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PORPHYRY'S AGAINST THE CHRISTIANS: THE LITERARY REMAINS
10: The Christian Doctrine of God
 
Apocrit. IV.20-IV.23
 
Let us explore completely this matter of the monarchy of the only God and the manifold rule [polyarchy] of those who are revered as gods. Your idea of the single rule [monarchy] is amiss, for a monarch is not the only man alive but the only man who rules. [63]
 
He rules, obviously, over his kinsmen and those like himself. Take for example the emperor Hadrian: he was a monarch because he ruled over those who were like him by race and nature -- not because he existed alone somewhere or lorded it over oxen and sheep, as some poor shepherd might do. In the same way: the supreme God would not be supreme unless he ruled over other gods. Only this sort of power would do justice to the greatness of God and redound to his honor. [64]
 
[Matt. 22.29-30; Exod. 31.18]
 
You say, "The immortal angels stand before God, those who are not subject to human passion, and these we speak of as gods because they are near the godhead." Why do we argue about names? Is this [difference of opinion] not really a difference over names? The one whom the Greeks call Athena is called Minerva by the Romans, and she is called other things by the Egyptians, the Syrians, the Thracians, and so on. Is something lost (I think not!) in addressing the goddess by different names?
 
Whether one addresses these divine beings as gods or angels matters very little, since their nature remains the same. Matthew supports this when he writes, "Jesus answered and said, 'You do err, for you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God, for in the resurrection, they do not marry nor are they given in marriage but are like the angels in heaven.'" Is this not a confession that [angels] have a share in the divine nature? [And those] who make images as objects of veneration for the gods do not imagine that God [himself] is in the wood or the stone or the bronze used in the making of the image.''
 
They do not think for a moment that if a part of the image is cut off that the power of God is thereby lessened. Such images -- such as those of animals and those in temples -- were erected by ancient peoples for the sake of evoking the memory of the god. They were created so that those who saw them would remember the god or would take time out to perform ritual cleansings, or to make easier the act of prayer, whereby each person supplicates the god for the particular things of which he has need.
 
I hasten to add that if one makes an image of a friend he does not confuse the icon with the friend or believe that the parts of his friend's body are incorporated into the representation. Just so, in the case of sacrifices offered to the gods: the [sacrifices] are not so much an honor paid to the gods as evidence that the worshipers are grateful for what they have received. Furthermore, it seems fitting that the forms of these statues are generally the form of a man because man is the noblest of creatures and an image of God.
 
The Christians seem to endorse this when they conceive of God as having fingers which he sometimes uses in order to write, as when it is said, "He gave the two tablets to Moses, which were written by the finger of God." And the Christians [too], imitating our ways, erect temples and build great houses in which they assemble for prayer, even though they are enjoined to do this in their own houses -- since the Lord can hear them wherever they are. [65]
 
Even if someone among the Greeks were silly enough to think that gods dwelled in statues, [66] his idea would be more sensible than that of the man who believes that the Divine Being entered into the womb of the virginal Mary to become her unborn son -- and then was born, swaddled, [hauled off] to the place of blood and gall, and all the rest of it. [67]
 
[Exod 22.28]
 
Might I also show you a passage where that awful word "gods" crops up, this time from the Law of Moses, where the book veritably shouts to the reader, "You shall not revile gods: you shall not curse a ruler of your people." The passage has clear reference to gods who are already familiar to us -- for example, those envisaged in the words "You shall not chase after other gods" [Jer. 7.6]: and "If you go and worship other gods ... " [Deut. 11.28]. [68]
 
These are gods and not men who are considered worthy of reverence by us. Both Moses and his successor Joshua speak clearly of these gods -- as when Joshua says to the people, "Fear him, serve him only and put away the gods your fathers served" (Josh. 24.14]. It is not about men but about the gods that Paul writes when he says of the spiritual principles, "Though there be so-called gods, whether on earth or in heaven, still to us there is but one God and father, from whom are all things" [1 Cor. 8.5].
 
