Against Celsus, Book 7

Origen · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

In the six books before this one, holy brother Ambrose, we have contended to the best of our ability against Celsus's accusations against Christians, leaving nothing unexamined and untested as far as we were able, and we have replied to each point as best we could, calling upon God through Jesus Christ himself, whom Celsus accuses, that the truth, since it is God, might shine in our hearts,

overturning falsehood — we now begin the seventh book as well, speaking that prophetic word in prayer to God: "In your truth destroy them," clearly meaning the arguments opposed to "the truth"; for these are destroyed by the truth of God, so that, once they are destroyed, all people, freed from distraction, may say the words that follow: "I will sacrifice to you willingly," offering a rational and smokeless

sacrifice to the God of all. Celsus now sets out to accuse the argument which holds that the things concerning Christ Jesus were prophesied by the prophets among the Jews. And first, at the outset, we examine those points by which he supposes that people who introduce some other god besides the god of the Jews are utterly unable to answer his objections, whereas we, who have kept to the same

god, take refuge in the defense drawn from the prophecies concerning Christ. And he says in reply to this: let us see how they will find an excuse — those who introduce another god will have none, while those who hold to the same god will again say the same thing, that clever point, that it had to happen this way; and the proof is that this was foretold long ago. We shall reply to this that what has been

said about Jesus and the Christians a little before this is so weak that even those who introduce another god, and do so impiously, could most easily answer what Celsus says. And were it not improper to give the weaker-minded occasion to accept worse doctrines, we too would have done this, in order to refute as false the claim that those who introduce another

god have no defense against what Celsus has said. But for now, let us make our defense concerning the prophets, in addition to what has been said above. He says, then: the things foretold by the Pythia, or the priestesses of Dodona, or the Clarian oracle, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, and by countless other givers of oracles, by whom practically the whole earth was populated with settlers — these they hold in

no regard; but the things said, or not said, by those in Judea in their own manner — just as even now those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do — these they consider marvelous and unalterable. Let us say, then, concerning the oracles he has listed, that it is possible for us, gathering material from Aristotle and those who philosophized on the doctrines of the Peripatetics, to say not a little toward

the overturning of the account concerning the Pythia and the rest of the oracles; and it is also possible, by setting forth what has been said by Epicurus and those who embrace his teaching on these same matters, to show that even some among the Greeks overturn the oracular sayings believed and admired throughout all Greece. Yet suppose it granted that the matters touching divine possession are neither inventions nor pretenses of men, the

the Pythia and the other oracles. Let us see, then, whether it cannot also be demonstrated in this way to those who examine matters as lovers of truth that, even for one who grants that these oracles exist, it is not necessary to accept that there are gods among them, but rather, on the contrary, that there are certain base demons and spirits hostile to the human race, hindering the ascent of the soul

and its journey through virtue, and the restoration of true piety to God. Now it is recorded concerning the Pythia—which seems to be the most illustrious of the other oracles—that the prophetess of Apollo, sitting around the mouth of the Castalian spring, receives a spirit through her womanly parts; and once filled with it, she utters what are held to be solemn and divine prophecies. Consider, then, from these facts whether

it is not made plain that that spirit is impure and profane, entering the soul of the woman who prophesies not through porous and invisible passages far purer than a woman's womanly parts, but through those parts which it was not even lawful for a decent person, let alone a man, to look upon, much less to speak of or touch—and doing this not just once, it seems, nor twice (for perhaps such a thing might have seemed more tolerable),

but as many times as she has been believed to prophesy from Apollo. Moreover, the very fact of bringing the one who supposedly prophesies into a state of ecstasy and frenzy, such that she is in no way self-possessed, is not the work of a divine spirit; for it would have been necessary for one possessed by the divine spirit to be, far more than anyone taught anything by the oracles, benefited in what contributes to a life lived in the open and

according to nature, whether for advantage or for what is expedient, and to be more clear-sighted precisely at that time when the divine is present with him. For this reason we demonstrate, gathering evidence from the sacred writings, that the prophets among the Jews, being illumined by the divine spirit to just the extent that was useful even to those prophesying themselves, enjoyed in advance the benefit of the visitation of the greater power

upon them; and through a contact with their soul—if I may call it so—of what is called the Holy Spirit, they became more clear-sighted in mind and more radiant in soul, and their body too, no longer at all working against a life lived according to virtue, since it was put to death, as we would say, with respect to what is called "the mindset of the flesh." For by a more divine spirit, we are persuaded that "the deeds of the body" and

the hostilities that begin from the mindset "of the flesh," which is hostile toward God, are put to death. But if the Pythia is beside herself and not in possession of herself when she prophesies, what sort of spirit must we suppose it to be—one that pours darkness over the mind and reasoning—except one of the same kind as the race of demons, which not a few Christians drive out from those who suffer from them, without any curious

or magical or drug-based practice, but by prayer alone and quite simple adjurations—such as even a very simple person could offer? For it is generally ordinary people who accomplish this, since the grace present in the word of Christ demonstrates the paltriness and weakness of demons, which by no means require, in order to be defeated and yield and withdraw from the soul and body of a person, someone wise and powerful

...in the rational proofs concerning faith. But indeed, granting that Christians and Jews are not alone in this conviction, and that a great many Greeks and non-Greeks likewise hold that the human soul goes on living and remains in existence once parted from the body, and it is established by reason that the pure soul, not weighed down by the leaden weights of vice, is borne aloft

to the regions of the purer, ethereal bodies, leaving behind the coarse bodies of this world and the defilements within them, while the base soul, dragged down to the earth by its sins and unable even to breathe, is carried about here below and rolls about—one such soul among "the tombs," where indeed "phantoms" of shadowy souls have been seen, another simply around

the earth—what sort of spirits must we suppose these to be that have been bound, whole ages, so to call them, to certain places, whether by some kind of sorceries or by their own wickedness, to buildings and locations? Reason indeed prefers to regard such beings as base, using an intermediate power of foreknowledge to deceive men and to draw them away from God and

from pure piety toward him. And this very fact shows that these are the same beings whose bodies are nourished by the vapors rising from sacrifices and by the exhalations from blood and burnt offerings—beings that delight in such things, arriving thereby at something like a love of life, corresponding to base men who do not embrace the purer life apart from bodies, but who cling, on account of the

pleasures of the body, to the life lived in an earthly body. But if the Apollo at Delphi was truly a god, as the Greeks suppose, whom should he rather have chosen as his prophet than the wise man—or, failing to find such a one, at least a man making progress toward wisdom? And how would he not have wished a man to prophesy rather than a woman? But if he wanted a female after all, as perhaps

he was unable, or took no delight in anything other than the bosoms of women, why should he not rather have chosen a virgin than a woman to declare his will as prophetess? But as it is, the Pythian god, for all the reverence paid him among the Greeks, deemed not one wise man — indeed not a single human being — fit to receive the divine possession the Greeks suppose he confers; nor again, among the female sex, did he choose any virgin

or a woman wise and benefited by philosophy, but rather some ordinary woman; for perhaps the better sort of men were too good for the working of his possession. And if he really was a god, he ought also to have used his foreknowledge as a kind of bait, so to call it, to bring about the conversion, healing, and moral improvement of men. But as it is, history hands down nothing of the kind

about him. For even though he declared Socrates the wisest of all men, he blunted his own praise by what he said about Euripides and Sophocles in the line: "Sophocles is wise, but Euripides is wiser." So Socrates, though judged superior to tragic poets whom this god himself called wise, was in fact judged better than men who contended on the stage and in the orchestra for some ordinary prize, and where

On the one hand producing griefs and pity in the spectators, on the other unseemly laughter (for that is what the satyr-dramas aim at), does not at all display, on account of philosophy and truth, the kind of gravity that gravity would make praiseworthy. And perhaps he did not call him the wisest of all men so much on account of his philosophy as on account of the sacrifices and the savory smoke he offered up to Apollo himself and the rest of the daimons.

For these reasons the daimons seem more likely to do what is requested by those who bring offerings to them than because of works of virtue. That is why Homer, the best of the poets, in describing what happens and teaching what it is above all that persuades the daimons to do what those who sacrifice wish, brought in Chryses, who for the sake of a few garlands and the thigh-pieces of bulls and

goats obtained what he asked against the Greeks on his daughter's account — that after suffering plague they should give Chryseis back to him. I recall reading, in the work of one of the Pythagoreans who wrote about the things said by the poet with hidden meaning, that Chryses' words to Apollo and the plague sent by Apollo against the Greeks teach that Homer knew of certain wicked daimons who delight

in the savory smoke and the sacrifices, and who repay those who sacrifice to them with the reward of destroying others, if that is what those who sacrifice pray for. And he who is called "lord of wintry Dodona," among whom the prophets are "unwashed of foot, sleeping on the ground," having rejected the male sex for prophecy, makes use of the women of Dodona, as Celsus himself pointed out. And let there be someone similar to these at Clarus, and another at Branchidae,

and another at the shrine of Ammon, or wherever on earth they give oracles — from what, then, will it be shown whether they are gods, or rather certain daimons? But among the prophets found among the Jews, some were wise even before their prophecy and the divine possession, while others became such as they were only from the very illumination of their mind by the prophecy, having been chosen by providence to be entrusted with

the divine spirit and the words that come from it, on account of the inimitable character of their life, exceedingly vigorous and free, and utterly undismayed in the face of death and dangers. For reason itself demands that the prophets of the God over all be of just this kind — men who made the vigor of Antisthenes and Crates and Diogenes look like child's play. It was indeed for truth's sake, and for freely

reproving sinners, that "they were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were tempted, they died by the slaughter of the sword; they went about in sheepskins, in goatskins, destitute, afflicted, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes in the ground — men such as the world had no claim to possess"; ever fixing their gaze on God and on the invisible things of God, things not perceived by the senses and therefore

eternal. The life of each of the prophets has been recorded. For the present it is enough to set alongside this the life of Moses (for prophecies of his too are handed down, recorded in the Law), and that of Jeremiah, handed down in the prophecy that bears his name, and that of Isaiah, who went about surpassing every discipline of asceticism, "naked and unshod," for three years. Consider too the young men, Daniel's

and of those with him — the vigorous life, having read of their water-drinking and that their food was pulse, since they abstained from living creatures. But if you can, look also at what came before these: Noah prophesying, and Isaac praying prophetically over his son, and Jacob saying to each of the twelve, "Gather round, and let me disclose what is destined to happen in days still to come." These, then,

and countless others prophesied to God and foretold the things concerning Jesus the Christ. For this reason we hold in no esteem whatsoever the things spoken beforehand by the Pythia, or the women of Dodona, or the Clarian oracle, or at Branchidae, or at the shrine of Ammon, or by countless other so-called soothsayers; but we stand in awe of the things spoken by those who prophesied in Judea, seeing that the vigorous

and disciplined and dignified life of the spirit of God was worthy of them, prophesying in a new manner and having nothing resembling the divinations that come from demons. I do not know how Celsus, having said this, went on to add that the things spoken by those in Judea were spoken in their manner — or perhaps not spoken at all, since, being incredulous, he claims it is possible that they were not even spoken, but perhaps written down as things that were never spoken. For he did not

take note of the times, nor of the fact that many years beforehand, having foretold countless things, they spoke also concerning the coming of Christ. Again, wishing to slander the ancient prophets, he says that they prophesied in this manner, which, he says, even now those around Phoenicia and Palestine are accustomed to do — without making clear whether he means certain people foreign to the teaching of the Jews and Christians, or those prophesying in a Jewish manner according to the

character of the prophets. But whatever he means by what he says, it is shown to be false. For neither have any who are strangers to the faith done anything resembling the prophets, nor are any recorded among the Jews who prophesied as newer figures after the coming of Jesus — for it is agreed that the Holy Spirit had abandoned them, since they committed impiety against God and against the one foretold by their own

prophets. Signs of the Holy Spirit were shown more abundantly at the beginning of Jesus' teaching and after his ascension, but fewer thereafter; yet even now traces of it remain among a few, whose souls have been purified by the word and by conduct in keeping with it. "A holy spirit belonging to instruction shuns deceit and rises up away from senseless reasonings." Since, moreover,

Celsus promises to describe the manner of the oracles in Phoenicia and Palestine, as one who has heard of it and thoroughly learned it, come, let us examine this too. First, then, he says there are several kinds of prophecy, without setting them out — for he did not have them, but was making a false boast beyond his knowledge. But let us look at what he says is the most perfect among the men there. Many, he says, both nameless persons, quite readily, from some chance

occasion, both within temples and outside temples; and some, gathering crowds and going about to cities or camps, are moved as though delivering oracles. And it is a ready and customary thing for each of them to say: "I am god," or "a child of god," or "a divine spirit. And I have come; for already the world is being destroyed, and you, O men, are perishing because of your wrongdoings. But I wish to save you—"

'And you will see me coming again with heavenly power. Blessed is the one who now worships me, but on all the rest I will cast eternal fire, both on cities and on lands. And people who do not know their own punishments will repent in vain and groan; but those who obey me I will keep forever.' Then, next after these words, he says: Having made these threats, they go on to add things unknown, frenzied, and utterly

obscure, whose meaning no one with any sense could discover; for they are unclear and amount to nothing, but they give any fool or charlatan an opening to appropriate what has been said for whatever purpose he wishes. Now he ought, if he were being fair-minded in his accusation, to have set out the prophecies word for word — whether those in which the God who spoke declared himself to be the Almighty, or those in which

it was the Son of God, or again those in which it was believed to be the Holy Spirit who spoke; for that was how he could really have struggled to overturn what was said and show that the words were not divinely inspired, containing as they do a turning away from sins, a demonstration of things that once were, and foreknowledge of things to come. This is why those among their own people who wrote down their prophecies preserved them,

so that later generations too, reading them, might marvel at them as the words of God, and being benefited not only by the reproving and converting passages but also by the predictive ones, persuaded by their fulfillments concerning the divine spirit that had foretold them, might continue to practice the piety in accordance with the word, obeying the law and the prophets. The prophets, then, spoke without any concealment, according to the will of God, whatever things could be understood directly by their

hearers as useful and contributing to the correction of morals, but whatever things were more mystical and more fit for higher vision and belonging to a contemplation beyond common hearing, these they declared 'through riddles' and allegories and what are called dark sayings, and what are termed parables or proverbs; so that those who do not shirk toil but undertake every toil

on behalf of virtue and truth, having examined them, might discover them, and having discovered them, might put them to use as reason directs. But that noble fellow Celsus, as though angered at not having understood such words of the prophets, reviled them, saying that having made these threats, they go on to add things unknown, frenzied, and utterly obscure, whose meaning no one with any sense could discover; for they are unclear and

amount to nothing, but they give any fool or charlatan an opening to appropriate what has been said for whatever purpose he wishes. And it seemed to me that he said this cunningly, wishing, as far as lay in his power, to prevent those who encounter the prophecies from testing and examining their meaning; and he has suffered something similar to those who, concerning a certain prophet who had come to someone and foretold to him the things that were to come,

said: 'Why did this madman come in to you?' It is likely, then, that there are words far wiser than our capacity, able to show that Celsus is lying in these matters and that the prophecies are divinely inspired; nevertheless we too, as far as was possible for us, have done what we could, expounding word for word, as Celsus puts it, the things that are frenzied and utterly obscure, in the works we composed on the

Isaiah, into Ezekiel, and into some of the Twelve. And as God grants progress in his word, at whatever times he wishes, either what is still lacking in what has already been set out on these matters will be added, or whatever we manage to clarify. And others too who wish to examine the scripture, if they have understanding, would be able to discover its meaning, since it is

in truth in many places obscure, but by no means, as Celsus says, nothing at all. But no fool or charlatan can smooth it over or twist what has been said to his own advantage in any way he pleases. Only the person who is truly wise in Christ could give the whole connected sense of what has been spoken with concealment by the prophets, comparing "spiritual things with spiritual" and constructing, on the basis of the customary usage

of the scriptures, the meaning of each thing that is found. One ought not credit Celsus's claim that he personally heard such people speak. For in Celsus's own time no prophets have arisen who resemble the ancient ones — otherwise their prophecies too would have been written down in succession, in a manner similar to the ancient writings, by those who received and admired them. It seems to me altogether plain that Celsus is lying, in that the

so-called prophets he claims to have personally heard, once refuted by Celsus, admitted to him whatever he demanded of them, and that they were fabricating things, saying whatever came to mind. He ought also to have given the names of those he claimed to have heard in person, so that from the names — if indeed he could have named any — it would be apparent to those capable of judging whether what he said was true or false. He also supposes that those who offer a defense on behalf of the prophets concerning matters relating to

Christ can say nothing to the point whenever something appears to be spoken about the divine that is wicked, shameful, unclean, or polluted. That is why, as though there were no defense at all, he strings together countless charges about things that are not even granted. One must know that even those whose purpose is to conduct their lives by the sacred writings, and who understand that "the knowledge of the senseless is words without examination," and who

have read "always ready to give a defense to everyone who asks us an account of the hope that is in us," do not take refuge merely in the fact that certain things have been said beforehand, but rather try to resolve the apparent inconsistencies and to show that there is nothing wicked in the words, nor shameful, nor unclean, nor polluted, but rather that they turn out to be such as ought to be understood by those who do not comprehend

the divine scripture. He ought to have set out, from the prophets, what appeared to him wicked in them, or what seemed to him shameful, or what he considered unclean, or what he supposed to be polluted, if indeed he saw such things said in the prophets; for his argument would then have been more forceful and more effective toward what he intended. But as it is he has cited nothing, but merely threatens,

claiming that such things appear in the scriptures, thereby falsely accusing them. So against empty noises of names, no argument compels a defense to show that there is nothing wicked or shameful or unclean or polluted in the words of the prophets. But neither does God do or suffer the most shameful things, nor is he made a servant of evil, as Celsus supposes; for nothing of the sort has been said beforehand about any of the

of such things. And if he himself says it was foretold that God would be made to serve evil, or would do or suffer the most shameful things, he ought to have set out the words of the prophets to that effect, rather than wishing to pollute his hearers to no purpose. As for what Christ was to suffer, the prophets foretold it, and stated the reason why he would suffer it; and God knew what Christ was going to suffer.

suffer. But where does he get that these things were most polluted and most impure, as Celsus says? He will seem to be teaching us how utterly polluted and impure the things he actually endured were, since he says: for what else was it for a god but to eat sheep's flesh and drink gall or vinegar, if not to eat dung? But according to us, God did not eat the flesh of sheep. For in order that

he might even seem to have eaten, Jesus ate as one bearing a body. But as for the gall and the vinegar, seeing that these were foretold in the passage "for my food they gave me gall, and vinegar they poured out for me to drink in my thirst," we already discussed this above, and Celsus now forces us to go over the same ground again. For those who scheme against the word of truth always bring the gall that arises

from their own wickedness, and the vinegar that comes from their own turning toward baseness, to the Son of God, Christ — who "tasted it and refused to drink." Then after this, wishing to overturn the faith of those who accepted the things concerning Jesus because they had been prophesied, he says: suppose the prophets declared beforehand that the great God — to put it no more offensively than that — would be enslaved, or fall ill,

or die, then it will be necessary that God either die, or be enslaved, or fall ill. Was it foretold in order that, by dying, he might be believed to be God? But the prophets would not have foretold this; for it is evil and impious. Therefore we must not consider whether they foretold it or did not foretell it,

but whether the deed is worthy of God and good. For what is shameful and evil must be disbelieved, even if all people, going mad, seem to foretell it. How then are the things done concerning this man, as though concerning a god, holy? It appears from this that he has suspected the argument about Jesus having been prophesied to have some strong power of persuasion over his hearers, and is trying to overturn the argument by another plausible move, saying: therefore we must not consider whether they foretold it or did not foretell it. But he ought,

if he wished to attack what is said not by sophistry but by demonstration, to have said: therefore it must be demonstrated either that they did not foretell it, or that the things said concerning Christ have not been fulfilled in Jesus in the way they foretold them — and then to bring forward the proof that seemed convincing to him. For in that way it would have become clear which prophecies we refer to Jesus,

and how he falsifies our interpretation; and it would have been found whether he nobly overturns what we bring forward from the prophets concerning Jesus, or is caught shamelessly trying to force the clear evidence of the truth to appear as not the truth. But since he lays down certain things as impossible and unbecoming to God, by way of hypothesis, he says: if these things were prophesied concerning the God over all, would it be necessary, since it was foretold, to believe the

...such things about God? And he thinks it is thereby established that, even if the prophets had truly foretold such things about the Son of God, it would still have been impossible for him to have suffered or done them, so that one ought to believe what was foretold. We must say that his premise, being absurd, would produce a chain of conditionals ending in mutually contradictory conclusions, which is shown as follows. If the true prophets of the God over all say that he will serve, or...

...that God will always be sick, or that God will die, these things will hold true of God, for it is necessary that the prophets of the great God not lie. But also, if the true prophets of the God over all say these very things, then, since things impossible by nature are not true, what the prophets say would not hold true of God. But whenever two...

...conditionals end in conclusions that contradict one another, by the theorem called 'through two conditionals,' the antecedent common to both conditionals is refuted—which in this case is the prophets' foretelling that the great God would serve, or be sick, or die. It is therefore concluded that the prophets did not foretell that the great God would serve, or be sick, or die, and the argument proceeds in this fashion:

if the first, then the second; if not the first, then not the second; therefore not the first. The Stoics apply this same pattern to the case of matter as well, saying: suppose you are aware that you have died — then you have died; suppose you are aware that you have died — yet you have not died; from this it follows that you are not aware you have died. And in this way...

...they construct the conditionals: suppose you are aware that you have died — that is something you are aware of, so 'having died' holds true. And again: suppose you are aware that you have not died, and that is something you are aware of — then you have not died; but since one who has died is aware of nothing, it is plain that if you are aware you have died, in fact you have not died. And, as I said before, both conditionals together lead to the conclusion that awareness of having died is not something you possess.

Something of this sort holds also for Celsus's premise, in the passage we quoted earlier, where he says: 'But not even what we have taken as our premise resembles the prophecies about Jesus.' For the prophecies did not foretell that a god would be crucified—those, I mean, that speak of the one who took death upon himself: 'Him did we behold, possessing neither form nor comeliness; his appearance was without honor, diminished beyond the...'

...sons of men; a man in suffering and in pain, and knowing how to bear sickness.' Observe, then, how plainly they have called the one who suffered human things a man. And Jesus himself, knowing precisely that the one who was to die was a man, says to those plotting against him: 'But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken to you the truth I heard from God.' But if...

...there was something divine in the man conceived in his case, which was the only-begotten of God and 'the firstborn of all creation,' who says: 'I am the truth' and 'I am the life' and 'I am the door' and 'I am the way' and 'It is I who am the living bread, descended out of heaven'—then someone else indeed...

somewhere the account of this and of his substance differs from the account of the man conceived of according to Jesus. This is why not even the very simplest Christians, untrained in the reasoning of critical inquiry, would say that the truth has died, or the life, or the way, or the bread, living and descended out of heaven, or the resurrection. For he says that he himself is the resurrection,

the one who, in the visible man according to Jesus, taught "I am the resurrection." No one among us is so senseless as to say "life" has died, or "the resurrection" has died. Celsus's hypothesis would have some standing if we asserted that the prophets had foretold that God the Word, or the truth, or the

life, or the resurrection, or any of the other things which the Son of God is said to be, would die. Celsus is right about the point only in this respect: the prophets would not have foretold this, for it is evil and unholy. But what is this, other than that the great God will be enslaved or will die? What is worthy of God is what has been prophesied by

the prophets: that a certain radiance and imprint of the divine nature would come to dwell in this life together with the soul made human, the sacred soul of Jesus, in order to sow a word that makes akin to the God of the universe the one who receives it into his own soul and cultivates it and brings it through to completion — a word which has within itself the power of the God

who is to come to be in a man's body and soul. And it will be such that its rays are not shut up in that one man alone, nor is it to be said that the light which provides these rays exists nowhere else, since it is God the Word. The things concerning Jesus, then, insofar as they are understood as done by the deity within him, are holy and not at odds with our conception of the divine; but insofar as he was a man, more than any man

whatsoever, adorned with the highest participation in the Word itself and Wisdom itself, he endured, as a wise and perfect man, what one had to endure who acts on behalf of the whole race of men, or indeed of all rational beings. And there is nothing strange in the man's having died, with his death set forth not merely as an example of dying for piety, but also

as having accomplished the beginning and advance of the destruction of the evil one and the devil, who has been allotted the whole earth. Signs of his overthrow are those who, because of the coming of Jesus, have everywhere fled the demons that held them, and, having been freed from slavery to them, have dedicated themselves to God and to the purer piety toward him that is possible for them, day by day.

