Celsus (Kelsos), author of The True Doctrine (Alethes Logos)
fl. c. AD 175-180 · Middle & Neo-Platonism · Prominent
Celsus was a Greek philosopher who wrote True Doctrine around 175 to 180, the earliest sustained intellectual attack on Christianity anyone knows of. Not a word of it survives on its own. Everything we have sits inside the passages Origen quotes while refuting him. God cannot change or come down, he argued, a soul might be granted everlasting life but a corpse never could, and the world was made no more for man than for lions or dolphins.
Signature
The position Celsus is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Order
- leans Vertical
- Law
- Customary Law
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Natural Processes
- leans Purposeful (80 on a 0–100 scale from Mechanistic to Purposeful)
- Society
- leans Collectivism (20 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- The Divine
- mildly between Describable and Indescribable (55 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Meaning
- mildly between Constructed and Inherent (44 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Order
- leans Vertical (20 on a 0–100 scale from Vertical to Horizontal)
- Ground of Being
- strongly leans Transcendence (90 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Celsus refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Polytheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Monarchy
What is your ideal form of government? - End of Things
- Eternal Return
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Pure Reason
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Authority
- Sacred Tradition
What is the legitimate source of authority? - Language
- Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Customary Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Ascent of the Soul
What happens at death?