The Harmony of the Gospels 1.26–1.44

Finally, let them think of him what they like. Do the Romans not think that even evil gods should be worshiped, they who built shrines to Pallor and Fever, and who advise that good demons be invited and evil demons appeased? Whatever, then, they think of him, why did they judge that he alone was neither to be called upon nor propitiated? Who is this God, either so unknown that among so many gods he alone has not yet been found, or so well known that he alone is now worshiped by so many people? Nothing remains for them to say as to why they refused to receive this God's rites, except that he wanted to be worshiped alone and forbade the worship of those gods of the nations whom they were already worshiping. But this itself must be asked of them all the more: whom, or what kind of God, do they think this one to be, who refused to allow the worship of the other gods to whom they made temples and images, and was so powerful that his will to overturn their images prevailed more than their will not to receive his rites? Certainly the opinion of that philosopher of theirs whom they affirmed, even by an oracle, to have been the wisest of all men, makes the matter plain. For it is Socrates' opinion that each god should be worshiped in the way he himself has commanded that he be worshiped. Hence they were under the utmost necessity of not worshiping the God of the Hebrews, because if they wanted to worship him in a way other than he himself had said he was to be worshiped, they would certainly not be worshiping him but what they themselves had invented; but if they wanted to worship him in the way he himself said, they saw that they must not worship the others whom he forbade to be worshiped. And for this reason they rejected the worship of the one true God so as not to offend many false ones, thinking that their anger would harm them more than his goodwill would profit them.

But let that have been an empty necessity and a laughable timidity. Now we ask what people who hold that all the gods should be worshiped think of this God. For if he is not to be worshiped, how are all worshiped when he is not worshiped? But if he is to be worshiped, not all are to be worshiped, because unless he is worshiped alone, he is not worshiped. Or will they perhaps say that he is not God, while they call gods those who, as we believe, can do nothing except what they are permitted by his judgment, not to benefit anyone, but so that they cannot even harm except those whom he who can do all things judges should be harmed in this way? Yet, as they themselves are forced to admit, they have certainly been able to do less than he. For if those are gods whose seers, consulted by human beings, gave answers (I will not say they deceived) on matters close to private affairs, how is he not God whose seers not only answered fittingly what they were consulted about for the time, but also, where they were not consulted, foretold so long before, concerning the whole human race and all nations, the things we now both read and see? If they call him a god by whom the Sibyl was filled when she sang the fates of the Romans, how is he not God who brought about, as he foretold, that both the Romans and all nations would believe in him as the one God through the gospel of Christ and would overturn all the images of their fathers? Finally, if they call those gods who never dared to say anything through their seers against this God, how is he not God who through his seers not only commanded that their images be overturned, but also foretold that they would be overturned in all nations by those who, having abandoned them, would be commanded to worship him as the one God and, being commanded, would serve him?

Or let them read out, if they can, that any one of the Sibyls or any other of their seers foretold that this would come to pass, that the God of the Hebrews, the God of Israel, would be worshiped by all nations, and that the worshipers of the other gods had been right to spurn him before; that they foretold too that the writings of his prophets would be of such lofty authority that, in obedience to them, even the Roman empire would command images to be destroyed, and that they warned that such precepts should not be obeyed. Let them read this out, if they can, from any books of their seers. I pass over saying that the things read in their books bear witness for our religion, that is, the Christian religion, which they may have heard from the holy angels and from our prophets themselves, just as the demons were compelled to confess Christ when he was present in the flesh. But I pass over these things, which, when we bring them forward, they contend were invented by our people. They themselves, they themselves above all must be pressed to bring forward something prophesied against the God of the Hebrews by the seers of their gods, as we, from the books of our prophets, observe so many great commands against their gods, recite their predictions, and show their fulfillment. The very few of them who now remain prefer to grieve that these things have been fulfilled rather than acknowledge the God who was able to foretell what was to be fulfilled, though in their own false gods, who are really demons, they seek nothing else as a great thing than when they have learned from their responses that something will happen to them.

