Against Celsus 7.57–8.2

Then next, as though his aim were to fill up a book, he wanted us to consider Jonah rather than Jesus a god, preferring Jonah, who preached repentance to one city, Nineveh, to Jesus, who preached repentance to the whole world and accomplished more than he. And he wanted us to proclaim as a god the one who spent “three days and three nights” marvellously and extraordinarily “in the belly of the sea monster,” but Celsus would not have the one who undertook to die for men, witnessed to by God through the prophets, be worthy of the honour second after the God of the universe, for the noble deeds he did in heaven and on earth. And Jonah was swallowed by the sea monster so as not to preach what God had commanded, but Jesus, because he taught what God willed, undertook death for men. Next he says that Daniel, who came up from the lions, ought to be worshipped by us rather than Jesus, who trampled on the savagery of every opposing power and gave us “authority to tread upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy.” Then, having no others to name, he says, “or others more marvellous still than these,” so as to revile Jonah and Daniel at the same time; for the spirit in Celsus did not know how to speak well of the righteous.

After this let us see also his next statement, which runs thus: “They have also this precept, not to retaliate against one who insults them: ‘And if he strikes you,’ he says, ‘on one cheek, offer him the other also.’ This too is old, said very well long before, and they have recorded it in a more rustic way. For Plato too has Socrates say this in dialogue with Crito: ‘We must never, then, do wrong.’ ‘Certainly not.’ ‘Nor, when wronged, must one do wrong in return, as the many think, since one must never do wrong at all.’ ‘It appears not.’ ‘What then? Must one do harm, Crito, or not?’ ‘Surely not, Socrates.’ ‘What then? Is it just, when one suffers harm, to do harm in return, as the many say, or not just?’ ‘Not at all.’ ‘For doing harm to men is no different from doing wrong.’ ‘You are right.’ ‘So one must neither do wrong in return nor harm any man, whatever one suffers from them.’ So says Plato, and again this: ‘Consider very carefully, then, whether you share this view and agree with it, and let us begin our deliberation from here, that it is never right to do wrong, nor to do wrong in return, nor, when suffering harm, to defend oneself by doing harm in return; or do you withdraw and not share this starting point? For so it has seemed to me long ago and still seems now.’ This, then, was Plato's view, and it had been held still earlier by divine men. But about these things and the others that they corrupt, let what has been said suffice; and whoever wishes to seek further into them will come to know.”

To this, then, and to everything Celsus has put forward as common property, being unable to look its truth in the face and saying that these things were said among the Greeks too, we must reply as follows. If a doctrine is beneficial and its intention sound, and it has been said among the Greeks by Plato or one of the Greek wise men, among the Jews by Moses or one of the prophets, and among Christians in the recorded words of Jesus or in what was said by one of his apostles, we must not think that what is said among the Jews or Christians is discredited because it was also said among the Greeks, especially if it is shown that the writings of the Jews are older than those of the Greeks. Nor again must we think that the same thing said in the beauty of Greek style is by all means better than what is expressed more plainly and in simpler words among Jews or Christians; although the original language of the Jews, in which the prophets left us books, was written in the Hebrew tongue and with a skilful arrangement of what is in that tongue as they used it. And if we must show that even the identity of doctrines, strange as the claim may seem, is better expressed by the prophets of the Jews or in the words of Christians, the argument should be built on an example taken from foods and their preparation. Suppose there is a wholesome food that makes those who eat it strong. Let it be prepared in one way and seasoned with certain sauces, and taken not by country people, raised on farms, and the poor, who have not learned to eat such things, but only by the rich and luxurious; and let it be prepared in another way, not as seems good to those thought more refined, but as the poor and the rustics and the majority of mankind have learned to eat, and let whole multitudes eat it. If, then, it were granted that from the one preparation only those thought more refined become healthy, none of the many touching such food, while from the other the multitudes of mankind live more healthily, which should we approve more, for the common good, on account of the wholesome food: those who prepare it usefully for the learned, or those who prepare it for the multitudes? Granted (for let it be granted) that equal health and vigour result from food prepared in the one way or the other, it is still clear that love of humankind and concern for the common good suggest that the physician who has cared for the health of the many is more generally beneficial than one who has cared only for the health of a few.