Next after this Celsus says the following: "Will they not consider this too? If the prophets of the Jews' God foretold that this one would be his son, how is it that that God, through Moses, legislates for wealth and power and filling the earth and slaughtering enemies of every age and killing whole families, which he himself did, as Moses says, before the eyes of the Jews,

and against these, if they do not obey, he expressly threatens that he will treat them as enemies. But is his son, the man from Nazareth, legislating against this—that a rich man, or a man ambitious for power, or one who lays claim to wisdom or reputation, should not even be allowed to approach the Father, while it is necessary to be no more concerned about food and storerooms than "the ravens" are, and less concerned about clothing than

"the lilies" are, and to offer oneself again to the one who has already struck once, and be struck again? Which is lying, Moses or Jesus? Or did the Father, in sending this one, forget what he had prescribed to Moses? Or did he condemn his own laws, change his mind, and send the angel to command the opposite? In all this Celsus—who professes to know everything—has suffered a most amateurish error concerning the meaning of the scriptures, having supposed

that there is no deeper meaning in the Law and the Prophets beyond the words taken according to the letter. He does not see that reason would never have promised bodily wealth so implausibly, and so openly, to those who lived rightly, when the most righteous are shown to have lived in the most extreme poverty. The prophets, at any rate, precisely because they lived purely and so received the divine spirit, "went about in sheepskins, in"

goatskins, destitute, afflicted, mistreated, wandering in deserts and mountains and caves and the holes of the earth"; for "many are the afflictions of the righteous," as the psalmist says. If Celsus had actually read the Law of Moses, it is likely that the saying "you shall lend to many nations, but you shall not borrow," spoken to the one who keeps the Law, he took to mean something like this: that it was said as a promise to the righteous man that he would grow so

blindly wealthy that, because of the sheer quantity of his money, the righteous man would lend not only to Jews but to no fewer than a second or third nation, but to many. How much money, then, would the righteous man have possessed, receiving it according to the Law as the wage of his righteousness, in order to lend "to many nations"? And it follows, on such

a construal, to suppose also that the righteous man never borrows at all, since it is written, "but you shall not borrow." Did the nation, then, remain for so long a time in the worship of God according to Moses, while plainly seeing—so far as Celsus is concerned—that the lawgiver was lying? For no one is recorded as having grown so wealthy as to have lent "to many nations." But it is not plausible that they, being taught in this way, understood

the Law as Celsus supposed, and that, while plainly seeing the promises of the Law to be false, they nevertheless contended earnestly for the Law. And if someone brings forward the recorded sins of the people as proof that they held the Law in contempt—perhaps because they had judged it to be lying—one must say to him that he ought also to read the times in which the whole people is recorded as having, after

doing evil in the sight of the Lord, changed for the better and turned back to the worship of God according to the Law. But even if the Law did promise them dominion, saying, "you shall rule many nations, but they shall not rule you," and nothing deeper is signified by these words, it is plain that the people would have far more grounds to condemn the promises of the Law. And he paraphrases certain

Celsus quotes words indicating that the whole earth was to be filled through the Hebrew seed — which, as far as the historical record goes, happened after Jesus' coming through what I might call the wrath of God rather than through his bestowing a blessing. But we must also speak about what was promised to the Jews — namely, that they would slaughter their enemies. If one reads through the words carefully and attends to them, one would find it

impossible to take them as they stand read literally. For the present it will suffice to cite from the Psalms how the righteous man is introduced saying, among other things, this: "In the mornings I put to death all the sinners of the land, to cut off from the city of the Lord all who work lawlessness." Now pay attention to the saying and to the disposition of the speaker, whether

having first recounted brave deeds — which lie there for anyone who wishes to read them — he could then add, taking the words literally as they can be taken, that at no other time of day but the early morning did he destroy "all the sinners of the land," so as to leave not one of them alive; and whether he wiped out from Jerusalem absolutely every single person who worked "lawlessness." You would find many such things also in the law,

such as: "we left none of them alive to be taken captive." Celsus also brings up the point that it was foretold to them: should they fail to keep the law, the very things they had done to their enemies would be done to them in turn. But before setting these things alongside what Celsus takes to be contradictions between the law and the teaching of Christ, we must speak about what has already been said. We say, then, that the law is twofold,

one aspect pertaining to the letter, the other to the meaning, as some before us have also taught. And the one pertaining to the letter is said — not so much by us as by God himself speaking through one of the prophets — to consist of "statutes not good" and "ordinances not good"; while the one pertaining to the meaning is said, according to the same prophet, speaking in the person of

God, to consist of "good statutes" and "good ordinances." For the prophet does not, in one and the same passage, plainly say contradictory things. In keeping with this, Paul too said that the "letter" kills, which is equivalent to what pertains to the letter, while "the spirit" gives life, which is equivalent to what pertains to the meaning. One can indeed find in Paul something analogous to what would be regarded, according to the prophet, as

contradictions. For just as in one place Ezekiel says, "I gave them statutes not good and ordinances not good, by which they shall not live," while in another place, "I gave them good statutes and good ordinances, by which they shall live" — or something equivalent to these — so too Paul, where he wishes to disparage the letter of the law,

says: "But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters on stones, came in glory, so that the sons of Israel could not gaze steadily at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, a glory now being brought to an end, how shall not the ministry of the spirit be even more in glory?" But where he marvels at the law and accepts it, he calls it spiritual, saying: "We know"

...that the law is spiritual." He also accepts the passage: "So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous, and good." If, then, the wording of the law promises wealth to the righteous, let Celsus, following the "letter" that kills, suppose that blind wealth is what is meant by the promise; but let us understand the sharp-sighted wealth, in accordance with which one is rich "in..."

...every word and all knowledge," and in accordance with which we instruct "the rich in the present age not to be arrogant, nor to set their hope on the uncertainty of riches but on God, who richly provides all things for our enjoyment, to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, and to share." For indeed "wealth" in true goods "is a ransom for a man's life," according to Solomon, whereas the opposite, poverty, is ruinous, for which reason "the poor man cannot withstand a threat." In proportion to...

...what has been said about wealth, the same must be said about power, in accordance with which "one" righteous man is said to pursue "a thousand, and two" to put "ten thousand" to flight. If this is how these things are understood in the case of wealth, consider whether it is not consistent with God's promise that the one who is rich "in every word...

...and all knowledge," and in all wisdom and in every good work, should lend—from the wealth of reason, wisdom, and knowledge—"to many nations," just as Paul lent "in a circuit" "from Jerusalem" as far as "Illyricum," fulfilling "the gospel of Christ" to all the nations among whom he had traveled. And since divine things were made known to him by revelation, his soul being illuminated...

...by the divinity of the word, for this reason he himself did not borrow, nor did he need any man to minister the word to him. And since it is also written, "You will rule over many nations, but they will not rule over you," by the power that comes from reason, subjecting those from the nations to the teaching of Christ Jesus, he ruled over them, and was never in any region subjected to men as though...

...they had become his superiors; and in this way he also filled the earth. But if it is also necessary to explain the matter of slaying, together with the righteous man's capability in all things, it must be said that in declaring, "In the mornings I destroyed all the sinners of the land, to cut off from the city of the Lord all who work lawlessness," he spoke of "the land" figuratively as the flesh, whose "mind"...

..."is enmity toward God," and by "the city of the Lord" he meant his own soul — the dwelling within which stood "the temple of God," once it had received glory and a right conception of God, marveled at by all who beheld it. So then, together with the rays of the sun "of righteousness" shining upon his soul, being as it were empowered and strengthened by them, he destroyed all "the mind of the flesh," which is called "the sinners of..."

...the land," and he cut off from the "city of the Lord" within his own soul "all who work lawlessness"—that is, the reasonings and thoughts hostile to the truth. In this way, too, the righteous destroy the entire "captivity" of their enemies and of the things that come from vice, so that not even an infant, a newly sprouting evil, is left remaining. This is how we also understand the verse in the hundred and thirtieth...

and of the saying in the sixth psalm, which reads: "O wretched daughter of Babylon, blessed is he who repays you the payment you have paid us; blessed is he who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rock." For "the infants of Babylon"—Babylon being interpreted as confusion—are the confusing thoughts arising from wickedness that are just now sprouting up and rising in the soul. Whoever takes hold of them, so as also

to dash their heads against the firm and vigorous force of reason, dashes "the infants" of "Babylon" "against the rock," and thereby becomes "blessed." Let God, then, command that the things of wickedness be slain root and branch, in their whole generation, teaching nothing contrary to what Jesus proclaimed; and let God bring about, before the eyes of the Jews "in secret," the destruction of the enemies and of everything

that comes from wickedness. And let this be the sense: that those who do not obey the law and word of God, having become like the enemies and having taken on the color of wickedness, suffer these things—which it is fitting that those who have fallen away from the words of God should suffer. It is clear enough, then, even from these things, how Jesus the man "of Nazareth" does not enact laws contrary to what has been said about wealth and about those who are amazed at how hard it is

for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God—whether one takes "rich" in the simpler sense, of one distracted by wealth and hindered, as if by a thorn, from bearing the fruits of the word, or also the one who is rich in false doctrines, concerning whom it is written in Proverbs: "better a poor righteous man than a rich liar." And it is likely that from "whoever wishes

to be first among you, let him be servant of all," and "the rulers of the nations lord it over them," and "those who exercise authority over them are called benefactors," Celsus has understood that Jesus forbade love of rule—which one must not consider contrary to "you shall rule over many nations, but they shall not rule over you," especially in view of what has been said about the wording. Next after this Celsus throws out something about wisdom, saying that

Jesus taught that the wise man is not to be admitted to the Father. Let us say to him: what sort of wise man? For if it is the one who has taken on the color of the wisdom called "of this world," which is folly "before God," we too will say that such a wise man is not to be admitted to the Father. But if one should understand the

Christ as wisdom, seeing that Christ is God's power and God's wisdom, we say not merely that so wise a being may be brought near the Father, but also that whoever is graced with the endowment termed "wisdom," bestowed through the Spirit, stands far apart from those lacking it. Again, further, we say that grasping after glory among men is barred not solely through Jesus's own teaching

but also by the ancient scripture. At any rate, one of the prophets, calling a curse upon himself if he were guilty of such sins, says that even worldly glory would come upon him instead of the greatest evil. He speaks thus: "O LORD my God, should I have done such a thing, should wrongdoing be found in my hands, should I have paid back with harm the one who dealt harm to me, then may I fall before my foes"

my life is void — let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it, and trample my life to the ground, and lay my glory in the dust." But neither does he cite: "Do not be anxious about what you will eat or what you will drink. Consider the birds of the sky, or consider the ravens, that they neither sow nor reap, and yet our heavenly Father

feeds them — how much more are you worth than the birds?" and "Why are you anxious about clothing? Observe the lilies of the field," and what follows, as though these were opposed to the blessings found in the law, which teach that the righteous man who eats is satisfied, and to what is said by Solomon in this fashion: "The righteous man, eating, fills his soul, but the souls of the impious are in want." For one must recognize

that the nourishment of the soul is what is meant in the blessing according to the law — a blessing that fills not the composite human being but the soul alone. From the gospel, on the other hand, one must take something perhaps deeper and perhaps also something simpler: that the soul ought not to be preoccupied with anxious concern over food and clothing, but, while practicing frugality, ought to be persuaded that God

provides for it, if it is concerned only with what is necessary. Celsus, then, without setting side by side what seems contrary between the law and the gospel, also cites this: that one should offer oneself again to be struck by the one who has already struck once. We shall reply that we do indeed know that "eye for eye and tooth for tooth" was spoken to the people of old, but we have also read

"but I say to you": "to the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." But since Celsus, I think, has been influenced by those who separate the deity of the gospel from the deity of the law, and sets down such things on that basis, it must be said in answer to his argument that even the ancient scriptures know: "To the one who strikes you on the right cheek, offer

the other also." For in the Lamentations of Jeremiah it is written: "It is good for a man, when he bears a yoke in his youth, that he sit alone and be silent, because he has taken it upon himself. He will give his cheek to the one who strikes him, and be filled with reproaches." The gospel's God is not set in opposition to the God of the law, not even concerning the blow on the cheek understood literally; nor is either one a liar,

neither Moses nor Jesus, nor did the Father, in sending Jesus, forget what he had commanded Moses; nor, having condemned his own laws, did he change his mind and send the angel with contrary instructions. But if it is necessary to say even a little about the difference in polity — the one the Jews formerly practiced according to Moses, and the one Christians now wish to set right according to the teaching of Jesus — we shall say

that it was not fitting for the calling of the nations to conduct their polity according to the law of Moses taken literally, since they were placed under Roman rule; nor was it possible for the Jews of old to keep the framework of their polity undisturbed, had they, hypothetically, obeyed the polity of the gospel. For the destruction of enemies, or of those who had acted against the law and been judged worthy of

it was not possible for Christians to make use of killing by fire or by stoning in accordance with the law of Moses — since not even the Jews, though they wish to act according to that law, are able to carry out these things as the law prescribed. And again, if you take away from the Jews of that time — who had their own system of government and their own territory — the going out against enemies and the waging of war on behalf of their ancestral customs, and

the killing, or the punishing in whatever way, of those who had committed adultery or murder or done something similar to these, nothing is left except that they should perish altogether, all at once, when their enemies attack the nation, since they have been enervated by their own law and prevented from defending themselves against their enemies. And since Providence — which long ago gave the law, but now no longer wishes it, but rather the gospel of Jesus

