Against Celsus, Book 6

Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

As we open this sixth book against Celsus's accusations of the Christians, holy Ambrose, what we need to contend against in it is not, as one might suppose, the material he sets out from philosophy. For Celsus has cited a great many passages, mostly from Plato, publicizing what is capable of persuading someone intelligent, drawn from the sacred writings, claiming that these things are better said among the Greeks, and without the exaltation

and the promise made as if from God or the Son of God. We say, then, that if the aim of those who champion the cause of truth is to benefit and win over, as far as possible, out of love for humanity, everyone whatsoever — not only the quick-witted but also the unintelligent — and again, not the Greeks only but also the barbarians, and above all

gentleness, if one is able to turn even the most rustic and untutored to it, then it is clear that such a person must give thought to a style of speaking that is of common benefit and capable of drawing in every kind of hearer. But those who bid a hearty farewell — as if to slaves — to the untutored, who cannot follow the coherence of words in their phrasing and the order of what is delivered, and who have taken thought only for those raised

on literature and learning, these have narrowed the common good down to something cramped and small indeed. I have said this in defending against the charge, made by Celsus and others, of plainness in the wording of the scriptures, which seems to be dimmed by the brilliance of artful composition — since our prophets, Jesus, and his apostles saw fit, in their manner of proclamation, not

only to contain the truth, but also to be capable of drawing in the many, until each, having been urged on and led in according to his capacity, might rise up to what is spoken in secret within words that seem plain. And if I may venture to say it, few, if any, have been benefited by the beautifully wrought and studied diction of Plato and those who wrote in a similar style; whereas more have been helped by those who taught and wrote in a plainer, yet at the same time

more practical and purposeful way for the many. One can see, at any rate, that Plato is in the hands only of those who are thought to be lovers of literature, while Epictetus is admired even by ordinary people with an inclination toward self-improvement, who perceive the betterment that comes from his words. And we say this not in reproach of Plato (for the great mass of humankind

has profited from him too, in its own useful way), but rather to show the intent of those who said: "and my word and my proclamation were not delivered in wisdom's persuasive speech, but through a display of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith would not stand upon human wisdom but upon the power of God." And the divine word says that what is spoken is not sufficient, even if

it is in itself true and utterly credible, to reach the human soul, unless some power is also given to the speaker from God, and grace blossoms upon what is said — and this grace does not arise apart from God in those who speak to good effect. The prophet, indeed, states in Psalm sixty-seven that "the Lord shall grant an utterance to those bringing good tidings, with great power." So that it might be given to certain people

the doctrines are the same for the Greeks and for those who follow our reasoning, yet by no means do they have the same power to win over souls and dispose them accordingly. This is why the disciples of Jesus, uneducated men as measured against Greek philosophy, went about through many nations of the inhabited world, disposing each of their hearers, as the word intended, according to his worth—and these hearers, in proportion to

the inclination of their free will toward accepting what is good, became far better people. Let ancient and wise men, then, be brought forward for those capable of understanding, and in particular let Plato, the son of Ariston, declare his views on the first good in one of his letters, saying that the first good is in no way "expressible in words," but comes to be "only after much shared inquiry," and "suddenly, as a light kindled from a leaping fire"

is set ablaze in the soul"—words which we too have heard and assent to as well spoken, for "God" has "made" these things and everything else well said "manifest to them." For this reason we say that those who grasped the truth about God, yet did not practice a reverence worthy of that truth, are subject to the punishments due to sinners. For Paul says, in these very words, concerning

such people: "from heaven God's wrath stands revealed against every ungodly and unjust act of men, those who hold the truth captive in unrighteousness, since what may be known about God lies plain among them; God himself made it plain to them. For his unseen qualities, ever since the world's creation, are perceived by the mind through the things he has made—both his eternal power and divinity—so

that they are without excuse, because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give him thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and their senseless heart was darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man, and of birds and four-footed animals and reptiles." And indeed they hold fast to "truth," as our own

reasoning too attests, those who think that the first good is "in no way expressible in words," and who say that "after much shared inquiry about the thing itself and living together with it, suddenly, as a light kindled from a leaping fire, coming to be in the soul, it now nourishes itself." But those who wrote such things about the first good go down "to Piraeus" to pray as to a god

to Artemis, and to watch the festival celebrated by common people. And though they philosophized to such a degree about the soul, and set forth at length the manner of life of a soul that has lived well, they abandon the greatness of what "God" "made manifest" "to them," and think cheap and petty thoughts, rendering "a cock" "to Asclepius"; and though they conceived "the invisible things" of God, and the forms, "from the creation of the world" and of

sensible things, from which they ascend to things understood by the mind—having seen, not ignobly, both his eternal power and divinity—they nonetheless "became futile in their reasonings," and their "senseless" heart "wallows" in darkness and ignorance regarding the worship of the divine. And one can see those who pride themselves greatly on wisdom and theology exchanging it for "the likeness of an image of corruptible man"

...worshipping them in his honor, he says, and sometimes even descending, along with the Egyptians, to birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. But even granting that some seem to have risen above these things, they will still be found to have exchanged "the truth of God for a lie" and to be worshipping and serving "the creation rather than the Creator." This is why, while the wise and learned among the Greeks were erring in their works concerning

...the divine, "God chose" "the world's foolish things," "to put the wise to shame," "and the base things," "and the weak things," "and the despised things," and "the things that are not, so that he might bring to nothing the things that are" — and truly, so that "no flesh might boast before God." Our own wise men, first Moses, most ancient of all, and the prophets who came after him, though "in no way" possessing "expressible"

...knowledge of the first good, nevertheless wrote — since God himself was manifesting himself to those worthy and fit — that God "appeared," for instance, to Abraham, and likewise to Isaac and Jacob. Yet who it was that appeared, of what nature, in what manner, and to which faculty within us, is a question they left for investigation to those able to render themselves like the men to whom God appeared, having appeared

...to them not with the eyes of the body but with a pure heart. For indeed, as our Jesus put it, "those pure in heart are blessed, since it is God they will see." And as for the light that is kindled "suddenly, as if leaping up from a fire," "in the soul," the divine word knew this before, saying through the prophet: "kindle for yourselves a light of knowledge." And John too, coming after him,

...says that "what had come to be" in the Word was "life"; and that "life" served as "the light of mankind," a "true light" which "gives light to every man arriving into" the true and intelligible "world," rendering him "the light of the world." For this light indeed "shone forth" "within our hearts, unto the illumination of the recognition of God's glory, in"

...the face of Christ." This is why that most ancient of prophets — prophesying, as he did, long ages before Cyrus came to the throne, for he preceded him by upward of fourteen generations — declares: "the Lord is my light and my savior; whom shall I fear?" and: "your law is a lamp to my feet, and a light to my paths," and: "the light of your face has been marked upon us, O Lord," and: "in

...your light we shall see light." And urging us toward this very light, the word in Isaiah says: "be enlightened, be enlightened, Jerusalem; for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you." And this same prophet, prophesying about the coming of Jesus, who turns people away from the worship of idols and images and demons, says that

..."upon those sitting in a land and shadow of death, light has risen for them," and again: "the people sitting in darkness have seen a great light." Observe, then, the difference between what was well said by Plato about the first good and what has been said in the prophets about the light of the blessed; and observe that the truth in Plato about this amounts to nothing

as far as genuine piety is concerned it profited its readers nothing — nor even the man himself who philosophized in this way about the first good — whereas the plain style of the divine scriptures has made those who engage with it in good faith inspired. Among them this light is nourished by the oil spoken of in a certain parable, the oil that kept the lamps burning among the five prudent virgins. Since

Celsus also sets out another passage of this kind from Plato's letter: "But if it seemed to me that these things could be adequately written for the many and could be spoken, what finer thing could we have done in life than to write something of great benefit to mankind and bring nature into the light for all?" Come, let us discuss this briefly too, whether

Plato had something more solemn than what he wrote, and more divine than what he left behind, or not. Let us leave that for each person to examine as far as possible, while pointing out that our own prophets too had in mind things greater than the writings they did not write. For Ezekiel takes a "scroll of a book," written "on the front" and on the back, in which there was "lamentation and song and woe," and when the word commanded him

he eats the scroll, so that he would not write it down and betray it to the unworthy. And John too has recorded that he saw and did something similar. Paul, moreover, "heard unspeakable words, which it is not permitted for a man to utter." And Jesus, who surpasses all of these, is said to have "spoken" the word of God "to the disciples" "privately," and especially during

his times of withdrawal — yet what it was that he said has not been recorded. For it did not seem to them that these things were "adequately writable" "for the many," nor "speakable." And if it is not tiresome to state the truth about such great men, I say that these men, from the understanding they received by the grace of God, saw more than Plato did — which things were "writable," and how they were "writable," and which were not at all

"writable" for the many, and which were "speakable" and which were not. Again, John too, teaching us the distinction between what is writable and what is not, says he heard seven thunders concerning certain things, which instructed him and forbade him to commit their words to writing. Many such things could likewise be discovered in Moses and the prophets, whose antiquity exceeds not merely Plato's but even Homer's

and older than the invention of writing among the Greeks — things full of matters worthy of the grace of God toward them and of great understanding. These men did not, as Celsus supposes, speak in this way because they had overheard Plato. For how could it be possible for them to have heard him when he did not yet exist? But so that someone may also apply Celsus's argument to the apostles of Jesus, who came later than Plato, consider whether

it is not on its face implausible that Paul, who made tents, along with Peter, who caught fish, and John, the one who abandoned his father's fishing nets, might have overheard something Plato said in his letters and passed down such teachings about God. But Celsus, having already repeated over and over that we demand immediate belief, now says it again as though it were something new beyond what had been said before. It is enough

what we have said with a view to this. But since he also quotes another passage of Plato in which he says that wisdom shines forth in those who philosophize in his way "through the use of questions and answers," come, let us show from the sacred writings that the divine word too urges us toward dialectic — in one place where Solomon says, "instruction that is not put to the test goes astray," and in another where the writer of the book

he left us, Jesus son of Sirach, says, "the knowledge of the fool is words never examined." Refutations among us, then, are on the whole benevolent, given to those who have learned that the one who presides over the word must be able "to refute those who contradict." But if some are lazy, not training themselves to attend to the divine readings and to search "the scriptures," and, as Jesus commanded, to seek out the meaning of the scriptures,

and to ask God about them, and to knock at what in them is shut, that is no reason why the word should be empty of wisdom. Then, after other Platonic passages showing that the good is knowable "to few," since the many, filled with "an unwarranted contempt" and "a lofty and hollow hope," having learned certain things "as if they were solemn," say them as though they were true — since Celsus

has already said this, Plato nonetheless neither works wonders nor, for one who wishes to choose whatever that thing is which he promises, stops the mouth of his tongue, nor does he from the outset order people to rush ahead and believe that God is of such a kind and has such a son, and that this son came down and conversed with him. To this I say that concerning Plato, Aristander, as I recall, put on record that Ariston was not truly his father, and that a phantom was, which

came to Amphictione in the form of Apollo; and many other Platonists have said such things in the Life of Plato. As for Pythagoras, who worked so very many wonders — who showed his ivory thigh at a Greek festival, and said he recognized the shield he had used when he was Euphorbus, and was said to have appeared on the same day in two cities — what need is there even to speak of it?

And whoever wishes to bring the charge that marvels are recorded of Plato and Socrates will also set forth the swan that appeared to Socrates in his sleep, and the teacher who, at the birth of the young man, said, "so this was the swan." But he will also seize upon as a marvel the third eye which Plato saw himself as having. And there will be no lack of malicious people wishing to speak ill of the things

that appeared to men of higher standing beyond the many — slander and defamation; such people will even mock Socrates' divine sign as a fabrication. We, then, are not working wonders when we recount the things concerning Jesus, nor did his genuine disciples write such accounts about him. But Celsus, who professes to know everything and quotes many things from Plato, deliberately, I think, keeps silent about the passage concerning the Son of God,

spoken by Plato in his letter to Hermeias and Coriscus. The passage of Plato runs thus: "and swearing by the god who is guide of all things that are and are to be, and by the lord and father of the guiding and causing principle, whom, if we truly philosophize, we shall all know clearly, so far as is possible for happy human beings." And another passage of Plato

Celsus sets it out as follows: "But I have it in mind to say still more about these matters at greater length; for perhaps what I am speaking of would be clearer if these very things were said. For there is a certain true account, opposed to anyone who dares to write anything at all of this kind, which has often been stated by me before, but seems that it must be stated now as well. There is"

"for each of the things that exist, three things through which knowledge must necessarily arise, and this is a fourth, and a fifth must be posited, which is the knowable and the true; of these, one is the name, the second is the account, the third is the image, and the fourth is the knowledge." And in accordance with this we might say that John is introduced before Jesus as "a voice of one crying in the wilderness," analogous to the name in Plato, and second after John,

pointed out by him, is Jesus, to whom fits the phrase "the word became flesh," being analogous to the account in Plato. Plato, then, calls the third thing the image. But we, assigning the name "image" to something else, will say more clearly that what comes to be in the soul after

the account is the impression of the wounds, and that this is the Christ in each person, coming from Christ the Word. And whether the wisdom that is "among the perfect" in our teaching—namely Christ—is also analogous to the fourth thing, which is knowledge, let whoever is able consider it. Then he says: do you see how Plato, although he affirmed that it is not "speakable," nevertheless, so as not to seem to retreat into the irrefutable, offers a reasoned account

to meet this difficulty—for perhaps even nothing at all might turn out to be "speakable." But since this serves to establish that one ought not simply to believe, but to give a reasoned account of the things believed, we too will make use of Paul's statement, which rebukes the one who believes rashly, where he says: "unless you believed in vain." As far as it is up to him, Celsus, by repeating himself, forces us to repeat ourselves as well,

since Celsus, after the aforesaid boasts of what are, so to speak, boasters, says that Plato does not boast and lie by claiming that he himself has discovered something new, or that he is present to announce it from heaven, but rather acknowledges where these things come from. One might say to this too, wishing to answer Celsus, that Plato also boasts in the speech of Zeus in the Timaeus, when he says:

"Gods of gods, of whom I am the maker and father," and so on. But if anyone will offer a defense of these things on account of the mind of the Zeus who delivers the speech in Plato, why will not the one who examines the meaning behind what the Son of God says, or what the Creator declares through the prophets, say something even more than can be said of the speech of Zeus in the

Timaeus? For what characterizes deity is the announcement of things to come, not spoken according to human nature, and judged by their outcomes to show that it was a divine spirit that announced them. We do not, then, say to everyone who comes to us: "First believe that this one whom I present to you is the Son of God," but to each according to what is fitting to his character and

to the situation we bring our argument, having learned "to know how we must answer each one." And there are some for whom, since they are unable to do more than be urged toward belief, we preach this; but to others, so far as we are able, we approach the matter demonstratively, through questions and answers. But we do not say what was said mockingly by Celsus: that "believe that this man I am introducing to you is the son of god, even if"

he has been bound most dishonorably or punished most shamefully, even if only yesterday and the day before he was rolling about most disgracefully before the eyes of everyone." Nor do we say: "believe all the more for that reason." For on each point we try to say even more than what we set out above. After this Celsus says that, if these people (meaning Christians) put forward this one, and others put forward another, and yet common to all and ready to hand is

"believe, if you want to be saved, or go away" — what will those who truly want to be saved do? Will they cast dice and divine where they should turn and to whom they should attach themselves? To this too, starting from what is plain, we will say the following: if there were more people reported, similarly to Jesus, to have come to dwell among mankind as sons of god, and each of them, drawing some people to himself,

so that it would be genuinely disputed, because of the similarity of the claim, which one testified to by his believers was truly the son of god — then there would be room for "if these people put forward this one, and others another, and it is common to all and ready to hand: believe, if you want to be saved, or go away," and so on. But as things stand, Jesus has been proclaimed to the whole inhabited world,

having come to dwell among the human race as the only son of god. For those who, like Celsus, supposed that this had been fabricated as a marvel, and who therefore wished to work marvels of the same kind themselves, so that they too might similarly gain mastery over people, were exposed as amounting to nothing — Simon the Samaritan magician, and Dositheus, who came from the same region as he did. For the one claimed to be himself the power of god called

