Contra Celsum, Book 8

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

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

Before what follows, let us see whether we do not rightly accept the saying, “No one can serve two masters,” which is followed by “for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will hold to one and despise the other,” and after that, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Our defense calls us to a deeper and secret teaching about gods and lords. For the divine Scripture knows that the great Lord is above “all the gods”; and by “gods” here we do not understand those worshiped among the nations, since we have learned that “all the gods of the nations are demons,” but “gods” of whom the prophetic word knows a certain assembly, and knows that the God over all judges between them and appoints to each his proper work. For “God has taken his place in the assembly of the gods; among them he judges gods.” For he is “God of gods, the Lord,” who through the Son “has called the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” And we are commanded to give thanks “to the God of gods,” having learned also that “God is not the God of the dead but of the living”; and these things are said not only in the passages cited but in countless others.

The divine words teach us to examine and think such things about Lord and lords, saying in one place, “Give thanks to the God of gods, for his mercy endures forever; give thanks to the Lord of lords, for his mercy endures forever,” and in another that God is “King of kings and Lord of lords.” The Word knows that some gods are so called, while others really are gods, whether so called or not; and Paul, teaching the same about lords that are and are not, says: “For although there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.” Then, since “the God of gods” calls whomever he wishes “from the east” and “the west” to his own portion through Jesus, and Christ, being Lord, shows by having gone to the ends of all the earth and calling to himself from all its ends that he surpasses all who are lords, therefore Paul, knowing this, says after the words I have cited: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.” And perceiving a wonderful and mysterious teaching in the passage, he adds, “But not all have this knowledge.” When he says, “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things,” he says “for us” of himself and of all who have ascended to the God over all “the gods” and to the Lord over all “the lords.” And he has ascended to the God over all who worships him without division, without separation, and without partition, through the Son alone who brings to him those who try in every way, by excellent words and deeds and thoughts, to bring themselves into kinship with God, the Creator of the universe; the Son, God's Word and Wisdom, seen in Jesus. For this reason, and for others like it, I think that the ruler “of this age,” who transforms himself “into an angel of light,” inspired the words, “And there follows him a host of gods and demons, arranged in eleven divisions,” where he says of himself and of those who have philosophized, “We with Zeus, and others with other demons.”

Since, then, there are many so-called or real gods, and likewise lords, we do everything to rise above not only what is worshiped as gods among the nations on earth, but also those whom the Scriptures call gods, of whom those know nothing who are “strangers to the covenants” of God given through Moses and through Jesus our Savior, and who are aliens from his promises made known through them. He rises above slavery to all demons who does nothing that is pleasing to demons; and he rises above the portion of those who in Paul are said to be gods who looks, whether like them or in whatever way the matter stands, “not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are not seen.” And whoever sees how “the eager longing of the creation awaits the revealing of the sons of God,” subjected “not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope,” and, speaking well of the creation, sees how the whole of it “will be set free from the bondage of corruption” and will attain “to the freedom of the glory of the children of God,” is not distracted into serving anyone else together with God, nor into “serving two masters.” It is not, then, the voice of sedition in those who have understood such things and do not wish to “serve” many “masters,” and for this reason are content with the Lord Jesus Christ, who trains under himself those who serve him, so that, when they have been trained and become a “kingdom” worthy of God, he may hand them over to God the Father. They do indeed separate and break away from those who are aliens to “the commonwealth” of God and strangers “to his covenants,” so that they may live as citizens of “the commonwealth in heaven,” coming to the living God “and to the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to countless angels in festive gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.”

Nor is it as though God were harmed, as a man seems to be harmed by one who serves another besides him, that we decline to serve anyone other than God through his Word and his truth, but so that we ourselves may not be harmed by separating ourselves from the portion of the God over all, since we live in a way that belongs to his blessedness by the special Spirit “of adoption.” This is to be among the sons of the Father in heaven, who cry out powerfully in secret, not in mere words but in deeds, “Abba, Father.” The Spartan envoys did not bow down before the king of the Persians, although his bodyguards pressed them hard, because they feared their one master, the law of Lycurgus; and those who serve on the far greater and more divine embassy “for Christ” would not bow down before the ruler of the Persians, or of the Greeks, or of the Egyptians, or of any nation whatever, even if the demons, bodyguards of those rulers, and the angels of the devil, wish to force them to do so and try to persuade them to abandon him who is higher than every law on earth. For the Lord of those who are ambassadors “for Christ” is Christ, for whom they are ambassadors, who is the Word, who was “in the beginning,” and was “with God,” and was “God.”

Then, since Celsus thought he was raising a teaching deeper than appears about heroes and certain demons, saying, after his argument about service to men (that the first person one wishes to serve is harmed if one wishes to serve a second as well), that “the same would hold of heroes and such demons,” we must ask him what he means by heroes, and of what kind he says such demons are, so that one who serves this hero must not serve another, and one who serves such a demon must not serve another as well, as though the first demon, to whom one gave worship before the second, were harmed in the same way as men are harmed. He should also show what harm he thinks heroes or such demons suffer. For he will be forced either to fall into a sea of nonsense and then take back his argument and reject what he has said, or, if he does not wish to talk nonsense, to admit that he knows neither heroes nor the nature of demons. And to his argument about men, that the first are harmed if one serves a second, we must say: what harm does he say comes to the first man if one who serves him wishes to serve another as well?

For if he were speaking as a layman and not a philosopher of harm concerning money and the things we call external, he would be refuted as not even having attended to what Socrates said well: “Anytus and Meletus can kill me, but they cannot harm me; for it is not possible for the better to be harmed by the worse.” And if by harm he means a movement or state according to wickedness, it is clear that, since no harm happens to the wise, one may serve two wise men living in different places. And if not even this is reasonable, then the example he used to discredit “No one can serve two masters” was taken up in vain. Rather, the teaching about serving the God of the universe alone, through his Son who brings us to God, will prevail. Moreover, we will serve God not as though he needed it, nor as though he were grieved if we do not serve him, but because we ourselves are benefited by the service of God and become free from grief and uncontrolled emotion by serving the God over all through his only-begotten Word and Wisdom.

See how unexamined is his remark, “For if you serve anything else in the universe,” in which he suggests that the service of God is brought about for us, without any harm to ourselves, by simply attaching ourselves to anything that belongs to God. But as though aware that he had not spoken soundly in saying, “For if you serve anything else in the universe,” he then takes it up again and adds a correction to what he said, in this way: “It is not permitted for anyone to be honored to whom this has not been granted by him.” And let us ask Celsus about those honored as gods or demons or even heroes: from where, my good man, can you show that the right to be honored has been granted to them by God, and not by the ignorance and stupidity of men who have gone astray and fallen away from the one who is properly honored? At any rate, as you said a little before, Celsus, Hadrian's favorite is honored, and surely you will not say that it was granted by the God of the universe to Antinous to be honored as a god. We will say the same about the others, demanding proof that the right to be honored was granted them by the God over all. And if he retorts the same thing to us about Jesus, we will show that it was granted to him by God to be honored, “so that all may honor the Son even as they honor the Father.” For the prophecies before his birth were commendations of the honor due to him. And the marvelous things he did, not by sorcery, as Celsus thinks, but by a divinity foretold by the prophets, had God's testimony; so that “whoever honors the Son,” who is the Word, by doing nothing contrary to reason may be benefited by honoring him; and by honoring him who is the Truth, may become better from honoring truth, and likewise from honoring wisdom and righteousness and all that the divine words say the Son of God is.

That honor toward the Son of God, and likewise toward God the Father, consists in a sound life, see whether we are not taught this from “You who boast in the law dishonor God by breaking the law,” and from “How much worse punishment, do you think, will he deserve who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and regarded as common the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” For if the one who breaks the law dishonors God “by breaking the law,” and the one who tramples on the Word tramples “the Son of God” underfoot, it is clear that the one who keeps the law honors God, and the one adorned with the Word of God and with his works worships God. If Celsus had known who belong to God, and that only the wise do, and who are strangers to him, namely all the wicked who in no way incline toward taking up virtue, he would have seen how one ought to understand, “What grief, then, does one cause God, to whom all belong, by honoring and worshiping all who are his?”

Next after this he says: “And indeed whoever claims that one Lord has been spoken of, meaning God, acts impiously in dividing the kingdom of God and stirring up rebellion, as though there were factions and some other rival opposed to him.” This would have had force if he had shown by geometric proofs that those worshiped as gods by the nations are gods, and had shown that those supposed to dwell in the images, temples, and altars are not some wicked demons. But as for the kingdom of God, continually spoken of and written about among us, we pray both to understand it and to become such that we may be ruled by God alone, and the kingdom of God may be ours too. He, on the other hand, teaching us to worship many gods, ought, if he considers what is consistent with himself, to speak of a kingdom of gods rather than of God. There are no factions with God, then, nor is there any god who is his rival, even if some, like Giants or Titans, wish in their own wickedness to fight against God together with Celsus and those who have made war on him who has established the facts about Jesus through countless proofs, and on Jesus himself, who, being the Word, has given himself for the salvation of our race to the whole world at once, as each can receive him.