Since this is so, why do the wretched not rather understand that he is the true God whom they see so separated from the company of their gods that the very people who profess that all gods should be worshiped are not permitted to worship him whom they are forced to confess as God, together with the rest? Since, then, they cannot be worshiped together, why is he not chosen who forbids these to be worshiped, and these abandoned who do not forbid him to be worshiped? Or if they forbid it, let it be read out. For what ought more to have been recited to their peoples in their temples, where nothing of the kind has ever resounded? And surely the prohibition of so many against one ought to be more widely known and more powerful than that of one against so many. For if the worship of this God is impious, the gods who do not keep people from impiety are useless; but if his worship is pious, then, since it commands that these not be worshiped, their worship is impious. But if they forbid his worship so timidly that they fear being heard more than they dare to forbid, who is so lacking in wisdom as not to perceive from this very fact that he is rather to be chosen who forbids their worship so publicly, who commanded, foretold, and accomplished the overturning of their images, rather than these, whom we do not know to have commanded that he not be worshiped, whom we do not read to have foretold it, and whom we do not see to have been able to do anything? I ask, let them answer: who is this God who thus pursues all the gods of the nations, thus exposes all their rites, thus extinguishes them?

Why should I ask people who have become futile in their thinking who he is? Some say, “He is Saturn,” I suppose because of the hallowing of the Sabbath, since they have assigned that day to Saturn. But their Varro, than whom they find no one more learned among them, thought the God of the Jews was Jupiter, judging that it makes no difference by what name he is called so long as the same reality is understood; I suppose he was overawed by his supremacy. For since the Romans usually worship nothing higher than Jupiter, as their Capitol testifies clearly and openly, and regard him as king of all the gods, when he noticed that the Jews worship the supreme God, he could suspect nothing else than Jupiter. But whether they think the God of the Jews is Saturn or Jupiter, let them say: when did Saturn dare to forbid the worship of another god, not even Jupiter himself, who is said to have driven him from his kingdom, the son his father? And if Jupiter pleased his worshipers as the more powerful and the victor, let them not worship Saturn, the conquered and expelled. But Jupiter did not forbid him to be worshiped either; and the one he was able to conquer he nevertheless allowed to be a god.

“These,” they say, “are fables, either to be interpreted by the wise or to be laughed at. But we worship the Jupiter of whom Maro says, ‘All things are full of Jove,’ that is, the spirit that gives life to all things.” Rightly, then, did Varro too suppose that Jupiter is worshiped by the Jews, since he says through the prophet, “I fill heaven and earth.” What of what the same poet calls the ether? How do they take it? For he says thus: “Then the almighty father Ether, with fruitful showers, descends into the lap of his joyful spouse.” For they say that the ether is not spirit but a lofty body, by which the sky is stretched out above the air. Or is the poet allowed to speak now according to the Platonists, so that God is not body but spirit, now according to the Stoics, so that he is body? What, then, do they worship in the Capitol? If spirit, or finally the bodily sky itself, what is that shield of Jupiter doing there, which they call the aegis? Surely the origin of this name is explained thus: because a she-goat nursed Jupiter when he was hidden by his mother. Or do the poets lie about this too? Are the Capitols of the Romans also the works of poets? And what is the meaning of this inconsistency, not poetic but plainly fit for a mime, to seek the gods in books according to the philosophers, and to adore them in temples according to the poets?

