Against Celsus 4.3–4.18

Having said that we say he has come down and the Jews that he will come down as judge, he thinks he can at once accuse the statement as most shameful and not needing a long refutation, and he says: “What is the purpose of such a descent for God?” He does not see that in our view the purpose of the descent is, first, to turn back what the Gospel calls “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and second, because of their disobedience, to take from them what is called the kingdom of God and give it “to other tenants” besides the Jews of old, the Christians, who “will render the fruits” of God's kingdom to God “in their seasons,” each action being a fruit of the kingdom. We, then, have said a little out of much in answer to Celsus's question, “For what is the purpose of such a descent for God?” But Celsus supplies himself with things that would be said neither by Jews nor by us, saying: “Or is it to learn what goes on among men?” For none of us says that Christ comes into life in order to learn what goes on among men. Then, as if some would say, “To learn what goes on among men,” he raises the objection to himself: “For does he not know all things?” Then, as if we would answer that he does know, he raises a further difficulty, saying: “Does he know, then, but not correct them, and is he unable to correct them by divine power?” All this too is said foolishly. For God always, by his own Word, who from generation to generation passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets, corrects those who hear what is said; and in the coming of Christ he corrects by the Christian teaching, not those unwilling, but those who have chosen the better life that pleases God. And I do not know what kind of correction Celsus wanted to happen when he raised the difficulty, “Is he not able to correct them by divine power, unless he sends someone specially endowed by nature for this?” Did he want correction to come to men by God's putting images into their minds, taking away wickedness all at once and implanting virtue? Another may inquire whether such a thing is consistent or possible by nature; but we would say: Suppose it is possible. Where then is what is in our power, and where is praiseworthy assent to the truth, or acceptable rejection of falsehood? And even if it were granted once that this is possible and fittingly done, why should one not rather ask about the beginning, saying something analogous to Celsus, “Was God not able by divine power to make men not needing correction at all, but good and perfect from the start, with wickedness never having come into existence?” These things can carry away ordinary and unintelligent people, but not one who looks into the nature of things: that if you take away the voluntary character of virtue, you take away its very being. A whole treatise is needed on these matters; and the Greeks too have said not a little about them in their works on providence, who would not have said what Celsus set out: “He knows, but he does not correct, nor is he able to correct by divine power.” We too have spoken about these things in many places as far as we could, and the divine words have made them plain to those able to hear them.

What Celsus brings against us and the Jews will, then, also be said against him: Does the God over all, sir, know what goes on among men, or does he not? If you hold that there is a God and providence, as your treatise indicates, he must know. And if he knows, why does he not correct them? Or must we give an account of why, knowing, he does not correct them, while you, who do not clearly show yourself an Epicurean in your treatise but pretend to acknowledge providence, will not equally be asked why God, knowing all that goes on among men, does not correct them or free all from wickedness by divine power? But we are not ashamed to say that he always sends people to correct them; for the words that summon to the best things, given by God, are among men. But there are already many differences among those who serve God, and few are those who proclaim the things of truth wholly and purely and bring about complete correction, such as Moses and the prophets were. But beyond all these, great is the correction through Jesus, who wished not only those in one corner of the world to be healed but, as far as it was up to him, those everywhere; for he came as “Savior of all men.”

After this the most noble Celsus, taking it from I know not where, raises a difficulty against us as saying that God himself comes down to men; and he thinks it follows from this that he leaves his own seat. For he does not know the power of God, and that “the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together has knowledge of every voice”; nor can he understand the words, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord”; nor does he see that according to the Christians' teaching we all “live and move and have our being in him,” as Paul too taught in his speech to the Athenians. So even if the God of the universe by his own power comes down with Jesus into human life, and even if the Word who was “in the beginning with God,” being himself “God,” comes to us, he does not become displaced or leave his own seat, so that one place is empty of him and another full that did not have him before. The power and divinity of God come to dwell through whom he wills and in whom he finds room, without his changing place or leaving his place empty and filling another. For even if we should say that he leaves one and fills another, we shall not be speaking of place; but we shall say that the soul of the bad man, poured out in wickedness, is left by God, and that the soul of one who wishes to live by virtue, or is making progress in it, or already lives by it, is filled with, or shares in, the divine Spirit. There is no need, then, for the descent of Christ or for God's turning toward men, that he should leave a greater seat and that things here should be changed, as Celsus thinks when he says, “For if you were to change even the least of the things here, everything would be overturned and gone.” But if we must speak of some being changed by the presence of God's power and the coming of the Word to men, we shall not hesitate to say that whoever has received the coming of the Word of God into his own soul is changed from bad to good, from licentious to self-controlled, and from superstitious to pious.

