Against Celsus 6.79–7.12

So there was no need for many bodies to come into being everywhere, and many spirits like Jesus, for the whole inhabited world of men to be enlightened by the Word of God. The one Word, rising as “the sun of righteousness,” was enough to send out from Judaea the rays that reach the souls of those who wish to receive him. And if anyone longs to see many bodies filled with the divine Spirit, serving, like that one Christ, the salvation of men everywhere, let him consider those who everywhere teach the word of Jesus soundly and with an upright life, who are themselves also called Christs by the divine Scriptures in the words, “Do not touch my anointed ones (Christs), and do my prophets no harm.” For just as we have heard “that Antichrist is coming,” and have learned no less that there are “many antichrists” in the world, in the same way, knowing that Christ has come, we see that because of him many Christs have come to be in the world, who, like him, have loved “righteousness and” hated “iniquity; therefore God, the God” of Christ, has anointed them too “with the oil of gladness.” But he, having loved “righteousness and” hated “lawlessness” above “his companions,” received the first-fruits of the anointing and, if one may so put it, the whole anointing of the oil “of gladness,” while his companions, each according to his capacity, have shared in his anointing too. Therefore, since Christ is “the head of the Church,” so that Christ and the Church are one body, the “ointment on the head” has come down “upon the beard,” the symbol of the mature man, “Aaron,” and this “ointment,” “coming down,” has reached “to the hem of his garment.” I have said this in answer to Celsus's irreverent words: He ought to have breathed similarly into many bodies and sent them out over the whole world. The comic poet, raising a laugh, made Zeus sleep and wake up and send Hermes to the Greeks; but let the Word, which knows that God's nature is sleepless, teach us that God governs the affairs of the world at the proper times, as reason requires. It is not surprising if, because the judgments of God are great and hard to describe, “uninstructed souls” go astray, and Celsus with them. There is nothing ridiculous, then, in the Son of God having been sent to the Jews, among whom the prophets had arisen, so that, beginning there bodily, he might rise in power and spirit upon the world of souls that no longer wished to be deserted by God.

Next Celsus saw fit to call the Chaldeans a most divinely inspired nation from the beginning, the Chaldeans from whom deceptive astrology has spread among men. And Celsus ranks the Magi too among the most divinely inspired nations, the Magi from whom magic, named after their nation, has come to the other nations too, to the corruption and destruction of those who use it. And earlier, even in Celsus, the Egyptians were in error, as having solemn enclosures for what they consider temples, but inside nothing but apes or crocodiles or goats or asps or some other animal; yet now Celsus has seen fit to call the nation of the Egyptians most divinely inspired, and that from the beginning, perhaps because they have made war on the Jews from the beginning. And the Persians, who marry their mothers and have intercourse with their daughters, seem to Celsus a divinely inspired nation, and so do the Indians, some of whom he said earlier had even tasted human flesh. But the Jews, especially those of old, who did none of these things, he not only did not call most divinely inspired but said they would soon perish. This he says of them now as though he were a prophet, not seeing the whole dispensation of God concerning the Jews and their venerable ancient commonwealth, and how by their “trespass salvation” has come “to the Gentiles,” and “their trespass is the riches of the world, and their failure the riches of the Gentiles,” until “the fullness of the Gentiles comes in,” so that after this “all Israel,” which Celsus does not understand, may be saved.

I do not know how he says of God: He who knows all things did not understand this, that he was sending his Son to wicked men who would sin and punish him. But he seems now to have deliberately forgotten the teaching that says that God's prophets foresaw by the divine Spirit and prophesied everything that Jesus the Christ would suffer; from which it does not follow that God did not know that he was sending his Son to wicked and sinful men who would punish him. Immediately he says that our statement that these things were foretold long ago is made as a defence. But since our sixth book has reached an adequate length, let us stop the discussion here and, God granting, begin the seventh, in which Celsus thinks he answers our statement that the prophets foretold everything about Jesus. Since these matters are many and need a longer argument against them, we did not wish to break them off, compelled by the size of the book, nor, to avoid breaking off the argument, to make the sixth book very long and beyond due proportion.