Next after this he might seem to say something plausible against us in the words: “If these people served no one else but one God, they might perhaps have a firm argument against the others; but in fact they give excessive worship to this man who appeared recently, and yet they think they commit no offense against God if his servant too is served.” To this too we must say that if Celsus had understood “I and the Father are one,” and what was said in prayer by the Son of God in “as I and you are one,” he would not have thought that we serve anyone else besides the God over all. “For the Father,” he says, “is in me, and I in the Father.” And if anyone is troubled by these words, in case we somehow go over to those who deny that the Father and Son have distinct individual existences, they should pay attention to “And the heart and soul of all who believed was one,” so that he may understand “I and the Father are one.” We worship, then, one God, as we have explained, the Father and the Son; and our firm argument against the others remains, and we do not give excessive worship to one who appeared recently as though he did not exist before. For we believe him who said, “Before Abraham came to be, I am,” and who says, “I am the truth”; and none of us is such a slave as to think that the substance of truth did not exist before the time of Christ's appearing. We worship, then, the Father of the truth and the Son who is the truth, being two distinct realities, but one in harmony, in agreement, and in identity of will; so that whoever has seen the Son, who is “the radiance of the glory” and the exact representation “of the being” of God, has seen God in him who is the image of God.

Then he thinks it follows, from our worshiping his Son together with God, that on our view not only God but also his servants are to be served. Now if he meant those who are truly servants of God after the Only-begotten of God, Gabriel and Michael and the rest of the angels, and said that these ought to be served, perhaps, having clarified what he means by “serve” and what the actions of one who serves are, we would have said on the subject, as discussing such great matters, what we were able to understand about them. But as it is, since he thinks the demons worshiped by the nations are servants, he does not bring us by any logical consequence to serve such beings, whom the Word shows to be servants of the evil one and of the ruler of this age, who draws away from God whomever he can. It is, then, because they are not servants of God that we decline to reverence and serve all those whom the rest of humanity reverence; for if we had been taught that they were servants of the God over all, we would not have called them demons. That is why we reverence the one God and his one Son, Word and Image, with earnest prayers and requests as far as we are able, bringing our prayers to the God of the universe through his Only-begotten; to whom we offer them first, asking him, who is “the propitiation for our sins,” as high priest to bring our prayers and sacrifices and intercessions to the God over all. Our faith, then, is directed to God through his Son, who confirms it in us, and Celsus can show no rebellion of ours concerning the Son of God. And we reverence the Father, admiring his Son, who is Word, Wisdom, Truth, Righteousness, and everything that we have learned the Son of God to be; and so too we reverence the one begotten of such a Father. So much for this.

Since Celsus says again, “If you were to teach them that this man is not his Son, but that he is the Father of all, whom alone one ought truly to worship, they would no longer be willing, unless they worship this man too, who is the leader of their rebellion. And they called him Son of God not because they greatly reverence God, but because they greatly exalt this man”: we, having learned who the Son of God is, and that he is “the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his being,” and “a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty,” and further “a radiance of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness,” know that he is Son from the Father, and the Father is his Father. There is nothing unfitting in this teaching, nor inappropriate for God, who has given existence to such an only-begotten Son. And no one could persuade us that such a one is not the Son of the unbegotten God and Father. If Celsus has heard some who do not confess that the Son of God is the Son of the Creator of this universe, that is for him and for those who agree with such a teaching to answer for. Jesus, then, is the leader not of rebellion but of all peace, who said to his disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” Then, since he knew that the people of the world and not of God would make war on us, he added to these words, “Not as the world gives peace do I give you peace.” And we take courage because of him, even if we suffer in the world, since he said, “In the world you have suffering; but take courage, I have overcome the world.” And we say that he is the Son of God, of the God whom, to follow Celsus's words, we greatly reverence; and we know that his Son has been greatly exalted by the Father. Granted that there may be some, as in a multitude of believers who admit differences of opinion, who through rashness suppose that the Savior is the greatest God over all; but we do not, since we believe him when he says, “The Father who sent me is greater than I.” That is why we would not subject him whom we now call Father to the Son of God, as Celsus slanderously claims.

After this Celsus says: “That I do not form this opinion wide of the mark, I will use their own words. For somewhere in the heavenly dialogue they say something like this, in these words: ‘If the Son is mightier than God, and the Son of Man is his lord (and who else will be lord over the God who rules?), how is it that many are around the well and no one goes into the well?⁠a Why, having traveled so long a road, are you without courage? You are mistaken; for I have courage and a sword.’ So it is not their aim to worship the God above the heavens, but the one they have supposed to be the father of this man, around whom they have gathered, so that, under the pretext of the great God, they may worship only this man whom they set at their head, the Son of Man, whom they declare mightier than and lord of ‘the God who rules.’ From this comes that rule of theirs, not to ‘serve’ two ‘masters,’ so that the faction around this one man may be preserved.” And here again, having taken these things from some most obscure heresy I cannot identify, he charges all Christians on the strength of them; I say most obscure, since the opinion from which Celsus took them is not known even to us, who have often exercised ourselves against those of the heresies; if indeed he took it and did not invent it or add a consequence of his own. For we, who say that the world perceived by the senses too belongs to the Creator of all things, say plainly that the Son is not mightier than the Father but inferior to him. And we say this because we believe him when he says, “The Father who sent me is greater than I.” And none of us is so confused as to say, “The Son of Man is lord” of God. We say that the Savior rules, especially when we understand him as God, Word, Wisdom, Righteousness, and Truth, over all things subject to him insofar as he is these things, but not over the Father and God who rules him. Then, since the Word does not rule the unwilling, and there are still some wicked beings, not only men but also angels and all demons, we say that he does not yet rule these, since they do not yield to him willingly; but in another sense of “rule” he rules them too (as we say that man rules the irrational animals, not by subjecting their ruling faculty, as he rules certain lions and beasts of burden that he has tamed), yet he does everything so that by persuading those who do not now obey him he may rule them too. On our view, then, what Celsus reports as said by us is false: “Who else will be lord over the God who rules?”

Then, I think, again confusing matters, he brings from another heresy the words, “How is it that many are around the well and no one goes into the well?” and “Why, having traveled so long a road, are you without courage? You are mistaken,” and “For I have courage and a sword”; none of which we, who belong to the church named after Christ alone, say is true. Having said this, he thinks he is saying things consistent with himself which have nothing to do with us. For our aim is not to worship some god on a hypothesis, but the Creator of this universe and of anything else there may be that is neither perceived by the senses nor visible. Those who walk “another way” and “other paths,” who deny him and have given themselves to a novel fiction and a mere name of a god as though greater than the Creator, will know, and whoever it may be who says that the Son is mightier than and lord “of the God who rules.” We have given the explanation that seems right to us of why one must not “serve two masters,” when we showed that no rebellion concerning Jesus the Lord can be proved among those who confess that they have risen above every lord and serve only the Lord, the Son of God, the Word of God.

After this Celsus says that we avoid setting up altars, images, and temples, because he thinks this is our token of a secret and forbidden association; not seeing that our altars are the ruling faculty of each righteous man, from which fragrant incense, prayers from a pure conscience, is truly and spiritually sent up. That is why John says in the Revelation, “The incense is the prayers of the saints,” and the psalmist, “Let my prayer be set as incense before you.” And our images and offerings fitting for God are not made by vulgar craftsmen, but are shaped and formed in us by the Word of God: the virtues, which are imitations of the firstborn “of all creation,” in whom are the patterns of righteousness, self-control, courage, wisdom, piety, and the other virtues. In all, then, who by the divine Word have formed in themselves self-control, righteousness, courage, wisdom, piety, and the works of the other virtues, there are images; by these we are persuaded it is fitting to honor the prototype of all images, the image “of the invisible God,” the only-begotten God. Moreover, those who put off “the old self with its deeds and put on the new self, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created him,” taking up what is “after the image of him who created him,” make images of him within themselves such as the God over all wishes. And just as among sculptors some accomplish their work marvelously, such as Phidias or Polyclitus, or among painters Zeuxis and Apelles, while others make images less well than these, and others less well than the second, and in short there is a great difference in the making of statues and pictures; in the same way some make images of the God over all better and with perfect knowledge, so that there is no comparison between the Olympian Zeus made by Phidias and the man made “after the image of him who created him”; but far better and more excellent than all those in the whole creation is the image in our Savior, who says, “The Father is in me.”

And in each of those who imitate him in this as far as they can there is an image “after the image of him who created him,” which they form by looking to God with a pure heart, having become “imitators of God.” In short, all Christians try to set up such altars as we have described and such images as we have shown, not lifeless and senseless, nor able to receive greedy demons lying in wait at lifeless things, but able to receive the Spirit of God, who dwells in the images of virtue we have mentioned and in what is “after the image of him who created him” as in his own home; and so too the Spirit of Christ settles on those who are, so to speak, conformed to him. Wishing to show such things, the Word of God recorded God as saying in a promise to the righteous, “I will dwell in them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people,” and the Savior as saying, “If anyone hears my words and does them, I and my Father will come to him and make our home with him.” Let whoever wishes, then, compare the altars I have described with the altars Celsus speaks of, and the images in the soul of those who worship the God of the universe with the images of Phidias and Polyclitus and the like; and he will clearly see that the latter are lifeless and decay with time, while the former remain in the immortal soul as long as the rational soul wishes them to remain in it.

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

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

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

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

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

Let us see what arguments Celsus uses in urging us to partake of offerings to idols and of the public sacrifices at the public festivals. What he says is this: “If these idols are nothing, what harm is there in joining the general feast? And if there are some demons, clearly these too belong to God, and one must both trust them, and sacrifice to them according to the laws, and pray to them, so that they may be favorable.” For this it would be useful to take up and explain the whole discussion of “offerings to idols” in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. There, answering the claim that “an idol is nothing in the world,” he established the harm that comes from eating offerings to idols, showing to those able to understand what is there that one who partakes of offerings to idols does nothing less evil than a murderer, since he destroys his brothers, for whom “Christ died.” And after this, laying down that what is sacrificed is sacrificed to demons, he shows that those who partake of “the table of demons” become “partners with demons”; and he shows that it is impossible for the same person “to partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” But since the explanation of these matters in the letter to the Corinthians requires a whole treatise with many proofs, we will be content with what has been briefly set out; from which it will be clear to anyone who examines it that, even if the idols are nothing, it is nonetheless harmful to join the general feast of the idols. We have also said enough to show that, even if there are some demons to whom the sacrifices are offered, we must not partake of them, since we know the difference between “the table of the Lord” and “the table of demons”; and because we know it, we do everything so that we may always partake of “the table of the Lord,” and guard ourselves in every way so that we may never become partners in “the table” of “demons.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Celsus also wants us to offer first-fruits to demons; but we offer them to him who said, “Let the earth produce green vegetation, yielding seed according to its kind and likeness, and the fruit tree bearing fruit whose seed is in it according to its kind on the earth.” And to him to whom we give first-fruits we also send up our prayers, “having a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God,” and we hold fast “the confession” as long as we live, finding God and his Only-begotten, revealed to us in Jesus, kind to human beings. And if we long also for a multitude of beings whom we wish to find kind, we learn “that thousands of thousands stood before him, and tens of thousands upon tens of thousands served him”; and they, regarding those who imitate their piety toward God as relatives and friends, work together for the salvation of those who call upon God and pray sincerely, appearing to them, thinking that they ought to hear them, and coming as though by one agreed signal for the benefit and salvation of those who pray to God, to whom they themselves also pray. For “they are all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation.” Let the wise men of the Greeks say, then, that demons have been allotted the human soul from birth; but Jesus taught us not to despise even “the little ones” in the church, saying that “their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven,” and the prophet says, “The angel of the Lord will camp around those who fear him and will rescue them.” We too, then, do not deny that there are many demons on earth; but we say that they exist and have power among the wicked because of their wickedness, but have no power against those who have put on “the whole armor of God” and have taken strength “to” stand “against the schemes of the devil,” and always study how to wrestle with them, knowing “that our wrestling is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.”

Let us consider also another statement of Celsus, which reads as follows: “Or could the satrap, governor, general, or procurator of the king of the Persians or of the Romans, and even those who hold lesser offices, charges, or services, do great harm if neglected, while the satraps and ministers of air and earth would do little harm if insulted?” See how he presents human satraps, governors, generals, and procurators of the God over all, and those holding lesser offices, charges, and services, as doing great harm to those who insult them, not seeing that not even a wise man would wish to harm anyone, but would rather try, as far as he can, to change and improve even those who insult him; unless, indeed, Celsus's satraps, governors, and generals of the God over all are worse than Lycurgus the lawgiver of the Spartans and Zeno of Citium. For Lycurgus, when he was given power over the man who had knocked out his eye, not only did not take revenge but did not cease charming him with words until he persuaded him to practice philosophy; and Zeno, to one who said, “May I perish if I do not take vengeance on you,” replied, “And I, if I do not make you my friend.” And I do not yet speak of those formed by the teaching of Jesus, who have heard, “Love your enemies and pray for those who mistreat you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven, who makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” And in the prophetic words the righteous man says such things as this: “O 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; may the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and trample my life into the ground,”

But the angels of God, who are truly his satraps, governors, generals, and procurators, do not, as Celsus thinks, harm those who insult them; and if some demons, such as Celsus too imagined, do harm, they harm as wicked beings who have been entrusted with no satrapy, command, or stewardship from God, and they harm those subject to them who have submitted to them as masters. For perhaps this is why those who in each place transgress in eating the foods customarily considered forbidden are harmed, if they are among those under those demons; whereas if some are not under them and have not subjected themselves to the demon of the place, they are free from suffering anything at their hands, though, having abandoned such demons but subjected themselves to others through ignorance of other things, they may suffer at their hands. But the Christian, the true Christian, who has subjected himself to God alone and to his Word, would suffer nothing from the demons, since he is stronger than demons. And he would suffer nothing, since “the angel of the Lord will camp around those who fear him and will rescue them,” and his angel, who “always” sees “the face of the Father” “in heaven,” always carries up his prayers through the only high priest to the God of the universe, and himself prays together with the one entrusted to his care. Let Celsus, then, not frighten us like children with bogeymen, threatening the harm that comes from the demons if we neglect them; for demons, though neglected, could do nothing to us, who are devoted to him who alone can help all who are worthy, and who nonetheless sets his own angels over those who worship him, so that neither the opposing angels nor the one called their “ruler of this age” may be able to work anything against those devoted to God.

Then, forgetting that he is speaking to Christians, who pray to God alone through Jesus, and mixing up the practices of others and connecting them unreasonably with Christians, he says: “If one names them in a non-Greek language, they will have power, but if in Greek or Latin, no longer.” Let him show whom we name in a non-Greek language as calling on him for help; and let him be persuaded that Celsus said these things against us in vain, whoever observes that Christians generally do not even use in their prayers the names found in the divine Scriptures and given to God; but Greeks use Greek names and Romans Latin ones, and so each prays to God and sings his praise in his own language as he can; and the Lord of every language hears those who pray in every language as though hearing one voice, so to speak, in its meaning, expressed in the various languages. For the God over all is not one of those who have been allotted some language, barbarian or Greek, and do not know the others, or do not care for those who speak in other languages.

Then after this, either having heard no Christian at all, or some lawless and uneducated one among the many, he says that Christians say: “Look, I stand beside the statue of Zeus or Apollo or any god you like, and I blaspheme it and strike it, and it does not avenge itself on me.” He does not see that in the divine legislation it is also commanded, “You must not insult gods,” so that our mouth may not grow used to insulting anyone, since we hear, “Bless and do not curse,” and are taught that “those who insult others” will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” And who among us is so foolish as to say such things and not see that such conduct can do nothing to overthrow the belief in those considered gods? For even those who are utter atheists, who deny providence and by their wicked and impious doctrines have produced a school of supposed philosophers, have themselves suffered none of what the many think evils, nor have those who embraced their doctrines, but they are even rich and healthy in body. And if one seeks harm among them, they should see that they are truly the ones who have been harmed. For what greater harm is there than not to perceive the Maker from the order of the world? And what worse misery than to be blinded in mind and not to see the Creator and Father of every mind?

Having attributed such words to us and slandered Christians, who do not say such things, he thinks he provides himself with a defense, which is rather a joke than a defense, where he says as though to us: “Do you not see, then, my good man, that someone even stands up to your demon and not only blasphemes him but banishes him from every land and sea, and binds you, who are dedicated to him like a statue, leads you away and impales you; and the demon, or, as you say, the Son of God, does not avenge himself on him at all?” This defense would have had force if we used such words as he recorded us as saying; and even so he would not have spoken the truth in calling the Son of God a demon. On our view, since we say that all demons are wicked, the one who has turned so many to God is not a demon but God the Word and God's Son; but according to Celsus, who has said nothing about wicked demons, Jesus has been called a demon, I do not know how, as though he had forgotten himself. Later, however, what is said about the impious will come, after all the remedies which they did not accept, upon those found in what one might call incurable wickedness.

And we, whatever we say about punishment, turn many from their sins through the teaching about punishment; but let us consider what answers the priest of Apollo or of Zeus, according to Celsus, gives: “Late,” he says, “grind the mills of the gods,” and “to children's children, who will be born in the future.” See how much better than this are “Fathers must not die for children, nor must sons die for fathers; each must die for his own sin,” and this, “The teeth of him who eats the sour grape will be set on edge,” and “The son will not bear the guilt of the father, nor will the father bear the guilt of the son; the righteousness of the righteous will rest on him, and the lawlessness of the lawless will rest on him.” And if anyone says that “to children's children, who will be born in the future” is like “visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,” they should learn that in Ezekiel this is called a “proverb,” since he blames those who say, “The fathers ate sour grapes, and the children's teeth were set on edge,” to which is added, “As I live, says the Lord,” “but each must die for his own sin.” It is not the present occasion to explain what the proverb about the “sins” being visited “to the third and fourth generation” means.

Then, insulting us like old women, he says: “You mock their images as you insult them; but if you had insulted Dionysus himself or Heracles in person, perhaps you would not have got off lightly. But those who stretched out and punished your god in person have suffered nothing, not even afterwards in all this time. What new thing has happened since then to make one believe that he was not a sorcerer of a man but a son of God? And he who sent his son with certain messages, when he was so cruelly punished that the messages perished with him, looked on and has not turned to him in all the time that has passed. What father is so unholy? Perhaps, as you say, he wished it, and that is why he was treated with outrage. But these whom you blaspheme, one could say that they too wish it and that is why they endure being blasphemed; for it is best to compare like with like. But these at least take severe vengeance on the blasphemer, who either flees and hides for this reason, or is caught and destroyed.” To this too I would say that we insult no one, since we believe that “those who insult others” will not “inherit the kingdom of God,” and read, “Bless those who curse you,” and “Bless and do not curse,” and know also, “When insulted, we bless.” And if insulting has some justification as a defense for one who thinks he has been wronged, even this the Word of God does not allow us; how much more, where insulting shows great foolishness, must we not insult? It is equally foolish to insult stone or gold or silver, shaped into the form of gods customary among those far from divinity. So too we do not mock lifeless statues, but, if anything, those who worship them. And even if there are some demons established in certain statues, and one of them is thought to be Dionysus and another Heracles, we do not insult these either; for such a thing is vain and is in no way fitting for one who is gentle, peaceable, and calm in soul, and who has learned that one must not insult anyone even for wickedness, whether man or demon.