And if you want us to answer the most ridiculous things of Celsus too, hear him saying: “But because God is unknown among men and for that reason seems to himself to be at a disadvantage, would he want to become known and to test those who believe and those who do not, like the newly rich among men who show off? They testify to a great and very mortal ambition in God.” We say, then, that God, being unknown by bad men, would want to be known, not because he seems to himself to be at a disadvantage, but because the knowledge of him frees the one who knows from unhappiness. Nor is it in order to test those who believe or those who do not that he either himself comes to dwell in some by an ineffable and divine power or sends his Christ, but in order that those who believe and grasp his divinity may be freed from all unhappiness, and that those who do not believe may no longer have room for excuse, as though they did not believe because they had not heard and been taught. What argument, then, shows that it follows from our teaching that God is like the newly rich among men who show off? For God does not show off toward us when he wants us to understand and perceive his greatness; but wishing to implant in us the blessedness that arises in our souls from our knowing him, he works through Christ and the continual coming of the Word so that we may take up our kinship with him. The Christians' teaching, then, testifies to no mortal ambition in God.

I do not know how, after talking nonsense to no purpose in the words we have set out, he later sets out that “not because he needs to be known for his own sake, but for our salvation, he wishes to give us knowledge of himself, so that those who accept it, becoming good, may be saved, and those who do not accept it, being shown to be wicked, may be punished.” And having set out such a thing, he raises a difficulty, saying: “Did God then only now, after so long an age, remember to make human life just, having neglected it before?” To this too we shall say that there was never a time when God did not wish to make human life just, but he always took care, giving occasions of virtue for the correction of the rational animal. For in every generation the wisdom of God, passing into souls which it finds holy, makes them friends of God and prophets. And in the sacred books there might be found those in each generation who were holy and receptive of the divine Spirit, and how they converted their contemporaries as far as they could.

It is not surprising that in certain generations there have been prophets who surpassed other prophets, some their contemporaries and others earlier or later, in the reception of the divine, because of their more vigorous and strong life. So too it is not surprising that there was a certain time when something exceptional came to dwell with the human race, surpassing those before it and after it. But the account of these matters has something rather mystical and deep, which cannot at all reach the ears of the common crowd. To make these things clear and to answer what is said about the coming of Christ, “Did God then only now, after so long an age, remember to make the human race just, having neglected it before?”, we would need to touch on the account of the portions and make clear why “when the Most High divided the nations, when he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and his people Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the lot of his inheritance.” And it will be necessary to state the cause of birth in each boundary under the one to whom that boundary was allotted, and how reasonably “his people Jacob became the Lord's portion, Israel the lot of his inheritance”; and why formerly “his people Jacob” was “the Lord's portion, Israel the lot of his inheritance,” but concerning later times the Father says to the Savior: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” For there are certain connections and sequences, unspeakable and indescribable, concerning the different dispensation for human souls.

So, whether Celsus likes it or not, after many prophets who corrected the affairs of that Israel, Christ came as the corrector of the whole world, not needing, as under the former dispensation, to use whips, chains, and tortures against men; for the teaching sufficed, when “the sower went out to sow,” to sow the word everywhere. And if a time will come that sets a limit to the world, a limit necessary because it had a beginning, and if an end will come to the world and after the end a just judgment of all, then the one who studies philosophy must establish the doctrines of the word with demonstrations of every kind, both from the divine writings and from the consistency of reasoning; but the ordinary and simpler person, unable to follow the most intricate speculations of the wisdom of God, must entrust himself to God and to the Savior of our race and be content with “he himself said it” from him rather than from anyone else.

After this again, as is his habit, Celsus, without establishing or proving anything, says, as if we babbled about God in a way neither holy nor pure: “That they babble these things about God in a way neither holy nor pure is quite clear.” And he thinks that we do these things to astonish ordinary people, and do not speak the truth about the punishments necessary for those who have sinned; that is why he likens us to those who in the Bacchic mysteries bring in apparitions and terrors beforehand. Now whether there is some plausible account of the Bacchic mysteries or none, let the Greeks say, and let Celsus and his fellow worshipers listen; but we defend our own teaching, saying that our aim is to correct the human race, whether by threats of punishments, which we are persuaded are necessary for the whole, and perhaps not useless even for those who will suffer them, or by promises to those who have lived well, which include the blessed life in the kingdom of God for those worthy to be ruled by him.

