Against the Heathen 22–31

If it is because the Divine has human form that it has been shaped this way, why do they also give it the figures of irrational creatures? And if its figure is that of irrational animals, why do they also give it the carvings of rational ones? And if it is both, and they have conceived of God from both, as having the figures of both irrational and rational creatures, why do they divide what is joined, separating the carving of irrational creatures from that of men, and not always carve him from both, like the fictions in the myths, Scylla, Charybdis, the Hippocentaur, and the dog-headed Anubis of the Egyptians? For either these alone should be represented with a double nature, or, if the gods have one form, the other should not also be fashioned for them. And again, if their forms are male, why do they give them female figures? And if they are female, why do they falsely give them male forms? And if again they are both, the two should not be divided but joined, and they should be made like the so-called hermaphrodites, so that their superstition may offer onlookers not only impiety and slander but laughter as well. And in general, if they suppose the Divine to be bodily, so that they conceive and fashion for it belly, hands, and feet, and again neck and breasts and the other members for human generation, see into what impiety and godlessness their mind has fallen, to suppose such things about the Divine! For it follows that it must also undergo all the other things that a body undergoes, so as to be cut, divided, and again destroyed altogether. But these and similar things are not proper to God, but rather to bodies on earth. For God is incorporeal, incorruptible, and immortal, in need of nothing for anything; while these are corruptible, figures of bodies, and in need of service from human beings, as was said before. For we often see old ones renewed, and those that time or rain or some creature on earth has destroyed being fashioned again. In this one might condemn their folly: they proclaim as gods those of whom they themselves are the makers; they ask salvation from those that they themselves adorn with their arts so that they may not perish; they expect their own needs to be supplied by those whom they know to need their care; and they are not ashamed to call lords of heaven and of the whole earth those whom they shut up in little shrines.

Not only from these things can one learn their godlessness, but also from their disagreement in opinion about the idols themselves. For if these are gods, as they say and philosophize about them, to which of them should one attach oneself, and which of them would one judge to be the more sovereign, so as either to worship God with confidence or, as they say, to recognize the Divine in them without hesitation? For the same beings are not called gods among all; rather, as many nations as there are, roughly so many gods are fashioned. In some places even a single country and a single city are at strife within themselves over the superstition of idols. The Phoenicians, for instance, do not know those called gods among the Egyptians, nor do the Egyptians worship the same idols as the Phoenicians. The Scythians do not accept the gods of the Persians, nor the Persians those of the Syrians. The Pelasgians disparage the gods in Thrace, while the Thracians do not know those of the Thebans. The Indians differ from the Arabs, the Arabs from the Ethiopians, and the Ethiopians from them, in their idols. The Syrians do not revere those of the Cilicians, while the Cappadocian nation names other gods besides these. The Bithynians have fashioned some for themselves, the Armenians others. And why should I say more? Mainlanders worship other gods than those of the islanders, and islanders serve other gods than those of the mainlands. In short, every city and village, not knowing the gods of its neighbors, prefers its own and thinks that these alone are gods. As for the abominations in Egypt, there is no need even to speak of them, since they are before everyone’s eyes: the cities have religions opposed to and at war with one another, and neighbors always take care to revere the opposite of what those near them revere. The crocodile, worshiped as a god by some, is thought an abomination by their neighbors; the lion, worshiped as a god by others, their fellow townsmen not only do not worship but kill as a wild beast when they find it; and the fish consecrated among some is caught for food in another place. From this come wars and riots and every occasion of bloodshed, and every indulgence of the passions among them. And remarkably, as the historians relate, the Pelasgians, who learned the names of the gods from the Egyptians, do not know the gods of the Egyptians but worship others besides. In short, among all the nations maddened with idols, opinion and worship differ, and the same things are not found even among the same people. And naturally they suffer this. For having fallen from the consideration of the one God, they have sunk into many and various things; and having turned away from the true Word of the Father, Christ the Savior of all, they naturally have their thought wandering in many directions. As those who have turned away from the sun and come into dark places wander round by many pathless ways, and do not see those who are present but imagine those who are not as present, and seeing do not see; in the same way those who have turned away from God and are darkened …

These things are no small proof of their real godlessness. For since there are different and many gods from city to city and country to country, and one destroys the other’s god, all are destroyed by all. For those thought to be gods among some become sacrifices and libations to those called gods among others; and the sacrifices of some are, conversely, the gods of others. The Egyptians revere the ox, and Apis, which is a calf; and others sacrifice these to Zeus. For even if they do not sacrifice the very ones the Egyptians have consecrated, by sacrificing their like they are thought to offer the same. The Libyans have as a god the sheep, which they call Ammon; and among many others this animal is slaughtered as a sacrifice. The Indians worship Dionysus, symbolically calling him wine; and others pour this out as a libation to the other gods. Others have honored rivers and springs, and above all the Egyptians have honored water, and proclaim these gods; and yet others, and even the very Egyptians who worship them, wash off with the waters the dirt of others and their own, and throw away what is left with dishonor. Nearly all the idol-making of the Egyptians is a sacrifice to the gods of others; so that they are mocked even by those others, because what they deify are not gods but things that for others, and even among themselves, are objects to be averted and sacrifices.

