Contra Celsum, Book 6

In beginning this sixth book against Celsus's accusations against the Christians, holy Ambrose, we do not intend to contend in it against the things he sets out from philosophy, as someone might suppose. For Celsus has quoted a great many passages, chiefly from Plato, setting side by side with them those passages from the sacred writings that can impress even an intelligent man, and claiming that these things were said better among the Greeks, and without exaggerated claims and the profession that they come from God or the Son of God. We say, then, that if the aim of those who are ambassadors of the truth is to benefit as many as possible and, so far as they can, to bring to it out of love for humanity everyone whatever, not only the clever but also the foolish, and again not only Greeks but also barbarians (and it is a great mark of gentleness if one is able to convert even the most boorish and uneducated), it is plain that such a person must take care to use a style of speaking that is of common benefit and able to win over every hearer. But those who have said a final farewell to the uneducated as though they were slaves, unable to follow a train of thought set out in polished phrasing and ordered arrangement, and have cared only for those brought up in literature and learning, have confined what is meant for all into a very narrow and small scope.

I have said this in defense against the charge brought by Celsus and others concerning the plainness of style in the Scriptures, which seems to be put in the shade by the brilliance of elegant composition. For our prophets, Jesus and his apostles, had regard to a manner of expression that not only contains the truth but is also able to win over the many, until, once encouraged and brought in, each according to his ability ascends to the things spoken in a way beyond words in words that seem plain. And if one may venture to say it, the very beautiful and studied style of Plato and of those who wrote in a similar way has benefited few, if indeed it has benefited any; but the style of those who taught and wrote more plainly, yet practically and with an eye to the many, has benefited more. One can see, at any rate, that Plato is in the hands only of those who are thought to be lovers of letters, while Epictetus is admired even by ordinary people who have an inclination to be helped, since they perceive the improvement that comes from his discourses. We say this not to find fault with Plato (for the great world of humanity has usefully produced him too), but to show the intention of those who said: “My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that our faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.” The divine word says that what is spoken, even if it is true in itself and most persuasive, is not sufficient to reach the human soul unless some power is also given from God to the speaker and grace blossoms on what is said, and this grace itself does not come to those who speak effectively without God. So the prophet says in the sixty-seventh Psalm: “The Lord will give a word to those who preach the good news with great power.” Grant, then, that in some cases the same doctrines are found among the Greeks and among those of our faith; yet they do not have the same power to win souls and dispose them accordingly. That is why the disciples of Jesus, uneducated as far as Greek philosophy is concerned, traveled around many nations of the world, disposing each of their hearers, as the Word wished, according to his worth; and these, in proportion to the inclination of their free will toward accepting the good, became much better.

Let the ancient and wise men, then, make themselves known to those who are able to understand; and let Plato, the son of Ariston, point out what concerns the first good in one of his letters, and say that the first good is in no way “expressible,” “but from long association” it comes to be, and “suddenly, like light kindled from a leaping fire, in the soul.” When we hear these words we too agree with them as well said, “for God revealed” these things “to them,” and whatever else has been well said. For this very reason we say that those who have grasped the truth about God, but have not practiced the piety worthy of the truth about him, are liable to the punishments of sinners. For Paul says of such people in these very words: “The anger of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold down the truth in unrighteousness, because what can be known of God is plain among them; for God revealed it to them. For his invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse; because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. 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 beasts and creeping things.” So those who hold that the first good is “in no way expressible,” and who say that “from long association with the matter itself and living with it, suddenly, like light kindled from a leaping fire, it comes to be in the soul and then nourishes itself,” do “hold” the “truth,” as our own Scripture also testifies.

But those who wrote such things about the first good go down “to the Piraeus” to pray to Artemis as to a god and to watch the festival held by ordinary people. And after philosophizing so loftily about the soul and describing the way of life of the soul that has lived well, they abandon the greatness of what “God revealed to them” and think mean and small thoughts, offering “a rooster to Asclepius.” And though they imagined God's “invisible things” and the Ideas “from the creation of the world” and from sensible things, from which they ascend to the things known by the mind, and saw with distinction his eternal power and divinity, they nonetheless “became futile in their reasonings,” and their “senseless heart,” so to speak, wallows in darkness and ignorance about the worship of the divine. And one can see men who pride themselves greatly on wisdom and theology worshiping “the likeness of an image of perishable man,” in his honor, they say, and at times even going down with the Egyptians to birds or four-footed beasts or creeping things. And even if some seem to have risen above these things, they will nonetheless be found to have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” and to “worship and serve the creature rather than the Creator.” Therefore, since the wise and learned among the Greeks go astray in their practice concerning the divine, “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise,” and “the low-born” and “the weak” and “the despised” and “the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are,” and truly “that no flesh might boast before God.” But our first wise men, Moses, the most ancient, and the prophets after him, knowing that the first good is “in no way expressible,” wrote, as though God showed himself to those who are worthy and fitted for it, that God “appeared,” for example, to Abraham or to Isaac or to Jacob. But who he was that appeared, and of what kind, and in what manner, and to which of the faculties within us, they left to be examined by those able to make themselves like those to whom God appeared; for he was seen by them not with the eyes of the body but with the pure heart. For according to our Jesus, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.”

But that “suddenly, like light kindled from a leaping fire,” light is kindled “in the soul,” the word of God knew first, when it said in the prophet: “Light for yourselves the light of knowledge.” And John, who lived later than he, says that “what came to be” in the Word “was life, and the life was the light of men,” which “true light enlightens every man coming into the” true and intelligible “world,” and makes him “the light of the world.” For this light “shone in our hearts to give the light of the gospel of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” That is why a very ancient prophet, who prophesied many generations before the reign of Cyrus (for he was older than him by more than fourteen generations), says: “The Lord is my light and my savior; whom should I fear?” and “Your law is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths,” and “The light of your face has been marked upon us, Lord,” and “In your light we will see light.” And the word in Isaiah, urging us to this light, says: “Be enlightened, be enlightened, Jerusalem, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.” And this same prophet, prophesying about the coming of Jesus, who would turn men away from the worship of idols and statues and demons, says: “To those who sat in the region and shadow of death a light has risen,” and again: “The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” See, then, the difference between what Plato said well about the first good and what is said in the prophets about the light of the blessed; and see that the truth about this in Plato did not help his readers toward pure piety, nor even the man himself who philosophized so about the first good, whereas the plain style of the divine writings has filled with divine inspiration those who read them sincerely. In them this light is nourished by the oil spoken of in a certain parable, which keeps the light of the torches burning in the five wise virgins.

Since Celsus also sets out another passage from Plato's letter, which reads as follows: “If it had seemed to me that these things could be adequately written or spoken for the many, what finer thing could I have done in my life than to write something of great benefit to humanity and to bring the nature of things to light for all?”, let us discuss this too briefly. Whether Plato held something more sacred than what he wrote and more divine than what he left behind, or not, we leave to each to examine as he can; but we will show that our prophets too had in mind certain things greater than what is written, which they did not write. For Ezekiel receives a scroll “of a book” written “in front” and behind, in which were “lamentation and song and woe,” and at the command of the Word he eats the book, so that he might not write it and betray it to the unworthy. And John too is recorded to have seen and done something similar. Moreover, Paul “heard inexpressible words, which it is not permitted for a man to speak.” And Jesus, who is greater than all these, is said to have spoken the word of God “to his disciples privately,” and especially in his withdrawals; but what he said has not been recorded. For it did not “seem” to them that these things “could be adequately written for the many” or “spoken.” And if it is not tiresome to speak the truth about such great men, I say that, from the thoughts they received by the grace of God, these men saw better than Plato what things are “to be written” and how, and what are in no way “to be written for the many,” and what are “to be spoken” and what are not. And again John, teaching us the difference between what is to be written and what is not, says that he heard seven thunders instructing him about certain things and forbidding him to commit their words to writing.

And many things may be found in Moses and the prophets, who are older not only than Plato but also than Homer and the invention of writing among the Greeks, that are worthy of the grace of God given to them and full of greatness of mind; and they did not say such things, as Celsus supposes, because they had misunderstood Plato. For how could they have heard a man who had not yet been born? And even if someone applies Celsus's argument to the apostles of Jesus, who lived later than Plato, see whether it is not plainly unconvincing to say that Paul the tentmaker, and Peter the fisherman, and John who left his father's nets, handed down such teachings about God because they had misunderstood what Plato says in his letters. Celsus has already harped many times on our being required to believe immediately, and he says it again as though it were something new beside what he had said before; what we have said on these points is enough for us. But since he also sets out another passage of Plato, in which he says that wisdom shines upon those who philosophize after his manner “as they use questions and answers,” let us show from the sacred writings that the divine word too urges us to dialectic: in one place Solomon says, “Instruction that is not examined goes astray,” and in another Jesus the son of Sirach, who left us the book called Wisdom, says, “The knowledge of the senseless is words that have not been examined.” Kindly refutations are, then, rather to be found among us, who have learned that the one who presides over the word must be able “to refute those who contradict.” And if some are negligent, not training themselves to attend to the divine readings and to “search the Scriptures,” and, according to the commandment of Jesus, to seek the meaning of the Scriptures, to ask God about them, and to knock at what is shut in them, that does not make the word empty of wisdom.

Then, after other Platonic passages which show that the good is known “to few,” since the many, filled “with an improper contempt” and “a lofty and empty hope,” say certain things as true “as though they had learned something sacred,” Celsus says: Although Plato said this beforehand, he nevertheless does not tell marvels, nor does he stop the tongue of the one who wishes to inquire what it is that he professes; nor does he command people to believe at the beginning that God is of such a kind and has such a Son, and that this Son came down and conversed with me. To this I say that about Plato, Aristander, I believe, wrote that he was not the son of Ariston but of a phantom that approached Amphictione in the form of Apollo; and a good many other Platonists have said such things in their Life of Plato. And about Pythagoras, who told a great many marvels, who showed his ivory thigh at a festival of the Greeks and said he had recognized the shield he had used when he was Euphorbus, and who is said to have appeared in two cities on one day, what need is there even to speak? And anyone who wishes to accuse the stories about Plato and Socrates of peddling marvels will set out the swan that was introduced to Socrates in his sleep, and the teacher saying, when the youth was introduced to him, “So this was the swan.” And he will count as a marvel the third eye that Plato saw himself as having. Nor will slander and abuse be lacking to the malicious who wish to disparage the things that have appeared to superior men beyond the many; such people will also mock Socrates' divine sign as a fiction. We, then, are not telling marvels when we relate the things about Jesus, nor did his genuine disciples write such stories about him. But Celsus, who professes to know everything and quotes much of Plato, deliberately, I think, passes over in silence the saying about a son of God found in Plato in his letter to Hermias and Coriscus. The words of Plato run as follows: “and swearing by the God of all things, the ruler of what is and of what is to be, and the Father and Lord of the ruler and cause, whom, if we truly philosophize, we will all know clearly, so far as is possible for fortunate men.”

Celsus also sets out another passage of Plato which reads as follows: “I have it in mind to speak about these things at still greater length; for perhaps what I am saying would be clearer if this were said. There is a true argument that stands against anyone who dares to write anything at all about such matters, an argument I have often stated before, but it seems that it must be stated now too. For each of the things that exist there are three things through which knowledge must come; knowledge itself is the fourth; and as fifth one must posit the thing itself, which is knowable and truly real. Of these, one is the name, the second the definition, the third the image, and the fourth knowledge.” Along these lines we might say that John, “the voice of one crying in the wilderness,” was brought in before Jesus as the counterpart of Plato's name; and second, after John and pointed out by him, is Jesus, to whom applies “The Word became flesh,” being the counterpart of Plato's definition (logos). Plato says the third is the image. But we, assigning the term image to something else, will say more clearly that the imprint of the wounds which comes to be in the soul after the Word, that is, the Christ in each person that comes from Christ the Word, is the third. And whether Christ, the wisdom “among” our “mature,” is the counterpart of the fourth, which is knowledge, anyone who is able will consider.

Then Celsus says: You see how Plato, although he firmly declared that the good is not “expressible,” nevertheless, so as not to seem to take refuge in what cannot be examined, gives a reasoned account of this difficulty; for perhaps even “nothing” might be “expressible.” But since he brings this forward to establish that one should not simply believe but should give a reasoned account of what is believed, we too will use a saying of Paul that rebukes the person who believes at random, in which he says: “unless you believed in vain.” Celsus, so far as it rests with him, forces us to repeat ourselves by repeating himself, saying, after the boasts he spoke of as those of boasters, that Plato does not boast and lie by claiming that he himself has discovered something new or has come from heaven to announce it, but acknowledges where these things come from. Someone wishing to answer Celsus might say to this too that Plato also boasts in the speech of Zeus in the Timaeus, where he says: “Gods of gods, whose maker and father I am,” and so on. But if someone defends these words by the meaning of the Zeus who makes the speech in Plato, why should not one who examines the meaning of the words of the Son of God, or of those spoken by the Creator in the prophets, say something even greater than the speech of Zeus in the Timaeus? For what marks divinity is the announcement of future things, spoken not according to human nature, which are shown by their fulfillment to have been announced by a divine Spirit. We do not, then, say to everyone who comes to us, “First believe that the one I am introducing to you is the Son of God”; but we bring the word to each one in the way suited to his character and condition, since we have learned “to know how we ought to answer each one.” And there are some to whom, since they can do no more than be urged to believe, we preach this; but others we approach, so far as possible, by demonstration through questions and answers. Nor do we say what Celsus mockingly says, “Believe that the one I am introducing to you is the Son of God, even though he was bound most dishonorably and punished most shamefully, even though only yesterday or the day before he was rolled about most disgracefully before the eyes of all.” Nor do we say, “For this reason believe all the more.” For on each point we try to say even more than we set out above.

