Against Celsus 1 part 18/42

[are they] like frogs? And what of this: does the splendor of righteousness—which keeps toward one's neighbor and kinsman what is communal and just and benevolent and kind—avail nothing toward such a one's not being a bat? But those who wallow in licentiousness, of which sort are the many among men, and those who indiscriminately resort to prostitutes, even teaching that this happens by no means contrary to what is fitting—are these not worms in the mud? And especially when compared with those who have been taught not to lift up the members of Christ and the body indwelt by the Word and make them members of a harlot, and who have already learned also that the body of the rational being, dedicated to the God of all things, is a temple of the God worshiped by them—such being it from a pure conception concerning the Creator;

who also, guarding themselves against corrupting the temple of God through unlawful intercourse, practice self-control as piety toward God.

And I do not yet speak of the rest of the evils among men, from which not even those who seem to philosophize quickly become pure—for many even in philosophy are spurious—nor do I yet say that such things are many among those who are neither Jews nor Christians;

but either they do not exist at all among Christians—if you examine strictly who the Christian is—or, if even one be found, yet certainly not among those who assemble together and come to the common prayers and are not shut out from them;

unless perhaps someone, rarely escaping notice, be found of such a kind among the many.

We are therefore not worms holding assembly, who take our stand against the Jews on the basis of the writings believed by them to be sacred, and demonstrate both that the prophesied One has come, and that those men were forsaken on account of the gravest sins, and that we, who have received the word, have the best hopes with God, both from faith in Him and from a life able to make us His own, pure from all wickedness and vice.

It is therefore not simply, if someone proclaims himself a Jew or a Christian, that such a one would say that God has made the whole world and the heavenly motion especially for us.

But if someone, as Jesus taught, is pure in heart and meek and a peacemaker and readily endures dangers for the sake of piety, such a one would reasonably be confident toward God, and understanding also the word in the prophecies, he might say even this:

all these things God has shown beforehand and announced to us who believe.

But since he has made those whom he regards as worms—Christians—say that 'God, abandoning the heavenly motion and overlooking this great earth, conducts His polity with us alone and sends heralds to us and does not cease sending and seeking how we may ever be with Him,' it must be said that he attributes to us things not said by us, who both read and know that 'God loves all things that exist and abhors none of the things He has made;'

for He would never have constituted anything if He hated it. And we have read also this:

But You spare all, because they are Yours, O Lover of souls.

For Your incorruptible Spirit is in all things;

wherefore You reprove little by little those who fall away, and reminding them in the things wherein they sin, You admonish them. But how can we say that God, abandoning the heavenly motion and the whole world and overlooking this great earth, conducts His polity with us alone? We who in our prayers have found that we ought to say, holding the conviction that 'the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord,' and 'the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh,' and that God, being good, 'makes His sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust,' and who exhorts and teaches us, that we may become His sons, toward the like, to extend our good deeds, so far as possible, to all men.

For He Himself is said to be Saviour of all men, especially of believers, and His Christ to be the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world;

having been taught that 'God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.' And yet 'scarcely will one die for the righteous;'

for perhaps for the good man one might even dare to die. But now, for sinners everywhere, that they might forsake sin and entrust themselves to God, Jesus has been proclaimed to have come, being also called, by a certain ancestral custom in these words, the Christ of God.

But perhaps Celsus misheard certain ones [saying] that 'God exists, then after Him we'—whom he named worms.

And he does the like of those who blame a whole sect of philosophy on account of certain things said by some rash youth who has frequented a philosopher's [school] for three days and is lifted up against the rest as being inferior and unphilosophical.

For we know that there are many things more honorable than man, and we have read that 'God stood in the assembly of gods'—gods not of those worshiped by the rest, for 'all the gods of the nations are daemons'—and we have read that 'God, standing in the assembly of gods, judges among gods in the midst;'

and we know also that 'even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet to us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we unto Him, and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through Him;'

and we know also that the angels are so much better than men that men, when made perfect, become equal to angels;

for 'in the resurrection of the dead they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but the righteous are as the angels of heaven' and become equal to the angels;

and we know that in the arrangement of all things there are certain ones called thrones, and others dominions, and others authorities, and others principalities;

and we see that we men, falling far short of these, have hopes, from living well and doing all things according to reason, of ascending to the likeness of all these.

