Contra Celsum, Book 4

Having gone through in the three books before this, holy Ambrose, what occurred to us in reply to Celsus's treatise, we now dictate a fourth in reply to what follows, having prayed to God through Christ. May words be given to us of which it is written in Jeremiah, where the Lord says to the prophet: “Look, I have given my words into your mouth as fire. Look, I have set you today over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to pull down and to destroy and to tear down, and to build and to plant.” For we too now need words that root out what is against the truth from every soul harmed by Celsus's treatise or by thoughts like it. And we need thoughts that pull down the buildings of every false opinion, and the building of Celsus in his treatise, like the building of those who said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top will reach to heaven.” And we also need wisdom that tears down every high thing lifted up “against the knowledge of God,” and the “high thing” of Celsus's boastfulness “lifted up” against us. Then, since we must not stop at “rooting out and pulling down” what has been mentioned, but must “plant,” in the place of what has been rooted out, the planting of God's field, and in the place of what has been pulled down build God's building and a temple of God's glory, we too must therefore pray to the Lord who gave what is written in Jeremiah, that he may give us too words for building up the things of Christ and for “planting” the spiritual law and the prophetic words that correspond to it. And above all we need, in reply to what Celsus says next after the passages already treated, to establish that the things concerning Christ were rightly prophesied. For Celsus, standing against both at once, against the Jews who deny that the coming of Christ has taken place but hope that it will, and against the Christians who confess that Jesus is the prophesied Christ, says:

“That some Christians and Jews say, the former that some god or son of God has come down to earth, the latter that he will come down, as judge of the things here, is most shameful, and the refutation does not need a long argument.” He seems to speak accurately about the Jews, not some but all, that they think someone will come down to earth; but about the Christians, that some of them say he has come down. For he is pointing to those who establish from the Jewish Scriptures that the coming of Christ has already taken place, and he seems to know that there are some heresies that deny that Christ Jesus is the one prophesied. We have already discussed, as far as we could, in the earlier books the prophecies of Christ; therefore we do not repeat much of what could be said on this subject, so as not to say the same things twice. But notice that if he wanted, with at least an appearance of consistency, to overturn faith in the prophecies, or in Christ’s future coming or his having already come, he ought to have set out the very prophecies which we Christians and Jews use in debating with one another. For in that way he might at least have seemed to turn those distracted by what he thinks is persuasive away from assent to the prophecies and from faith in Jesus as Christ on account of the prophecies. But as it is, either unable to answer the prophecies about Christ or not even knowing at all what the prophecies about him are, he quotes not a single prophetic saying, though there are countless ones about Christ, and thinks he is accusing the prophecies without setting out even the persuasiveness he might claim for his view. He does not know, however, that the Jews do not by any means say that the Christ who will come down is God or the Son of God, as we have said above too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let others, then, grant Celsus that he does not change, but makes those who see him think that he has changed. But we, being persuaded that in the coming of Jesus to men there was no appearance but truth and clear reality, are not subject to Celsus's accusation. Nevertheless we will reply: Do you not say, Celsus, that it is sometimes permitted to use deceit and lying as a kind of medicine? What absurdity then, if something of the kind was going to save, that something of the kind should have happened? For some words, spoken rather in the manner of falsehood, convert such characters, as sometimes doctors’ words of this kind do with the sick, rather than words spoken in the manner of truth. But let this defense be made by us on behalf of others. For it is not absurd that he who heals sick friends should heal the dear human race by such means as one would not use by preference but by force of circumstance. And the human race, being mad, had to be healed by methods which the Word saw to be useful for the mad, so that they might come to their senses. He also says that one does such things with enemies, taking care to escape danger. But God does not fear anyone, so as to escape danger by leading astray those who plot against him. It is altogether unnecessary and unreasonable to answer what no one says about our Savior. And in our defense on behalf of others we have already answered, “But no one sick or mad is a friend to God”; for the one who made that defense says that such an arrangement took place not on behalf of those already friends who are sick or mad, but on behalf of those who, through sickness of soul and departure from natural reason, are still enemies, so that they may become friends of God. For it is clearly said that Jesus took everything upon himself for sinners, so that he might “free” them from sin and make them “righteous.”

Then, since he represents in their own persons the Jews explaining the reason for the coming of Christ which they expect, and the Christians speaking about the coming of the Son of God into human life which has already taken place, come, let us consider these things too briefly, as far as possible. The Jews in his work say that “life, being filled with every wickedness, needs one sent down from God, so that the unjust may be punished and all things purified, as in the first flood that happened.” And since the Christians are said to add other things to these, it is clear that he says these things are said by them too. What absurdity is there in one coming, when wickedness overflows, to purify the world and treat each according to his worth? For it is not in keeping with God not to stop the spread of wickedness and renew all things. The Greeks too know that the earth is purified periodically by flood or fire, as Plato says somewhere in these words: “When the gods, purifying the earth with waters, flood it, those in the mountains,” and so on. It must be said, then: If they say these things, are the things promised dignified and worthy of consideration, but if we too establish some such things praised by the Greeks, are these no longer good doctrines? And yet those who care for the careful and accurate treatment of everything written will try to show not only the antiquity of those who wrote these things, but also the dignity of what was said and its consistency.

I do not know how he thinks that the overthrow of the tower also took place like the flood that purified the earth, as the teaching of Jews and Christians holds. For even if the story about the tower in Genesis hints at nothing, but, as Celsus thinks, is plain, not even so does it appear that this happened for the purification of the earth; unless perhaps he thinks that the so-called “confusion” of languages was a purification of the earth. About this, one who is able will give an account at a more appropriate time when the task at hand is to show both what meaning the story of this passage has and what its higher sense is. And since he thinks that Moses, who wrote about the tower and the confusion of languages, corrupted the stories told about the sons of Aloeus and wrote such things about the tower, it must be said that I do not think anyone before Homer spoke about the sons of Aloeus, but I am persuaded that Moses wrote about the tower, things much older than Homer and even than the invention of Greek letters. Who then are the more likely to corrupt whose stories? Those who tell about the sons of Aloeus the stories about the tower, or the one who wrote about the tower and the confusion of languages the stories of the Aloadae? But to unbiased hearers Moses appears older than Homer. And the account given by Moses in Genesis of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by fire because of their sin, Celsus compares with the story of Phaethon, having done everything consistently with one mistake, that of not observing the antiquity of Moses. For those who tell the story of Phaethon seem to be even later than Homer, who is much later than Moses. We do not deny, then, the purifying fire and the destruction of the world for the removal of wickedness and the renewal of the universe, saying that we have learned it from the prophets out of the sacred books. When, as we said above, the prophets, who said much about the future, are shown to have spoken the truth about many things now past and to give evidence that the divine Spirit was in them, it is clear that they must be believed also about the future, or rather the divine Spirit in them must be.

And the Christians, according to Celsus, adding some words to what the Jews say, claim that “because of the sins of the Jews the Son of God has already been sent, and that the Jews, having punished Jesus and given him gall to drink, drew upon themselves the anger of God.” Let whoever wishes refute this statement as false, if the whole Jewish nation was not overthrown within one whole generation after Jesus suffered these things at their hands. For there were, I think, forty-two years from the time they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem. And never, since the Jews have existed, is it recorded that they were cast out for so long a time from their holy worship and service, subdued by those more powerful; but even if at times they seemed to be abandoned because of sin, they were nonetheless visited, and returning they recovered their own and practiced their customary rites unhindered. One of the proofs, then, that Jesus was something divine and holy is that such great and terrible things have now for a long time happened to the Jews on his account. And we will say with confidence that they will not even be restored. For they committed the most unholy crime of all in plotting against the Savior of the human race in the city where they performed for God the customary symbols of great mysteries. That city, then, where Jesus suffered these things, had to be utterly destroyed, the Jewish nation overthrown, and God's call to blessedness transferred to others, I mean the Christians, to whom came the teaching about sincere and pure worship of God, and who received new laws suited to the constitution established everywhere; since the laws given before, as to one nation ruled by kings of its own race and customs, could not all be carried out now.

After this, laughing in his usual way at the race of Jews and Christians, he has compared them all to “a cluster of bats, or ants coming out of their nest, or frogs holding council around a marsh, or worms in assembly in a corner of the mud, disputing with one another which of them are the greater sinners, and saying: ‘God reveals and announces everything to us beforehand; and, abandoning the whole world and the heavenly motion and disregarding the vast earth, he governs for us alone, and makes proclamations to us alone, and does not cease sending and seeking how we may be with him forever.’” And in his fiction he makes us like worms saying: “There is God, and after him we, who have been made by him wholly like God; and all things have been put under us, earth, water, air, and stars; and all things are for our sake, and have been appointed to serve us.” And the worms in his account, that is, we, say: “Now, since some among us do wrong, God will come or will send his Son to burn up the unjust, and the rest of us will have eternal life with him.” And he adds to all this that “these things would be more tolerable from worms and frogs than from Jews and Christians disputing with one another.”

To this we ask those who accept what is said against us in this way, and we say: Do you consider all men a cluster of bats, or ants, or frogs, or worms, because of the greatness of God? Or do you not include other men in the image before us, but, because of their reason and the established laws, keep them as men, while you belittle Christians and Jews because of their doctrines that do not please you and compare them to these animals? Whichever of the two you give in answer to our question, we will reply by trying to show that such things are not rightly said either about all men or about us. Suppose first that you say that all men, compared with God, are likened to these lowly animals, since their smallness is in no way comparable with God's greatness. What smallness, then? Answer me, sirs. If that of their bodies, hear that superiority and inferiority, when truth is judge, are not decided by the body; for in that case griffins and elephants will be superior to us men, since they are larger, stronger, and longer-lived. But no one in his right mind would say that these irrational creatures are superior to rational ones because of their bodies (for reason raises the rational far above all irrational things); nor are the good and blessed beings superior because of their bodies, whether, as you say, the good spirits, or, as we are accustomed to call them, the angels of God, or whatever natures surpass men; but they are superior because the reason in them has been perfected and formed in every virtue.

But if you belittle the smallness of man not because of the body but because of the soul, as being inferior to the other rational beings, especially the good, and inferior for this reason, that wickedness is in it, why should the bad among Christians and those among the Jews who live badly be a cluster of bats or ants or worms or frogs, rather than the wicked among the other nations? In this sense everyone whatever who indulges in overflowing wickedness is a bat, a worm, a frog, and an ant compared with the rest of men. Even if someone is a Demosthenes the orator, with wickedness like his and the deeds he did from wickedness, or an Antiphon, another who was considered an orator, who abolished providence in his books entitled On Truth, like Celsus's title, these are no less worms rolling in a corner of the mud of stupidity and ignorance. And yet no rational being, of whatever kind, could reasonably be compared to a worm, since it has the starting points for virtue. For these beginnings of virtue do not allow those who have virtue potentially, and who can never wholly lose its seeds, to be compared to a worm. It appears, then, that neither men in general could be worms compared with God, for reason, which has its origin from the Word who is with God, does not allow the rational animal to be thought wholly alien from God; nor could the bad among Christians and Jews, who in truth are neither Christians nor Jews, be compared rather than the rest of the wicked to worms rolling in a corner of the mud. And if the nature of reason does not allow even this, clearly we will not insult human nature, made for virtue, even if it sins through ignorance, nor liken it to such animals.

But if, because of doctrines of Christians and Jews that do not please Celsus (which he seems not even to understand at all), these are worms and ants and the rest are not, come, let us compare the doctrines of Christians and Jews that are evident to all with those of the rest of humanity, and see whether it will not appear, to those who have once granted that some men are worms and ants, that the worms, ants, and frogs are those who have fallen from the sound conception of God and, in a semblance of piety, worship irrational animals, or statues, or even created things, when they ought to admire the Maker from their beauty and worship him; whereas men, and whatever is more honorable than men, are those who, following reason, have been able to ascend from stones and wood, and even from what is considered the most precious matter, silver and gold; and ascending also from the beautiful things in the world to the Maker of the universe, have entrusted themselves to him, and as to the one alone able to reach through all beings, to oversee the thoughts of all, and to hear the prayers of all, send up their prayers to him, and do everything as with him as spectator of what happens, and as with him as hearer of what is said, beware of saying anything that would be reported to God as displeasing. Unless, perhaps, such great piety, conquered neither by hardships nor by danger of death nor by plausible arguments, does not help those who have taken it up so that they are no longer compared to worms, even if they were compared to them before such great piety! And do those who conquer the most violent desire for sexual pleasure, which has made the spirits of many soft and pliable like wax, and who conquer it because they are persuaded that they cannot otherwise be brought near to God unless they ascend to him through chastity, seem to us brothers of worms, kinsmen of ants, and like frogs? And what of the splendor of justice, which keeps toward one's neighbor and kinsman what is sociable, just, humane, and kind: does it do nothing to keep such a man from being a bat? But are not those who wallow in sexual excess, as most men do, and who go indifferently to common prostitutes and teach that this is not altogether contrary to duty, worms in the mud? Especially when compared with those who have been taught not to take “the members of Christ” and the body inhabited by the Word and make them “members of a prostitute,” and who have already learned that the “body” of a rational being devoted to the God of the universe “is a temple” of the God they worship, becoming such from their pure conception of the Creator; and who, guarding against destroying “the temple of God” through unlawful intercourse, practice chastity as piety toward God.

And I do not yet mention the other evils among men, from which not even those who seem to practice philosophy are quickly free (for philosophy too has many illegitimate children); nor do I say yet that many such things are found among those who are neither Jews nor Christians, but that they either do not exist at all among Christians, if you examine strictly who is a Christian, or, if they are found, at any rate not among those who meet together, come to the common prayers, and are not excluded from them, unless perhaps someone of that sort is found rarely, hidden among the many. We who hold assemblies are not worms, then, we who stand against the Jews on the basis of the writings they believe to be sacred and show both that the one prophesied has come and that they have been abandoned because of their very great sins, and that we who have accepted the word have the best hopes with God, from faith in him and from a life able to bring us near to him, pure from all wickedness and vice. It is not simply, then, if someone calls himself a Jew or a Christian, that he could say that God made the whole world and the heavenly motion especially for us. But if someone, as Jesus taught, is pure “in heart,” gentle, a peacemaker, and readily endures dangers for the sake of piety, such a one might reasonably have confidence toward God, and, understanding the word in the prophecies, might even say: “God has revealed and announced all these things beforehand to us who believe.”

