Contra Celsum, Book 7

In the six preceding books, holy brother Ambrose, we have argued as well as we could against Celsus's accusations against Christians, leaving nothing, so far as possible, untested and unexamined, and not passing over anything without answering it as well as we could. Now, calling on God through Jesus Christ himself, whom Celsus accuses, that he who is the truth may shine in our hearts with what overthrows falsehood, we begin a seventh treatise too, saying in our prayer to God that prophetic word: “In your truth destroy them,” meaning, plainly, the arguments opposed “to the truth.” For these are destroyed by the truth of God, so that, when they have been destroyed, all who have been set free from distraction may say what follows: “I will sacrifice to you willingly,” offering to the God of the universe a rational and smokeless sacrifice.

Celsus's purpose now is to accuse the teaching that says the things about Christ Jesus were prophesied by the prophets among the Jews. First, at the outset, we examine his statement that those who introduce another God besides the God of the Jews cannot answer his objections at all, while we who have kept the same God take refuge in the defense drawn from the prophecies about Christ. He says to this: Let us see what excuse they will find. Those who introduce another God will have none; and those who keep the same God will say the same thing again, that clever saying, that it had to happen so; and the proof is that it had been foretold long ago. To this we will say that what he said a little earlier about Jesus and the Christians is so weak that even those who introduce another God, and do so impiously, could very easily answer what Celsus says. And if it were not absurd to give weaker people an opportunity to accept worse doctrines, we too would have done this, to prove false his statement that those who introduce another God have no defense against what Celsus says. But as it is, let us make our defense concerning the prophets, in addition to what was said above.

He says, then: The things foretold by the Pythian priestess, or the priestesses of Dodona, or the Clarian Apollo, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, and by countless other prophets, by whom practically the whole earth was colonized, they count as nothing; but what was said, or not said, in the manner of those people by the men in Judaea, as those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do even now, these they think marvelous and unchangeable. Let us say, then, about the oracles he has listed, that we could collect from Aristotle and the Peripatetic philosophers a good deal to overthrow the belief in the Pythian priestess and the other oracles; and we could also quote what Epicurus and those who embrace his doctrine say about them, to show that some Greeks too overthrow the prophecies believed in and admired throughout Greece. But let it be granted that the matters of the Pythian priestess and the other oracles are not fictions or human pretenses of divine inspiration. Let us see, then, whether even so it can be shown to those who examine the facts as lovers of truth that one who accepts that these oracles are real need not admit that there are gods in them, but rather certain evil demons and spirits hostile to the human race, which hinder the soul's ascent, its journey through virtue, and its restoration to God through true piety. It is recorded, then, about the Pythian priestess, whose oracle seems the most famous of all, that the prophetess of Apollo, sitting over the mouth of the Castalian cave, receives a spirit through her female parts; filled with it, she utters what are regarded as solemn and divine oracles. See from this whether the impurity and profanity of that spirit is not shown, since it enters the soul of the prophetess not through thin and invisible pores, far purer than a woman's parts, but through those which it would not be lawful for a chaste man to look at, much less to speak of or touch; and this not once or twice (for perhaps that would have seemed more tolerable), but as often as she is believed to prophesy from Apollo. Moreover, to bring the supposed prophetess into a trance and a frenzied state, so that she is in no way conscious of herself, is not the work of a divine spirit. For the one possessed by the divine Spirit ought, much more than anyone taught by the oracles, to be helped toward what contributes to ordinary life according to nature, whether toward what is profitable or what is advantageous, and to be most clear-sighted precisely at the time when the divine is with him.

For this reason we show, gathering from the sacred writings, that the prophets among the Jews, being enlightened by the divine Spirit as much as was useful to the prophets themselves, were the first to enjoy the coming of the Higher One to them. And through the touch, so to speak, of what is called the Holy Spirit on their soul, they became clearer-sighted in mind and brighter in soul, and in body too, which no longer opposed the virtuous life, since it was put to death according to what we call “the mind of the flesh.” For we are persuaded that by the more divine “Spirit” “the deeds of the body” are put to death, as well as the hostilities that begin from the mind “of the flesh,” which is hostile to God. But if the Pythian priestess is beside herself and not in her own mind when she prophesies, what kind of spirit must we think it is that pours darkness over the mind and the reasoning? Is it not of the same kind as the race of demons, which many Christians drive out of those who suffer from them, without any curious, magical, or pharmaceutical means, but by prayer alone and simple commands invoking God's name and such means as an ordinary person could apply? For as a rule it is uneducated people who do this, since the grace in the word of Christ shows the worthlessness and weakness of the demons, which do not at all need, in order to be defeated and to yield and leave the soul and body of a person, someone wise and powerful in rational demonstrations of the faith.

Moreover, if it is believed not only among Christians and Jews but also among many others, Greeks and barbarians, that the human soul lives and exists after its separation from the body, and reason shows that the pure soul, not weighed down by the leaden weights of wickedness, is carried up to the regions of the purer and bodies of the upper air, leaving behind the dense bodies here and the defilements in them, while the evil soul, dragged down to the earth by its sins and unable even to recover its breath, is carried about and rolls about here, one around “the tombs,” where “phantoms” of shadowy souls have been seen, another simply around the earth: what kind of spirits must we think those are that are bound, so to speak, for whole ages to buildings and places, whether by certain charms or because of their own wickedness? Reason chooses to think such things are evil, using the power of foreknowledge, which is morally neutral, to deceive people and to draw them away from God and from pure piety toward him. This is shown by the fact that the same beings, whose bodies are nourished by the vapors from sacrifices and the portions taken from blood and burnt offerings, and who take pleasure in such things, come to be, as it were, in love with life, like wicked men who do not welcome the purer life outside bodies but, for the sake of bodily pleasures, cling to life in the earthly body. And if the Apollo at Delphi were a god, as the Greeks think, whom should he rather have chosen as prophet than the wise man, or, if no such man were found, at least one making progress? How would he not have preferred a man to prophesy rather than a woman? And if he wanted the female sex, being perhaps unable to find pleasure in anything else or not delighting in anything but women's parts, why should he not have chosen a virgin rather than a woman to declare his will?

But as it is, the Pythian god admired among the Greeks judged no wise man, nor indeed any man at all, worthy of what the Greeks suppose to be divine possession; nor, among women, a virgin or a wise woman helped by philosophy, but an ordinary woman. Perhaps the better people were too good for his activity of possession. And if he were a god, he ought to have used his foreknowledge as a bait, so to speak, for the change of life, healing, and moral improvement of people; but as it is, history records nothing of the kind about him. For even if he said that Socrates was the wisest of all men, he blunted his praise by what he said before this about Euripides and Sophocles: “Sophocles is wise, Euripides wiser.” So Socrates, being thought better than tragic poets called wise by him, men who compete on the stage and in the orchestra for any prize at all and who produce now grief and pity in the spectators, now indecent laughter (for that is the aim of satyr plays), is not at all shown to be worthy of respect for philosophy and truth, and deserving of praise for that dignity. And perhaps he called him the wisest of all men not so much for his philosophy as for the sacrifices and the aroma of burnt fat he offered to him and to the other demons. For the demons seem to do what is asked of them by those who bring them offerings more for these reasons than for the works of virtue. That is why Homer, the best of poets, describing what happens and teaching what most persuades the demons to do what those who sacrifice wish, brought in Chryses, who, for a few garlands and thigh-pieces of bulls and goats, obtained what he asked against the Greeks for the sake of his daughter, so that they would be struck by plague and give him back Chryseis. I remember reading in one of the Pythagoreans, who wrote about the hidden meanings in the poet, that the words of Chryses to Apollo and the plague sent by Apollo on the Greeks teach that Homer knew that certain evil demons, delighting in smell of burnt offerings and sacrifices, pay as wages to those who sacrifice the destruction of others, if the sacrificers pray for this. And “the lord of wintry Dodona,” whose prophets are “men with unwashed feet who sleep on the ground,” having rejected the male sex for prophecy, uses the priestesses of Dodona, as Celsus himself noted. Let there be one like these at Claros, another at Branchidae, another at the shrine of Ammon, or wherever on earth they prophesy: how, then, will it be shown that they are gods and not certain demons?

