On the Witch of Endor, against Origen 10–16

Let us go back again, unrolling the tracks of the words. What then? When Saul asked the ventriloquist, saying, “What have you seen?”, first the crazed woman, answering, cries: “I have seen gods coming up out of the earth.” For since the devil, having seized the man, wished to throw him headlong in every way, he set out to show clearly that the demon had it in its power to bring up not just one righteous soul but all the souls of holy men together; he, on the contrary, arming here the army of demons and assembling a gathering in one moment of time, was boasting, wishing by this too to persuade everyone that he himself was God, the gatherer of the others. That, using his own madness, he is accustomed to make himself a god, Isaiah, rebuking him to his face, proclaims prophetically: “But you said in your heart: I will go up to heaven, I will set my throne above the stars; I will sit on a high mountain, on the high mountains toward the north; I will go up above the clouds; I will be like the Most High.” And the Lord himself testifies to like things, speaking openly through the prophet Ezekiel: “Because your heart was lifted up, and you said, I am God, I will dwell in the heart of the sea; but you are a man and not God.” How many punishments he threatens him with for this, it is easy to see from what follows; and that he relies on such apparitions, boasting each time, has been shown by the divine verdict. So if the demon was able to bring up those called by the name of gods, must one not think that the one who brings up is greater than those brought up? And if he surpasses the holy ones, it follows that the chief demon in turn surpasses him. And if anyone ascribes this to an irresistible power, it establishes that he is the God of gods, who assigns to his servants such authority that they summon the spirits and souls of the righteous from Hades. But no one in his right mind will ever lay this down, lest he cast his vote against the holy testimonies. When the crazed man asked a second time, “And he said to the woman, What did you perceive?”, she at once answered the question: “I saw a man standing upright, coming up out of the earth”; and he, as he heard the words, knew in his own notion that this was Samuel, being besieged from within by the demon; and as he was carried away by the naming of the signs, then, bowing his face to the ground, he did obeisance to him. First, then, one might quite rightly say: if that had been Samuel, and not the many-shaped serpent transformed, he would have answered with pious reasoning: “You shall worship the Lord your God, and him only shall you serve.” Second, I would say again: when Samuel ruled the whole people and was a chosen prophet, Saul, still a private man and looking for his father's asses, went to ask him, as a prophet, about the lost beasts, and nowhere appears to have done obeisance to him, though he needed him and was plainly subject to him as leader of the people. How then does the king, who did not do obeisance when he was a private man before a ruler, now on the contrary do obeisance to one who is a private man? Third, besides this I can ask why, when he heard of gods coming up, he did obeisance to none of them, but when he heard that the upright man had come up, then he did. Indeed, if, as Origen boldly declared, some of them were angels or choirs of prophets, he ought to have bowed to the greater. So from all the deeds together it is easy to see that Saul was blinded in his ruling mind, driven by the demon, while the devil changed himself into various forms, contriving to be worshipped by the ruler, so as thereby to deceive secretly as many as possible who would bow to him. And indeed this is not strange to say, since even when he saw the person of Christ, though within he saw him as God in act and the genuine Son of God by nature, observing him outwardly clothed with a pure, undefiled, spotless man, a very temple, he heedlessly approached to tempt him, fighting against God as usual; and when, having challenged him a first and second time, he was defeated and broken, the wretch, changing again to another manner, tried to show him the whole compass of this world and its kingdoms, and, emboldened by madness and lying speech, boasted: “All these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me.” Such words the impious one burst out with here, thinking to provoke to anger the patient character and by this to seem to lay hold of him; but the Lord silenced the avenger with long-suffering, as befits God; for it is proper to God to bear all things patiently. If, then, he thought nothing of addressing such words to the Lord himself, how is it not clear that he did these things wishing to be worshipped as equal to God? This, I think, is evident to all who think rightly: that through a frenzied woman he deceived the senseless ruler into bowing to him against what was right.

Next we must take up in order the very things that follow. When Saul had bowed down in obeisance, the crafty one again pretends to have suffered violence, having changed himself into the shape of Samuel; then he answers with irony, wishing to signify that the demon could summon the prophet even against his will and had such authority over him. And then some are so dim-sighted as not to be able to understand that all who sincerely think the things of Christ put the demons to flight in the divine name, and do not, on the contrary, as though subject to them, come up from Hades against their will when summoned by them. If anyone thinks that the demon of the ventriloquist could in no way be put to flight, being superior to all the others together, let him run back to the Acts of the Apostles, and looking into those very passages, let him see how Paul, the travelling herald, came to Philippi; and when he had enlightened Lydia, as she is called, with the knowledge of godliness, he then went to offer prayers: “And it came about,” it says, “that a slave girl met us having a spirit of Python, who brought her masters much gain. She cried after Paul and us, saying thus: These men are servants of the Most High God, who proclaim to us the way of salvation. And she did this for many days.” The demon, racked by an invisible scourge, was forced against its will to utter such words; but Paul, judging that its testimony was not trustworthy, quite rightly, being greatly troubled, said to the spirit: “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” Then the writer, narrating the affair, adds: “And it came out that very hour. When the masters of the slave girl saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the rulers”; and they became the cause of insults and blows to them, slandering them with sedition. If, then, Paul, rebuking the spirit, drove out the pythoness's spirit all at once in that very moment, and the spirit fled at the authority of his word, unable to withstand the sound of his tongue, let him who stands by such a rule come forward openly and say: by the virtue of what power did the demon bring up from Hades Samuel, who shared Paul's faith, summoning him against his will? But he could show nothing of this to be true. So from these things too it is very easy to see that the demon pretended that he came up against his wish, unwilling, by necessity and force, as though commanded to be summoned by the stronger. The ruler answered: “I am in great distress; the foreigners are making war on me, and God has departed from me,” he says, “and no longer hears me, either by the hand of the prophets or in dreams; and now I have called you to make known to me what I should do.” Again, then, one must answer: if it had been Samuel, the renowned prophet, would he not have brought the man to his senses by admonishing him? Would he not have said to him first: “Tell me, most wretched of all men: if foreigners surround you, if God has departed from you and does not hear you at all, if neither have prophets gone down to intercede for you, nor in dream or waking has what you must do been revealed to you, ought you not rather to bow to God in propitiation, and wash away the causes of your charges by alms to the poor, instead of fleeing to a ventriloquist diviner, exchanging the tokens of piety for frenzied divination, and doubling the suffering against yourself? Or must you not consider that God expressly forbade such pollutions in Leviticus through Moses, saying: You shall not follow ventriloquists, and you shall not cleave to enchanters, to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God? Do you not think these impious abominations contrary to God, when you attempt to act them out? Hear also God's oracle later against such a venture: And the soul, he says, that follows ventriloquists or enchanters, so as to go whoring after them; and what it will suffer he declared as he went on, saying: I will set my face against that soul and destroy it from among its people”? If, then, God, legislating from the beginning, banished with stern edicts those given to such incantations or divinations, and fearfully threatens grim and dark punishments against those convicted in judgment, ought not the man dedicated to God from his tender years, the firm guardian of the law, to have charged him with these things first? Indeed the man learned in the law from boyhood, able to examine the letters of the law most precisely, would not have overlooked the fault, lest perhaps some be dragged by it into frenzied divinations, wretchedly caught by deceit. But he said and asked nothing of the kind; for it was not Samuel, but the one who has contrived such dramas from of old. Upon this he answers, putting on the person of the prophet: “Why do you ask me, when the Lord has departed from you and has gone over to your neighbour? And the Lord has done to you as he spoke by my hand.” These things he brings in as an enemy, sketching at the same time his departure: reminders of accusation.

We must observe how, passing over the very charges that hold the matter together, he feigns to speak with a more demonstrative air; but, saying nothing worthy of foreknowledge, he artfully repeats all that Samuel, while still alive, had foretold would befall Saul, which in prophesying he had proclaimed beforehand as though already done. Indeed, the one who said to him, “Why do you ask me?” plainly admits that these are the things he had said before, confirming the first things by the later ones, as a pretext, by sorcery. But Origen, on the contrary, taking word for word the very sayings proclaimed long before by the prophet, defines them as fresh and new utterances of prophecy; and for this reason he wants Samuel to have been brought up, although Scripture refutes him directly, as he himself partly admits in one place. But what did it add after this, when the apparition was talking with the ruler? “The Lord will tear the kingdom out of your hand and give it to your neighbour David, because you did not listen to the voice of the Lord and did not carry out the fury of his anger on Amalek. Therefore the Lord has done this thing to you this day, and the Lord will give Israel with you into the hands of the foreigners.” If anyone wishes to verify what is plain, let him go back to the narrative of the text, running back a little; and unrolling the very passage where Saul, having defeated Amalek, appropriated the best of the spoils and, as though with understanding, thought he should offer whole burnt offerings from them, he would find that Samuel at that time foretold all these words word for word. For he said, “And the Lord has torn the kingdom out of his hand,” when the ruler took hold of the hem of his robe and tore it; and he foretold to him besides that the kingdom would be given to his neighbour, who was better than he, and he prophesied also in what way Israel would be divided because of this and would no longer return. And having said this, he confirmed what was spoken together with deeds; for not long after, sent by divine decision, he anointed David king. So the one said to have been brought up through the ventriloquist announced nothing new, but shaped as his own what Samuel had said before, impersonating him by deceit, and, repeating it with persuasive artistry, pretended to speak prophetically. But just as begging soothsayers, hurrying to the doors of the rich, at once amaze their hearers by telling offhand what has already passed in their lives and what happened long before, and then, having beguiled them into simple belief, fabricate whatever they like about the future; so too the apparition of the ventriloquist, transformed, recited the very prophetic sayings of Samuel and thought it was prophesying in appearance, though it knew nothing; it set forth another's words as its own and astounded the accursed man, and through them easily stole upon him and stole his mind away. What, then, was added after this? “And you,” it says, “tomorrow, and your son Jonathan”: the demon seemed to say this as its own; “and the Lord will give the camp of Israel into the hands of the foreigners.” But these things …

We must inquire whether it foretold the truth, or spoke at a guess, announcing from guesswork and chance; and besides, whether it could foreknow anything at all. First, then, Saul does not appear to have perished on the next day, as the apparition said in its utterance. For if, having heard the words, from excessive despondency he did not eat bread all that day and all that night, as the divine Scripture declares, and after this the woman again urged him to take food, since a journey lay ahead of him, it is plain that it was on the second day, after that fast all night and all day, that she persuaded him, lying slack on the ground, to get up and sit more decently on the couch; and the suckling calf she had, she quickly slaughtered and prepared as food; and when she had made the meal eagerly and set it before him and those with him, he, being urged, took food there; and we must understand that he came to further hours of the night, if indeed he set out from there by night. So the demon is convicted of lying by this fact itself; for it did not happen as he said, “Tomorrow you will be with me,” since Saul spent the next day there without food, and then, having taken food on the second, he went to the camp. Nor is he caught only in saying what was contrary to the fact; he also said that Jonathan alone, together with his father, would end up with him; but on the contrary, the narrative voice of Scripture declares that Saul was slain together with three sons, not with one only, as he said. So, for lack of foreknowledge, the demon said nothing true; for he would not have announced things contrary to what happened. Rather, having stolen, as I said, what Samuel had said before, he added a few things to it, weaving in similar things from what was probable; so he threatened the ruler with death, making use of Samuel's words, and promised besides the handing over of the camp of Israel, because the prophet had said that the people would be divided. For he saw the engines of war set up against him, and the leader of the people terrified, and moreover abandoned by God himself (from which the ruler, guessing, admitted that the prophet's proclamation was being fulfilled here), and he pretended to make his proclamation in accordance with the present movements. But whatever he added on his own, by itself, he was plainly caught lying in it; for he could not foretell the day of death, nor the killings of the sons of Saul, whom Scripture names. From this it is not hard to understand that the spirit announced nothing of its own, nothing true; but when it secretly stole the words of Samuel and appropriated them, it thought it was prophesying. But above all it cannot be said that it prophesied this without falsehood; and if indeed it did foretell the outbreak of war and the incurable streams of bloodshed, who is the cause of all wars? Is it not the devil? Did he not ask for Job? Did he not suddenly raise an undeclared war against him, and, transforming himself in different ways in different places, become at once his own messenger, witness, and war-leader, slipping into the inmost parts of men?

But the figure has been thought unclear by most; we must go on, then, consistently to the tracks of the third book of Kingdoms. It appears there how the prophet Micaiah is questioned by Ahab; and since he was compelled to tell the truth without disguise, he said he had seen the Lord sitting on a throne, and the heavenly armies standing around him on the right and on the left; and together with the account of the vision he said he had heard a voice of this kind: “Who will deceive Ahab, so that he will go up to Ramoth-gilead and fall there?” Then he says (to pass over what lies between and say what is to the point): “A spirit came out and stood before the Lord and said: I will deceive him”; and when the Lord answered, “By what?”, it replied again: “I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.” To this the Stronger said: “You will deceive, and you will prevail. And now, behold,” he says, “go and do so.” The prophet, telling these very things to the king, at once adds: “God has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these prophets of yours, and the Lord has spoken evil against you.” So if we must understand that this spirit, the cause of lying speech, is not good but evil, it follows that it is this very instrument of the devil. And if this is shown to be properly so, then he had heard beforehand how the vile Ahab would die when he went to war; for he resolved to cast out the truth with the lie, so as himself to bring about the outbreak of war and destroy the unjust man shamefully. So by these deeds too it is shown that he himself is the stage-manager of all evils for the unjust. But in Saul's case, whatever he added of his own and joined to Samuel's sayings, in it he not only lied persuasively but also blasphemed impiously. Hence the first blasphemy is refuted. First, in imitation, as the Lord said to the thief who confessed the power of his kingdom, “Today you will be with me in paradise,” the crafty one said the same to Saul, who had carried out the acts of divination: “Tomorrow you will be with me, you and Jonathan your son.” Second, he wants to show by this that the righteous man differs in nothing from the unrighteous, contriving to cut down the zeal of the godly. No one seems unaware that there is no fellowship of the believer with the unbeliever; or again, how the man who revelled in insatiable wealth was separated far from the dwelling of Lazarus, though he had done nothing like Saul. For he never gave anything to the poor man, nothing at all, not even of the crumbs that fell to the ground; but he did not maltreat the man with blows, nor torture him with scourges and drive him farther off. Yet when both departed and passed from here, the one came to rest in the bosom of the forefather Abraham, the other was given over to the sleepless flames of fire; and as he burned, tormented in Hades, he sees the forefather from afar, and beholds Lazarus too in his bosom; and burning in the flame he begged Abraham earnestly to send the poor man to him; for he asked that Lazarus might come and dip the tip of his finger in water and cool his tongue, touching it with moisture: such things the wretch asked in supplication. And when the forefather, answering him directly, showed that each in his own part had received fitting returns as his reward, then he added: “And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who wish to cross from here to you cannot, nor can those from there cross over to us.” If, then, there is a kind of chasm separating the righteous and the unrighteous, so that those from here cannot be ferried there, nor those from there come here, it is established that Saul, being unrighteous, is not with the prophet Samuel. For if the rich man cannot be with the poor man, and that though he did him no wrong and did not persecute him, but only did not readily share with him from what he had, how much more is this wretched man unworthy of the company of the saints …

But must we not consider how, for the sake of shameful gain, he set aside the divine command; and, struck incurably by a demon, was driven by envy to persecute the saintly David in no fitting manner, though David soothed with prophetic psalmody the savagery of the demon raging within him; how he slaughtered the priests of the Lord, three hundred and fifty in number; how he departed from God, divining impiously? If he did these things and things akin to them, how can one suppose that he came to rest with the wonder-working Samuel, who asked that rain should come in the season of harvest, and at his word a countless mass of waters was poured out? And if it cannot be said that Saul is with Samuel, then he lied who said to him, “Tomorrow you will be with me.” Therefore, if the one who said this is a liar, it is plain that this is not Samuel; for a prophet of the Lord would not lie so out of season. So such words, split off by themselves, show bare the many-faced beast hidden deep within. It is he, then, who dragged the frenzied Saul too down into the chasm of Tartarus; hence, having got hold of him, he addressed him as his own: “Tomorrow you and Jonathan your son will be with me.” Trying to establish, by naming two persons, that the righteous never differs from the unrighteous, he declared that Jonathan too would carry off the same lot as his father, though he did not share his cruelty. Who that exists pretends not to understand that he who lived most excellently, the lover of the prophet David, who did not attempt to persecute the righteous unjustly, does not bear the same lot as his father? For, to sum it all up, a son will not die for an unjust father.

[16] Indeed, he is refuted also by what follows in this account, for the writer added: “And Saul hastened, and fell full length on the ground, and was very much afraid,” it says, “at the words of Samuel”; for he knew that these were the words of Samuel, which Samuel had prophesied when present in body and tongue; but the apparition picked these out … and brought them forth as its own; and the ruler, frightened, and seeing the signs of war plainly set up against him, became terrified, thinking of their outcome. But Origen, fabricating doctrines for himself, knowing that very many vote for these things, when he argued against those who contradicted him, did not take pains to examine what was needful with due reverence; but declaring beforehand that the drama of the ventriloquist touches everyone, and calling the truth to an ill-considered examination, he plainly fights against the truth itself. Then, going through the praises of Samuel, all that the divine Scriptures say of him, he again declares him to be under the authority of the demon, in these very words and syllables: “Was so great a man under the earth? And did the ventriloquist bring him up? Does a demon have authority over a prophetic soul?” These things he is sometimes thought by some to say as one raising a difficulty, or perhaps asking. But so that he might establish by the conclusions that follow that this is how things are, he added in clearer words: “These things are written,” he says; “are they true or not true? To say they are not true leads to unbelief: it will come back on the heads of those who say it; to say they are true gives us inquiry and difficulty.” After this, again confirming without examination what he puts forward, and setting out the opinions of those who held contrary views, he adds: “And indeed we know some who say: I do not believe the ventriloquist. The ventriloquist says she saw Samuel; she is lying.” And he says many other things besides, through which he openly rebukes those who declare the ventriloquist's divinations false, and, cursing, brings it back on the heads of those who do not believe her. Wishing to persuade the facile very easily, he attaches this to Scripture itself, saying: “Or is it not written? Are these things true or not true?” And yet, he said, that the prophet's soul was not brought up gives us difficulty and inquiry; but to grant such things to the demon, how full of impiety is that? He no longer speaks as one inquiring, nor attends with his mind, struck by sheer folly; for to God alone belongs such authority, to command souls to be called back from Hades. So we must reply here again: these things are recorded in the holy Scriptures, but the writer did not declare that such a text was set down in his own person; for the book would not be read in the church if it cried out against the prophetic words, as we showed before and shall say a little later; rather, it engraved the words of the ventriloquist, and the knowledge of the frenzied ruler, shown by his deeds to be full of ignorance. For if it is fitting to lay such a charge on the holy Scriptures, then, since they say that the devil openly proclaims himself God, must we believe him because of this, attributing the whole to the narrative sense of the text, as Origen proposes? For this too has been recorded in the Scriptures themselves. Or again, when, with measureless arrogance, he says that the whole compass of this world, and its kingdoms, are his own, would anyone say that we must therefore understand that he is the creator of all things? Not at all, one would say; for the narrative voice engraved his boasts, but does not declare them true; nor could anyone ever show that it does. But there are countless such things to see besides; it is not possible to bring them all forward, lest by speaking at length we seem to be driven out …