In the six preceding books, holy brother Ambrose, we have contended as well as we could against Celsus's accusations against Christians, leaving nothing, so far as possible, untested and unexamined, and not passing over anything without answering it as well as we could. Now, calling on God through Jesus Christ himself, whom Celsus accuses, that he who is the truth may shine in our hearts with what overthrows falsehood, we begin a seventh treatise too, saying in our prayer to God that prophetic word: “In your truth destroy them,” meaning, plainly, the arguments opposed “to the truth.” For these are destroyed by the truth of God, so that, when they have been destroyed, all who have been set free from distraction may say what follows: “I will sacrifice to you willingly,” offering to the God of the universe a rational and smokeless sacrifice.

Celsus's purpose now is to accuse the teaching that says the things about Christ Jesus were prophesied by the prophets among the Jews. First, at the outset, we examine his statement that those who introduce another God besides the God of the Jews cannot answer his objections at all, while we who have kept the same God take refuge in the defence drawn from the prophecies about Christ. He says to this: Let us see what excuse they will find. Those who introduce another God will have none; and those who keep the same God will say the same thing again, that clever saying, that it had to happen so; and the proof is that it had been foretold long ago. To this we shall say that what he said a little earlier about Jesus and the Christians is so weak that even those who introduce another God, and do so impiously, could very easily answer what Celsus says. And if it were not absurd to give the weaker occasion to accept worse doctrines, we too would have done this, to prove false his statement that those who introduce another God have no defence against what Celsus says. But as it is, let us make our defence concerning the prophets, in addition to what was said above.

He says, then: The things foretold by the Pythian priestess, or the priestesses of Dodona, or the Clarian Apollo, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, and by countless other prophets, by whom practically the whole earth was colonized, they count as nothing; but what was said, or not said, in the manner of those people by the men in Judaea, as those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do even now, these they think marvellous and unchangeable. Let us say, then, about the oracles he has listed, that we could collect from Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophers a good deal to overthrow the belief in the Pythian priestess and the other oracles; and we could also quote what Epicurus and those who embrace his doctrine say about them, to show that some Greeks too overthrow the prophecies believed in and admired throughout Greece. But let it be granted that the matters of the Pythian priestess and the other oracles are not fictions or human pretences of divine inspiration. Let us see, then, whether even so it can be shown to those who examine the facts as lovers of truth that one who accepts that these oracles are real need not admit that there are gods in them, but rather certain evil demons and spirits hostile to the human race, which hinder the soul's ascent, its journey through virtue, and its restoration to God through true piety. It is recorded, then, about the Pythian priestess, whose oracle seems the most famous of all, that the prophetess of Apollo, sitting over the mouth of the Castalian cave, receives a spirit through her female parts; filled with it, she utters what are regarded as solemn and divine oracles. See from this whether the impurity and profanity of that spirit is not shown, since it enters the soul of the prophetess not through thin and invisible pores, far purer than a woman's parts, but through those which it would not be lawful for a chaste man to look at, much less to speak of or touch; and this not once or twice (for perhaps that would have seemed more tolerable), but as often as she is believed to prophesy from Apollo. Moreover, to bring the supposed prophetess into ecstasy and a frenzied state, so that she is in no way conscious of herself, is not the work of a divine spirit. For the one possessed by the divine Spirit ought, much more than anyone taught by the oracles, to be helped toward what contributes to ordinary life according to nature, whether toward what is profitable or what is advantageous, and to be most clear-sighted precisely at the time when the divine is with him.

