Against Celsus 1 part 11/42

And notice too the contradiction of Celsus right at his feet—against himself.

Having first said that he was secretly shown to one little woman and to his own devotees, he immediately adds:

While being punished, then, he was seen by all, but having risen, by one—whereas the opposite ought to have been the case.

But let us hear too what he supposes the "ought" to be—the opposite of his being seen by all while being punished, but by one having risen;

for as far as his own wording goes, he wished for something both impossible and irrational—that while being punished he should be seen by one, but having risen, by all;

or how will you explain the "whereas the opposite ought to have been the case"? And Jesus also taught us both who he was who sent him, in the words: No one knew the Father except the Son, and No one has ever seen God;

he announced the things concerning God to his genuine disciples;

of whom we find traces in the writings, from which we have starting points for theology, hearing in one place:

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all; and in another:

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and in truth. But the things for which the Father sent him are countless, which let him who wishes learn—in one place from the prophets who proclaimed beforehand concerning him, in another from the evangelists;

and not a few he will learn also from the apostles, and especially Paul.

But this one both leads the godly into the light and will punish sinners—which Celsus, not seeing, rendered thus:

And he who will lead the godly into the light, but will pity the sinners or those who repent.

If he wished to remain hidden, why was the voice from heaven heard proclaiming him the Son of God? But if he did not wish to remain hidden, why was he punished, or why did he die? And he supposes that in these things he convicts of discord the writings concerning him, not seeing that he neither wished all the things concerning himself to be known to all and to chance comers, nor all the things concerning himself to remain hidden.

The voice from heaven, at any rate, proclaiming him to be the Son of God and saying:

This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased—is not recorded as having occurred within hearing of the crowds, as the Jew of Celsus supposed.

But also the voice from the cloud on the very high mountain was heard only by those who had gone up with him.

For such is the divine voice: heard only by those whom the speaker wishes to hear.

And I do not yet say that the recorded voice of God is by no means air that has been struck, or a striking of air, or whatever is called such in the discussions about voice; wherefore it is heard by a hearing better than the sensible and more divine.

And whenever the speaker wishes his own voice not to be audible to all, the one who has the better ears hears God, but the one who is deafened in the hearing of his soul is insensible to God speaking.

These things, then, in reply to: "Why was the voice from heaven heard proclaiming him the Son of God?" And as for: "If he did not wish to remain hidden, why was he punished, or why did he die?"—the things said at greater length about the passion in the foregoing suffice us.

And after these things the Jew of Celsus sets forth as consequent what is not consequent.

For it does not follow, from "he wished to teach us, through the punishments he suffered, to despise even death," that having risen from the dead he should openly call all into the light and teach for what cause he had come down.

For he had earlier called all into the light, saying:

Come, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And for what cause he had come down is recorded in the words he set in motion at length—in the beatitudes and the things announced next after them, and in the parables, and in the discourses to the scribes and Pharisees.

And the gospel according to John has set forth how much he taught, presenting the magniloquence of Jesus not in words but in deeds;

and it is clear from the gospels that his word was in authority, at which indeed they marveled.

And to all these things the Jew of Celsus adds:

These things, then, are from your own writings, for which we need no other witness;

for you fall foul of your own selves.

But we have shown that, contrary to our own writings of the gospels, much foolish talk has been uttered in the words of the Jew, whether those addressed to Jesus or those addressed to us.

And I do not think, indeed, that he has shown how we fall foul of our own selves; he only supposes it.

And since the Jew adds to these things of his that altogether, O Most High and Heavenly One, what god, being present among men, is disbelieved? it must be said to him that, even according to the law of Moses, God who is recorded to have come most manifestly to the Hebrews was disbelieved by those who saw—not only in the signs and wonders in Egypt, and moreover the passage of the Red Sea and the pillar of fire and the cloud of light, but even when the Decalogue was being proclaimed to the whole people;

[for they made a calf] in the likeness of a calf that eats grass, nor would they have said to one another concerning the calf:

These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.

And see whether it is not in keeping with the same people both to have disbelieved before, throughout the whole wilderness, in the face of such great marvels and so many manifestations of God (as is written in the law of the Jews), and, in the case of the marvelous sojourn of Jesus, not to have been captivated by the words spoken by him with authority and by the things done by him marvelously in the sight of the whole people.

And I think these things suffice for one who wishes to show that the unbelief of the Jews toward Jesus was in keeping with what was recorded from the beginning concerning the people.