After this Celsus says: If these (meaning the Christians) introduce this one, and others another, and the common and ready word of all is “Believe, if you wish to be saved, or go away,” what will those do who truly wish to be saved? Will they throw dice and divine where to turn and whom to join? To this too, starting from what is evident, we will say the following. If there had been several who, like Jesus, were recorded to have come into human life as sons of God, and each of them had drawn some people to himself, so that because of the likeness of their claims it was disputed which one, attested by those who believed in him, was the Son of God, then there would be room for “If these introduce this one, and others another, and the common and ready word of all is ‘Believe, if you wish to be saved, or go away,’” and the rest. But as it is, Jesus has been preached to the whole world as the only Son of God who has come to the human race. For those who, like Celsus, supposed that marvels had been invented, and for that reason wished to invent marvels in the same way, thinking that they too would gain power over men in a similar way, were proved to be nothing: Simon the Samaritan magician, and Dositheus, who came from the same country as he; for the one claimed that he was the power of God that is called great, and the other that he himself was the Son of God. For nowhere in the world are there Simonians; and yet, to win over more followers, Simon removed from his disciples the danger of death, which Christians have been taught to choose, by teaching them that idolatry is a matter of indifference. But the Simonians were never plotted against at all, for the evil demon who plots against the teaching of Jesus knew that none of his own purposes would be undone by the teachings of Simon. And the Dositheans did not flourish even before; now they have died out entirely, so that their whole number is said not to reach thirty. And “Judas the Galilean,” as Luke wrote in the Acts of the Apostles, wished to call himself someone great, and before him “Theudas”; but since their teaching was not from God, they were destroyed, and “all who obeyed” them were immediately scattered. We do not, then, throw dice to divine where to turn and whom to join, as though several could draw us away by claiming to have come from God to the human race. But enough of these matters.

So we pass on to another accusation of Celsus, who does not even know our words but says, from things he has half-heard, that we say that wisdom among men is foolishness with God, since Paul says: “The wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.” And Celsus says that the reason for this was stated long ago. He thinks the reason is that by this saying we wish to attract only the uneducated and the simple-minded. But, as he himself noted, he said the same thing above, and we have answered the argument as well as we could. Yet he wished to show that this too was invented by us and taken from the wise men among the Greeks, who said that human wisdom is one thing and divine wisdom another. And he sets out sayings of Heraclitus: one in which he says, “For human character has no insight, but divine character has,” and another, “A man is called childish by a divinity, just as a child is by a man.” He also sets out these words from Plato's Apology of Socrates: “For I, men of Athens, have gained this name through nothing other than a kind of wisdom. What kind of wisdom is this? The kind that is perhaps human wisdom; for in this I really may be wise.” These, then, are the passages Celsus sets out. But I will add these words from Plato's letter to Hermias, Erastus, and Coriscus: “To Erastus and Coriscus, besides this fine wisdom of the Forms, I say, old man though I am, that they also need wisdom that guards against wicked and unjust men, and a certain power of self-defense. For they are inexperienced, because they have spent much of their life with us, who are moderate and not wicked. That is why I said that they need these, so that they may not be compelled to neglect the true wisdom and to attend more than they should to the human and necessary kind.”

Accordingly, then, there is a divine wisdom and a human wisdom. The human is what we call “the wisdom of the world,” which is “foolishness with God”; but the divine, which is different from the human, if indeed it is divine, comes by the grace of God, who gives it to those who have made themselves fit to receive it, and especially to those who, knowing the difference between the one wisdom and the other, say in their prayers to God: “For even if someone is perfect among the sons of men, when the wisdom that comes from you is absent he will be counted as nothing.”⁠a And we say that human wisdom is a training ground for the soul, but divine wisdom is its goal; and the latter is also called the “solid food” of the soul by the one who said: “Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their faculties trained to distinguish good and evil.” This view is indeed truly ancient; not, as Celsus supposes, in that its antiquity goes back to Heraclitus and Plato. For before these the prophets distinguished the two kinds of wisdom. For the present it is enough to quote from the words of David what is said about the man who is wise with divine wisdom, who “will not see corruption,” he says, “when he sees wise men dying.” Divine wisdom, then, being different from faith, is the first of the so-called “gifts” of God; after it, second, for those who know how to make such distinctions precisely, is what is called knowledge; and third, since even the simpler people who come to piety as well as they can must be saved, is faith. That is why Paul says: “To one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit.” Therefore you would find that it is not ordinary people who have received divine wisdom, but those who excel and stand out among all who are devoted to Christianity; nor does anyone explain the matters of divine wisdom to the most uneducated or to slaves or to the most ignorant.

Yet Celsus says that others are the most uneducated, slaves, and most ignorant, meaning those who do not know his instructions and have not been trained in the learning of the Greeks. But we say that the most uneducated are those who are not ashamed to talk to lifeless things, who call on what is weak for health, ask what is dead for life, and beg what is utterly helpless for help. And even if some say that these are not the gods but imitations of the true gods and symbols of them, these too are no less uneducated, slaves, and ignorant, since they imagine that imitations of the divinity can be in the hands of craftsmen. So we say that the lowest among us have been set free from this lack of education and ignorance, and that the divine hope is understood and grasped by the most intelligent. We also say that it is not possible for one who has not been trained in human wisdom to receive the more divine; and we acknowledge that all human wisdom is foolishness compared with the divine. Then, when he ought to argue about the doctrine, Celsus calls us sorcerers and says that we flee headlong from the more cultivated, because they are not ready to be deceived, and lure the more boorish. For he did not see that from the very beginning our wise men were educated in outside learning too: Moses “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and Daniel, Ananias, Azarias, and Misael in all the letters of the Assyrians, so that they were found ten times better than all the wise men there. And now too the churches have, in proportion to their numbers, a few wise men who have come even from what we call wisdom “according to the flesh,” and they also have those who have passed from that to the divine wisdom.

Then, after this, Celsus, as though he had merely heard talk about humility and had not carefully understood it, wishes to disparage the humility we teach; he thinks it is a misunderstanding of the words of Plato, who says somewhere in the Laws: “God, as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning and end and middle of all things that are, accomplishes his course straightforwardly, going around according to nature; and justice always follows him, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law; and the one who is to be happy holds fast to her and follows her, humble and orderly.” He does not see that among men far older than Plato it was said in prayer: “Lord, my heart has not been lifted up, nor have my eyes been raised high; nor have I walked among great things, nor among wonderful things above me, unless I was humble-minded.” At the same time these words show that the humble-minded person does not in every case humble himself in an improper and ominous way, as Celsus puts it, falling on his knees, flinging himself headlong, wearing the clothes of wretches, and heaping dust upon himself. For the one who is humble-minded according to the prophet, while walking “among great and wonderful things” above him, that is, among truly “great” doctrines and “wonderful” thoughts, humbles himself “under the mighty hand of God.” And if some, through lack of education, have not grasped the doctrine of humility clearly and do such things, the teaching is not to be blamed; rather we must pardon the lack of education of those who aim at better things but miss them through simplicity. For more truly “humble and orderly” than the humble and orderly man of Plato is the one who is orderly because he walks “among great” and “wonderful things” above him, and humble because, even while among them, he willingly humbles himself, not under any chance person but “under the mighty hand of God,” through Jesus, the teacher of such lessons, “who did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave,” “and being found in human form as a man he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” And the doctrine of humility is so great that it has no ordinary teacher, but our great Savior himself says: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”

After this Celsus says that Jesus' pronouncement against the rich, when he said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God,” was plainly taken from Plato, Jesus having corrupted the Platonic saying in which Plato said that “it is impossible to be exceptionally good and exceptionally rich.” Who that is able to pay attention to the facts even moderately would not laugh at Celsus, not only among those who believe in Jesus but among the rest of humanity as well, on hearing that Jesus, who was born and brought up among the Jews, who was thought to be the son of Joseph “the carpenter,” and who had not learned letters, not only those of the Greeks but not even those of the Hebrews, as the truthful writings about him also testify, read Plato, and, pleased with his saying about the rich, that “it is impossible to be exceptionally good and rich,” corrupted it and made it “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God”? But if Celsus had read the Gospels as a lover of truth and not with hatred and hostility, he would have considered why the camel, of all animals the most crooked in build, was taken as a comparison for the rich man, and what was meant by the narrow eye “of the needle” for him who says that the way that leads “to life” is narrow and hard; and why this animal is recorded in the law as “unclean,” having something acceptable, in that it chews the cud, and something blameworthy, in that it does not divide the hoof. He would also have examined how often the camel is mentioned in the divine Scriptures and of whom, so as to see the meaning of the word about the rich. Nor would he have left unexamined why Jesus calls the poor blessed and the rich wretched, whether he [says this] of those who are poor and rich in the ordinary, material sense or whether the word knows a certain poverty that is in every way blessed and a wealth that is in every way blameworthy. For not even an ordinary person would indiscriminately praise the poor, most of whom are of very bad character. But so much for this.

Next, wishing to belittle what is written among us about the kingdom of God, Celsus quotes none of it, as though it were not worth recording in his book (perhaps because he did not even know it), but sets out passages of Plato from the letters and the Phaedrus, as though these were spoken under divine inspiration while our writings contain nothing of the kind. Let us, then, set a few things beside them for comparison with what Plato said, not unpersuasively indeed, yet without disposing the philosopher himself to conduct himself worthily of them in piety toward the Maker of the universe, a piety that he ought not to have adulterated or defiled with what we call idolatry, or, as the many might say, using their own word, with superstition. In a Hebrew manner of speech it is said of God in the seventeenth Psalm that “God made darkness his hiding place,” to show that the thoughts about God that would be worthy of him are hidden and unknown, since he has hidden himself as it were in darkness from those who cannot bear the radiance of the knowledge of him and are unable to see him, partly because of the defilement of the mind bound to a human body “of humiliation,” and partly because of its too limited capacity to comprehend God. And to show that knowledge of God rarely reaches men and is found in very few, Moses is recorded to have entered “into the thick darkness where God was”; and again of Moses: “Moses alone must come near to God, but the rest must not come near.” And again, to explain the depth of the doctrines about God, which is incomprehensible to those who do not have “the Spirit” that searches all things, and searches “even the depths of God,” the prophet said: “The abyss like a garment is his covering.” And our Savior and Lord, the Word of God, showing the greatness of the knowledge of the Father, which is received and known worthily first of all by himself alone, and secondarily by those whose governing faculty is illuminated by the Word and God himself, says: “No one has known the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” For no one can know worthily the uncreated one, the firstborn of all created nature, as the Father who generated him does; nor can anyone know the Father as his living Word and Wisdom and Truth does. By participation in him, who removes from the Father what is called the “darkness” which “he made his hiding place,” and what is called his “covering,” the abyss, and so reveals the Father, whoever is able to know him knows him.

I thought it right to set out these few examples from a great many thoughts about God conceived by holy men, to show that the sacred writings of the prophets contain something more sublime than the Platonic words admired by Celsus, for those who have eyes able to see the sublime things of the Scriptures. The passage of Plato which Celsus set out reads as follows: “All things are about the King of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all beautiful things. And second things are about the second, and third things about the third. The human soul, then, longs to learn about them, of what sort they are, looking to what is akin to itself, none of which is adequate. But about the King and the things I have mentioned there is nothing of this sort.” I could also set out what is written in Isaiah about those whom the Hebrews call “seraphim,” who cover “the face” and “the feet” of God, and about those named “cherubim,” whom Ezekiel described, and their shapes, as it were, and in what manner God is said to ride upon the cherubim. But since these things are spoken in a very hidden way because of the unworthy and irreverent, who cannot follow the grandeur and sublimity of theology, I did not think it fitting to discuss them in this treatise.

Next Celsus says that certain Christians, having misunderstood some Platonic sayings, boast of the God above the heavens, going up beyond the heaven of the Jews. Here he does not make clear whether they go beyond the God of the Jews too, or only beyond the heaven by which they swear. It is not our present business to speak about those who proclaim another God besides the one worshiped by the Jews too, but to defend ourselves and to show that the prophets of the Jews whom we accept could not have taken anything from Plato, for they were older than he. So we did not take from Plato the saying that “all things are about the King of all, and all things are for his sake”; rather we have learned from the prophets things said better than this, since Jesus and his disciples made clear the intention of the Spirit in the prophets, which was none other than the Spirit of Christ. Nor was the philosopher the first to explain what concerns the place above the heavens; David long ago explained the depth and the multitude of the contemplations about God among those who have risen above sensible things, when he said in the book of Psalms: “Praise God, you heavens of heavens, and the water that is above the heavens; let them praise the name of the Lord.” And I do not rule out that Plato learned the words in the Phaedrus from certain Hebrews, or, as some have recorded, that he set them out after reading the prophetic writings, where he said: “No poet here below has ever sung, or ever will sing, worthily of the place above the heavens,” and what follows, among which is this: “For the being that truly is, without color, without shape, intangible, visible only to mind, the soul's pilot, is the object of the true kind of knowledge, and occupies this place.” And our Paul, educated by those words and longing for what is beyond the world and above the heavens, and doing everything for their sake in order to attain them, says in the second letter to the Corinthians: “For our momentary light affliction is working for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, while we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal.”