"great," while the other likewise claimed to be himself son of god. Yet nowhere in the inhabited world are there any Simonians — even though, in order to win over more followers, Simon removed from his disciples the danger of death that Christians were taught to embrace, teaching them instead to be indifferent toward idolatry. Nor, in fact, were the Simonians ever even plotted against at the outset; for the evil demon behind the plot knew that through Simon's teachings

nothing of his own purpose would be undone by Jesus's teaching. As for the Dosithean sect, it never flourished even earlier, and now it has died out entirely, so that their whole reported number does not reach thirty. And "Judas the Galilean," as Luke wrote in the Acts of the Apostles, wanted to call himself someone great, and before him "Theudas"; but since

their teaching was not from god, they were destroyed, "and all who were persuaded" by them were immediately scattered. We do not, then, cast dice to divine where we should turn and to whom we should attach ourselves, as though many people were capable of drawing us away by the claim of having come from god to dwell among the human race. But enough of these matters. So we move on to another accusation of Celsus. Nor do we

not knowing it, but saying from some half-heard scraps that we claim the wisdom found among men is foolishness with God, since Paul says: "Worldly wisdom counts as folly in God's sight." And Celsus says that the reason for this has already been stated earlier. He supposes the reason is that by this expression we wish to attract only the uneducated and the foolish. But,

as he himself noted, he said the same thing above, and we responded to that argument as best we could. All the same, he wanted to show that this too had been fabricated by us and taken over from the wise men among the Greeks, who said that human wisdom is one thing and divine wisdom another. And indeed he sets out sayings of Heraclitus, one of them being where he says: "For human

character does not possess understanding, but the divine does," and another: "A man is deemed childish by a divinity, just as a boy is by a man." He also sets out this passage from Plato's written Apology of Socrates: "For I, men of Athens, have gotten this name for no other reason than through a certain wisdom. What kind of wisdom is this? It is, perhaps, human wisdom; for in

reality I run the risk of being wise in this."" These, then, are the things Celsus sets out. But I will also cite the following from Plato's letter to Hermias, Erastus, and Coriscus: "To Erastus and Coriscus, in addition to that fine wisdom concerning the forms, I say — though I am an old man — that they need also the wisdom that guards against wicked and unjust men,

and some capacity for defense as well. For they are inexperienced in this, because they have spent a great deal of their life with us, who are moderate and not wicked men. This is why I said they need these things, so that they will not be forced to disregard true wisdom while attending more than they should to the human and necessary kind." According to this, then, there is a certain divine wisdom, and a human one.

And the human wisdom is what is called, in our terms, "worldly wisdom," which stands as "folly before God"; while the divine wisdom, being distinct from the human, if indeed it is divine, comes by the grace of God, who bestows it on those who have made themselves fit to receive it — and especially on those who, from having come to know the difference between the two kinds of wisdom relative to each other, say in

their prayers to God: "For even if someone is perfect among the sons of men, if the wisdom that comes from you is absent, he will be counted as nothing." And we say that human wisdom is a training-ground for the soul, while the divine is its end — which is also called the soul's "solid food," in the words of the one who said: "But solid food belongs to the mature, to those who through practice have

their faculties trained for distinguishing good and evil." And this opinion is indeed truly ancient — not, as Celsus supposes, with its antiquity traced back to Heraclitus and Plato. For the prophets, who are earlier than these men, already distinguished between the two kinds of wisdom; but for the present it is enough to cite, from the words of David, what concerns

the one who, in accordance with divine wisdom, is said to be wise, who says, "he will not see corruption," whenever he sees the wise dying. Divine wisdom, then, being distinct from faith, is first among what are called the "gifts" of God, and after it, second, for those who understand such things with precision, comes what is called knowledge, and third — since even the simpler people who approach according to their ability must be saved —

in reverence for God, comes faith. That is why it is said in Paul: "to one is given through the Spirit an utterance of wisdom, to another an utterance of knowledge by that same Spirit, and to another faith within that same Spirit." For this reason you would not find just anyone who has come to share in divine wisdom, but rather those who surpass and are distinguished above all who devote themselves to Christianity, nor does anyone expound the matters of divine wisdom to the most uneducated, or

to slaves, or to the most ignorant. And yet Celsus says that others are most uneducated and slaves and most ignorant — namely, those who do not know his own precepts, nor have been trained in the learning of the Greeks — whereas we say that the most uneducated are those who are not ashamed to converse with lifeless things, invoking their weakness on behalf of health, and

beseeching what is dead on behalf of life, and imploring what is utterly helpless on behalf of aid. And even if some say that these are not really the gods but imitations of the true ones and symbols of them, these people are no less so; imagining that the imitations of divinity exist in the hands of craftsmen, they too are uneducated and slaves and ignorant — so much so that even the least among us are free of this lack of education and

this ignorance, and we say that the divine hope is conceived and grasped by the most intelligent. And we also say that no one can pass over into the more divine wisdom without first being exercised in the human kind, and we grant that, set beside the divine, human wisdom is nothing but folly. Then, though he ought to contend about the argument itself, he instead calls us charlatans and says that we flee from the

more refined people headlong, as not being ready to be deceived, but that we ensnare the more rustic. For he failed to notice, from the outset and from the beginning, that those counted wise among us had themselves been schooled in outside learning — Moses was schooled in every discipline the Egyptians possessed, while Daniel, Ananias, Azariah, and Mishael were schooled in the whole of Assyrian letters, so that they were found ten times superior to every sage there. And even now the

churches have, in proportion to their numbers, a few wise people who have come over even from what is called among us wisdom "according to the flesh," and they also have those who have crossed over from that to divine wisdom. Then after this Celsus, as though he had merely heard some echo about humility and had not carefully understood it, wishes to speak ill of the humility found among us, and supposes it to be a garbled version

of Plato's words, where he says somewhere in the Laws: "God, then, just as also the ancient account has it, holding the beginning and the end and the middle of all things that exist, proceeds in a straight line, going about according to nature; and justice, the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law, always follows with him, and whoever is going to be happy follows closely, clinging to her, humble and adorned" — not

He sees that among writers much older than Plato it is said in a prayer: "Lord, my heart was not lifted up, nor were my eyes raised on high, nor did I walk among great things, nor among things too marvelous for me, unless I was of humble mind." And at the same time it is shown by this that the one who is humble-minded is not by any means humbled in an unseemly and dismal way, thrown down on his knees and lying prostrate on the ground,

clothing himself in the garb of the wretched and heaping dust upon himself. For the one who, according to the prophet, is humble-minded, walking "among great things and marvelous things" beyond himself—among truly "great" doctrines and "marvelous" thoughts—lowers himself "under the mighty hand of God." But if some, on account of their lack of learning, fail to make clear the doctrine concerning humble-mindedness and do such things, one must not blame the doctrine itself,

but rather one must pardon the lack of learning of those who set out after the better things but fail on account of their unlearnedness. For more truly "humble and adorned" than Plato's "humble and adorned" person is the one who is adorned because he walks "among great things" and "marvelous things" beyond himself, and yet humble, because even while being among these he humbles himself willingly—not under any chance thing, but "under the mighty

hand of God"—through the teacher of such lessons, Jesus: "who did not think equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, assuming a slave's form," "and appearing in the likeness of a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even death on a cross." And so great is the doctrine concerning humble-mindedness that it does not have any chance teacher for it, but our savior himself, so great as he is,

says: "Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." After this, concerning Jesus's pronouncement against the rich, where he said: "A camel passing through a needle's eye is a lighter task than a rich man entering the kingdom of God," he says this was said straight out of Plato, with Jesus corrupting the Platonic saying, in

which Plato said that "it is impossible for one who is exceedingly good to also be exceedingly rich." Who, even if only moderately capable of attending to the facts, would not laugh at Celsus—not only those who believe in Jesus but also the rest of humankind—when hearing that Jesus, raised and born among the Jews, reputed to be the carpenter Joseph's son,

and who had not learned letters, not only the Greeks' but not even the Hebrews', as the truth-loving writings about him themselves testify, read Plato, and being pleased with his saying that pronounces about the rich, that "it is impossible to be exceedingly good and rich," corrupted it and turned it into: "sooner could a camel pass through a needle's eye than a rich man enter the kingdom

of God"? But if Celsus, in reading the Gospels, had not done so with hatred and hostility, but had been a lover of truth, he would have paused to ask why on earth a camel was chosen, an animal that, as far as its build goes, is crooked, to be compared to the rich man, and what he meant by the narrow opening "of the needle," when he says that the way leading "into

"life," and that this animal is recorded in the law as "unclean," having one thing acceptable, namely that it chews the cud, but also one thing blameworthy, namely that it does not have a divided hoof — he would have examined as well how often the camel is taken up in the divine scriptures and in connection with whom, so as to discern the intention of the text concerning the rich. Nor would he have left unexamined the fact that

the poor are called blessed by Jesus while the rich are called wretched — whether he means this of the perceptible... poor and rich, or whether the word knows some poverty that is blessed without qualification and some wealth that is blameworthy without qualification. For not even an ordinary person would have praised the poor indiscriminately, since the character of most of them is rather base. But let this stand as it is,

for the present. Since, next, wishing to belittle what has been written among us concerning the kingdom of God, he set forth none of it, as though it were not even worth recording in his own work — perhaps because he did not even know it — but instead sets out sayings of Plato drawn from the Letters and from the Phaedrus, as though these were spoken by divine inspiration while nothing of the sort is found in our writings, come, let us compare a few things

for the sake of setting them beside what Plato has said, not implausibly indeed, yet not in a way that the philosopher conducted himself in a manner worthy even of the reverence he himself displayed toward the maker of the universe — a reverence which he ought not to have adulterated or defiled with what we call idol-worship, or, as the many too would say, using their own term, with superstition. In a certain Hebrew manner

it is said concerning God, in the seventeenth psalm, that "God made darkness his hiding place," so as to show that whatever could rightly be thought about God is unseen and unknown, since God has hidden himself, as it were, in darkness from those who cannot bear the flashing brightness of the knowledge of him, nor are able to see him — partly because of the defilement of their mind, bound as it is within a body of "humiliation"

belonging to human beings, and partly because of the lesser power their minds have for comprehending God. And so as to show how rarely the knowledge of God reaches human beings and how it is found in very few, Moses is recorded as having entered "into the thick darkness, where God was"; and again, concerning Moses: "Moses alone shall draw near to God, but the rest shall not draw near."

And again, in turn, so that the prophet might set forth the depth of the teachings concerning God, unattainable for those who do not possess the "spirit" that searches all things and searches also "the depths of God," he said: "the abyss is his covering, like a garment." But our Savior and Lord too, the Word of God, setting forth how vast the Father's knowledge truly is, says

that it is grasped and known properly, according to its worth, first and foremost by him alone, and secondarily by those whose ruling faculty is illumined by the Word and God himself, saying: "No one knew the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son, and whoever the Son reveals him to." For no one can know, according to its worth, either the unbegotten one or the firstborn of all begotten nature,

...is able, as the father who begot him is, nor can he know the father as does the living Word, who is his wisdom and truth — by participation in whom, removing from the father the thing called 'darkness,' which 'he made his hiding place,' and the thing called his 'covering,' the abyss, he thus reveals the father, so that whoever is able to know him, knows him. I thought it right to set forth these few things, briefly, from

the very many conceptions concerning God held by the sacred men, in order to show that the sacred writings of the prophets possess something more majestic — for those who have eyes able to see the majestic things in scripture — than the Platonic sayings admired by Celsus. The passage of Plato that Celsus set out runs in this way: 'Around the king of all are all things, and for his sake'

'all things exist, and he is responsible for all things good. The second god is concerned with the second things, and the third with the third things. The human soul, then, longs to learn about these, what sort of things they are, looking to what is akin to itself, none of which it possesses adequately. But concerning the king and the things I have spoken of, there is nothing of that sort.' I could also have set forth what is said among the Hebrews about

those called 'seraphim,' recorded in Isaiah, who cover 'the face' and 'the feet' of God, and what is said about those named 'cherubim,' whom Ezekiel described, and their forms, so to speak, and how it is said that God rides upon the cherubim. But since these things are spoken in a very hidden way, on account of those who are unworthy and lacking in reverence, unable to follow the greatness of thought and the majesty

of theology, I did not think it fitting to discuss them in this treatise. Next after this Celsus says that some Christians, having misheard Platonic expressions, boast of a supracelestial god, rising above the heaven of the Jews. But in saying this he does not make clear whether they also rise above the God of the Jews, or only above the heaven by which they swear. Now it is not our present purpose to speak about those who proclaim a god other than

the one also worshiped by the Jews, but rather to defend ourselves and to show that the prophets of the Jews among us could not have taken anything from Plato, for they were older than he. We have not, then, taken from Plato the saying that runs, 'Around the king of all are all things, and for his sake all things exist,' but we have learned things said better than these from

the prophets, since Jesus and his disciples clarified what was meant by the spirit at work within the prophets (which was no other spirit than that of Christ). The philosopher, moreover, was not the first to set forth the doctrine of the supracelestial place; rather David long ago set forth the depth of the abundance of contemplations concerning God among those who have risen above things perceptible to the senses, saying in

the book of Psalms: 'Praise God, you heavens of heavens, and the water lying above the heavens; let his name, the name of the LORD, be praised.' For my part, I do not rule out that Plato learned these words found in the Phaedrus from certain Hebrews, and, as some have recorded, having also encountered the prophetic writings, set out what he says in them, where he said: 'the supracelestial place neither'

"...no poet of this world has hymned it, nor will hymn it worthily," and so on, among which is also this: "for the colorless and shapeless and untouchable substance, being truly real, is visible only to mind, the pilot of the soul, and it is around this that the class of true knowledge has its place." And it was from words of that very kind that our Paul was trained, and longing

for the things above the world and above the heavens, and doing everything for the sake of those things, so that he might attain them, he says in the second letter to the Corinthians: "for our momentary, light affliction is producing for us, beyond all measure, an eternal weight of glory, because we do not fix our gaze on the things that are seen but on the things that are not seen; for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal." Plainly, then,

to those able to hear, he shows this, calling the perceptible things themselves "the things that are seen," and naming the intelligible things, graspable by mind alone, "the things that are not seen." And this same man knows the perceptible and "seen" things to be "temporary," but the intelligible and "unseen" things to be "eternal"; and wishing to arrive at the sight of those things, aided by his longing for them, he counted the whole of affliction as nothing

and as something light; and at the very moment of "the affliction" and of his labors he was by no means weighed down by them, but he lightened every hardship because of his gaze fixed on those things. For we too possess a "great high priest" — one who by the vastness of his power and of his mind "has passed through the heavens," namely Jesus, the son of God — who promised those who genuinely learned

the things of God and lived worthily of them that he would lead them on to the things above the world; for he says: "so that where I am going, you may be also." For this reason we, after the labors and struggles here, hope to come to be at the very heights of the heavens, and, having received springs of "water leaping up into eternal life" according to the teaching of Jesus, and having made our way through rivers of contemplation together with the

waters said to be "above the heavens," we shall praise "the name of the Lord." And to the extent that we praise him, we shall not be swept along by the revolution of the heavens, but we shall always be occupied with the vision of the invisible things of God, no longer understood by us "from the creation of the world, through the things that are made," but as the genuine disciple of Jesus named it, saying: "but then face to face," and

this: "when the perfect comes, that which is partial will be done away with." As for seven heavens, or any strictly limited number of heavens at all, the writings received in the churches of God make no report of this, but they seem to teach of heavens — whether the spheres of what the Greeks call the planets, or something else more hidden — and that there is a road for souls to travel to earth

and from earth, Celsus says, following Plato, that this happens by way of the planets; but Moses, our most ancient prophet, says that our patriarch Jacob, in a vision, beheld a divine dream: a ladder stretching "to heaven," with "God's" angels moving up and down along it, and the Lord fixed firmly upon its topmost rungs — whether this was what he saw, or something still greater than this

alluding to this in his discourse about the ladder — concerning which Philo too has composed a book, worthy of a careful and intelligent examination by lovers of truth. Next, wishing to display his own erudition in his discourse against us, Celsus sets forth certain Persian mysteries as well, in which he says: "The Persian account also hints at these things, and so does the rite of Mithras,

which is practiced among them. For there is in it a certain symbol of the two revolutions in heaven — the fixed one, and the one in turn allotted to the planets — and of the soul's passage through them. The symbol is of this kind: a ladder with seven gates, and above it an eighth gate. The first gate is lead, the next is tin, the third bronze, the

fourth of iron, the fifth of an alloyed coinage, the sixth silver, and gold for the seventh. They assign the first to Cronus, taking the lead as evidence of the star's slowness; the second to Aphrodite, comparing to it the brightness and softness of tin; the third to Zeus, the bronze-founded and solid gate; the fourth to Hermes, for iron, like Hermes, is enduring for every task, and money-making, and much-toiling

— both iron and Hermes are such; the fifth to Ares, the one made of an alloy, uneven and varied; the sixth, the silver one, to Selene; the seventh, the golden one, to Helios, imitating their colors." Next he examines the reason for the order of the stars thus enumerated, which is indicated through symbols in the names of the remaining material, and he attaches musical ratios to the theology of the Persians as he expounds it,

and beyond these he takes the further trouble to set out a second account as well, again concerned with musical theorems. It seemed to me that Celsus's setting forth of this text at this point is out of place, and resembles a practice he himself follows elsewhere: bringing inappropriately into his accusation against Christians and Jews not only the doctrines of Plato, as though those alone did not suffice him, but also, as he calls them, the Persian mysteries of Mithras

and their narrative. However these things may stand — whether falsely or truly — for those who hold Mithras and the Persians in honor: why, then, did he set these forth rather than any of the other mysteries along with their narrative? For the rites of Mithras do not seem, among the Greeks, to be more distinguished than the Eleusinian mysteries, or those handed down to the initiates at Aegina concerning

Hecate. And why should he do so all the more, if he wished to set forth barbarian mysteries along with their narrative, rather than set forth those of the Egyptians instead, in which many take pride, or those of the Cappadocians concerning Artemis at Comana, or the Thracian rites, or indeed the Roman ones, in which the most nobly born members of the senate are initiated? But if he thought it inappropriate to bring in any of those, as contributing nothing to the accusation against Jews or Christians, how did it not seem to him equally inappropriate in the case of setting forth the Mithraic mysteries?

But if someone should wish to draw his starting points not from the most obscure sect from which he took them, but instead from books — partly Jewish ones, read also in their synagogues, which Christians accept, and partly belonging to Christians alone — for the

a more mystical contemplation concerning the entry of souls into the divine realm, let him read what the prophet saw at the end of Ezekiel's prophecy, in which various gates are recorded, hinting at something concerning the differing entrance of the more divine souls into the better things. And let him also read, from John's Apocalypse, what is said concerning the heavenly city, Jerusalem above, and its foundations

and its gates. And if he can also learn, through symbols, the path marked out for those who will journey toward the divine, let him read the book called Numbers of Moses, and let him seek out the person able to initiate him into the meaning of what is written concerning the camps of the sons of Israel — which were stationed toward the eastern regions as the first, and which toward the southwest,

or toward the south, and which were toward the sea, and which were last, toward the north. For he will see there considerations not to be despised, nor, as Celsus supposes, ones requiring only foolish hearers and slaves. For he will come to distinguish which tribes are named among them, and what is meant by the nature of the numbers enumerated there and applied to each tribe — matters which

it did not seem opportune for us to set forth at present. But let Celsus and those who read his book know that nowhere in the genuine and divinely trusted scriptures are seven heavens spoken of; neither do our prophets, having taken this from the Persians or the Cabiri, say any such thing, nor do Jesus' own apostles say it, nor does the Son of God. Next, after the argument he drew from the Mithraic mysteries,

Celsus proposes that whoever wishes should compare a certain rite of the Christians with the aforementioned rite of the Persians, setting them side by side and laying bare also the rites of the Christians, and thus observe the difference between them. And where he knew how to name the sects, he did not hesitate to set out those he thought he knew; but where it was more necessary — if indeed he understood the matter — to do this and to teach which sect makes use of the diagram he had described,

this he has not done. It seems to me that even these things were set out, in part, from mishearings of an utterly obscure sect, that of the Ophites, I think. We ourselves, out of our love of learning, have come across this diagram, in which we found the fabrications of men — as Paul called them — who worm their way "into households and" take captive "little women heaped up with sins, led about by various desires, always learning and never able to arrive at"

"a knowledge of the truth." And the diagram had so little plausibility that not even the easily-deceived "little women," nor the most rustic people, nor those most readily led by any plausible speaker, would have agreed to accept it. At any rate, though we went about through many regions of the earth and sought out everywhere those who professed to know something of it, we found no one who championed the contents of the diagram. In it there was a depiction of circles,

ten in number, separated from one another yet bound together by a single ring, said to represent the soul of the universe, called Leviathan — the very creature which the scriptures of the Jews, whatever it is they hint at by it, say was fashioned by God as a plaything. For in the Psalms we found: "You made all things in wisdom; the earth is filled with your creation. This is the great and"

"...spacious; there ships pass through, small creatures together with great ones, this dragon which you fashioned to mock him." Instead of "dragon," in the Hebrew it was Leviathan. The impious diagram, then, said that the one so clearly denounced in the prophet under the name Leviathan was the soul that has wandered through the universe. We also found in it a figure named Behemoth, stationed as it were next to...

the lowest circle. This Leviathan the man who devised that abominable diagram inscribed upon the circle and at its center, setting out its name twice. Further, Celsus says the diagram is divided by a thick black line, and he claimed that this was called by them Gehenna, which is also Tartarus. As for Gehenna, we, having discovered that the Gospel speaks of it as a place where punishment is inflicted, inquired whether it was named anywhere in the ancient writings, especially since the Jews too make use of the name.

We found that in one place it is named in Scripture "the Valley of the son of Hinnom," and we learned that in the Hebrew, in place of "Valley," the same referent was called both the Valley of Hinnom and Gehenna. Attending closely to the readings, we find...

also, within the allotment of the tribe of Benjamin, Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom listed, where Jerusalem too was located. And examining the sequence by which Jerusalem is heavenly, proceeding from the allotment of Benjamin and the Valley of Hinnom, we find something bearing on the subject of punishments, in that such souls as these are transferred, through torment, to purification, according to: "Behold, the Lord enters like...

the fire of a smelting-furnace, and like the herb of those who wash; and he will sit smelting and purifying the gold and the silver" — and according to the punishments that take place around Jerusalem upon those being smelted, who have taken up into the substance of their own soul the things that come from wickedness, figuratively named, somewhere, lead; hence lawlessness, in Zechariah, sat upon "a talent of lead." But as for how much...

might be said on this subject, it is not for everyone, nor for the present occasion, to set forth; indeed, it is not even safe to entrust the plain clarity of such matters to writing, since the many have no need of further instruction beyond that concerning the punishment of sinners. For it is not profitable to ascend beyond this point, on account of those who, scarcely restraining themselves through fear of eternal punishment, hold back to some degree...

the outpouring of wickedness and the sins that arise from it. Neither the diagram, then, nor Celsus knows the true account concerning Gehenna; for otherwise those people would not have solemnized paintings and diagrams as though presenting the truth through them, nor, writing against the Christians in his own work, would Celsus have inserted into his accusations against Christians things said not at all by Christians but by certain others — people who perhaps no longer even exist, but have altogether...

vanished and been reduced to a very few, easily counted individuals — inserted into the charges against Christians. And just as it is not fitting for those who philosophize according to Plato to offer a defense on behalf of Epicurus and his impious doctrines, so neither is it fitting for us to offer a defense concerning the contents of the diagram and what is said against it by Celsus. We therefore leave aside, as superfluous and set forth in vain, the things put forward by Celsus regarding...

these are the words he has spoken; for we will accuse him of them more than Celsus does, before those who have been overpowered by such arguments. Next, after his remarks about the diagram, without even having overheard properly what is said among the church people about the so-called "seal," he sets out for himself certain bizarre and reciprocal utterances, as though the one who places the seal is called the father, and the one being sealed is called the young one and son, and answers: I have been anointed

with a white ointment from the tree of life" — a thing we have never heard occurring even among those from the heresies. Then he also fixes a number, said by the angels who hand over the seal, of seven, standing on either side of the soul of the departing body, some belonging to the light, others called the "ruling" ones, and he says that the ruler of the so-called "ruling" ones is called an accursed god. Then, seizing upon the

expression, he reasonably accuses those who dare to say this; and for this reason we too join in the indignation of those who blame such people. If indeed there are some who say that the god of the Jews is accursed, the one who sends rain and thunders and fashioned this present cosmos, being also the deity of Moses and of the account of creation he gives. But Celsus seems by this to have intended something not fair-minded but, out of a wholly unphilosophical hatred toward us, most unreasonable.

For he wished those of our people unfamiliar with these matters, on encountering his writing, to be set at war against us, as though we said that the good maker of this world is an accursed god. And it seems to me he has done something similar to the Jews, who at the beginning of the teaching of Christianity spread abroad slander about the message, namely that after sacrificing a child they partake of its

flesh, and again that those who wish to do the deeds of darkness that come from the message put out the light, and each one has intercourse with whoever happens to be at hand — a slander which unreasonably, in former times, prevailed among a great many, persuading those alien to the message that Christians are of this sort, and even now still deceives some, turning them away because of such things from coming even into a simpler fellowship of discourse

with Christians. Something of this sort, then, seems to me to be what Celsus is contriving to set forth, namely that Christians call the maker an accursed god, so that the one who believes him when he says these things against us might, if possible, also be roused to take up arms against Christians as the most impious of all. And confusing the matters together, he sets out the reason for the god of the cosmogony according to Moses being called accursed,

saying that he is of such a kind and deserving of a curse, according to those who hold such opinions about him, since he cursed the serpent for introducing to the first human beings the knowledge of good and evil. But it should have been plain to him that those who take the serpent's part, treating him as one who gave good counsel to the first human beings, and who surpass even the mythical Titans and Giants, and are for this reason called Ophians, fall so far short

of being Christians that they accuse them no less than Celsus does—accuse the followers of Jesus—and do not admit anyone into their assembly unless he first pronounces curses against Jesus. Observe, then, how utterly unreasonable a thing Celsus has done in his arguments against Christians, by taking as Christians those who are not even willing to hear the name of Jesus, even if such a person is wise in some way or

moderate in character, or he was some kind of human being. What, then, could be more foolish or more insane, not only among those who wanted to make the serpent the source of good things, but also in Celsus, who thought that the accusations against the Ophians were accusations against Christians? Long ago the Greek philosopher who loved frugality and set forth an example of the happy life, on the ground that he was not prevented

from being happy by complete lack of possessions, proclaimed himself a Cynic. But these impious people, taking their name from the serpent that is most hostile and most terrifying to human beings — not because the serpent is their enemy and they remain human, but rather because they have made themselves into serpents — pride themselves on being called Ophians, boasting of a certain Euphrates as the one who introduced their impious doctrines. Then next, as though reviling Christians and accusing those who said that the god of Moses and of

the law according to him was accursed, and thinking that Christians are the ones who say these things, he says: What could be more foolish or more insane than this senseless wisdom? For in what did the lawgiver of the Jews err? And how is it that you take his account of the world's creation for yourself through some kind of allegory of a figurative sort, as you claim, or the law of the Jews, yet unwillingly, most impious one, you praise the craftsman of the world,

who promised them everything, who pledged to multiply their offspring until they filled every corner of the earth, and to raise them from the dead in this very flesh and blood, and who inspired the prophets? And again you revile this same god. But whenever you are pressed by these people, you agree to worship the same god; but whenever your teacher Jesus and the Jews' Moses legislate opposite things, you seek some other god

instead of this one and the Father. And in these very words the most noble philosopher Celsus clearly slanders Christians, saying that the same people, whenever the Jews press them, confess the same god as theirs; but whenever Jesus legislates the opposite of Moses, they seek another god instead of this one. For whether conversing with Jews or being by ourselves, we know one and the same god,

whom the Jews worshipped of old and now profess to worship, in no way being impious toward him. But neither do we say that god will raise the dead in this very flesh and blood, as has been said above; for we do not say that what is sown "in corruption" and "in dishonor" and "in weakness" rises again as a "soul-formed body" of the same kind as it was sown. But we have spoken about these matters

adequately above. Then next he takes up again the matter of the seven ruling demons, which are in no way named, I think, by Christians but are adopted by the Ophians. And indeed we found, in a diagram we ourselves had acquired because of them, the arrangement set out in a manner similar to what Celsus set out. Celsus, then, said that the first was shaped in the form of a lion, without setting out what

name the truly most impious ones give him. But we found that the one honored in the sacred scriptures as the angel of the creator was the one that vile diagram called Michael, the lion-shaped one. Again, in turn, Celsus said that the next, the second, was a bull; but the diagram we had said that the bull-shaped one was called Suriel. Then Celsus said the third

an amphibious creature, hissing dreadfully; and he said the third diagram was serpent-shaped, calling it Raphael. Again, Celsus claimed that an eagle's shape belonged to the fourth; but the diagram called the eagle-shaped one Gabriel. Then Celsus said the fifth had a bear's face; but the diagram said the bear-shaped one was Thauthabaoth. Then Celsus

said the sixth was recorded among them as having a dog's face; but the diagram said this one was Erathaoth. Then Celsus said the seventh had the face of a donkey, and was named Thaphabaoth or Onoel; but we found in the diagram that this one is called Onoel or Tharthaaoth, being donkey-shaped. It seemed good to us also to set out these things

accurately, so that we should not seem to be ignorant of what Celsus professed to know, but also so that we Christians, having learned them more accurately than he, might show that these sayings belong not to Christians at all but wholly to people estranged from salvation, who in no way attach the name of Jesus, or savior, or god, or teacher, or son of god to themselves. But if anyone wishes also to learn the fabrications of those sorcerers, by which they wished to lead

people under their own teaching, as though possessing certain secret doctrines—though they were not fully able to do so—let him hear what they are taught to say after passing through what they call "the barrier of evil," the gates of the archons bound to the age: "I greet the sole-formed king, the bond of blindness, careless forgetfulness, the first power, kept safe through wisdom and the spirit of forethought; whence I am sent forth pure, already a part of the light of son and father; may grace be with me, yes,

Father, may it be with me." And they say the origins of the ogdoad are from there. Then, next, as they pass through the one they call Ialdabaoth, they are taught to say: "But you, having come to be, with confidence, both first and seventh, to hold power, Ialdabaoth, an archon who are the word of a pure mind, a perfect work for son and father, bearing the symbol of the character of the type of life, which you shut for your own age, having opened a gate for the world—I pass through your

authority once more, set free; may grace be with me, yes, Father, may it be with me." And they say that the star Phainon shares in feeling with the lion-shaped archon. Then they suppose that the one who has made his way past Ialdabaoth and come to Iao must speak thus: "But you, archon of the hidden mysteries of son and father, night-shining second Iao and first master of death, a portion of the innocent one—already bearing my own beard as a symbol, passing through your

realm, ready—you have overpowered the one who came into being from you by the living word; may grace be with me, Father, may it be with me." Then, next, comes Sabaoth, to whom they suppose they will say: "Archon of the fifth power, mighty Sabaoth, advocate of the law of your creation, which is being dissolved by grace through a more powerful pentad, let me pass, since I behold the unimpeachable symbol of your art, preserved in the image of the type, a body dissolved by the pentad; may grace be with me, Father, may it be with me."

