Summary: Regarding animal love, Origen the early Christian apologist is even less Christ-like than Celsus the critic of Christianity. Christ is compassion (Matthew 12:6-7). Yet Origen, under Saint Paul's influence, misconstrues Jesus' words, and anthropocentrically argues that humans are superior to all other animals on the ground that in contrast to them, only humans have reason and were made in the image of God; the whole universe were created for the sake of humans, who are entitled to abuse, slaughter and consume animals. As long as they do not become gluttons, humans may eat whatever animal flesh they fancy. By contrast, Celsus thinks that before God, "there is no difference between a man and an ant....", that animals have reason, too, and that God takes care of the whole providence, although he (Celsus) does assert that people's diet should be dictated by their nation's law. Nonetheless, in insisting that with the advent of Christ, even the Mosaic abstinence from swine's flesh was abolished, Origen is even farther away from the Vegan Christ than Celsus.
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1. Who're Origen and Celsus?
Origen of Alexandria (c. 185 – c. 253), also known as Origen Adamantius, was an early Christian scholar, ascetic, and theologian who was born and spent the first half of his career in Alexandria. He was a prolific writer who wrote roughly 2,000 treatises in multiple branches of theology, including textual criticism, biblical exegesis and hermeneutics, homiletics, and spirituality. He was one of the most influential and controversial figures in early Christian theology, apologetics, and asceticism. He has been described as "the greatest genius the early church ever produced".
Celsus (AD 175–177) was a 2nd-century Greek philosopher and opponent of early Christianity. His literary work, The True Word (also Account, Doctrine or Discourse; Greek: Hellenistic Greek: Λόγος Ἀληθής), survives exclusively in quotations from it in Contra Celsum (Against Celsus), preserved entirely in Greek, was Origen's last treatise, written about 248. It is an apologetic work defending orthodox Christianity against the attacks of the pagan philosopher Celsus, who was seen in the ancient world as early Christianity's foremost opponent. In the book, Origen systematically refutes each of Celsus' arguments point by point and argues for a rational basis of Christian faith. Contra Celsum became the most influential of all early Christian apologetics works. This article relies on Contra Celsum as the primary base for our comparison of Origen and Celsus regarding veganism and animal rights.
2. God is Love
God is love (1 John 4:7 NIV); God loves the world (John 3:16), including ALL His creation (Psalm 145:9); Christ is compassion (Matthew 12:6-7). God is love (1 John 4:7 NIV); God loves the world (John 3:16), including ALL His creation (Psalm 145:9); Christ is compassion (Matthew 12:6-7). This is the core of the Christian faith. Anybody who goes against this golden principle is not qualified to be a Christian.
Jesus even died for the cause of animal liberation. In driving out from the Holy Temple those vendors who were buying and selling animals for cruel sacrifice (Matthew 21:12), Jesus offended the chief priests and teachers of the law, for the reason that he was disrupting their revenue stream. Immediately afterwards, "the chief priests and the teachers of the law heard about this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him because the whole crowd was amazed at his teachings"(Mark 11:18). In fact, The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity by Keith Akers (2000) argues that the central event of the Christian faith, the Crucifixion, was predicated upon Christ's readiness to struggle for animal rights. Jesus Christ's rejection of animal sacrifice brought him into direct confrontation with the Temple Priests, resulting in his arrest, trial under Pontius Pilate, and crucifixion.
Down below we will examine who's more Christ-like, Origen or Celsus.
3. Humanity is Superior to Other Animals?
Origen is adamant that humanity is superior to all other animals on the ground that humans are rational creatures while animals are irrational, and that humans were created in the image of God (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 24, 85).
And if he once look upon the source of all impulses, it is manifest that he would behold also the difference which exists, and the superiority of man, not only over ants, but even over elephants.
3.1. No Difference before God
On the other hand, Celsus thinks that "Before God there is no difference between a man and an ant or a bee" (see Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 81), and that "all souls are of the same species" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 83).
3.2. Humans have Reason whilst Animals are Irrational?
Origen asserts that "the possession of reason raises a rational being to a vast superiority over all irrational creatures" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 24).