Of the prophets among the Jews, some were wise before their prophecy and divine possession, while others became so, their minds enlightened by the prophecy itself. They were chosen by providence to be entrusted with the divine Spirit and the words that come from him because of their life, hard to imitate, very vigorous and free, and wholly undaunted by death and dangers. For reason requires that the prophets of the God over all be such men. They made the vigor of Antisthenes, Crates, and Diogenes look like child's play. At any rate, for the sake of truth and for freely rebuking sinners, “they were stoned, they were sawed in two, they were tempted, they died by the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, oppressed, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth, of whom the world on earth was not worthy,” always looking to God and to the invisible things of God, which are not seen by the senses and are therefore eternal. The life of each of the prophets is recorded; for the present it is enough to cite the life of Moses (for prophecies of his too survive, recorded in the law), and that of Jeremiah, found in the prophecy named after him, and that of Isaiah, who, surpassing all asceticism, went “naked and barefoot” for three years. See too the vigorous life of boys, Daniel and those with him, reading how they drank water and their food was legumes, abstaining from meat. And if you can, look also at what came before these: Noah prophesying, and Isaac blessing his son prophetically, and Jacob saying to each of the twelve, “Come, that I may tell you what will be in the last days.” These and countless others prophesied for God and foretold what concerns Jesus the Christ. Therefore we count as nothing the predictions of the Pythian priestess, or of the priestesses of Dodona, or of the Clarian Apollo, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, or of countless others called prophets; but we are amazed at those of the men who prophesied in Judaea, seeing that their vigorous, strong, and worthy of respect life was worthy of the Spirit of God, who prophesied in a new manner, with nothing like the divinations from demons.

I do not know how Celsus, having said, what was said by the men in Judaea in the manner of those people, added, or not said, as though, being an unbeliever, he were claiming that possibly these things were not even said, but that things not said were perhaps written down. For he did not see the dates, nor that many years beforehand they foretold countless things and spoke also about the coming of Christ. Again, wishing to slander the ancient prophets, he says that they prophesied in the way that, he says, those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do even now, without making clear whether he means people foreign to the teaching of the Jews and Christians, or people prophesying in the Jewish manner, after the pattern of the prophets. However his words are meant, they are proved false. For neither have any of those foreign to the faith done anything like the prophets, nor are any more recent people, after the coming of Jesus, recorded to have prophesied among the Jews; for it is acknowledged that the Holy Spirit has left them, since they acted impiously toward God and toward the one prophesied by their own prophets. Signs of the Holy Spirit were shown at the beginning of Jesus' teaching, and more after his ascension, but later fewer; yet even now there are still traces of him among a few, whose souls have been purified by the Word and by the actions that accord with it. “For the holy spirit of discipline will flee deceit, and will rise up and depart from senseless thoughts.”⁠a

Since Celsus also promises to describe the manner of the prophecies in Phoenicia and Palestine, as one who has heard and thoroughly learned it, let us consider this too. First he says that there are several kinds of prophecies, without setting them out; for he could not, but was making a false boast. But let us look at what he says is the most perfect among the men of that region. Many, he says, nameless ones, very readily, on any chance occasion, both inside temples and outside temples; and others begging and roaming about cities or army camps, are moved as though uttering oracles. And it is ready to hand and customary for each to say: I am God, or a child of God, or a divine spirit. And I have come; for already the world is perishing, and you, people, are going to destruction because of your injustices. But I wish to save you; and you will see me coming back again with heavenly power. Blessed is the one who worships me now; but on all the rest I will cast everlasting fire, both on cities and on lands. And men who do not know their own penalties will repent in vain and groan; but those who have been persuaded by me I will keep forever. Then next he says: Having made these boasts, they add immediately unknown, frenzied, and wholly obscure words, whose meaning no one with sense could discover; for they are unclear and nothing, but they give occasion to any fool or sorcerer to take what was said in whatever sense he wishes about anything.

But if he were fair-minded in his accusation, he ought to have set out the prophecies in their very words, whether those in which the speaker claimed to be God almighty, or those in which he claimed to be the Son of God, or those in which the speaker was believed to be the Holy Spirit. For in this way he would have tried to refute what was said and to show that the words, which contain a call to turn from sins, a rebuke of the things that then existed, and foreknowledge of the future, were not inspired. That is why those who lived in their time wrote down their prophecies and preserved them, so that later generations too, reading them, might admire them as words of God, and, helped not only by the rebukes and calls to conversion but also by the predictions, and persuaded by the outcomes that the Spirit who foretold them was divine, might continue to practice the piety that accords with the Word, obeying the law and the prophets. The prophets, then, according to the will of God, said without any concealment whatever could be understood at once by the hearers as useful and contributing to the correction of morals; but whatever was more mystical and belonged to a higher initiation, related to contemplation beyond the hearing of the crowd, they declared “through riddles” and allegories and what are called dark sayings and what are named parables or proverbs; so that those who do not shrink from effort, but undertake every effort for virtue and truth, might examine and find them, and having found them, manage them as reason requires. But the fine fellow Celsus, as though angry at not having understood such words of the prophets, insulted them, saying: Having made these boasts, they add immediately unknown, frenzied, and wholly obscure words, whose meaning no one with sense could discover; for they are unclear and nothing, but they give occasion to any fool or sorcerer to take what was said in whatever sense he wishes about anything. And he seems to me to have said this craftily, wishing, so far as it rested with him, to prevent readers of the prophecies from testing and examining their meaning. He has had an experience like that of those who said of a certain prophet, who came to someone and foretold the future to him: “Why did this madman come to you?”

It is likely that there are arguments much wiser than our own capacity which can show that Celsus is lying here and that the prophecies are inspired. Yet we too have done what we could, explaining word by word what Celsus calls frenzied and wholly obscure in our treatises on Isaiah, Ezekiel, and some of the Twelve. And if God grants progress in his word at the times he wishes, there will be added to what has already been dictated on these either what is lacking or as much as we can manage to clarify. Others too, who have sense and wish to examine Scripture, would be able to find its meaning, since it is truly unclear in many places, but not, as Celsus says, nothing. Nor can any fool or sorcerer smooth it out or take what was said in whatever sense he likes. Everyone truly wise in Christ, and only such a person, could give the whole connection of what is said with concealment in the prophets, comparing “spiritual things with spiritual” and establishing each thing he finds from the usage of the Scriptures. But Celsus is not to be believed when he says he himself heard such men. For in Celsus's time there were no prophets like the ancient ones; since, if there had been, their prophecies too would have been written down, like those of ancient times, by those who accepted and admired them. It seems to me wholly plain that Celsus is lying when he says that the supposed prophets he himself heard, when refuted by him, admitted to him what they wanted, and that they invented their words at random. He ought also to have given the names of those he claimed to have heard, so that from the names, if he could give them, it might be clear to those able to judge whether he was telling the truth or lying.

He also thinks that those who make their defense about Christ from the prophets can say nothing to the point when anything evil or shameful or unclean or abhorrent seems to be said about the divine. That is why, as though there were no defense, he strings together for himself countless things about matters that are not granted. But one should know that those who wish to live according to the divine Scriptures, who know that “the knowledge of the senseless is words not examined,”⁠a and who have read “always ready to give a defense to everyone who asks us for a reason for the hope that is in us,” do not take refuge merely in the fact that these things were foretold, but also try to resolve the apparent absurdities and to show that there is nothing evil in the words, or shameful, or unclean, or abhorrent, but that they become so only for those who do not understand the divine Scripture as it ought to be understood. He ought to have cited from the prophets what appears evil in them, or seemed shameful to him, or was considered unclean by him, or what he supposed abhorrent, if he saw such things said in the prophets; for his argument would have been more striking and more effective for his purpose. But as it is, he has cited nothing, but threatens with a boast that such things appear in the Scriptures, telling lies about them. Reason, then, does not require us to make a defense against empty noises of words, to show that there is nothing evil or shameful or unclean or abhorrent in the words of the prophets.

Nor does God do or suffer the most shameful things, nor does he serve evil, as Celsus thinks; for nothing of the kind has been foretold. And if he says that it was foretold that God would serve evil or do or suffer the most shameful things, he should have cited the words of the prophets on this and not wished to defile his hearers to no purpose. The prophets did foretell what Christ would suffer, and they gave the reason why he would suffer; and God knew what his Christ would suffer. But where does it come from that these things were most abhorrent and most unclean, as Celsus says? He will seem to teach how the things he endured were most abhorrent and most unclean, when he says: For what else was it for a god to eat the flesh of sheep and to drink gall or vinegar but to eat dung? But in our view God did not eat the flesh of sheep. For even if he seems to have eaten, Jesus ate as someone with a body. As for the gall and vinegar, prophesied in the words, “They gave me gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,” we have spoken above and are forced by Celsus to repeat ourselves. Those who plot against the word of truth always bring to the Christ of God the gall of their own wickedness and the vinegar of their own turning to evil; and he, “having tasted it, would not drink.”

Then after this, wishing to overthrow the faith of those who have accepted what concerns Jesus because it was prophesied, he says: Suppose the prophets foretold that the great God, to say nothing more offensive, would be a slave or be sick or die; must God then die or be a slave or be sick, because it was foretold, so that by dying he may be believed to be God? But the prophets would not foretell this; for it is evil and unholy. Therefore one must consider neither whether they foretold it nor whether they did not, but whether the deed is worthy of God and good. And what is shameful and evil must be disbelieved, even if everyone in their madness seem to foretell it. How, then, are the things done to this man, as to a god, holy? From this it appears that he suspected the argument that Jesus was prophesied is something strong for persuading hearers, and he tries to overthrow it by another plausible argument, saying: Therefore one must consider neither whether they foretold it nor whether they did not. But if he wished to oppose what is said by demonstration and not by fallacy, he ought to have said: Therefore it must be shown that they did not foretell it, or that what was said about Christ was not fulfilled in Jesus as they foretold it; and he should have added what seemed to him the proof. For so it would have appeared what the prophecies say that we refer to Jesus, and how he proves our interpretation false; and it would have been found whether he nobly overthrows what we cite from the prophets for the account of Jesus, or whether he is caught shamelessly trying to force the clear evidence of truth into being not truth.

Since, positing hypothetically things impossible and unfitting for God, he says, If these things were prophesied about the God over all, must such things be believed about God because they are foretold?, and thinks he establishes that, even if the prophets had truly foretold such things about the Son of God, it would be impossible to believe the predictions that he would suffer or do them, it must be said that his hypothesis, being absurd, would produce conditionals ending in contradictory conclusions. This is shown as follows. If the true prophets of the God over all were to say that God would be a slave, or be sick, or die, these things will happen to God, for the prophets of the great God must speak truly. But also, if the true prophets of the God over all say these same things, since what is impossible by nature is not true, what the prophets say would not happen to God. And when two conditionals end in contradictory conclusions, by the theorem called “through two conditionals,” the antecedent common to both conditionals is refuted; here it is that the prophets foretell that the great God will be a slave or be sick or die. The conclusion, then, is that the prophets did not foretell that the great God would be a slave or be sick or die. The argument runs in this form: If the first, then the second; if the first, then not the second; therefore not the first. The Stoics also apply this form to a concrete case, saying: If you know that you are dead, you are dead; if you know that you are dead, you are not dead; it follows that you do not know that you are dead. They establish the conditionals in this way: If you know that you are dead, what you know is so; therefore it is so that you are dead. And again: if you know that you are dead, then, since there is something you know, you are not dead; for a dead person knows nothing. So it is plain that if you know that you are dead, you are not dead. And from both conditionals follows, as I said, the conclusion that you do not know that you are dead. Something of this sort holds for Celsus's hypothesis, stated in the words we quoted above.

But neither are the things we supposed hypothetically like the prophecies about Jesus. For the prophecies did not foretell that God would be crucified; they say of him who underwent death: “And we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty; but his form was without honor, failing beyond the sons of men; a man in suffering and pain, and knowing how to bear weakness.” See, then, how clearly they have called the one who suffered human things a man. And Jesus himself, knowing precisely that what was dying was a man, says to those plotting against him: “But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God.” And if there was something divine in the man understood to be Jesus, namely the only-begotten of God and “the firstborn of all creation,” who says, “I am the truth,” and “I am the life,” and “I am the door,” and “I am the way,” and “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” the account of him and of his being is surely different from that of the man understood to be Jesus. Therefore not even the very simplest Christians, who have not been brought up in rigorous arguments, would say that the truth has died, or the life, or the way, or the living bread that came down from heaven, or the resurrection; for the one who taught in the visible man Jesus says that he himself is the resurrection: “I am the resurrection.” None of us is so confused as to say, “The life has died,” or, “The resurrection has died.” Celsus's hypothesis would have had a place if we said that the prophets had foretold that God the Word, or the Truth, or the Life, or the Resurrection, or any of the other things the Son of God says he is, would die.