And since he has made the Christians, whom he regards as worms, say that “God, abandoning the heavenly motion and disregarding the vast earth, governs for us alone, and makes proclamations to us, and does not cease sending and seeking how we may be with him forever,” it must be said that he attributes to us what we do not say, we who read and know that God loves all things that exist and abhors nothing that he has made; for he would not have fashioned anything if he hated it. We have read too: “You spare all things, for they are yours, lover of souls; for your imperishable Spirit is in all things. Therefore you correct little by little those who fall, and warn them by reminding them of the things in which they sin.” How can we say that God, abandoning the heavenly motion and the whole world and disregarding the vast earth, governs for us alone, we who have found that in our prayers we must say, with understanding, that “the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,” and that “the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh,”⁠a and that God, being good, “makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust,” urging us to similar things so that we may become his sons, and teaching us to extend our good deeds to all men as far as we can? For he himself is called “Savior of all men, especially of believers,” and his Christ is said to be “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.” Perhaps some of the Jews might say, not the things Celsus recorded, but some other ignorant things; but not the Christians, who have been taught that “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” And yet “one will scarcely die for a righteous man; though perhaps for a good man someone might even dare to die.” But now Jesus, who by a custom traditional in these Scriptures is also called the Christ of God, is proclaimed to have come for sinners everywhere, so that they may leave sin and entrust themselves to God.

Perhaps Celsus misheard some who said, “There is God, and after him we,” the people he called worms. He does something like those who accuse a whole school of philosophy because of things said by a rash youth who has attended a philosopher's lectures for three days and is puffed up against the rest as inferior and unphilosophical. For we know that there are many things more honorable than man, and we have read that “God stood in the assembly of gods,” gods not those worshiped by the rest (“for all the gods of the nations are demons”); and we have read that “God,” standing “in the assembly of gods, judges gods in their midst.” We know also that “even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we for him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him.” We know too that the angels are so much superior to men that men, when perfected, become equal to angels; for “in the resurrection of the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but the righteous are like the angels in heaven” and become “equal to angels.” And we know that in the ordering of the universe there are some called thrones, others dominions, others authorities, and others rulers; and we see that we men, falling far short of these, have hopes, from living well and doing everything according to reason, of ascending to likeness with all of them. And finally, since “it has not yet been revealed what we will be, we know that when it is revealed we will be like God and will see him as he is.” And if anyone should cite what is said by some, whether by those who understand or by those who do not understand but have misheard sound teaching, “There is God, and after him we,” I too might interpret it, taking “we” to mean rational beings, and still more the good among rational beings. For in our view the virtue of all the blessed is the same, so that the virtue of man and of God is the same. That is why we are taught to become “perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” No noble and good man, then, is a worm swimming in the mud; no pious man is an ant; no righteous man is a frog; and no one whose soul is illuminated by the bright light of truth could reasonably be compared to a bat.

Celsus seems to me also to have misheard the words, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” and for this reason to have made the worms say that “having been made by God we are wholly like him.” If, however, he had known the difference between man's having been made “according to the image” of God and “according to the likeness,” and that God is recorded to have said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” but that God made man “according to the image” of God and not yet also “according to the likeness,” he would not have made us say that we are wholly like God. Nor do we say that even the stars have been put under us; since the resurrection of the righteous, as it is called and as the wise understand it, is compared to the sun, moon, and stars by the one who says, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead,” and since Daniel prophesied about these things long ago. He says that we claim that “all things have been appointed to serve us,” perhaps not having heard the intelligent among us say such things, and perhaps not knowing in what sense it has been said that the greatest among us is the servant of all. And if the Greeks say, “Then sun and night serve mortals,” they praise the saying and explain it; but when such a thing is either not said or said in another sense, Celsus slanders us for this too. In Celsus's account we, whom he calls worms, said that “since some among us do wrong, God will come to us or will send his Son to burn up the unjust, and the rest of us frogs will have eternal life with him.” And see how, like a clown, the dignified philosopher has turned into mockery, laughter, and ridicule the divine announcement of judgment, of punishment “upon the unjust,” and of reward for the righteous. And he adds to all this that these things would be more tolerable said by worms and frogs than announced by Jews and Christians disputing with one another. But we will not imitate him or say similar things about philosophers who profess to know the nature of the universe and debate with one another how the universe was put together, and how heaven and earth and all that is in them came to be, and how souls, having no origin and not being created by God, are ordered by him and change bodies, or, sown together with bodies, survive or do not survive. For instead of speaking respectfully and approving the purpose of those who have devoted themselves to examining the truth, one could mock and insult these too, saying that they are worms in a corner of the mud of human life, not measuring themselves, and therefore pronouncing on such great matters as if they had grasped them, and insisting that they have contemplated things that cannot be contemplated without the inspiration of a higher and more divine power. “For no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him; so also no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God.” But we are not mad, nor do we compare such great understanding of men (I use “understanding” in a general sense), occupied not with the affairs of the many but with the examination of the truth, to the movements of worms or of any other such creatures. With love of truth we bear witness to certain Greek philosophers that they knew God, since “God made it plain to them,” even if “they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their thinking,” and “claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the imperishable God for the likeness of an image of perishable man and of birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”

After this, wanting to establish that Jews and Christians differ in no way from the animals mentioned before in his work, he says that “the Jews were runaways from Egypt, who never did anything worth mentioning and were never of any account or number.” That they were not runaways, nor Egyptians, but Hebrews who lived temporarily in Egypt, we have said above. And if he thinks that their having been of no account or number is established by the fact that their history is scarcely found among the Greeks, we will say that if anyone looks closely at their way of life from the beginning and the arrangement of their laws, he would find that they were men who showed on earth a shadow of heavenly life. Among them nothing was held to be God except the One over all, and none of those who make images was a citizen. For there was neither painter nor sculptor in their state, since the law expelled all such from it, so that there might be no pretext for making statues, which attract foolish men and drag the eyes of the soul down from God to earth. They had, then, a law such as this: “Do not act lawlessly and make for yourselves a carved likeness, any image, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies under heaven, the likeness of any creeping thing that creeps on the earth, the likeness of any fish that is in the waters under the earth.” The law wanted them to deal with the truth of each thing and not to fashion other things contrary to the truth, falsifying what is truly male or really female, or the nature of beasts, or the race of birds or of creeping things or of fish. Dignified and lofty too among them was the command: “Do not, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the array of heaven, be led astray and worship them and serve them.” And what a state there was for a whole nation, in which it was not even possible for an effeminate man to appear! Admirable too was the removal from their state of prostitutes, the kindlers of young men's passions. There were also courts of the most just men, who had given proof of a sound life over a long time and were entrusted with judgments, who, because of their pure character, surpassing the human, were called gods by an ancestral custom of the Jews. And one could see a whole nation practicing philosophy; and for the leisure to hear the divine laws there were the so-called Sabbaths and the other [festivals] among them. [And why speak of the orders] of priests and sacrifices, which contain countless symbols made clear to those who love learning?

But since nothing is stable in human nature, that state too, gradually corrupted, had to be changed. And providence, having transformed the dignity of their teaching where it needed transformation to suit people everywhere, has handed over, in place of them, to those from all nations who believe, the dignified worship of God according to Jesus. He, adorned not only with understanding but also with a divine portion, and having overthrown the doctrine concerning the demons on earth, who delight in frankincense and blood and the steam of burnt fat, and drag men down from the conception of God like the Titans or Giants of myth, himself heedless of their plotting, which is aimed especially at the better people, laid down laws by which those who live will be blessed, in no way flattering the demons with sacrifices, but wholly despising them through the Word of God, who helps those who look up to God. And since God willed that the word of Jesus should prevail among men, the demons have been able to do nothing, though they pulled every string so that Christians might no longer exist; for they stirred up kings, the senate, rulers everywhere, and even the peoples themselves, who did not perceive the irrational and wicked working of the demons, against the word and those who believe in it. But the Word of God, more powerful than all, treating obstacles as food for its growth, advanced and won more souls; for God willed this. We have said these things, though in a digression, necessarily, I think; for we wanted to answer what Celsus says about the Jews, that they were runaways from Egypt, and that these men beloved of God never did anything worth mentioning. And to the claim that “they were never of any account or number,” we say that as “a chosen race” and “a royal priesthood,” withdrawing and avoiding mixing with the many so that their character might not be corrupted, they were guarded by the divine power; neither desiring, as most men do, to gain other kingdoms for themselves, nor abandoned so that, because of their small numbers, they became easy to attack and, as far as their small numbers went, were utterly destroyed. And this happened as long as they were worthy of God's protection. But when they had to be turned back to their God through sufferings, as a whole nation that was sinning, they were abandoned, sometimes more and sometimes less, until, under the Romans, having committed the greatest sin in killing Jesus, they were abandoned completely.

Next after this Celsus, running over what is in the first book of Moses, which is entitled Genesis, says that “they tried to trace their genealogy from the first seed of sorcerers and deceivers, calling to witness dim and ambiguous words hidden somewhere in darkness, and misinterpreting them to the ignorant and foolish; and this though in all the long time before no one had ever even disputed such a thing.” In these words he seems to me to have expressed very unclearly what he meant. It is likely that he deliberately made this passage unclear, since he saw the strength of the argument that the Jewish nation descends from such ancestors; and again he did not want to seem ignorant of something about the Jews and their race that is not to be despised. It is clear that the Jews trace their genealogy from the three fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; whose names, joined to the title of God, have such power that the formula “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” is used not only by those of that nation in their prayers to God and in driving out demons, but by almost all who practice incantations and magic. For such an invocation of God, and use of the name of God as belonging to these men, is found in many places in magical writings for use against demons. These things, then, which are brought forward by Jews and Christians to prove that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish nation, were holy men, Celsus seems to me not to have been wholly ignorant of, yet not to have set out clearly, since he could not answer the argument.

For we ask all who use such invocations of God: Tell us, sirs, who was Abraham, how great was Isaac, and of what power was Jacob, that the title “God,” joined to their name, can work such wonders? And from whom have you learned, or can you learn, about these men? Who troubled to record their history, whether one that openly exalts the men in secret writings, or one that hints through hidden meanings at great and marvelous things for those able to contemplate them? Then, when we ask and no one can show from what history, Greek or barbarian, or, if not history, some mystical record, the facts about these men come, we will bring forward the book entitled Genesis, which contains the deeds of these men and God's oracles to them, and we will say: Does not the fact that you too use the names of these three founders of the nation, since you perceive by experience that no small effects are produced by invoking them, show the divine character of these men? And we know them from nowhere else than from the sacred books of the Jews. Moreover, “the God of Israel,” “the God of the Hebrews,” and “the God who drowned the king of the Egyptians and the Egyptians in the Red Sea” are often named and used against demons or certain evil powers. And we learn the history of those named and the interpretation of the names from the Hebrews, who glorify and relate these things in their ancestral writings and their ancestral language. How, then, can the Jews be called shameless for trying to trace their genealogy from the first seed of these men whom Celsus supposed to be sorcerers and deceivers, and for tracing themselves and their origin back to men whose names, being Hebrew, bear witness to the Hebrews, who have their sacred books in the Hebrew language and letters, that their nation is related to these men? For even to this day Jewish names, belonging to the Hebrew language, were taken either from their writings or simply from what the Hebrew language signifies.

And let the reader of Celsus's book see whether he is not hinting at these things in the words, “They tried to trace their genealogy from the first seed of sorcerers and deceivers, calling to witness dim and ambiguous words hidden somewhere in darkness.” For these names are hidden, and not in the light and knowledge of many. In our view they are not ambiguous, even if they are used by those alien to our worship; but in Celsus's view, though he does not show the ambiguity of the words, they have somehow been tossed aside. And yet, if he wanted fairly to overturn the genealogy which he thought the Jews had most shamelessly adopted in boasting of Abraham and his descendants, he should have set out the whole passage, first argued for it with whatever plausibility he thought it had, and after that nobly overturned it with what seemed to him the truth and the arguments for it. But neither Celsus nor anyone else, discussing the nature of names used for works of power, will be able to present an accurate account of them and to prove that men whose very names have power not only among their own people but also among foreigners were contemptible. He should have shown how we deceive our hearers, as he thinks, by misinterpreting to the ignorant and foolish the facts about these names, while he himself, who boasts that he is neither ignorant nor foolish, gives the true interpretation of them. He also tossed out, concerning these names from which the Jews trace their genealogy, that “in all the long time before, no dispute had ever arisen” about such names, but that now the Jews dispute about them with certain others whom he did not name. Let whoever wishes show who these are who lay claim to them and use even plausible arguments against the Jews to show that the Jews and Christians do not report soundly about those to whom the names belong, and that others are the ones who have understood the wisest and truest things about them. But we are persuaded that no one can do such a thing, since it is evident that the names are taken from the Hebrew language, which is found among the Jews alone.

After this Celsus, setting out from history outside the divine word the claims of men who laid claim to antiquity, such as the Athenians, Egyptians, Arcadians, and Phrygians, who say that some among them were born from the earth and each offer proofs of this, says that “the Jews, huddled together in some corner of Palestine, utterly uneducated and not having heard long before what had been sung by Hesiod and countless other inspired men, composed a most implausible and tasteless story: that a man was formed by the hands of God and breathed into, and a woman from his side, and commands of God, and a serpent opposing them and prevailing over God's commands; telling a myth as if to old women, and most irreverently making God weak from the very beginning and unable to persuade even one man whom he himself had formed.” By these words the widely read and learned Celsus, who accuses both Jews and Christians of ignorance and lack of education, clearly shows how accurately he knew the dates of each writer, Greek and barbarian, since he thinks that Hesiod and countless others, whom he calls inspired men, are older than Moses and his writings, Moses, who is shown to be much older than the Trojan War! It was not the Jews, then, who composed a most implausible and tasteless story about the earth-born man, but the men whom Celsus calls inspired, Hesiod and his countless others, who, neither learning nor hearing the much older and most dignified words in Palestine, wrote such stories about the ancients as their theogonies, attributing birth, as far as they could, to gods, and countless other things. Reasonably, then, Plato expels from his republic Homer and those who write such poems, as corrupting the young. But Plato clearly did not think the men who left such poems were inspired; whereas Celsus the Epicurean, who can judge better than Plato, if indeed he is also the one who composed two other books against the Christians, perhaps from contentiousness against us called inspired those whom he did not think inspired.