Hence we show, gathering from the sacred writings, that the prophets among the Jews, being enlightened by the divine Spirit as much as was useful to the prophets themselves, were the first to enjoy the coming of the Higher One to them. And through the touch, so to speak, of what is called the Holy Spirit on their soul, they became clearer-sighted in mind and brighter in soul, and in body too, which no longer opposed the virtuous life, since it was put to death according to what we call “the mind of the flesh.” For we are persuaded that by the more divine “Spirit” “the deeds of the body” are put to death, as well as the enmities that begin from the mind “of the flesh,” which is hostile to God. But if the Pythian priestess is beside herself and not in her own mind when she prophesies, what kind of spirit must we think it is that pours darkness over the mind and the reasoning? Is it not of the same kind as the race of demons, which not a few Christians drive out of those who suffer from them, without any curious, magical, or pharmaceutical means, but by prayer alone and simple adjurations and such means as a simpler man could apply? For as a rule it is unlearned people who do this, since the grace in the word of Christ shows the worthlessness and weakness of the demons, which do not at all need, in order to be defeated and to yield and leave the soul and body of a man, someone wise and powerful in rational demonstrations of the faith.

Moreover, if it is believed not only among Christians and Jews but also among many others, Greeks and barbarians, that the human soul lives and exists after its separation from the body, and reason shows that the pure soul, not weighed down by the leaden weights of wickedness, is borne aloft to the regions of the purer and ethereal bodies, leaving behind the gross bodies here and the defilements in them, while the evil soul, dragged down to the earth by its sins and unable even to recover its breath, is borne about and rolls about here, one around “the tombs,” where “phantoms” of shadowy souls have been seen, another simply around the earth: what kind of spirits must we think those are that are bound, so to speak, for whole ages to buildings and places, whether by certain charms or because of their own wickedness? Reason chooses to think such things are evil, using the power of foreknowledge, which is morally neutral, to deceive men and to draw them away from God and from pure piety toward him. This is shown by the fact that the same beings, whose bodies are nourished by the vapours from sacrifices and the portions taken from blood and burnt offerings, and who take pleasure in such things, come to be, as it were, in love with life, like wicked men who do not welcome the purer life outside bodies but, for the sake of bodily pleasures, cling to life in the earthly body. And if the Apollo at Delphi were a god, as the Greeks think, whom should he rather have chosen as prophet than the wise man, or, if no such man were found, at least one making progress? How would he not have preferred a man to prophesy rather than a woman? And if he wanted the female sex, being perhaps unable to find pleasure in anything else or not delighting in anything but women's parts, why should he not have chosen a virgin rather than a woman to declare his will?

But as it is, the Pythian god admired among the Greeks judged no wise man, nor indeed any man at all, worthy of what the Greeks suppose to be divine possession; nor, among women, a virgin or a wise woman helped by philosophy, but an ordinary woman. Perhaps the better people were too good for his activity of possession. And if he were a god, he ought to have used his foreknowledge as a bait, so to speak, for the conversion, healing, and moral improvement of men; but as it is, history records nothing of the kind about him. For even if he said that Socrates was the wisest of all men, he blunted his praise by what he said before this about Euripides and Sophocles: “Sophocles is wise, Euripides wiser.” So Socrates, being thought better than tragic poets called wise by him, men who compete on the stage and in the orchestra for any prize at all and who produce now grief and pity in the spectators, now indecent laughter (for that is the aim of satyr plays), is not at all shown to be venerable for philosophy and truth and praiseworthy for his venerableness. And perhaps he called him the wisest of all men not so much for his philosophy as for the sacrifices and the savour of fat he offered to him and to the other demons. For the demons seem to do what is asked of them by those who bring them offerings more for these reasons than for the works of virtue. That is why Homer, the best of poets, describing what happens and teaching what most persuades the demons to do what those who sacrifice wish, brought in Chryses, who, for a few garlands and thigh-pieces of bulls and goats, obtained what he asked against the Greeks for the sake of his daughter, so that they would be struck by plague and give him back Chryseis. I remember reading in one of the Pythagoreans, who wrote about the hidden meanings in the poet, that the words of Chryses to Apollo and the plague sent by Apollo on the Greeks teach that Homer knew that certain evil demons, delighting in savour and sacrifices, pay as wages to those who sacrifice the destruction of others, if the sacrificers pray for this. And “the lord of wintry Dodona,” whose prophets are “men with unwashed feet who sleep on the ground,” having rejected the male sex for prophecy, uses the priestesses of Dodona, as Celsus himself noted. Let there be one like these at Claros, another at Branchidae, another at the shrine of Ammon, or wherever on earth they prophesy: how, then, will it be shown that they are gods and not certain demons?