You are mistaken to think that [the supreme] God is angry if anyone other than himself is called a god. Indeed, rulers do not refuse the title from their subjects: masters [receive the title] from their slaves. Is it right to think that God is more petulant in this regard than men? [69]
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Notes:
 
63. That is, he does not share power and no one is capable of overthrowing him. His rule, however, presupposes the existence of others like him in all ways except with respect to his monarchia, that is, the power that is uniquely his. In the second and third centuries, the term monarchy was employed as a synonym for the unity of the godhead. Western theologians tended to emphasize monarchy as a defense against the charge of polytheism on the one side and atheism (i.e.. refusal to recognize the gods revered in the official cults) on the other. Some Christian teachers, notably Noetus, Praxeas and Sabellius, argued that the distinctions "within" the godhead called "father," "son," and "spirit" described successions of modes or operations of the divine unity. See E. Evans. introduction to Tertullian, Adversus Praxean (London: Routledge, 1948), pp. 6-31.
 
64. That is to say, those who are godlike in being and nature, a class of immortals like that comprising the Roman pantheon. The philosopher employs the familiar argument that there is as much distance between the gods and men as between men and animals. Hence God is monarchial only if one imagines an order of divine beings over which he has supreme authority -- as an earthly king would over his subjects. On the diversity of the created order, cf. Plotinus, 6 Ennead 7.14-16.
 
Macarius is at his strongest in response to this objection, accusing his opponent of reasoning from nominal or generic similarity to actual likeness: "God alone is god absolutely .... [He rules] not by virtue of having the same name as other gods and hence alongside of them, but as supreme and without being one of them." The creator God of Christian thought, unlike the supreme god of Hellenistic speculation, derives his right to rule over creation by virtue of a divine prerogative. Porphyry's critique implies the view that the God of Christian teaching rules over natures essentially unlike his own and hence violates the order of nature, which he is thought to have established. A man may claim to be king over creatures like himself, but king only in a figurative way over creatures unlike himself (i.e., lord or master). The analogy employed is that of a king and his subjects versus a shepherd and his flocks. Macarius seems not to worry over this point; he claims that God's rule is necessarily a rule over the inferior because the divine being has no equal.
 
65. Crafer's translation of this passage has led him to conclude that the erection of great houses or churches implies a time for the writing after 312, "before which date the archaeological evidence for distinctively Christian places of worship is scant." This opinion, however, is susceptible to revision in the light of Christian archaeological evidence from the past fifty years, which suggests that churches had become vast charitable institutions, with buildings and estates to match their growing responsibilities. The data are surveyed comprehensively in the Acts of the IX. International Congress of Christian Archaeology (ACIAC: Rome: Pontifical Inst. of Christian Archaeology, 1978); and see W. H. C. Frend, "Church and People in the Third Century," in his survey, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 398-425.
 
The philosopher's comments make good sense if written before the edicts of toleration in the early fourth century: specifically, the Christians refused to acknowledge the legal impediments to the practice of their faith, and built shrines to rival those of their pagan opponents. A date toward the end of the third century would seem the most plausible. When in February 303 the emperor Diocletian turned his attention to the Christian upper classes, or honestiores, in Roman society, he ordered the attacks be made on the organization of the church rather than on ordinary believers; hence, church buildings and the "possessions" of the churches -- books of scripture and sacred vessels used in celebration-were targeted. Pagan critics of the period -- including Porphyry -- made it clear that the Christians were guilty of accepting "Jewish myths" at face value and had made a criminal into the hero of their cult. See the comments of Lactantius (who was an eyewitness of the events of 303) in his Institutes 5.2 and those of Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 1.2.
 
The philosopher's point concerning the "physical" nature of God has suffered mutation. If the objection is held to be apposite to Macarius' response, then it should argue that while the use of images was advocated by the ancients in order to encourage piety, representations of the supreme God are impious. In view of the uncertainty over the identity of Macarius, it is difficult to assess how well developed the Christian iconography of his day may have been. Porphyry seems to have objected only to literary imagery, suggesting contradictions in Christian interpretation of Jewish scripture; cf. Hoffmann, Celsus, pp. 114-119, and Plotinus, 5 Ennead 3.15f.
 