For I would say to the Jew who speaks in Celsus:

What god, being present among men, is disbelieved—and that, by those to whom he appears as they hope? Or why ever is he not recognized by those who have long awaited him? Why is it, sirs, that you wish to answer our questions? Which powers seem to you, as far as your supposition goes, to be greater—those in Egypt and the wilderness, or those which we said Jesus did among you? For if those are greater than these according to you, how is it not at once shown that it belongs to the same character as those who disbelieved the greater also to despise the lesser? For this is what is supposed concerning the things we say about Jesus;

but if the things concerning Jesus are said to be equal to those recorded by Moses, what strange thing has befallen a people that disbelieves at both beginnings of these matters? For the beginning of the giving of the law was in the time of Moses, in which the sins of your unbelieving people are recorded;

and the beginning of a second giving of the law and covenant is acknowledged to have come about for us through Jesus.

And you bear witness, by the very things in which you disbelieve Jesus, that you are sons of those who in the wilderness disbelieved the divine manifestations;

and what was said by our Savior will be said to you also, who disbelieved him: namely, So then you are witnesses and consent to the works of your fathers;

and there is fulfilled in you the prophecy that says:

Your life shall hang in suspense before your eyes, and you shall in no way believe in your life;

for you did not believe in the Life that had sojourned with the human race.

But Celsus, in personifying the Jew, did not manage to attribute to him such things as could be brought forward to him from the legal and prophetic Scriptures.

For he blames Jesus, saying such things concerning him:

He threatens and reviles lightly whenever he says:

Woe to you, and I tell you beforehand.

For in these words he plainly confesses that he is unable to persuade—which neither a god nor even a sensible man would suffer.

But see whether these things do not plainly turn back upon the Jew.

For God threatens and reviles in the legal and prophetic Scriptures, whenever he says "woes" not less than those in the gospel;

such as are those in Isaiah which run thus:

Woe to those who join house to house and draw field near to field; and: Woe to those who rise early in the morning and pursue strong drink; and: Woe to those who draw sins on as with a long cord; and: Woe to those who call evil good and good evil; and: Woe to those of you who are strong, who drink wine.

And you could find countless others.

And how is the following not closely resembling the threats he utters: Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, an evil seed, lawless sons, and so forth? To which he adds threats so great that they are not less than those he says Jesus uttered.

Or is it not a threat, and a great one at that, which says:

Your land is desolate, your cities are burned with fire;

strangers devour your country before your eyes, and it is made desolate, overthrown by foreign peoples? And how are there not also revilings in Ezekiel against the people, where the Lord says to the prophet:

You dwell in the midst of scorpions? Now then, O Celsus, have you with full awareness made the Jew say concerning Jesus that he threatens and reviles lightly, whenever he says—

could not the same be said to him concerning God? For plainly the God in the prophets is found, as the Jew supposes, to be liable to the same charges, as being unable to persuade.

And further I would say concerning these things, to those who think that the Jew in Celsus accuses Jesus well: that there are very many curses recorded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, concerning which, in whatever way the Jew might defend himself by appeal to Scripture, in that same way—or even better—we shall defend the things supposed to have been said by Jesus as revilings and threats.

And concerning the law of Moses itself we shall be the more able to make a defense, inasmuch as we have been taught by Jesus more intelligently to hear the legal writings than the Jew.

But also the Jew, if he sees the intent of the prophetic words, will be able to show that God, when he says "Woe" and "I tell you beforehand," does not threaten and revile lightly, and how God could say such things for the sake of the conversion of men—things which Celsus supposes not even a sensible man would do.

And Christians too, knowing one God, the one in the prophets and in the Lord, will demonstrate the reasonableness of the supposed threats and the so-called revilings spoken of by Celsus.

And a few things shall be said on this topic to Celsus, who professes both to philosophize and to know our doctrines:

namely, sir, if when the Hermes in Homer says to Odysseus:

Why now, wretched man, do you go alone over the hilltops? you put up with a defense which says that for the sake of Odysseus' conversion the Homeric Hermes so converses with him—since to flatter and say pleasing things belongs to the Sirens, beside whom there is a heap of bones, as they say:

Come hither, much-praised Odysseus, great glory of the Achaeans—

If, then, my prophets and Jesus himself, for the sake of the conversion of their hearers, say "Woe" and what you consider revilings, is nothing being managed thereby toward the hearers through such words, nor is such a word applied to them as a healing remedy? Unless indeed you wish God, or one who shares the divine nature, when conversing with men, to consider only the things of his own nature and what befits his own worth, and no longer to regard what is fitting to announce to the men who are being managed and led by his word, and to converse with each according to his underlying character.

