Against Celsus 7.42–7.56

Then after this he refers us to Plato, as a more effective teacher of the matters of theology, quoting his words from the Timaeus, which run thus: “Now to find the maker and father of this universe is a task, and having found him it is impossible to declare him to all.” Then he adds to this: “You see how the way of truth is sought by those who prophesy of divine things, and how Plato knew that it is ‘impossible’ for all to walk that way. But since for this reason wise men have devised it, so that we might gain some notion of the nameless and first being, one that makes him plain either by synthesis applied to other things, or by analysis from them, or by analogy, wishing to teach what is otherwise ineffable, I would be amazed if you are able to follow, bound as you are wholly to the flesh and seeing nothing pure.” Now Plato sets out the quoted saying magnificently and in a way not to be despised. But see whether the divine Word does not more lovingly present the God Word, who was “in the beginning with God,” becoming flesh, so that the Word, of whom Plato says that “having found him it is impossible to declare him to all,” might be able to reach all. Let Plato, then, say that “to find the maker and father of this universe” is “a task,” showing that it is “impossible” for human nature to find God as he deserves, or if not as he deserves, at least more fully and beyond what the many do. If that were true, and God had truly been found by Plato or any of the Greeks, they would not worship anything else and call it God and bow down to it, either abandoning him or joining with him what must not be joined with so great a God. But we declare that human nature is in no way sufficient to seek God and find him purely unless it is helped by the one who is sought, who is found by those who confess, after doing what lies in their power, that they need him; who shows himself to whom he judges it reasonable to be seen, in so far as it is natural for God to be known by man, and for the soul of man, while still in the body, to know God.

But Plato, when he says that “having found” “the maker and father of the universe” it is “impossible to declare him to all,” does not say that he is ineffable and nameless, but that, being expressible, he can be declared to a few. Then, as though forgetting the words of Plato which he quoted, Celsus says that God is nameless in these words: “But since for this reason wise men have devised it, so that we might gain some notion of the nameless and first being.” We, however, say that not only God is ineffable but also other things that come after him; which Paul, striving to indicate, says: “He heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter,” using “heard” for “understood,” as in “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” We say that it is “a task” to see “the maker and father of the universe.” But he is seen not only according to “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,” but also according to what is said by the image “of the invisible God” in “He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me.” For in these words no one with sense would say that Jesus said “He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me” with reference to his sensible body, visible to men; for on that view all who said “Crucify, crucify him” would have seen God the Father, and Pilate too, who received authority over his humanity, which is absurd. That “He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me” is not to be taken in the more common sense is clear from what was said to Philip: “Have I been with you so long, and you do not know me, Philip?” He said this to him when he asked, saying, “Show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” Whoever, then, has understood how one must take what is said of the only-begotten God, the Son of God, the firstborn “of all creation,” and how “the Word” became “flesh,” will see how by seeing the image “of the invisible God” one will know “the father and maker of this universe.”