If the example has been understood, it must be transferred to the quality of the rational food of rational beings. And see whether Plato and the wise men of the Greeks, in what they say well, are not like the physicians who cared only for those thought more refined and despised the multitude of mankind; while the prophets among the Jews and the disciples of Jesus, who bade a long farewell to elaborate arrangement of words and to what Scripture called “the wisdom of men” and wisdom “according to the flesh” (hinting at mere language), might be compared to those who have taken care to prepare and make ready the same quality of food, most wholesome, in an arrangement of words that reaches the multitudes of mankind, does not seem foreign to their speech, and does not by its foreignness turn them away from listening to such discourses as unfamiliar. For indeed, if the aim of rational food, so to call it, is to make the one who eats it patient and gentle, how could the teaching not be better prepared that produces multitudes of patient and gentle people, or at least of people advancing toward these virtues, than that which (granting this too) makes very few, easily counted, patient and gentle? Just as, if Plato, being a Greek, had wished to help Egyptians or Syrians with sound doctrines, he would have taken care to learn the languages of those who were to hear him, and, as the Greeks call it, rather to speak like a barbarian for the improvement of Egyptians and Syrians than, remaining a Greek, to be unable to say anything useful to Egyptians and Syrians; so the divine nature, which cares not only for those thought educated in Greek learning but for the rest of the Greeks too, came down to the simplicity of the multitude of its hearers, so that by using the words familiar to them it might call to listening the multitude of the simple, who after being once introduced can easily strive to grasp even the deeper of the thoughts hidden in the Scriptures. For it is clear even to an ordinary reader of them that many passages can hold a meaning deeper than what appears at first sight, a meaning made plain to those who devote themselves to examining the Word, and made plain in proportion to their leisure for the Word and their zeal in its practice.

So it has been established that, though, as Celsus says, Jesus spoke more rustically in saying, “To him who strikes you on the cheek offer the other also,” and, “To him who wishes to go to law with you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well,” yet by speaking in this way he moved and presented the teaching more usefully for life than Plato in the Crito, whom simple people cannot even understand, and hardly even those who have studied the general curriculum before the lofty philosophy of the Greeks. We must also observe that the meaning of patient endurance is not corrupted by the plainness of the words. But here too Celsus slanders the teaching, saying: “But about these things and the others that they corrupt, let what has been said suffice; and whoever wishes to seek further into them will come to know.”

Come, let us see the next passage too, in which he says this: “Let us leave that point. They cannot bear to see temples and altars and images. Neither can the Scythians, nor the Nomads of Libya, nor the godless Seres, nor other nations most unholy and lawless. That the Persians too think so, Herodotus relates in these words: ‘I know that the Persians have these customs: it is not their custom to set up images, altars, and temples, but they even charge those who do with folly; as it seems to me, because they did not think the gods to be of human form as the Greeks do.’ And indeed Heraclitus too declares somewhat as follows: ‘And they pray to these images, as if one were to chat with houses, not knowing at all who gods or heroes are.’ What wiser thing, then, do they teach us than Heraclitus? He at least hints, very enigmatically, that it is foolish to pray ‘to images’ if one does not know ‘who gods and heroes are.’ So Heraclitus; but they openly dishonour the images. If it is because stone, or wood, or bronze, or gold, which this or that man worked, would not be a god, their wisdom is laughable. For who, unless utterly childish, thinks these are gods, and not offerings and images of gods? But if it is because one must not suppose them to be images of the divine either, since God's form is different, as the Persians also think, they fail to notice that they refute themselves when they say that ‘God made man’ his own ‘image,’ and the form like himself. But they will agree that these things are for the honour of certain beings, whether like or unlike them in form, but that those to whom they are dedicated are not gods but demons, and that whoever worships God must not serve demons.”