I do not know how Celsus unwittingly fell into showing, in fact, that the demons or gods he praised a little before are most wicked, and take vengeance in retaliation rather than punish for correction, whenever someone insults them. For he says: “If you had insulted Dionysus himself or Heracles in person, perhaps you would not have got off lightly.” Let whoever wishes explain how one who is not present hears anything, and why he is sometimes present and sometimes not, and what business the demons have in moving from place to place. Next he says, thinking that we call God the body of Jesus that was stretched out and punished, and not the divinity in him, and that he was considered God when he was stretched out and punished: “But those who stretched out and punished your god in person have suffered nothing.” Having said a good deal above about the human sufferings he underwent, we now willingly pass over the subject, so as not to seem to repeat ourselves. But since he says that those who punished Jesus suffered nothing afterwards in all this time, we will show him and all who wish to learn that the city in which the Jewish people demanded that Jesus be crucified, saying, “Crucify, crucify him” (for they preferred that the robber cast “into prison for insurrection and murder” be released, and that “Jesus,” handed over “out of envy,” be crucified), not long afterwards was attacked and besieged for so long a time that it was overthrown from its foundations and laid waste, since God judged those who lived in that place unworthy of the shared human life. And, to speak paradoxically, sparing them, and seeing them incurable as regards a change for the better and growing daily in the flood of wickedness, he handed them over to their enemies. This happened because of the blood of Jesus shed on their land by their plotting, a land which could no longer hold those who had dared so great a crime against Jesus.

Something new, then, has happened since the time Jesus suffered: that, I mean, which concerns the city and the whole nation, and the sudden birth of a nation of Christians, born as it were all at once; new too is that the strangers “to the covenants” of God and aliens from the promises, those far from the truth, have received it by a certain divine power. These were not the works of a sorcerer of a man but of God, who sent his Word in Jesus for the sake of his messages, the Word who was so cruelly punished that the cruelty condemns those who punished him unjustly, and who endured most bravely and with all gentleness. His punishment did not destroy God's messages but, if one may put it so, brought them to knowledge; as Jesus himself taught, saying, “Unless the grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” So Jesus, “the grain of wheat,” having died, bore “much fruit”; and the Father always cares for the fruits that have come, still come, and will come from the death of the grain “of wheat.” The Father of Jesus, then, is a holy father, who did not spare “his own Son,” “but gave him up for us all,” who was his own lamb, so that “the Lamb of God,” dying for the whole world, might take away “the sin of the world”; and for this cause he endured, not under compulsion but willingly, what those who outraged him inflicted. Then after this Celsus, returning to the argument about those who blaspheme the images, says: “But these whom you blaspheme, one could say that they too wish it and that is why they endure being blasphemed; for it is best to compare like with like. But these at least take severe vengeance on the blasphemer, who either flees and hides for this reason, or is caught and destroyed.” It is not Christians who blaspheme them, but Christians who drive them out of statues and human bodies and souls, on whom the demons think they are taking vengeance. For Celsus, not understanding what happens, has said something true here; for it is true that the souls of those who condemn Christians, and of those who betray them, and of those who delight in making war on Christians, are filled with wicked demons.

But since the souls of those who die for Christianity out of piety, departing from the body with glory, destroyed the power of the demons and made their plotting against human beings weaker, for this reason, I think, the demons, having learned by experience that they are defeated and overcome by the martyrs of the truth, have been afraid to come back to taking vengeance; and so, until they forget the troubles they have suffered, it is likely that the world will be at peace with Christians. But when they gather their strength and, blinded by wickedness, wish again to take vengeance and persecute Christians, they will be overthrown again; and then again the souls of the pious, putting off their bodies for piety's sake, will overthrow the army of the evil one. And I think that the demons, perceiving that those who conquer and die for piety destroy their dominion, while those who are defeated by their sufferings and deny their worship of God become subject to them, sometimes struggle fiercely with the Christians who are handed over, as though punished by their confession and relieved by their denial. One can see traces of this even in the judges, who are pained by those who endure the outrages and tortures, and rejoice when a Christian is defeated. For they do not do this out of what they think is kindness, since they see clearly that “the tongue” of those overcome by pain “has sworn, but the mind” is “unsworn.” Let this be said also in answer to “But these at least take severe vengeance on the blasphemer, who either flees and hides for this reason, or is caught and destroyed.” And if a Christian flees, he does not flee out of cowardice, but keeping his Teacher's command, and preserving himself pure for the salvation of others who will be helped.

Let us see also what follows, which reads as follows: “Why need I list all that has been foretold, from oracles, by prophets and prophetesses, and by other men and women possessed, with inspired voice? And all the wonderful things heard from the inner shrines themselves? And all that has been revealed to those who consult them from victims and sacrifices, and all from other marvelous signs? To some, clear apparitions have appeared. All of life is full of these things. How many cities have been raised up by oracles and rid of plagues and famines, and how many, neglecting or forgetting them, have been miserably destroyed? How many have been sent out to found colonies and, following what was commanded, have prospered? How many rulers, how many private persons, have fared better or worse because of this? How many, distressed at childlessness, have obtained what they asked for and escaped the anger of demons? How many have been healed of bodily illnesses? And how many, on the other hand, having committed outrage at the temples, have been caught at once, some seized with madness on the spot, others confessing what they had done, others having killed themselves, others bound by incurable diseases? And already a terrible voice from the inner shrines themselves has struck some down.” I do not know how Celsus puts forward these things as clearly evident, while he has thought the marvels recorded among us, whether Jewish or concerning Jesus and his disciples, to be myths. Why are not ours true, and what Celsus speaks of mythical fictions? Not even the philosophical schools of the Greeks have believed in them, such as those of Democritus, Epicurus, and Aristotle; and they would perhaps have believed ours because of their evidence, if they had met Moses or one of the prophets who did marvelous things, or Jesus himself.

The Pythia is related once to have given an oracle after being bribed; but our prophets were admired not only by their contemporaries for the clear evidence of what they said, but also in later times. For through the oracles the prophets gave, cities were set upright, people were healed, and famines ceased. Indeed, the whole Jewish nation clearly went out as a colony from Egypt to Palestine according to oracles; and when it followed what God commanded, it prospered, and when it went astray, it repented. Why need I say how many rulers and how many private persons, according to the histories of Scripture, fared better or worse by heeding or neglecting the prophecies? And if we must speak of childlessness, over which some were distressed who then became fathers or mothers after sending up their prayers for this to the Creator of the universe, let one read about Abraham and Sarah, from whom Isaac was born when they were already old, the father of the whole Jewish nation and of others besides. They should read also about Hezekiah, who not only was rescued from illness according to Isaiah's prophecies, but also said with confidence, “For from now on I will father children, who will declare your righteousness.” And in the fourth book of Kingdoms the woman who received Elisha, who by God's grace prophesied the birth of a child, became a mother according to Elisha's prayers. Countless illnesses too were healed by Jesus. And others who dared to outrage the Jewish worship at the temple in Jerusalem suffered what is recorded in the books of Maccabees.

But the Greeks will say these things are myths, although they are attested as true by two whole nations. Why are not the stories of the Greeks myths rather than these? And if someone, coming to close quarters with the argument so as not to seem to accept arbitrarily what is his own and disbelieve what is another's, were to say that the Greek wonders were done by certain demons, and the Jewish ones either by God through the prophets, or by the angels, or by God through the angels, and the Christian ones by Jesus and his power in the apostles, come, let us compare them all with one another and see the end of the intention of those who worked them, and the benefit or harm, or neither, to those who received the supposed benefits. Will he not see that the Jewish nation of ancient times was philosophical, before they committed outrage against the divine, by whom they were abandoned because of their great wickedness; and that the Christians came together in a marvelous way, drawn at the beginning especially by miracles rather than by exhortations to leave their ancestral customs and choose what was foreign to them? For indeed, if one must use a probable argument about the first formation of the Christians, we will say that it is not credible either that the apostles of Jesus, uneducated and simple men, took courage to proclaim Christianity to people from anything other than the power given them and the grace in their word for the things they declared; or that their hearers were moved from long-standing ancestral customs, unless some remarkable power and marvelous deeds had moved them to doctrines so strange and foreign to those in which they had been raised.

Then, I do not know how, Celsus, citing the enthusiasm of those who struggle to the death rather than renounce Christianity, adds, as though putting our teachings on a level with what is said by initiators and guides to the mysteries: “Most of all, my good man, just as you believe in eternal punishments, so do the interpreters of those sacred rites, the initiators and guides to the mysteries; which you threaten others with, and they threaten you with. Which of them is truer or more powerful one may consider. For in word both of you equally affirm your own views; but if proofs are needed, they show many clear ones, bringing forward works of certain demonic powers and of oracles, and from every kind of divination.” By this he means that we and the initiators speak equally of eternal punishments, and that one should examine which of us speaks more truly. I would say that those speak truly who have been able to lead their hearers to live as though these things were so. Jews and Christians are so disposed concerning what they call the age to come and its rewards for the righteous and punishments for sinners. Let Celsus, then, or whoever wishes, show who were so disposed about eternal punishments by the initiators and guides to the mysteries. For it is likely that the intention of the originator of these teachings is not merely to discharge a duty and speak about punishments, but to lead the hearers to avoid, as far as they can, doing what causes the punishments. Moreover, the prophecies, to those who read them not carelessly, seem to me sufficient by the foreknowledge in them to persuade the intelligent and fair-minded reader that the Spirit of God was in those men; and with them none of the demonic works displayed, nor of the powers from oracles, nor of divinations, can be compared even in the slightest.