Celsus, then, speaks truly in this passage only in saying: But the prophets would not foretell this; for it is evil and unholy. And what is this but that the great God will be a slave or die? But what was prophesied by the prophets is worthy of God: that a certain “radiance” and “imprint” of the divine nature would come into life together with the holy soul of Jesus as it became man, to sow a word that would make the one who received it into his own soul, cultivated it, and brought it all to completion, akin to the God of the universe. This word has in itself the power of God the Word who would be in a human body and soul. And it will be so that his rays are not shut up in that one alone, nor is it said that the light which gives these rays, being God the Word, is nowhere else. The things concerning Jesus, then, insofar as they are understood as done by the divinity in him, are holy and do not conflict with the conception of the divine; and insofar as he was a man, adorned beyond every man by the highest participation in the Word himself and Wisdom itself, he endured as wise and perfect what the one who does everything for the whole human race, or even for all rational beings, had to endure. And there is nothing absurd in the man having died, and in his death not only being presented as an example of dying for the sake of piety, but also having brought about the beginning and progress of the destruction of the evil one, the devil, who had taken possession of the whole earth. The signs of his overthrow are those who, because of the coming of Jesus, have everywhere escaped from the demons that held them, and, set free from slavery to them, dedicate themselves to God and to a piety toward him that grows purer day by day, as far as they can.

Next Celsus says this: Will they not consider this in turn? If the prophets of the God of the Jews foretold that this man would be his child, how is it that he gives laws through Moses to be rich and powerful, to fill the earth, to slaughter their enemies young and old and kill them with their whole families, which he himself does, as Moses says, before the eyes of the Jews, and besides this threatens them expressly, if they do not obey, to treat them as he treats their enemies; while his son, then, the man “of Nazareth,” gives contrary laws, that one who is rich or loves power or lays claim to wisdom or glory has no access to the Father, that one must care no more for food and storehouse than “the ravens” do, and less for clothing than “the lilies,” and must offer oneself to be struck again to the one who has struck once? Is it Moses or Jesus who lies? Or did the Father, when he sent him, forget what he had commanded Moses? Or did he condemn his own laws, change his mind, and send his messenger for the opposite purposes? Here Celsus, who claims to know everything, has shown complete ignorance of the meaning of the Scriptures, supposing that there is no deeper sense in the law and the prophets than the words according to the letter. He does not see that the word would not have so plainly and implausibly promised bodily wealth to those who lived rightly, when the most righteous are shown to have lived in extreme poverty. The prophets, at any rate, who because of their pure life received the divine Spirit, “went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, oppressed, mistreated, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth”; for “many are the afflictions of the righteous,” according to the psalmist. If Celsus read the law of Moses, he probably thought that the words “You will lend to many nations, but you will not borrow,” spoken to one who keeps the law, meant that the righteous man was promised that he would become so rich in blind wealth that because of the quantity of his money he would lend not only to the Jews, nor to one other nation or a second or a third, but to many. How much money, then, would the righteous man have had, receiving it according to the law as the reward of righteousness, so as to lend to “many nations”? It follows from such an interpretation that one must also suppose the righteous man never borrows, since it is written: “but you will not borrow.” Did the nation, then, remain for so long in the religion of Moses, while plainly seeing, according to Celsus, that the lawgiver was lying? For no one is recorded to have become so rich as to lend “to many nations.” It is not credible that, if they had been taught to understand the law as Celsus thought, and plainly saw that the promises in the law were false, they would have fought for the law. And if anyone brings forward the recorded sins of the people as an example of their contempt for the law, perhaps because they had condemned it as lying, it must be said to him that he must also read of the times in which the whole people is recorded, after doing evil before the Lord, to have changed for the better and returned to the religion of the law.

Moreover, if the law promised them power, saying, “You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you,” and nothing deeper is meant by these words, it is plain that the people would have condemned the promises of the law much more. Celsus paraphrases certain words that indicate that the whole earth would be filled with the descendants of the Hebrews; which, as regards history, has happened after the coming of Jesus, rather as a sign of God's anger, so to speak, than as his granting a blessing. And concerning the Jews being promised that they would slaughter their enemies, it must be said that anyone who reads carefully and attends to the words would find that the literal interpretation is impossible. For the present it is enough to cite from the Psalms how the righteous man is introduced as saying, among other things: “In the mornings I killed all the sinners of the land, to destroy from the city of the Lord all who work wickedness.” Consider the literal wording and the disposition of the speaker, whether, after first relating brave deeds, which anyone who wishes can read, he could add what would be possible according to the letter, that at no other time of day but in the morning he killed “all the sinners of the land,” so as to leave none of them alive, and whether he destroyed from Jerusalem every single man who worked “wickedness.” You will find many such things in the law too, like “We did not leave any of them alive.”

Celsus also brings forward that it was foretold to them that if they did not obey the law they would suffer the same things they did to their enemies. Before Celsus, setting beside these what he thinks are contradictions of the law from the teaching of Christ, makes use of them, something must be said about what has been stated. We say, then, that the law is twofold, one according to the letter and the other according to the meaning, as some before us have also taught. And the law according to the letter is said, not so much by us as by God speaking in one of the prophets, to be “statutes that are not good” and “ordinances that are not good”; while the law according to the meaning is said, according to the same prophet, in the person of God, to be “good statutes” and “good ordinances.” For the prophet does not plainly contradict himself in the same passage. Consistently with this, Paul too said that “the letter” kills, which is equivalent to the literal sense, but “the Spirit” gives life, which has the same force as the sense according to the meaning. One can find in Paul something corresponding to what might be thought contradictions in the prophet. For as Ezekiel says in one place, “I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances that were not good, by which they will not live,” and in another, “I gave them good statutes and good ordinances, by which they will live,” or words to that effect, so Paul too, where he wishes to disparage the letter of the law, says: “If the ministry of death, carved in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not gaze at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, which was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be even more glorious?” But where he admires and approves the law, he calls it spiritual, saying, “We know that the law is spiritual,” and approves it in the words, “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.”

If, then, the wording of the law promises wealth to the righteous, let Celsus, according to the “letter” that kills, think that blind wealth is spoken of in the promise; but we think of the sharp-sighted wealth, by which one is rich “in all speech and all knowledge,” and in the sense in which we charge “those who are rich in this present age not to be arrogant, nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly provides us with everything to enjoy; to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share.” For “the wealth” in true goods “is the ransom of a person's soul,” according to Solomon; while the poverty opposed to it is destructive, because of which “the poor man does not withstand threat.” As we have explained about wealth, so we must speak about power, by which “one” righteous man is said to pursue “a thousand, and two” to put to flight “ten thousand.” If these things are understood so in the matter of wealth, see whether it does not follow from God's promise that one who is rich “in all speech and all knowledge” and all wisdom and every good work lends “to many nations” out of his wealth in speech, wisdom, and knowledge, as Paul lent, fully preaching “the gospel of Christ” “from Jerusalem” and around as far as “Illyricum” to all the nations he visited. And since divine things were made known to him by revelation, his soul being enlightened by the divinity of the Word, for this reason he did not borrow, nor did he need a person to teach the word to him. And since it is also written, “You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you,” by the power that comes from the Word he ruled over those from the Gentiles, subjecting them to the teaching of Christ Jesus, and was never placed under men as though they were his superiors. So too he filled the earth.