He accuses us of introducing a man formed by the hands of God, though the book of Genesis mentions God's hands neither for the making of man nor for his forming; but Job and David said, “Your hands made me and formed me,” concerning which “there is much to say” to show what was meant by those who said it, not only about the difference between making and forming but also about the hands of God. Those who have not understood these and similar expressions of the divine Scriptures think that we attribute to the God over all a shape like the human one; and by their reasoning it would follow that we think there are wings on God's body, since the Scriptures taken literally say this too of our God. The present work does not require us to interpret these things now; for we have examined them as best we could, primarily, in our exegetical works on Genesis. Then see Celsus's malice in what follows. For when our Scripture says of the forming of man, “And he breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul,” he, maliciously wishing to ridicule “he breathed into his face the breath of life,” which he did not even understand in what sense it is said, wrote that they composed a story of “a man formed by the hands of God and breathed into,” so that someone, thinking “breathed into” was said like bellows blown up, might laugh at “he breathed into his face the breath of life,” which is said figuratively and needs an explanation showing that God gave man a share of the imperishable Spirit, as it is said: “Your imperishable Spirit is in all things.”⁠a

Then, since his aim was to disparage what is written, he also ridiculed the words, “God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh in its place; and he built the rib which he took from Adam into a woman,” and so on, without even setting out the wording, which could make the hearer notice that it is spoken figuratively. And he did not choose even to let on that such things are interpreted allegorically, although he says in what follows that “the more reasonable of the Jews and Christians, ashamed of these things, try somehow to allegorize them.” One may say to him: Are the things said by your inspired Hesiod in the form of a myth about the woman allegorized, that she was given to men by Zeus as “an evil in exchange for fire,” while the woman taken from the side of the man who slept after a “trance,” and built by God, seems to you to have been said without any reason or hidden meaning? But it is not fair not to laugh at the former as myth but to admire it as philosophy in myth, while resting one's understanding on the bare wording of the latter, sneering and thinking it will have no meaning. For if one must accuse what is said in hidden meanings for the sake of the bare wording, see whether Hesiod's words will not rather incur laughter, a man, as you say, inspired, who wrote such things: “And Zeus the cloud-gatherer said to him in anger: ‘Son of Iapetus, knowing counsels beyond all others, you rejoice that you stole fire and deceived my mind, a great curse to yourself and to men who will come. To them in exchange for fire I will give an evil in which all may delight in their hearts, embracing their own evil.’ So he spoke; and the father of men and gods made it happen. And he told famous Hephaestus as quickly as possible to mix earth with water, to put in it a human voice and strength, and to liken her in face to the immortal goddesses, the beautiful, lovely form of a virgin; and Athena to teach her works, to weave the intricate web; and golden Aphrodite to pour grace about her head, and painful longing and limb-wearying cares; and he told Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argus, to put in her a shameless mind and a thieving character. So he spoke, and they obeyed Zeus, son of Cronus, the lord. Immediately the famous Lame God formed from earth the likeness of a modest virgin, by the counsels of the son of Cronus; and the goddess, gray-eyed Athena, dressed and adorned her; and the divine Graces and queenly Persuasion put golden necklaces about her body; and the fair-haired Hours crowned her with spring flowers; and Pallas Athena fitted every adornment to her body. And in her breast the guide, the slayer of Argus, fashioned lies and crafty words and a thieving character, by the counsels of loud-thundering Zeus; and the herald of the gods put speech in her, and named this woman Pandora, because all who have homes on Olympus gave her a gift, a curse to men who eat bread.” Laughable immediately too is what is said about the jar: “For before, the tribes of men lived on the earth apart from and without evils, and without hard labor and severe diseases, which bring death to men. But the woman, taking the great lid from the jar with her hands, scattered them, and devised severe troubles for men. Hope alone remained there within, in the unbreakable house, under the lip of the jar, and did not fly out of doors; for before that she put back the lid of the jar.” To one who allegorizes these things solemnly, whether he succeeds in his allegory or not, we will say: Is it permitted to the Greeks alone to philosophize in hidden meaning, and also to the Egyptians and to those barbarians who pride themselves on mysteries and truth, while the Jews alone, their lawgiver and their writers, seemed to you the most foolish of all men, and this nation alone has had no share of any power of God, a nation taught so nobly to ascend to God’s nature, which has no origin, to look to him alone, and to expect hopes from him alone?

And since Celsus also ridicules the story of the serpent as opposing God's commands to man, supposing the account to be a myth like those handed down by old women, and deliberately did not name God's “paradise,” nor how “God” is said to have planted it “in Eden toward the east,” and after that to have made to grow “out of the earth every tree beautiful to see and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the paradise, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” and what is said after this, which could immediately move a well-disposed reader to see that all these things are figuratively, and not unworthily, expressed: come, let us set beside it what is said about Eros by Socrates in Plato's Symposium, which is attributed to Socrates as more dignified than all that the speakers in the Symposium said about him. Plato's words are these: “When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a feast, and among them Poros, the son of Metis. When they had dined, Penia came to beg, as there was a banquet, and was about the doors. Now Poros, drunk with nectar (for there was not yet wine), went into the garden of Zeus and, heavy with drink, slept. Penia, then, plotting because of her own lack to have a child by Poros, lay down beside him and conceived Eros. That is why Eros has become the follower and attendant of Aphrodite, having been conceived on her birthday, and being by nature a lover of the beautiful, Aphrodite too being beautiful. Being then the son of Poros and Penia, Eros is in this condition. First, he is always poor, and far from being tender and beautiful, as most think, he is hard and parched and barefoot and homeless, always lying on the ground without bedding, sleeping in the open at doors and in the roads, having his mother's nature, always dwelling with want. But after his father he plots for the beautiful and the good, being brave, bold, and intense, a skilled hunter, always weaving some devices, desirous of understanding and resourceful, philosophizing all his life, a skilled sorcerer, poisoner, and sophist. And he is by nature neither immortal nor mortal, but on the same day he now flourishes and lives, when he has plenty, and now dies, and comes back to life again because of his father's nature. But what he acquires always slips away, so that Eros is never in want nor rich, and is in the middle between wisdom and ignorance.” If those who read this imitate Celsus's malice, which Christians should never do, they will laugh at the myth and mock the great Plato; but if, examining philosophically what is said in the form of a myth, they are able to find Plato’s intention, [they will see] how he was able to hide, for the sake of the many, in the form of a myth the doctrines that seemed great to him, but to speak as he should to those who know how to find from myths the intention of their author concerning the truth. I have set out this myth in Plato because of “the garden of Zeus” in it, which seems to have something like the paradise of God, and because of Penia, who is comparable to the serpent there, and Poros plotted against by Penia, comparable to the man plotted against by the serpent. It is not very clear whether Plato hit upon these things by chance, or, as some think, on his visit to Egypt met those who studied the philosophy of the Jews and, learning some things from them, kept some and altered others, taking care not to offend the Greeks by keeping the wisdom of the Jews entirely, since they were slandered among the many because of the strangeness of their laws and their distinctive way of life. But it was not now the occasion to explain either Plato's myth or the story of the serpent and the paradise of God and all that is recorded to have happened in it; for we have dealt with these things primarily, as best we could, in our exegetical works on Genesis.

And when he says that the account of Moses most irreverently introduced God as “weak from the very beginning and unable to persuade even one man whom he himself had formed,” to this too we will say that the statement is like accusing God because of the existence of wickedness, which he has not been able to prevent even from one man, so that at least one man might be found who from the beginning had never tasted wickedness. For as those who care to defend providence make a defense on this point with arguments neither few nor contemptible, so too those will philosophize about Adam and his sin who know that in Greek “Adam” means “man,” and that in what seems to be about Adam Moses is treating the nature of man. For “in Adam,” as the Scripture says, “all die,” and they were condemned “in the likeness of Adam's transgression,” the divine word saying these things not so much about one individual as about the whole race. For in the sequence of what is said as if about one person, the curse of Adam is common to all; and there is no woman against whom what is said against the woman is not said. And the man cast out of paradise with the woman, clothed in the “clothes made of skins,” which God made for those who had sinned because of the transgression of men, has a secret and mystical meaning, beyond Plato's descent of the soul, which sheds its wings and is borne here “until it lays hold of something solid.”

Next he says this: “Then a flood and a monstrous ark holding everything inside, and a dove and a crow as messengers, counterfeiting and recklessly altering the story of Deucalion; for I do not think they expected these things would come to light, but they simply told myths to little children.” In these words too see the man's unphilosophical hatred of the most ancient Scripture of the Jews. For, having nothing to say against the story of the flood, and not noticing what he could have said against the ark and its measurements, namely that if one takes in the common sense what is said of the “three hundred cubits” of the length “of the ark,” the “fifty” of the width, and the “thirty” of the height, one could not say that it held the animals of the earth, fourteen of each clean kind and four of each unclean, he simply said “monstrous, holding everything inside.” For what is monstrous about it, when it is recorded to have been built over a hundred years and to have narrowed from the “three hundred cubits” of length and the “fifty” of breadth until the “thirty” cubits of height ended in one cubit of length and breadth? And was not the construction rather marvelous, like a very great city, when its measurements are taken in the sense of squares, so that the length at the base is ninety thousand and the width two thousand five hundred? And was it not admirable to conceive it so that it was made firm and could withstand a storm that produced a flood? For it was smeared firmly not with pitch or any other such material, but with asphalt. And is it not marvelous that by God's providence living sparks of every kind were brought inside, so that the earth might again have the seeds of all animals, God having used a most righteous man, who was to be father of those after the flood?

Celsus threw in the matter of the dove to seem to have read the book of Genesis, though he could say nothing to prove that the story of the dove was fictitious. Then, as is his custom, to paraphrase what is written in a more ridiculous way, he changed “the raven” into a crow, and thinks that Moses wrote these things by recklessly altering the story of Deucalion among the Greeks; unless perhaps he thinks the writing is not even Moses' but that of several people; for this is what “counterfeiting and recklessly altering the story of Deucalion” indicates, and this: “For I do not think they expected these things would come to light.” But how did those who gave writings to a whole nation not expect them to come to light, when they even prophesied that this worship of God would be proclaimed to all the nations? And when Jesus said to the Jews, “The kingdom of God will be taken from you and given to a nation producing its fruits,” what else was he arranging than to bring to light himself, by divine power, the whole Jewish Scripture, which contains mysteries of the kingdom of God? Then, if they read the theogonies of the Greeks and the stories about the twelve gods, they dignify them with allegories; but if they want to ridicule ours, they say they were simply told as myths to little children.

He speaks of “a most absurd and ill-timed conceiving of children,” and though he did not name it, it is clear that he means that of Abraham and Sarah. And throwing in “the plots of brothers,” he means either Cain's plot against Abel or, besides this, Esau's against Jacob; and “a father's grief,” perhaps Isaac's at Jacob's departure, and perhaps also Jacob's because of Joseph's being sold into Egypt. And in recording “the treacheries of mothers” he means, I think, Rebekah, who contrived that Isaac's blessings should come not upon Esau but upon Jacob. If we say that God was very close to all these, living among them, what absurdity do we commit in being persuaded that he never withdraws his divinity from those devoted to him with a good and steadfast life? He mocked Jacob's acquisition of property with Laban, not understanding to what the words refer: “And the unmarked were Laban's, and the marked were Jacob's.” And he says that God gave his sons little donkeys and little sheep and camels; and he did not see that “all these things happened to them as types, and were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.” Among us the varied characters, made “marked” by the Word of God, live as citizens, given as a possession to the one figuratively called Jacob. For those from the nations who believe in him were signified by what is recorded about Laban and Jacob.

Being far from the intention of what is written, he says that God also gave wells to the righteous. For he did not observe that the righteous do not construct cisterns but dig “wells,” seeking to find the spring and source of drinkable good things that lies within, taking figuratively the command which says: “Drink waters from your own vessels and from the spring of your own wells. Let not your waters overflow outside your spring, but let your waters pass into your own streets. Let them be yours alone, and let no stranger share them with you.” In many places the Scripture has used events that happened in history and recorded them to present greater things revealed in hidden meaning; such are the stories about wells, and about the marriages and various unions of the righteous, which someone will try to explain at a more appropriate time in commentaries on those very passages. That wells were indeed constructed by the righteous in the land of the Philistines, as is recorded in Genesis, is clear from the marvelous wells shown at Ascalon, worth recording for the strangeness and peculiarity of their construction compared with other wells. That brides and female slaves are to be taken figuratively is not our own teaching, but we have received it from wise men of old, one of whom, rousing his hearer to figurative interpretation, said: “Tell me, you who read the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, and the son of the free woman through the promise. These things are allegorized; for these women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar”; and a little after, he says, “But the Jerusalem above is free, which is our mother.” Whoever will take up the letter to the Galatians will know how the stories of the marriages and of the unions with female slaves have been allegorized, the Scripture wanting us too to imitate not the bodily actions, as they are thought, of those who did these things, but, as the apostles of Jesus are accustomed to call them, the spiritual ones.