But was that Euhemerus too a poet, who reveals so very plainly that Jupiter himself and his father Saturn and his brothers Pluto and Neptune were human beings, that their worshipers ought rather to thank the poets, since they invented many things not to dishonor them but rather to adorn them? Although Cicero records that Euhemerus himself was translated into Latin by the poet Ennius. Was Cicero himself a poet too, who, as though to someone privy to the secrets, admonishes the person with whom he argues in the Tusculan Disputations, saying: “If indeed I were to try to search out ancient things and dig out from them what the writers of Greece have handed down, those very gods of the greater clans will be found to have set out from us to heaven. Ask whose tombs are shown in Greece; recall, since you have been initiated, what is handed down in the mysteries; then at last you will understand how widely this extends.” Here he certainly admits clearly enough that their gods were human beings, though he kindly supposes that they reached heaven. Yet he did not hesitate to say publicly that even this honor of reputation was conferred on them by human beings, when he spoke of Romulus: “Romulus,” he says, “who founded this city, we have raised to the immortal gods by goodwill and report.” What wonder is it, then, if earlier people did with Jupiter and Saturn and the rest what the Romans did with Romulus, and finally, in more recent times, wanted to do also with Caesar? To these Virgil added the flattery of a poem, saying, “Behold, the star of Dionean Caesar has come forth.” Let them see to it, then, that historical truth does not show the tombs of the false gods on earth, while poetic vanity does not fix, but feigns, their stars in heaven. For in truth that star is not Jupiter's nor that one Saturn's; rather, after their death, people who wanted those dead men to be held as gods imposed these names on stars founded from the beginning of the world. As to these, what so great evil did chastity deserve, or what so great good did pleasure, that among the stars that go round with the sun and moon Venus should have a star and Minerva should not?

But let Cicero, as an Academic, have been more uncertain than the poets, though he dared to mention the tombs of the gods and commit it to writing, even if he did not presume this from his own opinion but recorded it from the tradition of their rites themselves. Is Varro too either inventing as a poet or setting down doubtfully as an Academic when he says that the rites of such gods were composed from the life or death of each of them, in which they lived or died among human beings? Was that Leon, the Egyptian priest, a poet or an Academic, who revealed to Alexander of Macedon an origin of these gods different, indeed, from the opinion of the Greeks, but in such a way as to declare that they had been human beings?

But what is that to us? Let them say that they worship Jupiter not as a dead man and did not dedicate the Capitol to a dead man, but to the spirit that gives life to all things, with which the world is filled; and let them interpret as they will his shield, made from goatskin in honor of his nurse. What do they say of Saturn? Which Saturn do they worship? Is he not the one who “first came from Olympus, fleeing the arms of Jupiter, an exile with his kingdom taken from him, who brought together the unruly race scattered on the high mountains, gave them laws, and chose that it be called Latium, since he had lain hidden safe on these shores”? Does not his very image, which is made with the head covered, show him as one in hiding? Did he not show agriculture to the Italians, as the sickle shows? “No,” they say; “you may see to it whether he was a man and a certain king about whom these things are told; we, however, interpret Saturn as the whole of time, as his Greek name too shows. For he is called Cronos, which, with an aspirate added, is also the name of time; hence too in Latin he is called Saturnus, as though he were sated (saturetur) with years.” I do not know what is to be done any more with these people, who, trying to interpret the names and images of their gods for the better, admit that their greater god and the father of the others is time. For what else do they indicate than that all their gods are temporal, since they make time itself their father?