Christ, to prevail — has torn down the city of the Jews and their temple, and the worship of God carried out at the temple through sacrifices and the prescribed ritual service. And just as, no longer wishing those things to be carried out, it tore them down, in the same way it has caused the affairs of the Christians to grow, and day by day has already given them increase into a multitude, and now also into boldness of speech. And yet, though countless

obstacles arose to prevent the teaching of Jesus from being sown throughout the inhabited world, nevertheless, since it was God who willed that those from the nations too should be benefited through the teaching of Jesus Christ, every human plan against the Christians was brought to nothing; and the more that kings and the leaders of nations and peoples everywhere humbled them, the more they increased in number "and grew exceedingly strong." Next

after this, Celsus, at considerable length, sets down as being said by us things that are not said by us concerning God — as though he were by nature a body, indeed a body of human shape — and wishes to overturn things that have not been posited by us, which it would be superfluous to set out, let alone to refute. For if we actually said the things he claims we assert about God, and he took his stand against those,

it would have been necessary for us to set out his words and to establish our own position while refuting his. But if he is stringing together for himself things he heard from no one, or — granting even that he did hear them — heard them from certain simple and unsophisticated people who did not understand the intent of the teaching, we ought not to busy ourselves over matters that are not necessary. For clearly, incorporeal

our teachings declare God to be. Hence also "no one has ever seen God," and the firstborn of all creation is said to be an "image" "of the invisible God," as if he had said "of the incorporeal." We have already, in what precedes this, adequately discussed the question of God as well, when we examined how we understand that "God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth." After

the matters concerning God, in which he slanders us, he asks us: "Where do we intend to go away to?" And "what hope do we have?" And, as though we had answered, he sets down, supposedly, words of ours running as follows: "to another land, better than this one." And to this he says: "it has been recorded by divine men of old that a happy life exists for happy souls; some named them the Isles of the Blessed, others the Elysian Plain," from

the release from the evils that are here, as Homer too says: "but the immortals will send you to the Elysian plain and the ends of the earth, where life is easiest." Plato, holding the soul to be immortal, called that region to which it departs outright "earth," speaking as follows: he said that it is "something exceedingly vast, and that we who dwell from the Pillars of Heracles to the Phasis inhabit a small portion of it,

as ants or frogs dwelling around a marsh dwell around the sea, and that many others dwell elsewhere in many such places. For everywhere around the earth there are many hollows of every sort, both in shape and in size, into which the water and the mist and the air have flowed together; but the earth itself lies pure in a pure

heaven." Celsus, then, supposes that we have taken our account of that other, better earth, far superior to this one, from certain men whom he regards as divine men of old, and above all from Plato, who philosophized in the Phaedo about a pure earth lying in a pure heaven; not seeing that Moses, who is far more ancient even than Greek letters, introduced God promising

the holy land, "good and abundant, flowing with milk and honey," to those who should live according to his law—not, as some suppose, the "good land" being the Judea reckoned as lying below, itself too situated in the earth cursed from the beginning because of the deeds of Adam's transgression. For the words "cursed is the earth in your works; in toil shall you eat of it

all the days of your life" are said concerning the whole earth, which every person who has died "in Adam" eats "in toils"—that is, in labors—and eats it "all the days" of his own "life." And how "cursed" the whole earth is, that it "will bring forth thorns and thistles" "all the days of the life" of the one cast out of paradise in Adam, and

"in the sweat of" his own "face" every person eats his own bread, "until he returns to the earth from which he was taken." Now the whole passage bearing on this subject affords much matter capable of being worked out for the clarification of the wording; but for the present we have contented ourselves with a few points, wishing to free the reader from the distraction of supposing that what is said about the good land was spoken concerning the land of Judea.

concerning the good land which God promises to the righteous. If, then, the whole earth itself stands "cursed in the works" belonging to Adam and to all who perished within him, it follows plainly that every one of its parts likewise shares that curse, the land of Judea included; so that the phrase "into a good and abundant land,

into a land where milk and honey flow" is unable to apply to it, even though Judea and Jerusalem may be shown symbolically to be a shadow of the pure good and abundant land set in a pure heaven, wherein lies the heavenly Jerusalem; concerning which the apostle, speaking of himself as one raised together with "Christ" and seeking "the things above," and having discovered a sense bound to no Jewish mythology, says: "but you have come to Mount Zion

"...unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of a God who lives, a Jerusalem in the heavens, and unto myriad angels gathered in festival." And so that someone may be persuaded that we do not speak of the good and abundant land in Moses against the intention of the divine Spirit, let him attend to all the prophets, who teach the return to Jerusalem of those who have wandered and fallen away from it, and are, quite simply, restored to the place that is called both

the city of God, in the words of the one who said, "His place is in peace," and who also says, "The Lord is great, worthy of abundant praise, within the city of our God, upon his sacred mountain, firmly established, the delight of all the earth." It will suffice for the present to set out what is said in the thirty-sixth psalm concerning the land of the

righteous: "But those who wait upon the Lord shall inherit the land," and shortly after: "But the meek shall inherit the land, and shall delight in abundance of peace," and shortly after: "Those who bless him shall inherit the land," and again: "The righteous shall inherit the land, and shall dwell upon it forever." Consider whether it is not shown to those able to hear such sayings, spoken in the same psalm, that the earth is

pure because it is in a pure heaven: "Wait for the Lord, hold fast to his path, and he shall raise you up to possess the land." It seems to me also that what is said about the stones held precious here below, which are said to have some effluence from the stones in the better land, was taken by Plato from what

is written in Isaiah concerning the city of God, of which it is written: "I will make your battlements jasper, and your stones stones of crystal, and your wall precious stones," and again: "I will lay your foundations with sapphire." Now the myth in Plato is allegorized and recounted by those who have taken up the philosopher's teachings in a more dignified way. But the prophecies, from which

we conjecture that Plato too took his material, will be vindicated by those who have lived a life kindred to the prophets and inspired by God, and who have devoted their whole time, through purity of life and love of learning in divine things, to the examination of the sacred writings, for those fit to judge. Our purpose has been to show that we, for our part, did not take what we say about the holy land from the Greeks or from Plato; whereas they,

being later not only than the most ancient Moses but also than most of the prophets, either overheard something from those who spoke in riddles about such matters, or, having encountered the sacred scriptures, altered them and said certain things of this sort about the better land. Haggai clearly shows that "the dry land" is one thing and "the earth" another, calling this land, on which we are, the dry land. He

says thus: "Once more, yet again, I will make the heaven quake, and the dry ground, and the sea besides." Just as he himself refers the account to the myth in Plato, set out in the Phaedo, saying this: what he means by these words is not easy for everyone to grasp, unless someone is able to understand what it is he means when he says: "because of weakness"

and slowness, they are not able to traverse the air all the way to its outer limit": "and if nature were strong enough to endure the sight, it would know that this is the true heaven and the true light." In the same way we too, when we discuss the holy and good land and the city of God within it, do not think it belongs to the present

treatise, and so we defer explaining it, reserving it for our commentaries on the prophets, having already discussed the city of God in part, as far as we were able, in the works we composed on the forty-fifth and the forty-seventh Psalm. Now the most ancient discourse of Moses and the prophets recognizes that all the true realities share their names with the more general things here below, as for instance "true light" and

a "heaven" distinct from "the firmament," and a sun "of righteousness" distinct from the one perceived by the senses. And in short, [Scripture] says, in contrast to the objects of sense, none of which is true, the phrase "God, his works are true," assigning the "works of God" in some places to the higher realities, and elsewhere the things called the "works of his hands" to the lesser ones. So, finding fault with certain people through

Isaiah, it says: "they do not gaze upon the works of the Lord, and they do not understand the works of his hands." So much, then, for this. Now, since the account of the resurrection (a lengthy matter, hard to explain, and requiring a wise teacher, if any doctrine does, one who has advanced further still, in order that he may set forth what is worthy of God and the sublimity of the doctrine, since [Scripture] teaches

that what is called, according to the scriptures, the "tent" of the soul has the character of a seed, and that in this tent the righteous, while they are in it, groan under its burden, not wishing to strip it off but to put on another over it) — Celsus, not having understood this, and having heard about it from uneducated people who are unable to set it out with any reasoned account, mocks the doctrine. Beyond what has already been stated above regarding this matter, it is worth adding just this single remark in reply to his

argument: that it is not, as Celsus supposes, from having misunderstood the doctrine of the transmigration of bodies that we speak of the resurrection, but rather because we know that the soul, which by its own nature is bodiless and invisible, and which finds itself in every bodily place, needs a body suited by nature to that place. This body, wherever it is worn, once the soul has stripped off the former one — necessary before, but now superfluous in view of what comes next — and put on the new one in its place

instead of what it had before, requires a better garment for the purer, ethereal, and heavenly regions. And indeed the soul stripped off, on coming to birth here, the covering that had been useful for its existence in the womb of the one bearing it — the chorion, while it remained within her — and it put on, in place of that, what was necessary for the one who was about to live out life on earth. Then again, since there is a certain "tent," an earthly dwelling,

necessary in some way for the tent, the scriptures say both that the earthly house "of the tent" is dissolved, and that the tent puts on over itself "a dwelling not fashioned by hands, everlasting in the heavens." And the men of God say that "the" corruptible "puts on" incorruption — which is distinct from the incorruptible — and that "the" mortal "puts on" immortality, which is distinct from the immortal. For the same reasoning that wisdom follows

in relation to the wise, and righteousness in relation to the just, and peace in relation to the peaceable, so this word — incorruption — stands in relation to the incorruptible, and immortality in relation to the immortal. Observe, then, toward what the word exhorts, when it says we must "put on" "incorruption" and "immortality," which, like garments, do not allow the one who has put them on and is clothed in such garments to be corrupted or to die,

the one wearing them. Let us be permitted to venture these remarks on account of the man who has not understood what we mean at all by the resurrection, and who for this reason laughs at and mocks a doctrine he does not know. Supposing that we hold our views about the resurrection because we know and have seen God, he strings together for himself whatever he wishes and says something like this: whenever they are refuted from every side and their arguments are demolished, once again,

as if they had heard nothing, they return to the same question: how then are we to know and see God? And how are we to go to him? Let anyone who wishes know that even if for other purposes we need a body in order to exist in a bodily place, and one of such a kind as befits the nature of that bodily place, and though needing the body we put on over it, as a tent, the things spoken of above, still for

the knowledge of God we have no need whatever of a body. For it is not the body's eye but the mind that knows God, seeing the "image" of its Creator and having received, through God's providence, the power to know God. And that which sees God is a pure heart, from which no longer "come forth evil thoughts," no "murders," no "adulteries," no "acts of sexual immorality," no "thefts," no "false testimonies," no

"blasphemies," no "evil eye," nor anything else out of place; for which reason it is said, "Happy are those clean of heart, since they will look upon God." But since our own resolve is not sufficient to have the heart wholly "pure," but we need God, who creates it to be such, for this reason it is said by the one who prays with understanding: "Create in me a clean heart,

O God." But neither shall we ask anyone, as though God existed in a place, nor say: how are we to go to him? For God is greater than every place and encompasses everything whatsoever, and there is nothing that encompasses God. To go to God, then, is not enjoined upon us in a bodily sense — "you shall walk after the Lord your God" — nor did the

prophet, when he clung to God, speak in a bodily sense in his prayer: "My soul has clung to you." Celsus, then, speaks falsely of us, claiming that we anticipate beholding God with bodily eyes, hearing his voice with our ears, and touching him with hands perceptible to sense. But we know that eyes are spoken of by the divine words in a sense sharing the name with the eyes of the body, and likewise also the ears and

hands, and, stranger still than these, a perception more divine and different from that which is customarily so named by most people. For whenever the prophet declares, "Open my eyes, so that I may perceive the wonders found in your law"; or again, "Clear and bright is the Lord's commandment, giving the eyes light"; or, "Give my eyes light, lest I fall asleep unto death," no one who is not utterly senseless

that one should think that the "wonders" of the divine "law" are perceived with the eyes of the body, or that the Lord's commandment gives light to the eyes of the body, or that a sleep bringing death happens to the eyes of the body. But even when our Savior says, "let the one who has ears to hear, hear," even an ordinary person understands these words to be spoken about more divine ears—even if it is said

that "the word of the Lord" came to be by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet or of someone else, or that the law came "by the hand" of Moses, or that "with my hands I sought after God, and I was not disappointed," surely nobody is so witless that he fails to grasp that certain hands are here spoken of figuratively—hands of which John likewise says, "our hands have felt out the matter concerning the word of life." But if

you also wish to learn from the sacred writings about the superior, non-bodily perception, hear Solomon saying in the Proverbs, "you will find divine perception." There is therefore no need for us, who seek God in this way, to go where Celsus sends us—to Trophonius, and to Amphiaraus, and to Mopsus—where, he says, gods in human form are seen, and, as Celsus puts it,

not deceptively but visibly, in plain sight. For we know that these are demons, fed on the fumes of burnt fat and on blood and on the vapors rising from sacrifices, and thus held fast within the prisons built by their own desire—which the Greeks have taken for temples of gods. But we know that such dwellings belong to deceiving demons. After this Celsus maliciously says about the

aforementioned human-formed gods, as he calls them, that one will see them not slipping past just once, like the one who deceived those disciples, but always conversing with whoever wishes it. And by this he seems to have supposed that Jesus was a phantom, who, having appeared to the disciples after the resurrection from the dead, merely flitted past so as to be seen by them; whereas those he named, calling them human-formed gods, he thinks converse always with whoever

wishes it. But how can a phantom—as he himself says, one that flitted past to deceive those who saw it—after that single sighting accomplish so much, and turn the souls of such people, and instill in them the conviction that they must do everything pleasing to God, as ones who are going to be judged? And how does something called a phantom drive out demons and perform other not inconsiderable works, not confined to one

allotted place, as his human-formed gods are, but extending over the whole inhabited world, gathering and drawing by its own divinity whomever it finds inclined toward the good life? After this, in response to what we have said so far as we were able, Celsus again says the following: and again they will be asked, how will they know God without being grasped by sense-perception? What

is it possible to learn apart from sense-perception? Then, answering this, he says: it is the voice not of a human being, nor of the soul, but of the flesh. All the same, let them hear, if they are capable of understanding anything, being a cowardly, body-loving race: if you close your senses and look up with the mind, and turning away from the flesh raise the eyes of the soul, only in this way will you see God. And if you take a guide for this path

...you should seek, you must shun the deceivers and sorcerers who commend idols to you, so that you are not utterly ridiculous — blaspheming the other gods, the ones set forth, as idols, while worshipping one more wretched than even those true idols, no longer even an idol but a truly dead thing, and seeking a father like him. And first something must be said about his personification.