And how is it not ridiculous that the charge of being unable to persuade is said concerning Jesus and made common not only to the Jew—who has many such things in the prophecies—but also to the Greeks, among whom each of those who have carried off great repute for wisdom has been unable to persuade those who plotted against them, or the judges, or the accusers, to cease from wickedness and to journey through philosophy to virtue?

After these things the Jew says to him, evidently according to what is pleasing to Jews, that we hope, of course, to rise again in body and to have eternal life, and that the one sent to us will be the example and originator of this, showing that it is not impossible for God to raise someone together with the body.

We do not know, then, whether the Jew will say that the expected Christ shows in himself an example of the resurrection;

but let it be granted; let it be conceded that he both thinks and says this.

And we shall answer the one who said that he has spoken to us out of our own writings:

namely, sir, did you read those things in which you suppose you accuse us, but did not go through the resurrection of Jesus, and that he is the firstborn from the dead? Or, since you do not wish these things to have been spoken, were they therefore not said? But since the Jew still speaks and admits in Celsus the resurrection of bodies, I do not think it now opportune to discuss this matter with one who both believes and asserts that there is a resurrection of bodies, whether articulating such a thing within himself and able to plead well on behalf of the doctrine, or not, but assenting to the doctrine in a more mythical fashion.

Let these things, then, be said thus against the Jew of Celsus.

Where then is he, that we may see and believe? we shall say to him:

having done what? that we may see and believe that he is a portion of God.

Or is it permitted to you to make a defense concerning the fact that God does not always appear to the race of the Hebrews, but the same defense is not granted to us concerning Jesus, who once both rose and persuaded his disciples concerning his own resurrection—and persuaded them to such a degree that by the things they suffer they show to all that, beholding the eternal life and the resurrection demonstrated to them both in word and in deed, they make light of all the hardships in life? After these things the Jew says:

Or did he come down for this, that we might disbelieve? To whom it will be said:

he did not come for this, that he might work the unbelief of the Jews; but foreknowing that it would be, he foretold it and made use of the unbelief of the Jews for the calling of the nations.

For by their transgression salvation has come to the nations, concerning whom the Christ in the prophets says:

A people whom I did not know served me;

at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me, and: I was found by those who did not seek me, I became manifest to those who did not ask after me. And it is clear that the Jews were also punished with chastisement in this life, after they had treated Jesus as they did.

But let the Jews say, if those who accuse should assert:

Wonderful indeed for you is the providence and love of God for mankind—you who are punished and deprived both of Jerusalem and of what is called the sanctuary and of the most august worship!

For whatever they may say in defense concerning the providence of God, we shall the rather establish it, and say to better effect that the providence of God came to be wonderful, in that it made use of the sin of that people for the calling of those from the nations through Jesus—those strangers to the covenants and aliens from the promises—into the kingdom of God.

And the prophets foretold these things too: namely, that on account of the sins of the people of the Hebrews, God would choose not a nation but picked ones from everywhere, and, choosing the foolish things of the world, would make the nation that lacks understanding to become a people in the divine words—the kingdom of God being taken away from those and given to these.

And it suffices, from many passages, to set forth for the present the prophecy from the Song of Deuteronomy concerning the calling of the nations, which runs thus, spoken in the person of the Lord:

For they provoked me to jealousy with what is no god, they angered me with their idols;

and I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation, with a nation void of understanding I will anger them. Then the epilogue of the Jew upon all these things says concerning Jesus:

That man, then, was a man, and such as the truth itself makes manifest and as reason shows.

But I do not know whether a man who dared to sow throughout the whole inhabited world the reverence of God and the teaching that is according to him could, without God, do what he wished and become superior to all who oppose the spreading of his teaching—kings and rulers and the Roman senate and senators, and the magistrates everywhere, and the peoples.

And how can the nature of a man, having nothing superior in itself, turn back so great a multitude? And it is no wonder if it were of the prudent, but even of the most irrational, and of those given over to the passions, and—so far as their irrationality goes—the more difficult to transfer to a more temperate state.