Their more recent philosophers, the Platonists, who lived in Christian times, were ashamed of this and tried to interpret Saturn otherwise, saying that he was called Cronos as though from the fullness of intellect, because in Greek fullness is called koros and intellect or mind nous. The Latin name too seems to support this, as though compounded of a first, Latin part and a second, Greek part, so that he was called Saturnus as being satur nous, “full mind.” They saw how absurd it would be if Jupiter, whom they either thought or wanted to be thought an eternal god, were held to be the son of time. But according to this novel interpretation (and if their ancients had held it, it would be strange that it escaped Cicero and Varro), they say that Jupiter is the son of Saturn as the spirit flowing forth from that supreme mind, which they want to be as it were the soul of this world, filling all heavenly and earthly bodies. Hence that line of Maro which I quoted a little earlier: “All things are full of Jove.” Would these men not, if they could, change people's superstition just as they changed the interpretation, and either set up no images at all, or at least build Capitols to Saturn rather than to Jupiter? For they argue that no rational soul becomes wise except by participation in that supreme and unchangeable wisdom, not only the soul of any human being but even that of the world itself, which they call Jupiter. We, for our part, not only grant but proclaim most strongly that there is a certain supreme wisdom of God, by participation in which every soul that becomes truly wise becomes wise. But whether this whole bodily mass which is called the world has some soul, or as it were a soul of its own, that is, a rational life by which it is ruled as each animal is, is a great and hidden question; and this opinion ought not to be affirmed unless it is found to be true, nor refuted unless it is found to be false. But what does this matter to a human being, even if it always remains hidden from him, since no soul becomes wise or happy from any other soul whatever, but only from that supreme and unchangeable wisdom of God?

Yet the Romans, who founded the Capitol not to Saturn but to Jupiter, or other nations who thought that Jupiter should be worshiped above the other gods, did not hold what these men held. According to this new opinion of theirs, these men, if they had had any power in such matters, would have dedicated the highest citadels to Saturn instead, and would above all have done away with the astrologers and casters of nativities, who placed Saturn, whom these men would call the maker of the wise, among the other stars as a malevolent god. This opinion has so prevailed against them in human minds that people do not even want to name him, calling him “the Old Man” rather than Saturn, with so fearful a superstition that the Carthaginians have now almost changed the name of their village, calling it more often “the Old Man's village” than “Saturn's village.”

It is known, then, what the worshipers of images are convicted of worshiping and what they try to color over. But these new interpreters of Saturn too must be asked what they think of the God of the Hebrews. For they too chose to worship all the gods together with the nations, since in their pride they were ashamed to humble themselves under Christ for the forgiveness of sins. What, then, do they think of the God of Israel? If they do not worship him, they do not worship all the gods; but if they worship him, they do not worship him as he commanded himself to be worshiped, because they also worship others whom he forbade to be worshiped. For he forbade these things through those seers through whom he foretold the very things that their images are now suffering from the Christians. For whether angels were sent to those prophets to show them, figuratively and through a fitting appearance of things perceptible to the senses, the one true God, the creator of all, to whom all things are subject, and to indicate how he commanded that he be worshiped, or whether the minds of some among them were so raised up by the Holy Spirit that they saw these things with that sight with which the angels themselves see, it is nevertheless certain that they served the God who forbade other gods to be worshiped, and served him with the faithfulness of piety in the kingdom and priesthood of their commonwealth and in sacred rites that signified Christ, who was to come as king and priest.

Furthermore, as to the gods of the nations, whom these men will not give up worshiping and for whose sake they will not worship him who cannot be worshiped together with them, let them say why none of them is found who forbids another to be worshiped, though they place them in different offices and functions and want them to preside over the matters that belong properly to each. For if Jupiter does not forbid Saturn to be worshiped, because he is not the man who drove that man, his father, from his kingdom, but either the body of the sky or the spirit that fills heaven and earth, and therefore cannot forbid the worship of the supreme mind from which he is said to have flowed; if for that reason Saturn too does not forbid the worship of Jupiter, because he was not overcome by him in rebellion, as that other Saturn was by some Jupiter or other whose arms he fled when he came to Italy, but the first mind favors the soul begotten from itself: at least Vulcan should forbid the worship of Mars, the adulterer with his wife, and Hercules that of Juno, his persecutor. What is this so shameful agreement among them, that not even Diana, the chaste virgin, forbids the worship, I will not say of Venus, but of Priapus? For if one man wanted to be both a hunter and a farmer, he would be the servant of both, yet he would blush even to build their temples next to each other. But let them interpret Diana as whatever virtue they like; let them interpret Priapus too as the god of fertility, though surely Juno would be ashamed to have such a helper in making women fruitful; let them say what they please, let them interpret as they see fit, so long as the God of Israel throws all their arguments into confusion. Since he has forbidden all of them to be worshiped and has been forbidden to be worshiped by none of them, and has commanded, foretold, and accomplished the overthrow of their images and rites, he has shown clearly enough that they are false and deceiving, and that he is the true and truthful God.

