Questions on the Old and New Testament 114.1–114.31

On what grounds the pagans dare to engage with us, or think they can attack our faith, I do not see established, since they have no proofs for their claims, for their superstition, I should say, rather than their religion. They put forward things for which they have no warrant, so that they are rather to be considered the authors and defenders of novelties. In the first place, they claim to worship gods of whom they give no tokens and no testimonies. They call gods those who did not dare to call themselves by this name, so that men are held to be the authors of gods, when God ought to be the author of men; and therefore the claim is vain and empty. Whatever is without God cannot be stable. That what I say is plain is proved by their own books, in which nothing divine, nothing established at a god’s command, is read; rather they state that individual men instituted various sacrifices to divinities for certain reasons, and men of no apparent merit at that, though they would have to show that what these men established was established worthily. Since those whom they call gods are not read to have commanded any of these things, by what authority do they do them, or think them accepted, when they cannot prove they were commanded? And even if a command were proved, it would first have had to be examined whether it was fitting or due to obey beings whose deeds showed no signs or wonders to commend their divinity.

But when they are shut out from these arguments, they usually flee to the elements, saying that they worship those by whose governance human life is ruled. We ask them, as above, whether this was commanded or ordered by God, whom they themselves confess to be great and supreme, and yet neglect. If it ought to be done, it should have been commanded by the one who is said to be the elements’ maker. But if it was not commanded by him, it is presumption and will lead to punishment, not reward, because it is an insult to the Creator that the Lord should be despised and his servants worshiped, the emperor spurned and his counts adored. How will this go unpunished, when we see such things punished even in this life, and indeed more harshly?

But perhaps they will say it was commanded by the elements themselves. Let them show a precept somewhere; let them read that the elements ever said anything. If they cannot show it, what punishment do they deserve, who are exposed as the authors of a presumptuous and invented religion? The elements are free of this ungodliness; the very lights of the world will accuse them before God the judge, showing that they were in no way the authors of this vain counsel. Likewise those whom they call gods, though it is certain they were men, when they begin to be tormented for their own sins, will defend themselves as not guilty on this count, turning the charge back on those who, without any command from them, began to worship them as gods.

With what shame, then, do they think our faith should be blamed or mocked, when they see that its law is supported by the testimonies of mighty works, and they also read the voice of the Lord our God himself saying, “I am God, and there is no other besides me”? If he had said this in bare words, he would not have had to be believed, lest we seem like the pagans, who began to worship their gods without seeing any signs of their majesty, and, what is worse, to worship them shamefully. Shameful things are done there which modesty forbids revealing, and they call themselves prudent, while their own law makes sport of them like a buffoon.

But our God commanded that he be worshiped with his power as witness, and, so as to leave no ground for suspicion, he handed down a law that is itself honorable and holy, as befits God. We, whom the pagans call fools, would not have believed our God unless he had satisfied us with testimonies of mighty works, nor would we have received his law if we had not known it to be pure and worthy of the profession itself.

This is why among us nothing is done in darkness, nothing in secret. Whatever is known to be honorable is not afraid of being made public; but what is shameful and dishonorable cannot be made public, because shame forbids it. For this reason the pagans celebrate their mysteries in darkness, and in that at least they are prudent. They are ashamed to be mocked openly; they do not want the shameful things done there in place of law to be revealed, lest those who call themselves prudent seem dull to the people they call fools.

But perhaps we seem fools to them because our law preaches chastity, mercy, and continence. To them these things are foolish, for every good man seems bad to the bad, and the prudent man seems senseless to the fool. They so detest chastity that they even delight in effeminate men, and submit to their teaching; and unless these men were such, they would not be fit for their religion, if it must be called that. For this reason they are castrated and change their dress, so that from men they become, as it were, women, and, submitting against nature, undergo what women undergo, so that only then are they fit and worthy ministers of their superstition. Can such a man be blamed, whom the law makes such? He is transformed into a woman, having lost both the conduct and the dress of a man, precisely so that he may freely undergo what women undergo.

What, then, are these supposed mysteries, in which the honorable is made dishonorable and the uncorrupted corrupted, when the true worship of religion is this: to make honorable people out of the shameful and modest people out of the undisciplined? How can its worshipers strive for a good life, when the mysteries of their law cannot be celebrated without effeminate men? If their law delights in such men, whoever is not such will be a sinner and a fool. And so they call us fools. Those who practise these shameful things they judge prudent; those who avoid and flee them, fools. This seems to have been arranged by them with cunning and craft. They give their law the name of prudence precisely to cover its blameworthy features, because where there is prudence there is no reproach; but they call our law foolish, so as to keep people from it. But let the names of prudence and folly be set aside, and all the ill will that the defense of both sides produces be removed, and let the laws themselves contend with each other, so that it may appear where prudence lies and where folly. Yet when the sign of the cross is present, paganism falls silent; and if that “prudence” which they call folly is present, their rites dare not respond; the entrails of their victims are checked, and their power hides itself in reverence for the Christian majesty. A great thing, that what they call prudence should fear what they call folly!

