Against Celsus 1.62

After this, since, not even knowing the number of the apostles, he said that Jesus attached to himself ten or eleven notorious men, tax collectors and the most wicked sailors, and with them ran away here and there, gathering food in a shameful and beggarly way, come, let us deal with these things too as best we can. It is plain to those who read the Gospel accounts, which Celsus does not appear even to have read, that Jesus chose twelve apostles: Matthew a tax collector; and those whom he vaguely called sailors are perhaps James and John, since they left the boat and "their father Zebedee" and followed Jesus. For Peter and his brother Andrew, who used a net to earn their necessary food, are to be counted not among sailors but, as Scripture recorded, among fishermen. Let Levi too be a tax collector who followed Jesus; but he was not of the number of his apostles, except according to some copies of the Gospel according to Mark. Of the rest we have not learned the occupations by which they earned their food before becoming Jesus' disciples. I say, then, to this too, that to those able to examine the story of Jesus' apostles intelligently and fairly, it is evident that these men taught Christianity by divine power and succeeded in bringing people under the word of God. For it was not power of speech and orderly exposition according to the dialectical or rhetorical arts of the Greeks that was in them to win over their hearers. It seems to me that if Jesus had chosen men who were wise in the opinion of the many and able to think and speak in a way pleasing to crowds, and had used them as ministers of his teaching, he would most reasonably have been suspected of having proclaimed his teaching by a method like that of philosophers who head some school. And the claim that the teaching is divine would no longer have been evident, since the teaching and the preaching would have been in the persuasiveness of wisdom in the style and composition of words; and "faith" would have been, like the faith of the world's philosophers in their doctrines, "in the wisdom of men" and not "in the power of God." But as it is, who, seeing fishermen and tax collectors who had not even learned their first letters (as the Gospel records of them, and as Celsus has believed them on this point, since they tell the truth about their lack of education), boldly speaking not only to Jews about faith in Jesus but also preaching him among the other nations and succeeding, would not ask where their power of persuasion came from? For it was not the kind the many recognize. And who would not say that Jesus fulfilled by some divine power in his apostles the words, "Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men"? Paul too, setting forth this power, as we said above, says: "And my word and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that our faith might not be in the wisdom of men but in the power of God." For according to what is said in the prophets, who foretold the preaching of the gospel, "The Lord gave a word to those who preach the good news with great power, the King of the powers of the beloved," that the prophecy that says, "His word will run swiftly," might also be fulfilled. And we see that "into all the earth" has gone out "the sound" of Jesus' apostles, "and their words to the ends of the world." For this reason those who hear the word proclaimed with power are filled with power, which they show in their disposition, their life, and their struggle for the truth even to death. But some are empty, even if they profess to believe in God through Jesus, who, not having divine power, only seem to be brought to the word of God. Although I mentioned above a Gospel saying spoken by the Savior, I will use it again now at the right moment, to show both our Savior's foreknowledge concerning the preaching of the gospel, most divinely shown, and the strength of the word, which without teachers wins over believers by persuasion joined with divine power. Jesus says: "The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; pray therefore the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest."