Against Celsus 1 part 21/42

Yet, trying somehow to remedy the absurdities, the Stoics say—I do not know how—that in each cycle all will be indistinguishable from those of the former cycles, so that not the very Socrates will be born again, but one indistinguishable from Socrates, who will marry one indistinguishable from Xanthippe and be accused by ones indistinguishable from Anytus and Meletus.

But I do not know how the cosmos is always the same and not [merely] indistinguishably different from another, while the things in it are not the same but [only] indistinguishable.

But indeed the principal argument both against Celsus's statements and against those of the Stoa will more opportunely be examined elsewhere, since it does not befit the present occasion and the purpose at hand to dwell at length on these matters.

After this he says that "neither are the things seen given to man, but each comes to be and perishes for the sake of the salvation of the whole, according to the interchange I spoke of before, from one another into one another;"

"and it is superfluous to spend more time on the refutation of these things, since it has been set forth by us according to our ability."

This too has been answered:

"And neither would goods nor evils ever become fewer or more among mortal things."

"Nor does God need any newer correction."

"Nor, as a man who has constructed something deficiently and fashioned it rather unskillfully, does God bring correction to the cosmos, purging it by flood or conflagration—but rather He restrains the outpouring of vice from spreading further; and I, for my part, think that He also does away with it altogether in an ordered fashion, advantageously for the whole."

But whether, after the abolition of vice, there is reason for it to subsist again or not, such matters will be examined in a principal treatise.

[Celsus says:] "He wishes, then, that God should always be taking up the failings through a newer correction."

For even though all things have been ordered by Him most beautifully and most securely in the creation of the whole, nonetheless He needed a kind of medical art for those who are sick with vice and for the whole cosmos, which is, as it were, defiled by it.

And nothing whatever has been or will be neglected by God, who at each season does what was fitting for Him to do in a changeable and mutable cosmos.

And just as a farmer, according to the different seasons of the year, performs different agricultural works upon the land and upon the things growing on it, so God administers, as it were, certain 'years'—if I may so name them—the whole ages, doing in each of them whatever the reasonableness concerning the whole demands; and this is most clearly apprehended and accomplished by God alone, as the truth has it.

Celsus advanced a certain argument about evils, to this effect: that "even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil;

for you do not know what is advantageous either to you or to another or to the whole."

And the statement has something circumspect about it, and it hints too that the nature of evils is not altogether wicked, on account of the possibility that what is reckoned among the things in each particular case to be evil may be advantageous to the whole.

Nevertheless, lest someone, misunderstanding what is said, find an occasion for further depravity—as though his own vice were useful to the whole, or at least able to be useful—let it be said that, while the free will of each is preserved, even if God should make use of the vice of the wicked for the ordering of the whole, ranking them into a use of the whole, nonetheless such a one is blameworthy and, as blameworthy, has been ranked into a use that is execrable for each individual yet useful to the whole.

It is as if, in the case of cities, someone were to say that one who has committed such-and-such a crime, and on account of his crimes is condemned to certain public works useful to the whole, does indeed do something useful for the whole city, but has himself come to be in an execrable condition, in which no one even of moderate sense would wish to be.

Paul, teaching us that even the basest will contribute something to the use of the whole, though of themselves they will be in execrable conditions, and that the most diligent will be most useful to the whole, being of themselves the cause of their being ranked in a most excellent place, says:

"In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay, some for honor and some for dishonor;

if then anyone cleanse himself, he will be a vessel for honor, sanctified and useful to the master, prepared for every good work." And these things too, I take it, are necessarily set forth with reference to: "even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil;"

"for you do not know what is advantageous either to you or to another"—lest anyone take from the matters bearing on this topic an occasion for sinning, on the supposition that he will be useful to the whole through his sin.

And since after this Celsus, not understanding the passages in the Scriptures that speak of God as if subject to human passions—in which utterances of wrath are spoken against the impious and threats against sinners—disparages them, it must be said that, just as we, when conversing with very young children, do not aim at our own powers of speech, but, accommodating ourselves to the weakness of those before us, both say these things and do those things which seem to us useful for the conversion and correction of children as children;

so it seems that the Word of God has dispensed the things written, measuring what is fitting in the proclamation by the capacity of the hearers and by what is useful for them.