Let us see also what Celsus says to us next, as follows: “Moreover, is it not absurd of you, on the one hand to long for the body and hope that this very body will rise, as though we had nothing better or more precious than it, and on the other hand to cast it into punishments as dishonorable? But with those who believe this and are glued to the body it is not worth discussing this; for these are people who are also uncultivated and impure in other respects and, without reason, share in the sickness of rebellion. But with those who hope that the soul or the mind (whether they wish to call it spiritual, or an intelligent spirit, holy and blessed, or a living soul, or the above the heavens and imperishable offspring of a divine nature without a body, or whatever they like to name it), with those who hope that this will have eternal life with God, with these I will discuss. They are right in thinking that those who have lived well will be happy, and the unjust will be held altogether in eternal evils; and from this doctrine let neither they nor anyone else ever depart [the next words are corrupt].” As for the resurrection, even if he himself has often reproached us with it, we, having set out as well as we could what seemed reasonable to us on the subject, do not intend to reply many times to one charge made many times. Celsus slanders us as thinking there is nothing better or more precious than the body in our constitution; for we say that the soul, especially the rational soul, is more precious than any body, since the soul, and in no way the body, receives what is “after the image of him who created it.” For on our view God is not a body, so that we do not fall into the absurdities into which those who follow the philosophy of Zeno and Chrysippus fall.

And since he reproaches us as longing for the body, he should know that if longing is something bad, we long for nothing; but if it is morally neutral, we long for everything that God promises to the righteous. So too we long for and hope for the resurrection of the righteous. Celsus thinks that we are also inconsistent with ourselves, when on the one hand we hope for the resurrection of the body, as worthy of honor from God, and on the other hand cast it into punishments as dishonorable. But nothing is dishonorable that suffers for piety and chooses hardships for virtue; while everything is dishonorable that is spent in pleasures with wickedness. The divine Word at any rate says, “What seed is honored? The seed of man. What seed is dishonored? The seed of man.” Then Celsus thinks one must not discuss with those who hope for things concerning the body, as being unreasonably glued to a thing that cannot obtain what they hope for, calling them uncultivated and impure and without reason sharing in the rebellion; whereas he ought, as a lover of humanity, to help even the more uncultivated. For fellowship is not cut off from the more uncultivated among human beings as it is from the irrational animals, but he who made us made us equally for fellowship with all human beings. It is worthwhile, then, to discuss even with uncultivated people and to bring them, as far as possible, to a more cultivated state, and with the impure, to make them purer as far as possible, and with those who think whatever they think without reason and are sick in soul, so that they may no longer do anything without reason nor be sick in soul.

After this he accepts those who hope that the soul or the mind, or what they call the spiritual or rational spirit, intelligent, holy, and blessed, or the living soul, will have eternal life and be with God; and he admits as rightly held the doctrine that those who have lived well will be happy, and that the unjust will be held altogether in eternal evils. And I have been amazed at Celsus, beyond everything he says, for what he adds to the words above, where he says: “And from this doctrine let neither they nor anyone else ever depart.” He ought to have seen, since he was writing against Christians, for whom the whole foundation of faith is God, and the promises through Christ concerning the righteous, and the teachings about punishment concerning the unjust, that a Christian overturned by accepting Celsus's arguments against Christians would probably, in throwing away the teaching, throw away also the doctrine from which, he says, neither Christians nor anyone else should depart. But I think Chrysippus acted more humanely than Celsus in his Therapeutics of the Passions, wishing to heal the disturbing emotions as pressing on and troubling the human soul, first with arguments that seemed sound to him, but secondly and thirdly even with doctrines he did not approve: “For even if there are three kinds of goods,” he says, “one must heal the disturbing emotions on that basis too, not busying oneself, at the time the disturbing emotions are inflamed, with the doctrine that has already taken hold of the one troubled by disturbing emotion, so that untimely attention to overturning the doctrines that have taken hold of the soul, does not cause the possible cure to be lost.” And he says: “Even if pleasure is the good, and the one mastered by disturbing emotion thinks this, nonetheless one must help him and show that every disturbing emotion is inconsistent even for those who make pleasure the good and the end.” Celsus too, then, having once accepted the doctrines about those who lived well being happy and the unjust being held altogether in eternal evils, ought to have acted consistently with himself and, if possible, after the argument that seemed to him primary, to have established by further argument and proved at greater length that the unjust will truly be held altogether in eternal evils and those who have lived well will be happy.

For we too, primarily because of the many and countless things that have persuaded us to live according to Christianity, wish as far as we can to win all people to the whole teaching of Christians; but where we find people prejudiced by the slander against Christians, so that they do not even lend their ears to those who claim to teach the things of the divine Word, imagining that Christians are not even pious, there, out of love for humanity, we take our stand as far as we can, so that at least by establishing the doctrines about eternal punishment for the impious we may make even those unwilling to be Christians accept that teaching. So too about those who have lived well we wish to produce conviction, seeing that even those alien to the faith say much the same as we do about many things belonging to a sound life; for one would not find anyone who has entirely lost the common notions of what is noble and shameful, just and unjust. Let all people, then, seeing the world and the ordered motion in it of the heaven and of the stars in the fixed sphere, and the order of those called planets that move contrary to the motion of the world; seeing also the tempering of the air for the benefit of animals and especially of human beings, and the abundance of what has been created for the sake of human beings, beware of doing anything displeasing to the Creator of the universe and of their souls and of the mind in them; and let them be persuaded that they will be punished for their sins, and brought, in proportion to their good deeds or duties duly performed, by him who administers each according to what they deserve, to rewards proportionate to their good deeds or duties duly performed; and let all people be persuaded that the good will fare well for their better deeds, while the wicked will be handed over to pains and torments for their injustices, their sexual excess, and their lack of self-control, and further for their cowardice and timidity, and for all their folly.

Having said so much on this point too, let us see another statement of Celsus, which reads as follows: “Since human beings have been born bound to a body, whether for the sake of the administration of the universe, or paying penalties for sin, or because the soul has been weighed down by certain passions until it is cleansed in the appointed cycles (for according to Empedocles it must ‘wander thirty thousand seasons away from the blessed, becoming through time all kinds of forms of mortals’), we must believe, then, that they have been handed over to certain overseers of this prison.” See, then, how in these words, doubting like a man about so many things and setting out the doctrines of many about the cause of our birth, he shows a certain caution, not daring to declare any of them false. Would it not, then, have been fitting for such a man, who had once decided neither to agree at random nor boldly to reject the views of the ancients, at least to doubt, if he did not wish to believe, the teaching of the Jews declared by their prophets and that about Jesus; and to consider that it was likely that those who served the God of the universe, and who many times faced countless dangers and deaths for the sake of honor to him and to what they believed he had legislated, were not overlooked by God, but that some manifestation came to them too, since they despised human craftsmanship in images and tried to ascend by reason to the God over all himself? He ought to have considered that the common Father and Creator of all, who sees all and hears all, judging the choice of each according to what it deserves that seeks him and wishes to be pious, gives to these too some fruit of his protection, so that they may increase the notion of him which they have once received. If Celsus and those who hate Moses, the prophets among the Jews, Jesus, and his genuine disciples who worked for his word had reasoned in this way, they would not have so insulted Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and his apostles; nor would they have rejected the Jews alone among all the nations on earth, saying that they were worse even than the Egyptians, who brought down, as far as lay in them, the honor due to the divine to irrational animals, whether from superstition or from whatever cause or error. We have said this not to urge anyone to doubt the teaching of Christianity, but to show that for those who utterly insult the teaching of Christians it is preferable at least to doubt about them, and not to speak so boldly about Jesus or his disciples things they do not know and declare, not with what the Stoics call “apprehensive impression,” nor from any other criterion concerning which each school of philosophy has established what seemed good to it.

Then, since Celsus says, “We must believe, then, that they are handed over to certain overseers of this prison,” we must say to him that a good soul is set free from the bonds of wickedness even in the life of those whom Jeremiah called prisoners “of the earth,” because of Jesus, who said what the prophet Isaiah foretold long before his coming. And what did he foretell but “To say to the prisoners, Come out, and to those in darkness, Be revealed”? And this Jesus, as the same Isaiah foretold of him, is the one who “rose as a light on those who sit in the land and shadow of death,” so that for this reason we say, “Let us break their bonds apart and cast away their yoke from us.” If Celsus and those disposed against us like him could have heard the depth of the Gospels, he would not have advised us to obey those he called overseers of the prison. It is written in the Gospel that there was a “woman” who “was bent over and could not straighten herself fully.” Jesus, seeing her and seeing for what cause she was bent over, not being allowed to straighten herself “fully,” said: “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound for eighteen years, be freed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” And how many others now, bound by Satan, are bent over, unable because of him “to straighten themselves fully,” since he wants us to look down? And no one straightens them up except the Word who came to dwell in Jesus, and who inspired men before him too. And Jesus came to set free “all who were oppressed by the devil,” and said of him, with a depth befitting him, “Now the ruler of this world is judged.” We do not, then, insult the demons here, but expose their workings for the destruction of the human race, since on the pretext of oracles and bodily healings and other things they wish to separate from God the soul that has fallen into “the body of humiliation”; which those who have understood cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from the body of this death?” Nor do we offer our bodies at random to be racked and beaten to death; for one who is plotted against by the earthly demons and those who worship them, because he will not proclaim them gods, does not offer his body to these things at random. And we have rightly believed it pleasing to God to be beaten to death for virtue, to be racked for piety, and to die for holiness. For “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones”; and we say it is good also not to cling to life. But Celsus, likening us to criminals who justly suffer what they suffer for robbery, and not ashamed of so great a purpose, declares it similar to the disposition of robbers, making himself in this a brother of those who counted Jesus “with the lawless”; in whom the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “He was counted with the lawless.”