For to those able to hear, he plainly presents sensible things, calling them “things that are seen,” and names the intelligible things, grasped by the mind alone, “things that are not seen.” He also knows that sensible and “seen” things are “temporary,” but intelligible and “unseen” things are “eternal”; and wishing to attain the contemplation of these, helped by his longing for them, he considered every affliction as nothing and light. Even in the very time “of affliction” and labors he was in no way weighed down by them, but made every hardship light through his contemplation of those things. For we too have “a great high priest,” great in the greatness of his power and his mind, “who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” who has promised to lead on to what is beyond the world those who have genuinely learned divine things and lived worthily of them; for he says: “that where I am going you also may be.” For this reason we hope, after the labors and struggles here, to come to the summits of the heavens, and, having received according to the teaching of Jesus springs “of water welling up to eternal life,” and having taken in rivers of contemplation, to be with the waters said to be “above the heavens,” which praise “the name of the Lord.” And as long as we praise him, we will not be carried around by the revolution of the heaven, but will always be engaged in the contemplation of the invisible things of God, no longer understood by us “from the creation of the world through the things that are made,” but, as the genuine disciple of Jesus put it when he said, “but then face to face,” and, “When the perfect comes, what is in part will be done away.”

The Scriptures that are current in the churches of God do not speak of seven heavens or of any fixed number of them at all; but the words seem to teach “heavens,” whether they mean the spheres of what the Greeks call the planets or something else more secret. And Celsus says, following Plato, that the path of souls to earth and from earth passes through the planets. But Moses, our most ancient prophet, says that a divine dream was seen in a vision by our patriarch Jacob: a ladder reaching “to heaven,” and angels “of God” ascending and descending on it, and the Lord standing firm at its top; whether in the account of the ladder he was hinting at these things or at something greater than these. Philo too composed a book about it, which deserves wise and intelligent examination by lovers of truth.

Next, wishing to display his wide learning in his book against us, Celsus also sets out certain Persian mysteries, where he says: These things are hinted at by the account of the Persians too, and by the rite of Mithras that is among them. For in it there is a symbol of the two revolutions in heaven, that of the fixed stars and that assigned to the planets, and of the soul's passage through them. The symbol is this: a ladder with seven gates, and above it an eighth gate. The first of the gates is of lead, the second of tin, the third of bronze, the fourth of iron, the fifth of an alloy, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold. They assign the first to Cronus, indicating by the lead the slowness of the star; the second to Aphrodite, comparing her to the brightness and softness of tin; the third to Zeus, the bronze-floored and solid one; the fourth to Hermes, for both iron and Hermes endure all works, make money, and labor much; the fifth to Ares, the one that is uneven and varied because of the mixture; the sixth to the Moon, the silver one; and the seventh to the Sun, the golden one, imitating their colors. Next he examines the reason for the stars being arranged in this order, which is indicated through symbols in the names of the rest of the materials, and he attaches musical theories to the theology of the Persians that he sets out; and he is ambitious enough to set out a second account as well, again connected with musical theories. But it seemed to me absurd to set out Celsus's words on these matters, and like what he himself did when, in his accusation against Christians and Jews, he brought in irrelevantly not only the writings of Plato, as though he were content with these, but also what he calls the Persian mysteries of Mithras and their explanation. However these things stand, whether falsely or truly, for the Persians and those who revere the rites of Mithras, why did he set out these rather than some other mysteries with their explanation? For the mysteries of Mithras do not seem to be held in special honor among the Greeks above the Eleusinian mysteries, or those of Hecate handed on to those initiated at Aegina. And if he wished to set out barbarian mysteries with their explanation, why not rather those of the Egyptians, in which many take pride, or those of the Cappadocians about Artemis at Comana, or those of the Thracians, or even those of the Romans themselves, who initiate the noblest members of the Senate? But if it seemed to him irrelevant to set out any of these, since they contributed nothing to his accusation of Jews or Christians, why did the same not seem irrelevant to him when he set out the Mithraic rites?

But if anyone wishes to take occasions for a more mystical contemplation of the entry of souls into divine things, not from the utterly obscure sect Celsus cited but from books that are partly Jewish, read in their synagogues and accepted by Christians, and partly Christian only, let him read what was seen by the prophet at the end of the prophecy of Ezekiel, where different gates are described, hinting at something about the different entry of more divine souls into better things. Let him also read in the Revelation of John what is said about the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and its foundations and gates. And if he is able to learn, through symbols, the way also shown for those who will travel to divine things, let him read the book of Moses entitled Numbers, and let him seek someone able to initiate him into what is written about the camps of the children of Israel: which were placed first, toward the east; which toward the southwest or the south; which toward the sea; and which last, toward the north. For he will see in these passages contemplations that deserve respect, nor, as Celsus thinks, in need of foolish hearers and slaves. For he will grasp who are among them and what concerns the nature of the numbers listed in them and assigned to each tribe; but it did not seem to me timely to set these out now. Let Celsus and those who read his book know that nowhere in the genuine Scriptures believed to be divine are seven heavens mentioned; nor do our prophets say anything taken from the Persians or the Cabiri, nor do the apostles of Jesus, nor the Son of God himself.

Next, after the account taken from the Mithraic rites, Celsus promises that anyone who wishes to investigate a certain Christian rite together with the Persian rite already described, comparing them with one another and laying bare the Christian one too, will then see the difference between them. Where he knew names of sects to mention, he did not hesitate to set out those he thought he knew; but where he ought rather to have done so, if he knew it, and to have taught which sect uses the diagram he describes, this he has not done. It seems to me that here too he has set out the contents of the diagram in part from things half-heard about the utterly obscure sect of the Ophites, I believe. We ourselves, out of our love of learning, have come across this diagram, and in it we found the fictions of men who, as Paul put it, creep “into households” and captivate “silly women burdened with sins, led away by various desires, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” And the diagram was so wholly unconvincing that not even easily deceived “silly women,” nor the most boorish people who are ready to be led by anything plausible, would have assented to it. At any rate, though we have traveled through many parts of the earth and sought out those everywhere who profess to know something, we have never met anyone who upheld the teachings of the diagram.

In it there was a drawing of circles, ten of them separate from one another but bound together by one circle, which was said to be the soul of the universe and was named Leviathan; the Jewish Scriptures, whatever they may be hinting at, said that he was formed by God as a plaything. For in the Psalms we find: “You made all things in wisdom; the earth was filled with your creation. This is the great and wide sea; there ships pass through, small creatures with great ones; this is the dragon you formed to sport with.” In place of “dragon” the Hebrew had Leviathan. The irreverent diagram, then, said that this Leviathan, who is so plainly condemned in the prophet, is the soul that has pervaded the universe. We also found in it the one named Behemoth, placed as it were below the lowest circle. The man who fabricated that abominable diagram wrote this Leviathan on the circle and at its center, setting down his name twice. Further, Celsus says that the diagram was divided by a thick black line, and he said that he was told this was Gehenna, which is also Tartarus. But finding Gehenna written in the Gospel as a place of punishment, we inquired whether it was named anywhere in the ancient writings, especially since the Jews too use the name. We found that in one place Scripture speaks of the Valley “of the son of Ennom,” and we have learned that in the Hebrew, in place of “Valley,” the same thing was called both the Valley of Ennom and Gehenna. And studying the readings closely we find that Gehenna, or the Valley of Ennom, is listed in the lot of the tribe of Benjamin, in which Jerusalem also was. And examining the connection between the existence of a heavenly Jerusalem and the lot of Benjamin and the Valley of Ennom, we find something bearing on the doctrine of punishments, since souls of such a kind are taken to be purified through torment, according to the saying: “Look, the Lord comes in like a refiner's fire and like cloth cleaners’ soap; and he will sit refining and purifying as gold and as silver”

and according to the saying that punishments take place around Jerusalem for those who are refined, who have taken into the very substance of their soul the things that come from wickedness, which is somewhere called, figuratively, lead; that is why in Zechariah lawlessness sat upon “a talent of lead.” But all that might be said on this subject is neither for everyone nor for the present occasion. Nor is it without danger to commit the clear explanation of such things to writing, since the many need no further teaching than that about the punishment of sinners. For it is not useful to go beyond this, because of those who are barely restrained, even by fear of eternal punishment, from at least some of the flood of wickedness and the sins that come from it. So neither the diagram nor Celsus knows the teaching about Gehenna; for otherwise those people would not make much of pictures and diagrams as though they presented the truth by them, nor would Celsus, in his treatise against Christians, have put among his accusations against Christians things that are in no way said by Christians but by some people who perhaps no longer even exist, having entirely died out and dwindled to a very few who can easily be counted. And just as it is not the business of those who follow Plato's philosophy to make a defense for Epicurus and his irreverent doctrines, so it is not ours to defend what is in the diagram and what Celsus says against it. Therefore we leave aside what Celsus said about these matters as unnecessary and pointless; for we would accuse those who are held by such teachings more than Celsus does.

Next, after the matters of the diagram, Celsus, without even having half-heard anything about what churchmen call the seal, sets out certain strange ideas of his own and a dialogue of question and answer, in which the one who applies the seal is called father, and the one being sealed is called young man and son and answers: “I have been anointed with white ointment from the tree of life,” something we have not heard happens even among the sects.⁠a Then he also fixes a number said by those who hand on the seal: seven angels standing on either side of the soul as it departs from the body, some of light and others of those called archontic; and he says that the ruler of those called archontic is called a cursed god. Then, seizing on the phrase, he reasonably accuses those who dare to say this; and for this reason we too share the indignation of those who blame such people, if indeed there are some who call the God of the Jews cursed, the God who sends rain and thunder, the Creator of this world, the God of Moses and of the creation he describes. But Celsus seems to have intended something by this that was not fair-minded but, from his unphilosophical hatred of us, utterly unfair. For he wished to make those unacquainted with our teachings, when they read his book, fight against us, as though we called the good Creator of this world a cursed god. And he seems to me to have done something like the Jews who, at the beginning of the teaching of Christianity, spread slander against the faith, saying that Christians sacrifice a child and eat its flesh, and again that those of the faith, wishing to do the works of darkness, put out the light and each has intercourse with whatever woman is at hand. This slander, absurd as it is, long ago prevailed over a great many people, persuading those outside the faith that Christians are like this; and even now it still deceives some, who are turned away by such things from coming even to simple conversation with Christians.

Celsus seems to me to have set out some such thing deliberately, that Christians say the Creator is a cursed god, so that anyone who believed him when he said this against us might, if possible, even be moved to kill Christians as the most irreverent of all. Confusing matters, he also sets out the reason why the God of the creation according to Moses is called cursed, saying that he is such and deserves a curse, according to those who hold these opinions about him, because he cursed the serpent that brought the knowledge of good and evil to the first human beings. But he ought to have known that those who have taken the serpent's side, as though it gave good advice to the first human beings, outdoing the Titans and Giants of myth, and are for this reason called Ophites, are so far from being Christians that they accuse Jesus no less than Celsus does, and do not admit anyone to their assembly until he has pronounced curses against Jesus. See, then, how utterly unreasonable Celsus has been in his books against Christians, treating as Christians those who do not even wish to hear the name of Jesus, not even that he was a wise man or a person of moderate character. What could be more foolish or more mad, not only than those who wished to take their name from the serpent as the author of good things, but also than Celsus, who thought the accusations against the Ophites were accusations against Christians? Long ago the philosopher of the Greeks who loved simplicity and set out an example of a happy life, showing that he was not hindered from happiness by complete poverty, called himself a Cynic; but these irreverent men, as though they were not human beings, whose enemy the serpent is, but serpents, pride themselves on being called Ophites after the serpent, the most hostile and horrible of creatures to men, and boast of a certain Euphrates as the founder of their irreverent teachings.

Then next, insulting and accusing, as though they were Christians, those who called the God of Moses and of his law cursed, and thinking that those who say this are Christians, Celsus says: What could be more foolish or more mad than this senseless wisdom? For what mistake did the lawgiver of the Jews make? And how is it that you take his account of the creation of the world, or the Jewish law, for yourself by what you call a figurative allegory, and yet, most irreverent man, praise unwillingly the Creator of the world, who promised them everything, who announced that he would increase their race to the ends of the earth and would raise them from the dead with the same flesh and blood, and who inspired the prophets; and then again you insult him? But when you are pressed hard by them, you admit that you worship the same God; yet when your teacher Jesus and the Jews' Moses legislate contrary things, you look for another God instead of this one and the Father. Here too the most noble philosopher Celsus plainly slanders Christians, saying that the same people, when the Jews press them, acknowledge the same God as they, but when Jesus legislates contrary to Moses, look for another in his place. For whether we are discussing with Jews or are by ourselves, we know one and the same God, whom the Jews too worshiped of old and profess to worship now, and we are in no way irreverent toward him. Nor do we say that God will raise men from the dead with the same flesh and blood, as was said above; for we do not say that what is sown “in corruption” and “in dishonor” and “in weakness,” the “natural body,” rises such as it was sown. But we have spoken on these matters adequately above.

