The True Word

The True Word (Discourse, Account, or Doctrine; Greek: Λόγος Ἀληθής, Logos Alēthēs) is a lost treatise in which the ancient Greek philosopher Celsus addressed many principal points of Early Christianity and refuted or argued against their validity. In The True Word, Celsus attacked Christianity in three ways; by refuting its philosophical claims, by marking it as a phenomenon associated with the uneducated and lower class, and by cautioning his audience that it was a danger to the Roman Empire. All information concerning the work exists only in the extensive quotations from it in the Contra Celsum ("Against Celsus") written some seventy years later by the Christian Origen. These are believed to be accurate as far as they go, but may not give a fully comprehensive picture of the original work.

Celsus was only one writer in a long tradition of Roman writers and philosophers who wrote and spoke out against Christianity, feeling that their doctrines were either inscrutable or downright foolish. The primary problem that most Roman citizens and the Imperial government had regarding the Christians was their adamant refusal to participate in the required sacrifices that were regularly made to the Emperor and the Roman state, sacrifices that were an integral part of Roman politics, religion, and culture. Most Romans could not understand the Christians' insistence on their own superiority and their insistence upon their apparently exclusive path to salvation. They could also not understand Christianity’s claims that they were a unique religion with a long history reaching back to antiquity, when the Roman philosophers knew that Christianity had broken off from Judaism relatively recently and still used ancient Jewish texts both to formulate their theology and to support their religious claims. These Roman writers, who often professed to be loyal members of the Empire and Roman society, were also “troubled by the seeming incoherence of the Christian position toward society and towards the recognized religion of the state”. All of these factors led to Christians being classified as enemies of society. Roman philosophers also attacked Christian moral and ethical principles because “the Christianity of the first century had yet to develop an assailable system of belief or a fixed canon of writings from which such beliefs could be educed”. Celsus was only one among many, including Lucian, who wrote against Christianity.

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