And in general, concerning such a manner of proclamation of the things about God, it is thus said in Deuteronomy:

"The Lord your God bore with your ways, as a man would bear with the ways of his son." As if bearing the ways of a man for the benefit of men, the Word speaks such things;

for the multitude did not need a God personifying things to be said—fittingly to Himself—toward such persons.

But he who cares for the clarity of the divine writings will find in them that the things spoken are spiritual, comparing the intent of the things said to the weaker with the things proclaimed to the more apt—the spiritual things to those called spiritual—both often lying in the same passage for him who knows how to listen to it.

We do, then, name 'wrath' of God, but we do not say that it is a passion of His, rather something taken up for instruction, by means of sterner methods, of those who have sinned so much and in such ways.

For that the so-called wrath of God and His so-called anger instruct, and that this is pleasing to the Word, is clear from what is said in the sixth Psalm:

"O Lord, rebuke me not in Your anger, neither chasten me in Your wrath;" and in Jeremiah:

"Correct us, O Lord, but in judgment, and not in anger, lest You make us few." And one who has read, in the Second [book] of Kingdoms, of a wrath of God that incited David to number the people, but in the First [book] of Chronicles of the devil [as inciting him], and who compares the texts with one another, will see in what sense wrath is to be ranked;

and Paul says that all men have become children of this [wrath], saying:

"We were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest." And that wrath is not a passion of God, but each one prepares it for himself through the things by which he sins, Paul will make clear in this:

"Or do you despise the riches of His kindness and forbearance and longsuffering, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But according to your hardness and impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God." How then can each one treasure up for himself wrath in the day of wrath, if wrath is understood as a passion? And how can the passion of wrath instruct? But also, the Word which teaches us never to be angry, and which says in the thirty-sixth Psalm:

"Cease from anger and forsake wrath," and which says also in Paul:

"But now put away, even you, all these: wrath, anger, malice, blasphemy, filthy language"—[if it] attributed the passion to God Himself, [it would be attributing to Him that] from which He wishes wholly to deliver us.

"Awake! Why do You sleep, O Lord?" And again [the Scripture] says:

"And the Lord awoke as one out of sleep, like a mighty man recovering from wine." If, then, 'sleep' signifies something else and not what the obvious reading of the word indicates, why shall not 'wrath' likewise be understood [figuratively]? And the threats too are announcements concerning the things that will befall the wicked, just as if someone said that the words of a physician to the sick are also threats, when he says:

"I will cut you and apply cauteries to you, unless you obey my rules and live in this way and conduct yourself thus."

We do not, then, attach human passions to God, nor do we hold impious opinions concerning Him, nor, going astray, do we present the narratives about Him otherwise than from the writings themselves, examined together with one another;

nor is the aim set before those of us who reverently champion the Word anything else than to deliver the hearers, as far as possible, from folly, and to make them prudent.

And consistently with his not having understood the things written about the wrath of God, he says:

"For is it not ridiculous, if a man, angered with the Jews, destroyed and burned them all, root and branch, so that they were as nothing, while God the most high, as they say, being angry and enraged and threatening, sends His son, and he suffers such things?" If, then, the Jews, after treating Jesus as they dared to treat him, perished and were burned root and branch, they have suffered these things from no other wrath than that which they treasured up for themselves; the judgment of God against them came to pass by a divine arrangement, named 'wrath' according to a certain ancestral usage of the Hebrews.

And indeed the Son of the most high God does suffer, having willed it for the sake of the salvation of men, as has been said by us above as far as we were able.

But that the argument may concern not the Jews alone—for this is not what I am saying—but the whole nature [of things], which is what I promised, I will make the foregoing points more clearly evident.

Who, on encountering these things, being moderate and aware of human weakness, would not shrink back from the burden of one who has promised to render an account concerning the whole nature [of things] and has boasted in a manner like the inscription he dared to put upon his book? Let us see, then, what the things are which he promises to speak concerning the whole nature, and what he will make evident.

Through many [passages] in succession he charges us with saying that God made all things for man.

And he wishes, from the natural history of animals and the shrewdness apparent in them, to show that all things came to be no more for the sake of men than for the sake of the irrational animals.

And it seems to me that he says something like those who, out of hatred toward those they hate, accuse them of the very things for which their own dearest are praised.

For just as in those cases hatred blinds them so that they do not perceive that they are accusing their dearest by the things with which they think they are speaking ill of their enemies, in the same way Celsus too, confused in his reasoning, has not seen that he is also accusing the philosophers of the Stoa, who not wrongly rank man, and in short the rational nature, before all the irrational, and who say that providence has made all things primarily for its sake.