Some have been carried away into such impiety and madness as to slaughter and sacrifice to their false gods the very human beings of whom those gods are figures and forms. And the wretches do not see that the victims they slaughter are the originals of the gods they have fashioned and worship, to whom they offer the human beings. For they offer like to like, or rather the better to the lesser; they sacrifice living things to lifeless ones and offer rational beings to things without motion. For the Scythians called Taurians offer as sacrifices to the one they call the Virgin the shipwrecked and any Greeks they capture, so impious are they toward human beings of their own race; and so they prove the cruelty of their gods. For those whom Providence has saved out of dangers from the sea they slaughter, all but setting themselves against Providence, since they cover over its kindness with their own beastly souls. Others, when they return from wars and bring home victories, divide the captives into hundreds, take one from each hundred, and slaughter to Ares as many as they have chosen, one from each hundred. Nor is it only the Scythians who do such abominations, because of the savagery innate in them as barbarians; this act is proper to the wickedness of idols and demons. For the Egyptians too formerly offered such victims to Hera; the Phoenicians and Cretans propitiated Cronus with the sacrifice of their children; the Romans of old worshiped the so-called Latiarian Zeus with human sacrifices; and others in other ways, and all simply defiled and were defiled: they were defiled by doing the murders themselves, and they defiled their own temples by filling them with the smoke of such sacrifices. From these things evils came upon human beings in abundance. For seeing the demons among them delighting in these things, they at once imitated their own gods by similar offenses, thinking imitation of what they regard as their betters an achievement of their own. Hence human beings were overcome by the murder of men and of children and by every licentiousness. For almost every city is full of every licentiousness, having become like the ways of their gods; and among the idols there is none chaste except the one that is attested among them for licentiousness.

Women in Phoenicia, at any rate, used formerly to sit before the idol-temples, offering to the gods there as first-fruits the hire of their own bodies, thinking that by their sexual immorality they propitiated their goddess and brought her to favor by these means. And men, denying their nature and no longer wishing to be male, take on the nature of women, as though by this they were doing what pleases and honors the mother of their so-called gods. All alike live in the most shameful ways and vie with one another in what is worse; and as the holy minister of Christ, Paul, said: “For their females exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature; and likewise the males too, leaving the natural use of the female, were inflamed in their desire toward one another, males committing shamelessness with males.” Doing these and similar things, they confess and prove that their so-called gods too lived such a life. For from Zeus they have learned the corruption of boys and adultery, from Aphrodite sexual immorality, from Rhea licentiousness, from Ares murders, and from others other such things, which the laws punish and every self-controlled man turns away from. Is it right, then, still to think that these who do such things are gods, and not rather to consider them more irrational than the irrational animals because of the licentiousness of their ways? Is it right to think their worshipers human beings, and not rather to pity them as more irrational than the irrational and more lifeless than the lifeless? For if …