Then next he takes up again the matter of the seven ruling demons, who are in no way named by Christians but are, I believe, accepted by the Ophites. And in the diagram which we too acquired because of them we found the order set out in the same way as Celsus set it out. Celsus said that the first is shaped in the form of a lion, without stating what these truly most irreverent people call him; but we found that the angel of the Creator who is honored in the sacred Scriptures is the one that abominable diagram said was Michael, the lion-shaped. Again Celsus said that the next, the second, is a bull; the diagram we had said that the bull-shaped one was Suriel. Then Celsus said the third was an amphibious creature hissing horribly; the diagram said the third was Raphael, the serpent-shaped. Again Celsus said that the fourth had the form of an eagle; the diagram said that the eagle-shaped one was Gabriel. Then Celsus said that the fifth had the face of a bear; the diagram said that the bear-shaped one was Thauthabaoth. Then Celsus said that the sixth is recorded among them to have the face of a dog; the diagram said that he was Erathaoth. Then Celsus said the seventh had the face of a donkey and was named Thaphabaoth or Onoel; but we found in the diagram that he is called Onoel or Thartharaoth, being donkey-shaped. We too thought it right to set out these things precisely, so that we may not seem ignorant of what Celsus professed to know, but may show that we Christians know these things more precisely than he, and know that they are not the teachings of Christians but of people wholly estranged from salvation, who in no way acknowledge Jesus as Savior or God or Teacher or Son of God.

If anyone wishes to learn also the fictions of those sorcerers, by which they wished to draw people to their teaching as though they possessed some secrets, but were not at all able to, they should hear what they are taught to say after passing through what they call “the barrier of wickedness,” the gates of the archons bound forever: “I greet the solitary king, the bond of blindness, heedless forgetfulness, the first power, guarded by the spirit of providence and by wisdom; from here I am sent pure, already a part of the light of Son and Father.⁠a Grace be with me; yes, Father, let it be with me.” And they say that the beginnings of the Ogdoad are from here. Then next they are taught to say, as they pass through the one they call Ialdabaoth: “And you, Ialdabaoth, first and seventh, born to rule with confidence, being the ruling word of a pure mind, a perfect work for Son and Father, I bring a symbol marked with the imprint of life, and open to the world the gate that you closed for your age; I pass by your authority free again. Grace be with me; yes, Father, let it be with me.” And they say that the star Phainon (Saturn) is in sympathy with the lion-shaped archon. Then they think that the one who has passed through Ialdabaoth and reached Iao must say: “And you, ruler of the hidden mysteries of Son and Father, shining by night, second Iao, and first lord of death, portion of the innocent, bearing now my own beard as a symbol, I pass by your dominion, ready; having prevailed by the living word over the one born of you. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me.” Then next comes Sabaoth, to whom they think they will say: “Ruler of the fifth authority, sovereign Sabaoth, advocate of the law of your creation, which is undone by grace, by a mightier pentad, let me pass, seeing an unblemished symbol of your art, preserved by the image of an imprint, a body undone by the pentad. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me.” After him comes Astaphaeus, to whom they believe they will say such things: “Ruler of the third gate, Astaphaeus, overseer of the first source of water, looking upon one who is an initiate, let me pass, purified by the spirit of a virgin, seeing the being of the world. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me.” After him comes Ailoaeus, to whom they think they should say such things: “Ruler of the second gate, Ailoaeus, let me pass, bringing you a symbol of your mother, grace hidden by the powers of the authorities. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me.” Last they name Horaeus and think they should say to him: “You who fearlessly crossed the barrier of fire, who received the rule of the first gate, Horaeus, let me pass, seeing the symbol of your power undone by the imprint of the tree of life, taken in the image, after the likeness, of the innocent. Grace be with me; Father, let it be with me.”

Celsus's supposed wide learning, which is rather meddlesome curiosity and nonsense, has led us on to these matters, since we wish to show anyone who reads his book and what we have written against it that we are not at a loss about the lore Celsus uses to slander Christians, who neither hold nor know such things; for we too wished to know these things and to set them out, so that the sorcerers may not, by professing to know something more than we do, deceive those who are carried away by the impressiveness of names. I could have added a great deal more to show that we know the teachings of the deceivers but reject them as foreign and irreverent and incompatible with the truly Christian doctrines which we confess even to death. One should know, however, that those who composed these things, understanding neither magic nor the divine Scriptures, mixed everything together. From magic they took Ialdabaoth, Astaphaeus, and Horaeus; from the Hebrew Scriptures, the one named Iao among the Hebrews, Sabaoth, Adonaeus, and Eloaeus. But the names taken from the Scriptures are titles of one and the same God. Not understanding this, the enemies of God, as they themselves admit they are, supposed that Iao was one, Sabaoth another, a third besides him Adonaeus, whom the Scriptures call Adonai, and another Eloaeus, whom the prophets name in Hebrew Eloai.

Then next Celsus sets out other myths, about some people returning to the archontic forms, so that some become lions, others bulls, others serpents or eagles or bears or dogs. We also found in the diagram we had what Celsus called the square figure, and what those wretched people say about the gates of paradise. The flaming sword was painted as the diameter of a fiery circle, as though it were guarding the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Celsus either did not wish or was not able to set out the speeches which, according to the myths of the irreverent, those who pass through each gate will make; but we have done this too, in order to show Celsus and the readers of his book that we know the end of this rite which is no rite, and know it as foreign to the piety of Christians toward God.

After setting out what we have quoted and things similar to what we added, Celsus says this: And they add still more on top of this, words of prophets, and circles upon circles, and emanations of an earthly church and of circumcision, and a power flowing from a certain virgin Prunicus, and a living soul, and heaven killed that it may live, and earth killed with a sword, and many killed that they may live, and death ceasing in the world when the sin of the world dies, and again a narrow way down, and gates that open of themselves. And everywhere there is the tree of life, and a resurrection of the flesh from the tree, because, I suppose, their teacher was nailed to a cross and was a carpenter by trade. So that if he had happened to be thrown from a cliff, or pushed into a pit, or strangled by a noose, or had been a shoemaker or a stonemason or a blacksmith, there would be a cliff of life above the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality, or a blessed stone, or iron of love, or holy leather. What old woman, humming a story to lull a child to sleep, would not have been ashamed to whisper such things? In this, it seems to me, Celsus is jumbling things he half-heard. For it is likely that if he heard some little phrase of any sect whatever, without making it clear even according to that sect's meaning, he strung the scraps of words together and paraded them before those who know nothing either of our teachings or of those of the sects, as though he knew everything about Christians. The passage before us makes this plain.

For to use the words of prophets is our practice, since we show that Jesus is the Christ proclaimed beforehand by them and demonstrate from the prophetic writings that what is recorded about Jesus in the Gospels was fulfilled. To speak of circles upon circles perhaps belongs to the sect mentioned above, which encloses the seven circles of the archons in one circle, which they say is the soul of the universe and Leviathan. Or perhaps it is a misunderstanding of Ecclesiastes, who says: “Circling, circling goes the wind, and on its circles the wind returns.” Emanations of an earthly church and of circumcision were perhaps taken from what some say, that the church on earth is an emanation of a heavenly church and a higher age, and that the circumcision written in the law is a symbol of a circumcision that took place there in some purification. The followers of Valentinus, in accordance with their own misguided wisdom, give the name Prunicus to a certain Wisdom, of whom they would have the woman with a flow of blood for twelve years be a symbol. Having misunderstood this, the man who jumbles together everything of Greeks and barbarians and sects said: “a power flowing from a certain virgin Prunicus.” The living soul perhaps is spoken of in secret by some of the followers of Valentinus with reference to what they call “the psychic Creator”; or perhaps the living soul, in contrast to the dead soul, is spoken of by some, in a respectable sense, as the soul of one who is being saved. But I do not know of heaven being called killed, or earth killed with a sword, or many killed that they may live; and it is not unlikely that Celsus made these up himself.

As for death ceasing in the world when the sin of the world dies, we might say this ourselves, explaining the mystical saying of the apostle, which runs: when “he has put all enemies under his feet,” then “the last enemy, death, is destroyed.” It is also said: “When this perishable puts on freedom from decay,” “then the saying will come true that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory.” A narrow way down again perhaps those who introduce the transmigration of souls will speak of. And it is not unlikely that gates opening of themselves are spoken of by some who interpret figuratively the saying: “Open to me the gates of righteousness, that I may enter by them and give thanks to the Lord; this is the gate of the Lord; the righteous will enter by it.” And again in the ninth Psalm it is said: “You who lift me up from the gates of death, that I may declare all your praises in the gates of the daughter of Zion.” The word says that the gates “of death” are the sins that lead to destruction, just as, conversely, the “gates of Zion” are good actions; and so also “gates of righteousness,” which is equivalent to “the gates of virtue”; and these are readily opened to the one who pursues virtuous actions. As for the tree of life, someone will discuss it more appropriately when interpreting what is recorded in Genesis about the paradise planted by God. Celsus has often mocked the resurrection, which he did not understand; but now, not content with what he has said, he says that a resurrection of the flesh from the tree is spoken of, having misunderstood, I think, the symbolic saying that through a tree came death and through a tree life: death in Adam, life in Christ. Then, making fun of what concerns the tree, he mocks it from two sides, saying that it is brought in for this reason, either because our teacher was nailed to a cross or because he was a carpenter by trade. He does not see that the tree of life is recorded in the writings of Moses, nor does he notice that nowhere in the Gospels current in the churches is Jesus himself described as a carpenter.

He supposes also that we, interpreting the cross figuratively, invented the tree of life; and, consistently with his own error about this, he says that if that man had happened to be thrown down a cliff, or pushed into a pit, or strangled with a noose, there would have been invented a cliff of life above the heavens, or a pit of resurrection, or a rope of immortality. And again he says that if the tree of life had been invented because he was a carpenter, it would have followed that, had he been a shoemaker, something would be said about holy leather; had he been a stonemason, about a blessed stone; had he been a blacksmith, about iron of love. Who, then, does not immediately see the cheapness of his accusation, as he insults people whom he professed to convert as being deceived? Next he says things that fit those who invented the lion-shaped, donkey-headed, and serpent-shaped archons, and anyone who has told similar myths to theirs, but not those of the Church. For truly even a drunken old woman, lulling a child to sleep, would have been ashamed to sing and whisper to the child such a myth as those who invented the donkey-headed archons and the speeches, so to call them, at each gate. But Celsus does not know the teachings of those of the Church, which very few have trained themselves to understand, those who have devoted their whole life, according to Jesus' commandment, to searching “the Scriptures,” and have labored over the investigation of the meaning of the sacred writings more than the Greek philosophers labored to acquire some supposed knowledge.

Not content with what came from the diagram, the fine fellow wished, to increase his accusations against us, who have nothing in common with it, to add some other things in between, repeating what belongs to those people as though it were ours. For he says: A marvel of theirs, and not the least, is this: they explain certain things written between the upper circles above the heavens, among others two in particular, a greater and a smaller, of Son and Father. We found in this diagram the greater circle and the smaller, on whose diameter was written “Father and Son”; and between the greater, in which the smaller was, and another made up of two circles, the outer yellow and the inner blue, the barrier inscribed in the shape of an axe. Above it was a small circle joined to the greater of the first two, with “Love” written in it; and below, touching the circle, one with “Life” written in it. In the second circle, which was intertwined with and enclosed two other circles and another rhomboid figure, was written “Providence of Wisdom”; inside their common section, “Nature of Wisdom”; above their common section was a circle in which “Knowledge” was written, and below another in which “Understanding” was written. We have included these things too in our book against Celsus, to show readers that we know more clearly than he, and not from things half-heard, the things that we too condemn. If those who pride themselves on such things also profess some magical sorcery, and this is for them the sum of wisdom, we do not affirm it, for we have not found out any such thing. But Celsus, who has often been caught already in false witness and unreasonable accusations, would know whether he is lying here too, if he found such a thing about certain people who are strangers and aliens to the faith and set it out in his treatise.

Then, against those who, as he says, use a kind of magic and sorcery and invoke foreign names of certain demons, he says such things, that these people act like those who tell marvels about the same beings to those who do not know that their names are different among the Greeks and among the Scythians. Then he sets out, taking it from Herodotus, that the Scythians call Apollo Gongosyrus, Poseidon Thagimasadas, Aphrodite Argimpasa, and Hestia Tabiti. Anyone who is able will examine whether here too Celsus, along with Herodotus, is not mistaken, since the Scythians do not understand the same things as the Greeks about those whom they consider gods. For what likelihood is there that Apollo is called Gongosyrus among the Scythians? For I do not think that Gongosyrus, translated into Greek, gives the etymology of Apollo, or that Apollo in the Scythian language means Gongosyrus. Nor will one say the same about the rest: for the Greeks named those they considered gods starting from certain things and etymologies, the Scythians from others, and likewise the Persians from others, and the Indians or Ethiopians or Libyans from others, or as each chose to name them, since they did not remain in the first and pure conception of the Creator of the universe. We have said enough on this earlier too, when we wished to show that Sabaoth and Zeus are not the same, and quoted something from the divine writings about languages. So we willingly pass over these things, in which Celsus calls us to repeat ourselves. Then again, jumbling together matters of magical sorcery, and attaching them perhaps to no one, since there are no sorcerers who practice under the pretext of this form of piety, or perhaps to some who use such things with the easily deceived so as to seem to do something by divine power, he sets out certain things, saying: Why need I list all those who have taught purifications, or releasing songs, or averting cries, or rattlings, or demonic figures, or all kinds of protective remedies made of clothes or numbers or stones or plants or roots, and in general of every sort of thing? Reason does not require us to answer for these, since we are not in the least involved in such suspicions.