And rational beings, which are primary, have reason, like children being born;

while the irrational and inanimate things are like the afterbirth created together with the child.

And indeed I suppose that, just as in cities those who provide for the wares and the market provide for nothing else than for the sake of men—though dogs and other irrational creatures also share in the abundance—

so providence provides primarily for rational beings, and it followed as a consequence that the irrational also enjoy the things that come to be on account of men.

And just as he errs who says that the market-overseers provide no more for men than for dogs—since dogs too share in the abundance of the wares—so much the more do Celsus and those who think the same as he act impiously toward the God who provides for rational beings, when they say:

"thunder and lightning and rains"—already more clearly playing the Epicurean;

and secondly he says that, even if one grant these to be works of God, they do not come about for our nourishment, as men, any more than for the plants, trees, herbs, and thorns—granting them to occur by chance and not according to providence, as a true Epicurean.

For if these are not useful to us any more than to plants and trees and herbs and thorns, it is clear that they do not come from providence, or come from a providence that provides for us no more than for trees and herbs and thorns.

But each [alternative] is straightway impious, and it is silly to take a stand in contradicting such things against one who accuses us of impiety;

for it is clear to everyone, from what has been said, who the impious one is.

Then he says that, even if you say these things grow for men—clearly the plants and trees and herbs and thorns—why will you say they grow for men any more than for the most savage of irrational animals? Let Celsus, then, say plainly that the so great diversity of the things growing on the earth is not a work of providence, but that some chance concourse of atoms has produced these so many qualities, and that by chance so many kinds of plants and trees and herbs are similar to one another, and that no skilled reason has brought them into being, nor have they their origin from a Mind transcending all wonder.

But we Christians, who are devoted to the one God who created these things, even for these give thanks to Him who is also their Maker, because for us He has prepared so great a household, and on our account for the animals that serve us;

He "who causes the grass to grow for the cattle, and herbage for the service of men, that He may bring forth bread out of the earth, and that wine may gladden the heart of man, and oil may make his face cheerful, and bread may strengthen man's heart." And if He has also prepared foods for the most savage of animals, it is nothing to wonder at;

for these animals too, others among the philosophers have said, came to be for the sake of exercise for the rational animal.

And one of our wise men says somewhere:

"What is this? For what is this? For all things have been created for their use," and "Say not:

What is this? For what is this? For all things will be sought out in their season."

Next to these, Celsus, wishing [to show] that providence has made the things growing on earth no more for us than for the most savage of animals, says:

"We, at least, toiling and laboring hard, are nourished only with difficulty and pain;

but for them all things grow unsown and unplowed"—not seeing that God, wishing everywhere to exercise human understanding so that it may not remain idle and unprovided with the arts, made man needy;

so that, on account of this very neediness of his, he might be compelled to discover arts—some for the sake of food, others for the sake of shelter.

For indeed it was better for those not destined to seek the divine and to philosophize to be in want, in order to use their understanding for the discovery of arts, than, by having abundance in everything, to neglect understanding altogether.

The want of the necessities of life, at any rate, gave rise to this: farming, that: viticulture, this: the arts concerning gardens, that: carpentry and metalworking, which produce tools for the arts that minister to the supply of food;

and the want of shelter introduced this: weaving, [coming] after carding and spinning, and that: building; and thus understanding has ascended even to architecture.

And the lack of necessities caused even the things produced in other places to be conveyed, by navigation and steersmanship, to those who do not have them;

so that on these accounts too one might admire providence, which has advantageously made the rational [creature] needy, in contrast to the irrational animals.

For the irrational creatures have their food ready at hand, inasmuch as they have no impetus toward the arts;

and they have their shelter by nature, for they are covered with hair, or feathers, or scales, or shells.

And let these things be said by us also in defense against the statement made by Celsus:

"We, toiling and laboring hard, are nourished only with difficulty;

but for them all things grow unsown and unplowed."

He [Celsus] adduces in objection a Euripidean iambic line, opposed to his own opinion;

and, coming to grips with what was said, he accuses it of being wrongly stated.

Celsus's statement runs thus:

"But if you also cite the Euripidean line, that 'The sun and the night serve mortals,' [I ask:] why for us any more than for the ants and the flies? For to them too the night comes for rest, and the day for seeing and being active."