To this too we must say that, even if the Scythians, the Nomads of Libya, and the Seres, whom Celsus calls godless, and other nations most unholy and lawless, and the Persians too, cannot bear to see temples and altars and images, it does not follow that their not bearing these things is the same as our not bearing them. For the doctrines must be examined from which those who cannot bear temples and images start, so that the one who cannot bear them may be praised if he refuses from sound doctrines, and blamed if from mistaken ones. For the same thing can arise from different doctrines. For example, those who follow the philosophy of Zeno of Citium avoid adultery, and so do those who follow Epicurus, and some of the wholly uneducated too. But see how much disagreement there is among so many about avoiding adultery. The first avoid it because it is against the common good and against the nature of a rational being to corrupt a woman who by law already belongs to another and to ruin another man's household; the followers of Epicurus, when they refrain from adultery, do not refrain for this reason, but because they have taken pleasure as the end, and many things hindering pleasure befall one who gives way to the single pleasure of adultery, sometimes imprisonment or death, and often, before these, dangers in watching for the husband to leave the house and for those who take his side; so that if, supposedly, an adulterer could escape the notice of the woman's husband, all his household, and those in whose eyes one is disgraced by adultery, the Epicurean would commit adultery for the sake of pleasure. And if the uneducated man also sometimes does not commit adultery when he could, he would sometimes be found not committing adultery because of the fear arising from the law and its punishments, and such a man would not be refraining from adultery in order to hunt for greater pleasures. You see, then, that what is thought to be one act, abstention from adultery, is not the same but different according to the purposes of those who abstain; for it comes either from sound doctrines, or from wicked and most impious ones, like those of the Epicurean or of such an uneducated man.

Just as, then, this one thing, abstention from adultery, though it seems one, turns out to be many according to different doctrines and purposes, so too among those who cannot bear to worship the divine at altars and temples and images, the Scythians, the Nomads of Libya, the godless Seres, and the Persians do this from doctrines other than those from which Christians and Jews cannot bear such supposed service of the divine. None of those peoples refuses altars and images because he avoids pulling down and bringing down the worship of the divine to matter shaped in such a way, nor because he has understood that demons settle beside such shapes and places, having been bound there by certain spells or otherwise able to take possession of places for themselves, where, greedily partaking of the offerings of the sacrifices, they will hunt for lawless pleasure and lawless people. But Christians and Jews, because of “You shall fear the Lord your God and serve him only,” and because of “You shall have no other gods besides me,” and “You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything that is in heaven above or on the earth below or in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them,” and because of “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only,” and many other sayings like these, not only turn away from temples and altars and images, but also go readily to death, when they must, so as not to defile their conception of the God of the universe by any such transgression.

We have spoken above of the Persians, that though they do not set up temples they worship the sun and the works of God; which is forbidden to us, who are taught not to serve “the creature rather than the Creator,” but to know that “the creation will be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” and that “the eager longing of the creation awaits the revealing of the sons of God,” and that “the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope”; and so we must not honour, in place of God who lacks nothing, or of his Son, the firstborn “of all creation,” things subjected to the bondage “of corruption” and “to vanity,” even though they do this “in hope” of something better. Let this, then, suffice, in addition to what was said before, about the nation of the Persians, who turn away from altars and images but serve “the creature rather than the Creator.” And since he quoted the saying of Heraclitus, explaining it as hinting that it is foolish to pray “to images” if one does not know “who gods and heroes are,” we must say that it is possible to know God and his only-begotten, and those honoured by God with the title “god” and sharing in his divinity, who are other than all the gods “of the nations,” which “are demons”; but it is not possible both to know God and to pray “to images.”