After this he seems to me to do something like those who, out of great hatred of Christians, assure people who know nothing of Christian teaching that they have found out by experience that Christians eat the flesh of children and freely have intercourse with the women among them. For just as these charges are now condemned, even by the many who are wholly strangers to our religion, as slanders against Christians, so these statements of Celsus too would be found to be slanderous, where he said that he had seen among certain presbyters of our faith books in foreign languages containing names of demons and marvels; and he said that these men (so-called presbyters of our faith) promise nothing good but everything for the harm of men. I wish that everything Celsus says against Christians were of this sort, so that it might be refuted by most people, who have learned by experience that such things are false, since they have lived among very many Christians and have never even heard anything of the kind about them.

After this, as though he had forgotten that his task is to write against Christians, he says that a certain Dionysius, an Egyptian musician, who had met him, told him about magic that it has power over the uneducated and those of corrupt character, but can do nothing against those who have studied philosophy, since they have taken care to live a healthy life. If our task now were to discuss magic, we would have added a little on this to what we said about it above. But since we must say what is more to the point against Celsus's treatise, we say about magic that anyone who wishes to examine whether philosophers too can be caught by it or not should read what Moeragenes wrote in his memoirs of Apollonius of Tyana, the magician and philosopher. In them Moeragenes, who was not a Christian but a philosopher, said that some philosophers of considerable standing were caught by the magic of Apollonius, having come to him as to a sorcerer; among them, I believe, he told of the famous Euphrates and a certain Epicurean. But we affirm, having learned it by experience too, that those who, according to Christianity, worship the God over all through Jesus, live according to his gospel, and use the prayers commanded, continually and as they ought, night and day, are caught neither by magic nor by demons. For truly “the angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear him and will deliver them” from every evil; and “the angels” of the little ones in the Church, who are appointed to watch over them, are said “always” to see “the face of the Father in heaven,” whatever the face is and whatever the seeing is.

Next, starting from another point, Celsus says such things against us: They also err most irreverently in this, the greatest ignorance, which has likewise strayed from divine riddles, in making someone opposed to God, calling the same one devil and, in the Hebrew language, Satan. Otherwise, these things are utterly mortal notions and not holy to say, that the greatest God, wishing to benefit men in some way, has someone opposing him and is powerless against that opponent. The Son of God, then, is defeated by the devil, and, being punished by him, teaches us too to despise the punishments inflicted by him, announcing beforehand that Satan too will likewise appear and display great and marvelous works, appropriating the glory of God; that those who do not wish to be led astray by these must not turn toward Satan, but must believe in Jesus alone. These are plainly the words of a sorcerer, who is out for gain and guards himself beforehand against those who hold opposing views and gather rival crowds. Then next, wishing to set out the riddles which he thinks we misunderstood when we introduce the teaching about Satan, he says that the ancients hinted at a divine war: Heraclitus, saying this: “One must know that war is common, and justice strife, and that all things come about by strife and necessity”; and Pherecydes, who was much older than Heraclitus, telling a myth of one army ranged against another, giving Cronus as leader of one and Ophioneus of the other, and relating their challenges and contests; and that they made an agreement that whichever of them fell into Ogenos should be the defeated, and those who drove them out and conquered should hold heaven. He says that the mysteries about the Titans and Giants, who are declared to fight against the gods, have this meaning too, as do the Egyptian stories about Typhon, Horus, and Osiris. Then, having set out such things without explaining how those contain a better meaning while ours are misunderstandings of them, he insults us, saying that those stories are not like what is said about a devil-demon or (as they say more truly) a sorcerer holding opposing views. He understands Homer in the same way, as hinting at things similar to Heraclitus and Pherecydes and those who introduce the mysteries about Titans and Giants, in these words of Hephaestus to Hera, where he says: “For once before, when I was eager to defend you, he seized me by the foot and hurled me from the divine threshold”; and in these words of Zeus to Hera: “Do you not remember when you hung on high, and from your feet I let down two anvils, and around your hands threw an unbreakable golden chain? And you hung in the air and the clouds; and the gods throughout high Olympus were indignant, but could not come near and free you; whomever I caught I would seize and hurl from the threshold, until he reached the earth, faint.” And interpreting the Homeric verses, he says that the words of Zeus to Hera are words of God to matter, and that the words to matter hint that from the beginning it was in a disordered state, and God took it in hand, bound it together by certain proportions and ordered it; and that the demons around it who were insolent he hurls down, punishing them with the journey here. He says that Pherecydes, understanding these verses of Homer in this way, said: “Below that portion is the portion of Tartarus; the daughters of Boreas, the Harpies and Thyella, guard it; there Zeus casts out any of the gods when he behaves insolently.” He says that the robe of Athena, seen by all in the procession of the Panathenaea, has the same meaning. For, he says, it shows that a motherless and undefiled divinity masters the presumptuous earth-born. Having accepted the fictions of the Greeks, he adds, accusing our teachings, such things as this: that the Son of God is punished by the devil and teaches us too that when we are punished by the same one we should endure it. And these things are wholly ridiculous; for it was necessary, I suppose, to punish the devil, not to threaten the men who have been slandered by him.

See, then, whether the man who charges us with erring most irreverently and straying from divine riddles does not clearly err himself, not perceiving that the writings of Moses, which are much older not only than Heraclitus and Pherecydes but also than Homer, introduced the account of this evil one who fell from heavenly things. For the “serpent,” from which Pherecydes' Ophioneus came, having been the cause of man's expulsion from the divine paradise, hints at something like this, since he deceived the weaker sex with a promise of divinity and greater things; and the man is said to have followed her. And the destroyer in Moses' Exodus, who else could he be than the one who is the cause of destruction for those who obey him and do not resist or fight against his wickedness? Further, the scapegoat in Leviticus, whom the Hebrew Scripture named Azazel, was none other; he who had the lot had to be sent away and banished into the wilderness; for all who belong to the portion of the worse one because of their wickedness, being opposed to those of God's lot, are deserted by God. And the sons of Belial in Judges, whose sons are they said to be because of their wickedness, if not his? And, most clearly of all, in Job, who is older even than Moses himself, “the devil” is recorded to present himself before God and ask for authority over Job, to encompass him with the heaviest trials: first, the destruction of all his possessions and his children; second, covering the whole body of Job with a severe attack of the disease called “elephantiasis”. I pass over what the Gospels say about the devil who tempted the Savior, so that I may not seem to bring against Celsus, on the point in question, evidence from more recent writings. And in the last chapters of Job, where the Lord spoke to Job through whirlwind and clouds what is recorded in the book named after him, many things may be found said about a dragon. I do not yet mention what is in Ezekiel, as though about “Pharaoh” or “Nebuchadnezzar” or the ruler “of Tyre,” or what is in Isaiah, where the king of Babylon is lamented; from these one might learn a great deal about wickedness, what beginning and origin it had, and that wickedness came into being through certain beings who shed their wings and followed the first one who shed his wings.

For it was not possible for what is good as a contingent and acquired quality to be good in the same way as what is good in its very being. Goodness would never fall away from one who, so to speak, takes the living bread to preserve himself; and if it does fall away from anyone, it falls away through his own fault, because he has been negligent about partaking of the living bread and the true drink, by which the wing, nourished and watered, is restored, as the most wise Solomon says of the one who is truly rich: “For he has made himself wings like an eagle and returns to the house of the one who is set over him.” For it was necessary that God, who knows how to use for a necessary purpose even those who have come into being through wickedness, should place those who are so evil somewhere in the universe and make a training ground for virtue available to those who wish to strive “lawfully” to attain it; so that, being tested like gold in the fire by the wickedness of these, and doing everything so as to admit nothing counterfeit into their rational nature, they may be shown worthy and be drawn up by the Word to the ascent to divine things, to the highest blessedness of all and, so to speak, the summit of good things. The one called Satan in the language of the Hebrews, and by some in a more Greek form Satanas, is, translated into Greek, the adversary. Everyone who has chosen wickedness and the life that goes with it, doing what is contrary to virtue, is a Satan, that is, an adversary of the Son of God, who is righteousness and truth and wisdom. But in the proper sense the adversary is the first of all beings living in peace and blessedness who shed his wings and fell from blessedness; who, according to Ezekiel, walked “blameless” in all his ways until wickedness was found in him, and being “a seal of likeness and a crown of beauty” in the paradise of God, as though sated with good things, came to destruction, according to the word that mystically says to him: “You have become destruction, and you will not exist for ever.” These few things we have set out, perhaps boldly and at some risk, in entrusting them to this writing, though perhaps they are nothing. But if anyone who has leisure for testing the sacred writings were to gather from every part of them a full account of wickedness, how it first came to be and in what manner it is destroyed, he would see that neither Celsus nor any of those who are dragged down and drawn away in soul by this evil demon from God, from the right conception of him, and from his word, has even dreamed of the meaning of Moses and the prophets concerning Satan.

Since Celsus also throws in the matter of the so-called Antichrist, without having read what is said about him in Daniel or in Paul, or what was prophesied by the Savior in the Gospels about his coming, a few words must be said on this too. Since “as faces are not like faces, so neither are the hearts of men like one another's hearts,” it is plain that there are differences in “the hearts of men,” both among those who incline to the good, since not all are shaped and formed to it equally or in the same way, and among those who, through neglect of the good, rush to the opposite; for in these too wickedness is poured out very greatly in some and less in others. What absurdity, then, is there in there being among men two extremes, so to speak, one of good and the other of its opposite, so that the extreme of good is in the man understood to be Jesus, from whom so great a conversion, healing, and improvement has flowed to the human race, and the extreme of the opposite in the one named Antichrist? God, embracing all things in his foreknowledge and seeing what concerns both of these, wished to make it known to men through the prophets, so that those who understand their words may attach themselves to the better and guard against the opposite. And it was fitting that one of the extremes, the best, should be proclaimed Son of God because of his preeminence, and the one diametrically opposed to him son of the evil demon, Satan and the devil. Then, since evil is most marked in its outpouring and its extreme when it pretends to be the better, for this reason signs and wonders and powers of falsehood occur around the worse one through the cooperation of his father the devil. For beyond the help given by demons to sorcerers, who deceive men for the basest ends, there comes a cooperation from the devil himself for the deception of the human race. Paul speaks of this so-called Antichrist, teaching and explaining with a certain reserve in what manner he will come to the human race, and when, and why; and see whether Paul does not set these matters out most solemnly, and in a way not deserving even the slightest mockery.

He says this: “Now we ask you, brothers, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together to him, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter as though from us, as though the day of the Lord had come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? And now you know what restrains him, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will consume with the breath of his mouth and destroy by the appearing of his coming; the one whose coming is by the working of Satan with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and with all deception of unrighteousness for those who are perishing, because they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason God sends them a force of deception, so that they may believe the lie, in order that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness.” To explain each of these points is not suited to the present treatise. The prophecy about him is also given in Daniel, and it can move one who reads it intelligently and fair-mindedly to admire the words as truly inspired and prophetic, in which is foretold what concerns the kingdoms to come, beginning from the times of Daniel down to the destruction of the world. Anyone who wishes may read it; but see whether what concerns the Antichrist is not as follows: “And at the final stage of their kingdom, when their sins are coming to the full, there will arise a king bold of face and understanding riddles; and his strength will be mighty, and he will cause astonishing destruction, and prosper, and act, and destroy mighty men and the holy people. And the yoke of his collar will prosper; deceit is in his hand, and he will magnify himself in his heart, and by deceit he will destroy many, and he will stand up for the destruction of many, and he will crush them in his hand like eggs.” And what is said in Paul, in the passage of his I have set out, which says, “so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God,” is also said in Daniel in this way: “And upon the temple an abomination of desolations, and until the end of the time an end will be put to the desolation.” I thought it reasonable to set out these few out of many passages, so that the hearer may understand at least a little of the meaning of the divine words that teach about the devil and the Antichrist. Content with these on this subject, let us look at another passage of Celsus and contend against it as best we can.

After the passages set out above he said this: I will point out where this very idea of calling him Son of God came to them. Men of old called this world, as having come from God, his child and a youth. Very like indeed are this one and that one as child of God! He thought that we speak of a Son of God by distorting what is said about the world as having come from God and being his son and a god. For he was not able, by paying attention to the times of Moses and the prophets, to see that the prophets among the Jews prophesied in general that there is a Son of God before the Greeks and the men of old of whom Celsus speaks. Nor did he wish to quote what Plato says in the letters, which we mentioned above, about the one who ordered this universe as being the Son of God, so that he would not also be compelled by Plato, whom he often praised, to accept that the Maker of this universe is the Son of God, and the first God over all is his Father. And it is nothing surprising if, saying that the soul of Jesus has been united with so great a Son of God by the highest participation in him, we no longer separate it from him. For the sacred words of the divine writings know of other things too which, though two in their own nature, are counted as and are one with each other. So it is said of husband and wife: “They are no longer two but one flesh”; and of the perfect man who is joined to the true Lord, the Word and Wisdom and Truth: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit.” And if “he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” who has been joined to the Lord, to the Word himself and Wisdom itself and Truth itself and Righteousness itself, more than, or even as closely as, the soul of Jesus? If this is so, the soul of Jesus and God the Word, the firstborn “of all creation,” are not two.