66. In his response Macarius follows the line that the blessedness of the Christian heaven consists in the absence of death and decay, hence in the exclusion of "physical union" in preference for "rational existence ... associated with the world of immortality." The worldly corollary of this rational existence is taken to be avoidance of marriage and the "symbols of corruption," marriage being considered a symbol of irrational, sensate (sexual) existence. Patristic commendations of the unmarried life can be traced conceptually to Paul and to early eastern monastic practice. While the Council of Elvira in 306 endorsed celibacy for bishops, the Council of Nicaea in 325 rejected a proposal to compel clergy of all ranks to give up cohabitation with their wives. The issue was, in any case, at the forefront of discussion in the fourth-century church.
 
Macarius' circuitous reply is an attempt to say that there is no fundamental disagreement between the teaching of the gospel and "true philosophy" over the value of sexual abstinence. Porphyry's point, however, is that Christians in fact recognize a multiplicity of divine powers in acknowledging that the angels -- whom he equates with the gods --  have a share in the divine nature, and that the expression of these powers in human form as icons is not unreasonable if man is held to be made in God's image. He uses Matt. 22.29-30 to document the inconsistency of Christian teaching in the matter of worship and icon veneration.
 
67. Macarius' interesting use of the Helios metaphor, which also plays a role in defining the Nicene and post-Nicene formulation of the divine sonship of Christ, is not entirely relevant to the philosopher's simple comparison of two kinds of belief: It is far less absurd to think that God lives in statues than to believe that the divine being implanted itself in a virgin, and in the course of time was born, lived, and died as a human being. Macarius' reply shows little awareness of the mid-fifth-century Chalcedonian orthodoxy concerning the "two natures" of Christ, and indeed departs in certain respects from the emergent trinitarian orthodoxy of the fourth century: thus, "The word is made flesh, but does not lower itself to the disease [death?] or humiliation of the flesh .... For just as the sun when it descends into the wetness [of the sea] does not get wet ... so, too, God the Word ... while descending to the flesh [assumes nothing corrupt from it]." The orthodox had long used the sun as a means of describing the unique generation of the son from the father: the rays of the sun are "perpetually" generated by the sun; nevertheless, they are not divisible from its essence nor inferior to it. Macarius seems to confuse the application of the image in saying that the logos was as "unaffected" by human nature as is the sun in its daily descent into the sea. More to the point is his assertion that God is reckoned to have used mud (Gen. 2.7) in creating mankind and hence found it reasonable to "wear flesh from a virgin ... taking the mixture which is more precious than clay, and making from it an image stamped with his godhead."
 
68. Wrongly cited by Crafer as Deut. 12.28.
 
69. The philosopher's point is that neither Christianity nor Judaism is consistent in the matter of monotheistic outlook. The biblical tradition, with its acknowledgment of the gods of other tribes and nations, stands in tension with the formulations of Christian teachers from Justin Martyr onward, who juxtapose a "settled" biblical monotheism derived from Judaism with the glimmers of monotheistic thought derived from philosophy. See Justin's discussion, 1 Apology 59.
 
From the pagan perspective the Christian position appears more inconsistent by virtue of two doctrines: the doctrine of angels, which passed in a developed form from apocalyptic Judaism into first century Christianity, and the belief in the coequal divinity of father, son and spirit within an indivisible godhead. The Christian habit of denying the title "god" to any power other than the fully articulated trinity of persons seems incoherent to the philosopher.
 
Macarius, on the other hand, argues that the things called "gods" in scripture are not gods at all and have no independent existence; rather, they are mistakes made by the ancients in their attempts to intellectualize the divine realm. Porphyry seems to anticipate this defense in his suggestion that different ranks of divine beings are mentioned in scripture without any indication that they are illusory (cf. Gen. 1.26; 6.2; 6.4. etc.).