...attributing to us words as if spoken by us in defense of the resurrection of the flesh, on the ground that it is the mark of skill in one composing a speech-in-character to preserve the intention and disposition of the person being represented, and a fault when one attaches to the speaker's mouth words that do not fit him. And equally blameworthy are those who, in composing such speeches, attribute them to barbarians and the uneducated, or to home-bred slaves, and to people who have never...

...heard philosophical arguments and would not have spoken them well, fitting them out with a philosophy which the one composing the speech had learned but which it was not plausible for the person represented to know; and again those who, to people posited by hypothesis as wise and versed in divine things, attribute what is said out of vulgar passions by the uneducated and reported out of ignorance. This is why Homer is admired in many respects, for having kept the...

...characters of his heroes as he had established them from the start — that of Nestor, say, or of Odysseus, or of Diomedes, or of Agamemnon, or of Telemachus, or of Penelope, or of any of the rest; whereas Euripides is mocked by Aristophanes as speaking out of season, because he often fitted, into the mouths of barbarian women or household slaves, speeches full of doctrines drawn from the teaching of Anaxagoras or some other sage. If, then, such is...

...the skill in composing speeches-in-character, and such the fault, how could one not fairly laugh at Celsus for attaching to Christians things not said by Christians? For if he was inventing the words of uneducated people, how could people of that sort be capable of distinguishing sense-perception from intellect, and objects of sense from objects of intellect, and of holding doctrines resembling those of the Stoics who abolish intelligible substances, on the ground that whatever is apprehended is apprehended by the senses...

...and that all apprehension depends on the senses? And if he is inventing the words of people practicing philosophy and examining, as far as they are able, the things of Christ with care, he has not made even these consistent. For no one who has learned that God is invisible, and that there are certain invisible creations — that is, intelligible ones — would say, as though defending the resurrection, 'How will they know God if they are not apprehended by the senses?' or...

'What is it possible to learn apart from sense-perception?' And it is written — not in works set apart and read only by the few who love learning, but in the more popular writings — that 'the invisible things of God are perceived, being understood through the things he has made, from the creation of the world.' From this one can know that even though people in this life must begin from the senses and sensible things, since they are going to ascend to...

...the nature of intelligible things, they need not remain among sensible things; nor will they say it is impossible to learn intelligible things apart from sense-perception. And using the saying 'Who is able to learn apart from sense-perception?' they will show that it is not reasonable for Celsus to add to it, 'not the voice of a man, nor even of a soul, but of flesh.' Speaking, then, of mind, or of that which is beyond mind and being...

the God of all things is simple, invisible, and incorporeal, we will say that God is apprehended by nothing other than that which comes to be after the image of that mind — for now, to use Paul's expression, "through a mirror and in a riddle," but then "face to face." And if I say "face," let no one slander the mind signified by the word on account of the expression,

but let him instead learn from the saying that with face unveiled we behold, as in a mirror, the Lord's glory, and are transfigured into that very likeness from one glory to another, that no perceptible face is intended in such passages, but rather a figurative sense, just like eyes and ears, and all the terms we set forth above that share their names with the parts of the body. And so "man,"

that is, the soul that makes use of a body, called "the inner man" but also "soul," answers not what Celsus has written down, but what the man of God himself teaches. A Christian would never use the word "flesh" as Celsus does, having learned, by the Spirit, to put to death "the deeds of the body," and to bear about "always the dying of Jesus in the body," and to "put to death the members that are upon the

earth," and knowing what is signified by the words "my spirit shall not remain in these men forever, because they are flesh," and understanding also that "they that are in the flesh are unable to please God," and for this reason doing everything so as to be no longer at all "in the flesh," but "in the spirit" alone.

Let us see, then, to what Celsus summons us, so that we may listen to him, and by what means we shall come to know God — words after which he supposes no Christian is able to understand what he says. For he says: "Nevertheless, let them listen, if they are able to understand anything at all." We must consider, then, what he wants us to listen to from him. The philosopher ought to teach us; instead he heaps up abuse.

And whereas he ought to show goodwill toward his hearers in the preface of his discourse, he instead speaks to people who are dying unto death rather than renouncing, even in word alone, Christianity, and who are prepared for every torment and every kind of death — as though we were a cowardly race. He says we are a race that loves the body too, people who say, "even if we once knew Christ

according to the flesh, yet now we know him no longer," and who so readily set the body forward for the sake of piety that a philosopher would not so easily take off his cloak. He says to us, then, that if, closing our senses, we look up with the mind, and turning away from the flesh, awaken the eye of the soul, only so shall we see God. And he supposes that these notions — I mean what he says about the two kinds of eyes — were taken from

the Greeks, and had not been philosophized about beforehand among us. But it must be said that Moses, in setting down the making of the world, presents man, prior to the transgression, as in one way seeing and in another way not — seeing, insofar as it is said of the woman that "she saw the tree to be good as food, and that it was a delight to look upon, and lovely to

...to understand," not seeing this only in the statement made about the eyes as blind, spoken by the serpent to the woman, "For God knew that in whatever day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened," but also in "they ate, and the eyes of the two were opened." Their eyes, then, "were opened" — the eyes of sensation, which they had

rightly shut, so that, undistracted, they might not be hindered from seeing with the eye of the soul. But the eyes of the soul, which until then they had open and which rejoiced in God and in his paradise, these, I think, they shut because of sin. That is why our Savior too, knowing this twofold kind of eyes in us, says, "For judgment I came into

this world, that those who do not see may see, and those who see may become blind" — hinting by "those who do not see" at the eyes of the soul, which the Word makes to see, and by "those who see" at the eyes of the senses; these the Word blinded, so that the soul might see without distraction what it must see. In everyone, then, who is a Christian in the proper manner, the eye of the soul has been roused, and

the eye of sensation has closed; and in proportion to the rousing of the better eye and the closing of the eyes of sensation, each person perceives and beholds the God over all things and his Son, who is Word and Wisdom, and the rest. Next, after what has been examined, Celsus directs a speech as though to all Christians which it would have been fitting to address to those wholly estranged from

the teaching of Jesus, if indeed it was fitting to say it at all. For the Ophites, as we said above, who deny Jesus altogether — or if there are others who hold similar views to theirs and court idols — are deceivers and charlatans; and it is they who wretchedly learn by heart the names of the doorkeepers. In vain, then, does he say to Christians: even if

you seek a guide for this road, you must flee the deceivers and charlatans and those who court idols. And not knowing that such people, no less than Celsus himself, speak evil, as charlatans, of Jesus and of the whole worship of God that follows him, he says — confusing us with them by his own argument — "so that you may not be altogether ridiculous, while you revile the others, the

gods that are shown forth, as idols, yet worship one who is truly more wretched than idols themselves and no longer even an idol but in fact a corpse, and seek a father like him." That he does not know what Christians say and what those who fabricate such myths say, but supposes that the charges brought against those people belong to us, and says these things against us though they do not belong to us, is plain from what follows:

"such deceit, and those astonishing counselors, and the demonic sayings addressed to the lion and the amphibious one and the ass-shaped one and the others, and the marvelous doorkeepers, whose names you wretches wretchedly learn by heart while you rave madly and are impaled." And he did not see that none of those who worship the lion-shaped one and

those who think the donkey-shaped one and the amphibious one are gatekeepers of the ascent — he stands firm even to the point of death for the truth as it appears to him. But when we, through piety, so to speak, go beyond this — offering ourselves to death in every form — and when impalement is inflicted on us who suffer none of these things he mentions, and we ourselves are impaled for the sake of piety, he reproaches us with their mythmaking about the

lion-shaped one and the amphibious one and the rest. It is not on account of Celsus, then, that we shun the account of the lion-shaped figure and the others, for indeed we never received any such thing from the beginning; rather, following the teaching of Jesus, we say the opposite of what they say, not agreeing that Michael has this particular appearance, and that some other of those previously listed has that one. But whom does

Celsus want us to follow, as though we would not be at a loss for ancient leaders and holy men? He sends us off to inspired poets, as he calls them, and wise men and philosophers, without naming them, and though he promises to point out guides, he indefinitely declares that the poets, sages, and philosophers are inspired. But if he had named each of these, it would have seemed reasonable to us to contend the matter, on the grounds that

he is giving us guides who are blind about the truth, so that we might go astray — or, even if not altogether blind, at least mistaken about many doctrines of the truth. So whether he wants Orpheus to be an inspired poet, or Parmenides, or Empedocles, or even Homer himself, or Hesiod, let whoever wishes show how those who use such guides will travel better and be helped in matters concerning

life, in comparison with those who, for the sake of the teaching of Jesus Christ, have abandoned all images and shrines, and indeed all Jewish superstition as well, and look up, through the Word of God, to none but the Father of the Word, God alone. And who are these wise men or philosophers from whom Celsus wants us to hear many divine things, abandoning the servant of God,

Moses, and the prophets of the Creator of all things — men who truly spoke countless things by divine inspiration, and who themselves shone upon the human race and proclaimed the way of the worship of God, and left no one, so far as it depended on them, untasted of their own mysteries, but through surpassing love of humanity gave to the more discerning a theology able to lift the soul above the affairs of this world? And nonetheless

he also condescended to the weaker capacities of ordinary men and simpler women, of household servants, and in short of all those helped by no one but Jesus alone, so that, as far as possible, they might live better, with such doctrines about God as they were able to grasp. Then after this, as though to a more effective teacher of matters of theology, he sends us off to Plato, citing his own words from the

Timaeus, which run thus: "Now to find the maker and father of this universe is a task, and having found him, to declare him to all is impossible." Then he adds to this, saying: See how the way of truth is sought by those who declare the divine, and how Plato was aware that no one whatever could "walk" this road through to its end. But since for this reason it has been discovered by wise men, as being of the unnameable and first

we might gain some notion of him, made manifest either by composition applied to other things, or by analysis from them, or by analogy, wishing to teach what is otherwise ineffable. And I would be amazed if you were able to follow — bound entirely to the flesh as you are, and seeing nothing pure. Plato, then, brings forward the passage before us in a grand and by no means contemptible manner. But observe whether the

divine word does not introduce, in a more humane way, the God who was "in the beginning with God" — the Word — becoming flesh, so that the Word might be able to reach all people, the very Word whom Plato too says it is "impossible to speak of to all" once one has found him. Let Plato, then, say that it is the task of finding "the maker and father of this universe," showing that it is "impossible" for human nature to find God in a manner

worthy of him — or if not worthy, at least more fully than the many find him. But if this were true, and God had truly been found by Plato or by any Greek, they would not have worshipped anything else and called it and revered it as God, either abandoning this God or taking on together with him things that ought not to be taken together with so great a God. We, however, declare that

human nature is not by any means sufficient of itself to seek God and find him purely, without being helped by the very one being sought — who is found by those who confess, after doing what lies in their power, that they need him, revealing himself to those he judges it reasonable to be seen by; for it is God's nature to be known by man, while a human soul, still being in the body, is able to know God. But even when

Plato says that it is "impossible to speak of" the one who has found "the maker and father of the universe" "to all," he does not say that this maker is ineffable and unnameable, but rather that, being namable, he can be spoken of only to a few. Then, as though forgetting the very words of Plato which he himself had quoted, Celsus says that God is unnamable to these people — since it is for this reason that wise men have discovered a way, as it were, to gain some notion of

the unnamable and first being. We, however, say not only that God is ineffable, but also that certain things after him are as well — things which Paul, forcing himself to signify them, says: "he heard words beyond speech, sayings no human tongue may repeat," using "heard" in place of "understood," in a manner analogous to "let the one who has ears to hear, hear." We indeed say that we have seen the work of "the maker and father of

the universe." And this is seen not only according to the saying, "how blessed are those clean of heart, since it is God they will see," but also according to what is said by the image "of the invisible God" in the words, "whoever has seen me has seen the Father who sent me." For in these words no one of sound mind would say that Jesus,

in referring these things to his perceptible body seen by men, said, "whoever has seen me has seen the Father who sent me" — for on that reading, everyone who cried, "away with him, away with him to the cross," along with Pilate, who held authority over his human body, would likewise have seen the Father God, which is absurd. That the saying "whoever has seen me has seen