Celsus, then, thinks that God is known either by synthesis applied to other things, like what geometers call synthesis, or by analysis from other things, or by analogy like the analogy among the same geometers, if indeed anyone can come in this way to the forecourts of the good. But the Word of God, saying, “No one has known the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son reveals him,” declares that God is known by a certain divine grace, which comes into the soul not without God but with a kind of inspiration. And indeed it is likely that the knowledge of God is greater than human nature can attain (which is why there are so many errors about God among men), but that by the goodness and love of God for humankind, and by a wonderful and more divine grace, the knowledge of God reaches those whom God's foreknowledge has marked out beforehand as those who will live worthily of him whom they have come to know, never debasing their piety toward him, not even if they are led away to death by those who do not know what piety is and who imagine anything whatever to be piety rather than what piety really is, nor if they are thought to be most ridiculous. And God, I think, seeing the arrogance or the contempt for others of those who pride themselves on knowing God and on having learned divine things from philosophy, and yet, just like the most uneducated, go off to the images and their temples and the much-talked-of mysteries, “chose” “the foolish things of the world,” the simplest among Christians, who live more moderately and more purely than many philosophers, “to shame the wise,” who are not ashamed to converse with lifeless things as gods or images of gods. For what person of sense will not laugh at one who, after such great and numerous discourses in philosophy about God or gods, gazes at images and either sends up his prayer to them, or, by seeing them, imagines that he must ascend from what is seen and is a symbol to what is understood? But the Christian, even the simple one, is persuaded that every place in the world is a part of the whole, since the whole world is God's temple; and praying “in every place,” closing the eyes of sense and awakening those of the soul, he rises above the whole world. And he does not stop even at the vault of heaven, but, coming in thought into the place above the heavens, guided by the divine Spirit, and as it were outside the world, he sends up his prayer to God, not for ordinary things; for he has learned from Jesus to seek nothing small, that is, sensible, but only the great and truly divine things, which, given by God, help one to travel to the blessedness that is with him through his Son, who is the Word, God.

Let us see also what he says he will teach us, if indeed we shall be able to follow it, where he says that we are wholly bound to the flesh, we who, if we live rightly and according to the word of Jesus, hear, “You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you.” He says too that we see nothing pure, we who try not to be defiled by thoughts of evil even in our reasonings, and who say in prayer, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me,” so that we may behold him with “a pure heart,” which alone is able to see God. What he says is as follows: “Being and becoming, intelligible and visible. With being is truth, with becoming is error. Knowledge is concerned with truth, opinion with the other. And of the intelligible there is thought, of the visible sight. Mind knows the intelligible, the eye the visible. What the sun is among visible things, being neither eye nor sight, but the cause to the eye of its seeing, and to sight of its coming to be through him, and to visible things of their being seen, and to all sensible things of their coming into being, and indeed to himself of his being seen, that is what he is among intelligible things, who is neither mind nor thought nor knowledge, but the cause to mind of its thinking, and to thought of its being through him, and to knowledge of its knowing through him, and to all intelligible things and to truth itself and being itself of their being, being beyond all things, intelligible by a certain ineffable power. These things have been said for people of intelligence; if you understand any of them, it is well with you. And if you think that some spirit coming down from God foretells divine things, this would be the spirit that proclaims these things, filled with which men of old announced many good things; and if you cannot understand them, be silent, and hide your own ignorance, and do not say that those who see are blind and those who run are lame, when you yourselves are wholly lamed and mutilated in your souls, and live by the body, that is, by what is dead.”

To this we, who have made it our practice to be hostile to nothing that is well said, even if those outside the faith say it well, and not to quarrel with them nor seek to overturn what is sound, will say this. Those who revile people who wish, as far as they can, to worship the God of the universe (who accepts the faith of the simple in him and the reasoned piety of the more intelligent toward him), people who send up prayers with thanksgiving to the Creator of the universe and send them up as through the high priest who has shown humankind pure worship of God; who call them lame and mutilated in their souls and say that they live by the dead body, those who practise saying from the heart, “For though we live in the flesh we do not wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but mighty before God”: let them take care that by this very reviling of people who pray to belong to God they do not make their own souls lame and mutilate their own “inner man,” cutting off from him, by their slanders against others who wish to live well, the gentleness and steadiness sown naturally by the Creator in rational nature. But those who, besides other things, have learned from the divine Word and practise blessing when “reviled,” enduring when “persecuted,” and entreating when “slandered,” these would be the ones who have set upright the feet of the soul and are cleansing and making ready the whole soul; not so that they may separate being from becoming, and the intelligible from the visible, in words only, and join truth to being and flee by every means the error that goes with becoming, but looking, as they have learned, not at the things of becoming, which are “seen” and therefore “temporary,” but at the better things, whether one wishes to call them being, or “invisible” because they are intelligible, or “not seen” because their nature lies outside the senses. In this way the disciples of Jesus also look at the things of becoming, so as to use them as a kind of stepping-stone to the understanding of the nature of intelligible things: “for the invisible things” of God “from the creation of the world,” that is, the intelligible things, “are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” And having ascended from the creatures of the world to the invisible things of God, they do not stop there; but having exercised themselves sufficiently in them and understood them, they ascend to the eternal power of God and, in a word, to his divinity, knowing that God in his love for humankind “has shown” “the truth” and what may be “known” of him not only to those dedicated to him but also to some outside the pure worship of and piety toward him; while some of those who by God's providence have ascended to the knowledge of such great things do deeds unworthy of that knowledge, act impiously, and hold “the truth in unrighteousness,” and can no longer have any room for defence before God, given their knowledge of such great things.