And finally, since 'it has not yet been manifested what we shall be,' we know that, 'if it is manifested, we shall be like God and shall see Him as He is.'

But if someone should allege the thing said by some—whether by those who understand or by those who do not understand but have misheard a sound discourse—that 'God exists, then after Him we;'

this too I would interpret, taking 'we' to mean the rational, and still more the diligent rational [beings];

for according to us the same virtue belongs to all the blessed, so that the same virtue belongs to man and to God.

Wherefore we are taught to become perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.

No one therefore who is noble and good is a worm swimming in mud, and no one who is godly is an ant, and no one who is righteous is a frog, and no one whose soul is illumined by the bright light of the truth could reasonably be compared to a bat.

And it seems to me that Celsus has misheard also the saying 'Let us make man according to Our image and likeness,' and on this account has made the worms say that 'having come into being by God, we are altogether like Him.'

But if indeed he had known the difference between man's having come into being 'according to the image' of God and the 'according to the likeness,' and that it is recorded that God said:

Let us make man according to Our image and likeness, but God made man according to the image of God, and not yet also according to the likeness;

he would not have made us say that we are altogether like God.

And we do not say that the stars too have been subjected to us, since the so-called resurrection of the righteous, understood also by the wise, is compared to sun and moon and stars by the one who says:

There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars;

for star differs from star in glory.

So also is the resurrection of the dead—Daniel too having prophesied concerning these things long ago.

And he says that we say 'all things have been appointed to serve us,' perhaps not having heard the intelligent among us saying such things, and perhaps also not understanding how it is said that 'the greater among us is the servant of all.'

And if the Greeks say:

'Then sun and night serve mortals,' they praise the saying and expound it;

[but] whether such a thing be said by us or not, or be said otherwise, Celsus slanders us on these matters too.

And we—the worms, according to Celsus—were saying, in his account, that 'since some among us transgress, God will come to us or send His own Son, in order to burn up the unrighteous, and the rest of us frogs may have eternal life with Him.'

And see how, like a buffoon, this venerable philosopher has turned the divine proclamation concerning judgment, and concerning punishment for the unrighteous and reward for the righteous, into mockery and laughter and ridicule.

And he adds to all these that these things are more tolerable when said by worms and frogs than when announced by Jews and Christians quarreling with one another.

But we for our part shall not imitate him, nor shall we say the like concerning the philosophers who profess to know the nature of all things and dispute with one another concerning the manner in which the universe was constituted, and how heaven and earth and all things in them came into being, and concerning how the souls—either being unbegotten and not created by God are ordered by Him and change bodies, or, having been sown together with the bodies, continue to exist or do not continue to exist.

For one could, instead of speaking solemnly and approving the purpose of those who have dedicated themselves to examining the truth, mock and revile them, saying that these are worms in a corner of the mud of the life of men, not measuring themselves, and on this account pronouncing concerning such great matters as though they had grasped them, and that they speak, asserting as if they had contemplated, concerning matters that cannot be contemplated apart from the inspiration of a stronger and more divine power.

For 'no man knows the things of a man, except the spirit of the man which is in him;'

so also the things of God no one has known, except the Spirit of God. But we have not gone out of our minds, nor do we compare such great intelligence of men—and I speak of intelligence in the more common sense—occupied not with the things of the many but with the examination of the truth, to the movements of worms or of any other such [creatures];

but as lovers of truth we testify concerning certain Greek philosophers that they knew God, since 'God manifested Him to them'—even if they 'did not glorify Him as God nor give thanks, but became vain in their reasonings, and professing to be wise became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things.'

After these things, wishing to establish that the Jews and Christians do not differ at all from the animals previously mentioned by him, he says that the Jews were runaways from Egypt, having never done anything worthy of mention, and that they were never of any account either in word or in number.