But since Christ was the power of God and the wisdom of the Father, for this reason he did these things and still does them, even though neither Jews nor Greeks who disbelieve his word are willing.

We then will not cease believing in God according to the injunctions of Jesus Christ, and wishing to convert those who are blind concerning the reverence of God, even if those who are truly blind revile us as blind, and those who herd people like cattle—whether Jews or Greeks—accuse us who, together with those who assent to us, as herding men;

[while we, for our part,] contend for godliness toward the God who created all things.

Jesus Christ came, then, having been proclaimed beforehand not by one prophet but by all.

And this too was a mark of the ignorance of Celsus, to attribute to the Jewish character the statement that one prophet had foretold concerning the Christ.

And since the Jew in Celsus has been introduced saying these things, as though according to his own law, and has somewhere there brought his discourse to a close—having said also other things not worth remembering—I too shall here bring to an end the second of the works dictated by me against his treatise.

And, God granting and the power of Christ sojourning in our soul, we shall endeavor in the third book to deal with what was written next by Celsus.

ORIGEN'S THIRD BOOK AGAINST WHAT IS ENTITLED CELSUS' TRUE DISCOURSE. In the first book against Celsus' arrogant title—he having entitled the book he composed against us a "True Discourse"—we treated, to the best of our ability, as you commanded, most faithful Ambrose, of his preface and, in order, examined each of the things said, until we ended at the public harangue, which in his work was placed in the mouth of the Jew and feigned to have been made against Jesus.

In the second book, having met, as best we could, the whole of the speech which Celsus' Jew delivered against us, who through Christ believe in God, we now undertake this third discourse, in which our purpose is to contend against the things he sets forth as in his own person.

He says that Christians and Jews quarrel with one another most foolishly, and asserts that our debate with one another concerning Christ differs in no way from the proverbial "fight over the ass's shadow."

And he thinks there is nothing weighty in the dispute between Jews and Christians with one another, since both believe that by a divine Spirit it was prophesied that a saviour would come to sojourn among the human race, yet they no longer agree as to whether the one foretold has come or not.

For we Christians have believed in Jesus as having come in accordance with the things prophesied.

But most of the Jews are so far from believing in him that some of those living at that time plotted against Jesus, while those of the present day, approving of what the Jews then dared to do against him, slander Jesus, claiming that by some sorcery he feigned that he was the one proclaimed by the prophets as about to come, called according to the ancestral customs of the Jews the Christ.

Let Celsus then, and those who are pleased with what he says against us, tell us whether it resembles an ass's shadow that the Jewish prophets foretold the place of birth of him who would lead those who have lived well and who are reckoned as God's portion; that a virgin would conceive Emmanuel; that such signs and wonders would be wrought by the one prophesied; that his word would run swiftly, so that the voice of his apostles would go out into all the earth; what he would suffer when condemned by the Jews; and how he would rise again.

...as a foreknowledge of those who would in time to come wish to desert to the demons worshipped among other nations? Consider, then, whether it was not necessary that a whole nation, being taught to despise the gods worshipped among the rest, should be well supplied with prophets who of themselves displayed something greater and surpassing all the oracles everywhere.

Then, everywhere or in many places mighty works took place—as he himself in what follows adduces Asclepius doing good and foretelling the future to whole cities dedicated to him, such as Tricca, Epidaurus, Cos, and Pergamum, and Aristeas of Proconnesus, and a certain Clazomenian, and Cleomedes of Astypalaea.

But among the Jews alone, who claim to be dedicated to the God of all things, was there no sign or wonder which would cooperate with and confirm their faith in him who created all things, together with the hope of living a greater life with another? But how could such a thing be? For they would at once have gone over to revering the demons who prophesy and heal, abandoning the God who was believed by them, merely in word, to help them, yet who in no way displayed his own manifestation.

But if this did not happen, and rather they endured countless sufferings so as not to forswear Judaism and its law—and at one time they suffered in Assyria, at another in Persia, at another under Antiochus—how is it not reasonably established, for those who disbelieve the marvellous histories and prophecies, that such things were not fabrications, but that some divine Spirit, being present as in the pure souls of the prophets who had taken up every labour for the sake of virtue, moved them to prophesy some things to their contemporaries and other things to later generations, and especially concerning a certain saviour who would come to sojourn among the human race? And if this is so, how is it about an ass's shadow that Jews and Christians dispute with one another, examining from the prophecies in which they jointly believe whether the one prophesied has come, or has by no means sojourned but is still expected? And even if, for the sake of argument, it be granted to Celsus that Jesus is not the one whom the prophets announced, even so the inquiry into the meaning of the prophetic Scriptures is none the less not about an ass's shadow.