But perhaps those who have risen above these things, and who are struck with awe at creation, being put to shame by the refutation of these abominations, will not deny that these things are easily condemned and refuted by all; but they will think that their own view is safe and beyond dispute, namely the worship of the world and of the parts of the world. For they will boast that they revere and worship not merely stones and wood and the forms of men and of irrational birds, creeping things, and four-footed beasts, but the sun and the moon and the whole ordered world of heaven, and again the earth and the whole nature of the moist element; and they will say that no one can show that these, at least, are not gods by nature, since it is plain to all that they are neither lifeless nor irrational, but even surpass human nature, in that some dwell in the heavens and others on the earth. It is right, then, to look into these too and examine them; for in these too the argument will certainly find the refutation of them true. But before we look and begin the demonstration, it is enough that creation itself all but cries out against them and points to its maker and fashioner, God, who reigns over it and over the universe, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Those who are wise in their own conceit turn away from him, while they worship and deify the creation made by him; and yet creation itself worships and confesses the Lord whom they deny on its account. For the need of its parts for one another would rightly put to shame those who gape at its parts and think them gods; and creation makes known and points to the one who is their Lord and Maker, the Father of the Word, by its undisputed obedience to his command, as the divine law also says: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims the work of his hands.” The proof of these things is not obscure but very clear to those whose eye of understanding is not wholly maimed. For if one were to take the parts of creation by themselves and consider each separately, the sun alone by itself, the moon apart, and again earth and air, and the hot and cold, dry and wet substance, separating them from their union with one another, taking each by itself and contemplating it alone, he will certainly find none sufficient for itself, but all needing one another’s service and subsisting by one another’s help. For the sun is carried round with the whole heaven and contained in it, and could never go outside its revolution; the moon and the other stars testify to the help that comes to them from the sun; the earth again plainly does not yield its fruits without rains; the rains would not come down on the earth without the service of the clouds; and the clouds would never appear or form by themselves without the air. And the air is heated not by itself but by the ether, and is lit up and made bright by the sun. Springs and rivers will never exist without the earth; and the earth is not supported by itself but is set upon the substance of the waters, while it too is contained, bound fast in the middle of the universe. The sea and the great ocean that flows round the whole earth from outside are moved by winds and borne wherever the force of the winds dashes them. And the winds themselves do not arise in themselves but, according to those who have written about them, arise in the air itself from the heating and warmth of the ether upon the air, and through the air they blow everywhere. As for the four elements of which the nature of bodies consists, I mean the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet substance, who is so perverted in mind as not to know that they subsist when joined together, but when divided and existing by themselves they destroy one another …

How, then, could these be gods, when they need help from others? Or how is it fitting to ask anything of them, when they themselves demand from one another what they need? For if it is the account of God that he lacks nothing, but is self-sufficient and full of himself, and that in him all things consist, and that he rather gives to all, how is it right to proclaim as gods the sun and the moon and the other parts of creation, which are not like this, but even lack one another’s service? But perhaps they too will agree that, divided and taken by themselves, they are in need, since the proof is before their eyes; but joining all together and making them as one great body, they will say that the whole is God. For when the whole is put together, there will no longer be any need from outside, but the whole will be sufficient for itself and self-sufficient in all things: so those wise in their own conceit will say, so that they may be refuted on this ground too. This argument will show their impiety, along with great ignorance, no less than the former ones. For if each thing, when joined to the rest, fills up the whole, and the whole consists of the single things, then the whole is composed of parts, and each thing is a part of the whole. But this stands very far from the notions of God. For God is a whole and not parts, and does not consist of different things, but is himself the maker of the composition of all things. See what impiety against the Divine they express in saying these things. For if he is composed of parts, he will certainly appear unlike himself, having his completion from unlike things. For if he is the sun, he is not the moon; and if he is the moon, he is not the earth; and if he is the earth, he would not be the sea; and taking each in this way one will find the absurdity of this argument of theirs. One might also condemn them by looking at our own human body. For as the eye is not hearing, nor hearing a hand, nor is the belly the chest, nor again the neck a foot, but each of these has its own activity, and from these different parts one body is composed, having its parts joined for use, but divided when the time comes, when nature, which brought them together, separates them as God who ordained it wills; so (may the argument be pardoned by the Most High himself) if they join the parts of creation into one body and proclaim it God, it must be that he is unlike himself in himself, as was shown, and again that he is divided, according to the nature of the parts, which is to be divided.

One might refute their godlessness in another way too, according to the contemplation of the truth. If God is incorporeal, invisible, and intangible by nature, how do they conceive of God as a body, and worship with the honor due to God things that are seen by the eyes and that we touch with the hand? And again, if the account of God holds, that he is powerful in all things, and that nothing has power over him but he has power over all and is master of all, how do those who deify creation not see that it falls outside such a definition of God? For when the sun goes below the earth, the earth overshadows its light so that it is not seen; and by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliance of its light. Hail often damages the fruits of the earth; fire is quenched if a flood of waters comes. Spring thrusts winter aside, summer does not allow spring to pass its bounds, and summer in turn is prevented by autumn from going beyond its own seasons. If, then, they were gods, they ought not to be defeated and hidden by one another, but always to be together and to carry out their activities in common. Sun and moon and the rest of the choir of stars should have equal light by day and by night, shining for all and lighting up all things; summer, winter, spring, and autumn should exist together without change and in the same way; the sea should mingle with the springs and provide a common drink for human beings; calms and blasts of wind should occur at the same time; fire and water together should provide one common use for human beings. For no one would suffer any harm from them if, as these people say, they were gods and did nothing for harm, but everything rather for benefit. But if these things cannot happen because of their opposition to one another, how can one still call these things gods, opposed and at war with one another and unable to coexist, or worship them with the honors due to God? How could things whose nature is discordant with itself give peace to others who pray to them, and become for them presidents of concord? It is reasonable, then, that neither the sun, nor the moon, nor any other part of creation, much less the statues in stone and gold and the other materials, nor the Zeus and Apollo and the rest of the poets’ myths, are truly gods, as the argument has shown; but some of them are parts of creation, some are lifeless, and some were only mortal men. Therefore the worship and deification of these things is the introduction not of piety but of godlessness and of all impiety, and the proof of a great straying from the knowledge of the one and only true God, I mean the Father of Christ. Since, then, these things have been refuted in this way, and the idolatry among the Greeks has been shown to be full of all godlessness, and to have been introduced into human life not for its benefit but for its destruction, come now, as our argument promised at the beginning, now that error has been refuted, let us travel the road of truth and contemplate the leader and maker of the universe, the Word of the Father, so that through him we may come to know God his Father as well, and the Greeks may know how far they have cut themselves off from the truth.