Now concerning their not having been runaways nor Egyptians, but being Hebrews who sojourned in Egypt, it has been said by us in the foregoing;

but if he supposes that their not having been of account either in word or in number is established from the fact that the history concerning them is not very much found among the Greeks, we shall say that, if one were to gaze upon their polity from the beginning and the ordering of their laws, he would find that they were men displaying upon earth a shadow of the heavenly life;

among whom nothing else was held to be God except the One over all, and none of those who make images had a place in their polity.

For there was neither painter nor image-maker in their polity, the law casting out all such from it, that there might be no pretext for the making of images—[a thing] that draws after it the senseless among men and drags down the eyes of the soul from God to earth.

There was therefore among them a law also of this kind:

that they should not fashion anything contrary to the truth, falsifying the truly masculine or the really feminine, or the nature of beasts, or the kind of birds or of creeping things or of fishes.

And venerable and lofty among them was also this: 'Lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, the whole host of heaven, you be led astray and worship them and serve them.' And what a polity it was of a whole nation, among whom it was not even possible for an effeminate man to appear!

And wonderful too was the doing away, from their polity, of the kindlings of [the lusts of] the young—namely, the harlots.

There were also law-courts of the most just men, who had over a long time given proof of a sound life, who were entrusted with the judgments;

who, on account of their pure character and what was above man, were called gods, by a certain ancestral custom of the Jews.

And one could see a whole nation philosophizing, and on account of the leisure for hearing the divine laws, the so-called sabbaths and their other feasts came to be.

And what need is there to speak concerning the order of the priests and sacrifices among them, containing countless symbols clarified to those who love learning? But since there is nothing stable in human nature, that polity too had, little by little, to be corrupted and to be transformed in its way of life.

But providence, having fittingly transformed the venerableness of their teaching to suit men everywhere according to their need of transformation, has, in place of those things, handed over to those everywhere among men who believe, the venerable godliness that is according to Jesus.

He who, adorned not only with intelligence but also with a divine portion, overthrew the doctrine concerning the demons upon the earth—those who delight in incense and blood and in the savory vapors that rise from burnt sacrifices, and who drag men down from the conception of God, like the fabled Titans or Giants—he himself, taking no thought for their plotting (for they plot most of all against the better sort), laid down laws by which those who live shall be blessed: in no way flattering the demons through sacrifices, but utterly despising them, through the Word of God that aids those who look upward and toward God.

And since God willed that the word of Jesus should prevail among men, the demons were able to accomplish nothing, even though they set every rope in motion that Christians might be no more;

for they stirred up against the Word and against those who believe in Him the emperors and the senate and the magistrates everywhere, and even the populace itself, who did not perceive the irrational and wicked working of the demons;

but the Word of God, mightier than all, and receiving its very hindrance as nourishment for growth, advanced and won to itself more souls;

And though these things have been said by us in a digression, yet I think they were necessary.

For we wished to meet what Celsus says concerning the Jews, namely, that they became fugitives from Egypt, and that the men beloved of God never did anything worthy of note.

And in reply to the charge that they have come to be of no account and of no number, we say that, as a chosen race and a royal priesthood, withdrawing and avoiding intermingling with the multitude, lest their morals be corrupted, they were guarded by the divine power;

neither desiring, as most men do, to acquire other kingdoms for themselves, nor being left in such a state that, on account of their fewness, they would become easy prey to plots and, so far as their fewness was concerned, be utterly destroyed.

And this happened so long as they were still worthy of the guardianship that comes from God;

but when, as a whole nation that had sinned, they ought to have turned to their God through afflictions, they were at times more, at times less, abandoned, until at last, under the Romans, having committed the greatest sin in putting Jesus to death, they were utterly forsaken.

...and being misinterpreted to the ignorant and foolish—and this too, although in all the long time before, no such matter had ever even been disputed.

But in these words he seems to me to have stated very obscurely what he wished to say.

And it is likely that he deliberately contrived the obscurity in this passage, since he saw that the argument was strong which established that the nation of the Jews sprang from such ancestors;

and again, on the other hand, he wished not to seem ignorant of a matter concerning the Jews and their race which was not to be despised.