And not only is it foolish to pray “to images,” but also to pretend to pray “to images” by way of accommodation to the many, as do those who follow the philosophy of the Peripatetics and those who embrace the views of Epicurus or Democritus; for nothing spurious should be in the soul of one who is truly pious toward the divine. We do not honour the images also so that we may not, as far as it lies with us, fall into the notion that the images are other gods. That is why we charge Celsus and all who admit that these are not gods with the honour that those reputed wise are seen to pay the images; following it, the many not only sin in thinking that they worship them by way of accommodation, but also fall in their souls into thinking that these are gods, and cannot even bear to hear that the things they worship are not gods. Celsus says that they do not think them gods, but offerings to gods, without showing how they are not offerings of men but, as he called them, of the gods themselves. For it is clear that these are the offerings of men who have gone astray about the divine. But neither do we suppose that the images are images of the divine, since we do not depict a form of the invisible and incorporeal God. And since Celsus supposes that we fall into self-contradiction when we say that the divine is not of human form and when we believe that “God made man” his own “image” and made him in the image of God, we must say, as was said above too, that we hold that what is “according to the image of God” is preserved in the rational soul that is formed according to virtue. And here Celsus, not seeing the difference between the image of God and what is “according to the image of God,” says that we say that “God made man” his own “image,” and a form like himself; but this too we answered above.

Then next he says of Christians that “they will agree that these things are for the honour of certain beings, whether like or unlike them in form, but that those to whom they are dedicated are not gods but demons, and that whoever worships God must not serve demons.” If he had understood the doctrine of demons and what each of them brings about, whether summoned by those skilled in such things or giving himself willingly to whatever activity he wishes and is able, and had grasped the doctrine of demons, which is extensive and hard for human nature to comprehend, he would not have blamed us for saying that whoever worships the God over all must not serve demons. And we are so far from serving demons that we even drive them out, by prayers and by the lessons of the sacred writings, from human souls and from the places where they have established themselves, and sometimes from animals too; for the demons often work something for the harm of these as well.

Because of the many things we have said above about Jesus, we need not now repeat ourselves in answer to “So they are clearly convicted of worshipping not a god, nor even a demon, but a corpse.” Leaving this aside for that reason, let us see Celsus's next words, in which he says: “But first I will ask: why must demons not be served? Are not all things administered according to the will of God, and does not all providence come from him? And whatever there is in the universe, whether the work of God or of angels or of other demons or of heroes, do not all these things have a law from the greatest God, and has not each been appointed over something, having been allotted a power, whoever has been judged worthy? Will not the one who worships God justly serve this being who has received authority from there? For it is not possible,” he says, “for the same person to ‘serve’ many ‘masters.’” See how much he seizes on in these words, matters needing no slight examination but also knowledge of deeper and more secret truths about the administration of the universe. For we must examine in what sense it is said that all things are administered according to God's will, and whether the administration extends to sins or not. If the administration extends to sins, not only among men but also among demons and any other incorporeal being capable of sinning, let whoever says so see the absurdity of saying that all things are administered according to God's will; for it follows from the argument that sins and everything that comes from wickedness are administered according to God's will, which is not the same as “happens without God's preventing it.” But if one takes “administered” in its proper sense, then he says that things done from wickedness are administered (plainly, all are administered according to God's will), and no one who sins transgresses against God's administration. The same distinction must be made about providence, and we must say that “all providence comes from him” expresses something true when providence is something good; but if we say that absolutely everything that happens is by providence, even if something happens badly, then “all providence comes from him” will be false; unless one were to say that even what follows as a consequence of the works of God's providence is from God's providence. He declares also that “whatever there is in the universe, whether the work of God or of angels or of other demons or of heroes, all these have a law from the greatest God”; and what he declares is not true. For those who transgress do not transgress while following a law from the greatest God. And the Word shows that not only wicked men but also wicked demons and wicked angels transgress.