He ought to have accepted the love of truth of those who wrote the divine Scriptures, who did not hide even what is improper, and to have been drawn to accept the other and more marvelous things as not fictitious. But he did the opposite, and the story of Lot and his daughters, without examining it literally or investigating it according to the higher sense, he called “more lawless than the evils of Thyestes.” It is not necessary now to state the figurative meaning of the passage: what Sodom is, and what is meant by the angels' words to the one who escaped from there, “Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the surrounding country; escape to the mountain, so that you are not taken along with them”; who Lot is, and who his wife, who became “a pillar of salt” because she turned back; and who his daughters are, who made their father drunk in order to become mothers by him. But let us briefly soften the impropriety of the story. The Greeks too inquired into the nature of good, evil, and indifferent things; and those of them who succeed place good and evil in the will alone, and say that all things considered apart from the will are by their own nature indifferent, but that the will, when it uses these things as it should, is praiseworthy, and when it does not, blameworthy. So in the treatment of indifferent things they said that to have intercourse with one's daughters is by its own nature indifferent, even if one must not do such a thing in established states; and, for the sake of a hypothesis, to show that such a thing is indifferent, they have taken the case of the wise man left alone with his daughter, the whole human race having been destroyed, and they ask whether the father will fittingly unite with his daughter so that, on this hypothesis, the whole human race may not perish. Is this, then, soundly said among the Greeks, and does the respectable school of the Stoics argue for it; but when young girls, who had learned about the great fire that will consume the world but not clearly, seeing fire overwhelming their city and land, and supposing that the living spark of the human race was left in their father and themselves, wished on such a supposition to preserve the world, are they to be judged worse than the wise man of the Stoics' hypothesis, who fittingly unites with his daughters when all men have been destroyed? I am not unaware that some, offended by the intention of Lot's daughters, have supposed the act to be unholy, and have said that from unholy unions came cursed nations, the Moabites and the Ammonites. And in truth the divine Scripture is not found clearly approving such a thing as well done, nor charging or blaming it. But however the event stands, it is taken up into figurative interpretation, and it also has in itself a certain defense.

Celsus throws in the hatred, I think, of Esau for Jacob, a man admitted by Scripture to be wicked; and, without setting out clearly the story of Simeon and Levi, who avenged the outrage to their sister, violated by the son of the king of Shechem, he accuses them. He speaks of “brothers selling,” meaning the sons of Jacob, and of “a brother sold,” Joseph, and of “a father deceived,” Jacob, since he suspected nothing about his sons when they showed Joseph's “many-colored coat,” but believed them and “mourned for Joseph as lost,” while he was a slave in Egypt. See how hatefully and without love of truth Celsus has gathered material from the history: where the history seemed to him to contain an accusation, he sets it out; but where a notable display of chastity took place, when Joseph did not yield to the passion of his supposed mistress, who alternately pleaded and threatened, he did not even mention the story. For we might see Joseph as far better than what is recorded of Bellerophon, since he chose to be shut up in prison rather than lose his chaste mind; for though he could have defended himself and pleaded his case against the woman who accused him, he nobly kept silent, entrusting his cause to God.

After this Celsus, for form's sake, mentions with complete obscurity the dreams of the chief cupbearer, the chief baker, and Pharaoh, and their interpretation, by which Joseph was brought from prison to be entrusted by Pharaoh with the second throne in Egypt. What absurdity, then, did the account of the story have even in itself, that he who entitled his book The True Word, which sets out no doctrines but accuses Christians and Jews, put these things forward as part of his accusation? And he says that the one who had been sold showed kindness to the brothers who had sold him, when they were starving and had been sent to trade with their donkeys; which Celsus did not even set out. And he includes the recognition, wanting I know not what, and showing no absurdity arising from the recognition; for not even Momus himself, so to speak, could reasonably accuse these things, which even without figurative interpretation have great charm. He includes also Joseph, sold as a slave, being set free and going up with a procession to his father's tomb, and thinks the account contains an accusation when he says: “by whom (clearly Joseph) the illustrious and divine race of the Jews, having grown to a multitude in Egypt, was ordered to live as temporary residents somewhere outside and to pasture flocks in places of no honor.” From his hateful purpose he added that they were ordered to pasture flocks in places of no honor, without showing how Goshen, a district of Egypt, is without honor. And he called the people's exodus from Egypt a flight, not even mentioning at all what is written in Exodus about the departure of the Hebrews from the land of Egypt. We have set out these things too, to show that Celsus put in the category of accusation and nonsense things that did not appear worthy of accusation even literally, without showing by argument what he thinks is wrong in our Scripture.

Then, as one who has given himself up only to hating and detesting the teaching of Jews and Christians, he says that “the more reasonable of the Jews and Christians allegorize these things”; and he says that, being ashamed of them, they take refuge in allegory. One might say to him: If the stories of myths and fictions in their first sense, whether written with hidden meaning or in any other way, must be called worthy of shame, to what should this be said if not to the Greek stories? In them sons who are gods castrate fathers who are gods, and fathers who are gods swallow sons who are gods, and a goddess mother gives to the father “of men and gods” a stone in place of her son, and a father has intercourse with his daughter, and a wife binds her husband, taking as helpers in the binding the brother of the one being bound and his daughter. And why must I list the absurd stories of the Greeks about the gods, obviously worthy of shame even when allegorized? For Chrysippus of Soli, who is thought to have adorned the Stoic school of philosophy with many intelligent writings, interprets a painting at Samos in which Hera was depicted performing an unspeakable act on Zeus. The dignified philosopher says in his writings that matter, having received the seminal principles of God, holds them in itself for the ordering of the universe; for in the painting at Samos Hera is matter and Zeus is God. For these reasons, then, and because of such myths and countless others, we do not want even to call the God over all by the name Zeus, nor the sun Apollo, nor the moon Artemis; but practicing pure piety toward the Creator and speaking well of his beautiful works, we do not defile divine things even by a name, accepting Plato's words in the Philebus, when he did not wish to admit pleasure as a goddess: “For my fear, Protarchus, about the names of the gods is such.” We truly have “fear,” then, about the name of God and of his beautiful works, so as not to accept any myth, even on the pretext of figurative meaning, to the harm of the young.

If Celsus had read the Scripture impartially, he would not have said that “our writings are not such as to admit allegory.” For from the prophecies, in which events of history are written, one can be brought, not from the history itself, to see that the histories too were written with the aim of figurative meaning and most wisely arranged, having regard both to the multitude of those who believe more simply and to the few who wish, or are able, to examine things with understanding. And if those who today are considered reasonable among the Jews and Christians, according to Celsus, were the ones who allegorized the Scriptures, Celsus might perhaps be thought to say something plausible; but since the very fathers of the doctrines and the writers themselves interpret such things figuratively, what else can one suppose than that they were written so as to be interpreted figuratively according to their primary sense? We will set out a few out of very many passages to show that Celsus slanders the Scriptures in vain as not able to admit allegory. Paul the apostle of Jesus says: “It is written in the law, ‘You must not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the plowman ought to plow in hope and the thresher to thresh in hope of a share.” And elsewhere the same says: “For it is written, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the church.” And again in another place: “We know that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” Then, interpreting the story of the manna and that of the water recorded to have come marvelously out of the rock, he says this: “And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed, and the rock was Christ.” And Asaph, showing that the stories of Exodus and Numbers are “riddles” and “parables,” as is written in the book of Psalms, when about to recall them, begins in this way: “Listen, my people, to my law; turn your ear to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables; I will speak riddles from the beginning, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.”

Moreover, if the law of Moses had nothing written in it that is revealed through hidden meanings, the prophet would not have said to God in prayer, “Uncover my eyes, and I will perceive the wonders of your law.” But as it is, he knew that there is a “veil” of ignorance lying on the heart of those who read and do not understand what is spoken figuratively; which “veil is taken away” by God's gift, when he hears the one who has done everything in his power, has trained his faculties by habit to distinguish good and evil, and has said most constantly in prayer, “Uncover my eyes, and I will perceive the wonders of your law.” And who, reading of a dragon living in the river of Egypt, and fish nestling in its scales, or of the mountains of Egypt filled “with the excrement” of Pharaoh, is not led immediately to inquire who it is that fills the mountains of Egypt with such foul-smelling “excrement,” and what the mountains of the Egyptians are, and what the rivers in Egypt are, about which the Pharaoh just mentioned boasts, saying, “The rivers are mine, and I made them,” and who is the dragon corresponding to the rivers that will be shown by interpretation, and who are the fish in its scales? And why need I establish further what needs no establishing? Of such things it is said: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? Or intelligent, and will know them?” I have extended my discourse at some length because I wanted to show that Celsus did not speak soundly in saying that “the more reasonable of the Jews and Christians try somehow to allegorize these things, but they are not such as to admit any allegory, but are plainly very silly myths.” For far more are the Greek stories not only very silly but also very irreverent myths. For ours have regard also to the multitude of simpler people, which those who made the Greek fictions did not take care to do. That is why Plato, not without reason, expels such myths and such poems from his republic.

He seems to me also to have heard that there are writings containing allegories of the law; had he read them, he would not have said: “At any rate, the allegories that seem to have been written about them are much more shameful and absurd than the myths, joining with some marvelous and utterly senseless folly things that can in no way be fitted together.” He seems to say this about the writings of Philo, or of those still older, such as those of Aristobulus. I conjecture that Celsus had not read the books, since in many places they seem to me so successful that even the philosophers among the Greeks would be won over by what is said; in them not only the style is polished, but also the thoughts and doctrines and the use of what Celsus thinks are the myths of the Scriptures. I know also that Numenius the Pythagorean, a man who explained Plato far better and championed the Pythagorean doctrines, in many places in his writings sets out the words of Moses and the prophets and interprets them figuratively not implausibly, as in the work called Epops, and in his books On Numbers and On Place. And in the third book On the Good he sets out even a story about Jesus, without naming him, and interprets it figuratively; whether successfully or unsuccessfully, it is for another occasion to say. He sets out also the story of Moses, Jannes, and Jambres. We do not pride ourselves on it, but we approve of him more than Celsus and other Greeks, since he wished to examine our writings too with love of learning, and was moved by them as writings to be interpreted figuratively and not foolish.

Next after this, picking out from all the writings that contain allegories and explanations in a respectable style the one that is simpler, which can contribute something to the faith of the many and simpler people but cannot move the more intelligent, he says: “Such, for instance, is a certain dispute between one Papiscus and Jason which I came across, worthy not of laughter but rather of pity and hatred. It is not my task to refute these things; for they are surely clear to everyone, especially if one has the patience to endure listening to the writings themselves. But I want rather to teach this about nature: that God made nothing mortal, but the works of God are all that are immortal, and mortal things are theirs. And the soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different. And in this respect the body of a bat, or a worm, or a frog, or a man will not differ; for the matter is the same, and their corruptibility is alike.” Nonetheless I would want everyone who hears Celsus speaking vehemently and saying that the writing entitled the Dispute of Jason and Papiscus about Christ is worthy not of laughter but of hatred, to take the little work in his hands and have the patience to endure hearing what is in it, so that he may immediately condemn Celsus, finding nothing worthy of hatred in the book. And if anyone reads it impartially, he will find that the book does not even move one to laughter; in it a Christian is recorded arguing with a Jew from the Jewish Scriptures and showing that the prophecies about Christ fit Jesus, although the other, in the person of the Jew, stands against the argument neither disgracefully nor inappropriately.

I do not know how he combined things that cannot be mixed and do not naturally occur together in human nature, and said that book was worthy of pity and hatred. For everyone will admit that one who is pitied is not hated when he is pitied, and one who is hated is not pitied when he is hated. Celsus says that it is not his task to refute these things because he thinks they are surely clear to everyone as bad, and worthy of pity and hatred, even before a reasoned refutation is brought. But we urge the reader of this defense, written against Celsus's accusation, to have patience and to listen to our writings, and as far as possible to conjecture from what is written the purpose, conscience, and disposition of those who wrote them. For he will find men contending ardently for what they believed, and some showing that they are recording a history they saw and grasped as marvelous and worth writing for the benefit of those who would hear it. Or let anyone dare to say that it is not the source and beginning of every benefit to believe in the God of the universe, to do everything with reference to pleasing him in every matter whatever, and not even to think anything displeasing to him, since not only words and deeds but also thoughts will be judged. And what other teaching could bring human nature more effectively to a good life than the faith or conviction that the God over all sees what we say and do and even what we think? Let whoever wishes compare another way that turns and improves immediately not just one or two people but as many as possible, so that by comparing both ways one may accurately perceive the teaching that disposes people toward the good.

Since in the passage of Celsus I set out, which paraphrases certain things from the Timaeus, it is written that God made nothing mortal, but only immortal things, while mortal things are the works of others; and that the soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different; and that the body of a man will not differ from the body of a bat, or a worm, or a frog, for the matter is the same and their corruptibility is alike: come, let us discuss these things too for a little, refuting a man who either does not profess his own Epicurean opinion, or, as one might say, later changed to better views, or, as another might say, is a namesake of the Epicurean. For when he declared such things, he ought to have undertaken to contradict not only us but also the respectable school of philosophers descended from Zeno of Citium, and to establish that the bodies of animals are not works of God, and that the great skill shown in them did not come from the first Mind. He should also, about the many plants of every kind, governed by an indwelling nature without imagination and made for a significant use in the universe for men and for the animals that serve men, however else they may exist, not merely have declared but also have taught that it was not some perfect Mind that implanted such great qualities in the matter of plants. And if he once made gods the creators of all bodies, the soul alone being the work of God, how was it not consistent for one who divided up so many created things and gave them to many creators to establish, with a substantial argument, the differences among the gods, some making human bodies, others, say, the bodies of cattle, and others those of wild beasts? And seeing gods as creators of serpents, asps, and basilisks, and some as creators according to each individual species of them, and others according to the species of each plant and each herb, he should have stated the reasons for the divisions. For perhaps, if he had given himself to a precise examination of this subject, he would either have kept one God as creator of all things, who made each thing for some purpose and reason, or, not keeping to this, he would have seen what defense he had to make about corruptibility, a thing indifferent by its own nature, and that there is nothing absurd in a world composed of unlike things having been made by one craftsman, who formed the differences of species for the benefit of the whole. Or at the very least he should not have declared anything at all about so great a doctrine, if he was not going to establish what he professed to teach; unless, perhaps, he who accuses those who profess bare faith himself wanted us to believe what he declared, although he professed not to declare but to teach.