And if we must also explain the slaughtering, and at the same time the power of the righteous man in all things, it must be said that when he says, “In the mornings I killed all the sinners of the land, to destroy from the city of the Lord all who work wickedness,” he figuratively called the flesh “land,” whose “mind” “is hostility toward God,” and his own soul “the city of the Lord,” in which there was “a temple of God,” since he had received a right opinion and conception of God, admired by all who saw it. At the same time, then, as the rays of the sun “of righteousness” shone on his soul, empowered and strengthened as it were by them, he killed all “the mind of the flesh,” called “sinners of the land,” and destroyed from “the city of the Lord” in his soul “all who work wickedness,” the reasonings and thoughts hostile to the truth. So too the righteous destroy every “living thing” of the enemies and of those who come from wickedness, so that not even an infant evil that has just begun to sprout is left. In this way we also understand the saying in the hundred and thirty-sixth Psalm, which runs: “Wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who will pay you back for what you did to us; blessed is he who will seize and dash your infants against the rock.” For the “infants of Babylon,” which means confusion, are the confusing thoughts that come from wickedness, just beginning to sprout and spring up in the soul. The one who seizes them, so as to dash their heads against the firmness and strength of the Word, dashes “the infants” of “Babylon” “against the rock,” and for this reason becomes “blessed.” Let God, then, command us to kill the things of wickedness young and old and with their whole families, teaching nothing contrary to what Jesus proclaimed; and let God bring about, before the eyes of the Jews “in secret,” the destruction of the enemies and of all that comes from wickedness. And let it be so that those who do not obey the law and word of God, having become like the enemies and shaped by wickedness, suffer what those who have abandoned the words of God deserve to suffer.

It is clear from this, then, how Jesus, the man “of Nazareth,” does not legislate against what was said about wealth and those who go beyond it, in saying that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, whether one takes “rich” more simply as the one distracted by wealth and hindered by it, as by thorns, from bearing the fruits of the word, or as the one rich in false doctrines, of whom it is written in Proverbs: “Better a poor righteous man than a rich liar.” Celsus probably took from “Whoever wishes to be first among you, must be everyone's servant,” and “The rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them,” and “Those in authority over them are called benefactors,” that Jesus forbade love of power; but this must not be thought contrary to “You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you,” especially in view of our explanation of that saying. Next Celsus throws in something about wisdom, thinking that Jesus teaches that the wise man has no access to the Father. Let us say to him: What kind of wise man? If it is the one formed by what is called the wisdom “of this world,” which is foolishness “with God,” we too will say that the man wise in this way has no access to the Father. But if one understands Christ as wisdom, since Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, we say not only that the man wise in this way has access to the Father, but also that the one adorned with the gift called the word “of wisdom,” given through the Spirit, far surpasses those who are not.

Again, we say that laying claim to glory among men is forbidden not only by the teaching of Jesus but also by the Old Testament. At any rate, one of the prophets, calling a curse on himself if he should be guilty of sins, says that worldly glory too would come upon him as one of the greatest evils. He says this: “Lord my God, if I have done this, if there is injustice in my hands, if I have repaid those who repaid me with evil, then may I fall empty before my enemies; then may the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and trample my life to the ground, and lay my glory in the dust.” Nor are the words “Do not be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink. Consider the birds of the heaven,” or “Consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap, and your heavenly Father feeds them; how much more are you worth than the birds?” and “Why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field,” and what follows, contrary to the blessings in the law that teach that the righteous man eats and is filled, or to what Solomon says in this way: “The righteous man eats and satisfies his soul, but the souls of the ungodly are in need.” For one must see that it is the food of the soul that is indicated in the blessing according to the law, by which not the composite man is filled but the soul alone. And from the Gospel one must perhaps take something deeper, perhaps something simpler: that one must not let one's soul be distracted by cares about food and clothing, but, living simply, be persuaded that one is provided for by God, if one cares only for necessities.

Celsus, without setting side by side the apparently contrary passages of the law and of the Gospel, also says: and must offer oneself to be struck again to the one who has struck once. We will say that we know both the saying spoken to those of ancient times, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” and have read, “But I say to you,” “To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.” But since Celsus, I think, having heard things from those who separate the divinity of the Gospel from the divinity of the law, sets out such things, it must be said to his argument that the ancient writings too know, “To the one who strikes you on the right cheek, offer the other also.” At any rate, it is written in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: “It is good for a man when he bears a yoke in his youth; he will sit alone and keep silent, because he has taken it upon himself. He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, and he will be overwhelmed with insults.” The Gospel, then, does not set in opposition to the God of the law a God who legislates differently, not even concerning a literal blow on the cheek. Neither of the two is lying, neither Moses nor Jesus; nor did the Father, when he sent Jesus, forget what he had commanded Moses; nor did he condemn his own laws, change his mind, and send his messenger for the opposite purposes.

If we must say a few words about the different way of life which the Jews formerly followed according to Moses, and which the Christians now wish to achieve according to the teaching of Jesus, we will say that it did not suit the calling of the Gentiles, who are subject to the Romans, to live according to the law of Moses in its letter; nor was it possible for the Jews of ancient times to keep the structure of their state intact if, hypothetically, they had followed the way of life according to the Gospel. For Christians could not, according to the law of Moses, put to death enemies or those who had acted against the law and were judged to deserve death by fire or stoning, since not even the Jews, though they wish to, can carry these things out according to that law as the law commanded. Again, if you take away from the Jews of that time, who had their own state and land, the right to march against their enemies, to fight for their ancestral ways, and to put to death or otherwise punish adulterers or murderers or those who had done anything like this, nothing would remain but for them to be utterly destroyed all at once when their enemies attacked the nation, since they would have been unnerved by their own law and prevented from defending themselves against their enemies. And providence, which formerly gave the law and now the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not wishing the Jewish way of life to prevail any longer, destroyed their city and temple and the worship of God in the temple through sacrifices and the prescribed service. And just as it destroyed those things, not wishing them to be carried out any longer, in the same way it increased the Christian way of life, which has grown daily in numbers and now in freedom of speech too, although countless obstacles arose to prevent the teaching of Jesus from being sown in the world. But since it was God who wished the Gentiles too to be helped by the teaching of Jesus the Christ, every human plan against the Christians was overthrown; and the more kings and rulers of nations and peoples everywhere humbled them, the more numerous they became, “and they became extremely strong.”

Next Celsus, setting out at length as said by us things not said by us about God, as though he were by nature a body and a body of human shape, wishes to overthrow things we have not asserted; it would be unnecessary to quote them or their refutation. For if we said what he says we assert about God, and he opposed it, it would have been necessary for us to set out his words, establish our own position, and refute his. But if he strings together for himself things he heard from no one, or, granting that he heard them, from some simple and guileless people who do not know the meaning of the word, we need not busy ourselves about what is unnecessary. For the Scriptures clearly say that God has no body; that is why “no one has ever seen God,” and “the firstborn of all creation” is said to be “the image of the invisible God,” as though it said “of the one who has no body.” We have discussed God adequately earlier too, when we examined how we understand “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”