And who would not wonder that these now few worshipers of many false gods are unwilling to obey him? When they are asked what God he is, they may answer whatever they think, yet they do not dare to deny that he is God, because if they denied it, they would very easily be refuted by his works and by his predictions and their fulfillment. For I do not mean the things which they think they are free not to believe, that he himself in the beginning made heaven and earth and all that is in them, nor those very ancient things, that he translated Enoch, that he destroyed the ungodly by the flood, that he delivered righteous Noah and his household from it by means of wood. I begin his deeds among human beings with Abraham. For to him a clear promise was made through an angelic oracle, which we now see being fulfilled. For to him it was said, “In your seed shall all the nations be blessed.” From his seed came the people of Israel, and from it the Virgin Mary, who gave birth to Christ, in whom let them now dare to deny, if they can, that all nations are blessed. This promise was also made to Isaac, Abraham's son, and to Jacob, Abraham's grandson, who was also called Israel, from whom the whole people both descended and took its name, so that the God of this people was called the God of Israel; not that he is not the God of all nations, whether they know him or already know him, but because he willed that the power of his promises should appear more clearly in this people. For that people, first multiplied in Egypt and delivered from that slavery through Moses with many signs and wonders, after many nations had been defeated, received also the land of promise, in which it reigned through its kings, sprung from the tribe of Judah. This Judah was one of the twelve sons of Israel, the grandson of Abraham. And from him they were called Jews, and with the help of this same God they did many things, and suffered many things under his scourge for their sins, until the seed should come to whom the promise was made, in whom all nations would be blessed and would of their own accord break the images of their fathers.

For what is being fulfilled through the Christians was foretold not in Christian times but so long before. The Jews themselves who have remained enemies of the name of Christ, whose future unbelief too is not passed over in silence in those prophetic writings, they themselves have and read the prophet who says, “O Lord my God and my refuge in the day of evils, to you shall the nations come from the end of the earth and say, ‘Truly our fathers worshiped lying images, and there is no profit in them.’” See, now it is happening; see, now the nations are coming from the end of the earth to Christ, saying this and breaking images. And this too is a great thing that God has granted to his church spread everywhere: that the Jewish nation, deservedly defeated and scattered throughout the lands, should carry everywhere the books of our prophets, so that these should not be thought to have been composed by us, and, though hostile to our faith, should become a witness to our truth. How, then, did the disciples of Christ teach what they did not learn from Christ, as fools in their folly keep boasting, namely that the superstition of the gentile gods and images should be destroyed? Can it be said that the disciples of Christ also invented those prophecies which are now read in the books of the enemies of Christ?

For who overthrows these things but the God of Israel? For to that people it was said through the divine utterances made to Moses: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord. You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor the likeness of anything, neither of what is in heaven above nor of what is on the earth beneath.” And so that it would also overthrow these things where it received power, it is commanded thus: “You shall not worship their gods nor serve them; you shall not do according to their works, but you shall utterly throw down and utterly break their images.” And who would say that Christ and the Christians do not belong to Israel, since Israel was the grandson of Abraham, to whom first, then to his son Isaac, and then to his grandson Israel himself, was said what I have already recalled: “In your seed shall all nations be blessed”? We now see this happening in Christ, since from that line arose the virgin of whom the prophet of the people of Israel and of the God of Israel sang, saying, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,” and Emmanuel means “God with us.” The God of Israel, then, who forbade other gods to be worshiped, who forbade idols to be made, who commanded that they be overthrown, who foretold through the prophet that the nations would say from the end of the earth, “Truly our fathers worshiped lying images, in which there is no profit,” he himself, through the name of Christ and the faith of the Christians, commanded, promised, and accomplished the overthrow of all these superstitions. In vain, then, do the wretches, since they have been forbidden to blaspheme Christ even by their own gods, that is, demons who fear the name of Christ, want to make foreign to him that teaching by which Christians argue against idols and, where they can, uproot all those false religions.

Let them answer about the God of Israel, whom not only the books of the Christians but also those of the Jews testify teaches and commands these things. Let them consult their gods about him, those gods who forbade Christ to be blasphemed; let them give some insulting answer about the God of Israel, if they dare. But whom are they to consult? Or where can they consult now? Let them read the books of their own people. If they think the God of Israel is Jupiter, as Varro wrote (to speak for the moment according to their opinion), why then do they not believe Jupiter that idols are to be destroyed? If they think he is Saturn, why do they not worship him? Or why do they not worship him in the way he commanded that he be worshiped through those seers through whom he fulfilled what he foretold? Why do they not believe him that images are to be overturned and other gods are not to be worshiped? If he is neither Jupiter nor Saturn (for if he were one of them, he would not say such things against the rites of their Jupiter and Saturn), who then is he who alone is not worshiped by them for the sake of other gods, and yet, with the other gods overturned, so evidently brings it about that he alone is worshiped, with every proud height humbled which had raised itself against Christ, persecuting and killing Christians for the sake of idols? Now certainly they look for places to hide when they want to sacrifice, or where to shut up their very gods so that they are not found and broken by the Christians. From where does this come, if not from fear of the laws and of the kings through whom the God of Israel shows his power, kings now subject to the name of Christ, as he promised long before, saying through the prophet, “And all the kings of the earth shall worship him; all nations shall serve him”?

Surely what is repeatedly sung through the prophet is now being fulfilled: that he would cast off his ungodly people (not, indeed, the whole of it, for many of the Israelites believed in Christ; his apostles too were from them), and would humble everything proud and insolent, so that he alone would be exalted, that is, so that he alone would be made manifest to human beings as high and powerful, until idols were cast away by believers and hidden by unbelievers, when the earth is shattered by the fear of him, that is, when earthly people are broken by fear, fearing the law either of God himself or of those who, believing in him and reigning over the nations, would forbid such sacrileges.

For what I have said briefly beforehand, so that it might be understood more easily, the prophet says thus: “And now you, house of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord. For he has cast off his people, the house of Israel, because their land is filled, as from the beginning, with auguries like that of foreigners, and many foreign children have been born to them. For their land is filled with silver and gold, and there was no number of their treasures. And the land is filled with horses, and there was no number of their chariots. And the land is filled with the abominations of the works of their hands, and they have worshiped what their fingers have made. And man has bowed down and man has humbled himself, and I will not forgive them. And now enter into the rocks and hide yourselves in the earth from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the majesty of his power, when he rises to shatter the earth. For the eyes of the Lord are lofty, but man is lowly; and the height of men shall be humbled, and the Lord alone shall be exalted on that day. For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon everyone insolent and proud, and upon everyone lofty and lifted up, and they shall be humbled; and upon every cedar of Lebanon of the lofty and lifted up, and upon every oak of Bashan, and upon every mountain and upon every high hill, and upon every ship of the sea, and upon every sight of the beauty of ships. And the insolence of men shall be humbled and shall fall, and the Lord alone shall be exalted on that day. And all things made by hands they shall hide in caves and in clefts of the rocks and in hollows of the earth, from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the majesty of his power, when he rises to shatter the earth. For on that day a man shall cast away the abominations of gold and silver which they made to worship, vain and harmful things, so as to enter the holes of the solid rock and the clefts of the rocks, from the face of the fear of the Lord and from the majesty of his power, when he rises to crush the earth.”