At any rate, the divine Word bears witness about those who have grasped what Celsus sets out and profess to philosophize according to these doctrines, that “knowing God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and” after so great a light of knowledge of what God had shown them, “their senseless heart was darkened.” One can see, indeed, how those “claiming to be wise” display signs of great folly when, after such great discourses in their lectures about God and intelligible things, “they exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.” That is why they themselves, abandoned by providence as not having lived worthily of what God had shown them, wallow “in the lusts of their hearts to impurity,” and “their bodies” are dishonoured in indecencies and licentiousness, because they exchanged “the truth of God for a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

But those whom they despise as simple and call fools and slaves, if only they entrust themselves to God and receive the teaching of Jesus, are so far from licentiousness and impurity and all indecency in sexual intercourse that, like perfect priests who have turned away from all intercourse, many of them keep themselves entirely pure, not only from all sexual union … Somewhere among the Athenians there is one hierophant who, not trusting himself to be master of his male desires and to control them as far as he wishes, has his male parts treated with hemlock and is then considered pure for the worship customary among the Athenians; but among Christians one can see men who have had no need of hemlock in order to serve the divine purely, but for whom the Word suffices instead of hemlock, so that, having driven every desire from their minds, they serve the divine with prayers. Among others who are thought to be gods there are virgins, very few in number, whether guarded by men or not (for that is not the question to examine now), who appear to live on in purity for the sake of the honour of the deity; but among Christians it is not for honours among men, not for wages and money, nor for a little glory that they practise complete virginity; and since “they have seen fit to acknowledge God,” they are kept by God in an approved mind and in “doing what is” “fitting,” filled with all righteousness and goodness.

I have said these things not to quarrel with what has been well understood among the Greeks too, nor to accuse sound doctrines, but wishing to show that these things, and things even greater and more divine than these, have been said by the divine men, the prophets of God and the apostles of Jesus, and are examined by those who wish to be Christians more perfectly and who know that “the mouth of the righteous will meditate wisdom, and his tongue will speak judgment; the law of his God is in his heart.” But even among those to whom these things have not been made clear, whether from great simplicity, or plainness, or lack of anyone to urge them on to reasoned piety, yet who believe in God over all and in his “only-begotten Son,” Word and God, one may often find a seriousness, purity, and plainness and simplicity of character better than that of those “claiming to be wise,” who, not having taken it up, wallow with boys in what is unlawful, “men with men committing what is shameful.”

