Against Celsus 8.19–8.33

And if we must also compare temples with temples, so as to show those who accept Celsus's views that we do not avoid building temples fitting for the images and altars described, but refuse to build lifeless and dead temples for the giver of all life, let whoever wishes hear how we are taught that our bodies are “a temple of God,” and that “if anyone” through licentiousness or sin “destroys the temple of God,” he, as truly impious toward the true temple, will be destroyed. But better and more excellent than all the temples so called was the holy and pure body of our Saviour Jesus. He knew that the temple of the God within him could be plotted against by the impious, but not so that the will of those who plotted would be stronger than the divinity that built the temple, and he said to them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” He “was speaking of the temple of his body.” In another way too the divine words, teaching the resurrection mystically to those able to hear the words of God with a more divine hearing, say that the temple will be built up again with living and most precious stones; hinting that each of those who breathe together through the same Word toward the piety he teaches is a precious stone of the whole temple of God. So Peter says, “You are being built up as living stones and a spiritual house into a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ,” and Paul, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus our Lord himself being the cornerstone.” The passage in Isaiah too, which runs as follows and is spoken as to Jerusalem, has some such mystical sense: “Behold, I am preparing for you carbuncle as your stone, and your foundations of sapphire, and I will make your battlements of jasper, and your gates of crystal stones, and your wall of choice stones, and all your sons taught of God; and your children shall be in great peace, and in righteousness you shall be built.”

Some of the righteous, then, are carbuncle, others sapphire, others jasper, others crystal; and so the righteous are every kind of choice and precious stone. The meaning concerning the stones and the account of their nature, and to what kind of souls the name of each precious stone can be applied, it is not the present occasion to explain; we needed only to recall briefly the meaning of our temples and of the one temple of God made of precious stones. For just as, if people prided themselves over others on what are considered temples in their respective cities, those who thought highly of the more precious temples would mention the special features of their own to refute the inferior ones; so, against those who accuse us because we do not think the divine must be worshipped in senseless temples, we set our temples beside theirs and show, at least to those who are not senseless nor like their senseless gods, that there is no comparison between our images and the images of the nations, nor between our altars and what we may call our incense and their altars and their savour of fat and blood; nor between the temples we have described and the temples of senseless gods, admired by senseless men who have not even imagined the divine sense by which one perceives God and his images, temples, and altars fitting for God. It is not, then, as a token of a secret and forbidden association, nor as any such token, that we avoid setting up altars, images, and temples, but because, having found through the teaching of Jesus the way of piety toward the divine, we avoid what, by a semblance of piety, makes impious those who have strayed from the piety that comes through Jesus Christ; who alone is the “way” of piety, truly saying, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Let us see also what Celsus says next about God, and how he urges us to partake of what are, in truth, offerings to idols, or, if I may so call them, offerings to demons, but what he would call sacred offerings, since he does not know what is truly sacred and what kind of sacrifices are so. What he says is this: “God is surely common to all, good, in need of nothing, and free from envy. What, then, prevents those most devoted to him from sharing in the public festivals too?” I do not know what he imagined in thinking that sharing in the public festivals by those devoted to God follows from God's being good, in need of nothing, and free from envy. I say that sharing in the public festivals would have followed from God's being good, in need of nothing, and free from envy, if it had been shown that the public festivals contain nothing erroneous and were established from a contemplation of God as consistent with his service and worship. But if the festivals, public in name only, have no demonstrable reason as suited to the service of the divine, but are shown to be the inventions of those who established them, however it happened, on account of certain human stories, or because they seemed to contain natural philosophy about water or earth or its fruits, it is clear that those who wish to worship the divine with understanding would act reasonably in not sharing in the public festivals. For “a festival,” as one of the Greek wise men says well, “is nothing other than doing what one ought”; and he truly keeps festival who does “what he ought,” always praying, continually offering bloodless sacrifices in his prayers to the divine. That is why this saying of Paul seems to me most magnificent: “You observe days and months and seasons and years? I am afraid I may have laboured over you in vain.”

If anyone objects to this with what we do on certain days, Lord's days, Preparation days, the Pasch, or Pentecost, we must say to this too that the perfect man, who is always in the words, deeds, and thoughts of the Word of God, who is by nature Lord, is always in his days and always keeps the Lord's day. Moreover, since he is always preparing himself for true life, abstaining from the pleasures of this life that deceive the many, not nourishing “the mind of the flesh” but pommelling “his body” and bringing it into subjection, he always keeps the Preparation days. Again, whoever has understood that “Christ our Passover has been sacrificed,” and that one must keep the feast by eating the flesh of the Word, there is no time when he does not keep the Pasch, which is interpreted “passing-over,” always passing over in thought and in every word and deed from the affairs of this life to God, and hastening to his city. Besides these, whoever can truly say, “We have risen with Christ,” and also, “He raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ,” is always in the days of Pentecost; and especially when, going up “into the upper room” like the apostles of Jesus, he gives himself to supplication and “prayer,” so as to become worthy of the “rushing mighty wind” from heaven, which forcefully destroys the wickedness in men and all that comes from it, and worthy also of some share of a tongue of fire from God.