3.2.2. A High Level of Intelligence in Animals
By contrast, Celsus is adamant that animals have wisdom and rational thinking, too. He points out that not only humans but also animals, e.g., ants and bees, make homes, store food, cremate their deceased folk and communicate with each other (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 81-84). And he thinks that it is absurd to maintain that "plants, and trees, and herbs, and thorns.... grow for the use of man rather than for.... irrational animals" (see Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 75). ''All things.... were not made for man any more than.... for lions, or eagles, or dolphins..." says Celsus (see Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 99)
In rebuttal of Celsus, Origen argues that the former fails to "observe the difference that exists between what is done after reason and consideration, and what is the result of an irrational nature, and is purely mechanical" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 81). Origen scornfully regards animals as irrational creatures driven mechanically by impulses in contrast to humans who are controlled by reason:-
Now does he who, according to his own supposition, looks from heaven upon the proceedings of men and ants, look upon their bodies alone, and not rather have regard to the controlling reason which is called into action by reflection; while, on the other hand, the guiding principle of the latter is irrational, and set in motion irrationally by impulse and fancy, in conjunction with a certain natural apparatus? (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 85)
Origen even unabashedly claims that the hives, cells, and product of labour -- honey -- of the bees are meant to be food and medicine for humans, apparently forgetting the Eighth Commandment, "Thou shalt not steal":-
But the bees have no cities or suburbs; while their hives and hexagonal cells, and succession of labours, are for the sake of men, who require honey for many purposes, both for cure of disordered bodies, and as a pure article of food. (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 82)
3.2.3. Science Proves that Reason is NOT Unique to Humans
As mentioned above, Origen holds that made in God's image, humanity possesses reason whilst all other animals are unreasoning and thus inferior. Yet, God never denied that non-human animals are also made in His image (Chen 2023a). Equally importantly, modern scientific studies have found that reason is not unique to humanity, Many animals, e.g., pigs, dolphins, bonobos, elephants, and many species of birds, are intelligent, far more intelligent than formerly thought. "If being intelligent or using reason identifies one as bearing God’s image, many creatures must be made in the image of God," according to Oord (2015). Below, please find a few examples:-
Dr. Kelly Jaakkola (2005), senior research scientist at the DolphinResearch Center in Grassy Key, Fla and her colleagues have demonstrated that dolphins understand the concept of numerosity.
A 2015 study by researchers from the University of Cambridge and Queen Mary University of London found that New Caledonian crows can reason about hidden causal agents, such as a human or another crow, based on the movement of a stick that they cannot see (Taylor et. al. 2015).
A 2017 study by researchers from the University of Oxford and the University of Vienna found that African grey parrots can reason by exclusion, which is the ability to choose an option by eliminating other alternatives, even when they have no prior knowledge of the items involved (Mikolasch et. al. 2017)
A 2017 study by researchers from the University of Lincoln and the University of Nottingham found that pigs can use a mirror to find hidden food, which is a sign of self-awareness and spatial reasoning (Briefer et. al. 2017).
A 2018 study by researchers from the University of Wyoming and the University of California, Davis found that horses can reason about the location of food based on the emotional expressions of humans, such as happy or angry faces (Proops et. al. 2018)
A 2019 study by researchers from the University of St Andrews and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna found that dogs can reason about the content of human communication, such as pointing gestures or verbal commands, based on the reliability and relevance of the information provided (Kundey et. al. 2019)
3.2.4. Ask "Can they Reason?" rather than "Can they Suffer?"!
Morally and spiritually speaking, as far as animal rights are concerned, whether animals are sentient is even more important than whether they are rational. Pointing to the words of the nineteenth-century utilitarian, Jeremy Bentham (1780: 309n) animal rights advocates claim that the morally relevant question about animals is not "Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer ?" And, animals do indeed suffer, and do indeed feel pain. The researchers (Sawrey et.al. 1958) who force rats to choose between electric shocks and starvation to see if they develop ulcers does so because they are aware that rats have nervous systems similar to humans and feel the pain of shocks in a comparable way.
Jeremy Bentham's (1780) point was echoed two hundred years by Gary Lawrence Francione (2000), who argues in his book Introduction to Animal Rights: Your Child or the Dog? that a theory of abolition should not require that animals have any cognitive characteristic beyond sentience to be full members of the moral community, entitled to the basic, pre-legal right not to be the property of humans.