It is plain, then, that the Jews trace their descent from the three fathers, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob;

and the names of these, when joined to the title of God, are so powerful that not only those of the nation use them in their prayers to God and in adjuring demons by the formula 'the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,' but indeed almost all who busy themselves with incantations and magic do likewise.

For there is found in the magical writings, in many places, such an invocation of God and a taking up of the name of God as something proper to these men, for use against the demons.

These things, then, brought forward by Jews and Christians as proof that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish nation, were holy men, Celsus seems to me not to have been wholly ignorant of, yet not to have set them out clearly, because he was unable to meet the argument.

For we make inquiry of all who use such invocations of God, saying:

Tell us, you people, who was Abraham, and how great was Isaac, and of what power was Jacob, that the title 'God' fitted to their name should produce such mighty deeds? And from whom have you learned, or are you able to learn, the things concerning these men? And who, moreover, took the trouble to record the history about them—whether one that of itself glorifies these men in its plain words, or one that hints through deeper meanings at certain great and marvelous things to those able to contemplate them? Then, when, upon our inquiry, no one can point to any history whatever—whether Greek or barbarian—or to some mystical record concerning these men,

we shall bring forward the book entitled Genesis, which contains the deeds of these men and the oracles of God to them; and we shall say: is it not the case that even your taking up of the names of these three founders of the nation—when men perceive by experience that no contemptible results are achieved by their invocation—itself shows the divine quality of these men, whom we receive from no source other than the sacred books among the Jews?

But indeed the God of Israel, and the God of the Hebrews, and the God who drowned the king of the Egyptians and the Egyptians in the Red Sea, is also frequently named and invoked against demons or certain wicked powers.

And we learn the history concerning these named ones, and the interpretation of the names, from the Hebrews, who glorify and expound these things in their ancestral writings and ancestral tongue;

how then could the Jews, who undertook to trace their own descent from the first seed of these men—whom Celsus supposes to have been sorcerers and impostors—shamelessly attempt to refer themselves and their origin back to such men, whose names, being Hebrew, bear witness to the Hebrews, who possess their sacred books in the Hebrew tongue and script, that their nation is akin to these men? For indeed up to the present day the Jewish names, keeping to the Hebrew tongue, were either taken from their letters, or simply from what is signified by the Hebrew language.

And let the reader of Celsus's writing consider whether he is not hinting at these very things by his phrase, 'and they attempted to trace their descent from the first seed of sorcerers and vagabond men,' calling to witness dim and ambiguous voices hidden somewhere in darkness.

These names, according to us, are not ambiguous, even though they be taken up by those who are strangers to our religion;

but according to Celsus, who does not demonstrate the ambiguity of the words, it has somehow been carelessly thrown out, I know not how.

And yet he ought, if he wished honestly to overturn the genealogy which he thought had been most shamelessly assumed by the Jews who boast of Abraham and his descendants, to have set out the whole matter of this passage, first arguing for it with what plausibility he supposed it had, and then nobly overturning, by what seemed to him the truth and by the arguments in its favor, the points of the passage.

But neither Celsus nor anyone else, in treating of the nature of names taken up for powers, will be able to set forth the exact account of these matters and to prove that those men were contemptible whose very names have power not only among their own people alone, but also among strangers.

He ought to have shown how it is that we, by misinterpreting to the ignorant and foolish the matters concerning these names, deceive (as he supposes) our hearers, while he himself, who boasts of being neither ignorant nor foolish, gives the true interpretation of these things.

And he threw out, among his remarks about these names from which the Jews trace their descent, the assertion that never before, in all the long time past, has there been any dispute concerning such names, but that now the Jews are disputing about them with certain others, whom he did not name.

For let whoever wishes show who are the claimants, and who, even using plausibility against the Jews, maintain that the Jews and Christians do not soundly report the matters concerning those after whom the names are given, but that there are others who have grasped the wisest and truest things concerning them.

But we are persuaded that no one will be able to do any such thing, since it is evident that the names have been taken from the Hebrew tongue, which is found among the Jews alone.