I do not yet say that if he had had the patience to endure listening to the writings, as he calls them, of Moses and the prophets, he would have noticed why the words “God made” are applied to heaven and earth, and to what is called the vault of sky, and further to the lights and stars, and after that to the great sea creatures and every soul “of creeping living things which the waters brought forth according to their kinds,” and every winged bird “according to its kind,” and next to the wild beasts “of the earth according to their kind,” and the cattle “according to their kind,” and all the creeping things “of the earth according to their kind,” and lastly to man; whereas “made” is not said of other things. For light the Scripture is content with “there was light”; for the gathering into one of all the water under the whole heaven, with “and it was so”; and likewise for the things that sprouted from the earth, when “the earth brought forth grass, plants yielding seed according to their kind and likeness, and fruit trees bearing fruit, whose seed is in it according to its kind on the earth.” And he would have inquired to whom, or to what beings, the recorded commands of God for the coming into being of each part of the world were spoken; and he would not easily have accused, as unintelligible and containing no secret meaning, what was written in these passages either by Moses or, as we would say, by the divine Spirit in Moses, from whom he also prophesied; since he knew “the things that are, the things that will be, and the things that were before” better than the seers spoken of by the poets are said to have known them.

Further, since Celsus says, “The soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different; and in this respect the body of a bat, a worm, a frog, or a man will not differ, for the matter is the same and their corruptibility is alike,” it must be said to this argument of his too: if, because the same matter underlies the body of a bat, a worm, a frog, or a man, these bodies will not differ from one another, then clearly the bodies of these will not differ from the sun, moon, stars, heaven, or any other of what the Greeks call perceptible gods. For the same matter underlies all bodies, by its own nature without quality and without shape; and from whom it receives its qualities, according to Celsus, who does not want anything perishable to be the work of God, I do not know. For by Celsus's own argument the corruptibility of everything whatever that has come from the same underlying matter must be alike. Unless, perhaps, Celsus, hard pressed here, will leap away from Plato, who makes the soul from a kind of mixing bowl, and take refuge with Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that the ether is immaterial and of a fifth nature besides the four elements; against which view both the Platonists and the Stoics have stood firm with distinction. And we too, whom Celsus despises, will stand firm, when asked to explain and establish what is said in the prophet as follows: “The heavens will perish, but you remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed; but you are the same.” But this is enough against Celsus, who declared that “the soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different”; from whose argument it followed that the body of a bat, a worm, or a frog does not differ from the ethereal body.

See, then, whether one must side with a man who accuses Christians with such doctrines, and abandon the teaching which grants a difference to bodies because of the qualities that lie upon and about them. For we too know that there are “heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,” and that the “glory” of the “heavenly” bodies is one and that of the “earthly” another; and not even that of the “heavenly” ones is the same, for “there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the stars,” and among the stars themselves “star differs from star in glory.” That is why, accepting the resurrection “of the dead,” we say that changes take place in the qualities in bodies; since some of them, sown “in decay, are raised in freedom from decay,” and sown “in dishonor, are raised in glory,” and sown “in weakness, are raised in power,” and bodies sown natural are raised spiritual. That the underlying matter is receptive of whatever qualities the Creator wills, all of us who accept providence establish; and, God willing, there is now such and such a quality in this matter, and afterward such and such another, better, say, and different. And since there are set courses for the changes in bodies, from the time the world has existed and as long as it exists, and I do not know whether a new and different course will not follow after the destruction of the world, which our Scriptures call the completion, it is not surprising if at present, as most people say, a serpent is formed from a dead man, coming from the spinal marrow, and a bee from an ox, a wasp from a horse, a beetle from a donkey, and, in a word, worms from most things. But Celsus thinks this establishes that none of these is the work of God, but that the qualities, ordered I know not from where, so that these come from those, are not the work of some divine Word who changes the qualities in matter.

We say this further to Celsus, who said, “The soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different,” and who threw out so great a doctrine not only without proof but also without definition; for he did not make clear whether every soul is the work of God, or only the rational soul. We say to him, then: If every soul is the work of God, clearly that of irrational and most worthless creatures is too, so that the nature of every body is different from that of the soul. He seems, however, in what follows, where he says that irrational animals are dearer to God than we are and have a purer notion of the divine, to represent not only the soul of men but much more that of irrational animals as the work of God; for this follows from saying that they are dearer to God than we are. But if only the rational soul is the work of God, first, he did not make this clear; and second, it follows from his speaking without definition about the soul, as if not every soul but only the rational one were the work of God, that the nature of every body is not different. And if the nature of every body is not different, but the body of each animal corresponds to its soul, clearly the body of the one whose soul is the work of God would differ from a body in which dwells a soul that is not the work of God. And so it will be false that the body of a bat, a worm, or a frog will not differ from that of a man.

For it is absurd that stones should be thought purer or more defiled than stones, and buildings than buildings, according to whether they have been built for the honor of the divine or to receive the most dishonorable and cursed bodies, while bodies should not differ from bodies according to whether their inhabitants are rational or irrational, and, among rational ones, according to whether they are the better people or the worst of men. Such a view has led some to dare to deify the bodies of distinguished men as having received a good soul, and to cast out or dishonor those of the worst; not that such a thing has always been done soundly, but that it had its origin in a sound notion. Or will the wise man, after the death of Anytus and Socrates, care alike for the burial of the body of Socrates and that of Anytus, and build a similar monument or tomb for both? And we have said these things because of the phrase “of which none is the work of God,” the “of which” referring to the body of a man, or the serpents that come from the body, and to that of an ox, or the bees that come from the body of an ox, and to that of a horse or donkey, and the wasps from a horse and beetles from a donkey; on account of which we were compelled to take up again the statement, “The soul is the work of God, but the nature of the body is different.”

Then next he says: “The nature of all the bodies previously mentioned is common, and one, going and returning in a cycle of change.” To this too it is clear from what has been said that the nature is common not only to the bodies listed before but also to the “heavenly” ones. And if this is so, clearly, according to him (I do not know whether also according to the truth), the nature of all bodies is one, going and returning in a cycle of change. And it is clear that this is so according to those who make the world perishable; but those who do not make it perishable, while not admitting a “fifth body,” will also try to show that according to them too the nature of all bodies is one, going and returning in a cycle of change. So too what perishes remains in change; for the underlying matter remains when the quality perishes, according to those who hold that matter is uncreated. But if some argument can show that matter is not uncreated but was made for some use, clearly it will not have the same nature as regards permanence as it would if it were supposed uncreated. But it is not our present task, in answering Celsus's accusations, to discuss natural philosophy.

He says also: “Nothing born of matter is immortal.” To this it will be said that if nothing born of matter is immortal, either the whole world is immortal and not as born of matter, or it too is not an immortal thing. If, then, the world is immortal, as is held even by those who said that only the soul is the work of God and say that it came from a certain mixing bowl, let Celsus show that it did not come from matter without qualities, if he keeps to “nothing born of matter is immortal.” But if, since the world is born of matter, it is not immortal, the world is mortal: is it then also perishing, or not? If perishing, it will perish as the work of God; then, in the perishing of the world, what will the soul, the work of God, do? Let Celsus say. But if, twisting the notion of the immortal, he says that it is immortal in the sense of being perishable but not perishing, as capable of death but not actually dying, clearly there will be something, according to him, both mortal and immortal at the same time, by being capable of both; and it will be a mortal thing that does not die, and what is not immortal by nature will be called immortal in a special sense because it does not die. In what distinct sense, then, will he say, “Nothing born of matter is immortal”? You see that the thoughts in his writings, when pressed and examined, are refuted, not admitting what is noble and incontestable. Having said these things, he adds: “On this subject so much is enough; and if anyone is able to hear and inquire further, he will know.” Let us then, whom he considers foolish, see what has followed from our being able to hear him and inquire even a little.

Next after this he thinks that we can learn, through a few petty phrases, what has been variously investigated through many substantial arguments about the nature of evils and differently interpreted, saying: “Evils among beings could be neither fewer nor more, either before, or now, or again; for the nature of the universe is one and the same, and the origin of evils is always the same.” He seems to have paraphrased this too from the Theaetetus, where Socrates in Plato said: “But it is not possible for evils to perish from among men, nor for them to be established among the gods,” and so on. And it seems to me that he who includes the truth in this one treatise and entitles his book against us The True Word has not even listened to Plato accurately. For the passage in the Timaeus which says, “When the gods purify the earth with water,” has shown that the earth, when purified by the waters, has fewer evils than in the time before it was purified. And we say that according to Plato evils are at times fewer, because of the passage in the Theaetetus which says that “evils cannot perish from among men.”

I do not know how, while positing providence (at least as far as the words of this book go), he says that evils are neither more nor fewer but, as it were, fixed in number, doing away with the finest doctrine, that vice and evils are unlimited and by their own nature boundless. And it seems to follow from the claim that evils neither have been nor are nor will be fewer or more, that, just as according to those who hold the world to be indestructible the balance of the elements comes about by providence, which does not allow any one of them to gain the upper hand, so that the world may not perish, so, as it were, some providence presides over evils, which happen to be just so many, so that they become neither more nor fewer. Celsus's account of evils is refuted in another way too, by the philosophers who have examined questions of good and evil, and who have shown from history as well that at first courtesans hired themselves out to any who wished outside the city, wearing masks; then later, growing contemptuous, they laid the masks aside, and, not being permitted by the laws to enter the cities, they stayed outside them; but as corruption grew day by day, they dared to enter the cities too. Chrysippus says this in his Introduction to Goods and Evils. From this, since evils become more and fewer, one can gather that those known as “Ambiguous” once stood in public, suffering and inflicting outrage and serving the lusts of those who came in, but that later the market officials drove them out. And about countless things that have entered human life from the spreading of vice one could say that formerly they did not exist. At any rate, the most ancient histories, though they accuse sinners of countless things, do not know of those who commit unspeakable acts.

How, from these and similar facts, does Celsus not appear ridiculous, thinking that evils could never become more or fewer? For even if the nature of the universe is one and the same, it does not follow at all that the origin of evils is always the same. For just as, though the nature of this or that particular man is one and the same, the state of his ruling faculty, his reason, and his actions is not always the same (at one time he has not yet acquired reason, at another he has vice together with reason, and this spread either more or less widely; and sometimes he has been turned toward virtue and makes more or less progress, and occasionally he even attains virtue itself, and that in more or in fewer contemplations), so one can say still more of the nature of the universe that, even if it is one and the same in kind, the same things, or things of the same kind, do not always happen in the universe. For there are not always good harvests, nor always bad ones, nor always floods of rain, nor always droughts; and in the same way neither the good harvests nor the bad of better souls are fixed, nor is the outpouring of worse souls always greater or less. And for those who wish to examine everything as precisely as possible, the account of evils is necessary: evils do not always remain at the same level, because of the providence that either preserves what is on earth or cleanses it by floods and great fires, and perhaps not only what is on earth but also what is in the whole world, when it needs cleansing because vice has become great in it.

After this Celsus says: "What the origin of evils is, is not easy for one who has not studied philosophy to know; but it is enough to say to the multitude that evils do not come from God, but cling to matter and dwell among mortals; and the cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions the same things must always have happened, be happening, and be going to happen." Celsus says that the origin of evils is not easy to know for one who has not studied philosophy, as though the philosopher could know their origin easily, while the non-philosopher cannot easily discern the origin of evils, though he can know it, even if only with hard work. But we say in reply to this too that the origin of evils is not easy to know even for one who has studied philosophy, and perhaps even for such people it is not possible to know it purely, unless by God's inspiration it is made clear what evils are, and shown how they came into being, and understood in what way they will be done away with. At any rate, since ignorance about God is among evils, and not to know the manner of worshiping God and of piety toward him is the greatest evil, certainly, even according to Celsus, some of those who studied philosophy did not know it, as is clear from the different schools in philosophy. But in our view no one who has not come to know that it is an evil to think piety is preserved in the laws established according to the commonly understood constitutions of states will be able to know the origin of evils. And no one who has not grasped the facts about the one called the devil and his angels (who this one was before he became the devil, how he became the devil, and what the cause was of those called his angels revolting along with him) will be able to know the origin of evils. And one who is to know it must also have understood more exactly about demons, that, insofar as they are demons, they are not God's creations, but only insofar as they are rational beings, and how they came to be such that their ruling faculty took on the condition of demons. If, then, any other subject among those in human life that need examination is hard for our nature to track down, the origin of evils would be counted among them.

Then, as one who could say something more secret about the origin of evils but keeps silent about it and says what suits the multitude, he says that it is enough to say to the multitude about the origin of evils that "evils do not come from God, but cling to matter and dwell among mortals." It is true, then, that evils do not come from God; for according to our Jeremiah too it is plain that "out of the mouth of the Lord will not come evil things and the good." But that matter dwelling among mortals is the cause of evils is not true in our view. For the ruling faculty of each person is the cause of the vice that exists in it, which is evil; and the actions that come from it are evils too. And nothing else, in our view, strictly speaking, is evil. But I know that this subject needs much working out and argument, which can come, by the grace of God who enlightens the ruling faculty, to the one judged by God worthy of knowledge on this topic as well.

I do not know how it seemed useful to Celsus, writing against us, to throw in a doctrine that needs much demonstration, even plausible demonstration, showing as far as possible that "the cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions the same things must always have happened, be happening, and be going to happen." If this is true, free will is abolished. For if according to the appointed revolutions the same things must always have happened, be happening, and be going to happen in the cycle of mortal things, it is clear that Socrates must always practice philosophy and be accused of new divinities and of corrupting the young, and Anytus and Meletus must always accuse him, and the council on the Areopagus must always condemn him to death by hemlock. So too, according to the appointed cycles, Phalaris must always be tyrant, and Alexander of Pherae must commit the same cruelties, and those condemned to Phalaris's bull must always bellow in it. If this is granted, I do not know how free will can be preserved, or how praise and blame can be reasonable. And to such a hypothesis this will be said to Celsus: if the cycle of mortal things is always alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions the same things must always have happened, be happening, and be going to happen, then, according to the appointed cycles, Moses must always come out of Egypt with the people of the Jews, and Jesus must again come to live among us to do the same things, which he has done not once but infinitely many times according to the cycles; and the same Christians will exist in the appointed revolutions, and Celsus will write this book again, having written it infinitely many times before.