3.3. Who's Made in the Image of God?
To Origen, humans and other divine beings possess reason because they were made in the image of God, while "irrational animals" were not:-
The human soul was created in the image of God; and they see that it is impossible for a nature fashioned in the divine image to have its (original) features altogether obliterated, and to assume others, formed after I know not what likeness of irrational animals. (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 83)
"For he who looks from heaven will see among irrational creatures, however large their bodies, no other principle than, so to speak, irrationality; while among rational beings he will discover reason, the common possession of men, and of divine and heavenly beings, and perhaps of the Supreme God Himself, on account of which man is said to have been created in the image of God, for the image of the Supreme God is his reason." (Contra Celsum, Book IV,Chapt. 85)
3.3.1. Animals are at Least Partly Made in the Image of God
There is good reason to question whether Christians should think that only humans bear the image of God. Animals at least partly manifest God's image because of the following reasons (Chen 2023a):- Firstly, The Bible never denies that animals are made in the image of God. Secondly, both humanity and other animals were made out of dust by God. Thirdly, God made a covenant with not only humanity but also other animals. Fourthly, many verses in the Bible describe how different animals bear different characteristics of God. Fifthly, both humans and other animals are gifted with a soul. {According to the Hebrew version of Genesis, God endowed all animals with a living soul (נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה Nephesh Chayyah), which is, however, mistranslated as just "life" in almost all mainstream English and Chinese versions of the Bible.} It follows that animals are our fellow creatures, that we should go vegan and stop eating and abusing them.
4. The Whole Universe was Created for the Sake of Humans?
Origen does not only think that humanity is superior to all other animals but also that the whole universe is designed for humans:-
"God made all things for the sake of man"(Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 74).
All things were created for man, and every rational being, and that it was chiefly for the sake of the rational creature that the creation took place. (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 99)
Even.... the most savage animals.... have been created for the purpose of affording exercise to the rational creatures... (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 75)
God, wishing to exercise the human understanding in all countries..., created man a being full of wants, in order that by virtue of his very needy condition, he might be compelled to be the inventor of arts. (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 76)
4.1. God Takes Care of Every Creature
While Origen asserts that "God takes care, not merely of the whole, but beyond the whole, in a special degree of every rational being" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 99), Celsus thinks that "God takes care of the whole, and (His) providence will never forsake it....nor is He angry on account of men any more than on account of apes or flies" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 99).
5. Humans are Entitled to Abuse and Eat Animals?
Based on the premise that God created the universe entirely for the sake of humanity, Origen draws the conclusion that "the Creator, then, has constituted all things the SERVANTS of the rational being and of his natural understanding" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 78), that humans may (ab)use, enslave, exploit, employ, murder for food or hunt for entertainment and/or training all other animals in whatever way the former see fit:-
When we desire it, we [may] keep such wild beasts shut up; and when we need the flesh of their bodies for food, we [may] slaughter them, as we do those beasts which are not of a savage nature... For some purposes we require dogs, say as guardians of our sheep-folds, or of our cattle-yards, or goat-pastures, or of our dwellings; and for other purposes we need oxen, as for agriculture; and for others, again, we make use of those which bear the yoke, or beasts of burden. And so it may be said that the race of lions, and bears, and leopards, and wild boars, and such like, has been given to us in order to call into exercise the elements of the manly character that exists within us. (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 78)
Origen even goes so far as to say that other than humanity, the Lord is not really concerned with any animals at all, even where he may appear to do so:-
it is not for oxen that God is concerned, even where He may appear to legislate for them, or for irrational animals, but that what is written for the sake of men, under the appearance of relating to irrational animals, contains certain truths of nature. (Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 36)
Here Origen is clearly influenced by Paul the carnist apostate, for the former quotes the latter as follows:- "Paul, the apostle of Jesus, says: It is written in the law, You shall not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain. Does God take care for oxen? Or says He it altogether for our sakes?" (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 49). (In 1 Corinthians 9:9, Paul cites Deut 25:4 ["Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain"] and asks, "Is it about oxen that God is concerned?")