But the multitude of those who seem to believe and are not of such a stature, being unwilling or unable to keep all days in this way, need sensible examples by way of reminder, so that they may not slip away altogether. Having understood such things, I think, Paul called the festival held on days appointed rather than others a “part of a festival,” hinting by this expression that the life that is always according to the divine Word is not “in part of a festival” but in a complete and unceasing festival. See again, then, from what has been said about our festivals, compared with the public festivals of Celsus and the nations, whether ours are not far more dignified than the public festivals, in which “the mind of the flesh,” keeping festival, runs riot and turns to drunkenness and licentiousness. It would take long now to say why the festivals according to God's law teach one to eat “the bread of affliction,” or “unleavened bread with bitter herbs,” or why they say, “Humble your souls,” or something similar. For it is not possible for man, a composite being, to keep festival wholly, as long as “the flesh desires against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh”; for either one who keeps festival in the spirit afflicts the body, which because of “the mind of the flesh” cannot by nature keep festival with the spirit, or one who keeps festival according to the flesh has no room for the festival according to the spirit. But this is enough on the subject of festivals for the present.

Let us see what arguments Celsus uses in urging us to partake of offerings to idols and of the public sacrifices at the public festivals. What he says is this: “If these idols are nothing, what harm is there in joining the general feast? And if there are some demons, clearly these too belong to God, and one must both trust them, and sacrifice to them according to the laws, and pray to them, so that they may be favourable.” For this it would be useful to take up and explain the whole discussion of “offerings to idols” in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. There, answering the claim that “an idol is nothing in the world,” he established the harm that comes from eating offerings to idols, showing to those able to understand what is there that one who partakes of offerings to idols does nothing less evil than a murderer, since he destroys his brothers, for whom “Christ died.” And after this, laying down that what is sacrificed is sacrificed to demons, he shows that those who partake of “the table of demons” become “partners with demons”; and he shows that it is impossible for the same person “to partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” But since the explanation of these matters in the letter to the Corinthians requires a whole treatise with many proofs, we shall be content with what has been briefly set out; from which it will be clear to anyone who examines it that, even if the idols are nothing, it is none the less harmful to join the general feast of the idols. We have also said enough to show that, even if there are some demons to whom the sacrifices are offered, we must not partake of them, since we know the difference between “the table of the Lord” and “the table of demons”; and because we know it, we do everything so that we may always partake of “the table of the Lord,” and guard ourselves in every way so that we may never become partners in “the table” of “demons.”

Since Celsus says in these words that the demons too belong to God, and therefore one must trust them, sacrifice to them according to the laws, and pray to them so that they may be favourable, we must teach those who wish to learn about this too that the Word of God will not declare anything wicked to be God's possession, judging it unworthy of so great a Lord. That is why not all men are called men of God, but only those worthy of God, such as Moses and Elijah, and any other recorded as a “man of God,” or who is like those recorded. So too not all angels are said to be “angels of God,” but only the blessed ones, while those who have turned aside to wickedness are named angels of the devil, just as wicked men are called men of sin, or sons of pestilence, or sons of injustice. Since, then, among men some are good and some wicked, and therefore some are said to be “of God” and others of the devil, and among “angels” some are “of God” and others of the evil one, but demons are not divided in two, since all of them are shown to be wicked, we shall therefore say that Celsus's statement is false when he says, “And if there are some demons, clearly these too belong to God.” Otherwise let whoever wishes show either that the division concerning men and angels is not sound, or that a similar division can be shown to hold for demons too. If this is impossible, it is clear that the demons do not belong to God; for their ruler is not God but, as the divine words say, “Beelzebul.”

Nor must we trust demons, even if Celsus urges us to do so; rather we must die before we obey demons, and endure anything whatever in obedience to God. So too we must not sacrifice to demons; for it is impossible to sacrifice acceptably to beings that are wicked and harmful to men. And according to what laws does Celsus want us to sacrifice to the demons? If according to those established in the cities, let him prove that they agree with the divine laws; and if he cannot (for the laws of the many cities do not even say the same things as each other), it is clear that they are not laws in the proper sense, or are laws of the wicked, which must not be obeyed; for “we must obey God rather than men.” Away, then, with the advice of Celsus, who says we must pray to demons, and let us not listen to it in the least; for we must pray to the God over all alone, and we must pray also to the only-begotten Word of God, the firstborn “of all creation,” and ask him as high priest to bring our prayer, when it has reached him, to his God and our God, and to his Father and the Father of those who live according to the Word of God. And just as we would not wish to have favourable to us men who want us to live according to their wickedness, if they are favourable to none of those who choose the opposite, since their favour makes us enemies of God, who perhaps is not favourable to those who wish to have such men favourable; in the same way those who have understood the nature, will, and wickedness of demons would never wish to have the demons favourable to them.