He, then, did not make clear how error goes with becoming, nor did he set out what he meant, so that we might understand it by comparing his views with ours; but the prophets, hinting at something wise about the things of becoming, say that a sacrifice “for sin” is offered even for those just born, as not pure from sin. They say too: “In iniquities I was conceived, and in sins my mother desired me.” And they declare also that “sinners were estranged from the womb,” saying strikingly as well, “They went astray from the belly; they spoke lies.” So thoroughly do our wise men disparage the whole nature of sensible things that at one point bodies are called vanity, in “For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope,” and at another the Preacher called them vanity “of vanities”: “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” And who has disparaged the life of the human soul here as much as the one who said, “Surely all things are vanity, every man living”? For he did not doubt the difference between the soul's life here and outside the things here, nor did he say, “Who knows whether to live is to die, and to die is to live?” but he boldly speaks the truth in “Our soul has been brought low to the dust” and “You have brought me down into the dust of death”; in accordance with which it has also been said, “Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” and, “who will transform the body of our humiliation.” He too is a prophet who said, “You have humbled us in a place of affliction,” calling the region about the earth a place “of affliction,” the place to which Adam, that is, man, came when he was cast out of paradise because of wickedness. And the one who says, “Now we see through a mirror and in a riddle, but then face to face,” and further, “While we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord,” and therefore “we are well pleased to be away from the body and at home with the Lord”: see how much he had contemplated about the different life of souls.

And why need I set more passages against the words of Celsus, to show that these things were said among us long before, when our meaning is clear from what has been said? In these words he also makes a kind of supposition, saying that if a divine spirit coming down from God foretells divine things, “this would be the spirit that proclaims these things, filled with which men of old announced many good things.” But he did not see the distinction drawn precisely among us by those who say that “your incorruptible spirit is in all things; therefore” God convicts “little by little those who fall away,” and who say also that “Receive the Holy Spirit” indicates a different measure of what is given from that shown by “You will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” It is a task, after careful reflection on these things, to see the difference between those who at long intervals have received an apprehension of the truth and some brief notion of God, and those who have been more fully inspired by God, who stand always with God, and who are continually led by the divine Spirit. If Celsus had examined and understood this, he would not have charged us with ignorance, nor ordered us not to say that those are blind who think they show their piety in the material crafts of men, those that make images. For no one who sees with the eyes of the soul worships the divine in any other way than as the one who teaches us always to look to the Creator of the universe, to send up every prayer to him, and to do everything as in the eyes of God, as before a spectator who looks even into our thoughts. We pray, then, both to see and to be guides of the blind, until by coming to the Word of God they recover the sight of their souls, blinded by ignorance. And if we act worthily of him who said to his disciples, “You are the light of the world,” and of the Word who taught that “the light shines in the darkness,” we shall be “a light” to those in darkness, and shall instruct the foolish and teach the young.

Let Celsus not be indignant when we call lame and maimed in the feet of the soul those who hurry to what are thought to be temples as though to true temples, and who do not see that no work of mere craftsmen can be holy. Those who worship according to the teaching of Jesus also run, until, having reached the end of the race, they say with a strong and truthful disposition: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith; henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.” And each of us runs “so” “as not uncertainly,” and boxes against wickedness “so” “as not beating the air,” but those who are under “the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience.” Let Celsus say that we live by the dead body, we who hear, “If you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live,” and who learn, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.” And may we show by our deeds that he lies who says of us that we live by the dead body.

After this, then, to which we have replied as well as we could, he says to us: “How much better it would have been for you, since you desired to make some innovation, to have taken up with some other of those who died nobly and could receive a divine myth! Come, if Heracles and Asclepius and those glorified of old did not please you, you had Orpheus, a man admittedly possessed of a holy spirit, who also died a violent death. But perhaps he had already been taken over by others. Well then, Anaxarchus, who, thrown into a mortar and pounded most lawlessly, thoroughly despised the punishment, saying, ‘Pound, pound the bag of Anaxarchus; for him you do not pound’: the voice of a truly divine spirit. But some natural philosophers got in first and followed him too. Well then, Epictetus? When his master was twisting his leg, he said, smiling and unperturbed, ‘You will break it’; and when he had broken it he said, ‘Did I not tell you that you would break it?’ What did your god say like this while he was being punished? And you could with better reason have put forward the Sibyl, whom some of you use, as a child of God; as it is, you are able to interpolate many blasphemous things into her writings at random, and you make a god of one who lived a most infamous life and died a most pitiable death. How much more suitable for you than he would have been Jonah ‘under the gourd,’ or Daniel who came out from the beasts, or others more marvellous still than these?”