Next after him comes Astaphaios, to whom they believe they will say such things: "Astaphaios, ruler of the third gate, guardian over the first source of water, let me pass, since I see a single initiate, purified by the spirit of a virgin, beholding the substance of the world; may grace be with me. Father, may it be with me." And after him comes Ailoaios, to whom they suppose they say such things: "Ailoaios, archon of the second gate, let me pass, bringing you the symbol of your mother,

'grace hidden by the powers of the authorities; may grace stand by me, Father, may it stand by me.' And last of all they name Horaios, and imagine themselves saying to him: 'You who have crossed the wall of fire fearlessly, you who have obtained the rule of the first gate, Horaios, let me pass, since I behold the symbol of your power set down in the figure of the tree of life, taken as an image after the likeness of the innocent one; may grace stand by me, Father, may it stand by me.' To these things the

supposed erudition of Celsus — though it is rather officious meddling and nonsense — has driven us, wanting to show to whoever meets his writing and what we have written against it that we are not at a loss regarding the doctrines of Celsus, on account of which he falsely accuses Christians, who neither hold nor know any such things, even though we ourselves wished both to become acquainted with these matters and to set them out, so that the

charlatans might not deceive, by their profession of knowing something more than we do, those who are carried away by the fancy of the names. I could have set out still more in order to show that we know the practices of the deceivers but reject them as foreign and impious and not coexisting with the words we, as true Christians, confess even unto death. One must know, however, that those who compiled these things had understood

neither the matters of magic nor made distinctions among the divine scriptures. They mixed everything together: from magic they took Ialdabaoth and Astaphaios and Horaios, and from the Hebrew scriptures the one named among the Hebrews Iaoia, and Sabaoth, and Adonaios, and Elouaios. But the names taken from the scriptures are surnames of one and the same God;

and not understanding this, these enemies of God, as they themselves also confess, supposed that Iao was one being, Sabaoth another, and third besides these Adonaios, whom the scriptures call Adonai, and yet another Elouaios, whom the prophets name in Hebrew Eloai. Then next Celsus sets out other myths, as though certain souls return to the ruling forms,

so that some become lions, others bulls, and others serpents or eagles or bears or dogs. In the diagram we possessed we also discovered what Celsus called the square figure, along with what those wretched people say concerning the gates of paradise. It was painted as the diameter of a certain fiery circle: the flaming sword, as though guarding both the tree

of knowledge and the tree of life. Now Celsus was either unwilling or unable to set out the speeches which, at each gate, according to the myths of the impious, are spoken by those passing through them; but we have done this too, in order to show to Celsus, and to those who read the treatise, the outcome of this uninitiated initiation, and to make known how foreign it is to the piety of Christians

toward the divine. After setting out the things said above and their counterparts — which we ourselves have added — Celsus says such things as these: 'And others still add other things upon others — sayings of prophets, and circles upon circles, and emanations of an earthly church and of circumcision, and a certain flowing power of a virgin called Prounikos, and a living soul, and a heaven that is slain so that it may live, and'

earth slaughtered with a sword and many slaughtered so that they may live, and death coming to an end within the world once the sin belonging to the world has died, and again a narrow descent and gates that open of themselves; and everywhere there stands the tree of life, along with flesh raised again from a tree, because, I suppose, their teacher had been fastened to a cross, and by trade he was a carpenter. As if that man happened

to have been thrown from a cliff, or pushed into a pit, or strangled by a noose, or had been a leatherworker or a stonecutter or a blacksmith - then above the heavens there would be a cliff of life, a pit of resurrection, a rope belonging to immortality, a blessed stone, love forged in iron, or a piece of leather deemed holy. What old woman, singing a tale to lull a child to sleep, would not have been ashamed to whisper such things?

In these matters Celsus seems to me to be jumbling together things he has half heard. For it is likely that, whenever he heard some little phrase from some sect or other, without making it clear even according to that sect's own intention, but simply heaping the little words together, he made a show before people who understood nothing either of our teachings or of those of the sects, as if he knew everything about the Christians. And the passage before us makes this plain as well.

For drawing upon the sayings of the prophets belongs to us - we who show that Jesus is the Christ they proclaimed beforehand, and who demonstrate from the prophetic writings the things fulfilled in the gospels concerning Jesus. But to speak of "circles upon circles" perhaps belongs also to the sect already mentioned, which encloses within a single circle what they call the soul of the universe

and Leviathan, the seven circles of the rulers. Perhaps too it is a mishearing of Ecclesiastes, which says: "the spirit goes round in circles, and upon its circuits the spirit returns." And the expression "an effluence of circumcision and of an earthly church" perhaps derives from what some claim, namely that the church on earth is an effluence of a certain heavenly church and a greater age, and

that the circumcision prescribed in the law is a symbol of a certain circumcision that took place there, in a certain purification. Now the followers of Valentinus name a certain Wisdom "Prounikos," in keeping with their own deluded wisdom, of which they wish the woman who had a flow of blood for twelve years to be a symbol; and it was in mishearing this that the man who jumbles together everything of the Greeks and the barbarians and of the sects said, "a certain power of Prounikos"

"flowing from a virgin." "Living soul" is perhaps a term used in secret by some of the followers of Valentinus for what they call the "psychical Demiurge," but perhaps too, by way of contrast with a dead soul, some not unfittingly call the living soul the soul of the one being saved. But as for "slaughtered," I do not know of heaven being called slaughtered, or earth being slaughtered with a sword, and many being slaughtered so that they may live.

And it is not unlikely that Celsus produced these things on his own. As for "the world's death coming to an end once the world's sin has died," we would explain this by setting out the apostle's mystical teaching, which goes thus: once he has put "every enemy" beneath "his feet," then comes the moment when "the last enemy, death, is done away with." And it is also said, "when this corruptible...

"puts on incorruption," "then the word that is written will come to pass: death has been swallowed up in victory." But perhaps those who introduce the doctrine of reincarnation will speak instead of a narrow way back down. It is not implausible that the gates opening of their own accord were spoken of by some in a riddling way, referring to the passage: "Throw open for me the gates of justice, so that entering by them I may offer praise to the Lord; this is the Lord's gate, through which the righteous shall enter

through it." And again in the ninth psalm it is said: "you, the one lifting me up out of death's gates, so that I may proclaim all your praises within the gates of the daughter of Zion." And the text says that the "gates of death" are the sins that lead to destruction, just as, conversely, the "gates of Zion" are good deeds; and likewise

the "gates of righteousness," which amounts to the same thing as "the gates of virtue"; these stand open at once for the one who pursues deeds in accordance with virtue. As for the tree of life, someone will discuss it more fittingly when interpreting the account in Genesis of the paradise of God, planted by him. Now Celsus has often mocked a resurrection that he did not understand; but

here, not content with what has already been said, he claims that a resurrection of the flesh is spoken of on the basis of a tree — having misheard, I think, the symbolic statement that through a tree came death and through a tree came life, death in the case of Adam, life in the case of Christ. Then, playing on the matter of the tree, he mocks it from two angles, saying that it is brought in for this reason: either because our

teacher had been fastened to a cross — or, since carpentry was his trade, failing to notice that the tree of life is recorded in the writings of Moses, and equally failing to notice that nowhere among the Gospels circulated within the churches does it stand written that Jesus himself worked as a "carpenter." He also supposes that we, allegorizing about the cross, have fabricated the tree of life, and, in keeping with his own error about this,

he says that if that man had happened instead to be thrown down a cliff, or shoved into a pit, or strangled by a noose, there would have been fashioned above the heavens a cliff of life, or a pit of resurrection, or perhaps a rope of immortality. Again he says that if the tree of life has been fabricated because he was a carpenter, it would follow that, had he been a cobbler, something

would be said about holy leather, or if a stonemason, about a blessed stone, or if a blacksmith, about iron of love. Who, then, does not see straightaway the cheapness of his accusation, as he heaps abuse on people whom he professed to want to convert, on the grounds that they are deceived? Next he says things that would suit those who fashioned the lion-shaped, ass-headed, and dragon-shaped rulers, and anyone who told myths similar to those, but not at all

those who belong to the church. For truly even a drunken old woman lulling a child to sleep would be ashamed to croon such a myth and whisper it to the child as the sort that those who fashioned the ass-headed figures did, along with their so-called public speeches assigned to each gate. But Celsus does not know the doctrines of the church, which very few have trained themselves to understand — those who have devoted their whole life

having devoted themselves, in accordance with Jesus's command, to searching "the scriptures," and having labored more than the Greeks who philosophized about some supposed science over the examination of the meaning of the sacred writings. But the noble fellow, not content with what comes from the diagram, wished, in order to increase the accusations against us — which have nothing in common with that diagram — to say certain other things in between,

taking up their statements as though they were ours. For he says: "And this too is not the least remarkable thing about them: they expound certain things inscribed between the circles above the heavens, others as well, and in particular two, one greater and one smaller, of son and father." We found, in this diagram, the greater circle and the smaller, on whose diameter was inscribed "father and

son," and between the greater circle, within which was the smaller, and another composite made of two circles, the outer one tawny and the inner one dark blue, there was inscribed a partition shaped like an axe-head, and above it a small circle touching the greater of the previous ones, having inscribed on it "love"; and below, touching the circle, was written "life"; and on the second circle

was inscribed — a circle interwoven with and enclosing two other circles and another figure shaped like a rhombus — "providence of wisdom," and within their common intersection, "nature of wisdom," while above their common intersection was a circle in which was inscribed "knowledge," and below it another in which was inscribed "understanding." We have set these things down as well in our reply to Celsus, so that we might show our readers more clearly

that we have known it firsthand and are not repeating the charges we bring merely from hearsay. As for whether those who pride themselves on such things also promise some magical sorcery, and whether this is for them the sum of their wisdom, we ourselves do not affirm it — for we have not investigated any such thing. But Celsus, who has already been caught out many times in false testimony and irrational accusations, would know whether

he is lying in these matters too, if in setting out in his own treatise something of the sort about certain people who are strangers and foreign to our faith, he has grasped it correctly. Next, against those who employ, as he says, a certain magic and sorcery and who invoke barbarian names of certain demons, he says that these people do something similar to those who, over the same underlying things, work wonders before people who do not know that their names are one thing

among the Greeks and another among the Scythians. Then he sets out, taking it from Herodotus, that the Scythians call Apollo Goitosyrus, Poseidon Thagimasadas, Aphrodite Argimpasa, and Hestia Tabiti. But let whoever is able examine whether, on this point too, Celsus, along with Herodotus, is not lying, since the Scythians did not hold the same conceptions as the Greeks about their so-called gods.

For what plausibility is there in saying that Apollo is called Goitosyrus among the Scythians? I do not suppose that Goitosyrus, translated into the Greek tongue, yields the etymology of Apollo, or that Apollo means Goitosyrus in the Scythian dialect. Nor will he say anything of the same sort about the rest either; for the Greeks, starting from different circumstances and etymologies of their own, so named the gods among themselves

regarded as gods, and the Scythians from others still, and likewise the Persians from others, the Indians from others, or the Ethiopians or the Libyans, or however each people likes to name them, because they did not remain with the first and pure conception of the maker of all things. We have said enough about this in what came before, when we wanted to show that Sabaoth is not the same as Zeus,

since we were also citing something about the dialects from the divine writings on that occasion. We therefore willingly pass over these points, in which Celsus accuses us of needless repetition. Then again, mixing in matters from magical sorcery and attaching them, perhaps to no one, on the ground that there are no practitioners of such trickery under the pretext of piety of this particular kind, but perhaps to some who make use of such things against those who are easily deceived,

so that they might seem to be doing something by divine power, he sets out a list, saying: "Why should I enumerate all those who have taught purifications, or redemptive chants, or banishing utterances, or knockings, or demonic figures, or amulets made of garments or numbers or stones or plants or roots and, in general, all kinds of protective charms made of every sort of material?" About these things reasonableness does not require us to give a defense, since we are not implicated in such suspicions to any degree at all."

After this he seems to me to be doing something very like those who, out of great hostility toward Christians, assert to people who know nothing whatever about Christian affairs that they have discovered by experience that Christians eat the flesh of children and indulge without restraint in intercourse with the women among them. For just as these claims, already made even by the many and by people wholly

alien to our religion, are condemned as lies fabricated against Christians, so too such statements would be found to be lies told by Celsus, in which he claimed to have seen, among certain elders of our persuasion, barbarian books containing the names of demons and monstrous nonsense; and he said that these (the supposed elders of our persuasion) promised nothing good but everything for the harm of human beings.

And would that everything said by Celsus against Christians were of this kind, so that it might be refuted by the great majority who have learned by experience that such things are false, from having lived together with the majority of Christians and having heard nothing of the sort about them. After this, as though forgetting that his task is to write against Christians, he says that a certain Dionysius, an Egyptian musician, who had been his acquaintance, told him about

matters concerning magic: that it has power over the uneducated and over those corrupted in character, but is unable to have any effect on those who have practiced philosophy, since they have taken care for a healthy way of life. Now if it had been our purpose to discuss magic at present, we might have added a little to this from what we said about it above; but since it is necessary to speak to the more pressing points

of Celsus's treatise, we say concerning magic that whoever wishes to examine whether philosophers too are liable to be caught by it or not should read what Moiragenes wrote in his Memoirs of Apollonius of Tyana, the magician and philosopher; in which he, who was not a Christian but a philosopher, said that some philosophers of no mean repute were caught by the magic in Apollonius, having approached him as though he were a mere charlatan.

Among these, I think, he also related things about the famous Euphrates, and about a certain Epicurean. But we, having also learned by experience, affirm that those who, in accordance with Christianity, worship through Jesus the God who is over all and live according to his gospel, employing the prescribed prayers continually and duly by night and day, are captured neither by magic nor by demons. For truly

"the angel of the Lord will encamp around those who fear him and will deliver them" from every evil; and "the angels" set over the little ones within the assembly, appointed to stand guard over them, are said without ceasing to see "the face of the Father who is in heaven" - whatever the face is, and whatever the seeing is. Next, following these, from

another point Celsus says the following against us: they err in some most impious ways also concerning this, the greatest ignorance, likewise led astray from divine riddles, making a certain being opposed to God, calling him the devil, and in the Hebrew tongue naming the same one Satan. In any case it is altogether a mortal and not even a pious thing to say - that the greatest God, wishing to

benefit human beings in some way, has one working against him and is powerless. The child of God, then, is overcome by the devil, and through the punishment he suffers at the devil's hands he also teaches us to hold those same punishments in contempt, foretelling that Satan too will in like manner appear and exhibit great and astonishing works, seizing for himself the glory belonging to God; and that those unwilling to be deceived by these displays ought not to turn aside toward that one, but should

trust in him alone. These things are plainly the words of a sorcerer, one working for hire and guarding in advance against those who hold opposing views and rise up against him. Then, next, wishing to set forth the riddles from which he supposes that we, having misheard them, introduce our teachings about Satan, he says that the ancients hinted at a certain divine war - Heraclitus speaking thus: "one must know that war is common and justice is strife, and that all things come to be

according to strife and are so apportioned"; and that Pherecydes, who was born much earlier than Heraclitus, made a mythical account of an army arrayed against an army, setting Cronus over one side as commander and Ophioneus over the other, and relating their challenges and contests; and that a covenant was made between them, that whichever of them should fall into Ogenus would be the defeated ones, while those who drove them out and won would hold heaven.