For even if the demons are not favourable to them, they could suffer nothing from them, since they are guarded by the God over all, who is favourable to them because of their piety and who sets his divine angels over those worthy of being guarded, so that they may suffer nothing from the demons. And whoever has the God over all favourable to him because of his piety toward him, and because he has received the Lord Jesus, the angel of God's “great counsel,” content with God's favour through Christ Jesus, could say with confidence, as one who will suffer nothing from the whole army of demons: “The Lord is my light and my Saviour; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the protector of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And he will also say: “If an army is drawn up against me, my heart shall not fear.” So much in answer to “And if there are some demons, clearly these too belong to God, and one must both trust them, and sacrifice to them according to the laws, and pray to them, so that they may be favourable.”

Having set out his next statement too, come, let us again examine it as well as we can. It runs thus: “If in keeping with some ancestral custom they abstain from certain such sacrificial victims, then they must abstain entirely from eating all animals, as Pythagoras too thought, honouring the soul and its organs. But if, as they say, it is so as not to feast with demons, I congratulate them on their wisdom, that they are slow to understand that they are always table-companions of demons. And they guard against this only when they see a victim being sacrificed; but when they eat bread and drink wine and taste fruits, and drink water itself and breathe the air itself, do they not receive each of these from certain demons, to each of whom the care of each part has been assigned?” I do not know how it seemed to him to follow from this that those whom he described as abstaining from certain victims in keeping with some ancestral custom must abstain from eating all animals. We do not say this, as though the divine Word did not also suggest such things, saying, for the sake of a safer and purer life, “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or do anything by which your brother stumbles,” and again, “Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died,” and again, “If meat makes my brother stumble, I will never eat meat, so that I may not make my brother stumble.”

We must know, however, that while the Jews thought they understood the law of Moses, and observed in the matter of foods that they should partake of those considered clean by them and abstain from the unclean, and also not use the blood of an animal as food, nor what was caught by wild beasts, and other things about which there is much to say and which it is therefore not the time to examine now, the teaching of Jesus, wishing to call all men to pure worship of God, and not to hinder, on the pretext of heavier legislation about foods, many who could be helped in their conduct by Christianity, declared that “it is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out of the mouth”; for “what goes into the mouth,” he says, “passes into the stomach and is expelled into the drain,” while what comes out of the mouth is “evil thoughts” spoken, and “murders,” “adulteries,” “sexual immorality,” “thefts,” “false witness,” and “blasphemies.” And Paul too says that “food will not commend us to God; for we are no better off if we eat, and no worse off if we do not eat.” Then, since these things have some unclearness unless they are explained, “it seemed good to the apostles” of Jesus “and to the presbyters” gathered together at Antioch, and, as they themselves put it, “to the Holy Spirit,” to write a letter to believers from the Gentiles, forbidding them to eat only what they called “necessary things”: that is, food offered to idols, what is strangled, and blood.

For what is offered to idols is sacrificed to demons, and the man of God must not become a partner in “the table of demons”; and as for things strangled, since the blood has not been drained out, which they say is the food of demons, who are nourished by the fumes rising from it, the Word forbids them, so that we may not be nourished with the food of demons; perhaps some such spirits would be nourished along with us if we partook of things strangled. From what has been said about “things strangled,” the reason for abstaining from “blood” can be clear. And it is not out of place, now that I have come to this subject, to recall a most elegant maxim, recorded in the Sentences of Sextus, which most Christians read, and which runs thus: “The use of animals for food is indifferent, but abstaining is more reasonable.” We abstain, then, not simply in keeping with some ancestral custom from what are considered victims and are sacrificed to so-called gods or heroes or demons, but for several reasons, of which I have set out some in part. But it is not the case that, just as one must abstain from all wickedness and what comes from wickedness, so one must abstain from eating all animals. One must abstain not only from eating animals but from anything whatever, if we use food from wickedness and what comes from wickedness; for one must abstain from eating out of gluttony or because one is led by pleasure, without the purpose of the body's health and its care. We do not, however, hold the transmigration of the soul and its fall down to the irrational animals; and plainly, if we sometimes abstain from animals, it is not as Pythagoras did that we shall not use their flesh. For we know that only the rational soul is to be honoured, and its organs to be committed with honour to burial according to custom; for it is fitting that the dwelling-place of the rational soul should not be cast aside dishonourably and at random like that of the irrational animals, especially since Christians have believed that honour extends to the body in which a rational soul has dwelt, and to the body itself that has received a soul which contended well through such an organ. And as to “How are the dead raised, and with what kind of body do they come?”, we have explained this briefly above, as the matter required.