After his remarks about God, in which he slanders us, he asks us: Where are we going to go? And what hope do we have? And as though we had answered, he sets out supposedly our words, thus: To another land, better than this one. To this he says: A happy life for happy souls has been recorded by divine men of ancient times; some named it the Isles of the Blessed, others “the Elysian plain,” from their release (lysis) from the evils here, as Homer says: “But the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth, where life is easiest.” And Plato, who held the soul to be immortal, openly called that region to which it is sent “earth,” thus: saying that “it is something very great, and that we who live from the Phasis to the Pillars of Heracles inhabit a small part of it, like ants or frogs around a marsh, living around the sea; and that many others live elsewhere in many such places. For there are everywhere around the earth many hollows, of all kinds in form and size, into which water and mist and air have flowed together; but the earth itself lies pure in the pure heaven.” Celsus supposes, then, that we have taken what concerns the other land, better and far superior to this, from certain men of ancient times whom he considers divine, and especially from Plato, who philosophized in the Phaedo about the pure earth lying in the pure heaven. He does not see that Moses, who is much older even than Greek writings, introduced God promising the holy land, “good and large, flowing with milk and honey,” to those who lived according to his law; not, as some think, the “good” land that is considered to be Judaea here below, which itself lies in the earth cursed from the beginning in the works of Adam's transgression. For “Cursed is the earth in your works; in sorrow you will eat of it all the days of your life” is said of the whole earth, of which every man who has died “in Adam” eats “in sorrow,” that is, in toil, and eats of it “all the days of” his “life.” And, being “cursed,” the whole earth “will produce thorns and thistles” “all the days of the life” of him who was cast out of paradise in Adam; and every man eats his bread “in the sweat of his face,” “until he returns to the earth from which he was taken.” The whole passage allows for much discussion that could be worked out to clarify the words; but for the present we have been content with a little, wishing to remove the distraction of supposing that what is said about the good land which God promises to the righteous is said about the land of Judaea.

If, then, the whole “earth” itself is “cursed in the works” of Adam and of those who died in him, it is plain that all its parts share in the curse, among them the land of Judaea; so that the words “into a good and large land, into a land flowing with milk and honey” cannot apply to it, even if Judaea and Jerusalem are shown symbolically to be a shadow of the good and large land lying pure in the pure heaven, in which is the heavenly Jerusalem. Discussing this, the apostle, as one raised together “with Christ” and seeking “the things above,” and having found a meaning that clings to no Jewish mythology, says: “But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless angels in festive gathering.” And so that one may be persuaded that we are not speaking contrary to the intention of the divine Spirit about the good and large land in Moses, they should pay attention to all the prophets, who teach the return to Jerusalem of those who have wandered and fallen away from it, and, in a word, their restoration to what is called the place and city of God, in the words of him who said, “His place is in holy peace,” and who also says: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God, on his holy mountain, spreading far the joy of all the earth.” For the present it is enough to cite what is in the thirty-sixth Psalm, which says this about the land of the righteous: “But those who wait for the Lord, they will inherit the land”; and a little later: “But the gentle will inherit the land and delight in abundance of peace”; and a little later: “Those who bless him will inherit the land”; and again: “The righteous will inherit the land and live on it forever and ever.” And see whether the earth's being pure in the pure heaven is not indicated, for those able to hear, by what is said in the same Psalm: “Wait for the Lord and keep his way, and he will exalt you to inherit the land.”

It seems to me that what Plato says about the stones considered precious here, which are said to have a kind of emanation from the stones in the better land, was also taken by him from what is written in Isaiah about the city of God, of which it is written: “I will make your battlements of jasper, and your stones stones of crystal, and your enclosing wall choice stones”; and again: “I will lay your foundations with sapphire.” Those who have understood the philosopher's teachings in a higher sense explain Plato's myth allegorically. But the prophecies, from which we conjecture that Plato too took these things, will be explained, for those fitted by purity of life and love of learning about divine things, by those who have lived like the prophets and in an inspired way, and have devoted all their time to the examination of the sacred writings. Our purpose was to show that we have not taken what concerns the holy land from the Greeks or Plato; rather they, who were later not only than Moses, the most ancient, but also than most of the prophets, either misunderstood some who spoke of such things in riddles, or read the sacred writings and, distorting them, said such things about the better land. Haggai clearly shows that “the dry land” is one thing and “the earth” another, calling this land on which we live dry land. He says this: “Yet once more I will shake the heaven and the earth and the dry land and the sea.”

Just as Celsus himself defers the explanation of Plato's myth in the Phaedo, saying: What he means by this is not easy for everyone to know, unless one can understand what it is that he says: “that because of weakness and slowness we are not able to pass through to the uppermost air,” and “that if our nature were able to bear the sight, we would know that that is the true heaven and the true light”; in the same way we too, thinking it does not belong to the present treatise to clarify what concerns the holy and good land and the city of God in it, defer it to the commentaries on the prophets, having explained in part, as far as we could, what concerns the city of God in our treatises on the forty-fifth and forty-seventh Psalms. The most ancient word of Moses and the prophets knows all true things by the same names as the more general things here, such as “true light,” and a “heaven” other than “the firmament,” and a sun “of righteousness” other than the sun perceived by the senses. And in a word it says, to distinguish them from things perceived by the senses, none of which is true: “God, his works are true,” applying “the works of God” to some things and what are called “the works of his hands” to lesser things. At any rate, finding fault with some through Isaiah, he says: “They do not regard the works of the Lord, and they do not consider the works of his hands.” So much for this.

The doctrine of the resurrection is vast and hard to interpret, and needs, more than any other doctrine, a wise man of great attainment to show what is worthy of God and the grandeur of the doctrine, which teaches that what Scripture calls the tent of the soul, in which the righteous “who are” in it groan “being burdened,” not wishing “to be unclothed but to be further clothed,” has the principle of a seed. Since Celsus did not understand it, and mocks what is said because he has heard about it from uneducated people who can explain it by no reasoning, it is useful, in addition to what we said above on this subject, to note only this in answer to his argument: that it is not, as Celsus thinks, from misunderstanding the transmigration of souls that we speak of the resurrection, but because we know that the soul, which is by its own nature without a body and invisible, when it is in any bodily place, needs a body suited to the nature of that place. Sometimes it wears this body after putting off the former one, which was necessary but is unnecessary for the second state; sometimes it puts it on over what it had before, needing a better garment for the purer places in the upper air and heavens. When it came to birth here, it put off what was useful in the womb of the mother while it was in her, the chorion, the membrane surrounding the fetus; and it put on under that what was necessary for one who was going to live on earth. Then again, since there is a “tent,” an earthly house, somehow necessary to the tent, the Scriptures say that the earthly house “of the tent” is destroyed, but that the tent puts on “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” And the men of God say that “the perishable” itself “puts on freedom from decay,” which is different from the imperishable, and “the mortal puts on immortality,” which is other than the immortal. For as wisdom is to the wise, and righteousness to the righteous, and peace to the peaceful, so freedom from decay is to the imperishable and immortality to the immortal. See, then, to what the word urges us, when it says we are “to put on” “freedom from decay” and “immortality,” which, like garments for one who has put them on and is wrapped in such garments, do not allow the one who wears them to be corrupted or to die. Let us have ventured to say this much on account of one who did not understand what we mean by the resurrection, and for this reason laughs at and mocks a doctrine he does not know.

Thinking that we uphold the doctrine of the resurrection for the sake of knowing and seeing God, he strings together for himself what he wishes and says this: When they are shut out on every side and refuted, they come back again, as though they had heard nothing, to the same question: How, then, can we know and see God? And how can we go to him? Let anyone who wishes know, then, that even if for other purposes we need a body, in order to be in a bodily place, and one of the kind that corresponds to the nature of the bodily place, and, needing the body, we put on over the tent what has been mentioned, yet for knowledge of God we have no need of a body at all. For what knows God is not the eye of the body but the mind, which sees what is “in the image” of the Creator and has received, by the providence of God, the power to know God. And what sees God is a pure heart, from which there no longer “come evil thoughts,” nor “murders,” nor “adulteries,” nor “sexual immoralities,” nor “thefts,” nor “false witness,” nor “blasphemies,” nor “an evil eye,” nor any other wrong thing; because of which it is said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” And since our own will is not sufficient to have a wholly “pure” “heart,” but we need God, who creates it such, for this reason the one who prays with understanding says: “Create in me a clean heart, O God.”

Nor will we ask anyone, as though God were in a place, and say: How can we go to him? For God is superior to every place and contains everything whatever, and there is nothing that contains God. Going to God, then, is not commanded to us in a bodily sense in “You must follow the Lord your God”; nor does the prophet, joined to God, say in a bodily sense in his prayer: “My soul has clung close behind you.” Celsus, then, lies about us when he says that we expect to see God with the eyes of the body, to hear his voice with our ears, and to touch him with physical hands. We know that the divine words speak of eyes that share only the name with the eyes of the body, and likewise of ears and hands, and, more wonderful than these, of a more divine sense different from what the many ordinarily call sense. For when the prophet says, “Uncover my eyes, and I will consider the wonders of your law,” or “The commandment of the Lord is far-shining, enlightening the eyes,” or “Enlighten my eyes, so that I do not sleep in death,” no one is so confused as to think that “the wonders” of the divine “law” are perceived with the eyes of the body, or that the commandment of the Lord enlightens the eyes of the body, or that a sleep that brings death comes upon the eyes of the body. And when our Savior says, “Anyone with ears to hear should listen,” even an ordinary person understands that these words are said about more divine ears. And if it is said that “the word of the Lord” came by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet, or of someone else, or the law “by the hand” of Moses, or “With my hands I sought God, and I was not deceived,” no one is so foolish as not to take it that there are certain hands spoken of figuratively, about which John also says, “Our hands have touched concerning the Word of life.” And if you wish to learn from the sacred writings about the better sense, which is not bodily, hear Solomon saying in the Proverbs: “You will find a divine sense.”

We have no need, then, as people who seek God in this way, to go where Celsus sends us, to the shrines of Trophonius, Amphiaraus, and Mopsus, where he says gods in human form are seen, and, as Celsus says, not deceptive but even clearly visible. For we know that these are demons, fed on the smell of burnt fat, on blood, and on the fumes rising from the sacrifices, and so held fast in the prisons built by their own desire, which the Greeks have supposed to be temples of gods. But we know that such places are the dwellings of deceiving demons. After this Celsus says maliciously of the gods in human form he has just mentioned that one will see them “not slipping by once, like the one who deceived these people, but always conversing with those who wish.” By this he seems to have supposed that Jesus was a phantom when he appeared to his disciples after the resurrection from the dead, as though he slipped by in order to be seen by them; whereas those whom he named gods in human form he thinks always converse with those who wish. But how can a phantom, as he himself says, slipping by to deceive those who saw it, after that sight accomplish so much, turn the souls of such people, and persuade them that they must do everything in a way pleasing to God, as those who will be judged? And how does what he names a phantom drive out demons and accomplish other workings not to be despised, not confined to one allotted place like his gods in human form, but reaching through the whole inhabited world, and gathering and drawing by its own divinity whomever it finds inclined toward the good life?

After this, in answer to what we have said as well as we could, Celsus again says something like this: “And they will say again: How will they know God if they do not perceive him through the senses? What is it possible to learn without sense?” Then, answering this, he says: “This is the voice not of a man, nor of the soul, but of the flesh. Nevertheless, let them listen, if they are able to understand anything, cowardly and body-loving race that they are: if you close your senses and look up with the mind, and turning from the flesh awaken the eyes of the soul, only so will you see God. And if you seek a guide for this road, you must avoid the deceivers and sorcerers and those who pander to idols, so that you may not be utterly ridiculous, blaspheming the others, the gods that are displayed, as idols, while worshiping one more wretched than even real idols, not even an idol any longer but truly a corpse, and seeking a father like him.” First we must say, in reply to his impersonation, in which he puts in our mouths words as though spoken by us in defense of the resurrection of the flesh, that the virtue of one who writes speeches in character is to keep the intention and the character of the person portrayed, and the fault is when someone puts words that do not fit into the mouth of the speaker. Equally blameworthy are those who, in speeches in character, attribute to barbarians and uneducated people or household slaves, who have never heard philosophical discourse nor spoken well, a philosophy which the writer has learned but which the person portrayed could not be expected to know; and again those who attribute to characters supposed to be wise and to know divine things what is said by the uneducated out of ordinary passions and reported out of ignorance. That is why Homer is admired in many respects, having kept the characters of the heroes as he established them from the start, for instance that of Nestor, or Odysseus, or Diomedes, or Agamemnon, or Telemachus, or Penelope, or any of the others; while Euripides is mocked by Aristophanes as one who speaks out of season, because he often put speeches of doctrines which he had learned from Anaxagoras or some other wise man into the mouths of barbarian women or slaves.

If such is the virtue in writing speeches in character, and such the fault, how could anyone not reasonably laugh at Celsus, who attributes to Christians what is not said by Christians? For if he was inventing speeches of simple people, how could such people distinguish sense from mind, and things perceived by the senses from things understood by the mind, and hold doctrines like those of the Stoics, who abolish beings understood by the mind, that whatever is perceived is perceived by the senses and that all perception depends on the senses? And if he is inventing speeches of those who philosophize and examine the teaching of Christ carefully and as far as they are able, he has not made them consistent with these either. For no one who has learned that God is invisible, and that there are some invisible created things, that is, things understood by the mind, would say, as though in defense of the resurrection: “How will they know God if they do not perceive him by the senses?” or “What is it possible to learn without sense?” And it is written, not in secluded writings read only by a few scholars, but in those that are more widely read, that “the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” From this one may know that, even if people in this life must begin from the senses and things perceived by the senses when they are about to ascend to the nature of things understood by the mind, yet they must by no means remain among things perceived by the senses. Nor will they say that it is impossible to learn things understood by the mind without sense; rather, using the question “Who is able to learn without sense?”, they will show that Celsus has no good reason to attach to it the remark, “This is the voice not of a man, nor of a soul, but of the flesh.”