It is clear, then, that it was not only some of the Jews and Christians who said that the sun and the things in heaven serve us, but also, according to some, the dramatic philosopher [Euripides], who was a hearer of the natural philosophy of Anaxagoras;

who, from the one rational being, man, says by synecdoche that the things ordered in the universe serve all rational beings—this again being shown by synecdoche from the [line]:

Or perhaps the tragedian, from the sun which makes the day, named 'the day,' teaching that the things most in need of day and night are those beneath the moon, and not other things so much as the things on earth.

Day, then, and night serve mortals, having come to be on account of rational beings.

And if ants and flies enjoy a share—being active by day and resting by night—of the things that have come to be on account of men, one ought not therefore to say that day and night come to be on account of ants and flies either, nor for no purpose; rather, these must be reckoned to have come to be according to providence, for the sake of men.

Next to these, he brings up against himself, as objections, the things said on behalf of men—that the irrational animals were created for their sake—and says that, if someone should call us rulers of the irrational creatures, since we both hunt and feast upon them, we shall say: why have we not rather come to be for their sake, since they hunt and eat us? But indeed we need nets and weapons, and many men as helpers, and dogs, against the hunted;

whereas to them nature has straightway and of themselves given weapons, easily bringing us under their power.

And here too you see in what way understanding has been given to us as a great help, and as better than any weapon which the beasts seem to have.

We, at any rate, who are weaker in body than many of the animals, and than some even exceedingly smaller, prevail over the beasts through understanding and hunt down even such great elephants, subjecting to our gentleness those naturally fit to be tamed, and, against those not naturally fit, or not seeming to afford us use through taming, standing thus with our own security, so that, when we wish, we keep such great beasts shut up, and, when we need food from their bodies, we slay them just as we do the non-wild animals.

The Creator, then, has made all things subject to the rational animal and to its natural understanding.

And for some purposes we need dogs—for the sake of argument, for the guarding of flocks, or herds of cattle, or herds of goats, or of houses—and for other purposes oxen, as for farming, and for yet others we use beasts of burden or pack-animals.

And so it is said that the race of lions and bears and leopards and boars and such-like has been given to us for the exercise of the seeds of courage that are in us.

Then he says, against the race of men who are aware of their own superiority—which it has over the irrational animals—that, in answer to your saying that God has given us the ability to take the beasts and to make use of them, we shall say that, in all likelihood, before there were cities and arts and such-like intermixings and weapons and nets, men were seized and eaten by beasts, while beasts were very rarely caught by men.

But observe, in answer to these things, that even if men take beasts and beasts seize men, there is a great difference between those who prevail by understanding and those who get the upper hand by savagery and ferocity over men who do not use their understanding to avoid suffering anything from beasts.

And the [phrase] 'before there were cities and arts and such-like intermixings' belongs, I think, to one who has forgotten what he said above—that the world is uncreated and incorruptible, and that only the things on earth suffer floods and conflagrations, and that not all things together meet with these.

"a time when there were by no means cities, nor had arts yet been discovered."

But let it be granted that we too may concede these things, consistently with him—though they are no longer consistent with him and with the things stated above by him;

what, then, does this have to do with [the claim] that absolutely, in the beginning, men were seized and eaten by beasts, while beasts were no longer caught by men? For if the world has come to be according to providence, and God is set over the whole, it was necessary that the living embers of the human race, in the beginning, should come to be under a certain guardianship from superior beings, so that in the beginning there was an intermixing of the divine nature with men.

Which things the Ascraean poet [Hesiod] too, conceiving, said:

"For common then were the banquets, and common the seats, of the immortal gods and of mortal men."

And the divine Word, according to Moses, brought in the first men as hearing a more divine voice and oracles, and seeing at times the sojournings of God's angels coming to them.

For indeed it is likely that, at the beginning of the world, human nature was helped to a greater degree,

until, progress having been made toward understanding and the rest of the virtues and the discovery of the arts, they should be able to live also by themselves, no longer needing those who continually oversee and administer them with the marvelous manifestation of those who minister to the will of God.

And it follows from these things that it is false that, in the beginning, men were seized and eaten by beasts, while beasts were very rarely caught by men.

From these things, then, it is manifest that what is said by Celsus thus is also false:

"So that in this respect, at least, God subjected men to the beasts rather [than the beasts to men]."

