both acknowledges and refutes Celsus’s argument. He acknowledges it insofar as he concedes that there are indeed Christians who oppose the Creator’s commandments. He refutes it insofar as he demonstrates that these “opponents” are heretical outliers rather than authentic representatives of the faith. Here, Clement performs a theological triage, segregating genuine Christianity from its heretical fringe by criteria that ironically spring, at least in part, from a hostile pagan source.
This rhetorical dynamic deepens our understanding of early Christian boundary-marking. Heresiological discourse frequently adopts the language of its opponents, retools it, and applies it within a Christian framework to marginalize or discredit deviant groups. In this case, the pivot from Celsus’s blanket charge of Christian opposition to Mosaic law (and, by extension, the Creator) to Clement’s pointed description of “Antitactae” and their ilk demonstrates a subtle but decisive shift. Celsus’s polemical barbs become theological instruments in the Church Father’s hand.
We might also note that the Marcionite stance, with its refusal to engage in procreation, its disdain for material goods, and its dismissal of Old Testament moral precepts, provided the perfect foil for Clement’s theological narrative of continuity and fulfillment. Marcionites, as “opponents” of the Creator, cast in stark relief Clement’s own theological position that the same God is the author of both the Law and the Gospel, and that the “antitheses” read into Scripture by sub-Christian theologies are fundamentally misguided. Clement can thus co-opt Celsus’s language of antinomothetein—understood as legislating against the Law—and apply it discerningly to those who actually embrace a dualist theology. The charge of “opposing” divine laws is thus no longer a non-specific polemical cliché; it becomes a technical descriptor for a known theological system, forged in dialogue with a hostile pagan source.
In conclusion, the evidence from Origen’s Contra Celsum and Clement’s Stromateis strongly suggests that the epithet “Opponents” and its conceptual field—antitaxis, antitassesthai, and related forms—found a renewed and more pointed significance in Clement’s heresiological polemic through his encounter with Celsus’s critique. Clement appropriated Celsus’s blanket condemnation, refining it into a tool of theological discrimination. By doing so, he confirmed that the Christian tradition, far from internally divided on this matter, could identify and isolate those who truly merited the charge of “opposition” to God. In contrast to Celsus’s insinuation that all Christians were implicated, Clement demonstrates that only certain heretical factions—Marcionites and their sympathizers—fit such a description. Thus the movement of Clement’s thought is one of selective adoption and re-contextualization: the notion of “opposition” is taken from a hostile outsider’s critique and deployed to mark clear boundaries within the Christian movement itself.
Statistics: Posted by Secret Alias — Wed Dec 18, 2024 7:56 am