So we say that the God of the universe is mind, or beyond mind and being, simple, invisible, and without a body, and we would say that God is perceived by nothing other than that which is made in the image of that mind; now, to use the words of Paul, “through a mirror and in a riddle, but then face to face.” And if I say “face,” let no one misrepresent, because of the word, the sense it conveys, but they should learn, from “with unveiled face seeing as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and being transformed into the same image from glory to glory,” that in such passages it is not a physical face that is meant but one understood figuratively, like eyes and ears and all the other terms which, as we showed above, share their names with the parts of the body. And indeed the man, that is, the soul using a body, called “the inner person,” and also “soul,” answers not what Celsus wrote down, but what the man of God himself teaches. A Christian would not use the voice of the flesh, since he has learned to put to death “by the Spirit the deeds of the body,” and to carry about “always in the body the dying of Jesus,” and “Put to death your earthly parts”; and since he knows what is meant by “My Spirit will not remain in these people forever, because they are flesh,” and understands also that “those who are in the flesh cannot please God,” and therefore does everything so as to be no longer at all “in the flesh” but only “in the Spirit.”

Let us see also to what he calls us, so that we may listen to him on the way we will know God; for he thinks no Christian can understand what he says, since he says: “Nevertheless, let them listen, if they are able to understand anything.” We must consider, then, what he wants us to hear from him. The philosopher, who ought to teach us, insults us; and when he ought to show his goodwill to his hearers in the opening of his discourse, he calls “a cowardly race” those who face death rather than renounce Christianity even with a word, and who are ready for every outrage and every kind of death. He says too that we are a “body-loving race,” we who say, “Even if we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him no longer,” and who so readily lay down the body for the sake of piety that a philosopher would not so easily take off his cloak. He says to us, then: “If you close your senses and look up with the mind, and turning from the flesh awaken the eye of the soul, only so will you see God.” And he thinks that this (I mean the teaching about two kinds of eyes), which he has taken from the Greeks, was not taught among us before. We must say that Moses, describing the making of the world, presents man before the transgression as in one sense seeing and in another not seeing: seeing, when it is said of the woman that “the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes to see, and beautiful to contemplate”; and not seeing, not only when the serpent says to the woman, as though of blind eyes, “For God knew that on the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened,” but also in “They ate, and the eyes of the two were opened.” Their eyes of sense, then, “were opened,” which they had rightly kept closed, so that they might not be distracted and hindered from seeing with the eye of the soul; while the eyes of the soul, which until then they had kept seeing and rejoicing in God and his paradise, these, I think, they closed because of sin. That is why our Savior too, knowing this twofold kind of eyes in us, says: “For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind,” hinting by “those who do not see” at the eyes of the soul, which the Word makes to see, and by “those who see” at the eyes of the senses, which the Word blinded, so that the soul may see without distraction what it ought. In everyone, then, who lives as a Christian in the right way, the eye of the soul has been awakened and that of sense has been closed; and in proportion to the awakening of the better eye and the closing of the sight of sense, the God over all and his Son, who is Word and Wisdom and the rest, are understood and contemplated by each.

Next after what we have examined, Celsus addresses to all Christians a speech which it would have been fitting to address, if at all, to those who admit that they are wholly alien to the teaching of Jesus. For the Ophites, as we said above, who deny Jesus altogether, or any others who hold views like theirs, are the ones who pander to idols, the deceivers and sorcerers; and they are the ones who wretchedly learn by heart the names of the doorkeepers. It is in vain, then, that he says to Christians: “And if you seek a guide for this road, you must avoid the deceivers and sorcerers and those who pander to idols.” And not even knowing that such people, no less than Celsus, being sorcerers, speak evil of Jesus along with him, and of all the worship of God he taught, he says, mixing us up with them in his speech: “So that you may not be utterly ridiculous, blaspheming the others, the gods that are displayed, as idols, while worshiping one more wretched than even real idols, not even an idol any longer but truly a corpse, and seeking a father like him.” That he does not know what Christians say and what those who invent such myths say, but thinks the charges brought against them belong to us and says these things to us though they do not apply to us, is clear from this: “Such deceit, and those wonderful counselors, and the demonic words addressed to the lion, and the amphibian, and the ass-shaped one, and the others, and the divine doorkeepers, whose names you wretched people learn by heart to your misfortune, and so you are wickedly possessed and are impaled.” He did not see that none of those who think the lion-shaped, the ass-shaped, and the amphibian are doorkeepers of the ascent stands firm to the point of death, even for what seems to him the truth. But what we do out of piety, even, if I may say so, to excess, offering ourselves to every kind of death, including impalement, he attributes to those who suffer none of these things; and on us who are impaled for the sake of piety he heaps insults for their mythmaking about the lion-shaped one, the amphibian, and the rest. It is not because of Celsus, then, that we avoid the account of the lion-shaped one and the rest, for we never received anything of the kind in the first place; but following the teaching of Jesus we say the opposite of those people, and do not agree that Michael has such a face and some other of those previously listed has such another.

We must consider also whom Celsus wishes us to follow, so that we may not lack ancient guides and holy men. He refers us to inspired poets, as he calls them, and wise men and philosophers, without giving their names; and having promised to show us the guides, he indicates in vague terms “the inspired poets and wise men and philosophers.” If he had given the names of each of them, it would have seemed reasonable for us to argue that he is giving us guides who are blind about the truth, so that we may go astray, or if not wholly blind, at least mistaken about many doctrines of the truth. Whether he wants Orpheus to be an inspired poet, or Parmenides, or Empedocles, or even Homer himself or Hesiod, let whoever wishes show how those who use such guides will travel better and be helped in the conduct of life, compared with those who, because of the teaching of Jesus Christ, have abandoned all images and statues, and all Jewish superstition as well, and through the Word of God look up only to God, the Father of the Word. And who are the wise men or philosophers from whom Celsus wishes us to hear many divine things, abandoning Moses the servant of God and the prophets of the Creator of the universe, who truly spoke countless things by inspiration, and abandoning him who shone upon the human race and proclaimed the way of the worship of God, and who, as far as lay in him, left no one without a taste of his mysteries, but out of surpassing love for humankind was able to give to the more intelligent a theology capable of lifting the soul from the things of this world, while nonetheless also coming down to the lower capacities of ordinary men, of less educated women and slaves, and in short of those helped by no one but Jesus alone, so that they might live better, as far as possible, with such doctrines about God as they could grasp?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And not only is it foolish to pray “to images,” but also to pretend to pray “to images” by way of accommodation to the many, as do those who follow the philosophy of the Peripatetics and those who embrace the views of Epicurus or Democritus; for nothing spurious should be in the soul of one who is truly pious toward the divine. We do not honor the images also so that we may not, as far as it lies with us, fall into the notion that the images are other gods. That is why we charge Celsus and all who admit that these are not gods with the honor that those reputed wise are seen to pay the images; following it, the many not only sin in thinking that they worship them by way of accommodation, but also fall in their souls into thinking that these are gods, and cannot even bear to hear that the things they worship are not gods. Celsus says that they do not think them gods, but offerings to gods, without showing how they are not offerings of men but, as he called them, of the gods themselves. For it is clear that these are the offerings of men who have gone astray about the divine. But neither do we suppose that the images are images of the divine, since we do not depict a form of the invisible God, who has no body. And since Celsus supposes that we fall into self-contradiction when we say that the divine is not of human form and when we believe that “God made man” his own “image” and made him in the image of God, we must say, as was said above too, that we hold that what is “according to the image of God” is preserved in the rational soul that is formed according to virtue. And here Celsus, not seeing the difference between the image of God and what is “according to the image of God,” says that we say that “God made man” his own “image,” and a form like himself; but this too we answered above.

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

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

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

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