Let us now compare the substance of the laws. The pagans profess even in writing that they worship gods and goddesses; and what they say is true, for they worship both males and females. Janus and Saturn, Jupiter and Mercury and Apollo and the rest, and likewise Minerva and Isis, and Frui, and Venus, and Flora the prostitute with the rest, are gods and goddesses, as the histories of both Greeks and Romans testify. But the Christians, poor men whom they call fools, worship in a mystery one God, from whom are all things, and venerate nothing that he has created. They know that he alone suffices for them and abounds for their salvation, aware that if they assign his glory and name to others they will offend him, since no emperor allows his tribunes and counts to be adored with his name.

Let the laws now be compared, so that it may be seen where prudence lies: with one who worships the Creator or with one who worships the creature, with one who worships the Lord or with one who worships his servants? Can it be that in some household, besides the one master, another is called master? Yet the pagans, trained in the learning of the courts and prudent in their own eyes, venerate many gods and goddesses in one world created by one God. They have called the stewards and agents of the world by the name of lord and god, and are thereby shown to be improvident. To assert what brings ruin is the mark of the improvident and foolish, since God must avenge the injury done to him on those who have shared the name and glory of the Lord God with their fellow servants.

Next let the precepts be considered. Our law, the law of those they call fools, commands that overseers and ministers be ordained who are holy, without crime and above reproach. The pagan tradition, on the contrary, holds that overseers and ministers cannot be fit for it unless they are changed from men into women, so as to undergo, freely and publicly, what women undergo, and, shaking out their hair indecently in the water, utter a soft, quavering, and shameful voice. If they did this in public, they would be stoned by the whole people. And there is that Dog-head who goes nodding about through every place seeking the members of Osiris, the adulterer, husband of Isis. See with what ministers, without any true teachers, the pagans claim for themselves the name of prudence, when it belongs not only to imprudence but to crime! To love what is obscene and disgraceful is deadly. And what is that rite in which they are made sport of in a cave with their eyes veiled? Their eyes are veiled lest they shudder at being shamefully dishonored. Some flap their wings like birds, imitating the croak of the raven; others roar like lions; and others, their hands bound with chickens’ intestines, are thrown across pits full of water, while someone comes up with a sword, cuts through the intestines, and calls himself their liberator.

There are other things more shameful still. See in how many ways those who call themselves wise are shamefully made sport of! But because they undergo these things in darkness, they think they can remain unknown. All these things, devised and arranged in secret by wicked and shameful men, the holy Christian faith has exposed and uncovered. When the faith was preached, those who heard it, considering what good and holiness was publicly promised, came over to the faith, leaving behind those hidden, dishonorable, and shameful things and confessing how they had been made sport of through ignorance. For long ago almost everyone was caught up in this error, and so they seemed prudent to themselves, because there was no one to rebuke them. Although all erred under the one deceitful name of idolatry, each arranged his worship according to his own morals and way of life, so that the one error took on variety from the shamefulness and conduct of its founders. Indeed the rites they call those of Liber are dishonorable, utterly vain, and full of madness; for it is hard for the impure not to be given to rage. Indeed everywhere he is seen painted with Priapus, with whom he lived dishonorably.

Their other rites are of the same kind; but that later generations should be caught by these inventions was brought about by the subtlety and cunning of Satan. Although these things were not devised without his counsel, he sprinkled certain illusions over each invention, by which to lure people into error; and so it came about that deceit was commended by the line of antiquity and a shameful invention excused. Through custom what was shameful began not to seem shameful. When people are dishonored, at first they blush; but afterward, as custom flatters them, shame withdraws and the face changes, especially if one sees many others like oneself. The profit of shamefulness comes when those who are called noble are seen to be dishonored; for dishonored nobility easily finds imitators.

If, then, long ago they seemed prudent to themselves because there was no one whom this foul invention displeased, now that by God’s mercy the human race has been enlightened, and it has been declared a crime what passed for law, and folly what was thought a prudent invention, they ought at least to give up this name, if they wish to remain in a crime now exposed, recognizing that the name of wisdom does not belong to them.