After this Celsus, setting out things from history outside the divine Word—those concerning the men who laid claim to antiquity, such as the Athenians and Egyptians and Arcadians and Phrygians, who say that some among them were earthborn and each adduce proofs of this—says that the Jews, huddled in some corner of Palestine, wholly uneducated and not having heard beforehand these things long ago celebrated by Hesiod and countless other inspired men, composed most implausible and inartistic tales: a certain man fashioned by the hands of God and breathed into, and a little woman from his rib, and commands of God, and a serpent opposing these and prevailing over the commands of God—relating some myth as old wives do, and making God most impious, weak from the very beginning and unable to persuade even one man whom He Himself had formed.

By these words, indeed, the man of much learning and erudition, Celsus, who charges both Jews and Christians with ignorance and lack of education, clearly displays how accurately he knew the dates of each author, Greek and barbarian;

seeing that he supposes Hesiod and countless others, whom he names inspired men, to be older than Moses and his writings—Moses, who is demonstrated to be much older than the Trojan War.

It was not, then, the Jews who composed the most implausible and inartistic tales about the earthborn man, but rather Celsus's 'inspired men,' Hesiod and his other countless ones, who, neither having learned nor heard the far older and most venerable accounts in Palestine, wrote such histories about ancient things—the Eoeae and the Theogony—attributing to the gods, so far as in them lay, an origin, and countless other things.

With good reason, then, does Plato cast out of his own republic Homer and those who write such poems, as corrupting the young.

But Plato, on the one hand, is clearly seen not to have thought that those who left behind such poems were inspired men;

...whereas Celsus, having composed two other books against the Christians, perhaps out of contentiousness with us, named as inspired those whom he did not think inspired.

He charges us with introducing a man fashioned by the hands of God, although the book of Genesis took no 'hands' of God either at the making of the man or at his fashioning, whereas it is Job and David who said:

'Your hands made me and fashioned me'—concerning which there is much to say, in order to set forth what was understood by those who said these things, not only about the difference between making and fashioning, but also about the hands of God;

which hands those who do not understand—and who likewise misunderstand such expressions from the divine Scriptures—suppose that we attribute to the God who is over all such a form as the human one; according to whom it would follow that we must also believe there are wings on the body of God, since the Scriptures, taken literally, say these things too about our God.

But to interpret these things now is not required by the matter at hand;

for in our exegetical works on Genesis these matters have been examined by us, as far as was possible, in their proper place.

Then observe the malice of Celsus in what follows.

For when our Scripture says, concerning the fashioning of the man:

'And He breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living soul'—he, wishing maliciously to disparage the phrase 'He breathed into his face a breath of life' (which he did not even understand in what manner it was said), recorded that 'they composed a man fashioned by the hands of God and breathed into,' so that one, supposing the word 'breathed into' to be said in a way similar to wineskins that are inflated, might laugh at 'He breathed into his face a breath of life'—a phrase spoken figuratively and requiring exposition, which shows that God imparted of the incorruptible spirit to the man;

'For Your incorruptible spirit is in all things.'

Then, since it was his set purpose to speak ill of the things written, he also mocked the words, 'God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept;

and He took one of his ribs and filled up flesh in its place;

and He built the rib which He had taken from Adam into a woman,' and what follows—not even setting out the text itself, which is able to make the hearer perceive that it was spoken with a figurative meaning.

And indeed he was unwilling to pretend that such things were being allegorized, although in what follows he says that the more reasonable of the Jews and Christians, being ashamed at these things, try somehow to allegorize them.

But one may say to him:

Are then the things said by your inspired Hesiod in the form of myth concerning the woman allegorized—namely, that she was given to men by Zeus as an evil in exchange for fire—

while the woman taken from the rib of him who slept after the trance, and built by God, seems to you to be told without any meaning and without any concealment? But it is not fair not to laugh at those as a myth, but to admire them as things philosophized in myth, while at these—fixing the mind on the mere letter—you scoff and suppose them to hold no rational meaning.

For if one must accuse, merely on account of the bare letter, things said in deeper meanings, consider whether the words of Hesiod are not rather likely to incur ridicule—a man, as you say, inspired, who wrote such things:

'And in anger the cloud-gatherer Zeus addressed him: