On the Witch of Endor, against Origen 17–25

So, since he seemed to rebuke not a little those who think most rightly, he again slipped away and leapt to another idea, and made a great show, playing the demagogue, of the fact that they say, among other things, that it would be dreadful to suppose that the renowned Samuel had been in Hades, he who had been honoured with the choice dignity of prophecy. This he repeats up and down like an old woman, contriving by deceit to shift his hearers from one thing to another. But we do not differ about matters agreed by all, but about those which we have decided are properly in dispute; for the question is not whether Samuel was in Hades, but whether a demon has such authority as to call back the souls of the righteous from Hades and send them back again. Since, then, caught in the act, he was convicted of pouring out blasphemy, he turns aside the ears of his hearers with deceitful art, and takes refuge, of course, in the person of Christ, so that, comparing it with the holy men, he might show that Christ too went down to Hades together with all the others. But while he was showing this, and exhorting each one, he said: “Why are you afraid to say that every place needs Christ and the prophets?” And, putting a few things in between, he weaves in another blasphemy, declaring that Christ, even when he was below, “so to speak,” he says, “being in the place below, was above in his purpose”. Speaking as though of a mere man, and no longer aiming at his divine nature, he said that he came to the lowest places but was of course above by his purpose, just like other men. “For so,” he said, “the prophets too and Samuel, even if they go down where the souls below are, can be in the place below, but they are not below in their purpose.” Deafening the world with endless talk, he does not even understand this: that any man whatever, even if he is very wicked, when he has gone down to Hades is above in his purpose; for there is no one, righteous or unrighteous, who, living at any time, does not long to hold to what is highest and be rid of the places under the earth. If, then, all who have been brought down to Hades alike love the regions above in their purpose, though some did not at all care for a righteous life, what special dignity of the prophetic choir did he make clear? And what did he report as distinctive of the Lord, when he declared him like all others? So ignorantly did he sound out this saying, not understanding that the Word was God: he is present everywhere at once not rather by purpose but by the power of the Godhead. And if indeed he allowed his chosen temple to be destroyed, he at once raised it again on the third day; and the soul of this human tabernacle, going down to the lowest parts of the earth, threw open the gates there with a single stroke and set free the souls shut in there. So it has been strengthened with divine power through its union with God and the Word, so as to have an authority that reaches everywhere.

Indeed I am persuaded that there is clear evidence of this too: at the time when he came to the places under the earth, at the same time he also brought the thief's soul into paradise that very day. For if salvation came to all men through one man, it is plain that his soul ransoms the souls of its own kind, at once going down to the regions of the chaos below the earth, and at once restoring to the most ancient pasture of paradise the one who slipped in under the power of his unconquered kingdom. And consistently with this, the Servant of God testified even before, saying beforehand: “No one has gone up into heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.” So if he said that the one sprung from the human race had gone up into heaven, alone of all, and had come down here again from there, and that, having come here, he went about in heaven, it is established that the man did these things in a singular way by the power of his soul. For the holy soul of Christ, dwelling together with God and the Word, goes about through all things together and has gone into the highest heaven itself, into which no other man has gone up; but these things are attached to the very human form which God and the Word wore. And that the Son of God is present everywhere at once, John too stands as witness, not least, who heard Christ himself and cries out loudly in so many words: “No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” And indeed, if Christ, present here in the body, was going about when John reported these words, and he who received these sayings proclaimed that he was in the bosom of the Father while being entertained on earth in his body, how are we not to understand that he had both gone into the heavens, as dwelling within the bosom of the Father, and sojourned on earth as befits God, and was present to all at once, being God?

But if anyone, sick with Jewish blindness, does not accept the words of the Gospel, we must bring against him the sayings of Solomon and speak somewhat as follows: “For while gentle silence enveloped all things, and night in its own swiftness was half gone, your all-powerful Word leapt from heaven, from the royal throne, bearing as a sharp sword your unfeigned command, and stood and filled all things with death; and it touched heaven while it stood upon the earth.” If, then, the only-begotten Son is proclaimed the Word of God himself and God, in a company of equal glory, through whom angels, heavens, earth, sea, depths, and the lights that run through the sky, and, in a word, the whole constitution of things that have come into being were made; and if he, correcting all with just judgment, holds the throne of the everlasting kingdom from heaven and punishes the unjust with swift justice; then, being all-powerful in act and deed, since he is God and the Word of God, he touched heaven while he stood upon the earth, at the same time, plainly filling all things in every way by the power of his Godhead. So, if his nature is such, those are impious who think that the divine is circumscribed by a place or by some particular portion of space; and Origen speaks offhand from ignorance rather than from well-ordered wisdom when he says that Christ, having gone down to the lowest parts of the earth, abode above in his purpose. For he did not understand that this one, being God, was not present above by eagerness of will, in seeming and in desire, so much as he fills all things for all, as much as possible, by the working of his Godhead.

But such opinions about Christ befit the man who lays down that prophetic souls are brought up by a demon. The pythoness, when she saw the demons who shared her belly, cried out as though she had seen certain gods coming up from the earth, goddesses, if one must say so. But the grandiloquent Origen was not afraid to say that the demon brought up not only the prophet's soul, but: “Did not other holy souls of prophets come up with him?” he said. And, not satisfied with this madness, he laid down that the angels too came up with their spirits; for he said that they came up here for the salvation of those in need. Origen, it seems, ascribes very great hopes to the angels and prophets, or even to the whole choir of the saints together: first representing them as under the authority of a demon, and then indicating that they were brought up here through a frenzied woman to heal the suffering, led forth like prisoners. He does not seem to me to speak any less crazily than she. Let it be so: he has pitifully belittled the holy men, and was not ashamed before the order of the angels either. Or let him who stands by such a rule show clearly whence he got it that the angels who feast in heaven came up from the earth. For it was not they who went down to Hades bringing ransoming releases to the captives, but Christ, since he set up a victorious trophy against the enemy and, having snatched away the spoils of the captives, ascended aloft with his body into heaven; while angels stand before God at all times, eager to perform the services due, but they do not dwell in Hades.

But Origen, it seems, pretends not to understand, so that he may set up a superstitious divination; then, having undertaken to allegorize all the Scriptures, he does not blush to take this passage alone according to the letter, … with pretence. But discussing the paradise which God planted in Eden, and wishing to explain how the fruit-bearing trees sprang up, he added among other things: “When in reading we go up from the myths,” he said, “and from the literal sense, we ask what those trees are which God cultivates; we say that they are not sensible.” Speaking figuratively in this way, he does not shudder to call myths the things that God is recorded to have made and that Moses, the most faithful servant of God, wrote down; but, on the contrary, what the myth fashioned in the belly obscurely whispers, this he confirms with a dogmatic decree, showing it to be true. The words of the ventriloquist he establishes as having been spoken through the Holy Spirit, and he deems that they remain unshaken, ascribing the appearance to Scripture; but the very messages of God delivered through Moses he calls myths, and changes their meaning, not judging it right to abide by the literal sense. Does he not allegorize the wells dug by Abraham and his household, and, stretching out such a swarm of words, destroy their whole account by transferring it to another meaning, though the wells can still be seen in the country even now? Did he not turn into figures the affairs of Isaac and Rebecca, saying that the earrings and bracelets were not of gold, forcing the whole subject and carrying it over to the intelligible? And dealing with the much-enduring Job, instead of admiring his endurance, praising his labours, extolling his prowess, accepting his faith, describing the examples of his fortitude, urging newly enlisted recruits through him to virtue by courage and strength of mind, arming the contestants to fight manfully for godliness, he left that aside and, rushing loftily to the names of the daughters, wore himself out like an old woman. What nonsense he talked, rushing at the name “Day”, and “Cassia”, and the “horn of Amalthea”, it is not even possible to say; for it is full of every kind of mockery. About Lazarus I write this: instead of glorifying Christ's mighty work and showing clearly by it that he is God, who by his authority summoned the stinking corpse from the tomb, and by the release of his word restored the swollen body, he says nothing on this account, but brought Lazarus, the friend of the Lord, whom he loved, not without reason, for his virtue, down to the figure of one sick and dead in sins. But no one said or wrote such things against the righteous man; for the Lord would not have loved him so indiscriminately if he were not bound to a divine way of life. And no less, observing the drama of the stoning, since he tries to treat this too figuratively, he falsifies the text of the Gospel, saying: “Searching in what goes before, we did not at all find that the Jews took up stones to stone him”; then after a little he says: “For if they took them up again, they took them up before.” And up and down he wants to make out that no other such account precedes, so as to establish that it was words, not stones, that they rashly took up against him; although the evangelist had said earlier: “So they took up stones to throw at him.” And after he had written this, passing over about a hundred and thirty-five lines in between, he adds: “The Jews took up stones again to stone him.” These are recorded in two places and appear to have been done at different times, since they do not have the same connections or combinations of words; but Origen, who thinks he knows all the Scriptures, did not read this, though he writes these things as though he knew the whole Gospel word for word.

If anyone supposes that we are inventing these things, by reading the very statements of the Gospel and the works he laboured over on this subject, he will find that we have said nothing false. But what need is there to say more? Allegorizing nearly everything, so to speak, from the names, he destroys the substance of the facts, not even considering this: that there are many names shared by the righteous and the unrighteous, and that unlike ways of life cannot be judged alike from one name. There is Judas the traitor, and the other Judas, the apostle; or again Zechariah, a most unjust king, and another Zechariah, the prophet. Moreover, there is Hananiah, who was thrown into the furnace of fire; and besides him another Ananias, who persecuted the church instead of being persecuted, and ordered the apostle to be struck, to whom Paul retorted to his face: “God is about to strike you, you whitewashed wall; and do you sit judging me according to the law, and contrary to the law order me to be struck?” Therefore, if things are judged by the name, let those who rely on such tropologies say by what method they think fit to interpret unlike kinds of knowledge or the ascents of different ways of life from shared names. Indeed many Jews even today, bearing the names of forefathers or prophets, do lawless things; and many among the Greeks, called Peter and Paul, do incurable things. So the empty parts of Origen's words are caught not least by such levity. But what he introduces wrongly about the resurrection cannot be shown at present. For Methodius, worthy of holy remembrance, wrote sufficiently on this subject and showed openly that Origen gave the heretics an unguarded entry by defining the resurrection as being of the form, not of the body itself. That he overturned everything with tropologies and sowed the seeds of wrong belief everywhere, it is easy to see; and, repeating himself up and down, he filled the world with measureless chatter. Yet, though he habitually allegorized everything in every way by such a method, he was not able to treat figuratively the words of the ventriloquist alone, nor even to give a clear account of the story from its very sequence.

But what did he bring in besides? When the apparition said to Saul, “The Lord will tear the kingdom out of your hand,” he retorted against this, plausibly, that one should not think that a demon prophesies about the Israelite kingship. But we said already before that the demon stole these words, spoken earlier by Samuel, so that, deceiving the senseless Saul, he might seem to speak his own. This man, however, does not pretend to know such dramas of the devil. So when the demon seemed to foretell that the kingdom of the crazed man would be torn away, he then added: “And he will give it to your neighbour David.” The very learned Origen, moved at this point, said: “A demon cannot know the kingship of David, appointed by the Lord.” But I cannot help wondering how this man carries off a reputation among the many for good counsel, as being sensible and most excellent in judgment. If the kingship had been obscure, one might perhaps have pretended ignorance by way of excuse. But if David had been attested by God, and anointed besides by Samuel, and, always excelling in the wars, had been shown to be the king's son-in-law, so that the dancing women ascribed the tens of thousands to him and the thousands to Saul; if these and such things were plain, what was strange or marvellous if the demon recognized the kingship that had been appointed by the Lord through the prophet? For we need not think, if one must speak by way of exaggeration, that he saw only bodily things, as the use of the oil involves the perceptible application of touch; but no one will dispute that these things were evident to all. But let me add and say what is greater. Even if these things were not plain, which would be greater by comparison: to know the kingship of David, or to bring up prophetic souls from Hades? And indeed this has been shown in the case of the greater Person; for in the case of Christ too, the demons, racked and unwilling, cry out in so many words: “What have we to do with you, Son of God? Have you come before the time to destroy us?” But to summon souls from Hades, and to call heaven-flying choirs of angels with them, God alone has authority to accomplish, and his most divine Son, but no one else at all. If, then, they recognized the invisible kingship of God, anointed with the Holy Spirit, could they not much more recognize that of David, conferred through a perceptible anointing and a visible rite? Did the wicked one not know the things done and recorded in the Scriptures about David, he who approached the Lord when he was clothed with the body and said boldly: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written,” he says, “that he will command his angels concerning you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone”? So if he pretends to speak from the holy Scriptures, he knows what is written, with an evil learning; and if he is acquainted with them, he was not ignorant of the kingship of David, which is engraved in the sacred writings; so that, in speaking what was written, the demon prophesied nothing …

But the much-renowned Origen, finding nothing at all to say, took refuge artfully in this, adding elsewhere: “But I,” he says, “cannot grant a demon such great power that it should prophesy about Saul and the people of God, and prophesy about the kingship of David, that he is going to reign.” Then one might say: “O most foolish of men, you do not grant it the power to prophesy, but you allow it to bring up prophets from Hades and suddenly to summon choirs of angels, which is greater and more eminent and belongs to a more divine authority? Who ever thought so feebly or so poorly?” But above all I would reply that the demon prophesied nothing, as we have shown before; and even if it spoke things worthy of prophecy, not even so should we suppose that the demon brought up spirits and souls of the righteous from Hades. For Caiaphas too prophesied concerning the plot against Christ, saying: “It is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation should not perish.” He did not say this of himself, as the most wise John has recorded; but being high priest that year, he prophesied. If, then, this man, who formed unjust counsels against the Lord, nevertheless does not prophesy of himself, but, moved of course by another, makes the refutation against himself, then, if anyone else does something of this kind, we must not take it that he is therefore attached to a more divine power. Nor must we tolerate it if people say that by demonic divination one seems to bring up souls from Hades and armies of angels, as God does. For we must listen to what Moses, in his oracles in Deuteronomy, declares about such prophets: “But if there arises among you,” he says, “a prophet, or one who dreams a dream, and gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass of which he spoke to you, saying, Let us go and serve other gods whom you do not know, you shall not listen to the words of that prophet,” he says, “or to that dreamer of the dream; for the Lord your God is testing you, to see whether you love the Lord your God.” Here, presenting the pair of the Father and the only-begotten Son, he names one the Lord who tests, and another besides him the beloved Lord and God, so that from the pair he may show the one Godhead and the true divine begetting. And if that prophet who promised to show the sign or the wonder must be utterly rejected because he introduces lawless idolatry, even if the power of the sign is working before him, how much more must one not believe a demon promising to summon souls and spirits of the righteous from Hades? Nor would anyone say, without impiety, that while they were divining, God raised Samuel, wishing to test the unjust man, so as to credit the drama to the demon's promise and by this pretext to ruin some by deceit; for one must by all means guard against the pollution of divination, as the lawgiver decreed. Does anyone not think the causes of augury abominable, and the divinations of the ventriloquist and the tokens of omens? Let him hear how, a little before, he laid down again: “But if,” he says, “you enter the land which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to do according to the abominations: purifying one's son and one's daughter in fire, and divining divination, and enchantment, a ventriloquist, a diviner of portents, one who inquires of the dead; for everyone who does these things is an abomination to the Lord.” After this, showing that because of these things he threatens even the foreigners with death and destruction, he added at once: “For because of these abominations the Lord will destroy them from before you.” It appears, then, that the divination of the ventriloquist is yoked with all the causes of idolatry together, like refuse lying within in a fever, rousing the sickness, foul tinder, accustomed to bring the disease to a head by swelling and corruption. And if he called the joyless visions recounted of ventriloquists “divinations of portents”, he established that there is nothing true in them. Hence, I think, in Leviticus too he issued a grimmer sentence against them, adding in these very words: “And a man or a woman,” he says, “who is a ventriloquist or an enchanter among you, let them be put to death; stone them with stones; they are guilty.”

What, then, do those say who hold that Origen's vainglorious opinions should be embraced? Does the law command that the ventriloquists be put to death as the causes of most hateful practices, or, on the contrary, as counsellors of good works? If they are the perpetrators of impious dramas, the lawgiver rightly drives out the accursed, who announce nothing true; but if they are the inventors of the finest deeds, the law voted against them for nothing. For if they bring up souls from Hades, and these, arriving here, proclaim the future, they furnish usefully those in need; then the lawgiver did not justly decree that benefactors be stoned. So one of two things is necessary: either to make these words void, or to discredit the words of the ventriloquist as stale and false. But what shall we say? Do the divine Scriptures contradict themselves? Does the one vote fight with the many? And even if there is some conflict, the many prevail. And indeed, on the contrary, these things are treated as done unholily; no less is it recorded in the fourth book of Kingdoms that Manasseh … and worshipped all kinds of idol-shaped matter: “He made for himself,” it says, “ventriloquists.” And conversely again Josiah the king, distinguished by the virtue of righteousness, pulled down all the hand-made images together and destroyed them by fire; and besides this, it says, he removed the ventriloquists and the teraphim; then after a little it says that he burned them too, being of course lawless. So, if the writer of both texts is the same, and here he describes the lives of two persons, kings, and of these he introduces the unjust one as having chosen, besides other things, the ventriloquists too, and praises the one roused by zeal for removing the ventriloquists besides all the enemies; if this is so, it is established that he did not put out words that fight with themselves. Nor again did he say that the Holy Spirit declared that Samuel came up; but he narrated the words of the ventriloquist, as she thought and boasted in appearance to the unwary; for otherwise he would somehow fight with himself and with all the other Scriptures. And not only do these sayings refute this, but another illustrious witness also adds his vote to them, the prophet Isaiah, who, in one place forbidding such abominations, in another quite rightly exhorting those who heard him, sings: “And if they say to you, Seek the ventriloquists and those who speak from the earth, the empty talkers who speak from the belly, will not a nation seek its God?” Then, adding something after this, he goes on: “Why do they seek the dead on behalf of the living? For he gave the law as a help, so that they should not speak like this word, for which there are no gifts to give.” By a clear holy utterance he renounced the race of ventriloquists. And if he rejected such a gathering, he showed beyond dispute that none of them ever says anything at all true, but that by empty lying they spread deceit and by stale empty talk lead the ignorant astray. Hence, consistently, he mocked those who ask the dead about the living; for they themselves, being wholly dead and maimed, these empty talkers, pretend to serve the voices of the dead; and the prophet testified, crying out, that an unbreakable law is laid down concerning these things, so that not according to the … for this, I think, is the guarding of the law: to call on help from heaven, and not to beg aid from earthly things, into the very …