Celsus, then, says that only the cycle of mortal things must necessarily, according to the appointed revolutions, always have happened, be happening, and be going to happen; but most of the Stoics say that not only the cycle of mortal things is such, but also that of immortal things and of the gods they believe in. For after the great fire that consumes the universe, which has happened infinitely many times and will happen infinitely many times, the same order of all things from beginning to end has come about and will come about. Trying, however, to remedy the absurdities somehow, the Stoics say, I do not know how, that in each cycle all will be indistinguishable from those of the earlier cycles, so that Socrates does not come into being again, but someone indistinguishable from Socrates, who will marry a woman indistinguishable from Xanthippe and be accused by men indistinguishable from Anytus and Meletus. But I do not know how the world is always the same and not one world indistinguishable from another, while the things in it are not the same but indistinguishable. But the fundamental argument against both Celsus's words and those of the Stoics will be examined more suitably elsewhere, since it does not fit the present occasion and the purpose at hand to enlarge on these matters here.

After this he says: "Nor were visible things given to man, but each thing comes into being and perishes for the sake of the preservation of the whole, according to the exchange I spoke of before, from one to another." It is unnecessary to spend more time refuting these things, as we have already set out our view as best we could. It has also been said in answer to this: "Neither goods nor evils could become fewer or more among mortals." An answer has also been given to this: "Nor does God need new correction." But God does not bring correction to the world as a man who has built something defectively and made it unskillfully, cleansing it by flood or great fire; rather he prevents the spread of vice from ranging further, and I think he also does away with it altogether, in an orderly way, to the benefit of the whole. Whether after the abolition of vice there is reason for it to come into being again or not will be examined in the fundamental treatise. God, then, does will always to remedy failings through fresh correction. For even if everything has been ordered by him most beautifully and most securely in the creation of the universe, he nonetheless needed some healing art for those sick with vice and for the whole world, defiled as it were by it; and nothing has been or will be neglected by God, who at each time does what it is fitting for him to do in a world that is changeable and mutable. And as a farmer does different farm work on the land and on what grows on it according to the different seasons of the year, so God administers whole ages as if they were years, so to speak, doing in each of them whatever reason concerning the universe requires, which is most clearly understood and carried out, as the truth holds, by God alone.

Celsus put forward an argument about evils of this kind: "Even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil; for you do not know what benefits you or another or the whole." The argument has something cautious in it, but it also hints that the nature of evils is not wholly wicked, since what is thought to be evil in individual cases may benefit the whole. However, so that no one who misunderstands what is said may find an occasion for his own ruin, as though his vice too were useful to the universe or could be useful, it will be said that, free will being preserved for each person, even if God makes use of the wickedness of the bad for the ordering of the universe, assigning them to the service of the universe, such a person is no less blameworthy, and has been assigned, as blameworthy, to a service that is undesirable for each individual but useful to the whole. It is as if in cities someone said that a man who had committed certain sins and for his sins had been condemned to some public works useful to all does something useful to the whole city, while he himself has come into an undesirable condition, one in which no one with even moderate sense would wish to be. And Paul, the apostle of Jesus, teaching us that even the very worst will contribute something to the service of the universe but will be, through their own fault, among things undesirable, while the most earnest will be most useful to the universe, and will be placed in the finest position through their own doing, says: "In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honor and some for dishonor. If then anyone cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the master, prepared for every good work." I think it necessary to have set this out in answer to "Even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil; for you do not know what benefits you or another," so that no one takes occasion from the topic to sin, as though he will be useful to the whole through his sin.

Since after this Celsus, not understanding the passages in the Scriptures about God as though he had human passions, ridicules those in which words of anger are spoken against the ungodly and threats against those who have sinned, it must be said that, just as we, when talking with very small children, do not aim at the full measure of our own ability in speaking, but adapting ourselves to the weakness of those in our charge say these things and also do what seems useful to us for the conversion and correction of children as children, so the Word of God seems to have arranged what is written, measuring what is fitting in the telling by the capacity of the hearers and by their benefit. And in general, about this manner of telling things about God, it is said in Deuteronomy: "The Lord your God bore with your ways, as a man would bear with the ways of his son." It is as though the Word, taking on human ways for the benefit of human beings, says such things; for the many did not need God, speaking in his own person, to say in a manner fitting for himself what was to be said to such people. But one who cares for the clear understanding of the divine writings will find in them the things called spiritual for those who are named spiritual, comparing the intent of what is said to the weaker and of what is proclaimed to the more practiced, both often lying in the same passage for one who knows how to hear it.

We do speak of God's anger, but we say that it is not an emotion of his, but something he uses to educate, by sterner ways, those who have committed so many and such sins. That what is called God's anger and what is named his fury educates, and that this is the view of Scripture, is clear from what is said in the sixth psalm: "Lord, do not rebuke me in your fury, nor discipline me in your anger," and in Jeremiah: "Discipline us, Lord, but with judgment and not in fury, so that you do not reduce us to a few." And whoever reads in the second book of Kingdoms of the "anger" of God that moved David to number the people, and in the first book of Chronicles of "the devil," and compares the texts with one another, will see to whom the anger is assigned: the anger of which Paul says all human beings have become "children," saying: "We were by nature children of anger, like the rest." That anger is not an emotion of God, but each person prepares it for himself by his sins, Paul will show in the words: "Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God's kindness leads you to repentance? But by your hardness and unrepentant heart you are storing up anger for yourself on the day of anger and of the revelation of God's righteous judgment." How then can each person "store up anger for himself on the day of anger," if "anger" is understood as an emotion? And how can an emotion of anger educate? Moreover, the Word that teaches us never to be angry, and says in the thirty-sixth psalm, "Stop being angry and give up fury," and in Paul, "Put away all these things yourselves: anger, fury, malice, slander, foul talk," would not attach to God himself the emotion from which it wishes to free us altogether. It is clear that what is said about God's anger is figurative from the fact that sleep too is recorded of him, from which the prophet, as though waking him, says: "Rise; why do you sleep, Lord?" And again he says: "And the Lord awoke as one asleep, like a mighty man who has been drunk with wine." If, then, sleep means something else, and not what the obvious understanding of the word shows, why should not anger also be understood in a similar way? And threats are announcements of what will happen to the wicked, as if someone called threats the words of a doctor telling his patients: "I will cut you and cauterize you, unless you obey my rules and follow this diet and conduct yourself in this way." We therefore do not attach human emotions to God, nor do we hold irreverent opinions about him, nor do we go astray when we set out the accounts about him from the writings themselves compared with one another. Nor is the purpose of those among us who wisely represent the Word anything other than to free the hearers from simple-mindedness as far as possible and to make them wise.

In keeping with his failure to understand what is written about God's anger, he says: "Is it not ridiculous that a man, angered at the Jews, destroyed them all, young and old, and burned their city, so that they were nothing; while God the greatest, as they say, being angry and furious and threatening, sends his Son, and he suffers such things?" If, then, the Jews, after doing to Jesus what they dared against him, perished young and old and were burned, they suffered these things from no other anger than that which they stored up for themselves, God's judgment against them having come about by God's decree, which is named anger by a certain ancestral custom of the Hebrews. And the Son of the greatest God does suffer, by his own will, for the salvation of human beings, as has been said above as well as we could. After this he says: "But so that the argument may not be about the Jews alone (for that is not what I am saying) but about the whole of nature, as I promised, I will make plainer what I said before." Who, reading this, if he were modest and aware of human weakness, would not shrink from the offensiveness of one who promised to give an account of the whole of nature and boasted in the same way as in the title he dared to give his book? Let us see, then, what it is he promises to say about the whole of nature and what he will make plain.

Next he accuses us at length of saying that God made all things for man. And he wishes to show from natural history about animals, and from the intelligence they display, that all things came into being no more for human beings than for the irrational animals. He seems to me to say something like those who, out of hatred for people they detest, accuse them of the very things for which their dearest friends are praised. For just as in their case hatred blinds them so that they do not see that they are also accusing their dearest friends by what they think are slanders against their enemies, in the same way Celsus too, his reasoning confused, has not seen that he is also accusing the Stoic philosophers, who rightly put man, and in a word rational nature, ahead of all irrational beings, and say that providence made all things principally for its sake. And rational beings have the place of the principal things, like children being born; while irrational and inanimate things have the place of the afterbirth created together with the child. And I think that, just as in cities those who oversee the goods for sale and the market oversee them for no other reason than for human beings, yet dogs and other irrational animals also share incidentally in the abundance, so providence cares principally for rational beings, and it has followed that irrational beings too enjoy what comes about for human beings. And just as a person errs who says that the market overseers care no more for human beings than for dogs, since dogs too share incidentally in the abundance of the goods for sale, so much more are Celsus and those who think as he does irreverent toward God, who cares for rational beings, when they say: "Why are these things produced as food for human beings rather than for plants, trees, grass, and thorns?"

For he thinks, first, that thunders and lightnings and rains are not works of God, being by now more openly an Epicurean; and second he says that, even if one were to grant that these are works of God, they are produced as food no more for us human beings than for plants, trees, grass, and thorns, granting, like a true Epicurean, that these things happen by chance and not by providence. For if they are no more useful to us than to plants, trees, grass, and thorns, it is clear that they do not come from providence either, or else from a providence that cares no more for us than for trees, grass, and thorns. Each of these views is plainly irreverent; and to stand up and contradict such things against one who accuses us of irreverence is simple-minded, for it is clear to everyone from what has been said who is the irreverent one. Then he says: "Even if you say that these grow for human beings" (clearly meaning plants, trees, grass, and thorns), "why will you say that they grow for human beings rather than for the wildest irrational animals?" Let Celsus say plainly, then, that the great variety of things growing on earth is not the work of providence, but some chance gathering of atoms has made so many qualities, and that by chance so many species of plants and trees and grass resemble one another; and that no craftsmanlike reason brought them into being, nor do they have their origin from a mind that surpasses all wonder. But we Christians, devoted to the only God who created these things, give thanks for these too to their maker, because he prepared so great a home for us, and, for our sake, for the animals that serve us: "He who makes grass spring up for the cattle, and green plants for the service of human beings, to produce bread from the earth, and that wine may bring joy to the heart of man, and his face be made cheerful with oil, and bread strengthen the heart of man." And if he has also prepared food for the wildest animals, there is nothing surprising in that; for other philosophers too have said that these animals came into being to exercise the rational animal. And one of the wise men among us says somewhere: "Do not say, 'What is this? Why is this?' For all things were created for their use," and "Do not say, 'What is this? Why is this?' For all things will be sought out in their time."

Next, Celsus, wishing to show that providence made the things that grow on earth no more for us than for the wildest animals, says: "We, toiling and laboring hard, are fed with difficulty and pain; but for them 'all things grow unsown and unplowed.'" He does not see that God, wishing human understanding to be exercised everywhere, so that it would not remain idle and without invention of the arts, made man needy, so that by his very neediness he would be compelled to discover arts, some for food and others for shelter. For it was better for those who would not seek divine things and pursue philosophy to be in want, so as to use their understanding to discover arts, than, having everything in abundance, to neglect understanding altogether. At any rate, want of the necessities of life established agriculture, vine cultivation, the arts of gardening, carpentry and smithing, which make tools for the arts that serve the production of food; and want of shelter introduced weaving, after carding and spinning, and building; and so understanding has risen even to architecture. And lack of necessities has caused the products of other places to be carried by seamanship and navigation to those who do not have them; so that for these reasons too one might admire providence, which, to our benefit, made the rational being needier than the irrational animals. For the irrational animals have their food ready to hand, since they do not have the capacity for arts; and they have natural covering too, for they are covered with hair, or feathers, or scales, or shells. Let this be said in our defense against the passage in Celsus that says: "We, toiling and laboring hard, are fed with difficulty; but for them 'all things grow unsown and unplowed.'"

Next, forgetting that his purpose is to accuse Jews and Christians, he raises against himself an iambic line of Euripides that opposes his view, and, closing with what was said, accuses it of being wrongly said. Celsus's passage reads as follows: "And if you quote the line of Euripides, that 'sun and night are servants to mortals,' why to us rather than to ants and flies? For to them too 'night' comes for rest, and day for seeing and working." It is clear, then, that not only some Jews and Christians have said that the sun and the things in heaven serve us, but also the one some call the philosopher of the stage, who had been a hearer of Anaxagoras's natural philosophy; he says, by synecdoche from the one rational being, man, that the things ordered in the universe serve all rational beings, which again are indicated by synecdoche in "sun and night." Or perhaps the tragedian also named the day from the sun, which makes the day, teaching that the things that most need day and night are those beneath the moon, and others not so much as those on earth. Day, then, and "night serve mortals," having come into being for the sake of rational beings. And if ants and flies, working by day and resting by night, share incidentally in what came into being for human beings, it must not be said that day and night come into being for ants and flies too, nor for no reason at all; rather one must believe that these things came into being by providence for the sake of human beings.

Next he raises against himself what is said on behalf of human beings, that the irrational animals were made for them. And he says: "If someone should call us rulers of the animals, since we hunt the other animals and feast on them, we will say: why were we not rather made for them, since they hunt us and eat us? Moreover, we need nets and weapons and many men to help us, and dogs, against the animals we hunt; but to them nature has given weapons of their own from the start, easily subjecting us to them." Here too you see in what way understanding has been given to us as a great help, better than any weapon the wild beasts seem to have. At any rate, we who are far weaker in body than the animals, and than some of them exceedingly smaller, master the wild beasts through understanding, and hunt even such enormous elephants. Those that are by nature capable of being tamed we subject to our tameness; against those that are not, or that do not seem to us to provide any use from taming, we take our stand with such security that when we wish we keep such great beasts shut up, and when we need food from their bodies we kill them just as we do the animals that are not wild. The Creator, then, made all things servants of the rational animal and of its natural understanding. For some purposes we need dogs, for example to guard flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, flocks of goats, or houses; for others oxen, for example for farming; for others we use yoke-animals or beasts of burden. So too the race of lions and bears, leopards and boars, and the like is said to have been given to us to exercise the seeds of courage in us.

Then he says to the race of human beings, who are aware of their superiority over the irrational animals: "To what you say, that God has given us the power to catch wild beasts and use them, we will say that probably, before there were cities and arts and such associations, and weapons and nets, human beings were seized and eaten by wild beasts, while wild beasts were very rarely caught by human beings." See, in reply to this, that even if human beings catch wild beasts and wild beasts seize human beings, there is a great difference between those who prevail by understanding and those who get the upper hand by savagery and cruelty over people who do not use understanding to avoid suffering from wild beasts. As for "before there were cities and arts and such associations," I think he has forgotten what he said above, that the world is uncreated and indestructible, and that only things on earth suffer floods and great fires, and not all of them fall into these at the same time. So, just as those who hold the world uncreated cannot speak of its beginning, neither can they speak of a time when there were no cities at all and arts had not yet been discovered. But suppose we grant him this, consistently with our view though no longer with what he himself said above: what has this to do with the claim that at the beginning human beings were in every case seized and eaten by wild beasts, while wild beasts were no longer caught by human beings? For if the world came into being by providence, and God presides over the universe, the first sparks of the human race must, at their beginning, have come under some protection from higher beings, so that at the beginning there was an association of the divine nature with human beings. The poet of Ascra had this in mind when he said: "For then feasts were shared, and seats were shared, between the immortal gods and mortal human beings."

And the divine word according to Moses also presented the first human beings as hearing a more divine voice and oracles, and sometimes seeing visits of God's angels made to them. For it is likely that at the beginning of the world human nature was helped to a greater degree, until, having made progress in understanding and the other virtues and in the discovery of the arts, they were able to live on their own as well, not always needing those who serve God's will to guide and manage them with a wondrous appearance. It follows from this that it is false that at the beginning human beings were seized and eaten by wild beasts, while wild beasts were very rarely caught by human beings. From this it is plain that what Celsus says in these words is false too: "So that in this way at least God subjected human beings rather to the wild beasts." For God did not subject human beings to the wild beasts, but gave the wild beasts to be caught by human understanding and by the arts that understanding produces against them. For it was not without God that human beings devised ways to protect themselves from wild beasts and master them.

The noble fellow does not see how many philosophers, who introduce providence and say it does all things for the sake of rational beings, he does away with, as far as in him lies, together with useful doctrines in which Christians agree with philosophy; nor how much harm, hindering piety, comes from accepting that man differs in no way before God from ants or bees. He says: "If human beings seem to differ from the irrational animals because they have built cities and use a constitution and offices and positions of command, this is nothing to the point; for ants and bees do too. Bees, at any rate, have a leader, and there is following and service, wars and victories, and the capture of the defeated, and cities and suburbs too, and succession of work, and punishments against the idle and wicked; at any rate they drive out the drones and punish them." Here too he has not seen the difference between things accomplished by reason and reasoning and things that come about from an irrational nature and mere constitution. No reason within those who do these things accounts for them (for they do not possess it); but the most ancient one, the Son of God and King of all subject things, made an irrational nature that helps, as irrational, those not counted worthy of reason. Among human beings, then, cities came into being with many arts and an ordering of laws; and constitutions and offices and positions of command among human beings are either those properly so called, certain earnest dispositions and activities, or those so named by a looser use of words, in imitation of those as far as possible. For those who have made laws successfully looked to those and established the best constitutions, offices, and positions of command. None of these can be found among irrational beings, even if Celsus applies to ants and bees the rational names that are assigned to rational beings: city, constitutions, offices, and positions of command. In these matters we must in no way praise the ants or the bees (for they do not act with reasoning), but we must admire the divine nature, which extended even to irrational beings a kind of imitation, as it were, of rational beings, perhaps to shame rational beings, so that looking at ants they may become more industrious and more careful to store up what is useful to them, and considering bees they may obey those in command and divide among themselves the useful works of the state for the preservation of cities.

And perhaps the so-called wars of the bees are set there as a lesson that wars among human beings, if ever they must happen, should be just and orderly. And bees do not have cities and suburbs; rather, the hives and the hexagonal cells and the works of the bees and the succession among them exist for the sake of human beings, who need honey for many purposes, for the treatment of bodies that are ill and as pure food. Nor should what the bees do against the drones be compared with the punishments in cities against the idle and wicked and the penalties inflicted on them. But, as I said before, in these things nature is to be admired; while man, who is able to reason about all things and to set all things in order, is to be commended as a fellow worker with providence, accomplishing the works not of God's providence alone but also of his own.

Having spoken about bees, so as to belittle, as far as in him lies, the cities, constitutions, offices, positions of command, and wars for native lands, not of us Christians only but of all human beings, Celsus next adds a detailed praise of ants, so that by his praise of them he may bring down, in his argument about the ants, human management in the matter of food, and cast aside human foresight for winter quarters as having nothing more than what he supposes is the irrational foresight of the ants. Which of the simpler people, who do not know how to look into the nature of all things, would Celsus not turn away, as far as in him lies, from helping those weighed down by burdens and sharing their labor, when he says of ants that they take over one another's burdens whenever they see one tired? For someone who needs education through reason and has no understanding of it will say: "Since, then, we differ in no way from ants, even when we help those who are tired from carrying very heavy burdens, why do we do such a thing in vain?" The ants, being irrational animals, would not be puffed up to think great things of themselves because their works are compared to those of human beings; but human beings, who can hear through reason how their fellowship is being belittled, might be harmed, as far as Celsus and his words can do it. He does not see that in wishing to turn his readers away from Christianity he turns away even non-Christians from compassion toward those who carry the heaviest burdens. He ought, if he were even a philosopher aware of human fellowship, not only not to do away, along with Christianity, with what is useful among human beings, but also to cooperate, if possible, with the goods that Christianity shares with other human beings. And if ants cut off the sprouts of the grain they store away, so that it does not swell but remains as food for them through the year, one must not suppose that reasoning in ants is the cause of this, but nature, mother of all, which has ordered even irrational beings so as not to leave even the least thing without some trace of the reason that comes from nature. Unless, of course, by this Celsus covertly wants (for in many things he likes to play the Platonist) every soul to be of the same kind, and a man's to differ in no way from that of ants and bees; which is the view of one who brings the soul down from the vault of heaven not to the human body only but to the other bodies as well. Christians will not be persuaded by this, since they have already grasped that the human soul was made "in the image" of God, and see that it is impossible for a nature created "in the image" of God to wipe out its features altogether and take on others, made in the images of I know not what, among the irrational animals.

And since he says that the living ants set apart a special place for those that die, and that this is their ancestral burial ground, it must be said that the more praises he utters of the irrational animals, the more, even against his will, he magnifies the work of the Word who ordered all things, and shows the skill in human beings that is able by reason to set in order even the advantages of the nature of irrational beings. (But why do I say irrational, since Celsus thinks that the beings called irrational according to the common notions of all people are not irrational at all?) At any rate, the man who promised to speak about the whole of nature, and boasted of the truth in the title of his book, does not think even ants are irrational. For he says of ants, as though they converse with one another, something like this: "Indeed, when they meet one another they converse, and so they do not lose their way; so there is among them a fullness of reason, and common notions of certain universals, and speech, and objects and meanings." For conversing with another takes place in speech that shows some meaning, and often reports about what are called objects; and to say that these exist in ants too, how would it not be the most ridiculous thing of all?

And he is not ashamed to add to these things, so as to display to those who come after him the unseemliness of his own doctrines, saying: "Come then, if someone were to look down from heaven upon the earth, how would what we do seem to differ from what ants and bees do?" Does the one who, on his hypothesis, looks down from heaven upon the earth at what human beings do and what ants do look at the bodies of human beings and ants, but not perceive the rational ruling faculty moved by reasoning, and on the other hand the irrational ruling faculty moved irrationally by impulse and impression, with a certain natural constitution underneath? It would be absurd for one looking from heaven at things on earth to want to look at the bodies of human beings and ants from so great a distance, and not much rather to see the natures of their ruling faculties and the source of their impulses, rational or irrational. And if he once sees the source of all impulses, it is clear that he would also see the difference and the superiority of man, not only over ants but also over elephants. For one looking from heaven will see in the irrational beings, even if their bodies are large, no other principle than, if I may so call it, irrationality; but in rational beings reason, which human beings share with divine and heavenly beings, and perhaps with the God over all himself; which is why man is said to have been made "in the image" of God; for the "image" of the God over all is his Word.

Next, as though striving to bring the human race down still further and make it like the irrational animals, and wishing to leave out nothing of what is reported of irrational animals that shows something greater, he says that the arts of sorcery too exist in some irrational animals, so that human beings may not pride themselves especially on this either, or wish to have superiority over the irrational animals. He says this: "And if human beings think something of themselves for sorcery, here too snakes and eagles are wiser; at any rate they know many antidotes and charms against harm, and indeed the powers of certain stones for the protection of their young; and when human beings chance upon these, they think they have a wonderful possession." First, I do not know how he called sorcery the animals' experience, or some natural apprehension, of natural antidotes; for the name sorcery is customarily applied to something else. Unless perhaps, as an Epicurean, he covertly wants to disparage all use of such things as belonging to the professions of sorcerers. But let it be granted to him that human beings pride themselves on knowing these things, whether they are sorcerers or not: how does it follow that snakes are wiser than human beings in this, because they use fennel for sharpness of sight and quickness of movement, grasping only this natural thing not by reasoning but by their constitution? Human beings do not come to such a thing from bare nature like snakes, but partly from experience and partly from reason, and sometimes by reasoning and according to science. So too, if eagles find the so-called eagle-stone and carry it to their nest for the protection of their young, how does it follow that eagles are wise, and wiser than human beings, who found by experience the natural help given to eagles and used it by reasoning and with understanding?

Let it be granted that other antidotes too are known by animals. What has this to do with showing that it is not nature but reason that discovers these things in animals? For if it were reason that discovered them, not just this one thing alone would be found, fixed, in snakes (let there be a second and a third), and something else in the eagle, and so with the other animals; rather, as many things as in human beings. But as it is, it is plain from the fact that each animal's nature has been inclined, in a fixed way, toward certain helps, that there is no wisdom or reason in them, but a certain natural constitution toward such things for the preservation of the animals, brought about by the Word. And yet, if I wished to close with Celsus on these matters, I would have used the saying of Solomon from Proverbs, which reads as follows: "There are four things that are least on the earth, but these are wiser than the wise: the ants, which have no strength, but prepare their food in summer; and the rock-badgers, a people not strong, who made their houses in the rocks; the locust has no king, yet marches in good order at one command; and the gecko, which supports itself on its hands and is easily caught, lives in the strongholds of the king." But I do not use these sayings as though their sense were plain; rather, in keeping with the title (for the book is titled Proverbs), I examine them as riddles. For it is the custom of these men to divide things that show one thing on the surface but convey another in a hidden sense into many kinds, one of which is proverbs. That is why in our Gospels too our Savior is written to have said: "I have spoken these things to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs." It is not, then, the perceptible ants that are wiser even "than the wise," but those indicated as in the form of proverbs. And the same must be said of the other animals. But Celsus thinks the books of the Jews and Christians are altogether very simple and uneducated, and supposes that those who interpret them allegorically do so by forcing the intent of the writers. Let Celsus, then, be refuted by this too as slandering us in vain; and let his argument about snakes and eagles, which declared them wiser than human beings, be refuted as well.

Wishing further to show at length that not even notions about the divine are exclusive to the human race among all mortal beings, but that some of the irrational animals too have notions about God (about whom such disagreements have arisen even among the sharper-witted of human beings everywhere, Greeks and barbarians), he says: "If man is thought superior to the other animals because he has grasped notions of the divine, let those who say this know that many of the other animals will lay claim to this too; and with good reason. For what could one call more divine than to foreknow and foretell the future? Human beings learn this from the other animals, and especially from birds; and those who understand their indications are the diviners. If, then, birds, and whatever other prophetic animals there are, foreknowing from God, teach us by signs, it seems that they are by nature so much nearer to communication with the divine, and wiser and dearer to God. And the intelligent among human beings say that they have conversations too, evidently holier than ours, and that they themselves somehow understand what is said and show by the deed that they understand, when, having said beforehand that the birds said they would go somewhere and do this or that, they show them going there and doing what they had foretold. And nothing seems to keep oaths better than elephants, or to be more faithful to divine things, surely because they have knowledge of him." See in this how many questions debated among philosophers, not only of the Greeks but also of those among barbarians, who either discovered or learned from certain demons the facts about omens from birds and other animals, from which certain divinations are said to come to human beings, he seizes upon and sets out as agreed. For first it has been debated whether there is an art of augury, and in general divination through animals, or not. Second, among those who have accepted that there is divination through birds, the cause of the manner of divination has not been agreed upon; for some say that the movements of the animals come from certain demons or prophetic gods, to birds for different flights and different cries, and to the others for such and such movements; while others say that their souls are more divine and suited to this, which is most unconvincing.