In this connection, Origen, just like Paul, seems to forget that Jesus said he came "not" "to be served, but to serve" (Matthew 20:28 NIV), and he told us to be "servant of all" (Mark 9:35 NIV).
And Celsus questions, "If one were to call us the lords of the animal creation because we hunt the other animals and live upon their flesh, we would say, Why were not we rather created on their account, since they hunt and devour us?" (see Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 78)
Again, Origen anthropocentrically retorts that it is our reason that enables and entitles us humans to master other animals (Contra Celsum, Book IV, Chapt. 78).
6. All People are to Eat according to their Nation's Law?
Celsus is less anthropocentric than Origen and more friendly to animals but he is not vegan because he insists that everyone has the "obligation" to "live according to their country's customs" and eat whatever food/flesh their law dictates and abstain from whatever food their law bans (Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 35) for "law is the king of all things" and "there's nothing wrong in each nation observing its established method of worship [even in terms of flesh consumption]" (Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 34). Examples given by Celsus are as follows:-
The Egyptians ... excluded .... the use of cow's flesh.... Some abstain from the flesh of sheep, and others from that of crocodiles; others, again, from that of cows, while they regard swine's flesh with loathing. The Scythians, indeed, regard it as a noble cut to banquet upon human beings. Among the Indians, there are some who deem themselves discharging a holy duty in eating their fathers.(Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 36)
7. No Meat will Defile Humans?
Origen is even more anti-vegan than Celsus. Due to a misinterpretation of Peter's vision of a sheet with animals (Acts 11:7-10), Jesus' alleged "declaration" of all foods clean (Mark 7: 19), and Paul's anti-vegan stance on food (I Cor. 8:8, Origen maintains that with the arrival of Christ, even the Mosaic abstinence from swine's flesh was abolished:-
But neither do the Jews pride themselves upon abstaining from swine's flesh, as if it were some great thing; but upon their having ascertained the nature of clean and unclean animals, and the cause of the distinction, and of swine being classed among the unclean. And these distinctions were signs of certain things until the advent of Jesus; after whose coming it was said to His disciple, who did not yet comprehend the doctrine concerning these matters, but who said, Nothing that is common or unclean has entered into my mouth, What God has cleansed, call not common [Acts 11:7-10] . It therefore in no way affects either the Jews or us that the Egyptian priests abstain not only from the flesh of swine, but also from that of goats, and sheep, and oxen, and fish. But since it is not that which enters into the mouth that defiles a man [Matthew 15:11], and since meat does not commend us to God [1 Corinthians 8:8], we do not set great store on refraining from eating, nor yet are we induced to eat from a gluttonous appetite.... (Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 36)
7.1. Did God Really Want Peter to Kill and Eat Animals?
Based on Acts 10, one day when Apostle Peter was praying on a rooftop, he had a vision in which a large sheet containing four-footed wild beasts, reptiles and fowls was let down from Heaven to him. A voice (God's?) told him to "kill and eat". But Peter declined on the ground that he had never consumed unclean animals. The voice then said thrice, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean," (Acts 10:14) after which the sheet was taken back to Heaven. Many a Christian thinks that this is God's permission for humans to eat all animals. In reality, this vision has only two demonstrable functions:- First, to test Peter's compassion to animals and his loyalty to God's law (cf. Jeremiah 35); Second, to show Peter that God had cleansed all gentiles and removed the divide between gentiles and Jews (as stated by Peter himself upon entering centurion Cornelius's house later on). (Chen 2021a)
7.2. Jesus Never Declared All Foods Clean! (Chen, 2021b)
Jesus' declaring all foods clean, a phrase in parenthesis (Mark 7: 19), and thus permitting the eating of all animals must be a later addition to accommodate the gentiles converting to Christianity, as it is absent in KJV and the Greek manuscripts. For grammarwise, the participial phrase, “purging [καθαρίζων] all [πάντα] the [τὰ] food [βρώματα]?” (Mark 7:19 KJV), it is in grammatical discordance with the rest of the sentence (cf. Beer 2014). And the sign of interrogation (question mark) “is rarely found before the ninth century” (Metzger 1964:27). Equally importantly, the context of Jesus' saying "It is not what enters the mouth that defiles the person, but what comes out of the mouth, this defiles the person” (Matthew 15:11 NASB) is some Pharisees criticizing Jesus' disciples for failing to wash their hands ritualistically before eating bread. The conversation is centered around whether one should hold the tradition of the elders and always wash one's hands before eating. And Jesus' conclusion is: God's command is more significant than men's tradition, and evil thoughts rather than food taken without washing hands defile us. Here, Jesus is not saying that we can eat any kind of unclean food or animal flesh (cf. Beer 2014).