Next: if the Stoic philosophers, who say that the virtue of man and of God is the same, say that the God over all is not happier than their wise man among men, but that the happiness of both is equal, Celsus does not laugh at or mock the doctrine. But if the divine word says that the perfect man is joined through virtue to the Word himself and made one with him, so that on this basis we do not separate the soul of Jesus from the firstborn “of all creation,” he laughs at Jesus being called Son of God, not seeing what is said about him mystically and secretly in the divine Scriptures. And to bring to acceptance of what is said anyone who wishes to follow the consistency of doctrines and be helped, we say that the divine words declare that the whole Church of God is the body of Christ, animated by the Son of God, and that those who believe are members of this body as of a whole. For just as the soul gives life to and moves the body, which by nature cannot move itself with life, so the Word, moving the whole body, the Church, toward what is needed and acting on it, moves both the Church and each member of those belonging to the Church, who do nothing apart from the Word. If this, as I think, is a consistent argument that should not be dismissed, what difficulty is there in the soul of Jesus, and Jesus as a whole, not being separated from the only-begotten and firstborn “of all creation,” because of its highest and unsurpassable communion with the Word himself, nor being any longer other than he? But so much for this.

Let us look also at what follows, in which, delivering his verdict in a single phrase and not saying anything even plausible, he accuses the account of the creation of the world according to Moses, saying: Furthermore, their account of the origin of the world is very silly. If he had put forward the way in which it seemed to him silly, and some plausible arguments, we would have answered them; but it does not seem reasonable to me to argue, against his bare assertion, in what way it is not silly. If anyone wishes to consider what has moved us and what we have established with apparent demonstration concerning the account of creation according to Moses, they should consult our treatises on Genesis from the beginning of the book up to “This is the book of the generation of men,” in which we have tried to establish from the divine writings themselves what the heaven and earth are that came to be “in the beginning,” and what the invisible and unformed state of the earth is, and what the abyss and the darkness upon it are, and what the water is and the “Spirit of God” moving over it, and what the created “light” is, and what “the firmament” is as distinct from the heaven made “in the beginning,” and so on. He also declared that the account of the creation of men is very silly, neither stating proofs nor contending against them; for he had, I think, no arguments able to overthrow the statement that man was made “in the image of God.” Nor did he understand the “paradise” planted by God, and man's original life in it, and the life that came about through circumstances when he was cast out because of sin and made to dwell opposite “the paradise of delight.” Let the man who says that these things are spoken very foolishly first consider each of them, and this in particular: “He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turned, to guard the way of the tree of life.” Did Moses, then, write these things without understanding anything, doing something like what the poets of the Old Comedy wrote in jest: “Proetus married Bellerophon, and Pegasus came from Arcadia”? But they composed such things wishing to raise a laugh; it is not credible that one who left writings to a whole nation, and wished to persuade those to whom he gave laws that they came from God, wrote irrelevant things and said without any meaning, “He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turned, to guard the way of the tree of life,” or anything else said about the creation of men and made the subject of philosophy by the wise among the Hebrews.

Next, having piled together in bare assertions the differing views some of the ancients held about the origin of the world and of men, he says that Moses and the prophets, who left us our writings, not knowing what the nature of the world and of men is, composed utter nonsense. If he had said in what way he thought the divine writings were utter nonsense, we would have tried to refute the arguments that seemed plausible to him for their being utter nonsense. But as it is, doing the same as he and joking too, we will declare that Celsus, in no way knowing what the nature of the meaning and the word in the prophets is, composed utter nonsense, boastfully entitling it The True Word. And since he brings forward as an accusation, as though it were clear and precisely understood by him, the matter of the days of creation, some of which passed before light and heaven, sun, moon, and stars came to be, and some after they came to be, we will only point out this to him: did Moses forget that he had just said that the world was completed in its making in six days, and, forgetting himself, did he add to these words, “This is the book of the generation of men, in the day when God made the heaven and the earth”? But it is not at all credible that Moses said, after the account of the six days, “in the day when God made the heaven and the earth,” without meaning anything. And if anyone thinks this can refer to “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” they should note that “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” is said before “Let there be light, and there was light,” and before “God called the light day.”

But it is not our present purpose to explain the teaching about things understood by the mind and things perceived by the senses, and in what way the natures of the days are distributed to both kinds, nor to examine the passages; for whole treatises would be needed for an exposition of the creation according to Moses. We did this, as far as we could, long before the present treatise against Celsus, discussing the six days of creation according to Moses with the capacity we had some years ago. One should know, however, that through Isaiah the Word promises the righteous that there will be days in a state in which not the sun but the “Lord” himself will be their “everlasting light, and God their glory.” But Celsus, having misunderstood, I think, some wretched sect that wrongly interpreted “Let there be light” as spoken by the Creator in the form of a wish, said: For the Creator did not borrow light from above, like those who kindle their lamps from their neighbors. And having misunderstood another impious sect, he also said: If there was an accursed god opposed to the great God, who did these things against his will, why did the great God lend him the light? We are so far from offering a defense on these points that we would rather accuse the opinion of those sects more clearly as mistaken, and oppose not, as Celsus does, what we do not know about them, but what we know precisely, partly from having heard them in person and partly from having carefully read their writings.

After this Celsus says: About the origin and destruction of the world, whether it is ungenerated and indestructible, or generated but indestructible, or the reverse, I say nothing about this now. Therefore we too say nothing about these things now, for the present treatise does not require it. But neither do we say that the Spirit of the God over all came to be in the things here as though in things alien to him, according to the words “the Spirit of God moved over the water”; nor do we say that certain things contrived wickedly against his Spirit by another, the Creator, distinct from the great God, with the higher God putting up with it, needed to be destroyed. Therefore let those who say such things go their way, far off, and Celsus too, who does not accuse them in a methodical way; for he ought either not to have mentioned such things at all, or, in keeping with what he regards as love of humanity, to have set them out carefully and argued against the impious things they say. Nor have we ever heard that the great God, having given the Spirit to the Creator, asks for it back. Then next, foolishly charging these impious teachings, he says: What god gives something in order to ask it back? For asking back belongs to one in need, but God needs nothing. And he adds to this, as though saying something clever against certain people: Why, when he lent it, did he not know he was lending to an evil being? He also says: Why does he overlook an evil Creator working against him?

Then, I think, mixing sects with sects and not noting that these views belong to one sect and those to another, he brings forward the objections we raise against Marcion, perhaps having misunderstood these too from some who argue against him in a cheap and uninformed way, not very intelligently. Setting out, then, what is said against Marcion, and not noting that he is speaking against him, he says: Why does he send secretly and destroy the works of this one? Why does he force his way in stealthily and lead astray and deceive? Why does he deceive those who, as you say, have been condemned or cursed by this one, and carry them off like a slave-dealer? Why does he teach them to run away from their master? Why to flee from their father? Why does he adopt them himself, without the father's consent? Why does he claim to be the father of strangers? And he adds to these, as though in astonishment: A fine god indeed, who desires to be the father of sinners condemned by another, of the disinherited, and, as they themselves say, of refuse, and who is unable to punish the one he sent to carry them off from him when he was caught. Next, as though addressing us who confess that this world belongs to no alien or strange god, he says such things as this: If these are his works, how did God make evil things? How is he unable to persuade and admonish? How does he repent when people become ungrateful and wicked, and find fault with his own art, and hate and threaten and destroy his own offspring? Or where will he carry them off to out of this world, which he himself made? Here too, it seems to me, without making clear what evils are, although among the Greeks too there have been many schools of thought about goods and evils, he snatches at it as though it followed for us, who say that this world too is the work of the God over all, that in our view God is the maker of evils. Let the matter of evils be as it may, whether God made them or not, or whether they came about as a consequence of his principal works; but I wonder whether what he thinks follows for us, who say that this world too is the work of the God over all, namely that God made evils, does not follow also from what he himself says. For one might say to Celsus: If these are his works, how did God make evil things? How is he unable to persuade and admonish? And the greatest fault in argument is when someone accuses those of other views of holding unsound doctrines, while he himself has the same faults in his own doctrines much more.

Let us, then, look briefly at what the divine Scriptures say about good and evil things, and what we should say in reply to: How did God make evil things? How is he unable to persuade and admonish? According to the divine Scriptures, good things in the proper sense are the virtues and the actions that accord with them, just as evils in the proper sense are their opposites. For the present we will be content with the words of the thirty-third Psalm, which show this: “But those who seek the Lord will not lack any good thing. Come, children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord. Who is the man who desires life, who loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good.” For “Turn away from evil and do good” is not said of bodily goods or evils, as some call them, nor of external ones, but of the goods and evils of the soul. For the one who turns away from such evils and does such goods, as one who desires the true life, would come to it, “loving to see good days,” whose “sun” is the Word “of righteousness,” and would reach them, since God rescues him “from the present evil age” and from the evil days of which Paul said: “Making the most of the time, because the days are evil.”

But bodily and external things might be found, in a looser sense, to be called goods when they contribute to life according to nature, and evils when they oppose it. So Job says to his wife: “If we received good things from the hand of the Lord, should we not endure evil things?” Since, then, it is found in the divine Scriptures, in one place, spoken in the person of God, “I am the one who makes peace and creates evils,” and in another place again about him, “that evils came down from the Lord upon the gates of Jerusalem, the noise of chariots and horsemen,” sayings that have troubled many readers of Scripture who cannot discern what it means by good and evil, it is likely that from this Celsus raised the difficulty and said, How did God make evil things? or that he heard someone with a rather simple view of the passage and set down the words quoted. But we say that God did not make evils, meaning wickedness and the actions that come from it. For how could the preaching of judgment speak with confidence, teaching that the wicked are punished for their wicked actions in proportion to their sins, and that those who have lived virtuously or done virtuous actions are blessed and will receive rewards from God, if God had made what is truly evil? I know well that those who want to dare to say that these too come from God will cite certain texts of Scripture, being unable to show the one consistent thread of Scripture, which blames sinners and approves those who do well, and nonetheless also says those things, not few in number, that seem to distract those who read the divine writings ignorantly. I did not think it suited to the present treatise to set out now the distracting texts, which are many, and their interpretations, which need much argument. Evils, then, if one understands those properly so called, God has not made; but some, few in comparison with the order of the universe, have followed as consequences of his principal works, just as the spiral shavings and sawdust follow as consequences of the carpenter's principal works, and as builders seem to make the rubbish of stones and mortar that falls off and lies beside the buildings.

But if one means the things called evils in a looser sense, the so-called bodily and external evils, let it be granted, someone says, that God sometimes makes some of these in order to turn some people back to him through them; and what absurdity can the statement contain? For just as, if we loosely call evils the pains inflicted on those being disciplined by fathers, teachers, and tutors, or by physicians on those who are cut or cauterized for the sake of healing, and we say that the father does evil to his sons, or the tutors or teachers or physicians do, those who beat or cut would not be accused of anything; so if God is said to bring such things to bring back and heal of those who need such pains, the statement would contain nothing absurd. Nor would it if “evils come down from the Lord upon the gates of Jerusalem,” consisting in the pains inflicted by enemies, brought on them to turn them back to him; nor if he visits “with a rod the wrongdoings” of those who have abandoned “the law” of God, “and with lashes their sins”; nor if he says: “You have coals of fire; sit on them; these will be a help to you.” In this way we also explain “who makes peace and creates evils”: for he creates bodily or external evils, purifying and disciplining those who were unwilling to be disciplined by reason and sound teaching. So much in answer to “How did God make evil things?”

To “How is he unable to persuade, instruct, and warn?” it has been said already that, if this is a charge at all, Celsus's words could be brought against all who accept providence. But one might reply in defense that God is not unable to instruct and warn; for he instructs and warns his hearers through all of Scripture and through those who teach by the grace of God; unless, indeed, one were to understand “instruct and warn” in a special sense, as including success with the one instructed and warned and his heeding the teacher's word, which is contrary to the ordinary meaning in common use. And to “How is he unable to persuade?”, which could also be brought against all who accept providence, this must be said. Since being persuaded belongs, as it were, to what are called correlative terms, like a person's having their hair cut, when he acts by offering himself to the barber, it requires not only the action of the one persuading but also, so to speak, the submission to the persuader, or the acceptance of what the persuader says. Therefore it must not be said that those who are not persuaded are not persuaded because God is unable to persuade, but because they do not accept the persuasive words of God. One would not be wrong to say this of people, too, who are called craftsmen of persuasion; for it is possible that one who has mastered the principles of rhetoric perfectly and uses them properly may do everything to persuade, yet, failing to win the will of the one who ought to be persuaded, seem not to persuade. That, even if persuasive words come from God, being persuaded does not come from God, Paul teaches clearly when he says: “This persuasion is not from him who calls you.” Such also is the saying: “If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are not willing and do not listen to me, the sword will devour you.” For a person to choose what the one instructing and warning says, and, having heeded it, to become worthy of God's promises, the choice of the hearer and their agreement to what is said are needed. That is why, it seems to me, it is said with emphasis in Deuteronomy: “And now, Israel, what does the Lord your God ask of you but to fear the Lord your God and to walk in all his ways and to love him and to keep his commandments?”

Next we must answer: How does he repent when they become ungrateful and wicked, and find fault with his own art, and hate and threaten and destroy his own offspring? Here he slanders and misrepresents what is written in Genesis, which reads as follows: “And the Lord God, seeing that the wicked actions of those on the earth were multiplied, and that each one was intently thinking evil in his heart all the days, considered that he had made man on the earth; and he pondered in his heart, and God said: I will wipe out man whom I made from the face of the earth, from humans to animals, and from crawling creatures to the birds of heaven; for I was angry that I made them.” He sets out things that are not written as though they were indicated by what is written. For in these words neither repentance of God is named nor that he finds fault with his own art and hates it. And if God seems to threaten the flood and to destroy his own offspring in it, it must be said that, since the human soul is immortal, the supposed threat is meant to turn the hearers back to God, and the destruction of men in the flood is a purification of the earth, as those of the Greeks whose philosophy deserves respect also said in the words: “When the gods purify the earth.” About expressions that attribute human feelings, as it were, to God, we have said quite a lot above as well.