"the Father who sent me" is not referred to in the more common sense — this is clear from what was said to Philip: "So long a time am I with you, and you have not known me, Philip?" And he said this to him when Philip had asked, saying, "Show us the Father, and it is enough for us." So then, if someone understands how one ought to hear this concerning the only-begotten God the Son of God, the firstborn

"of all creation," inasmuch as "the Word" became "flesh," he will see how, having seen the image "of the invisible God," one will come to know "the Father and maker of this whole universe." Celsus, then, supposes that God is known either by the composition analogous, with respect to other things, to what geometers call "synthesis," or by analysis from other things, or again by an analogy analogous to the

analogy used by those same geometers — reaching only as far as the outer doors, if indeed one capable of the good could even come this far by such a route. But the Word of God, having said, "No one has known the Father, save the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal him," by a certain divine grace — one that arises in the soul not apart from God but with a kind of inspiration — declares that God is known. And this is reasonable,

for the knowledge of God is likely to be greater than is proportionate to human nature (which is why there are so many errors among human beings concerning God), yet by the goodness and love of humankind that belong to God, and by an extraordinary and more divine grace, the knowledge of God reaches those who have been laid hold of beforehand by God's foreknowledge, because they will live in a manner worthy of the one they have come to know — in no way falsifying their piety toward him,

neither so that they might be led away to death by those who do not know what piety actually is, and who fashion piety to be whatever they please rather than what piety truly is, nor so that they might be thought utterly ridiculous. And God, I think, seeing also the arrogance, or the contempt for others, of those who think great things of themselves because

they have come to know God and have learned divine matters from philosophy — while behaving in a manner much like the most uneducated, devoting themselves to statues and their temples and the much-talked-of mysteries — "chose" "the foolish things of the world," the simplest people among the Christians, who live more moderately and more purely than many philosophers, "in order that he might put the wise to shame" — people who are not ashamed to converse with lifeless things as if they were gods, or

with images of gods. For who that has any sense will not laugh at someone who, after such great and so many philosophical discourses about God or the gods, fixes his gaze on statues and either sends up his prayer to them themselves, or, through the sight of these, ascends to the one he imagines he must ascend to — carrying up from what is seen, which is a symbol, to what is thought? But the Christian,

even the ordinary one, is convinced that every place in the world is part of the whole, since the whole world is a temple of God; and praying "in every place," having closed the eyes of sense-perception and opened those of the soul, he rises above the whole world. And he does not even come to rest at the vault of heaven, but having arrived, in thought, at the place beyond heaven, being guided by

of the divine spirit, and being as it were outside the world, sends up to God a prayer not about ordinary things; for he learned from Jesus to seek nothing small, that is, nothing perceptible by the senses, but only the great and truly divine things, whatever contributes, when given by God, toward journeying to the

blessedness that is with him through his son, who is the Word, God's. But let us also look at what he says he will teach us, if indeed we shall be able to follow it, in which he says that we are utterly bound to the flesh — we who, if we live rightly and according to the teaching of Jesus, hear the words, "you exist not in flesh but in spirit, given that God's Spirit truly makes its home in you." He says also that we see nothing pure — we who try

not to be defiled, even in our reasonings, by the imaginings of wickedness, and who say in prayer, "God, fashion in me a pure heart, and set a steadfast spirit anew within my depths," so that with the heart alone, which by nature can see God, we may behold him with that same purity of heart. What he says is something like this: substance and becoming — intelligible, visible; with substance is truth, but with

becoming, error. Concerning truth, then, there is knowledge; concerning the other, opinion. And of the intelligible there is intellection, of the visible, sight. The intellect knows the intelligible, the eye the visible. What the sun is among visible things — being neither eye nor sight, but the cause to the eye of seeing, and to sight of being constituted through it, and to visible things of being seen,

and to all perceptible things of coming to be, and indeed to itself of being seen — this is what that one is among intelligible things, being neither intellect nor intellection nor knowledge, but the cause to the intellect of thinking, and to intellection of existing through him, and to knowledge of knowing through him, and to all intelligible things and to truth itself and to substance itself of being, being beyond all things, intelligible by some ineffable

power. These things have been said for people who have intellect; but if you too understand something of them, it is well for you. And if you suppose that some spirit descending from God foretells divine things, this would be the spirit that proclaims these things, filled with which men of old announced many good things; and if you cannot comprehend these, be silent and

cover your own ignorance, and do not say that those who see are blind and that those who run are lame — you who are yourselves utterly crippled in soul and maimed, and who live by the body, that is, by the corpse. To this we shall reply, we who have made it our practice to be hostile to no one who speaks well, even if those outside the faith speak well, not to contend with them out of rivalry nor to seek to overturn what is sound,

because those who revile people who wish, according to their ability, to be pious toward the God of all — who accepts the faith of the uneducated and the reasoned piety of the more intelligent, who offer up prayers with thanksgiving to the maker of the universe, offering them as through a high priest, the one who has presented sincere reverence for God to mankind — and who call them crippled in soul, and

They call "mutilated" also those who, living in body with the corpse, practice saying from their disposition: "though we live in flesh, our campaign is not waged by fleshly standards, for the arms we bear in this campaign are not of the flesh but are mighty for God" — let them see whether, by this very act of speaking ill of men who pray to belong to God, they render their own souls lame and mutilate their "inner"

"man," cutting off, through their slanders against others, those who wish to live well — along with the fairness and steadiness naturally implanted by the Creator in rational nature. But those who, besides other things, have learned from the divine word, and who also practice "blessing when reviled," "enduring when persecuted," "exhorting when slandered" — these would be the ones who have set upright the foundations of the soul, and

purified and prepared the whole soul — not so that they might, by words alone, separate being from becoming and the intelligible from the visible, and join truth to being while fleeing in every way the error that accompanies becoming, looking, as they have learned, not at the things of becoming (things that are "seen" and, for that reason, "temporary") but rather toward the better things, whether one wishes to call them being,

or "invisible," because they happen to be intelligible, or "not seen," because their nature lies outside sense-perception. And so the disciples of Jesus also look upon the things of becoming, in such a way as to use them as a kind of stepping-stone toward the understanding of the nature of intelligible things: since God's "unseen realities," that is, the intelligible things, have been "understood through the things he made," "ever since the world's creation," in the

act of being perceived, "are clearly seen." And indeed, having ascended from the created things of the world, they do not stop among the invisible things of God; rather, having sufficiently trained themselves in these and understood them, they rise up to God's everlasting power and, in short, to his deity, knowing that the God who loves mankind has "manifested" "the truth" and "what" "is known" of himself, not only to those devoted to him,

but also to some who are outside sincere piety and reverence toward him. But some of those who, by God's providence, have ascended to the knowledge of such great things, act unworthily of that knowledge, are impious, and "hold the truth in unrighteousness," no longer able to have any place for defense before God on account of their knowledge of such great things. Indeed, they are testified against by the divine word —

those who have grasped the doctrines set out by Celsus and profess to philosophize according to these teachings — that "though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings, and," after so great a light of the knowledge of the things God had manifested to them, "their senseless heart," pressing on, "was darkened." One can indeed see in what way those

"who claim to be wise" display evidence of great folly, when, after such lofty discourses in their schools about God and the intelligible things, they "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." For this reason they themselves were abandoned by providence, as not having lived worthily of the things God had manifested to them,

They wallow "in the desires of their hearts unto uncleanness," and "their bodies" are dishonored in shameful acts and licentiousness, in exchange for which they "exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and reverenced and served the creation rather than the creator." But those whom they despise for their lack of learning, and call foolish and mere slaves, believe in God, if nothing else.

Having accepted the teaching of Jesus, they fall so far short of licentiousness and uncleanness and all the shamefulness found in sexual intercourse that, after the manner of perfect priests, having turned away from all intercourse, many of them keep themselves entirely pure, and not only from every kind of union. There is, I believe, among the Athenians a certain hierophant who, not even trusting himself to be master of his own male desires and able to control them as much

as he wishes, is rendered impotent by hemlock in his male parts, and is thereby considered pure for the rite customarily observed among the Athenians. But among Christians one can see men who had no need of hemlock in order to serve the divine in purity, but who are content with reason in place of hemlock, so that, having driven every desire out of their minds, they serve the divine with prayers. Among others who are reputed to be gods there are virgins, quite few in number,

whether guarded by men or not (for it is not our present purpose to examine this); they seem to persist in purity for the sake of honoring the divine. But among Christians it is not for the sake of honors among men, nor for wages and silver, nor for petty glory, that they practice complete virginity; rather, as those who "have approved of having God in full knowledge," they are kept

by God with an approved mind and by "doing what is fitting," being filled with all righteousness and goodness. I have said these things not out of a wish to quarrel with what has been nobly conceived even among the Greeks, nor to accuse sound doctrines, but because I wish to show that not only these things, but things even greater and more divine than these, have been spoken by the divine men, the prophets of God

and the apostles of Jesus, and are put into practice by those who wish to be Christians in the fullest sense and who understand that "a righteous man's mouth utters wisdom, and his tongue pronounces judgment; God's law dwells within his heart." Yet even among those in whom, whether through great lack of learning, or through simplicity, or through the absence of anyone to exhort them to a rational piety, these things

have not been articulated, yet the God who is over all is believed in, along with his "only-begotten Son," the Word who is also God — there one would often find a plainness and simplicity of dignity, purity, and character better than that possessed by those who "claim to be wise" but, not having grasped it, wallow among boys with whom it is unlawful, "males working shamefulness with males." He, then, did not make clear how

error attaches to a person after birth, nor did he set forth exactly what he meant, so that we might understand it by comparing his statements with our own. But the prophets, hinting at what is wise concerning the circumstances of birth, say that a sacrifice "for sin" is offered even on behalf of those newly born, as not being pure from sin. And they also say: "I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother craved for me"

my mother." But they also declare that "sinners are estranged from the womb," saying, remarkably, this too: "they have gone astray from the womb, they have spoken falsehoods." In this way our sages so thoroughly discredit the whole nature of sensible things that at one point the body is called "vanity" in the text, "since it was to futility that the creation was made subject - not by its own choice, but on account of the one who subjected it, in hope,"

and at another point it is called the "vanity of vanities," which the Ecclesiast spoke of: "vanity of vanities, all is vanity." And who has discredited the life of the human soul here as thoroughly as the one who said: "yet all things are vanity - every man that lives"? For he did not doubt about the difference between the soul's life here and its life outside of the things here, nor did he simply say: who knows whether

living itself is dying, and dying is living? Rather he is bold enough to speak the truth in saying, "our soul was brought low to the dust," and "you have brought me down to the dust of death" - which is why it is also said, "who shall rescue me out of this body doomed to die?" and it is also said, "who will transform the body of our humiliation." And a prophet is also he who

said this: "you have humbled us in a place of affliction," calling the earthly realm the "place of affliction," to which Adam - that is, humanity - came after being cast out of paradise on account of wickedness. And he too, who says, "we see now through a mirror, in a riddle, but then face to face." And further also this: "so long as we dwell within the body, we remain exiles far from"

the Lord," for which reason "we are content to be away from the body and to be at home with the Lord" - see how great a view he had come to hold concerning the differing life of souls. And what need is there for me to set out at greater length Celsus's wording, when these things have already been said by us long before this, and it is already clear from what has been said what our intention is? In these words he as it were also grants the point,

saying that a divine spirit coming down from God foretells divine things, and that this would be the spirit that proclaims these things - filled with which, men of old announced many good things. But he did not see the difference among the things carefully worked out among us by those who say also that "your incorruptible spirit is in all things; therefore he corrects those who fall away little by little" - God does this, they say - while others state other things,

and that "receive holy spirit" indicates a different quantity of what is given than that shown by "you shall be baptized in holy spirit not many days from now." It takes careful thought to perceive the difference between those who, at various intervals, have arrived at only a brief grasp of the apprehension of truth and knowledge of God, and those who have been more fully inspired by God and who stand continually with God

and are led at all times by the divine spirit. Had this been examined and understood by Celsus, he would not have charged us with ignorance, nor would he have instructed us not to say that those men are blind who practice the material arts, the ones concerned with images, and who suppose that by this they display piety. For no one who beholds with the eyes of the soul worships the divine in any other way than the one who points to always beholding it with the

the maker of the universe, and to refer every prayer to him, and to do everything as in the sight of God, before a witness, one who watches even our reasonings. We pray, then, both that we ourselves may see and that we may be guides of the blind, until they come forward to the word of God and recover the eyes of their soul that had been blinded by ignorance. And if we also do things worthy of him who said to his

disciples that "you are the light of the world"; and since he also taught, "the light shines in the darkness," we too will be a "light" to those in darkness, and we will instruct the foolish and teach the infants. Let Celsus not be indignant when we call lame, and maimed in the feet of the soul, those who hasten to what are held to be sacred places as though they were truly sacred, and

do not see that no work of vulgar craftsmen can be sacred. But those who live piously according to the teaching of Jesus run their race, until, arriving at the finish, they say with a firm and truthful disposition, "I have contended the noble contest, I have completed the course, I have preserved the faith; from now on the crown of righteousness is reserved for me." And each of us likewise "races" in such a way "as