He says that the mysteries concerning the Titans and the Giants also hold to this same intent, being reported as waging war against the gods, as well as the Egyptian accounts concerning Typhon and Horus and Osiris. Then, having set out such things and without explaining in what way those belong to a superior account while these are mishearings of them, he heaps abuse on us, saying that those are not similar to our accounts about the devil,

the demon, or (as they say more truly) about the sorcerer who holds opposing views. And he understands Homer in the same way, as hinting at things similar to Heraclitus and Pherecydes and those who introduce the mysteries about the Titans and the Giants, in these words of Hephaestus to Hera, where he says: "for once before, when I was eager to defend you, he seized me by the foot and hurled me from the divine threshold," and to those

of Zeus to Hera, as follows: "Do you not remember when you were hung on high, and from your feet I hung two anvils, and about your hands I fastened a golden, unbreakable bond? And you hung in the air and the clouds, while the gods were vexed throughout long Olympus. But they were not able to release you by standing near; and whomever I caught, I would seize and hurl him from the threshold, until he reached the ground"

faint with weakness. And in explaining these Homeric verses he says that the words of Zeus to Hera are the words of God to matter, and that the words spoken to matter hint that, since matter was from the beginning disordered, God took hold of it and bound it together by certain proportions and adorned it, and that the demons around it, as many as are insolent, he casts down, punishing

them by this journey to the world below. And these Homeric verses, understood in this way, he says Pherecydes spoke of when he said: "Below that region is the Tartarean region; it is guarded by the daughters of Boreas, the Harpies and Thyella, where Zeus casts out any of the gods whenever one grows insolent." And he says that the robe of Athena, displayed to all in the

procession of the Panathenaea, holds to the same kind of ideas. For it shows, he says, that a certain motherless and undefiled deity holds sway over the earthborn ones as they grow bold. Having accepted these Greek fabrications, he then adds, accusing our teachings of the following: that we teach the Son of God to be chastised at the hands of the devil, so that, chastised in turn by that same one, we might endure. And these things are altogether ridiculous; for it was fitting, I think,

to punish the devil, not to threaten the people he had slandered. Consider, then, whether the one who charges us with erring most impiously and with having wandered from divine mysteries is not himself clearly in error, failing to notice that writings far older not only than the works of Heraclitus and Pherecydes, but even older than Homer — namely the writings of Moses — introduced the account of this evil one who fell from the heavens.

For the "serpent," from whom the Ophioneus in Pherecydes derives, became the reason man was cast out of God's paradise, and in this he hints at something of this sort: by the promise of divinity and of greater things he deceived the female sex, whom the man is said to have followed as well. And who else could the destroyer in Moses' Exodus be than the one who causes ruin for those who obey him

and do not resist his wickedness and do not struggle against it? Further, the scapegoat in Leviticus, whom the Hebrew scripture named Azazel, was no other; he had to be sent away and driven off, holding his lot in the wilderness, for all who belong to the worse portion because of wickedness are opposed to those from God's lot, and are destitute

of God. But also the sons of Belial in Judges are said to be sons of whom else but this one, on account of their wickedness? And clearly, distinct from all these, in the still more ancient book — more ancient even than Moses himself — Job, "the devil" is recorded as standing before God and asking for authority against Job, so that he might surround him with the heaviest circumstances, first with that concerning all

the destruction of his possessions and his children — and the second by encompassing him with a savage "elephant," as the disease is called, over the whole body of Job. For I pass over what the gospels say about the devil who tempted the Savior, so that I may not seem to bring what is relevant to the question at hand, against Celsus, from more recent writings. And in the closing chapters

of Job, in which the Lord spoke to Job out of the whirlwind and the clouds — the words recorded in the book that bears his name — there is no small amount said about a dragon that one might take up. I am not yet speaking of what comes from Ezekiel concerning "Pharaoh," or "Nebuchadnezzar," or the ruler of "Tyre," or what comes from Isaiah, in which the king of Babylon is lamented; from

which one could learn no little about evil — what beginning and origin it had, and that it arose from certain beings who shed their wings and followed the one who first shed his wings. For it was not possible for what is good by accident and by later addition to be like what is good in its essence — a thing which, for the one who takes up the living bread, if I may call it so,

for the keeping of himself, could never happen. But if it happens to someone, it happens because of that person's own fault, since he grew careless about partaking of the living bread and the true drink; by being nourished and watered from these the wing is repaired, according to the wisest Solomon, who said of the man who is truly rich that "he furnished for himself wings like an eagle, and

he returns to the house of the one set over him." For it was fitting that God, who knows how to make use of whatever is needed, should also assign, somewhere within the whole, a place for those who become evil through their own choosing, and should set out, as a training ground for virtue, a contest lying open to those who wish to compete "lawfully" for the sake of attaining it — so that, like gold tested in fire by the evil of these things, and having done everything so that

they may bring nothing counterfeit to their own rational nature, they may be shown worthy and be drawn up by the Word to the ascent toward things divine, to the highest blessedness of all and, if I may so name it, the mountain-peak of the good things. But he who in the Hebrew tongue is called Satan, and by some, in more Greek fashion, Satanas — when translated into the Greek language, means "adversary." And everyone who chooses evil and

the life that goes with it, acting in opposition to virtue, is a Satan, that is, an adversary of the Son of God, who is himself righteousness, truth, and wisdom entire. But in the stricter sense the adversary is the first of all those living in peace and passing their days in blessedness who shed his wings and fell from blessedness — who, according to Ezekiel, walked "blameless" in all his ways, until lawlessness was found in

him; and though he was "the seal of likeness and the crown of beauty," set within God's own paradise, having, as it were, become sated with good things, he came to ruin, in accordance with the word spoken to him mystically: "you have become destruction, and you shall not exist forever." These, then, are a few things we have set out with some daring and risk, trusting to this scripture — perhaps to no purpose at all; but if anyone, having taken the trouble to examine it closely

Anyone who is able to embody, from every part of the sacred writings, the account concerning evil — how it first came into being and in what way it is destroyed — would see that neither Celsus nor any of those whom this wicked demon has dragged down and torn away from God, from the right conception of him, and from his word, had even dreamed of what Moses and the prophets meant concerning Satan.

But since Celsus also tosses off some remarks about the one called Antichrist — without having read what is said about him in Daniel, or in Paul, or what was prophesied by the Savior in the Gospels concerning his coming — we too must say a few words about this. "For as faces are not alike to faces,"

so too hearts are not alike to the hearts of men." It is clear that there would be, among "the hearts of men," differences even among those inclined toward the good — not all being shaped and formed toward it equally and in the same way — and differences among those who, through neglect of the good, rush toward its opposite; for among these too there are some in whom

evil is spread very widely, and others in whom it is less. What, then, is strange in there being, so to call them, two extremities among human beings — one of the good, the other of its opposite — such that the extremity of the good is found in the man conceived of according to Jesus, from whom such great conversion, healing, and

improvement flowed to the human race, while the extremity of the opposite is found in the one called Antichrist? God, having embraced all things in his own foreknowledge and having seen the matters concerning both of these, willed to make them known to human beings through the prophets, so that those who understood their words might attach themselves to the better and guard themselves against the opposite. And it was fitting that the one

of the two extremes, the best, should be proclaimed Son of God because of his preeminence, while the one diametrically opposed to him should be called son of the wicked demon, and Satan, and the devil. Then, since evil is most sharply characterized precisely when it is at the height and outpouring of its wickedness, at the point where it counterfeits the better, for this reason there occur around the worse one, through the cooperation of

his father the devil, signs and wonders and false powers. For beyond the cooperations that come from demons to sorcerers, for the deceiving of the basest of men, there occurs a cooperation from the devil himself for the deceiving of the human race. Paul speaks of this so-called Antichrist, teaching and setting forth, with a certain concealment, in what manner he will come to dwell

among the human race, and when, and for what reason; and consider whether Paul does not set these matters out with the utmost gravity, not deserving even the slightest mockery. He speaks thus: "Now we ask you, brothers, regarding our Lord Jesus's coming, that is Christ's, and our being gathered together to him, that you not be quickly shaken in mind, nor"

be shaken, either by a spirit or by a word or by a letter alleged to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has arrived. Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction, the one who opposes and exalts himself above everything called god or an object of worship, so that

he takes his seat in the temple of God, showing himself to be god. Do you not recall that, while still among you, I used to tell you these things? Even now you know what is restraining him, so that he may be revealed in his own time. For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work; only the one who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way, and then the lawless one will be revealed,

whom the Lord Jesus will consume with the breath of his mouth and will bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming — the one whose coming, by Satan's working, arrives with every kind of power, false signs and wonders, and with all the deceit of wickedness for those who are perishing, because they did not accept the love of the truth so as to be saved. And for this reason

God sends them a working of error, that they may believe the lie, so that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in wickedness." To explain each of these points is not fitting for the present undertaking. The prophecy concerning him has been spoken in Daniel, and it is capable of leading the reader who approaches it thoughtfully and with good will to admire the words

as truly inspired and prophetic, words in which is spoken what pertains to the kingdoms that were to come, beginning from the times of Daniel down to the destruction of the world. It will be possible for anyone who wishes to consult it; but as for what concerns the Antichrist, consider whether it is not something like this: "And at the last stage of their kingdom, when their sins are being completed, there will arise a king insolent of face and skilled in

understanding riddles. And his strength will be mighty, and he will destroy marvelous things, and will succeed, and will act, and will destroy the strong, and the holy people too. His collar's yoke will prosper; deceit is in his hand, and in his heart he will be exalted, and by deceit he will destroy many, and he will stand for the destruction of many, and he will crush them like eggs in his hand." Now what is said in Paul,

in the wording I set out above, which states, "so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, showing himself to be god" — this too has been said in Daniel in the following manner: "and upon the temple, the abomination of desolations, and until the completion of the age a completion will be given upon the desolation." This much, then, drawn from a larger number of passages, seemed reasonable for me to set out,

so that the hearer might understand, even if only in part, the intent of the divine words that teach what concerns the devil and the Antichrist. Content with these for that purpose, let us now look also at another statement of Celsus and contend against it as far as we are able. After the passages set out above, he went on to say something like this: I will explain how it came about that they were led to call this figure the son of God.

the ancients called this world, since it came into being from god, his child and a youthful god. So this one and that one are certainly quite alike: a child of god. Celsus supposed, then, that we call Jesus the son of god by distorting what is said about the world—that it came into being from god and is both his son and god. For he was unable, by attending to the dates of Moses and the prophets, to see

that in general the existence of a certain son of god was prophesied, before the Greeks and before the ancient men Celsus speaks of, by the prophets among the Jews. Nor was he willing to cite what is said by Plato in the letters—which we mentioned above—about the one who set this universe in order, as being a son of god, lest he himself, on account of

Plato, whom he often extolled with great reverence, be forced to admit that the craftsman of this universe is son of god, and that the one who is first and over all is his father, and god. And if, in saying that the soul of Jesus has been united to so great a son of god by the utmost participation in him, we no longer separate it from him, that is nothing to wonder at. For the sacred words of the divine

scriptures know that other things too, though two by their own nature, are reckoned and indeed are one with each other. For instance, concerning man and woman it is said, "they are no longer two but one flesh," while concerning the person who has reached perfection and cleaves to the genuine lord—wisdom itself, truth itself, and reason itself—scripture states: "whoever cleaves to the lord becomes a single spirit with him." And if "whoever cleaves"

is a single spirit with him"—whose soul has cleaved to the lord, to reason itself and wisdom itself and truth itself and righteousness itself, more fully, or even in comparable measure, than the soul of Jesus? Supposing that is so, then the soul of Jesus is not two in relation to the god-word who is firstborn "of all creation." Now if, when the philosophers of the

Stoa say that man and god have the same virtue, they do not thereby say that the god over all is happier than the sage among men according to their teaching, holding instead that both possess equal happiness—Celsus does not ridicule or scoff at this doctrine. But if the divine word declares that the one who is perfect is joined by virtue and united to the very-word, so that, having thereby ascended, we do not separate the soul of Jesus

from the firstborn "of all creation." He mocks the claim that Jesus is called son of god, failing to see what is said concerning him, in hidden and mystical terms, within the divine scriptures. But in order to bring the one who wishes to follow the logical sequence of doctrines and profit from it to accept what is said, we say that the divine words call the body of Christ—ensouled by the son of god—the whole church of god, and

that the members of this body, as of a whole, are these, namely those who believe. For just as the soul gives life to the body and moves it, though the body is not by nature able to move itself with life, so the word, moving the whole body—the church—toward what is needed and acting within it, moves it and each member belonging to the church, nothing being done apart from the word

acting. If, then, this consequence is not to be despised, as I think, what is difficult about the soul of Jesus, and Jesus altogether without qualification, not being separated, by the highest and unsurpassable communion, from the very Word himself, being none other than him who is the only-begotten and firstborn of "all creation"? But so much for this. Let us look also at what follows, in which, having declared a single statement, and

not even offering anything plausible, he accuses the Mosaic account of the creation of the world, saying: "Moreover, the cosmogony too is quite silly." Now if he had put forward the way it appears to him to be silly, along with certain plausibilities, we would have contended against those; but it does not seem reasonable to me to construct a case against his mere assertion, showing in what way it is not silly.

But if anyone wants to examine what has moved us, along with the demonstration we have set forth, concerning the Mosaic account of the creation of the world, let him take up what we have worked out on Genesis, starting at the book's opening and continuing through to "this is the record of humanity's origins," in which we have attempted, from the divine writings themselves, to establish what the heaven and earth were that came to be "in the beginning," and

what the earth's being "invisible and unformed" was, and what the abyss was, and the darkness resting over it, and what the water signified, and the "spirit of God" that was borne upon it, and what the created "light" was, and what the "firmament" was, in distinction from the heaven that came to be "in the beginning," and so on with what follows. And he declared that the account of the origin of human beings, too, was quite silly,

setting forth no proofs and offering no argument against it; for he had, I think, no arguments capable of overturning the statement that man was made "according to the image of God." Nor, indeed, did he understand the "paradise" planted by God, and the life man lived in it at first, and the life that came about from his circumstances after being cast out because of sin and settled opposite "the paradise of delight."

But let the one who says these things were spoken quite sillily first consider this passage as well: "He stationed the cherubim and the fiery sword that turns every way, to guard the way to the tree of life." And if, then, Moses wrote these things without understanding anything, but doing something similar to what the poets of the Old Comedy wrote in jest — "Proetus married Bellerophon, and

Pegasus was from Arcadia" — well, those poets composed such things wishing to raise a laugh; but it is not plausible that a man who left writings for an entire nation, concerning matters about which he wished to persuade those being given laws that they were from God, should have written things unfitting to argument and spoken without any sense at all in the words "He stationed the cherubim and the fiery sword that turns every way, to guard the way to the tree of life," or any other

of the things said about the origin of mankind and philosophized upon by the sages among the Hebrews. Next, after this, having heaped together in bare assertions the disagreements among some of the ancients concerning the origin of the world and of mankind, he says that those who left us our writings, Moses and the prophets, did not know what the nature of the world and of human beings really is,

to compose a profound piece of nonsense. Now if he had told us the way it seemed to him that the divine writings were a profound piece of nonsense, we would have tried to refute the plausible-seeming arguments that appeared to him to show that they were a profound nonsense. But as it is, doing something similar to him, and playing along, we too will declare what in fact is the nature of the mind and of the discourse found in the

prophets — a nature Celsus, having no knowledge of it whatsoever, composed a profound nonsense about, boastfully entitling it True Account. But since he brings forward, as though he had understood them clearly and precisely, the matters concerning the days of the creation of the world for his accusation — some of which had passed before light and heaven came to be, along with sun, moon, and the stars, while others came after these had been brought into being — we will note only this

against him: is it possible that it escaped Moses's notice that he had already said beforehand that the world, as it was being fashioned, was completed in six days, and that, forgetting himself, he then adds, "This is the book of the origin of humankind, in the day that God made heaven and earth"? But there is no plausibility in supposing that Moses, having understood nothing, said after the account of the six days, "in the day that God made"