And not we alone speak of wicked demons, but almost all who hold that demons exist. So not all things have a law from the greatest God. For whatever has fallen away from the divine law through its own carelessness, wickedness or evil, or ignorance of the good, does not have the law of God, but, to use a new name, and the one Scripture uses, has the law “of sin.” According to most of those who hold that demons exist, then, the wicked demons also do not have the law from God, but transgress it; but according to us all demons have fallen from the road to the good, not having been demons before; and the class of demons is one of those who have fallen away from God. That is why whoever worships God must not serve demons. What demons are like is shown also by those who summon demons for what are called love charms or hate charms, or to hinder actions, or for countless other such purposes; this is what those do who have learned by incantations and spells to summon demons and bring them to whatever they wish. That is why the service of all demons is foreign to us who worship the God over all. And the service of those considered gods is the service of demons; for “all the gods of the nations are demons.” This is clear also from the fact that elaborate rites of binding were performed in those considered temples that seem more effective, at the first establishment of such statues and temples, rites performed by those devoted to the service of demons through spells. That is why we have resolved to flee the service of demons as destruction; and we say that all the worship practised among the Greeks at altars and images and temples of gods is service of demons.

Also, “each has been appointed over something, having been allotted a power by the greatest God, whoever has been judged worthy of any work” needs a far deeper knowledge, one able to show whether wicked demons are appointed over certain things by God the Word who administers the universe, as executioners are in cities and as those appointed over grim but necessary tasks in states; or whether, as robbers in the deserts appoint one to rule them, so the demons, forming bands, as it were, in various places on earth, have made themselves a ruler to lead them in the deeds they have chosen for stealing and plundering human souls. Whoever means to speak well on this, in order to defend Christians, who refuse to worship anything but the God over all and his Word, the firstborn “of all creation,” needs to explain also “All who came before me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not listen to them,” and “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy,” and anything else like these in the sacred writings, such as “Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you,” and “You shall tread on the asp and the basilisk, and you shall trample the lion and the dragon.” But Celsus knew nothing of these things; for if he had known them, he would not have said, “And whatever there is in the universe, whether the work of God or of angels or of other demons or of heroes, these have a law from the greatest God, and has not each been appointed over something, having been allotted a power, whoever has been judged worthy? Will not the one who worships God justly serve this being who has received authority from there?” To this he adds, “For it is not possible for the same person to ‘serve’ many ‘masters,’” which we shall discuss in the next book, since the seventh volume of our work against Celsus has reached a sufficient length.

I have now come to the completion of seven books, and I wish to begin an eighth. May God and his “only-begotten” Word be with us, so that the lies of Celsus, falsely entitled The True Word, may be nobly refuted, and the case for Christianity may be powerfully demonstrated, as far as the matters he dictates allow. We pray to be able to say, in the spirit of Paul, “We are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were appealing through us,” and to be ambassadors “for Christ” to men, as the Word of God calls them to friendship with himself, wishing to bring into kinship with righteousness, truth, and the other virtues those who, before receiving the doctrines of Jesus Christ, lived in darkness about God and in ignorance about the Creator. And again I will say: may God give us the noble and true Word, the Lord strong and mighty “in battle” against wickedness. And now we must proceed to Celsus's next statement and our reply to it.

In what went before he raised the question to us why we do not serve demons; and to what he said about demons we replied according to what seemed to us the meaning of the divine Word. Then after that he introduces us as saying, in reply to his question, when he wants us to serve demons too, that it is not possible for the same person to “serve” many “masters.” This, as he thinks, is the voice of sedition, of people who, as he himself put it, wall themselves off and break away from the rest of mankind. He thinks that those who say this, as far as lies in them, transfer their own passion to God. That is why he thinks that among men it holds good that one who serves someone could not reasonably “serve” another man as well, since the first would be harmed by the divided service, nor that one who has already sworn alliance with someone should swear alliance with another too, as harming him; and that it is reasonable not to serve at the same time different heroes and such demons; but in the case of God, whom no harm or grief reaches, he thinks it unreasonable to guard against serving many gods in the same way as with men, heroes, and such demons. He says also that one who serves many gods, by serving one of those that belong to the Great God, does something pleasing to him too; and he adds that “it is not permitted for anyone to be honoured to whom this has not been granted by him. Therefore,” he says, “one who honours and worships all who are his does not grieve God, to whom they all belong.”