not uncertainly," and so "fights" against vice "as one not beating the air," but rather those under "the ruler of the authority of the air, the spirit now at work in the sons of disobedience." Let Celsus say that we are living with a dead body, while we hear: "If you live according to the flesh, you are going to die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body,

you will live," and while we learn the saying, "if we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit"; and may it be ours to show by our deeds that the one who says of us that we live by the dead body is lying. After this, then, in response to what we have answered as best we could, he says to us: how much better it would have been for you, since you desired to introduce some innovation, to have taken pains over some other of those who died nobly and

were capable of receiving a divine myth. Come now, if Heracles and Asclepius and those glorified of old did not please you, you had Orpheus, a man who by common agreement made use of a holy spirit, and who himself died by violence. But perhaps he had already been taken up by others. Take Anaxarchus, then, who, thrown into a mortar and crushed in the most lawless manner, utterly despised his punishment, saying: "Pound, pound the sack of Anaxarchus, for it is not he

you are pounding" — a saying of a truly divine spirit indeed. But others too, natural philosophers, who came before, followed this same course — was there not Epictetus? He, while his master twisted his leg, remarked with a faint, undismayed smile, "You are breaking it," and when it broke, said, "Did I not tell you that you were breaking it?" What such thing did your god utter when being punished? You, on the other hand, if you made use of the Sibyl, as some of you do, would more reasonably have set her up as

the child of God; but as it is, while you are able recklessly to interpolate into her sayings many blasphemous things, you set up as god the one who lived a most disreputable life and died a most pitiable death. How much more fitting for you would Jonah have been "under the gourd," or Daniel who escaped from the beasts, or others still more marvelous than these? Since, then, he refers us to Heracles, memoirs of the accounts

let him show us this himself, and let him give a defense of Heracles' shameful slavery under Omphale, and let him demonstrate whether the man was worthy of divine honor who violently and like a robber seized the farmer's ox, slaughtered it, and feasted on it with delight, even while the man kept cursing him as he ate — so much so that it is recorded that even to this day the spirit of Heracles receives his sacrifice together with curses. He calls

upon us to repeat ourselves about Asclepius, though we have already spoken about him too. But we are content with what we said there. And why is it that he admires Orpheus and says that, by common consent, he lived well because he made use of a holy spirit? I am amazed that Celsus, out of sheer contentiousness toward us and in order to belittle Jesus, now sings the praises of Orpheus, when — at the time he was reading through

Orpheus's impious myths about the gods — he did not turn away from those poems as ones which, even more than Homer's, deserved to be banished from his fine republic. For indeed Orpheus said far worse things about the so-called gods than Homer did. Noble, then, was Anaxarchus, who said to Aristocreon, the tyrant of Cyprus: "Pound away, pound away at the sack that holds Anaxarchus!" The Greeks know that this is the one unique thing admired about Anaxarchus, on account of which, if

even as Celsus supposes, some ought fittingly to have honored a man on account of virtue, it would still not have been reasonable to proclaim Anaxarchus a god. And he sends us on to Epictetus as well, admiring what was nobly said by him — yet not so as to be compared with what Epictetus said at the breaking of his leg, set beside the extraordinary deeds of Jesus which are disbelieved by Celsus, along with his words — because they were spoken with divine power,

and to this day they turn not only some of the simpler people but also many of the more intelligent toward him. And since, after his catalogue of so many men, he says: "What such thing did your god say while being punished?" — we would say to him that, by his silence under the whips and the many acts of cruelty, more than anyone in Greece who has spoken out amid such circumstances, he

displayed endurance and patience — if indeed Celsus is willing to trust even this account, faithfully recorded by truth-loving men, who told the extraordinary deeds without falsehood and who reckoned his silence under the whips among those very deeds. But moreover, while being mocked and clothed in the "scarlet robe," and having the "crown of thorns" placed upon his head, and taking the "reed" in his hand in place of

a scepter, he showed the utmost gentleness, saying nothing ignoble or resentful toward those who dared such things against him. It was not, then, out of ignobility, as some suppose, that one who kept silent under the whips out of endurance, and who bore with gentleness everything brought upon him by his mockers, should also have said: "Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet

not as I will, but as you will." There is, then, an account to be given of what appears to be a kind of qualified request to be excused from the so-called cup, which we have examined more fully elsewhere and have given our answer. But so that we may hear what was said more simply, consider whether the prayer was not spoken together with piety toward God, by one who does not think that any circumstance whatsoever should take precedence, but rather that it should be endured

...which does not happen as the primary thing, but whenever the occasion calls for it. But the voice was not one of yielding; rather it was the voice of one content with what was happening and preferring the circumstances that come from providence, the voice that says, "Yet not what I want, but what you want." Then—I do not know how—he wanted us to proclaim the Sibyl as child of God rather than Jesus, declaring that we had interpolated many

blasphemous things into her oracles, without demonstrating even what it was that we had interpolated. He would have demonstrated it, had he shown that the older texts were purer and did not contain what he supposes was interpolated; but having demonstrated neither that nor that these things are blasphemous, he then again—not twice or three times, but indeed many times—called the life of Jesus utterly disgraceful, without pausing over each of the things done in his life

that are also considered most disgraceful, so that in saying this he might appear not only to be making an unproven assertion but also to be reviling one he does not know. For if he had set out the specific forms of the most disgraceful life as they appeared to him in Jesus's actions, we would have contended against each of the things that seemed to him most disgraceful. But that Jesus suffered a most pitiable death could equally be said about

Socrates and about Anaxarchus, whom he mentioned a little earlier, and about countless others. Is the death of Jesus most pitiable, but not theirs as well? Or is theirs not most pitiable, while that of Jesus is most pitiable? You see, then, here too, that Celsus's aim was to revile Jesus, moved, I think, by some spirit that had been overthrown

by Jesus and brought down, so that it might no longer have the savory smoke and blood on which it fed, by which it deceived those who sought God among the images on earth and did not look up to the God who is truly over all things. Then next, as though he had set himself the aim of filling out his book, he wanted us to consider Jonah a god rather than Jesus—Jonah, who preached repentance to a single city, the

city of Nineveh, preferring him to Jesus, who preached repentance to the whole world and accomplished far more than he did. And he wanted us to proclaim as god the one who did the marvelous and paradoxical thing of being "in the belly of the sea monster" "three days and three nights," while Celsus did not want the one who undertook to die on behalf of humanity—though he is attested by God through the prophets—to be worthy of the honor that is second after

the God of the universe, on account of the valiant deeds he did in heaven and on earth. And Jonah, in order not to preach what had been commanded by God, was swallowed by the sea monster, while Jesus, since he taught what God wanted, undertook death on behalf of humanity. Next he says that Daniel, having come up from among the lions, ought rather to be worshiped

by us than Jesus, who trampled down the ferocity of every opposing power and gave us "power to trample serpents and scorpions, and upon all the strength of the enemy." Then, having no others to name, he says: "or those still more monstrous than these," at the same time so as to revile both Jonah and Daniel; for the spirit in Celsus did not know how to speak well of the righteous.

After this, let us also look at his next statement, which runs as follows: "They also have a precept of this kind, that the one who is insulted should not defend himself; and if someone strikes, he says, the one cheek, you should offer the other as well." This too is old, and was said very well before, but they have recorded it in a cruder form. For Plato has represented Socrates conversing with Crito as follows: "One must never do wrong at all."

"Certainly not. Then neither must one who is wronged do wrong in return, as the many suppose, since one must never do wrong at all. It does not appear so. What then? Must one do evil, Crito, or not? Surely not, Socrates. What then? Is it just, or not just, to do evil in return when one has suffered evil, as the many say? Not at all. For to do evil to men differs in nothing...

...from doing wrong." "You speak truly." "Therefore one must neither do wrong in return nor do evil to any person, whatever one may suffer at their hands." This is what Plato says, and again the following: "Consider then, you too, very carefully, whether you share this view and agree, and let us begin our deliberation from this point: that it is never right either to do wrong, or to do wrong in return, or, when suffering evil, to defend oneself by doing evil in return...

...or do you withdraw and not share in this starting point? For to me it has seemed so both long ago and still now." This, then, is what pleased Plato; but these things had also been resolved even earlier by divine men. But concerning these matters, and the other things that they corrupt, let what has been said suffice; and whoever cares to inquire into them further will know how. Now, in answer

to this, and to everything that Celsus has made common property—since he was unable to look the truth of these matters in the face—claiming that they too were said among the Greeks, the following must be said: if the doctrine is beneficial and its intent is sound, and it was said among the Greeks by Plato or one of the Greek sages, and among the Jews by Moses or one of the prophets, and among Christians in

the recorded words of Jesus, or in sayings spoken by one of his apostles, one must not suppose that what is said among the Jews or among the Christians is discredited by the fact that it was also said among the Greeks—especially if it can be shown that the Jewish sayings are older than the Greek ones. Nor, again, must one suppose that the same thing, when said with the beauty of Greek diction, is altogether better than what is reported in a more common style and simpler words among the Jews or Christians,

even though the earliest language of the Jews—which the prophets used, and in which they have left us books—was written down, according to their custom, in the Hebrew dialect and in a wise composition of the words within that dialect. And if it is necessary also to show the identity of the doctrines—even if the statement seems paradoxical—namely that it is better expressed among the Jewish prophets than in the words of the Christians, the argument must be built up from some example drawn from foods and their preparation.

Let there be some healthy food, one that produces strength in those who eat it. Let this, prepared in one way and seasoned with such-and-such condiments, be eaten not by the uneducated country folk, raised on farmsteads, and the poor, who are unaccustomed to eating such things, but by the rich and those of luxurious habits,

alone — not prepared in that manner, the way it seems to those who are reckoned more refined, but as the poor and the more rustic and the majority of people have learned to eat. Let tens of thousands eat. Suppose, then, it were granted that from a preparation of that sort only those reckoned more refined are made healthy, with none of the multitude partaking of such foods, while from a preparation of this other sort the masses

of humankind live in better health — which physicians should we approve of more, for the sake of the common good, on account of healthy foods? Those who prepare them usefully for the learned, or those who prepare them for the multitudes? Given that equal health and well-being arise from foods prepared this way or that (let that much be granted), it is nevertheless plain that philanthropy itself, and the sense of common good, suggest that the doctor who has taken thought for the health of the many is more beneficial to the community than the one who has taken thought for the health of

only the few. Now if the illustration has been grasped, it must be carried over to the quality of the rational food of rational beings, and you should observe whether Plato and the wise among the Greeks, in the fine things they say, are not much like those doctors who took thought only for the ones reckoned more refined, while holding the mass of humankind in contempt;

whereas Jewish prophets and the disciples of Jesus, who bade a long farewell to the elaborate arrangement of words and to what scripture calls "the wisdom of men" and "wisdom according to the flesh" — hinting thereby at mere language — would be like those who took thought that the same quality of food, the most healthful, be composed and made ready with an arrangement of words that could reach the masses of humankind,

without making the way they spoke seem foreign to them, and without that foreignness turning them away from listening, as though to discourses they were unaccustomed to. For indeed, if the aim of what I might call rational food is to make the one who eats it patient under wrong and gentle, how would a discourse not be better prepared if it produces multitudes who are patient under wrong and gentle — or at least advancing toward these virtues — rather than doing so in only

a very small and easily counted number (granting even this much), making them patient under wrong and gentle? It is just as if Plato, wishing to benefit those who spoke Egyptian or Syriac with sound doctrines, being himself a Greek, would have taken care beforehand to learn the languages of his hearers and, as the Greeks put it, to "talk like a barbarian," for the sake of improving Egyptians and Syrians, rather than remain a Greek and be able to say nothing useful to Egyptians

and Syrians. In just this way the divine nature that exercises providence came down, not only to those reckoned educated in Greek learning, but also to the rest of the Greeks, to the plainness of the multitude of hearers, so that by using words familiar to them it might draw the crowd of ordinary people to listen — people who, once the introduction had been made, could easily go on to aspire to grasp even the deeper of the hidden thoughts

contained in the scriptures. For it is clear even to an ordinary reader of these texts that they can hold a meaning far deeper than what appears on the surface, a meaning that becomes evident to those who give themselves over to the examination of the text — and becomes evident in proportion to the leisure devoted to that study and the eagerness applied to its practice. It has therefore been established that, as Celsus says, putting it rather crudely, Jesus said...