Next after this Celsus says: “Reason chooses one of two courses. If they refuse to serve those who reasonably preside over these things, they should not come to manhood, nor marry a wife, nor raise children, nor do anything else in life, but depart from here with all speed, leaving no descendants behind, so that such a race may be utterly wiped out from the earth. But if they will marry wives and father children and taste fruits and share in the things of life and endure the evils appointed (for it is nature that all people should experience evils; evils must exist, and they have no other place), then they must give the honors due to those entrusted with these things, and perform the fitting services for life until they are set free from their bonds, so that they do not seem ungrateful to them. For it is unjust to share in what they possess and contribute nothing to them.” We say to this too that no departure from life seems reasonable to us except that alone which is for piety and virtue, when those thought to be judges, or who seem to have power over our lives, set before us the choice: either to live while doing what is contrary to the commands of Jesus, or to die while obeying his words. God has also permitted us to marry a wife, since not all can receive what is superior, that is, what is wholly pure; and, when we have married, by all means to raise those who are born and not to destroy the children given by providence. And these things do not conflict with our not obeying the demons who control the earth; for armed with the whole armor of God we stand as athletes of piety against the race of demons that plot against us.

Even if, then, Celsus by his own argument sends us out of life with all speed, so that, as he thinks, such a race as ours may be utterly wiped out from the earth, we will live in the world of our Creator according to the laws of God, in no way willing to serve the laws of sin. And we will marry wives, if we wish, and receive the children given to us in our marriages. And if need be we will share in the things of life, enduring the evils appointed as trials of the soul. For so the divine words are accustomed to name what happens to human beings; in these, like gold in the fire, the human soul is tested and either exposed or shown to be admirable. And we are so prepared for what Celsus calls evils that we even say, “Examine me, O Lord, and try me; test my kidneys and my heart by fire.” For no one “is crowned unless he competes lawfully” here on earth with the body “of humiliation.” Besides this, we do not render the honors thought due to those to whom Celsus says the things here have been entrusted. For we worship “the Lord” our “God” “and serve him only,” praying to become imitators of Christ, who, when the devil said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me,” said, “You must worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” That is why we do not render the honors thought due to those to whom Celsus says the things here have been entrusted, since “no one can serve two masters,” and we cannot at once “serve God and mammon,” whether mammon is called one thing or many. And if one dishonors the lawgiver “by breaking the law,” it seems clear to us that, when two laws are opposed to each other, the law of God and the law of mammon, it is preferable for us to dishonor mammon “by breaking the law” of mammon, so that we may honor God by keeping the law of God, rather than to dishonor God “by breaking the law” of God, so that we may honor mammon by keeping the law of mammon.

Celsus, then, thinks that one performs the fitting services for life, until people are set free from their bonds, when one offers sacrifices according to the customs of the many to each of the gods recognized in the city, not understanding what is truly fitting as it is understood by exact piety. But we say that he performs the services of life with what is fitting who remembers who the Creator is and what is pleasing to him, and who does everything with a view to what is pleasing to God. Again, Celsus does not want us to be ungrateful to the demons here, thinking that we owe them thank-offerings; and we, clarifying the teaching about thanksgiving, say that we do nothing ungrateful toward those who do us no good but even stand against us, when we do not sacrifice to them nor even serve them. But we take care not to be ungrateful to God, whose benefits fill us, since we are his creatures, cared for by him, judged in whatever way we are, and awaiting from him hopes even beyond this life. And we have a symbol of our thanksgiving to God, the bread called “Eucharist” (thanksgiving). Nor, as we said above too, do the demons have the management of what has been created for our needs; so we do nothing unjust in partaking of created things and not sacrificing to those to whom they do not belong. And if we see that it is not certain demons but angels who are appointed over the fruits of the earth and the birth of animals, we speak well of them and call them blessed, as entrusted by God with what is useful to our race; yet we do not give them the honor owed to God, for neither does God wish this, nor do they themselves who have been entrusted with such things. And they approve of us when we guard against sacrificing to them rather than when we sacrifice; for they have no need of the fumes rising from the earth.

After this Celsus says something like this: “That in these things, even down to the least, there is someone to whom authority has been given, one may learn from what the Egyptians say: that the human body is divided among thirty-six demons or certain gods of the upper air, distributed into as many parts (others say many more), and each is appointed to take care of a different part of it. And they know the names of the demons in their native language, such as Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, Biou, Erou, Erebiou, Ramanor, Reianoor, and all the others they name in their own tongue; and by invoking them they heal the ailments of the parts. What, then, prevents one from greeting these and the others, if one wishes, so as to be healthy rather than sick, and fortunate rather than unfortunate, and to be freed as far as possible from tortures and punishments?” By these words Celsus tries to bring down our soul to the demons, as having been allotted our bodies, and, declaring that each presides over a part of our body, wants us to believe in the demons he speaks of and to serve them, so that we may be healthy rather than sick and fortunate rather than unfortunate, and be freed as far as possible from tortures. He has so far condemned the undivided and undistracted honor paid to the God of the universe as not to believe that God alone, worshiped and magnificently honored, is sufficient to give to the one who honors him, from his very worship, a power to prevent the demons' plotting against the holy man. For he has not seen how the name of Jesus, called upon by those who truly believe, has healed many of diseases and demon-possession and other misfortunes.

It is likely that one who embraces Celsus's views will laugh when we say that “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue is brought to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”; but after laughing he will receive more effective proofs that this is so than of the names he reports, Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, and the rest of the Egyptian list, as being invoked and healing the ailments of the parts. And see how, turning us away from believing in the God of the universe through Jesus Christ, he calls us, for the healing of our body, to believe in thirty-six barbarian demons, whom the Egyptian magicians alone invoke and by whom they promise us, I do not know how, better things. It is time for us, according to Celsus, to practice magic and sorcery rather than Christianity, and to believe in some countless number of demons rather than in the God over all, who is manifest in himself, living, and evident, through him who with great power sowed the pure word of worship of God in the whole inhabited human world; and I will not be lying if I add that he sowed it also among the other rational beings who need correction, healing, and a turning away from wickedness.

Celsus, at any rate, suspecting the slide into magic of those who have learned such things, and somehow perceiving that harm would come to his hearers, says: “One must, however, guard against this, so that no one, associating with these beings, be wholly absorbed in their service, and, becoming a lover of the body and turning away from better things, be overcome by forgetfulness. For perhaps one ought not to disbelieve wise men, who say that most of the earthly demons, being absorbed in generation and riveted to blood and the aroma of fat and melodies and bound to certain other such things, could do nothing better than heal the body and foretell future fortune to a man or a city, and that all they know and can do concerns mortal affairs.” Since, then, there is so great a danger of slipping in this matter, as even the enemy bears witness to God's truth, how much better, free from all suspicion of being absorbed in such demons, or becoming lovers of the body and turning away from better things and being overcome by forgetfulness of the better, to entrust oneself to the God over all through Jesus Christ, who gave us such teaching, and to ask from him all help and protection from holy angels and righteous ones, so that they may rescue us from the earthly demons, absorbed in generation, riveted to blood and the aroma of fat, drawn by outlandish melodies, and bound to other such things, who even by Celsus's admission can do nothing better than heal the body. But I would say that it is not even clear that these demons, served in whatever way, can heal bodies; rather, one must heal the body, if one wishes to live more simply and in the ordinary way, by the method of medicine, and, if more excellently than the many, by piety toward the God over all and by prayers to him.

Consider for yourself, then, what kind of character the God over all will accept rather, he who is able, as no one else is, to do everything, including benefiting people in soul, body, or external things: the one devoted to him in everything, or the one who busies himself with the names of demons, their powers and actions, incantations, herbs proper to demons, and stones with engravings on them corresponding to the forms of demons handed down, whether symbolic or of whatever kind. It is clear to anyone who can follow even a little that the unaffected character, free from such meddling and for that reason devoted to God over all, will be acceptable to God and to all who are akin to him; while the character that, for the sake of bodily health and love of the body and good fortune in morally neutral things, busies itself with the names of demons and seeks how to charm the demons with certain incantations, God will leave, as wicked, impious, and more demonic than human, to those whom the one who says such things to demons has chosen, to be torn apart by the thoughts each of them suggests, or by other evils too. For it is likely that, being wicked and, as Celsus admitted, riveted to blood and the aroma of fat and melodies and other such things, they do not keep faith and, as it were, pledges even toward those who gratify them with these things. For if others call on them against those who have served them, and buy their service with more blood and aroma of fat and the service they need, they might plot against the one who served them yesterday and gave them a share of the feast they love.

Celsus, having said much before this, even referring us to oracles and their divinations as those of gods, has now done better in admitting that those who foretell future fortune to a man or a city, and all that concern mortal affairs, are earthly demons, absorbed in generation, riveted to blood and the aroma of fat and melodies and bound to other such things, able to do nothing better than these. And it is likely that, when we opposed Celsus, who spoke of the oracles and of the worship paid to those considered gods as divine, someone supposed us impious for saying that these are works of demons drawing down the human souls to the things of generation; but now let whoever supposed this of us be persuaded by what Christians proclaim well, seeing that even the one writing these things against Christians has now at the end written them as though overcome by the spirit of truth. Even if Celsus says, then, “One must perform these rites as far as it is beneficial, for reason does not choose to do this altogether,” we must not perform rites to demons absorbed in the aroma of fat and blood, nor must we defile the divine, as far as lies in us, by bringing it down to wicked demons. If Celsus had examined exactly the notion of what is beneficial, and had seen that what is properly beneficial is virtue and action according to virtue, he would not have set “as far as it is beneficial” in connection with such beings, and demons at that, as he himself admitted. We, then, choose, if health and prosperity in the affairs of life are to come to us through the service of such demons, rather to be sick and unfortunate in the affairs of life with a conscience purely pious toward the God of the universe, than to be healthy in body and fare more prosperously in the affairs of life while being divided and falling away from God and being utterly sick in soul and wretched. And we must approach him who lacks nothing whatever except the salvation of human beings and of every rational being, rather than to those who need the aroma of fat and blood.