...so that it may be clearly demonstrated who is the one foreproclaimed, of what sort he was prophesied to be, and what he would do, and, if possible, also when he would come to sojourn.

And in the foregoing we have already spoken, citing a few prophecies out of many, to the effect that Jesus is the prophesied Christ.

Neither Jews nor Christians, then, err in admitting that the prophets spoke from God; rather, those who err concerning the one prophesied and expected hold a false opinion as to who he is and of what nature he has been proclaimed to be, according to the true word of the prophets.

Next after these things, Celsus, supposing that the Jews, being Egyptians by race, left Egypt, having revolted against the Egyptian commonwealth and despised the customary Egyptian practices concerning religion, says that they themselves suffered at the hands of those who attached themselves to Jesus and believed in him as Christ the very things which they had done to the Egyptians, and that for both groups the cause of the innovation was their revolting against the community.

What, then, Celsus has done in this passage must be carefully considered.

The ancient Egyptians, having grievously maltreated the Hebrew race—who through a famine that had seized Judaea had sojourned in Egypt—suffered, for having wronged them as strangers and suppliants, precisely what a whole nation deserved to suffer at the hands of divine providence, having conspired together against the entire race of those who had come to dwell as guests among them, though that race had done them no wrong.

And being smitten by the scourges of God, they reluctantly and only after no little while released, to go wherever they wished, those who were being unjustly held in slavery.

Inasmuch, then, as they are self-loving and prefer their own kinsmen, whatever sort they may be, even to more righteous strangers, there is no accusation they have left unspoken that they have not uttered against Moses and the Hebrews—not utterly denying the marvellous mighty works wrought through Moses, but asserting that these came about by sorcery and not by divine power.

And being dedicated to the God of all things, and partaking of a more divine Spirit, he [Moses] also laid down laws for the Hebrews, as the Deity prompted him, and recorded the events as they truly were.

Celsus, then, not having become a just examiner of the things related by the Egyptians in one way and by the Hebrews in another, but being prepossessed as by friends in favour of the Egyptians, agreed with those who wronged the strangers as though they spoke the truth, and said that the wronged Hebrews left Egypt in revolt—not seeing in what way it is impossible that so great a seditious multitude of Egyptians, having sedition as its origin, should become a nation at the same time as it revolted, and at the same time change its language, so that those who hitherto used the Egyptian tongue should suddenly perfect the Hebrew language.

But let it be granted, for the sake of argument, that on leaving Egypt they came to hate even the language in which they had been reared.

How then, after this, did they not rather use the Syrians' dialect or the Phoenicians', but instead established the Hebrew tongue as something distinct from both? This is what my argument means to infer: that it is false that certain people who were Egyptians by race revolted against the Egyptians, and left Egypt, and came to Palestine, and settled in what is now called Judaea.

For the Hebrews had an ancestral language even before their descent into Egypt, and they had Hebrew letters distinct from those of the Egyptians, which Moses used in writing the five sacred books believed by the Jews to be holy.

And yet, examining the matter more deeply, one may say concerning those who came out from the land of Egypt that, marvellously, the whole people all together took up, as a God-given gift, the language called Hebrew.

As indeed one of their own prophets said, that "when they came out of the land of Egypt they heard a tongue which they had not known."

And in this way too it must be established that those who came out of Egypt with Moses were not Egyptians.

For if they had been Egyptians, their names would have had to be Egyptian, since in every language the appellations are akin to it.

But if it is clear from their names being Hebrew that they were not Egyptians—for the Scripture is full of Hebrew names, even of those who gave such names to their sons in Egypt—it is evident that what is said by the Egyptians is false, namely, that being Egyptians they were driven out with Moses from Egypt.

And it is clearly evident that, having their descent from Hebrew forefathers according to the history recorded by Moses, they used a language of their own, from which they also assigned names to their sons.

And likewise false is the claim that the Hebrews, being Egyptians, took their origin from a revolt, and that others, being Jews in the times of Jesus, revolted against the Jewish community and followed Jesus.

For Celsus, or those who agree with him, will be able to point to no act of sedition on the part of the Christians.