"To the one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also," and "to the one who wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well" - this has stirred the argument in a way more beneficial to life, and has set it forth by speaking thus, than as Plato does in the Crito, which private individuals cannot even follow, but only, with difficulty, those who have completed the general course of studies before the dignified philosophy of the Greeks. And one must also observe

that the thought concerning patient endurance of wrong is not corrupted by the plainness of the wording. But even here Celsus slanders the argument, saying: "But concerning these matters, and others which they corrupt, let what has been said suffice; and whoever wishes to inquire into them further will find out for himself." Let us, then, go on to see what follows, in which he says this: "Let us take our stand

from this point: temples, altars, and images are more than they can endure to look upon. For neither do the Scythians do this, nor the Nomad Libyans, nor the godless Seres, nor any of the other most impious and lawless nations. But that the Persians too hold this view, Herodotus records in the following passage: 'I know that the Persians follow these customs: it is not their custom to set up images, altars, and temples,

but they even charge those who do so with folly - as it seems to me, because they did not, like the Greeks, consider the gods to have human form.' And indeed Heraclitus declares something along these lines: 'And they pray to these images, as if one were to converse with a house, not knowing at all who the gods or heroes really are.' What, then, do they teach us that is wiser than Heraclitus? For he,

in a rather cryptic way, hints that it is foolish to pray "to images" if one does not know "who the gods and heroes are." So says Heraclitus; but these people dishonor the images outright. If it is because it is stone or wood or bronze or gold, which so-and-so fashioned, and therefore could not be a god - that is ridiculous wisdom. For who else,

unless he were an utter fool, would consider these things to be gods rather than dedications and images of gods? But if it is because one ought not to suppose them to be images of the divine either, on the ground that the form of god is different - as the Persians too suppose - they fail to notice that they are refuting themselves, whenever they say that "god made man" in his own "image," and that his form is like his own. But they will grant that these things exist in honor

of certain beings, whether like or unlike them in form, yet that the beings to whom these things are consecrated are not gods at all but daimons, and that no one who worships god should serve daimons. To this too it must be said that, if the Scythians, and the Nomad Libyans, and the Seres, whom Celsus calls godless, and the other most impious and lawless nations, and even the Persians, cannot bear the sight of temples

altars, and images, it does not follow from this that their failure to tolerate these things is the same as our failure to tolerate them. For one must examine the doctrines from which those who do not tolerate temples and images set out - those, that is, who do not tolerate them - so that, if it is from sound doctrines that one does not tolerate them, the one who does not tolerate them may be praised, but if from mistaken ones, he may be blamed.

For it is possible for the same thing to come about from different doctrines. To take an example, those who follow the philosophy of Zeno of Citium avoid committing adultery, but so do some who follow Epicurus, and some who are utterly untrained in philosophy at all. But observe how great a disagreement there is, among all these, about the avoidance of adultery: the one group avoids it because it is a violation of the social bond and contrary to nature for a rational being

to corrupt a woman already claimed by another under the laws and to ruin another man's household; but the followers of Epicurus refrain from adultery not for this reason, when they do refrain from it, but because they have set down pleasure as the goal, and because many things arise to hinder the pleasure of the one who yields to the single pleasure of adultery — sometimes imprisonment or death, and often,

even before these, dangers as well, in watching for the husband's departure from the house and for those who share his sentiments — so that, on the hypothesis that it were possible for the adulterer to escape the notice both of the woman's husband and of all his household and of those among whom a person incurs disgrace from committing adultery, the Epicurean would in fact have committed adultery for the sake of the pleasure.

And if even the untrained person, when adultery is available, does not commit it, this would sometimes be found to be due to fear arising from the law that is in force, and the punishments — not committing adultery — and not because he is pursuing greater pleasures would such a person refrain from adultery. You see, then, that what is thought to be a single deed — abstention from adultery — turns out, depending on the intentions of those who abstain,

to be not the same thing but different: for it proceeds either from sound doctrines, or from the corrupt and most impious doctrines found among the Epicureans, or from such an untrained person. Just as, then, this one thing, abstention from adultery, though it seems to be one thing, is caught being many, occurring as it does according to differing doctrines and intentions, so also with those who do not tolerate, at altars and temples

and images, the worshiping of the divine — the Scythians, or the Nomads among the Libyans, or the godless Seres, or the Persians do this from other doctrines than those which Christians and Jews do not tolerate, namely such supposed service rendered to the divine; none of those peoples, out of turning away from and dragging down and debasing the reverence due to the divine to such matter fashioned in such a way,

fails to tolerate altars and images, nor is it because they have understood concerning demons that such beings station themselves beside such shapes and places, either having been made to settle there by certain sorceries, or having otherwise been able to seize such places in advance for themselves, in which, greedily partaking of the exhalation of the things sacrificed, they will hunt after unlawful pleasure and unlawful things. But Christians and Jews, because of "You shall fear the Lord your God and"

serve him alone," and because of "You shall have no other gods besides me," and "You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor a likeness of anything, of what is in heaven above, or what is on the earth below, or what is in the water beneath the earth; you shall not bow down to them, nor shall you serve them," and because of "You shall worship the Lord your God"

and him alone you shall serve" — and many other similar sayings — lead them not merely to shun temples, altars, and images, but even to go willingly to death, when death is required, rather than taint their understanding of the God of all things by any such transgression. It has been said above, concerning the Persians, that they do not build temples,

but worship the sun and the works fashioned by God — a practice forbidden to us, who are taught not to serve "what is made in place of the Maker," yet to understand that "creation will itself be released from its slavery to corruption, into the liberty belonging to the glory of God's children," and that "creation's eager watching awaits the unveiling of the sons of God," and

that "the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but because of him who subjected it, in hope." And it is surely not necessary that beings subjected to the bondage of decay and to futility, and who do these things in a better hope, should be honored in the place due to God, who lacks nothing, or to his Son, the firstborn of all creation. Enough, then, has been said in addition to what precedes,

concerning the Persian nation, who avoid altars and images but worship "the creation rather than the Creator." Since he also cited a saying of Heraclitus — recounting it as implying that it is foolish to pray "to images" if one does not know "what gods and heroes are" — it must be said that it is possible to know God, and his only-begotten, and those honored by

God with the title "god" and who share in his divinity, being distinct from all the gods "of the nations," who are "demons"; yet it is not possible both to know God and to pray "to images." And not only is praying "to images" foolish, but so is pretending, in accommodation to the multitude, to pray "to images," as is done by

those who philosophize according to the Peripatetic school, and those who embrace the teachings of Epicurus or Democritus; for nothing spurious ought to exist in the soul of one who is truly reverent toward the divine. We do not honor images also because we do not wish, so far as it lies with us, to fall into the notion that images are other gods. For this reason we also bring a charge against Celsus and

against all who agree that these are not gods, namely that among those who are reputed wise there is also this apparent honor paid to images; and the multitude, following this example, err not only by supposing that they worship them merely by way of accommodation, but also by falling in soul into the belief that these are gods, and by not even enduring to hear that the things worshiped by

them are not gods. Celsus, then, says that he does not consider them gods but offerings to the gods, without demonstrating how these are not offerings of men but, as he termed them, offerings belonging to the gods themselves. It is plain that these are in fact offerings made by men who have strayed in their thinking about the divine. But we do not suppose the images to be likenesses of the divine either, since we do not depict the form of a God who is invisible and incorporeal. Since

According to Celsus we lapse into inconsistency, since we say the divine has no human shape, yet also believe that "God made man" in his own "image" and fashioned him in the image of God. It must be said, as has also been said above, that we hold the phrase "according to the image of God" to be preserved in the rational soul, in its quality with respect to virtue. And where

Celsus, however, does not see the difference between the image of God and "according to the image of God," and claims we assert that "God made man" as his own "image," a form resembling himself; but this too has been addressed above. Next he goes on to say about Christians that they will agree that these things exist in honor of certain beings, whether similar or dissimilar in form,

but that the beings to whom these things are consecrated are demons rather than gods, and that one who worships God should not minister to demons. And if indeed he had understood the account concerning demons and what each of them accomplishes, whether summoned by those skilled in such matters or willingly giving himself over to whatever activity he wishes and is able to perform, and had grasped the account concerning demons, which is extensive and

difficult for human nature to comprehend, he would not have brought this charge against us, namely that we say one ought not to serve demons if one worships the God over all. And we are so far from serving demons that we even drive them out, by prayers and by the teachings drawn from the sacred writings, from human souls and from the places

in which they have established themselves, and sometimes also from animals; for the demons often work certain effects for the harm even of such creatures. Because of the many things said above about Jesus, there is no need now to repeat them in order to show that they themselves are clearly refuted as worshipping not a god, nor even a demon, but a corpse. Let us, then, set this aside for the moment and look at the words of Celsus that follow, in which he says:

"But first I will ask: why should demons not be served? Is not everything administered according to the plan of God, and does not all providence come from him? And whatever exists among all things, whether it be the work of God or of angels or of other demons or of heroes, all these have their law from the greatest God, and each has been

allotted power over each particular thing, whoever has been deemed worthy of it. Will not, then, the one who worships God rightly serve this being who has obtained authority from that source? For it is not possible, he says, for the same person to be a slave to several masters." See here too how much he sweeps together, matters that require no trivial examination but rather a deeper and more esoteric knowledge concerning the administration of the affairs of the universe. For how it is said that everything

is administered according to the plan of God must be examined, and whether this administration extends even to sins or not. For if the administration extends even to sins, not only among men but also among demons, and among whatever else outside bodies is by nature capable of sinning, let the one who says this see the absurdity of holding that everything happens according to the plan

is administered by God. For it follows from this account that even sins, and everything that comes about through wickedness, are administered by God according to his will—which is not the same as saying they happen because God does not prevent them. But if one takes "administered" in its strict sense, he means that the things administered by wickedness are administered (that is, obviously, everything is administered according to God's will), and no one who sins

acts against the administration of God in doing so. The same distinction must be drawn concerning providence, and it must be said that the statement "all things come from providence" signifies something true when the providence in question is a good providence; but if we shall say without qualification that everything that happens is (according to) providence, then even when something evil happens, the statement "all things come from providence" will be false—unless

one says that even the things that follow as consequences of what comes from God's providence are themselves from God's providence. He also declares that whatever exists in the universe, whether it is the work of God or of angels or of other daimons or of heroes, all these things possess a law derived from the greatest God—and in saying this he does not declare a true account. For things that transgress the law do not

transgress the law that comes from the greatest God by following it. Reason shows that not only wicked human beings transgress the law but also wicked daimons and wicked angels. And we are far from alone in speaking of wicked daimons; nearly everyone who holds that daimons exist says the same. Not everything, then, possesses a law derived from the greatest God. For whatever, through its own carelessness, wickedness, or depravity

or ignorance of what is good, has fallen away from the divine law, does not possess the law of God but, to give it a new name—and one drawn from scripture—possesses the law "of sin." Now according to most of those who hold that daimons exist, even the wicked daimons do not possess the law that comes from God but transgress it; but according to us, all

daimons have fallen away from the path toward the good, not having been daimons to begin with; and the class of daimons is a species of those who have fallen away from God. For this reason, whoever worships God ought not to serve daimons. The truth about daimons is also made clear by those who invoke daimons for the sake of the so-called love-charms or hate-charms, or to hinder actions, or for countless other such purposes—things done by

those who have learned, through incantations and sorceries, to summon and bring on daimons for whatever ends they wish. For this reason the service of all daimons is foreign to us, who worship the God who is over all things. And the service of what are reckoned to be gods is the service of daimons; for it is written, "the nations' gods, every one, are but daimons." This is also made clear by the fact that, at the places reckoned most potent among the so-called

temples, elaborate incubation-rites have arisen, and at the founding of such carved images and shrines, rites of incubation which those devoted to the service of daimons through sorceries have instituted. For this reason we have resolved to flee, as destruction itself, the service of daimons; and we say that the service of daimons is the whole of the worship reckoned among the Greeks as offered at altars, statues, and temples of the gods. There is need

and unto that — for it is appointed, and each has received power over some particular thing from the greatest God, whoever has been deemed worthy of any task whatsoever — this requires a very deep knowledge, one able to establish it. Whether, then, just as the public executioners in the cities, and those appointed over the grim but necessary business of the state, are so appointed — in the same way there are wicked demons appointed over certain things by the one who administers the

whole by the word of God; or whether, just as men who go robbing in desolate places set up one particular man to rule over them, so too the demons, forming as it were bands according to the regions of the earth, have made for themselves a certain ruler to lead them in the deeds they have chosen, for the sake of stealing and plundering the souls of men. Now one who intends to speak well on these matters needs, in order that concerning

the Christians he may offer his defense — since they turn aside from worshiping anything besides the God over all and his Word, the firstborn of "all creation" — to relate also the saying, "all who came before me are thieves and robbers, and the sheep did not listen to them," and "the thief does not come except to steal and to slaughter and to destroy," and whatever else

is said to similar effect in the sacred writings — as also, "see, authority is granted to you to trample serpents and scorpions underfoot, together with every force the enemy holds, and in no way whatsoever shall anything do you harm," and "you will set your foot upon asp and basilisk, and lion and dragon you will crush beneath you." But Celsus knew none of this whatsoever; for if he had known it, he would not have said—

and whatever there may be among all things, whether it be the work of God, or of angels, or of other demons, or of heroes, these have their law from the greatest God, and each has been appointed, having received power, whoever has been deemed worthy of it. Shall not, then, the one who worships God rightly do service also to this being who has obtained authority from that source? To these words he adds that it is not possible

for the same person to be "enslaved" to several "masters" — a matter we shall take up in the next book, since the seventh volume that we have written against the treatise of Celsus has now attained an adequate compass.

← All of Origen: Against Celsus