"heaven and earth." And if someone thinks these words can be referred back to "In the beginning God fashioned heaven and earth," let him take note that before "Let light come to be, and light came to be" and "God called the light Day," it had already been said, "In the beginning God fashioned heaven and earth." Now

it is not our present purpose to expound the account of intelligible and sensible things, and the manner in which the natures of the days have been distributed between the two kinds, nor even to examine the matters relating to these topics; for a treatise devoted entirely to it would be needed for the exposition of the Mosaic account of the world's creation — which, to the extent we were able, we composed a considerable time before the present treatise against Celsus,

drawing on the capacity we then had, from many years earlier, when we discussed the six days of the creation of the world according to Moses. One ought, however, to know that through Isaiah the word promises the righteous that they will be in a state of a day in which it will not be the sun but the Lord himself who will be their "everlasting light," and God their "glory." Having, I think, misheard

some wicked school of thought that gave a bad account of "Let there be light," as though it were spoken by the creator in the form of a wish, he said this; for the creator did not, like people who light their lamps from a neighbor's, make use of light from above. And having also misheard another impious school of thought, he said this too: if the one who did these things, contrary to the will of the great god, was some cursed god opposed to him,

why did he lend him the light? To such things we are so far from needing to offer any defense that we would rather more plainly accuse the opinion of those people as mistaken, and take our stand not, as Celsus does, against things we do not know about them, but against what we know accurately — partly having followed them ourselves, partly having carefully studied their writings. After this Celsus

He says: "As for the origin and destruction of the world—whether it is unoriginated and indestructible, or originated yet indestructible, or the reverse—I say nothing about this at present, for the treatise before us does not require it. But neither do we say that the spirit of the God over all came to be in this world as in something alien,

in accordance with the text, 'the spirit of God was borne above the water,' nor do we say, as though certain people wickedly contrive it, that it was as though by another craftsman opposed to the great God that his spirit had need of removal, the God above tolerating this. So let those who say such things, and Celsus too, who does not accuse them on any factual basis, take themselves far off and good riddance. It was necessary that he either leave such matters wholly unmentioned,

or, in whatever way seemed to him humane, to have set them out carefully and contended against what is said by them impiously. We have likewise never once heard that the great God, having granted the craftsman the spirit, afterward reclaims it. Then, next, foolishly bringing accusations against impious doctrines, he says: "What god bestows a thing meaning later to reclaim it? Reclaiming belongs to one who lacks something, and God lacks nothing." And to this

he adds, as if saying something rather clever against certain people: "Why, when he was lending, did he not know he was lending to an evil man?" And he also says: "Why does he overlook a wicked craftsman working against himself?" Then, I think, mixing sects together with sects and not noting that this belongs to one sect and that to another, he brings forward the objections we raise against Marcion, having perhaps overheard even these, badly and unprofessionally,

from certain people who bring charges in [words that are] second-rate and unschooled. Not, indeed, very intelligently. So, setting out the things said against Marcion, and not noting that he is speaking against him, he says: "Why does he send secretly and corrupt this one's creatures? Why does he force his way in secretly and persuade and deceive? Why does he lure away, as though performing the office of a kidnapper, those whom this one has condemned or cursed, as you say,

and spirit them off? Why does he teach them to run away from the Lord? Why to flee the Father? Why does he himself adopt them, when the Father does not consent? Why does he claim to be the father of things belonging to another?" And he adds, as though in wonder, this: "A fine god indeed, to desire to be father of sinners condemned and disinherited by another, and, as they themselves say, of refuse!"

And when the one he sent out—spiriting him off from that other god—was caught, he was unable to avenge him. Next, as though addressing us who confess that this world does not belong to some alien and foreign god, he says such things as this: "But if these are his works, how did God make evil things? How is he unable to persuade and admonish? How does he, over creatures that turned out ungrateful

and wicked, feel remorse, and find fault with his own craft, and hate it, and threaten it, and destroy his own offspring? Or to where does he ever spirit them away, out of this world which he himself made?" It seems to me that here too, without making clear what the evils actually are—even though among the Greeks many sects have arisen concerning good things and evil things—he snatches up as though it followed

for us, who say that this world too is a work of the God over all, that according to us God is the maker of evils. Well then, let the matter of evils stand however it in fact stands, whether God has made them or not, but rather they came about as a consequence attending upon the primary things — but I wonder whether it is not the very thing that, for us, who say that works

of the God over all this world too is, he thinks follows, regarding God's having made the evils — whether it follows just as much on the basis of what he himself says. One could respond to Celsus thus: granting these are his works, in what way did God produce evils? And in what way is he powerless to persuade and to admonish? The greatest wickedness in argument

occurs when someone accuses those who hold different views on certain doctrines of being unsound, while he himself is guilty of these very charges in his own doctrines, and far more so. Let us, then, briefly examine the matter of good and evil things according to the divine scriptures, and what we must say in reply to: how did God make evil things? And how is he unable to persuade and admonish?

Properly speaking, then, according to the divine scriptures, the good things are the virtues and the actions in accordance with them, just as, properly speaking, the evil things are the opposites of these. For the present we will content ourselves with the words of the thirty-third psalm, which establish this as follows: "But those who seek out the Lord will lack no good thing. Come, children, hear me; I will instruct you in reverence for the Lord. Who is

the man who desires life, who loves to see good days? Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking deceit. Turn away from evil and do good." For "turn away from evil and do good" is said neither of bodily goods or evils, as some call them, nor of external goods, but of those pertaining to

the goods or evils of the soul. For the one who turns away from evils of this kind and does good things of this kind, as one who desires the true life, would come to be within it — "loving to see good days," the days whose word is the sun of "righteousness" — and would arrive at those days, God rescuing him "from the present evil age" and from the evil

days—the same days Paul had in mind when he wrote: "buying back the opportunity, since the days are wicked." One would also find, though in a looser sense, that bodily things and external things too are called good or evil — those contributing to life according to nature being reckoned goods, and those opposed to it being reckoned evils. Job speaks in just this way to his wife: "If good we have taken from

at the Lord's hand, must we not likewise endure the bad?" Since, then, it is found in the divine scriptures, in one place spoken from the person of God, "I am the one who makes peace and creates evils," and elsewhere again about him: "for calamity descended, sent by the Lord, upon Jerusalem's gates — the clatter of chariots and horsemen," — sayings which have troubled many of those who read the scripture, unable to discern the matters concerning

what is meant by "goods" and "evils" themselves; it is likely that either Celsus, raising this as a difficulty, said something like: how did God make evils? or that, having heard some rather uneducated person expounding on the passage in question, he set down the wording he cites. We, however, say that God did not make evils in the sense of wickedness and the actions that arise from it. For how could it be

that the proclamation concerning judgment could speak with boldness—teaching that the wicked are punished for their wicked deeds in proportion to their sins, and that those who have lived according to virtue, or who have performed virtuous deeds, are blessed and will obtain the rewards that come from God—if God had made evils in the true sense? I know well that certain people will seize upon particular sayings of scripture

and, wishing even in these cases to dare to assert that they came from God, will be unable to point to a single consistent tenor in scripture, which blames sinners while approving those who act rightly, and yet no less speaks those other things which seem—being not a few—to trouble those who read the divine writings without understanding. But to set out now the troubling passages, which are numerous, and their interpretations, which require much elaboration,

I did not think fitting to the composition now before us. Evils, then, if one understands by the term those things properly so called, God has not made; rather, a few things followed upon his primary works, as incidental to the ordering of the universe as a whole—just as the spiral shavings and sawdust follow upon the carpenter's primary work, and just as to builders there seem to fall away, alongside the buildings,

things like refuse dropping from the stones and the mortar. But if one means by "evils" those things so called only in a loose sense—what are termed bodily and external evils—who denies that God has at times brought about some of these, in order that through them he might turn certain people back? And what absurdity can this account possibly contain? For just as, if we hear in a loose sense the hardships imposed as "evils" upon those being disciplined

by fathers and teachers and tutors, or upon those cut or cauterized by physicians for the sake of treatment—we say the father does evil to his sons, or the tutors, or the teachers, or the physicians—yet those who strike or those who cut would not be blamed at all for it—so too, if God is said to bring on such things for the sake of turning back and treating those who need such hardships, there would be

nothing absurd in the account. Nor, then, would it be absurd that "misfortune falls, dispatched by the Lord, upon Jerusalem's gates," these having their substance in the hardships inflicted by enemies, brought upon them for the sake of turning them back; nor that he "punishes with a rod the lawless deeds" of those who have abandoned God's "law" "and their sins with whips"; nor that it says: "you have coals of fire, sit upon

them; they will be a help to you." And in this same way we explain also "he who makes peace and creates evils": for he creates bodily or external evils, purifying and disciplining those who were unwilling to be disciplined by reason and sound teaching. This, then, concerns the question how God made evils. As for how he persuades and admonishes—

...is unable to? It has already been said that if this were truly a charge, Celsus's statement would apply equally to all who accept providence. But one could answer in God's defense that he is not unable to admonish. For he admonishes throughout all of scripture, and through those who by God's grace teach those who listen—unless indeed some particular meaning is to be heard in "admonish," one that includes also

succeeding with the person admonished and his actually hearing the teacher's word—which lies outside the sense of the term as worn smooth by ordinary usage. But as to how he is unable to persuade—this too must be addressed, once it has likewise been brought before all who accept providence. It is because being persuaded is, so to speak, one of the things called reciprocal states, analogous to a man being shorn, where the one acting is the one who presents himself to the shearer.

For this reason it requires not only the activity of the one who persuades but also—if I may coin the word—a submission to the persuader, or an acceptance of what is said by the persuader. For this reason one must not say that those who are not persuaded fail to be persuaded because God is unable to persuade, but because they do not accept God's persuasive words. And that this is

the case even among human beings—among those called craftsmen of persuasion, as one might say—one would not be wrong to note. For it is possible for someone who has grasped the principles of rhetoric to the fullest and applies them properly to do everything toward persuading, yet, failing to secure the consent of the one who is supposed to be persuaded, seem not to persuade. And that even if the persuasive words are said to come from God, the being-persuaded itself

is not from God—this Paul teaches clearly when he says: "the persuasion is not from him who calls you." Of the same kind is also the saying: "If you are willing and listen to me, you will eat the good things of the land; but if you are not willing and do not listen to me, the sword will devour you." For in order that someone may will what the one admonishing says, and having listened to it become worthy of God's promises, the listener's own choice is needed, along with his assent to what is said.

That is why it seems to me that Deuteronomy states with emphasis: "And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, and to go about in every one of his paths, and to hold him in love, and" "to observe his commandments?" Next

in order it is necessary to answer the question of how, when they turn out ungrateful and wicked, he repents and finds fault with his own handiwork and hates it and threatens it and destroys his own offspring. In this he also slanders and falsely misrepresents what is written in Genesis, in this manner: "And the LORD God, seeing that the wickednesses of those on the earth had multiplied,

and that everyone was scheming in his heart intently toward evil all his days, God took thought regarding man's having been made upon the earth; and he pondered in his heart, and God said: I will wipe out man, whom I made, from the face of the earth, from man to beast, and from creeping things to the birds of the sky;"

"...that I was angered, that I made them"—setting out what is not written as though it were disclosed by what is written. For in these passages no repentance is named of God, nor is it said that he finds fault with and hates his own craftsmanship. But if God seems to threaten the events of the flood and to destroy in it his own offspring, it must be said that, since the soul of human beings is immortal, the

threat that is supposed wishes to turn back those who hear it, while the destruction of human beings in the flood serves as a cleansing of the earth, just as those among the Greeks who philosophized not contemptibly have said in the phrase: "whenever the gods purify the earth." Concerning the expressions that are, so to speak, ascribed to God after the manner of human passions, we have said not a little above as well. Suspecting

what would follow next—perhaps also himself perceiving what could be said by those who defend the case of those destroyed in the flood—Celsus goes on to say: "Yet should he refrain from destroying his own offspring, to what place, then, does he remove them from this world, the very one he made?" To this too we say that he does not altogether spirit away, out of the whole world composed of heaven and earth,

those who suffered the flood; rather he frees them from life in the flesh, and having released them from their bodies he releases them at the same time from being upon the earth, which in many places in the scriptures it is customary to call "world." Especially in the Gospel according to John one can often find "world" used to name the terrestrial place, just as also in the passage: "the true light was that

which enlightens every man coming into the world," and "in the world you have affliction; but take courage, I have conquered the world." If, then, one understands "spirits them away" as meaning away from this world, the terrestrial place, nothing absurd confronts the argument; but if someone names "world" the system composed of heaven and earth, it is not altogether the case that those who suffered the flood

are spirited away from the world so named. And yet one might say, on grasping the saying, "while we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen," and "for his invisible attributes, ever since the creation of the world, are perceived, being understood through the things that are made," that, in addition to the invisible things and those called simply unseen, one who happens to be among them has spirited himself away from the world, reason itself removing him from here and transferring him

to the place above the heavens, for the contemplation of what is beautiful. After the passage just examined, as though aiming somehow to fill the book with a multitude of words, Celsus says, in other words, things similar to what was examined a little above, where he said: "It is far more foolish still to apportion certain days to the process of world-formation, before there were days at all; for since heaven had not yet come to be, nor"

had the earth yet been made firm, nor the sun yet been carried along its course, how could there have been days? For how does this differ from—but let us also take the matter up from further back and examine it—how could the first and greatest God not be absurd, commanding: 'let this come to be, and another thing, or this,' fashioning so much on one day, and again as much more on the second, and on the third and..."

...fourth and fifth and sixth day? We also spoke of it in the sense of a command—'let this and that or the other come to be'—when we cited: "he himself spoke and they came to be, he himself commanded and they were created," saying that the one who is properly the craftsman is the Son of God, the Word, and as it were the one who works the world with his own hand, while the Father of the Word, by having commanded the Son to make the world with his own word, is properly the primary maker.

As for the light having come to be on one day, the firmament on the second, and on the third the things under the heaven (the waters) having been gathered into their gatherings, and the earth thus having sprouted forth what is governed by nature alone, and on the fourth the luminaries and the stars, and on the fifth the swimming creatures, and on the sixth

the land creatures and man, we have spoken as far as was possible for us in our work on Genesis; and above, in rebuking those who, following the more superficial reading, said that six days' worth of time passed in the making of the world, we cited: "This is the book of the origin of heaven and earth, when it came to be, in the day that God fashioned the heaven and the

earth." Then again, not having heard, "And on the sixth day God completed the works he had made, and on the seventh day he rested from all the works he had made; God then blessed the seventh day, sanctifying it, since on that day he had rested from all the works that"

God had begun to make"—and having supposed that "he rested on the seventh day" and "he took his ease on the seventh day" are one and the same thing, he says—after this, indeed, as though some utterly incompetent workman had grown tired and needed a rest from his labor. For he does not even know what the day of the Sabbath and of God's rest is, coming after the world-making that was carried out for as long as the world has taken to be established—

the day of God, on which those who have done all their own works in the six days will keep festival together with God, and, because they have left out nothing of what was required, will rise up to the contemplation and to the gathering held within it of the righteous and the blessed. Then, as though either the scriptures said this, or we ourselves gave such an account of God—that having grown weary

he rested—he says that it is not right for the first God to grow weary, nor to work with his hands, nor to give commands. Celsus, then, says that it is not right for the first God to grow weary; but we would say that not even God the Word grows weary, nor do any of those who already belong to the better and more divine order, for weariness belongs to things that are in a body. And you may inquire whether it belongs to things

in any body whatsoever, or to those in the earthly body and one only slightly better than this. But, he says, it is not right for the first God to work with his hands either; yet if you take "work with his hands" in its proper sense, then not even the second God, nor anything else among the more divine beings, does so. But let "work with his hands" be said in a loose or figurative sense, so that we may also explain "the firmament proclaims the work of his hands" and "the

"his hands established the heaven," and if anything similar to this is said, we allegorize the hands and limbs of God. What, then, is absurd about God working in this way with hands? And just as it is not absurd for God to work in this way with hands, so too it is not absurd for him to command, so that the things accomplished by the one commanded are good and praiseworthy, because it is God who has commanded concerning them. And again...