Of the prophets among the Jews, some were wise before their prophecy and divine possession, while others became so, their minds enlightened by the prophecy itself. They were chosen by providence to be entrusted with the divine Spirit and the words that come from him because of their life, hard to imitate, very vigorous and free, and wholly undaunted by death and dangers. For reason requires that the prophets of the God over all be such men. They made the vigour of Antisthenes, Crates, and Diogenes look like child's play. At any rate, for the sake of truth and for freely rebuking sinners, “they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they died by the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth, of whom the world on earth was not worthy,” always looking to God and to the invisible things of God, which are not seen by the senses and are therefore eternal. The life of each of the prophets is recorded; for the present it is enough to cite the life of Moses (for prophecies of his too are extant, recorded in the law), and that of Jeremiah, found in the prophecy named after him, and that of Isaiah, who, surpassing all asceticism, went “naked and barefoot” for three years. See too the vigorous life of boys, Daniel and those with him, reading how they drank water and their food was pulses, abstaining from meat. And if you can, look also at what came before these: Noah prophesying, and Isaac blessing his son prophetically, and Jacob saying to each of the twelve, “Come, that I may tell you what will be in the last days.” These and countless others prophesied for God and foretold what concerns Jesus the Christ. Therefore we count as nothing the predictions of the Pythian priestess, or of the priestesses of Dodona, or of the Clarian Apollo, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, or of countless others called prophets; but we are amazed at those of the men who prophesied in Judaea, seeing that their vigorous, strong, and venerable life was worthy of the Spirit of God, who prophesied in a new manner, with nothing like the divinations from demons.

I do not know how Celsus, having said, what was said by the men in Judaea in the manner of those people, added, or not said, as though, being an unbeliever, he were claiming that possibly these things were not even said, but that things not said were perhaps written down. For he did not see the dates, nor that many years beforehand they foretold countless things and spoke also about the coming of Christ. Again, wishing to slander the ancient prophets, he says that they prophesied in the way that, he says, those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do even now, without making clear whether he means people foreign to the teaching of the Jews and Christians, or people prophesying in the Jewish manner, after the pattern of the prophets. However his words are meant, they are proved false. For neither have any of those foreign to the faith done anything like the prophets, nor are any more recent people, after the coming of Jesus, recorded to have prophesied among the Jews; for it is acknowledged that the Holy Spirit has left them, since they acted impiously toward God and toward the one prophesied by their own prophets. Signs of the Holy Spirit were shown at the beginning of Jesus' teaching, and more after his ascension, but later fewer; yet even now there are still traces of him among a few, whose souls have been purified by the Word and by the actions that accord with it. “For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will rise up and depart from senseless thoughts.”

Since Celsus also promises to describe the manner of the prophecies in Phoenicia and Palestine, as one who has heard and thoroughly learned it, let us consider this too. First he says that there are several kinds of prophecies, without setting them out; for he could not, but was making a false boast. But let us look at what he says is the most perfect among the men of that region. Many, he says, nameless ones, very readily, on any chance occasion, both inside temples and outside temples; and others begging and roaming about cities or army camps, are moved as though uttering oracles. And it is ready to hand and customary for each to say: I am God, or a child of God, or a divine spirit. And I have come; for already the world is perishing, and you, O men, are going to destruction because of your injustices. But I wish to save you; and you will see me coming back again with heavenly power. Blessed is the one who worships me now; but on all the rest I will cast everlasting fire, both on cities and on lands. And men who do not know their own penalties will repent in vain and groan; but those who have been persuaded by me I will keep for ever. Then next he says: Having made these boasts, they add straightway unknown, frenzied, and wholly obscure words, whose meaning no one with sense could discover; for they are unclear and nothing, but they give occasion to any fool or sorcerer to take what was said in whatever sense he wishes about anything.