Celsus, then, I think, after all the arguments he gave about demons needing the aroma of fat and blood, makes, as it were, a recantation for the worse, and says that “one should rather think that the demons need nothing and lack nothing, but rejoice in those who act piously toward them.” If he thought this was true, he should not have set down the former things, or should have erased them. But human nature is not altogether abandoned by God and the Truth that is his Only-begotten. That is why Celsus spoke the truth about the aroma of fat and blood that demons need, but then by his own wickedness slid back into falsehoods and likens the demons to men who do what is just with perfect justice, even if no one is grateful to them, while doing good to those who repay them with gratitude. He seems to me to be confused here, at times having his ruling faculty disturbed by the demons, and at other times, recovering from the irrationality under them, to see a little of the truth. For again he adds: “God must not be abandoned anywhere at all, neither by day nor by night, neither in public nor in private, in every word and deed continually; but both with these and without them let the soul always be directed toward God.” I take “with these” to mean with public life, and with every deed, and with every word. Then again, as though wrestling in his reasoning against the frenzies caused by the demons and being mostly defeated, he adds: “If this is so, what harm is there in winning the favor of the rulers here, both the others and the powerful rulers and kings among men, since not even these have been deemed worthy of their position here without demonic power?” In what went before he tried, as far as lay in him, to bring our soul down to the demons; now he wants us to win the favor also of powerful rulers and kings among men; and since life and history are full of examples of these, I have not thought it necessary to set them out now.

It is the one God over all, then, whose favor we must win and whom we must pray to be gracious, winning his favor by piety and every virtue. And if Celsus wishes us to win the favor of some others after the God over all, let him consider that, just as the movement of its shadow follows a moving body, in the same way, when one wins the favor of the God over all, it follows that one has the favor of all his friends, angels, souls, and spirits. For they perceive those who are worthy of God's favor, and not only become favorable themselves to the worthy but also work together with those who wish to serve the God over all, and win his favor for them, and pray with them and make requests with them; so that we dare to say that, when people who with deliberate choice set better things before themselves pray to God, countless holy powers pray with them without being asked, helping our mortal race and, if I may so put it, sharing its struggle, because they see the demons fighting and contending against the salvation above all of those who dedicate themselves to God and care nothing for the hostility of the demons, even if the demons rage against such a man, who flees their service by aroma of fat and blood and hurries by every kind of word and deed to become akin to and united with the God over all through Jesus, who destroyed countless demons when he went about “healing” and turning back to God “those oppressed by the devil.”

We, however, must despise winning the favor of men and kings, not only if we are to win their favor by murders, sexual excess, and the most cruel deeds, but also if it is through impiety toward the God of the universe, or through some slavish and degrading word, foreign to brave and high-minded men who wish to take up endurance, as the greatest virtue, together with the others. Where, however, we do nothing contrary to the law and word of God, we are not mad, nor do we rush to rouse against ourselves the anger of a king or powerful ruler, which brings us to outrages and tortures or even death. For we have read also, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God; so that whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed.” In our Commentary on the Letter to the Romans we examined these words more fully and in various ways, as far as we could; but now we have taken them for the present purpose more simply, in the more common sense, since Celsus says, “Not even these have been deemed worthy of their position here without demonic power.” And since there is much to say about the establishment of kings and powerful rulers, and much inquiry on the subject because of those who have ruled more cruelly and tyrannically, or who from ruling have run aground on luxury and self-indulgence, for this reason we have put off examining the problem for the present. We do not, however, swear by the Fortune of the emperor, as we do not swear by any other supposed god. For if, as some have put it, fortune is only a manner of speaking, like “opinion” and “interval,” we do not swear by what is nothing at all as though it were a god, or had any real existence and could do anything, so that we may not apply the power of an oath to what we should not; or if (as some have thought, saying, “Those who swear by the Fortune of the Roman emperor swear by his demon”) what is called the emperor's Fortune is a demon, then in that case we must rather die than swear by a wicked and faithless demon, which often sins together with the man to whom it has been allotted, or even sins more than he.

Then again Celsus, like those who recover for a time from demon-possession and then fall back again, says something like this as though sober: “If, however, someone commands one who happens to worship God either to act impiously or to say anything else shameful, one must in no way whatever obey, but rather endure every torture and submit to every death before one even thinks, let alone says, anything unholy about God.” Then again, from ignorance of our teaching and besides from confusing everything, he says: “But if someone commands you to praise the Sun or Athena, praise them most eagerly with a fine hymn; for so you will seem rather to worship the great God, if you hymn these too; for piety becomes more perfect by passing through all things.” We say, then, that we do not wait for someone to command us to praise the Sun, since we have learned to speak well not only of those subject to God's ordering but even of our enemies. We praise the Sun, then, as a beautiful work of God, keeping the laws of God, and obeying “Praise the Lord, sun and moon,” and hymning, as far as it can, the Father and Creator of the universe. But Athena, ranked with the Sun, is the subject of myths in the stories of the Greeks, whether with hidden meanings or without them, which say that she was born fully armed from the head of Zeus; and that when she was pursued by Hephaestus, who wished to destroy her virginity, she escaped him, but loved and raised the seed that fell to the earth from his desire, calling it Erichthonius, “whom once,” they say, “Athena raised, daughter of Zeus, and the grain-giving earth bore.” And we see that one who accepts Athena, daughter of Zeus, must accept along with her many myths and fictions, which one who flees myths and seeks truth would not accept.

And even if she is interpreted figuratively and said to be prudence, let someone show that she truly exists as an actual being according to this figurative interpretation. And if Athena was a woman of ancient times who has been honored, since those who wished her name to be sung among human beings as that of a goddess handed down mysteries and rites to their subjects, much more ought we not to hymn Athena and glorify her as a god, since it is not permitted for us to bow down even to the great sun, though we speak well of it. Celsus says, then, that we will seem rather to worship the great God if we hymn both the Sun and Athena; but we know the opposite. For we sing hymns to the God over all alone and to his only-begotten, God the Word. And we hymn God and his only-begotten, as do also “sun and moon” and “stars” and all the heavenly host. For all these, being a divine choir, hymn the God over all and his only-begotten together with the righteous among human beings. We have said before that we must not swear by the king among human beings or by his so-called Fortune. So there is no need for us to answer again the words: “And if someone commands you to take an oath by a king among human beings, this too is nothing terrible. For to him have been given the things on earth, and whatever you receive in life you receive from him.” We say that not all the things on earth have been given to him, nor do we receive from him whatever we receive in life. For when we receive justly and well, we receive from God and his providence, such as cultivated fruits and bread, which strengthens “the human heart,” and the gentle vine and wine, which gladdens “the human heart.” And the fruits of the olive too we have from the providence of God, “to make the face shine with oil.”

Next Celsus says that “one ought not to disbelieve an ancient man who long ago declared, ‘Let there be one king, to whom the son of crooked-counseling Cronus gave it.’” And he adds: “For if you undo this doctrine, the king will rightly punish you. For if all were to do the same as you, nothing would prevent him from being left alone and deserted, and the things on earth from falling into the hands of the most lawless and savage barbarians, and neither the fame of your worship nor of true wisdom would be left among human beings any longer.” Let there be one lord, then, one king, not the one “to whom the son of crooked-counseling Cronus gave it,” but the one to whom he gave it who sets up “kings and” removes them, “and raises up the useful man” on the earth at the right time;⁠a and it is not the son who, as Greek myths say, drove Cronus from power and cast him down into Tartarus, who sets up kings, not even if one allegorizes these passages; but God who governs all things knows what he does in the matter of the setting up of kings. We do, then, undo the doctrine, “to whom the son of crooked-counseling Cronus gave it,” since we are persuaded that God, or the Father of God, wishes nothing crooked or twisted. But we do not undo the doctrine about providence and about what happens by it, whether primarily or as consequences of other things. Nor would the king rightly punish us for saying that it was not the son of crooked-counseling Cronus who gave him his kingship, but he who removes “kings and” sets them up. And let all do the same as I do, overthrowing the Homeric doctrine, keeping the divine one about the king, and observing “Honor the king”; and on such a hypothesis the king will not be left alone, nor will he be deserted, nor will the things on earth be in the hands of the most lawless and savage barbarians. For if, as Celsus says, all were to do the same as I, clearly the barbarians too, having come to the Word of God, will be most law-abiding and most gentle; and every worship will be destroyed, and only that of the Christians will prevail; which indeed will one day alone prevail, as the Word continually wins more souls.