After this Celsus sets down what is admittedly said by Christians and Jews in defence of their abstaining from offerings to idols, when they say that those devoted to the God over all must not feast with demons; in answer to which he said what has been quoted. Now we, as far as foods and drinks are concerned, know no other ways of feasting with demons than eating what the many call sacred offerings and drinking the wine of the libations made to the demons. But Celsus thinks that one who partakes of bread, or drinks wine in any way, or tastes fruits, feasts with demons; and even if one partakes only of water, he says that in this too the drinker feasts with demons. He adds to this that whoever breathes this air also receives it from certain demons, since the demons appointed over the air grant animals the air for breathing. Let whoever wishes, then, take up Celsus's argument and show how it is not some divine angels of God, but demons, whose whole race is wicked, that have been appointed to manage all the things mentioned. For we too say that it is not without the oversight of invisible husbandmen, so to speak, and other stewards, not only of what grows from the earth but also of all flowing water and of the air, that the earth bears what are said to be governed by nature, that water gushes and flows in springs and in rivers that rise from the ground, and that the air is kept uncorrupted and life-giving for those who breathe it. We do not, however, say that these invisible beings are demons; but, if one must venture to say something, if these are the works of demons, we shall say that famines, failures of vines and fruit trees, and droughts, and also the corruption of the air to the ruin of crops, and sometimes to the death of animals and to plague among men, all these the demons bring about with their own hands as executioners, having received by some divine judgment authority to do these things at certain times, either for the conversion of men who have run aground on the flood of wickedness, or for the training of the rational race; so that those who remain pious even in such trials and in no way become worse may be made manifest to invisible and visible spectators who did not until then see their disposition, while those of the opposite disposition, who conceal the display of their wickedness, being exposed by what happens, may perceive what they are and become plain to the spectators, if I may so call them.

The psalmist bears witness that the grimmer things are carried out by certain evil angels by divine judgment, in “He sent against them the anger of his wrath, wrath and anger and affliction, a sending by evil angels.” And if anything else besides these happens when the demons are permitted, since they always wish to do these things but are not always able because they are hindered, let whoever can examine it, imagining the divine judgment, as far as human nature can, concerning the sudden release of many souls from the body, when they take such roads as lead to a common death. For “great are the judgments of God,” and because of their greatness they cannot be grasped by a mind still bound to a mortal body; that is why they are also “hard to explain,” and to uneducated souls they cannot be contemplated even in part. That is why the rasher, through ignorance of these things and through the rashness with which they set themselves against the divine, increase the impious doctrines against providence. We do not, then, receive each of the things we need for life from demons, especially those of us who have learned to use them as we ought; nor do those who partake of bread and wine and fruits and water and air feast with demons, but rather with divine angels appointed over such things, who are as it were invited to the table of the pious man who has heard the Word teaching such things as: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” And again in another place it is written: “Whether you eat or drink,” do everything “in the name” of God. When, then, we eat and drink and breathe “to the glory of God,” and do everything according to the Word, we feast with none of the demons but with the divine angels. For “everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer.” But it would not be “good,” nor could it be sanctified, if, as Celsus thinks, these things had been assigned to demons.

From this it is clear that we have also answered what he says next, which runs thus: “Either, then, one must not live at all nor come into this world, or one who has come into life on these terms must give thanks to the demons who have been allotted the things on earth, and render them first-fruits and prayers as long as we live, so that we may find them kind to men.” We must indeed live, and live according to the Word of God, as far as possible and as it is granted to live according to him; and it is granted when, whether we eat or drink, we do “all to the glory of God.” And we must not refuse to use, with thanksgiving to the Creator, the things he made for our sake. It is rather on these terms than on those Celsus thinks that we were brought into life by God; and we are not subject to demons but to the God over all, through Jesus Christ who brought us to him. By the laws of God no demon has been allotted the things on earth; but by their own lawlessness they have perhaps divided among themselves the places where there is a desert of knowledge of God and of the life according to him, or where much that is alien to divinity is found; or perhaps, as fit to be overseers and punishers of the wicked, they have been appointed by the Word who governs the universe to rule over those who have subjected themselves to wickedness and not to God. For such reasons, then, let Celsus, as one who does not know God, render his thank-offerings to demons; but we, giving thanks to the Creator of the universe, also eat the loaves that are brought with thanksgiving and prayer over what has been given, loaves that through the prayer have become a certain holy body, which sanctifies those who use it with a sound purpose.