But if he were fair-minded in his accusation, he ought to have set out the prophecies in their very words, whether those in which the speaker professed to be God almighty, or those in which he professed to be the Son of God, or those in which the speaker was believed to be the Holy Spirit. For thus he would have striven to refute what was said and to show that the words, which contain a call to turn from sins, a rebuke of the things that then existed, and foreknowledge of the future, were not inspired. That is why those who lived in their time wrote down their prophecies and preserved them, so that later generations too, reading them, might admire them as words of God, and, helped not only by the rebukes and calls to conversion but also by the predictions, and persuaded by the outcomes that the Spirit who foretold them was divine, might continue to practise the piety that accords with the Word, obeying the law and the prophets. The prophets, then, according to the will of God, said without any concealment whatever could be understood at once by the hearers as useful and contributing to the correction of morals; but whatever was more mystical and belonged to a higher initiation, related to contemplation beyond the hearing of the crowd, they declared “through riddles” and allegories and what are called dark sayings and what are named parables or proverbs; so that those who do not shrink from labour, but undertake every labour for virtue and truth, might examine and find them, and having found them, manage them as reason requires. But the fine fellow Celsus, as though angry at not having understood such words of the prophets, reviled them, saying: Having made these boasts, they add straightway unknown, frenzied, and wholly obscure words, whose meaning no one with sense could discover; for they are unclear and nothing, but they give occasion to any fool or sorcerer to take what was said in whatever sense he wishes about anything. And he seems to me to have said this craftily, wishing, so far as it rested with him, to prevent readers of the prophecies from testing and examining their meaning. He has had an experience like that of those who said of a certain prophet, who came to someone and foretold the future to him: “Why did this madman come to you?”

It is likely that there are arguments much wiser than our own capacity which can show that Celsus is lying here and that the prophecies are inspired. Yet we too have done what we could, explaining word by word what Celsus calls frenzied and wholly obscure in our treatises on Isaiah, Ezekiel, and some of the Twelve. And if God grants progress in his word at the times he wishes, there will be added to what has already been dictated on these either what is lacking or as much as we can manage to clarify. Others too, who have sense and wish to examine Scripture, would be able to find its meaning, since it is truly unclear in many places, but not, as Celsus says, nothing. Nor can any fool or sorcerer smooth it out or take what was said in whatever sense he likes. Only, and every, one who is truly wise in Christ could give the whole connection of what is said with concealment in the prophets, comparing “spiritual things with spiritual” and establishing each thing he finds from the usage of the Scriptures. But Celsus is not to be believed when he says he himself heard such men. For in Celsus's time there were no prophets like the ancient ones; since, if there had been, their prophecies too would have been written down, like those of old, by those who accepted and admired them. It seems to me wholly plain that Celsus is lying when he says that the supposed prophets he himself heard, when refuted by him, admitted to him what they wanted, and that they invented their words at random. He ought also to have given the names of those he claimed to have heard, so that from the names, if he could give them, it might be clear to those able to judge whether he was telling the truth or lying.

He also thinks that those who make their defence about Christ from the prophets can say nothing to the point when anything evil or shameful or unclean or abominable seems to be said about the divine. That is why, as though there were no defence, he strings together for himself countless things about matters that are not granted. But one should know that those who wish to live according to the divine Scriptures, who know that “the knowledge of the senseless is words not examined,” and who have read “always ready to give a defence to everyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us,” do not take refuge merely in the fact that these things were foretold, but also try to resolve the apparent absurdities and to show that there is nothing evil in the words, or shameful, or unclean, or abominable, but that they become so only for those who do not understand the divine Scripture as it ought to be understood. He ought to have cited from the prophets what appears evil in them, or seemed shameful to him, or was considered unclean by him, or what he supposed abominable, if he saw such things said in the prophets; for his argument would have been more striking and more effective for his purpose. But as it is, he has cited nothing, but threatens with a boast that such things appear in the Scriptures, telling lies about them. Reason, then, does not require us to make a defence against empty noises of words, to show that there is nothing evil or shameful or unclean or abominable in the words of the prophets.