7.3. Paul was Against the Vegan Christ
Paul's teachings are indeed diametrically opposed to Jesus the Vegan Christ's (Chen, 2021c), especially regarding veganism. In I Corinthians 8:4-13, Paul argues that eating meat offered to an idol is not immoral, because “an idol is nothing at all” (I Cor. 8:4 NIV). “Food,” he asserts, “does not bring us near to God; we are no worse if we do not eat, and no better if we do” (I Cor. 8:8 NIV). "To the pure, all things are pure" (Titus 1:15 NIV). On the other hand, in the letter to the church of Thyatira, Jesus rebukes them for tolerating a prophetess who "seduce[s] my servants to ... eat things sacrificed unto idols" (Revelation 2:20 KJV). And The Jerusalem Council led by James the Just, Jesus' natural brother, wrote to Gentile converts the Council's "decision that they should abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals" (Acts 21:25 NIV).
Moreover, Paul advises, "Eating anything sold in the meat market without raising questions of conscience" (1 Corinthians 10:25 NIV). For two thousand years, this has (mis)led numerous Christians to think that it is alright to slaughter innocent animals and eat their flesh. Paul even defames vegans as weaklings in terms of faith:- "One man's faith allows him to eat everything, but another man, whose faith is weak, eats only vegetables" (Romans 14:2 NIV). By contrast, Jesus warns against meat-eating:- “Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh" (Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels). And He admonishes the Pharisees, quoting Hosea 6:6, "Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice" (Matthew 9:13 CSB).
In fact, according to US President Thomas Jefferson, St. Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus" (Washington 1854). As pointed out by Albert Schweitzer (1910) in The Quest for the Historical Jesus, Paul perverted the discourse of Jesus and "displace[d]" it. As argued by Keith Akers (2020), Paul violated Jesus' vegan principle and the Jerusalem Council's vegan decree; as admitted by Paul himself, he was a relative of the Herodian family (Romans 16:11) and his real name was Saul (Acts 7:58, 8;1-3); as interpreted by Robert Eisenman (2012), Paul was the liar described in the Dead Sea Scrolls; according to Thijs Voskuilen (2005), Paul was a Roman spy sent to subvert Jesus' church from inside; as pointed out by Robert Mt. Sion (2013), Paul was the AntiChrist. Paul corrupted Jesus' vegan church and Pauline Christianity has hijacked the Vegan Christ for two thousand years (Chen 2023b).
8. Origenian Abstinence
The only thing ever uttered by Origen concerning abstinence from animal flesh is that as long as you do not eat gluttonously (Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 36) (as mentioned above), it is alright, and that the occasional practice of abstinence is for the purpose of curbing sexual desire rather than for the sake of compassion for innocent creatures of God:-
We, however, when we do abstain, do so because we keep under our body, and bring it into subjection, and desire to mortify our members that are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence; and we use every effort to mortify the deeds of the flesh.(Contra Celsum, Book V, Chapt. 36)
9. Conclusion
Under the spell of Saint Paul the fake apostle, Origen mistakenly believes that God and Jesus have cleansed all meats and condoned animal flesh eating. While God is love and Jesus died for the cause of animal liberation, Origen has no love nor empathy nor compassion for animals at all. He, just like so many modern-day Christian priests, encourages people to use animals to the bone without a moment's hesitation. By contrast, Celsus, though insisting that should abstain only from the kinds of meat prohibited by their country's customs and eat whatever food/flesh their law dictates, thinks that all animals, including humanity, are equal before God, that not only humans but also other animals have rationality and wisdom. Ironically, Celsus the critic of Christianity turns out to be more empathic and Christ-like towards innocent sentient creatures of God than Origen the so-called hard-core apologist for the Christian faith.
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