Next, Celsus, suspecting or perhaps perceiving for himself what could be said by those who defend the matter of the people destroyed in the flood, says: But if he does not destroy his own offspring, where does he carry them off to out of this world which he himself made? To this too we say that he does not at all carry those who suffered the flood out of the whole world composed of heaven and earth, but frees them from life in the flesh, and releasing them from their bodies, at the same time releases them from being on the earth, which in many places of Scripture is customarily called the world. Especially in the Gospel according to John one can often find the region around the earth called the world, as in “It was the true light, which enlightens every person coming into the world,” and “In the world you have trouble; but take courage, I have overcome the world.” If, then, one understands “carries them off out of this world” as the region around the earth, the statement meets with no absurdity; but if one calls the system of heaven and earth the world, those who suffered the flood are not at all carried off out of the world so named. And yet one might say, understanding the words “while we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are not seen,” and “For his invisible things are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood through the things he has made,” that one who is occupied with the invisible things, and in general with what are called things not seen, has departed from the world, since the Word leads him out from here and transfers him to the place above the heavens, to contemplate the things that are beautiful.

After the passage we have examined, as though his aim were somehow to fill his book with many words, he says in other words things similar to those examined a little earlier, where he said: Much more silly is it to distribute certain days to the making of the world before there were days. For when heaven had not yet come to be, nor the earth yet been fixed, nor the sun yet carried around us, how were there days? For how does this differ from: Let us take it again from the beginning and consider how it would not be absurd for the first and greatest God to command, “Let this come to be,” and another thing, “this or that,” and on one day to fashion so much, and on the second again so much more, and on the third and fourth and fifth and sixth? We have in effect answered “commanding, ‘Let this come to be,’ and another thing, ‘this or that’” when we cited “He spoke and they came to be; he commanded and they were created,” saying that the immediate Creator, and as it were the very maker of the world, is the Word, the Son of God, while the Father of the Word, by having commanded his own Son, the Word, to make the world, is Creator in the primary sense. As for “light” being made on one day, “the firmament” on the second, the gathering of the waters “under the heaven” into their gatherings on the third, and so the earth's producing the things governed by nature alone, and the “lights” and “stars” on the fourth, the swimming creatures on the fifth, and the land animals and “man” on the sixth, we have spoken as well as we could in our treatises on Genesis. And above, too, when we found fault with those who said, following the more obvious interpretation, that a period of six days passed in the making of the world, we cited: “This is the book of the generation of heaven and earth, when it came to be, in the day when God made the heaven and the earth.”

Then again, having misunderstood “And on the sixth day God finished his works which he had made; and he ceased on the seventh day from all his works which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because on it he ceased from all his works which God began to make,” and thinking that “he ceased on the seventh day” is the same as “he rested on the seventh day,” he says: After this, like some thoroughly bad workman, he became tired and needed a holiday to rest. For he does not know what the day of the sabbath and of God's ceasing is, which follows the making of the world that goes on as long as the world lasts, the day on which those who have done all their works in the six days will celebrate with God, and, because they have left undone nothing that falls to them, will ascend to contemplation and to the festive gathering of the righteous and blessed in it. Then, as though either the Scriptures said so or we ourselves explained it so, that God became tired and rested, he says that it is not fitting for the first God to become tired, or to work with his hands, or to give orders. Celsus says that it is not fitting for the first God to become tired; but we would say that neither does God the Word become tired, nor any of those who already belong to the better and more divine order; for becoming tired belongs to beings in a body. You can examine whether it belongs to those in any body whatever, or to those in an earthly body and one a little better than this. Nor is it lawful for the first God to work with his hands; and if you understand working with hands in the proper sense, neither for the second God nor for any other of the more divine beings. But let working with hands be spoken of loosely or figuratively, so that we may explain “The firmament proclaims the work of his hands” and “His hands established the heaven,” and anything said similarly, interpreting figuratively the hands and limbs of God. What is absurd, then, in God's working with his hands in this way? And as it is not absurd for God to work with his hands in this way, so neither is it absurd for him to command, so that what is accomplished by the one commanded may be good and praiseworthy, because the one who commanded them is God.

And again Celsus, perhaps having misunderstood “For the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things,” or perhaps because uninformed people have been rash in explaining such things, and not understanding to what the terms for body parts applied to the powers of God refer, says: He has neither a mouth nor a voice. Truly God will have no voice, if voice is air that has been struck, or a striking of air, or a form of air, or whatever those skilled in these matters define voice to be. But what is called the voice of God is said, as the voice of God, to be seen by the people in the words “All the people saw the voice of God,” the seeing being understood, to use the customary language of Scripture, spiritually. He says also that God has nothing else of what we know; but he does not make clear of what things we know. If he means body parts, we agree with him, understanding “of what we know” as the things named in a bodily and more common sense. But if we take “of what we know” in general, since we know many things, then he has virtue, blessedness, and divinity. And if one takes “of what we know” in a higher sense, since all that we know is less than God, there is nothing absurd in our too accepting that God has nothing of what we know. For the attributes of God are greater than everything known not only to human nature but also to the beings that have risen above it. If he had read the words of the prophets, David saying, “But you are the same,” and, I think, Malachi, “and I have not changed,” he would have seen that none of us says there is any change in God, either in act or in thought. For remaining “the same” he governs changeable things according to their nature, and his reason chooses to govern them so.

Then Celsus, not having noticed the difference between “in the image of God” and “his image,” that “the image of God” is “the firstborn of all creation,” the Word himself and Truth itself and also Wisdom itself, being “the image of his goodness,” whereas humanity has been made “in the image” of “God”; and further that every person of whom “Christ is the head” is “the image and glory of God”; and without considering in which part of a human being being “in the image” of “God” is marked, and that it is in the soul that either has not had, or no longer has, “the old self with its deeds,” and which, from not having these, is called “in the image” of its Creator, says: Nor did he make humanity his image; for God is not like this, nor like any other form. Is it conceivable that being “in the image” of “God” should exist in the worse part of a human being, who is composite, I mean in the body, and that this, as Celsus has taken it, is itself what is “in his image”? For if being “in the image” of “God” is in the body alone, the better part, the soul, has been deprived of being “in the image,” and it is in the perishable body, which none of us says. And if being “in the image” of “God” is in both together, then God must be composite and must himself consist, as it were, of soul and body, so that the better part of being “in the image” may be in the soul, and the lesser, corresponding to the body, in the body, which none of us says. It remains, then, that being “in the image” of “God” is to be understood in what we call the inner person, who is renewed and is by nature able to become “in the image of the Creator,” when one becomes “perfect,” “as the heavenly Father is perfect,” and hears, “You must be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy,” and, learning “Imitate God,” takes up into his virtuous soul the features of God. Then too “the body” of one who has taken up what is God's in being “in the image” is a “temple” of God, since he has such a soul, and has God in the soul because of being “in the image.”

Again, he strings together for himself many things as though granted by us, which none of the Christians who have sense grants. For none of us says that God partakes of shape or color. Nor does he partake even of motion, he who because he stands firm and his nature is stable calls the righteous man too to something similar, saying: “But you, stand here with me.” And if some expressions seem to represent a kind of motion in him, like the one that says, “They heard the Lord God walking in the paradise in the evening,” such things must be understood as God being thought of as moving by those who have sinned, or understood in the same way as sleep or anger or something similar is said of God figuratively. Nor does God partake of being; for he is partaken of rather than partakes, and he is partaken of by those who have “the Spirit of God.” And our Savior does not partake of righteousness, but, being “righteousness,” is partaken of by the righteous. The subject of being is vast and hard to contemplate, especially if being in the proper sense is that which is stable and without a body: so as to find whether God is beyond being in dignity and power, giving a share of being to those to whom he gives it according to his Word, and to the Word himself; or whether he himself too is being, yet is said to be invisible by nature in the passage about the Savior which says, “who is the image of the invisible God,” where by the word “invisible” what has no body is meant. One must also inquire whether the only-begotten and firstborn “of all creation” should be called being of beings, idea of ideas, and first principle, and his Father and God beyond all these.

Celsus, then, says of God that all things come from him, having detached, I do not know how, “all things” from him. But our Paul says: “From him and through him and to him are all things,” showing the beginning of the existence of all things in “from him,” their holding together in “through him,” and their end in “to him.” And truly God himself is derived from nothing. And since Celsus says, Nor is he attainable by reason, I distinguish the meaning and say: if he means by the reason within us, whether the inward or the spoken word, we too will say that God is not attainable by reason. But if, understanding “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” we declare that God is attainable by this Word, being comprehended not by him alone but also by anyone to whom he reveals the Father, we will prove false Celsus's saying, Nor is God attainable by reason. The words He is not nameable also need distinguishing. If it means that nothing in words and meanings can express the properties of God, the statement is true, since even many qualities cannot be named. For who can express by names the difference between the quality of sweetness of a date and the sweetness of a dried fig? Who can distinguish by a name and represent the particular quality of each? It is not surprising, then, if God is not nameable in this sense. But if you take nameable to mean that it is possible to represent something about him by names, so as to lead the hearer by the hand and make him understand some things about God so far as is attainable by human nature, there is nothing absurd in saying he is nameable. In the same way we will distinguish the words For he has experienced nothing that can be grasped by a name. It is true too that God is beyond all suffering or emotion. So much for this.

Let us look also at his next passage, in which he as it were introduces someone who, after hearing these things, says: How, then, can I know God? And how can I learn the way there? And how do you show him to me? For now you cast darkness over my eyes, and I see nothing clearly. Then he, as it were, answers the one who raised this difficulty, and thinks he gives the reason why darkness has been poured over the eyes of the one who said this, saying: Those whom one leads out of darkness into bright light, being unable to withstand its brilliance, suffer in their sight, are harmed, and think they have been blinded. To this we will say that all who look to the evil arts of painters, modelers, and sculptors sit in darkness and are settled in it, not wishing to look up and ascend with the mind from visible and all things perceived by the senses to the Creator of the universe, who is light; but that everyone who has followed the rays of the Word is in light, since the Word has shown from what ignorance, impiety, and lack of learning about the divine these things were worshiped instead of God, and has led by the hand the mind of the one who wishes to be saved to the uncreated God over all. For “the people who sat in darkness,” the people of the Gentiles, “saw a great light, and on those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has risen,” God Jesus. No Christian, then, answers Celsus or any of those who accuse the divine word by saying, “How can I know God?” For each of them, as far as he can, has known God. And no one says, “How can I learn the way there?” since he has heard the one who said, “I am the way and the truth and the life,” and has tasted, in traveling it, the benefit of traveling. And no Christian would say to Celsus, “How do you show God to me?”

Here Celsus said something true: that someone, having heard his words, answers, seeing that his words are words of darkness, “You cast darkness over my eyes.” Celsus and those like him wish to cast darkness over our eyes; but we, by the light of the Word, dispel the darkness of impious doctrines. A Christian might say to Celsus, who says nothing clear or striking, “I see nothing clearly in your words.” Celsus, then, does not lead us out of darkness into bright light, but wishes to move us from light into darkness, making “darkness light and light darkness,” and falling under what Isaiah well said in this way: “Woe to those who make darkness light and light darkness.” But we, since the Word has opened the eyes of our soul, seeing the difference between light and darkness, choose by every means to stand in the light and do not wish to be near the darkness at all. The true light, being living, knows to whom its brilliance should be shown and to whom only light, not displaying its own brightness because of the weakness that still remains in the other's eyes. And if we must speak at all of sight suffering and being harmed, whose eyes should we say suffer this but those of the one held fast by ignorance of God and hindered by his passions from seeing the truth? Christians, then, by no means think they are blinded by the words of Celsus or of anyone estranged from piety. But let those who perceive that they are being blinded by following crowds that go astray and nations that hold festivals to demons come to the Word who gives eyes, so that, like the poor and blind men lying by the road who were healed by Jesus because they said to him, “Son of David, have mercy on me,” they too may receive mercy and get back their eyes, new and beautiful, such as the Word of God would create.

Therefore, if Celsus asks us how we think we know God, and how we will be saved by him, we will answer that the Word of God is able, when he comes to those who seek him or who receive him when he appears, to make known and reveal the Father, who was not seen before his coming. And who else can save the soul of man and bring it to the God over all but God the Word? He, being “in the beginning with God,” for the sake of those who had clung to the flesh and become what flesh is, “became flesh,” so that he might be received by those unable to see him as he was, the “Word,” “with God,” and “God.” And being spoken of in bodily terms and proclaimed as “flesh,” he calls to himself those who are flesh, so as first to make them be formed according to the Word who became flesh, and after this to lead them up to see him as he was before he became “flesh”; so that, having been helped and having ascended from the introduction according to the flesh, they may say: “Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer.” He “became flesh,” then, and having become “flesh” he “dwelt among us,” not coming to be outside us; and having dwelt and come to be among us, he did not remain in his first form, but, leading us up to the spiritual “high mountain,” he showed us his glorious form and the brightness of his garments, and not only his own but also that of the spiritual law, which is “Moses,” seen “in glory” with Jesus. He also showed us all prophecy, which did not die even after he became man but was taken up into heaven, of which Elijah was a symbol. And the one who has seen these things could say: “We saw his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Celsus, then, rather naively fabricated what he thinks we will say to his question how we think we will know God and how we will be saved by him; but we would say what has been set out above.