But to add to the weight of their own confession, when they are caught in folly they call fools those by whom they are refuted. They attack our faith and its late origin, yet they do not deny that nothing in our precepts can be faulted. Those who attack our faith take up the case not so much against us as against our author. They pronounce us fools, as having believed a foolish thing, and him a liar, a deceiver, and malicious, as one who handed down a faith by which believers would be deceived. So let us first prove that we did not believe foolishly, and then plead the cause of our author.

When we lived in the error in which the pagans still remain, drawn by no signs of mighty works but by bare words, we took up what they call sacred rites, thinking they were of benefit, not because divinity had commended them but because old custom had handed them down; and in that error, as is no secret, mocked by various vanities, we knew no hope of salvation. What could a thing devised by men profit us? But we were persuaded to come to faith in God, and to believe in his Son made flesh and crucified, not by words but by deeds. We saw the dead raised, lepers cleansed, sight restored to a man born blind, demons cast out, and every infirmity healed.

Now let it be judged when we were fools: when we believed bare words, or when we believed deeds? Deeds certainly come before words, since words were invented to signify deeds. If, then, we gave faith to a human tradition invented to make sport of people’s minds, with no power to persuade us, how much more should we give it to this faith, which all the signs that call on God attest to be divine and deifying! Would we not rightly be judged fools if we did not believe mighty works, we who had believed mere words? Would we not reasonably be marked as improvident and thoughtless if we did not follow the hope that calls us, we who had been given over to despair?

“But,” they reply, “what you believe is foolish; for it does not stand to reason that God has a Son, or that dead and dissolved bodies are restored to life again.” All the philosophers and the founders of sects stabbed at one another with various disputations, and none went over to another, because each remained in what he had been steeped in. Since words are open to contradiction, no one overcame another; there was no way by which anyone could show himself the victor, but, wearing one another out with contradictions, none persuaded the other.

Hence God’s providence, whose mind cannot be searched out, joined power to his preaching, so that the truth of the preaching would be proved by the testimony of power, and those who were ready to contradict words would not dare to contradict when they saw power. What greater witness to truth could there be than the working of power?

But if anyone denies the mighty works by attacking the Scriptures, how can he call our faith foolish while denying the Scriptures? Where it is written of Christ that he is to be believed the Son of God, in the same place power is found as witness. And if it seems absurd to someone reading that Christ, the Son of God, was crucified, let him read on and he will find that he rose from the dead, and let him understand that he did not die to no purpose, or unwillingly, he who was able to rise, but that it is a mystery. Whoever he is, then, either he will keep silent about the cross, because, if he calls the cross foolish, he cannot call the resurrection foolish, for the resurrection excuses the cross; or, if he speaks of the cross, he cannot deny that there is providence in it, which he sees confirmed by the testimony of the resurrection. Either both are accepted or both are rejected, so that one who will not defend them should not dare to accuse.

Why he allowed himself to be crucified by his own kin is a mystery to be kept for its place. But he so commended this death that he testified he would be glorified through it. For he says, “I have power to lay down my life,” and, “I have power to take it up again.” He was not compelled to die, then, who had power both to die and to rise. One who rejects this cannot say that death was inflicted on him by force; for if he denies this, he cannot claim that he died either, because these things are contained in the same place where he is read to have been handed over to death. No one condemns what comes later on the basis of what comes before, or the earlier on the basis of the later; for what belongs to one body is not contradictory.

As for the rising of the dead, they say deceitfully that it is foolish to believe it; for they see examples by which it may be judged credible. None of the seeds needed for our use can be reborn unless they have first been dissolved. If God decreed these things in the world for the sake of human beings, why do they think it foolish to believe that he will grant the same to their very bodies, unless because they themselves are fools, who allow God no more than the world can do? Yet a shadow of the mighty works that were done still appears even now. Although it is not now the time for doing mighty works (they had to be done at the beginning, so that the seed of faith might grow by them), even now demons are terrified when the cross of Christ is named and, if it is done more earnestly, are put to flight; and the gods of the pagans, out of dread and fear of the cross when it is named, cannot give their oracles.

If Christ’s death is a disgrace, why is it a terror? Something that comes from a crime should not be feared but despised. Who would fear a man executed for his crime? And if he was innocent, he still cannot be feared, only mourned. So unless the demons, or the gods of the pagans, perceived that the cross of Christ is a sacrament, they would not be terrified when it is named; and, to put it more exactly, unless they were guilty, they would not be afraid. All who belong to the devil’s side consented to Christ’s death. Hence all the demons, or gods of the nations, are shaken with terror when the cross of Christ is named. Whenever anyone is guilty of the death of an innocent man, fear seizes his heart when that man’s name is mentioned, for in recalling the offense he sees himself guilty. How much more the demons, or the gods of the nations, who are guilty of the death of the Lord and Savior of the world!