After this, wanting to show us that we say nothing strange or new about the flood or the conflagration, but that, having misheard what is said about them among the Greeks or barbarians, we have believed our Scriptures about them, he says this: “This too occurred to them from misunderstanding those others: that in cycles of long periods of time, and at the returns and conjunctions of the stars, conflagrations and floods happen, and that after the last flood, in the time of Deucalion, the cycle, according to the alternation of the universe, requires a conflagration. This made them say, in their mistaken opinion, that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.” To this we shall say that I do not know how Celsus, who has read much and displays knowledge of many histories, paid no attention to the antiquity of Moses, who is recorded by some Greek writers to have lived in the time of Inachus the father of Phoroneus, and is acknowledged by the Egyptians to be most ancient, and also by those who have written the history of Phoenicia. Let whoever wishes read the two books of Flavius Josephus on the antiquity of the Jews, so that he may learn in what way Moses was more ancient than those who said that floods and conflagrations happen in the world in long cycles of time; whom Celsus says the Jews and Christians misheard, and, not understanding the teaching about the conflagration, said that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.

Whether there are cycles, and floods or conflagrations in cycles, or not, and whether the Scripture knows of this too, both in many places and where Solomon says, “What is it that has been? The very thing that will be. And what is it that has been done? The very thing that will be done,” and so on, it is not the present occasion to say. It is enough only to note that Moses and some of the prophets, being most ancient men, did not take what they say about the conflagration of the world from others; but, if one must pay attention to the dates and say so, rather others, having misheard them and not understanding precisely what they said, invented periodic identities, indistinguishable in their individual qualities and their accidents. But we do not attribute either the flood or the conflagration to cycles and the revolutions of the stars; we say that their cause is wickedness poured out in excess and purged by flood or conflagration. And if the prophetic words say that God comes down, he who said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,” we interpret it figuratively. For God comes down from his own greatness and height when he manages the affairs of men, and especially of the wicked. And as ordinary usage says that teachers come down to the level of children, and the wise or those advanced come down to young men just turned to philosophy, not by descending bodily, so, if anywhere in the divine Scriptures God is said to come down, it is understood analogously to the usage that employs the word in this way; and so too with going up.

And since Celsus says mockingly that we claim God comes down like a torturer bearing fire, and forces us to examine deeper doctrines out of season, we shall say a little, enough to give the hearers a taste of a defense that removes Celsus's mockery of us, and then turn to what follows. The divine word says that our God is “a consuming fire,” and that “rivers of fire flow before him,” and also that he himself enters “like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap,” to refine his own people. When, then, he is said to be “a consuming fire,” we ask what it is fitting for God to consume, and we say that God, as fire, consumes wickedness and what is done from it, which is figuratively called “wood,” “hay,” and “straw.” The bad man, at any rate, is said to “build upon” the rational foundation that has been laid “wood,” “hay,” and “straw.” If, then, anyone can show that the writer understood these things otherwise, and can present the bad man bodily building “wood” or “hay” or “straw,” clearly the fire too will be understood as material and perceptible. But if the works of the bad man, called “wood” or “hay” or “straw,” are plainly spoken of figuratively, how does it not at once appear what kind of fire is meant, so that such “wood” may be consumed? For he says: “The fire itself will test what sort of work each one's is. If anyone's work which he has built upon remains, he will receive a reward; if anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss.” And what work could be meant here as burned up, if not everything done from wickedness? Our God, then, is “a consuming fire,” in the sense we have explained, and so “enters like a refiner's fire,” to refine the rational nature filled with the lead of wickedness and the other impure materials that have adulterated the golden, if I may so call it, or silver nature of the soul. So too “rivers of fire” are said to be “before” God, who will wipe out the wickedness mixed through the whole soul. But this suffices in reply to “this made them say, in their mistaken opinion, that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.”

Let us see also what Celsus says next, with great pomp, in this way: “Yet further,” he says, “let us take up the argument from the beginning with more proofs. I say nothing new, but what has long been held. God is good and beautiful and happy, and exists in what is most beautiful and best. If then he comes down to men, he needs a change, and a change from good to bad, from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to unhappiness, and from what is best to what is most wicked. Who then would choose such a change? And indeed it is the nature of the mortal to be altered and remolded, but of the immortal to remain the same and unchanged. So God would not accept such a change either.” It seems to me that what is needed in reply to this is said by one who has explained the descent of God to human affairs spoken of in the Scriptures, for which he does not need a change, as Celsus thinks we say, nor an alteration from good to bad, or from beautiful to shameful, or from happiness to unhappiness, or from what is best to what is most wicked. For, remaining unchangeable in his being, he comes down by his providence and dispensation to human affairs. We, then, present the divine writings as saying that God is unchangeable, both in “But you are the same” and in “I have not changed”; whereas the gods of Epicurus, being composed of atoms and, as far as their structure goes, dissoluble, busy themselves shaking off the atoms that would destroy them; and the god of the Stoics, being a body, at one time has his whole substance as the ruling part, when the conflagration occurs, and at another comes to be in a part of it, when the world is ordered. For these men have not been able to make clear the natural notion of God as wholly incorruptible, simple, uncompounded, and indivisible.

But the one who came down to men was “in the form of God” and out of love for mankind “emptied himself,” so that he could be received by men. Surely no change took place in him from good to bad, for he “committed no sin”; nor from beautiful to shameful, for he did not know “sin”; nor did he pass from happiness to unhappiness, but he “humbled himself,” and was nonetheless blessed, even when he humbled himself for the benefit of our race. Nor did any change take place in him from what is best to what is most wicked; for how is kindness and love for mankind most wicked? Or is it time to say that the physician too, who sees terrible sights and touches unpleasant things in order to heal the sick, passes from good to bad, or from beautiful to shameful, or from happiness to unhappiness? And yet the physician who sees terrible sights and touches unpleasant things does not altogether escape the possibility of falling into the same ills; but he who heals the “wounds” of our souls through the Word of God in him was himself incapable of receiving any wickedness. And if Celsus thinks that the immortal God the Word, by taking a mortal body and a human soul, is altered and remolded, let him learn that “the Word,” remaining Word in his being, suffers none of the things that the body or the soul suffers; but, coming down at times to one who cannot see the radiance and brightness of his divinity, he becomes as it were “flesh,” spoken of in bodily terms, until the one who has received him in this form, lifted up little by little by the Word, is able to behold even what I may call his primary form.

For there are, as it were, different forms of the Word, according as the Word appears to each of those being led to knowledge, in proportion to the state of the one being introduced, or making a little progress, or more, or already coming near to virtue, or having come to be in virtue. Hence it is not, as Celsus and those like him would have it, that our God was transformed; but when he went up “the high mountain,” he showed another form of himself, far better than the one which those who stayed below and could not follow him to the height beheld. For those below did not have eyes able to see the transformation of the Word into what is glorious and more divine; they could scarcely receive him as he was, so that it might be said of him by those unable to see what is better in him: “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honor, falling short of the sons of men.” Let this be said in reply to the supposition of Celsus, who did not understand the changes or transformations of Jesus spoken of as in histories, nor what in him was mortal or immortal.

Will not these things, especially when understood as they should be, appear far more dignified than Dionysus, deceived by the Titans, falling from the throne of Zeus, torn apart by them, and afterward put together again and, as it were, coming back to life and going up to heaven? Or are the Greeks permitted to refer such things to the doctrine of the soul and interpret them figuratively, while the door is shut to us for a consistent explanation, harmonious and in agreement everywhere in the Scriptures, which come from the divine Spirit present in pure souls? Celsus, then, did not at all see the intention of our writings; that is why he attacks his own interpretation and not that of the Scriptures. But if he had understood what follows for a soul that will be in eternal life, and what one must think about its being and its origins, he would not have so ridiculed the immortal coming into a mortal body, not according to Plato's transmigration but according to another, loftier contemplation. And he would have seen also one exceptional descent, from great love for mankind, in order to turn back what the divine Scripture mystically called “the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” which had come down from the mountains, to which the shepherd in certain parables is said to have come down, leaving on the mountains those that had not gone astray.

By dwelling on things he has not understood, Celsus causes us to repeat ourselves, since we do not want to leave anything he has said, even in appearance, unexamined. He says next: “Either God really changes, as they say, into a mortal body, and it has been said already that this is impossible; or he does not himself change, but makes those who see him think so, and leads them astray and lies. Deceit and lying are otherwise evils, and one would use them only as a kind of medicine, either with friends who are sick and mad, to heal them, or with enemies, taking care to escape danger. But no one sick or mad is a friend to God, nor does God fear anyone, so as to escape danger by leading him astray.” To this one might reply partly about the nature of the divine Word, who is God, and partly about the soul of Jesus. About the nature of the Word: just as the quality of food changes into milk in the nurse to suit the nature of the infant, or is prepared by the physician for the sick man's need for health, or is made ready in this way for the stronger man as more capable, so God changes for men the power of the Word, which by nature nourishes the human soul, according to each one's worth. To one it becomes, as Scripture called it, “pure spiritual milk”; to another, as weaker, a kind of vegetables; to another, who is perfect, “solid food” is given. And surely the Word does not belie his own nature in becoming nourishment for each as he can receive him; nor does he lead astray or lie. But if one takes the change to refer to the soul of Jesus, when it came into a body, we shall ask what he means by change. If a change of being, it is not granted, not only of that soul, but of any other rational soul either. But if it is that it suffers something from the body with which it is mingled and from the place into which it has come, what absurdity results for the Word, who from great love for mankind brings down a Savior to the human race? For none of those who earlier professed to heal could do as much as this soul showed by what it did, having come down voluntarily into human misfortunes for the sake of our race. The divine word, knowing this, says much in many places of the Scriptures; but for the present it suffices to quote one passage of Paul, which runs: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name.”