Celsus, then, wishing by what he put forward to show that irrational animals are more divine and wiser than human beings, ought to have established at length that such divination exists, and after that to have shown his defense more clearly: to reject by demonstration the arguments of those who do away with such divinations, to overturn by demonstration also the arguments of those who said that the movements for divining come to the animals from demons or gods, and after that to establish his view about the soul of the irrational animals as more divine. For then, since he would have displayed a philosophical competence on such great matters, we would have opposed his plausible arguments as best we could, overturning the claim that irrational animals are wiser than human beings, and exposing as false both that they have holier notions of the divine than we do and that they have some holy conversations with one another. But as it is, the one who accuses us for believing in the God over all asks us to believe that the souls of birds have more divine and clearer notions than human beings. If this is true, birds have clearer notions of God than Celsus; and it is no wonder if they have clearer notions than Celsus, who belittles man so much. But, as far as Celsus is concerned, birds have greater and more divine notions, I do not say than we Christians, or than the Jews who use the same Scriptures as we do, but even than the theologians among the Greeks; for they were human beings. According to Celsus, then, the race of supposedly prophetic birds has grasped the nature of the divine better than Pherecydes and Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato. And we ought to go to the birds as teachers, so that, as on Celsus's supposition they teach us the future by divination, so too they may free human beings from doubting about the divine, by handing on the clear notion they have grasped of him. It follows, then, that Celsus, who thinks birds surpass human beings, should use birds as his teachers, and none of the philosophers among the Greeks.

But we must say a few things out of many in reply to what has been put forward, refuting his ungrateful false opinion toward the one who made him. For Celsus too, being "a man, when he was in honor, did not understand"; therefore he was not even "compared" to the birds and the other irrational animals that he thinks prophetic, but, yielding them first place, more than the Egyptians who worship irrational animals as gods, he subjected himself, and as far as in him lies the whole human race, to the irrational animals, as worse and understanding less about the divine. Let it first be examined, then, whether divination through birds and the other animals believed to be prophetic exists or not. For the argument made on either side deserves attention: on one side it urges us not to accept such a thing, so that the rational being may not abandon the oracles of demons only to use birds instead; on the other it shows, by evidence attested by many, that many have been saved from the greatest dangers by trusting divination through birds. For the present, let augury be granted to exist, so that even so I may show to those who are prejudiced that, even granting this, the superiority of man over the irrational animals, even over the prophetic ones themselves, is great, and in no way comparable to them. It must be said, then, that if there were some divine nature in them able to foreknow the future, and so rich that out of its abundance it could show the future even to any human being who wished, clearly they would have known their own affairs much earlier; and knowing their own affairs they would have taken care not to fly up over the place where human beings had set snares and nets against them, or where archers, taking the flying creatures as their target, shot arrows at them. And eagles, if they foreknew the plot against their young, whether of snakes climbing up to them and destroying them, or of some human beings taking them for sport or for some other use or service, would surely not have nested where they would be plotted against. And in a word, none of these animals would ever have been caught by human beings, if it were more divine and wiser than human beings.

Moreover, if omen-birds fight omen-birds, and if, as Celsus says, the prophetic birds and the other irrational animals, having a divine nature and notions of the divine and foreknowledge of the future, foretold such things to others, then neither would Homer's sparrow have nested where a serpent was going to destroy her and her young, nor would the serpent in the same poet have failed to guard against being seized by the eagle. For Homer, admirable in poetry, says this about the first: "Then a great sign appeared: a serpent, blood-red on its back, terrible, whom the Olympian himself sent into the light, darting from beneath the altar, rushed to the plane tree. There were the young of a sparrow, tender nestlings, on the topmost branch, cowering beneath the leaves, eight of them, and the mother that bore the young was the ninth. There he devoured them as they chirped pitifully, while the mother fluttered around, lamenting her dear young; but he coiled himself and seized her by the wing as she shrieked. But when he had eaten the sparrow's young and herself, the god who had shown him made him conspicuous: the son of crooked-counseling Cronus turned him to stone. And we stood and marveled at what had happened. So the terrible omens of the gods came in among the hecatombs." And about the second: "For a bird came upon them as they were eager to cross, a high-flying eagle, skirting the army on the left, carrying in its talons a blood-red serpent, monstrous, alive and still writhing; and it had not yet forgotten the fight. For it struck the eagle that held it on the breast beside the neck, bending itself back; and the eagle, stung with pain, let it fall from him to the ground and dropped it in the middle of the crowd, and itself, with a cry, flew off on the blasts of the wind. And the Trojans shuddered when they saw the gleaming snake lying in their midst, a portent of Zeus who bears the aegis." Was the eagle, then, prophetic, and the serpent, since augurs use this animal too, not prophetic? And since it is easy to refute the choice of one over the other, would not the claim that both are prophetic be refuted too? For would the serpent, if it were prophetic, not have guarded against suffering this from the eagle? And one could find countless other such examples showing that it is not the animals that have a prophetic soul in themselves; rather, according to the poet and most people, "the Olympian himself sent it into the light," and for a certain sign Apollo too uses a hawk as messenger; for "the falcon" is said to be "Apollo's swift messenger."

In our view, certain wicked demons, of the Titan or Giant kind, if I may so call them, who have become irreverent toward what is truly divine and toward the angels in heaven, and have fallen from heaven and roll about the coarser and unclean bodies on earth, having some power of discerning the future, since they have no earthly bodies, and occupying themselves with this kind of work, wishing to lead the human race away from the true God, slip into the more predatory and savage animals and others that are more cunning, and move them to whatever they wish, when they wish; or they turn the impressions of such animals toward such flights and movements, so that human beings, caught by the divination in irrational animals, may not seek the God who encompasses the universe, nor examine pure worship of God, but may fall in their reasoning to the earth, and to birds and serpents, and even to foxes and wolves. For it has been observed by those skilled in these matters that the clearer foreknowledge comes through such animals, since the demons cannot do as much in the tamer animals as they can, because of the likeness of vice (not vice, but something like vice) in such animals, to make these animals act.

So, if I have admired anything else in Moses, I will declare this too worthy of admiration: that, having understood the different natures of animals, and whether he learned from the divine about them and the demons akin to each animal, or found it out himself, rising up by wisdom, in his ordinance about animals he said that all those thought prophetic by the Egyptians and the rest of humanity are unclean, and that, in general, those that are not such are clean. And among the unclean in Moses are the wolf, the fox, the serpent, the eagle, the hawk, and those like them. And in general, not only in the law but also in the prophets, you would find these animals taken as examples of the worst things, and never a wolf or a fox named for a good thing. It seems, then, that there is some fellowship between each kind of demon and each kind of animal. And just as among human beings some are stronger than others, not at all because of their character, in the same way some demons would be more powerful than others in matters indifferent; and some use these animals to deceive human beings, according to the will of the one called in our writings "the ruler of this age," while others foretell through another kind. And see how foul the demons are, so that even weasels are used by some to show the future. And do you judge for yourself which is better to accept: that the God over all and his Son move birds and the other animals to divination, or that those who move such animals, and not human beings though human beings are present, are wicked demons, and, as our holy writings have called them, "unclean."

If the soul of birds is divine because the future is foretold through them, why should we not say rather, where omens are taken from human beings, that the soul of those through whom the omens are heard is divine? On this view, then, the "woman at the mill" in Homer was divine, who said of the suitors: "May they now dine here for the last and final time." And she was divine, while great Odysseus, the friend of Homer's Athena, was not divine, but understanding the omens spoken by the divine woman at the mill he rejoiced, as the poet says: "And noble Odysseus rejoiced at the omen." Now see: if birds have a divine soul and perceive God, or, as Celsus calls them, the gods, clearly we human beings too, when we sneeze, sneeze from some divinity in us and a prophetic power in our soul. For this too is attested by many; which is why the poet says: "and he sneezed as he prayed." Which is why Penelope too says: "Do you not see that my son sneezed at your words?"

What is truly divine, for knowledge of the future, uses neither irrational animals nor ordinary human beings, but the holiest and purest human souls, which it inspires and makes prophets. Therefore, if anything else is admirably said in the law of Moses, such things as these must be counted among them: "You must not practice augury, nor watch birds for omens"; and elsewhere: "For the nations whom the Lord your God will destroy from before you, these will listen to omens and divinations; but the Lord your God has not given it so to you"; and then next he says: "The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers." And once, when God wished to turn people away from augury through an augur, he made the Spirit say in the augur: "For there is no augury in Jacob, nor divination in Israel; at the right time it will be told to Jacob and to Israel what God will accomplish." Knowing these things and others like them, we wish to keep the commandment spoken in a mystery: "Keep your heart with all vigilance," so that none of the demons may lay hold of our ruling faculty, and no spirit of the adversaries may turn our imagination to what it wishes. And we pray that "the illumination of the knowledge of the glory of God" may shine "in our hearts," as the Spirit of God dwells in our imagination and shows us the things of God; since "all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God."

One must know that to foreknow the future is not in every case divine; for in itself it is indifferent and falls to both the wicked and the good. Doctors, at any rate, foreknow certain things by medicine, even if they happen to be wicked in character; and so also ship pilots, even if they happen to be depraved, foreknow the signs of weather, the violence of winds, and changes in the atmosphere, from some experience and observation; and surely no one will say for this reason that they are divine, if they happen to be depraved in character. False, then, is what Celsus says: "What could one call more divine than to foreknow and foretell the future?" False also that many animals lay claim to notions of the divine; for none of the irrational animals has a notion of God. False also that irrational animals are nearer to communication with the divine; since even those human beings who are still wicked, even if they make the utmost progress, are far from communication with the divine. Only those, then, who are truly wise and genuinely pious are nearer to communication with the divine, such as our prophets and Moses, to whom Scripture bore witness because of his great purity, saying: "Moses alone must come near to God, but the rest must not come near."

How irreverently has the one who charges us with irreverence said that irrational animals are not only wiser than human nature but also dearer to God! And who would not be turned away, if he paid attention to a man who says that the serpent, the fox, the wolf, the eagle, and the hawk are dearer to God than human nature? It follows for him to say that, if these animals are dearer to God than human beings, clearly these animals are dearer to God than Socrates and Plato and Pythagoras and Pherecydes and the theologians he praised a little earlier. And one might pray for him, saying: "If these animals are dearer to God than human beings, may you become dear to God with them, and be made like those who, in your view, are dearer to God than human beings." And let him not suppose such a thing to be a curse; for who would not pray to become wholly like those he is convinced are dearer to God, so that he himself may become dear to God as they are? Celsus, wishing the conversations of irrational animals to be holier than ours, does not attribute this report to ordinary people but to the intelligent. But the intelligent in truth are the good, for no wicked person is intelligent. He speaks, then, in this way: "And the intelligent among human beings say that they have conversations too, evidently holier than ours, and that they themselves somehow understand what is said and show by the deed that they are not ignorant, when, having said beforehand that the birds said they would go somewhere and do this or that, they show them going there and doing what they had already foretold." In truth no intelligent person has reported such things, and no wise person has said that the conversations of irrational animals are holier than those of human beings. But if, to examine Celsus's views, we look at what follows from them, it is clear that on his view the conversations of irrational animals are holier than the revered conversations of Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and the philosophers; which is plainly not only incongruous but most absurd. But even if we should believe that some people, learning from the inarticulate cry of birds that the birds will go somewhere and do this or that, foretell it, we will say that this too has been shown to human beings symbolically by the demons, with the aim that man should be deceived by the demons and his mind dragged down from heaven and God to earth and to things still lower.

I do not know how Celsus heard of an oath of elephants, and that they are more faithful than we are toward the divine and have knowledge of God. For I know many wonderful things reported about the nature of this animal and its tameness, but I am not aware that anything about the oaths of an elephant has been said by anyone; unless perhaps he called their tameness, and their keeping of a kind of compact with human beings once they have come under them, faithfulness to an oath; and this itself is false. For even if rarely, it has nonetheless been reported that after apparent tameness elephants have turned savage against human beings and committed murders, and for this reason were condemned to be killed as no longer useful. And since after this he takes up, to establish, as he thinks, that storks are more pious than human beings, what is reported about this animal, that it repays its parents' care and brings food to its parents, it must be said that storks do this too not from a principle of duty nor from reasoning, but from nature, the nature that formed them having wished to present, among irrational animals, an example able to shame human beings into repaying gratitude to their parents. If Celsus had known how different it is to do these things by reason from doing them irrationally and naturally, he would not have called storks more pious than human beings. Further, as though standing up for the piety of irrational animals, Celsus takes up the Arabian animal, the phoenix, which after many years visits Egypt, carrying its dead father buried in a ball of myrrh, and places it where the precinct of the sun is. This too is reported; but, if it is true, it may also be natural, divine providence having been generous in setting before human beings, in the differences among animals, the variety of the structure of things in the world, reaching even to birds; and it made a unique animal, so as to make people admire in this too not the animal but the one who made it.

Since, then, to all these things Celsus adds: "So all things have not been made for man, any more than for the lion, or the eagle, or the dolphin, but so that this world, as God's work, might come to be complete and perfect in all its parts. For this reason all things have been measured out, not with a view to one another, except incidentally, but with a view to the whole. And God cares for the whole, and providence never abandons it, nor does it become worse, nor does God turn it back to himself after a time, nor is he angry on account of human beings, any more than on account of apes or mice; nor does he threaten these, each of which has received its own lot in its part," come, let us reply to this, if only briefly. I think I have shown from what was said before how all things have been made for man and for every rational being; for all things have been created principally for the sake of the rational animal. Let Celsus, then, say that they were made no more for man than for the lion or the others he names; but we will say: the Creator did not make these things for the lion, nor for the eagle, nor for the dolphin, but all things for the sake of the rational animal, and "so that this world, as God's work, might come to be complete and perfect in all its parts." For we must agree with this as well said. But God cares, not, as Celsus thinks, only for the whole, but beyond the whole, especially for every rational being. And providence will never abandon the whole; for even if some part of the whole becomes worse because the rational being sins, he arranges to cleanse it and after a time to turn the whole back to himself. And he is not angry on account of apes or mice; but on human beings, since they have transgressed their natural starting points, he brings judgment and punishment, and he threatens them through the prophets and through the Savior who came to the whole human race, so that through the threat those who hear may turn back, while those who neglect the words calling them to turn may pay the penalty they deserve, which it is fitting for God to impose, according to his own will and for the benefit of the whole, on those who need such painful treatment and correction. But since the fourth book has reached a sufficient length, we will end our discussion here. May God grant, through his Son, who is God the Word, and Wisdom, and Truth, and Righteousness, and everything else that the holy Scriptures say of him in their teaching about God, that we may begin the fifth book too for the benefit of those who will read it, and finish it well also, with the coming of his Word into our soul.