What has been said before has been proved to be nothing but error in human life; but the road of truth will have as its goal the God who truly is. For the knowledge and exact apprehension of this road we need no one else but ourselves. Nor, as God himself is above all things, is the road to him far off and outside us; it is in us, and it is possible to find its beginning from ourselves, as Moses also taught, saying: “The word of faith is within your heart.” The Savior, indicating and confirming this, said: “The kingdom of God is within you.” For since we have faith and the kingdom of God within ourselves, we can quickly contemplate and perceive the King of the universe, the saving Word of the Father. And let not the Greeks who worship idols make excuses, nor let anyone else simply deceive himself, as though he did not have such a road and so found an excuse for his godlessness. For we have all set foot on it and have it, even if not all are willing to travel it, but rather wish to turn aside and pass it by, because of the pleasures of life that draw them from outside. And if anyone should ask what this road is, I say that it is each person’s soul and the mind within it. For through it alone can God be contemplated and perceived, unless the impious, as they have denied God, will also refuse to admit that they have a soul; and they would be right to say this before anything else, for it is not for those who have a mind to deny God, its maker and fashioner. That each human being has a soul, and a rational one, it is necessary to show briefly for the sake of the simple, especially since some of the heretics deny even this, thinking that the human being is nothing more than the visible form of the body; so that, once this has been shown, they may be able to hold through themselves a clearer refutation of the idols.

First, then, no small mark that the human soul is rational is that it differs from the irrational animals; for this is why nature is accustomed to call them irrational, because the human race is rational. Next, this too would be no ordinary proof: that man alone reasons about things outside himself, considers things that are not present, reflects on them again, and by judgment chooses the better of his reasonings. For the irrational animals see only what is present and rush only at what is before their eyes, even if harm follows. But man does not rush at what he sees; he judges by reasoning what is seen by the eyes. Often, at any rate, after he has started forward he is restrained by reasoning, and having reasoned, he reconsiders. And everyone, if he is a friend of the truth, perceives that the human mind is something other than the bodily senses. Because it is something other, it becomes the judge of the senses themselves; what they perceive, the mind discerns, recalls, and shows them what is better. For it belongs to the eye only to see, to the ears to hear, to the mouth to taste, to the nose to perceive smells, and to the hands to touch; but what one ought to see and hear, and what one ought to touch, taste, and smell, is no longer for the senses but for the soul and its mind to discern. The hand can certainly grasp a sword, and the mouth taste poison; but they do not know that these things are harmful unless the mind discerns it. To look at this through an image, it is like a well-made lyre and the musician who holds it with skill. For the strings in the lyre each have their own note, one low, one high, one middle, one sharp, another something else; yet their harmony cannot be distinguished nor their arrangement recognized without the skilled man. Their harmony and right arrangement are shown only when the one holding the lyre strikes the strings and touches each one fittingly. In the same way, when the senses in the body are tuned like a lyre and the skilled mind directs them, then the soul discerns and knows what it does and acts. This alone is proper to human beings, and this is the rationality of the human soul, by using which it differs from the irrational animals and shows that it is truly something other than what is seen in the body. Often, at any rate, while the body lies on the earth, a man imagines and contemplates the things in the heavens; and often, while the body is still and at rest and asleep, the man moves within and contemplates things outside himself, traveling to foreign lands and walking about and meeting acquaintances, and often through these things divining and foreknowing his actions of the following day. What else would this be but a rational soul, in which man reasons and perceives things beyond himself?