Since, then, he refers us to Heracles, let him present to us memoirs of his sayings and defend his undignified slavery with Omphale, and let him show whether he was worthy of divine honour who took the farmer's ox by force, like a robber, feasted on it, and was delighted at the curses the farmer uttered against him as he ate; so that even to this day the demon of Heracles is related to receive its sacrifice with curses. He invites us to repeat ourselves about Asclepius, though we have spoken of him before; but we are content with that. And what did he admire in Orpheus that he says he admittedly had a holy spirit and lived well? I wonder whether Celsus too, out of rivalry with us and in order to belittle Jesus, now sings the praises of Orpheus, whereas when he read his impious myths about the gods he did not turn away from his poems as deserving, even more than Homer's, to be banished from the good commonwealth; for Orpheus said much worse things than Homer about those who are considered gods. Anaxarchus, indeed, was noble when he said to Aristocreon, tyrant of Cyprus, “Pound, pound the bag of Anaxarchus”; but this is the only thing the Greeks know to admire about Anaxarchus, and on account of it, even if, as Celsus thinks, one ought properly to worship a man for virtue, it would not be reasonable to proclaim Anaxarchus a god. He refers us also to Epictetus, admiring what he said nobly; not, however, so that his saying at the breaking of his leg can be compared with the marvellous deeds and words of Jesus which Celsus disbelieves, for they were spoken with divine power and to this day convert not only some of the simpler people but also many of the more intelligent.

Since, after the list of so many men, he says, “What did your god say like this while he was being punished?”, we might say to him that under the scourges and the many outrages he displayed more fortitude and patience by his silence than any Greek who spoke in adversity; if at least Celsus is willing to believe this too, recorded in good faith by men who loved the truth, who spoke truthfully also of the marvellous things and counted his silence under the scourges among them. And when he was mocked, and clothed in the “scarlet robe,” and the “crown of thorns” was put on his head, and he took the “reed” in his hand instead of a sceptre, he showed the utmost gentleness, saying nothing ignoble or indignant to those who dared so much against him. It was not, then, like one who out of fortitude kept silent under the scourges and out of gentleness endured everything inflicted by those who mocked him, to have said from cowardice, as some think, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as you will.” The apparent request to be excused from what is called the cup has a meaning, which we have examined and explained more fully elsewhere. But to take the saying more simply, see whether the prayer was not spoken with piety toward God, since everyone thinks adversity not something to be chosen for its own sake, yet endures what happens not by choice when the occasion calls. Indeed, the voice was not that of one who gave way; the voice that said, “yet not what I will, but what you will,” was that of one content with what happened and preferring the adversities that come from providence.

Then, I do not know how, he wanted us rather to proclaim the Sibyl a child of God than Jesus, declaring that we have interpolated many blasphemous things into her writings, without showing what we interpolated. He would have shown it if he had shown that the older copies were purer and did not contain what he thinks has been interpolated. And without showing that these things are blasphemous, he then again, not twice nor three times but many times, called the life of Jesus most infamous, without dwelling on each of the things done in his life that are thought to be most infamous, so that in saying this he seems not only to make assertions without proof but also to revile one whom he does not know. For if he had set out the kinds of most infamous life that he thought appeared in his deeds, we would have contended against each of the things that seemed to him most infamous. That Jesus died a most pitiable death could be said also of Socrates and of Anaxarchus, whom he mentioned a little before, and of countless others. Or is the death of Jesus most pitiable, but not theirs? Or is theirs not pitiable, but that of Jesus pitiable? You see, then, here too that Celsus's aim was to revile Jesus, moved, I think, by some spirit that was overthrown and destroyed by Jesus, so that it no longer has the savour of fat and the blood, fed on which it deceived those who seek God in images on earth and do not look up to the God who is truly over all.