Celsus, perhaps having misheard the phrase "it was the mouth of the Lord that spoke these things," and perhaps also because ordinary people have rushed heedlessly into their account of such matters, and without understanding of whom the names of bodily members are used when spoken of the powers of God, says: he has neither mouth nor voice. And indeed there will truly be no voice for God, if...

voice is struck air, or a blow of air, or a form of air, or whatever those skilled in such things define voice to be; yet the phrase "voice of God" is spoken of as something the people perceive as though it were God's own voice, in "the whole people looked upon the voice of God," "seeing" being understood there - so that I may name it in keeping with the custom of...

scripture - spiritually. But he also says that God has nothing of the things we know; yet of what "we know" he gives no clarification. For if he means bodily members, we agree with him, understanding along with it those things known by us in a bodily and more common sense; but if we are to hear it universally - "of what we know" being taken to mean the many things we know - for virtue, blessedness, and divinity belong to him. But if one should hear it...

in a loftier sense, "of what we know," since everything we know falls short of God, it is not at all strange for us likewise to grant that God possesses none of the things we know. For what belongs to God surpasses everything known, not only by human nature, but also by the things that surpass it. But if he had read the words of the prophets...

David saying, "but you are the same," and Malachi, I believe: "and I have not changed," he would have seen that none of us says there is change in God, either in deed or in thought. For remaining "the same," he governs the things subject to change, as is their nature, and his reason chooses that they be governed. Then Celsus says, not having perceived the difference between "according to...

the image of God" and "his image," that the "image" "of God" is the "firstborn of all creation," who is the Word itself and the Truth itself, and moreover also Wisdom itself, serving as "image" "of his goodness"; man, by contrast, was shaped in the likeness "of God." And moreover also that any man over whom "Christ" stands as head bears the standing of "the image and glory of God"; but...

he has not even considered in what part of man the "according to the image" of "God" is characterized, and that it is in the soul which either never possessed or has since shed "the old man together with his practices," and which, precisely by lacking these, is termed "according to the image" of its creator, that he says: nor did he fashion man as his own image; for such is not God's nature, nor for another...

...similar in form to nothing. But what sense does it make to suppose that the "according to the image" of "God" resides in the worse part of the composite human being, I mean in the body — as Celsus has taken it, that this itself is his "according to the image"? For if the "according to the image" of "God" is in the body alone, then the better part, the soul, is deprived of the "according to the image," and

it is in the corruptible body — which none of us says. But if the "according to the image" of "God" resides in both together, then it follows that God has to be composite and, as it were, himself made up of soul and body, so that the better part, the "according to the image," would be in the soul, while the lesser part, corresponding to the body, would be in the body —

which none of us says either. It remains, then, that the "according to the image" of "God" is to be understood as present in what we call the inner man, who is being renewed and whose nature it is to come to be "according to the image of the one who created him" — when someone becomes "perfect," "as the heavenly Father is perfect," and hears, "Holy shall you be, since I, the Lord your God, am myself holy," and

learning "Become imitators of God," takes up into his own virtuous soul the characteristic marks of God. Then the body too is a "temple" — the body of the one who, in the "according to the image," has taken up the things of God, who has such a soul, and who, through the "according to the image," has God within the soul. Again he strings together for himself yet more assertions, claiming they are

given by us — assertions which none of the Christians who have any sense actually makes. For none of us says that God partakes of shape or of color; nor indeed does he partake of motion, he who, because his nature is fixed and stable, summons the righteous man to the same condition, saying, "But stand here with me." If, however, some

expressions seem to present some kind of motion belonging to him, such as the one that says, "They caught the sound of the LORD God as he moved about in the garden when the day had grown cool," such expressions must be understood in the sense that God is conceived as moving toward those who have sinned; or else they must be understood in the way that God's "sleep" is spoken of figuratively, or his "wrath," or something similar. But God does not even partake of being; rather he is partaken of

rather than partaking, and it is by those possessing the "spirit of God" that he is partaken of. And our savior likewise does not partake of righteousness; rather, being "righteousness" himself, he is partaken of by the righteous. The discussion concerning being is a lengthy one, and hard to see clearly, especially if being properly speaking is that which is fixed and incorporeal — so that it may be discovered whether God is beyond being in seniority and power,

imparting being to those to whom he imparts it according to his own Word and to that very Word itself, or whether he too is being — except that he is said, by nature, to be invisible, in the passage concerning the savior which states, "he who bears the likeness of the God none can see," and by the word "invisible" the incorporeal is signified. It must also be inquired whether one ought to speak of him as the being of beings, and the form

of forms, and beginning of the only-begotten and firstborn "of all creation," and beyond all these his Father and God. Now Celsus says of God that all things come from him, releasing all things from him in some manner I cannot fathom; but our Paul declares that all things proceed from him, are brought into being through him, and are directed to him, setting forth the beginning

of the subsistence of all things in the phrase "from him," and their coherence in the phrase "through him," and their end in the phrase "to him." But in truth God is from nothing. Since he says that he is not even attainable by reason, I distinguish the meaning and say: if by the reason within us, whether the inward reason or the uttered reason, then we too will say that

God is not attainable by reason. But if, understanding "At the outset the Word existed, and the Word was present with God, and the Word was itself God," we declare that God is attainable by this Word, not being grasped by it alone but also by whomever it reveals the Father to, then we shall be making Celsus's statement false, when he says: God is not

attainable by reason. And the claim that he is not nameable also needs distinguishing. For if what is meant is that nothing among words and their meanings can represent the properties of God, this statement is true, since indeed many qualities are not nameable. For who can give names that mark the difference between the quality of sweetness in a date and the quality of sweetness in a dried fig? And who by a name

can distinguish and represent the particular quality of each? It is therefore nothing surprising if God is not nameable in this way. But if you take "nameable" in the sense that it is possible by names to represent something concerning him, so as to guide the hearer and make him understand, in whatever measure human nature can attain, certain things about God, there is nothing absurd

in calling him nameable. And in this way we shall also make the distinction on the point that nothing is comprehended by a name in respect of what it has undergone. It is also true that God is beyond all passion. So much, then, for this. Let us next look at his following statement, in which he puts words, as it were, into the mouth of someone who, after hearing these things, speaks as follows: how then am I to know God? And how am I to learn

the way there? And how do you show him to me? For as it is now, before my eyes you cast darkness, and nothing do I see clearly. Then, to the one who has raised this difficulty, he replies, as it were, and thinks he is giving the cause of the darkness upon the eyes of the one who spoke the foregoing, saying: those whom someone leads out of darkness into bright light are unable to withstand

the glare, and so their sight is punished and harmed, and they suppose themselves to be blinded. To this too we shall reply that all those who gaze upon the base craft of painters and sculptors and image-makers sit and are settled in darkness, unwilling to look up and ascend in mind from visible and all sensible things to the maker of the universe, who is

...light. And everyone who has followed the rays of reason comes to be in the light, since he has shown from what great ignorance and impiety and lack of understanding concerning the divine these things were worshiped in place of God, and has led by the hand the mind of the one wishing to be saved toward the God who is unbegotten and over all. For "the people who sat in darkness," that is, the nations, "saw a great light,"

"and to those sitting in the region and shadow of death a light has dawned" — God Jesus. So no Christian answers Celsus or any of those who bring accusation against the divine word by saying, "How am I to know God?" For each of them, so far as is possible, has known God. And no one says, "How am I to learn the way there?" since he has heard the one who said, "I am the way

and the truth, and the life," and tasted, in walking that road, the good that comes of walking it. And no Christian would say to Celsus, "How do you show me God?" Yet this much Celsus said truly in the passage before us: that someone who has heard his words answers him, but seeing that darkness fills his utterances, says, "You cast darkness over my eyes."

Celsus, then, and those like him, want to cast darkness over our eyes, but we, by the light of reason, dispel the darkness of impious doctrines. And the Christian might say to Celsus, who says nothing clear or striking, this: "I see nothing clear in your words." It is not, then, from darkness into a brilliant light

that Celsus leads us forward, but he wishes to remove us from light into darkness, laying it down that "darkness is light and light is darkness," and thereby falling under what was well said by Isaiah in this way: "Woe to those who call darkness light and light darkness." But we, once reason has opened the eyes of our soul, seeing the difference between light and darkness,

choose in every way to stand in the light, and wish to have no part whatever in darkness. And the true light, being alive, knows to whom its rays must be shown and to whom light must be shown, not withholding its own brightness on that person's account, but because of the weakness still present in that person's eyes. And if one must speak at all of eyesight being punished and harmed, to what

else shall we attribute the eyes suffering this than to the one held fast by ignorance of God and hindered by the passions from seeing the truth? Christians, then, in no way suppose themselves maimed by the words of Celsus or of any alien form of piety; but let those who perceive themselves being maimed by following wandering crowds and nations that keep festival to demons come forward to the Word who freely grants eyes,

so that, just as the poor and blind who lay by the road, cured by Jesus after crying out to him, "Son of David, take pity on me," obtained through that pity eyes made new and whole, of a kind only the Word of God could form. For this reason, should Celsus ask how we claim to know God, and by what means we expect to be saved through him, we will answer that the

the Word of God, having become, to those who seek him or to those who accept him when he appears, one who makes the Father known and reveals him, since the Father was not seen before the Word's coming. Who else has power to save man's soul and lead it to the God over all, but the God who is the Word — he who was "with God in the beginning," for the sake of those who clung fast to the flesh and

had become what "flesh" is, "became" "flesh," so that he might be received by those unable to see him as he was, namely as "Word," and as being "with God," and as "being God." And, spoken of in bodily terms and announced as "flesh," it is to himself that he summons those who exist as flesh, so that he may first shape them according to the Word made flesh, and thereafter lift them up to behold

him such as he was prior to becoming "flesh" — so that they, having profited and climbed up out of the introduction given through the flesh, might declare: "even though we once knew Christ according to the flesh, we no longer know him in that way now." He "became" "flesh," accordingly, and upon becoming "flesh" he "pitched his tent among us," without remaining apart from us; and having pitched that tent and taken up existence among us, he did not stay fixed in his original form, but

having brought us up onto the rational "high mountain," he displayed to us his own glorious form together with the brightness of his garments — and not his form alone, but also that of the spiritual law: namely Moses, who appeared "in glory" together with Jesus. And he showed us also all prophecy, which does not die even after the becoming man, but is taken up into heaven, of which Elijah was the symbol.

And whoever has beheld these things might say: "we beheld his glory, a glory befitting an only-begotten son from a father, brimming with grace and truth." Celsus, for his part, has rather crudely invented what he imagines we would say in response to his question: how do we suppose we shall come to know God, and how shall we be saved and brought to him? But we would say what has already been set out above. Yet, Celsus says,

we answer by plausible guesswork, and he claims to record our answer as running thus: since God is great and hard to behold, he sent down to us here, having put his own spirit into a body like ours, so that we might be able to hear from him and learn. But the God and Father of all is not the only one who is great in our regard; for he has imparted also of himself and of his greatness to his

only-begotten and firstborn "of all creation," so that, being himself the "image" "of the invisible God," he might also preserve the image of the Father in his greatness. For it was not possible for something to be a well-proportioned, if I may so call it, and beautiful image "of the invisible God" without also representing the image of his greatness. But our God too, in that he is not a body,

is invisible; yet to those able to see with the heart he is visible, that is, with the mind — and not with just any heart, but with a pure one. For it is not right for a defiled heart to look upon God; rather, that which is capable, as is fitting, of beholding the pure must itself be pure. Let it be granted, then, that God is also hard to behold; but he is not the only one hard for anyone to behold — his only-begotten is too. For God is hard to behold

...word, and in this way wisdom too is hard to behold, the wisdom in which God has made all things. For who is able to behold the wisdom in each single one of all things, the wisdom by which God has made each of all things? It is not, then, because God is hard to behold that he sent the Son as one easy to behold. Celsus, not understanding these things, spoke as though from the person

of us: "because it was hard to behold, [God] cast his own spirit into a body like ours and sent it down here, so that we might be able to hear from him and learn." But as we have shown, the Son too, though hard to behold, inasmuch as he is the Word, God, through whom all things came into being, "also tented among us." But if Celsus understood what we say about the spirit of God, and that "as many as

are guided by God's spirit, these are sons of God," he would not have asserted, as if speaking for us, that God took a spirit belonging to himself, placed it within a body, and dispatched it to this place. For God is always imparting a share of his own spirit to those able to partake of it, and it does not come to be present in those who are worthy by way of cutting off or division. For the spirit that belongs to us is not a body, just as

fire is not a body either — the fire that is said to be God in the phrase, "our God is fire that consumes." All these expressions, indeed, are used figuratively, to represent, by means of familiar and bodily names, the intelligible nature. And just as, if sins are said to be wood and grass and stubble, we will not say that sins are bodies, and if acts of manly virtue are said to be gold and

silver and precious stone, we will not say that acts of virtue are bodies — so too, even if God is said to be a "consuming fire" of the "wood" and the "grass" and the "stubble" and every substance of sin, we will not think of him as a body. And just as, when he is called "fire," we do not think of him as a body, so too, when God is called "spirit," we do not say that he is a body. For

it is the custom of Scripture, in contradistinction to things perceptible by the senses, to call intelligible things "spirits" and "spiritual"; as, for instance, when Paul says, "but our competence comes from God, who made us competent to serve a new covenant — a covenant not bound to writing but to spirit; for the writing brings death, while the spirit brings life" — by "letter" he named the sense-perceptible understanding of the divine writings, and by "spirit"

the intelligible understanding. So it is, then, also in the phrase "God is spirit." Since both Samaritans and Jews carried out what was commanded by the law in a bodily and typological way, the Savior said to the Samaritan woman: "a time is approaching when it will be neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem that they worship the Father; God is spirit, and those who worship him are bound to worship in spirit and"

truth." By these words he taught that one must "worship" God not "in flesh" and with fleshly sacrifices, but "in spirit." For indeed, by analogy with "in spirit," one might understand that to serve him in an intelligible way is itself, in a sense, to be "spirit." But also, one must "worship" the Father not "in types" but "in truth," which "came into being through Jesus Christ" after the giving

the law "through Moses." For "as soon as one turns to the Lord" ("and the Lord is that Spirit"), "the veil" lying "on the heart" "is stripped away, whenever Moses is read." Since Celsus has failed to understand what is said concerning God's Spirit ("for a merely natural person does not accept what belongs to God's Spirit; it is folly to him, and he cannot"

to know them, because they are examined spiritually"), he links this to his own idea, supposing that when we say God is "Spirit" we differ in no way from the Stoics among the Greeks, who say that God is a spirit permeating everything and holding all things within its embrace. For while the oversight and providence of God does pervade all things, it is not like the spirit of the Stoics; and

providence embraces and contains all the things it oversees, yet it does not contain them the way a body contains, in which case what is contained is itself also a body, but as a divine power that has embraced what it contains. Now according to the Stoics, who say that the first principles are corporeal and therefore corrupt all things, and thereby risk corrupting even the God who is over all

— unless this seemed to them altogether too absurd a consequence — even the word of God that descends as far as men and the very least of things is nothing other than a corporeal spirit. But we, on the contrary, endeavor to show that the rational soul surpasses every bodily nature, being an incorporeal and invisible substance; and so the divine Word, through whom all things

came to be, could not be a body — he who arrives first, so that all things might come to be through the Word, extending not only to men but even to what are reckoned the very smallest things and governed by nature. The Stoics, then, consume all things by fire; but we do not know of any incorporeal substance that is consumed by fire, nor do we hold that the soul of a man, or the being of angels, thrones, dominions, principalities, or

powers, is dissolved into fire. Hence it is said in vain by Celsus, as one ignorant of the things of the Spirit of God, that since the Son, who has come to be in a human body, is a spirit from God, the Son of God himself could not be immortal. Then again he confuses his own argument, as though some among us would not agree that God is spirit but rather that his

Son is, and he thinks he has met the point by saying that spirit has no such nature as to endure forever — just as if, when we call God a "fire" that "consumes," he were to answer that fire has no such nature as to endure forever — not seeing in what sense we say our God is "fire," and of what things he is a consumer, namely of sins and of wickedness. For it befits a good God