Then Celsus, not listening to himself, having said something inconsistent with “For if all were to do the same as you,” says: “Surely you will not say that if the Romans, persuaded by you, neglect their customary duties to gods and men and call upon your Most High, or whoever you like, he will come down and fight for them, and they will need no other defense. For formerly too the same God promised those who paid heed to him these things and much greater than these, as you say; and you see how much he has helped them and you. Of them, instead of being masters of the whole earth, not even a clod of earth or a hearth is left; and of you, if one still wanders about in hiding, he is sought out for the penalty of death.” Since he asks, as a hypothesis, what would happen if the Romans, persuaded by the teaching of Christians, neglected their duties to the customary gods and their former human laws and worshiped the Most High, hear what we think about this. We say that if “two” of us “agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by the Father” of the righteous “who is in heaven”; for God rejoices in the agreement of rational beings and turns away from disagreement. What must we think, then, if not only, as now, very few agree, but the whole empire of the Romans? For they will pray to the Word who formerly said to the Hebrews when they were pursued by the Egyptians, “The Lord will fight for you, and you will be silent”; and praying in complete agreement they will be able to destroy far more enemies who pursue them than those destroyed by the prayer of Moses crying to God and of those with him. And if what God promised to those who keep the law has not come about, it has not failed because God lied, but because the promises were made on conditions, namely keeping the law and living according to the law. And if neither a clod nor a hearth is left to the Jews who received the promises on conditions, the blame must be laid on all their lawlessness, and especially on that against Jesus.

But on Celsus's hypothesis, if all the Romans were persuaded, they would by praying overcome their enemies, or would not even make war at all, guarded by the divine power that promised to save five whole cities for the sake of fifty righteous men. For the men of God are the salt that preserves the order of the world on earth, and earthly things hold together as long as the salt does not lose its flavor; for “if the salt has lost its taste,” it “is no longer good either for the soil or for the manure heap,” but “is thrown out” and trampled “by men.” “Anyone with ears should listen” how these things are said. And we, when God allows the tempter and gives him authority to persecute us, are persecuted; and when God does not wish us to suffer this, even in a world that hates us we are wonderfully at peace, and take courage because of him who said, “Take courage, I have overcome the world.” And he has truly overcome “the world”; therefore the world has strength only as far as he who overcame it wills, having received from the Father to overcome “the world”; and we take courage in his victory. And if he wishes us again to fight and struggle for piety, let the opponents come, to whom we will say, “I can do all things in him who strengthens me, Christ Jesus our Lord.” For when two sparrows are sold, as Scripture puts it, “for a penny,” “not one of them falls into a snare without the Father in heaven.” And divine providence embraces all things to such an extent that not even the hairs “of the head” have escaped being numbered by him.

Then again, as is Celsus's custom, he makes a muddle in what follows, saying what none of us has written. For he says something like this: “Nor is that tolerable when you say that, if those who now reign over us are persuaded by you and are captured, you will persuade those who reign after them, and then others, if they too are captured, and others after others, until, when all who are persuaded by you have been captured, some one government, having come to its senses and foreseeing what is happening, will destroy you all root and branch before it perishes first.” Reason does not require us to speak about this; for none of us says of those who now reign that, if they are persuaded and captured, we will persuade those after them again, and when they are captured we will again persuade the next. And from where did he fling out the idea that, as those who come later are successively persuaded by us and captured through not defending themselves against their enemies, some one government, having come to its senses and foreseeing what is happening, will destroy us root and branch? But it seems that in this, stringing nonsense together, he has blurted out this too of his own accord.

After this, having expressed a certain wish, “If only it were possible for those who inhabit Asia, Europe, and Libya, Greeks and barbarians, to the ends of the earth, to agree under one law,” and thinking this impossible, he adds that “whoever thinks this knows nothing.” If one must speak of this too, a little will be said on the subject, which needs much examination and argument to show that what is said about all rational beings agreeing under one law is not only possible but true. The Stoics say that when the element stronger than the others has prevailed, there will be the cosmic fire, all things changing into fire; but we say that the Word will one day prevail over the whole rational nature and transform every soul into his own perfection, when each, using simply his own power of choice, chooses what he wills and comes to be in what he chose. And we say that it is not likely that, as with diseases and wounds in bodies some of what happens is stronger than all medical art, so with souls there is anything arising from wickedness that cannot be healed by the rational being who is over all, who is God. For since the Word and the healing in him are more powerful than all the evils in the soul, he applies it to each according to the will of God, and the end of things is that wickedness is destroyed. Whether it is destroyed so that it can never again in any way be permitted, or not, is not for the present discussion to teach. The prophecies say much, in hidden words, about the complete destruction of evils and the correction of every soul; but for the present it is enough to cite the passage from Zephaniah, which reads as follows: “Prepare yourself, rise early; all their gleaning is destroyed. Therefore wait for me, says the Lord, on the day of my rising up as a witness; for my judgment is on the gatherings of the nations, to receive kings, to pour out on them all the anger of my fury. For in the fire of my jealousy all the earth will be consumed; for then I will turn to the peoples a tongue for its generation, so that all may call on the name of the Lord, to serve him under one yoke. From the ends of the rivers of Ethiopia they will offer me sacrifices. On that day you will not be put to shame for all your practices by which you acted impiously against me; for then I will take away from you the contemptuous things of your pride, and you will no more boast on my holy mountain. And I will leave in you a people gentle and humble, and the remnant of Israel will reverence the name of the Lord, and they will do no injustice and speak no vain things, and no deceitful tongue will be found in their mouth; for they will feed and lie down, and there will be none to make them afraid.” Let whoever can, having studied all this, set out the clear meaning of the prophecy, and especially examine what it means that, when all the earth is consumed, a tongue is turned “to the peoples for its generation,” corresponding to the state of things before the confusion; and they should consider what it means that “all call on the name of the Lord, to serve him under one yoke,” so that “the contemptuous things of pride” are taken away, and there is no longer “injustice,” nor vain words, nor a deceitful tongue. It seemed good to me to set out these things moderately and without exact exposition because of Celsus's words, since he thinks it impossible for the Greeks and barbarians who inhabit Asia, Europe, and Libya to agree. And perhaps such a thing is truly impossible for those still in bodies, but not impossible for those set free from them.

Next Celsus urges us to help the king with all our strength, to work with him in what is just, to fight for him, and to serve in the army with him, if he presses, and to share his command. To this too we must say that we give help to kings at the right time, a divine help, so to speak, taking up “the whole armor of God.” And we do this in obedience to the apostolic voice that says, “I urge, then, first of all that earnest requests, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, for kings and all who are in high positions.” And the more pious a person is, the more effective he is in helping those who reign, more than the soldiers who go out to the battle lines and kill as many of the enemy as they can. Then we would also say this to those who are strangers to the faith and ask us to serve in the army for the common good and to kill people: that among you too the priests of certain images and the temple-wardens of those you consider gods keep their right hand undefiled for the sake of the sacrifices, so that they may offer the customary sacrifices to those you call gods with hands unstained by blood and pure from murder; and surely when war comes you do not enlist the priests too. If, then, this is done reasonably, how much more, while others serve in the army, do these serve as priests and servants of God, keeping their right hands pure but struggling through prayers to God for those who serve as soldiers justly and for the one who reigns justly, so that everything opposed and hostile to those who act justly may be destroyed? And we, by our prayers destroying all the demons who stir up wars, violate oaths, and disturb the peace, help those who reign more than those who seem to serve in the army. We work with them in the common affairs, we who offer up prayers with righteousness, together with exercises and meditations that teach us to despise pleasures and not be led by them. We fight for the king even more; and we do not serve in the army with him, even if he presses us, but we serve in the army for him, raising up our own army of piety through our intercessions to the divine.

And if Celsus wishes us also to lead armies for our country, he should know that we do this too, not doing it to be seen by people and to boast about it; for in secret, in our very ruling faculty, there are prayers sent up, as by priests, for those in our country. And Christians benefit their countries more than the rest of humanity, educating the citizens and teaching them to be pious toward the God who guards the city, taking up into a divine and heavenly city those who have lived well in the least cities; to whom it might be said, “You were faithful” in a very small city; come also to the great one, where “God has taken his place in the assembly of the gods; among them he judges gods,” and he numbers you among them, if you no longer die like a man nor fall “like one of the rulers.”

Celsus also urges us to take office in our country, if this too must be done for the preservation of the laws and of piety. But we, knowing that in each city there is another organization of a country founded by the Word of God, call those able in speech and who live soundly to rule over the churches; not accepting those who love power, but urging those who, from great modesty, do not wish rashly to take on the common care of the church of God. And those of us who rule well are rulers under obligation, compelled by the great King, whom we are persuaded is the Son of God, God the Word. And if those who rule well in the church of the country according to God (I mean the church) are called or urged to rule, they rule according to what God has commanded, and in doing so they defile none of the established laws. And it is not to shirk the more common services of life that Christians avoid such offices, but to keep themselves for the more divine and more necessary service of the church of God for the salvation of people; leading both necessarily and justly, and caring for all: for those within, that they may live better day by day, and for those who seem to be outside, that they may come to be in the holy words and deeds of worship of God, and so, truly worshiping God and educating many as far as they can, may be blended with the Word of God and the divine law, and so be united to the God over all through the Son of God, the Word, Wisdom, Truth, and Righteousness, who unites to him everyone who has been turned to living in all things according to God.

In these words you have, holy Ambrose, the completion, according to the power present in us and given to us, of what you commanded. And we have set out in eight books all that we thought fitting to dictate in answer to Celsus's work entitled The True Word. It is for the reader of his treatise and of what we have dictated against it to judge which of the two breathes more of the true God, and of the way of piety toward him, and of the truth that reaches human beings through sound doctrines urging them to the best life. Know, however, that Celsus promised to write another treatise after this one, in which he promised to teach how those who wish and are able to obey him ought to live. If, then, he did not write the second work he promised, it would be well for us to be content with the eight books dictated against his work; but if he began and finished that one too, seek out the treatise and send it, so that we may dictate against it too whatever the Father of truth gives us, and overturn the false opinion in it, and, if anything true is said somewhere in it, bear witness to it without quarreling as well said. [Closing doxology] Glory to you, our God; glory to you.