For God did not subject men to the beasts, but gave the beasts to be capable of capture by the understanding of men and by the arts that subsist against them from understanding.

For it was not without God that men devised for themselves salvation from the beasts and dominion over them.

And the noble fellow, not seeing how many philosophers there are who introduce providence and say that it makes all things on account of rational beings, does away—so far as in him lies—with doctrines useful to the agreement of the Christians on these points with philosophy; nor [does he see] how great a hindrance to piety arises from accepting that man differs in nothing from ants or bees in God's sight. He says that, if for this reason men seem to differ from the irrational creatures—because they have founded cities and use polity and magistracies and governments—this is nothing to the point, for the ants and the bees [do likewise].

To bees, at any rate, there is a leader; there is a following and attendance, and wars and victories and slayings of the vanquished, and cities and even suburbs, and a succession of labors, and judgments against the idle and the wicked;

the drones, at any rate, they drive away and punish.

But not even in these things has he seen wherein the things accomplished from reason and reasoning differ from those that come about from irrational nature and bare constitution.

Of which [the latter] no reason inherent in the doers takes up the cause—for they do not have it—but the most ancient One, who is both the Son of God and king of all things subject [to Him], made an irrational nature which, as irrational, helps those not deemed worthy of reason.

Cities, then, among men have come into being with many arts and an ordering of laws;

and polities and magistracies and governments among men are either those properly so called—certain excellent dispositions and activities—or those more loosely so named, in imitation of the former as far as possible;

for those who legislated successfully, looking to the former, established the best polities and magistracies and governments.

and being better stewards of the things useful to themselves, observing that the bees obey leaderships and divide among themselves the useful works of the polity for the preservation of the cities [hives].

And perhaps the so-called wars of the bees too contain a teaching toward making just and orderly wars among men, if ever there should be need.

And there are not cities and suburbs among the bees, but the hives and the hexagons and the works of the bees and the succession among them [exist] on account of men, who need honey for many purposes—both for the treatment of bodies that have suffered ailments, and for pure nourishment.

And one must not compare the things done by the bees against the drones with the judgments and punishments inflicted in cities against the idle and the wicked.

But, as I said before, in these matters nature is to be marveled at;

while man, who is able to reason about all things and to set in order the things of all, is to be accepted as one cooperating with providence, and as accomplishing the works not of God's providence alone, but also of his own.

And Celsus, having spoken about the bees in order, so far as in him lies, to cheapen the cities and polities and magistracies and governments not only of us Christians but of all men, and the wars on behalf of fatherlands, next brings on a eulogy of ants, going through it at length;

in order that by the eulogy of those [ants] he may overthrow the economy of men concerning food, and, by the argument addressed to the ants, may cast down the forethought concerning winter stores as being nothing more than the providence—in his view—of irrational ants.

And whom of the simpler men, who do not know how to look into the nature of all things, would Celsus not, so far as in him lies, turn away from helping those burdened by loads and from sharing in their labors, when he speaks of the ants, how they take up one another's burdens whenever they see one of them tiring? For the one who needs instruction through reason and in no way perceives it will say:

"Since, then, we differ in nothing from ants, even when we help those who are tiring under the carrying of the heaviest loads, why do we do such a thing in vain?" And the ants, being irrational animals, would not be exalted to think highly of themselves because their works are compared to those of men;

but men, being able through reason to hear in what way their fellowship is cheapened, would be harmed—so far as it depends on Celsus and his words—since he did not see that, wishing to turn those who read his book away from Christianity, he also turns even non-Christians away from sympathy toward those who bear the heaviest of burdens.

He ought, if indeed he were even a philosopher with a sense of fellowship, not only not to do away, along with Christianity, with the useful things among men, but also to cooperate, if it were possible, with the common goods in Christianity directed toward other men.

And if the ants also nibble off the sprouting parts of the fruits they store away, so that these may not swell [and germinate] but may remain through the year for them as food, one must not suppose that reasoning is the cause of these things among the ants, but rather the all-mothering nature, which has adorned even the irrational creatures so as to leave not even the least thing [undone], in no way bearing a trace of reason derived from [their own] nature.

Unless perhaps through these things Celsus secretly wishes—for in many places he wishes to Platonize—[to maintain] that every soul is of the same kind, and that the soul of man differs in nothing from that of ants and bees;

which is the doctrine of one who brings the soul down from the vaults of heaven, not onto the human body alone, but also onto the rest [of the creatures].