But Celsus says that we answer by a plausible conjecture, and he claims to record our answer as follows: Since God is great and hard to see, he put his own spirit into a body like ours and sent it down here, so that we might be able to hear and learn from him. But in our view the God and Father of the universe is not alone great; for he has given a share of himself and of his greatness to the only-begotten and firstborn “of all creation,” so that, being himself “the image of the invisible God,” he might preserve the image of the Father in greatness too. For it was not possible to be a well-proportioned, so to speak, and beautiful image “of the invisible God” without also representing the image of his greatness. And in our view God is invisible because he is not a body, but can be seen by those able to see with the heart, that is, with the mind; not with any heart at all, but with a pure heart. For it is not fitting for a defiled heart to look at God; that which is to see the pure one worthily must itself be pure. Let it be granted that God is hard to see; but he is not alone hard for anyone to see; his only-begotten is so too. For God the Word is hard to see, and so also is the Wisdom in which God made all things. For who can see, in each and every thing, the Wisdom in which God made each and every thing? It is not, then, because God is hard to see that he sent his Son as easy to see. Not understanding this, Celsus said as though in our person: Because he is hard to see, he put his own spirit into a body like ours and sent it down here, so that we might be able to hear and learn from him. But, as we have explained, the Son too, being hard to see, as God the Word through whom all things came to be, also “dwelt among us.”

If Celsus had understood what we say about the Spirit of God, and that “as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” he would not have declared for himself, as though from us, that God put his own spirit into a body and sent it down here. For God always gives a share of his own Spirit to those able to partake of him, the Spirit coming to be in the worthy not by cutting off and division. For the Spirit, in our view, is not a body, just as fire is not a body, which God is said to be in the words, “Our God is a consuming fire.” For all these things are said figuratively, to represent a nature understood by the mind by familiar and bodily names. And just as, if sins are said to be wood and hay and straw, we will not say that sins are bodies, and if good deeds are said to be gold and silver and precious stone, we will not say that good deeds are bodies, so too if God is said to be “a consuming fire” of the “wood” and “hay” and “straw” and all the substance of sin, we will not think of him as a body. And as, when he is called “fire,” we do not think of him as a body, so when God is called “spirit,” we do not say that he is a body. For Scripture customarily calls things understood by the mind spirits and spiritual, in contrast to things perceived by the senses; as when Paul says: “But our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life,” he called the interpretation based on the senses of the divine writings “letter,” and the interpretation grasped by the mind “Spirit.” So too in “God is spirit.” Since both Samaritans and Jews carried out the commands of the law bodily and typologically, the Savior said to the Samaritan woman: “The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor on this mountain will they worship the Father. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” By these words he taught that God must be worshiped not in the flesh and with fleshly sacrifices but “in spirit.” For he himself would be understood as “spirit” in proportion as one serves him “in spirit” and with the understanding. And the Father must be worshiped not in types but “in truth,” which “came through Jesus Christ” after the law was given “through Moses.” For “whenever we turn to the Lord” (“and the Lord is the Spirit”), “the veil” lying on the heart “is taken away,” “whenever Moses is read.”

Since Celsus has not understood what concerns the Spirit of God (“for the person without the Spirit does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually discerned”), he goes on to join things together for himself, supposing that when we say God is “spirit” we differ in no way from the Stoics among the Greeks, who say that God is a spirit that has passed through all things and contains all things in itself. The oversight and providence of God do indeed pervade all things, but not as the spirit of the Stoics does; and providence does contain and encompass all the things it provides for, yet not as a containing body contains, when what is contained is also a body, but as a divine power that encompasses what it contains. According to the Stoics, who say that the first principles are bodily and for that reason make all things perishable, and who run the risk of making even the God over all perishable, had this not seemed to them too glaringly absurd, even the Word of God, who comes down to human beings and to the least of things, is nothing other than a bodily spirit. But according to us, who try to show that even the rational soul is superior to all bodily nature and is an invisible and being without a body, God the Word, through whom all things came to be, would not be a body; he reaches, so that all things may come to be through the Word, not only as far as human beings but also to things thought to be the least and governed by nature. Let the Stoics, then, consume everything in their cosmic fire; but we do not know of any being without a body that is consumed by fire, nor that the human soul, or the substance of angels or thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, is dissolved into fire.

Therefore Celsus, as one who does not know the things of the Spirit of God, has said to no purpose that, since the Son is a spirit from God that came to be in a human body, the Son of God himself would not be immortal. Then again he confuses the argument for himself, as though some of us would not acknowledge that God is spirit, but only his Son, and he thinks he answers by saying that there is no nature of spirit such that it lasts forever. It is as if, when we say that God is “a consuming fire,” he were to say that there is no nature of fire such that it lasts forever, not seeing in what sense we say that our God is “fire,” and what he consumes, namely sins and wickedness. For it is fitting for a good God, after each person has shown what kind of contestant he has been, to consume wickedness with the fire of punishments. Then again he takes for himself something not said by us: that God must necessarily have breathed out his spirit again; and following from this, that Jesus could not rise with his body, for God would not have taken back the spirit he had given, defiled by the nature of the body. It is foolish, then, for us to answer arguments that are not ours as though they were ours.

Next, repeating himself after having said much above and mocked the birth of God from a virgin, to which we replied as well as we could, he says: If he wanted to send down a spirit from himself, why did he need to breathe it into a woman's womb? For since he already knew how to form human beings, he could have formed a body for this one too, and not have thrown his own spirit into such great contamination. In that way he would not even have been disbelieved, if he had been produced directly from above. He said this because he did not see the virginal and pure birth, free from any corruption, of the body that was to serve for the salvation of humanity. And the man who sets out the Stoic doctrine, and does not pretend to have learned about things indifferent, thinks that the divine nature was thrown into defilement and was defiled, whether in coming to be in a woman's body until a body was formed around it, or in taking up a body. He does something like those who think that the rays of the sun are defiled in mud and foul-smelling bodies and do not remain pure even there. And even if, according to Celsus's supposition, a body had been formed for Jesus without birth, those who saw the body would not at once have believed that it did not come from birth; for what is seen does not also announce the nature from which it came. For example, if hypothetically there were some honey not from bees, no one would declare from taste or sight that it was not from bees; just as honey from bees does not show its origin to the senses, but experience shows that it comes from bees. So too experience teaches that wine comes from the vine; for taste does not trace it back to the vine. In the same way, then, a body perceived by the senses does not announce the manner of its coming into being. You will be led to accept this from the heavenly bodies, whose substance and brightness we perceive by seeing them, yet sense certainly does not tell us whether they are generated or ungenerated. There have in fact been rival schools of thought about these; and even those who say they are generated do not agree about how they are generated; for sense does not tell them, even if reason, by force of argument, finds that they are generated, how they came to be.

Next he repeats what he has already said many times about the opinion of Marcion; in part he sets out Marcion's views truly, and in part he has misunderstood them too. We need not answer or refute this. Then again he brings up for himself what may be said for Marcion and against him, saying which charges they escape and which they fall into; and when he wishes to support the argument that says Jesus was prophesied, so as to accuse Marcion and his followers, he says plainly: How will one who was punished in this way be shown to be the child of God, unless this had been foretold about him? Then again he jokes and, as is his habit, mocks, bringing in two sons of gods, one of the Creator and the other of Marcion's god, and paints their single combats, saying they are like those of quails, and the battles of their fathers, who, being useless from old age and senile, do nothing to each other but let their sons fight. What he said above we will say to him: What old woman lulling a child to sleep would not be ashamed to say such things as he says in the book entitled The True Word? For he ought to have stood up to the arguments in a methodical way; but he leaves aside the matters themselves and jokes and plays the buffoon, thinking he is writing mimes or lampoons, not seeing that such a way of arguing is contrary to his own purpose, since he wishes us to abandon Christianity and pay attention to his doctrines. If he had set these out seriously, they might perhaps have been more persuasive; but since he mocks, jokes, and plays the buffoon, we will say that it was for lack of serious arguments (for he did not have them and did not know them) that he fell into such nonsense.

Next he says: Since a divine spirit was in the body, it must certainly have differed somewhat from the others in size, or beauty, or strength, or voice, or impressiveness, or persuasiveness. For it is impossible that one to whom something divine belonged more than to others should differ in no way from another; but this body differed in no way from another, but, as they say, was small, ugly, and undignified. Here too it is plain that when he wishes to accuse Jesus, he quotes from the Scriptures as though he believed those that seem to give him grounds for accusation; but where, according to the same Scriptures, things might seem to be said contrary to what he takes up for his accusation, he does not even pretend to know them. It is admittedly written that the body of Jesus was ugly, but not, as he has set out, undignified too; nor is it clearly shown that he was small. The passage is recorded in Isaiah, who prophesies that he will come to the many not in a attractive form or with any surpassing beauty, as follows: “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before him as a child, as a root in a thirsty land; he has no form (nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form) nor beauty; but his form was without honor, failing beyond the sons of men.” Did Celsus, then, listen to these words because he thought them useful to him for accusing Jesus, but pay no more attention to what is said in the forty-fourth Psalm, where it is said: “Strap your sword to your thigh, mighty one, in your splendor and your beauty; and bend your bow, and prosper, and reign”?

But suppose he had not read the prophecy, or, having read it, had been led astray by those who misinterpret it as not prophesied about Jesus Christ. What will he say about the Gospel, in which Jesus went up “on a high mountain” and “was transfigured before” the disciples and was seen in glory, when also “Moses and Elijah,” “appearing in glory, spoke of his departure, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem”? Or, when a prophet says, “We saw him, and he had no form nor beauty,” and so on, does Celsus accept that this prophecy refers to Jesus, being blind in accepting what is said, and not seeing that it is a great proof that Jesus, who seemed to be without form, is the Son of God, that even his appearance was prophesied many years before his birth; but when another prophet says that he has splendor and beauty, does he no longer wish the prophecy to refer to Jesus Christ? And if it were clearly to be gathered from the Gospels that “he had no form nor beauty, but his form was without honor, failing beyond the sons of men,” one might say that Celsus said this not on the basis of the prophecy but of the Gospel. But as it is, since neither the Gospels nor the apostles show that “he had no form nor beauty,” it is plain that he is compelled to accept what comes from the prophecy as true of Christ; and this no longer allows his accusations against Jesus to proceed.

Again, the man who says, Since a divine spirit was in the body, it must certainly have differed somewhat from the others in size or voice or strength or impressiveness or persuasiveness, how did he not see that his body differed according to what those looking at it could bear, and for that reason appeared in a useful way, such as each needed to see it? And it is not surprising that matter, which is by nature changeable and alterable, transformable into whatever the Creator wishes and receptive of every quality the craftsman wishes, should at one time have the quality according to which it is said, “He had no form nor beauty,” and at another time one so glorious, impressive, and wonderful that the three apostles who had gone up with Jesus and saw such beauty fell “on their faces.” But he will say that these are fictions differing in no way from myths, like the rest of the wonders about Jesus. We have answered this at length earlier. But the account has also a more mystical meaning, declaring that the different forms of Jesus are to be referred to the nature of the divine Word, who does not appear in the same way to the many and to those able to follow him up the “high mountain” we have spoken of. For to those who are still below and not yet prepared to ascend, the Word “has no form nor beauty”; for to such his “form” is “without honor and failing” beside the words produced by men, which are figuratively called here “sons of men.” For we might say that the words of the philosophers, being “sons of men,” appear much more attractive than the Word of God preached to the many, which displays even the foolishness “of preaching”; and because of the apparent foolishness “of preaching,” those who see only this say: “We saw him, and he had no form nor beauty.” But to those who, by following him, have received power to go after him even as he ascends “the high mountain,” he has a more divine form. They see it if one is a “Peter,” who has received in himself the building of the Church from the Word and has acquired such a habit that no gate of Hades will prevail against him, since he has been lifted up through the Word “from the gates of death, so that he may” proclaim “all the praises” of God “in the gates of the daughter of Zion”; and those too see it who have taken their birth from words of great voice, who fall in no way short of spiritual “thunder.”

Next Celsus says something like this: Further, if God, like Zeus in the comic poet, woke up from a long sleep and wished to rescue the human race from evils, why did he send this spirit you speak of into one corner? He ought to have breathed similarly into many bodies and sent them out over the whole world. But the comic poet, raising a laugh in the theater, wrote that Zeus, when he woke up, sent Hermes to the Athenians and Spartans; do you not think that you have made the Son of God, sent to the Jews, more ridiculous? See here too the irreverence of Celsus, who unphilosophically takes up a comic poet trying to raise a laugh, and compares our God, the Creator of the universe, with the one in the poet who woke up and sent Hermes. We said earlier that God did not send Jesus to the human race as though rising from a long sleep. He has assigned the plan of the incarnation to the present time for good reasons, but he has always done good to the human race. For nothing good has come about among human beings without the divine Word visiting the souls of those who were able, even for a short time, to receive such workings of the divine Word. And the coming of Jesus to what seems one corner took place for good reason, since the one prophesied had to come to those who had learned of one God, who read his prophets and learned of the Christ who was proclaimed; and to come at a time when the Word was about to be poured out from one corner over the whole world.

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

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

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