— once each person has been shown to be the kind of contender he has proven himself in the contest — to consume wickedness with the fire of punishments. Then again he takes up for his own purposes what is not said by us: that it is necessary that God should have breathed out his spirit, and that from this it follows that a bodily resurrection was impossible for Jesus; since God would not have taken back, stained by the

of the body by nature. It is foolish, then, for us to respond to arguments as if they were ours when they are not ours. Then, going on to repeat himself, after saying a great deal above and mocking the birth of the god from a virgin — to which we responded as far as we were able — he says: "But if the god wished to send down a spirit from himself, what need did he have to breathe it into a woman's womb? He was already able"

to fashion human beings, since he knew how, and to mold a body around this one too, without casting his own spirit into so great a defilement. Done that way, it would not have been disbelieved, if it had been sown from above at once." And he says this because he does not understand the virginal and pure begetting, and the coming-to-be, free from any corruption, of the body that was going to serve for the salvation of human beings. But the man who sets out the Stoic

doctrine, while not even pretending to have learned the teaching about indifferent things, supposes that the divine nature has been cast into defilement and has been defiled — whether it came to be within a woman's body until the body was molded around it, or whether it took on a body — doing something rather like those who suppose that the sun's rays are polluted by the mud and foul-smelling bodies they touch, and do not remain pure even there. And if,

according to Celsus's own hypothesis, the body had been molded around Jesus apart from any begetting, would those who saw the body not immediately have believed that it was not from a begetting? For what is seen does not report its nature either, nor whence it came to be. For instance, if, by hypothesis, there were some honey that was not from bees, no one could tell this from taste or from sight,

that it is not from bees — just as what is from bees does not show its origin to sense-perception either, but experience shows that this is from bees. Likewise, experience also teaches that the vine gives rise to wine; taste alone does not reveal that it came from a vine. In the same manner, then, the perceptible body does not report the manner of its coming-into-being,

but you will be led to what is said by means of the things in the heavens, whose existence and brightness we perceive by seeing them, yet perception surely gives us no clue as to whether they are things that have come to be or things that have not come to be. Indeed, sects have arisen even about these matters; and even those who say they have come to be do not agree among themselves about how they have come to be — for perception does not suggest this about them either,

even if reason, forcing the issue, discovers that they have come to be — concerning the manner in which they have come to be. Then, next, he goes back over what he has already said many times about Marcion's opinion, and in part sets out Marcion's views truly, and in part has misheard them; and it is not necessary for us to respond to this or even to refute it. Then again he brings against himself both the arguments for Marcion and those against him,

saying which of the charges they escape and which they fall into; and when he wishes to plead for the argument that claims he was prophesied, so as to accuse Marcion and his followers, he says plainly: "How will it be shown that one who was punished in this way is a son of God, unless this has been foretold about him?" Then again he jests and, as is his custom, mocks, introducing two sons of gods, one of the demiurge,

and another god according to Marcion, and he depicts their single combats, saying they are like those of quails, and the theomachies of the ancients; or that, being useless through old age and given to raving, they do nothing to one another, but let their children fight. What then he said above, this we will say back to him: what old woman singing a child to sleep would not be ashamed to say such things,

as this man says in the book entitled The True Word? For he ought to have engaged the arguments in earnest, but instead, abandoning the substance, he plays around and clowns, thinking he is writing mimes or some jokes, not seeing that such a manner of arguing works against his own purpose, since he wants us to abandon Christianity and attend to his own doctrines — which, had he set them forth with dignity,

would perhaps have been more persuasive. But since he mocks and plays and clowns, we will say that it was from a lack of dignified arguments (for he neither had them nor knew them) that he fell into such great nonsense. Next after this he says that, since a divine spirit was in the body, it certainly ought to have differed from the rest in some way — either in size or beauty or strength or voice or striking impressiveness or persuasiveness.

For it is impossible that one who possessed something divine beyond the rest should differ from others in nothing; yet this man differed from no one else, but was, as they say, small and ill-formed and ignoble. It is clear also in these matters that, whenever he wants to accuse Jesus, he speaks as one who trusts the scriptures that seem to him to provide grounds for accusation, citing what comes from them; but wherever, according to those very

same scriptures, one might think the opposite is said to what is taken up for accusation, these things he does not even pretend to know. It is indeed written, admittedly, concerning the body of Jesus having become ill-formed, but certainly not, as he has stated it, ignoble as well. Nor is it clearly shown that it was small. The passage stands thus as recorded in Isaiah, prophesying that he would come to dwell among the many not

in comely form, nor with any surpassing beauty: "Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We proclaimed him in his presence as a little child, like a shoot rising from parched earth; there is no form to him, no glory — we looked upon him, and form he had none — nor was there beauty in him; rather his appearance was held cheap, falling short beside the sons of men."

Did Celsus, then, hear these words, since he thought they would be useful to him for accusing Jesus, but no longer paid attention to what is said in the forty-fourth psalm, in what manner it is said: "Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one, in your comeliness and your beauty; and bend your bow, and prosper, and reign"? But let it be granted that he had not

read this prophecy, or that, having read it, he was led astray by those who misinterpret it as not being prophesied concerning Jesus Christ; what will he say, then, also concerning the gospel, in which, having gone up "onto a high mountain," he "was transfigured before" the disciples, appearing to them clothed in glory, at the moment when "Moses and Elijah," "having appeared in glory, spoke of his exodus, which he was about to fulfill in Jerusalem"? Or

If a prophet says, "We looked upon him, and form he had none, nor beauty," and so on, and Celsus accepts that this prophecy refers to Jesus, then he is blind in accepting what is said, and does not see that it is powerful evidence that the one who seemed formless was the son of God, since it had been prophesied many years before his birth

that his very appearance would be so — but if a different prophet says that comeliness and beauty belonged to him, does he no longer want that prophecy to refer to Jesus Christ? And if the gospels made it plainly evident that "no form was his, nor any beauty, and his appearance carried no honor, being lesser than the sons of men," one might say

that Celsus had said this not on the basis of the prophetic text but on the basis of the gospel; but as things stand, given that it is neither the gospels nor even the apostles who show "no form was his, nor any beauty," it is clear that he is compelled to accept what comes from the prophecy as being true of Christ — which no longer allows his accusations against Jesus to proceed. Again, too, the one who says: since a divine

spirit was in a body, it surely ought to have differed from the rest in some way, whether in size, or voice, or strength, or the power to astonish, or persuasiveness — how did he fail to see the way in which his body's difference lay in what was possible for those who saw it, and for that reason appeared in whatever form was useful and fitting for each person to behold? And it is not surprising that matter, which is by nature changeable and alterable and capable of becoming

whatever the craftsman wishes, is receptive of every quality the artisan wants it to have — at one time bearing the quality by which it is said that "no form was his, nor any beauty," and at another time being so glorious and astonishing and wondrous that the onlookers who went up with Jesus fell "on their faces" at the sight of such beauty — three apostles. But he will say these things are fictions

and no different from myths, like the rest of the wonders concerning Jesus. To this point, then, we have already given a defense at greater length earlier; but the account also has a more mystical dimension, declaring that Jesus's different forms should be traced back to the very nature of the divine word, which does not appear the same way to the many as it does to those able to follow it "up"

onto the "high mountain," as we have explained. For to those who are still down below and not yet prepared to make the ascent, the word "has no form nor beauty"; for to such people "his form" is "without honor and deficient" beyond the words produced "by men," who are figuratively called in these passages "the sons of men." For we would say that the words of philosophers appear far more comely,

being "sons of men," than the word of God proclaimed to the many, which also displays the foolishness "of the proclamation"; and because of the apparent foolishness "of the proclamation," those who look only at this say, "We beheld him, and he possessed neither shape nor comeliness." Yet to those who have received the power to follow him and, in following, to go up with him "onto the high mountain," a more divine

has a form which people see, if someone is "Peter," having received within himself the church's building from the Word and having attained such a condition that no gate of Hades will prevail against him, since he has been raised up through the Word "from the gates of death," so that he might announce "all the praises" of God "in the gates belonging to the daughter of Zion"; and if there are some

who have taken their origin from great-voiced words, who fall short in no way of intelligible "thunder." And "his garments" below are other than these — they are not "white," they are not "like the light"; but if you go up "onto the high mountain," you will see his light and "his garments." "The garments" of the Word are the wordings of Scripture; these sayings are the clothing of the divine thoughts.

As, then, he himself appears otherwise below and, once he has gone up, is transfigured and "his face becomes like the sun," so also his clothing, so also "his garments": when you are below, they are not radiant, they are not "white"; but if you go up, you will see the beauty and "the light" of the garments, and you will marvel at the "face" of Jesus

once transfigured. But observe whether the same thing is not also to be learned about the savior in the Gospels. For the things concerning his birth — as he is traced by genealogy from Abraham and "begotten from David's seed according to the flesh" — belong to "the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ"; but the more divine and greater of the things that would be said about him, even those reported by himself, John declares, so that

indeed I do not think the world itself could contain the books that would be written. For this failure of the world to "contain the books that would be written" must not be understood, as some suppose, on account of the sheer quantity of writing, but on account of the magnitude of the matters — the magnitude of the matters being such that it is not only incapable of being written but cannot even be reported through a tongue of flesh, nor signified in human languages and voices.

Hence Paul too, when he is about to learn the more divine things, passes outside our earthly world here and is caught up into the third heaven, so that he might be able to hear the "unspeakable words" from that place. For the things spoken here, and reckoned to be the word of God, are reported once the Word has been made flesh and, insofar as he is "God" "with God," has emptied himself. This is why the Word of God, upon

the earth, since he has become man, we see in human fashion; for always in the Scriptures "the Word became flesh," that he might make his dwelling "among us"; but if we recline upon "the breast" of the Word made flesh and are able to follow him as he goes up "onto the high mountain," we will say: "We beheld his glory" — though perhaps some others, apart from those who reclined upon his breast

and followed him "onto the high mountain," will say "we beheld his glory," but will no longer add "glory as of an only-begotten from a father, full of grace and truth" — for this utterance befits John and those like him. And according to another, loftier account, those who have been able to follow closely in the footsteps of Jesus, as he ascends and is transfigured away from his condition on earth

they will see his transfiguration according to each scripture — as it were, the Jesus who appears to the many being the plain sense of the text, while the one who goes up "into a high mountain" and is transfigured is seen only by the very few of the disciples, and by those able to follow him up to the heights of the topmost and loftiest mind, which contains the sayings of the hidden wisdom "in a mystery," "which God foreordained before

the ages, for the glory" of his righteous ones. But how could Celsus and those hostile to the divine word, examining the claims of Christianity with no love for truth, grasp what was intended by the different forms of Jesus? I mean also the different ages, and whatever was done by him both before his suffering and after his rising from the dead. Next Celsus says something

of this sort: moreover, if God, like the Zeus of the comic poet who wakes from his long sleep, wanted to rescue the human race from evils, why on earth did he send this spirit — as you call it — into one single corner? He ought to have breathed it into many bodies alike and sent it out over the whole inhabited world. But the comic poet, playing the fool

in the theater, wrote that Zeus, once woken up, sent Hermes to the Athenians and the Spartans; but do you not think it more ridiculous still that the son of God should have been sent to the Jews? Notice here too the tastelessness of Celsus, who unphilosophically takes a comic poet playing the fool and compares the God who fashioned the whole universe, our God, to the Zeus in his play who, once woken up, sends Hermes. We have already said,

in what came before this, that God did not send Jesus to the human race as though rousing himself from a long sleep, but rather, having now allotted for good reasons the plan concerning the incarnation, he has forever been benefiting the human race. For nothing good has ever come about among men without the divine word visiting the souls of those who were able, even for a short

time, to receive such workings of the divine word. But even the visitation of Jesus which appears to have been confined to one corner took place for good reason, since it was fitting that the one foretold by the prophets should come to those who had learned of the one God, who read his prophets, and who were being taught of the Christ that was proclaimed — and that his coming should fall at the moment the word was destined to spread outward from a single corner across the whole inhabited world.

For this reason there was no need for many bodies to appear everywhere, nor many spirits like that of Jesus, so that the entire inhabited world of men might be lit up by God's word. That single word was sufficient, rising like "the sun of righteousness," to dispatch from Judea the rays that reach the souls of those willing to accept it. But if someone longs to see many

bodies filled with the divine spirit, serving — after the pattern of that one Christ — the salvation of men in every place, he should consider those everywhere who teach the word of Jesus soundly and with an upright life, who are themselves also called Christs by the divine scriptures, in the text "touch not my Christs, and do no evil among my prophets." For indeed, as we have heard, "that

"An antichrist is coming," and we have learned no less that "many antichrists" are in the world; likewise, since we know that Christ has appeared among us, we perceive that many christs have arisen because of him in the world, who, in a manner analogous to him, have "loved righteousness and" hated "unrighteousness; and for this reason God, his God," has "anointed" them too "with the oil of gladness." But he himself

having loved "righteousness and" hated "lawlessness" beyond "his companions," has received the firstfruits of the anointing, and, if one may call it so, the whole anointing of the oil of "gladness"; while his companions, each according to his capacity, have shared also in his anointing. For this reason—Christ being the "head" of "the church"—Christ and the church together form one body,

the "oil upon the head" has come down "upon the beard," the symbols of the perfect man "Aaron," and this "oil" has gone on "coming down" "to the hem of his garment." And I have said these things in response to the indecent statement of Celsus, who said that God ought likewise to have breathed out many bodies and sent them into every part of the inhabited world. Now the comic poet, making sport,

has depicted Zeus sleeping and being roused from sleep and sending Hermes to the Greeks; but let reason, which knows that the nature of God is sleepless, teach us that God administers the affairs of the world according to the seasons, as reasonableness demands. And it is no wonder if, because the judgments of God are great and hard to expound, "untaught" souls go astray,

and Celsus along with them. There is therefore nothing laughable in the fact that among the Jews, among whom the prophets arose, the Son of God was sent, so that, beginning from there, he might rise up in body, in power, and in spirit for the inhabited world of souls, which no longer wished to be without God. Next, after this, Celsus thought it especially inspired from the beginning to speak of the Chaldeans as a nation, from whom the deceptive science of casting nativities has been distributed among

mankind. But Celsus also ranks the Magi among the most inspired nations, from whom the magic that takes its name from their nation has come, to the corruption and ruin of the rest of the nations who make use of it. As for the Egyptians, earlier on, even according to Celsus himself, they were shown to be in error, since they have solemn enclosures for what are reckoned sacred, but inside them nothing

but monkeys, crocodiles, goats, asps, or some other creature; yet now Celsus has thought fit to call the Egyptian nation too most inspired, and inspired from the beginning—perhaps because they have made war on the Jews from the beginning. And the Persians, who marry their mothers and have intercourse with their daughters, seem to Celsus to be a god-filled nation; and so too the Indians, some of whom he said earlier

had even tasted human flesh. Yet none of this kept him from saying not only that the Jews—especially those who acted in ancient times—were not most inspired, but that they would perish immediately. This he already says about them as if he were a prophet, not seeing the whole of the venerable ancient constitution of the Jews as God's dispensation, and how "by their trespass salvation" has come "to the

"to the nations," and "their trespass is the wealth of the world, and their failure is the wealth of the nations," until "the fullness of the nations comes in," so that after this "all" — whom Celsus does not understand — "Israel" may be saved. But I do not know how he can say of God that the all-knowing one did not know this, that he sends his son to evil men who would sin and would punish him.

But he seems, for the moment, to have willfully forgotten the argument which says that Jesus Christ foresaw by the divine spirit all that he would suffer, and that God's prophets had prophesied it; and these facts imply no ignorance on God's part—he knew perfectly well that he was dispatching his son to wicked men bound to sin and to punish him. Yet immediately he says that this very point had long ago been stated by us in our defense, as something foretold.

But since our sixth volume has now reached an adequate scope, let us bring the argument to a close at this point and begin, God granting it, the seventh, in which he thinks he is answering our claim that the prophets foretold everything concerning Jesus. Since these matters are numerous and require a longer treatment than can be given to them here, we were unwilling to break off the discussion, being pressed by the size of the book,

nor, in order to avoid breaking off the argument, were we willing to make the sixth volume excessively large and beyond due measure.

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