But the pagans contend that they hold the truth because of its antiquity, “for what is earlier,” they say, “cannot be false,” as though antiquity or old custom prejudged the truth. Murderers, effeminate men, adulterers, and other criminals could defend their unlawful acts in this way, because these acts are ancient and began from the very beginning of the world; whereas from this they ought rather to recognize their error, because what is blameworthy and shameful is shown to have begun badly, while what is honorable and holy is rightly practised; and the shameful and blameworthy cannot have come before the holy and blameless.

Finally, it cannot be denied that the pagan tradition was invented by man, while it is evident that our law was given by God. On the mountain God’s majesty appeared to give the law to men, and, so that it might be believed, he sent before it many signs and wonders done in Egypt, to which the books laid up by Ptolemy in the library of Alexandria still bear witness today. So he deigned to give the law in such a way that no one would doubt that it was God who gave it. God’s majesty was seen by all, openly and plainly, in such brightness and terror that no other god would be believed besides him, and what he commanded would be held worthy of all observance.

And so that everything may agree with what is worthy of God, let the law he handed down be examined, to see whether there is anything unjust in it, anything dishonorable, anything ridiculous. This is how God had to make himself known: not appearing in a corner by imposture, he who cannot be enclosed, nor in a cave, where an enticing deceit is at work so that what is there is other than what is seen, nor handing down things to be observed that would have to be done in darkness because they were dishonorable.

When the knowledge of the one God had been blotted out in the world through the habit of sinning, because falsehood had drawn a veil over the truth, God, kind and merciful, unwilling that his work should be given over to perdition, deigned to visit the human race. He did not appear as those did who falsely wished to be called gods, but showed himself as the truth of God is, so as to remove the error that had corrupted the mind of the world through the preaching of false gods. Indeed more than six hundred thousand men who had come out of Egypt, seeing and recognizing from the appearance of his ineffable glory that this was the Lord above all, were afraid to come near him, but worshiped from afar on bended knee. Afterward, as other signs followed besides all the wonders he had done in Egypt, he was shown to be the one God.

These things became known in almost every language; they were a terror to the neighboring nations. What is there like this among the gods of the nations? To what nation, to what people did they show their glory? What signs or mighty works did they do as testimony to their divinity? Where or when are they shown to have spoken?

But the irrational crowd began to worship as gods either apparitions of shades, or demons, or images of the dead; and this practice, once established as ancient custom, supposes that it can defend the truth of its reasoning, though the reason of truth comes not from custom or antiquity but from God, who is shown to be God not by antiquity but by eternity. For this reason faith is not something that had a beginning but is without beginning: our believing in God has a beginning, but what is believed is eternal. How then do the pagans think themselves earlier, when what they worship comes after God? Does not the work come after the maker? The pagans worship works, we the maker; they the creature, we the Creator. Certainly God made the world; come now, did he not show knowledge of himself to what he made? Or did he make man and not wish to be worshiped by the one he made? That is absurd.

Man, once made, began to venerate his maker, because it is fitting and the case requires it. When this had fallen out of use through human sloth, God restored it in Abraham, so that the knowledge of God that had been in Adam would begin again in Abraham, so that those born of him might be brought up in this knowledge and, through the line of descent, there would never fail to be someone who worshiped God, while people of foreign nations were also called to this knowledge of God. One who knows has a beginning; but the one who is known is above any beginning. On what reasoning, then, do the pagans say that their law came before ours? If the world is before God, which God forbid, then paganism too can be placed before Christianity.

Let no one wonder at the name “Christianity.” It means worshiping one God in the mystery of the Trinity; for even if the name of Christ is thought to come from chrism, the meaning of the name is older than creation. Among our forebears, those who were anointed as kings were called christs, bearing the image of the Christ to come, who, born of God the Father as king, is rightly called Christ, because what chrism gave to them, his birth gave to him. As long as the pagans do not know him, they reject him; but when they have come to know him, they honor him all the more eagerly, rejoicing that they have passed from evil to good. Those who were obstinate in a thing so trivial and absurd, how much stronger and more ardent will they be once they know the truth! What kind of one is our Christ, then, who is hated when unknown and loved when known! Every bad man is loved while unknown and hated once known. How many once hated Christ who now love him and grieve that they hated what they did not know! It is foolish to hate someone you do not know, for it must first be tested whether the thing deserves hatred. Indeed those who oppose him today will defend him tomorrow, repenting that they came so late to know the truth. If it were something deserving hatred or had any deceit in it, every day pagans would be made out of Christians. But since this is the truth, every day, every hour, without ceasing, people abandon Jupiter, among them sophists and nobles of the world who had fashioned him into a god, and take refuge in Christ, to whom be honor and glory for ever and ever.