Against Celsus 1 part 23/42

the Creator did not make these things for the lion or the eagle or the dolphin, but all things on account of the rational creature, and that this world, as being God's work, might come to be whole and complete out of all things.

For with this one must agree as well said.

But God cares, not as Celsus thinks, for the whole alone, but, beyond the whole, especially for every rational being.

And providence will never abandon the whole;

for it administers it, and even if some part of the whole becomes worse through the rational portion's sinning, it makes a purification of it, and after a time turns the whole back to Himself.

Yet neither is He angered for the sake of apes nor of mice;

but on men, inasmuch as they have transgressed their natural starting-points, He brings justice and chastisement, and threatens these things both through the prophets and through the Saviour who has sojourned among the whole race of men;

in order that through the threat those who hear may be turned, while those who neglect the words of conversion may pay penalties according to their desert—penalties which it is fitting that God should impose, in accordance with His own will profitably for the whole, upon those who need such and so toilsome a healing and correction.

But since the fourth book has also taken its sufficient compass, here at this point we shall bring the discourse to rest.

ORIGEN'S FIFTH BOOK AGAINST THE TREATISE OF CELSUS ENTITLED THE TRUE DISCOURSE. Not pursuing the forbidden much-speaking, from which it is not possible to escape sin, do we now begin the fifth book against the writing of Celsus, holy Ambrose, but striving with all our power to leave nothing of what was said by him untested, and especially in those passages where to some he might seem to have intelligently accused us or the Jews.

And if it were possible, entering with reason into the conscience of every single one of those who read his treatise, to draw out each dart that wounds him who is not wholly fenced about with the whole armour of God, and to apply a rational remedy healing the wound from Celsus, causing those who attend to his words not to be unsound in the faith—this we would have done.

But since this is God's work—to sojourn invisibly according to His own Spirit, together with the Spirit of Christ, in those whom He judges fit to be visited—while ours, who try through words and writings to make men faithful, is to do all things in order to be called workmen that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth; one thing among all seems to us also to be ours, namely to refute, as far as we are able, the plausible arguments of Celsus, faithfully doing what was enjoined upon us by you.

Come, then, having set forth the parts of Celsus's words that follow those which we previously met and answered—let the reader judge whether we did overthrow them—let us bring forward what is to be said against them.

And may God grant that our mind and word may not be bare and stripped of divinity in dealing with the matter at hand;

in order that the faith of those whom we pray to be helped may not be in the wisdom of men, but, having received the mind of Christ from His Father who alone gives it, and being aided unto participation in the Word of God, we may cast down every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, even the conceit of Celsus, who exalts himself against us and against our Jesus, and still further against Moses and the prophets;

in order that, since He who gives the word to those who preach the gospel with great power supplies this to us also and bestows the great power, faith may arise in those who shall read, in the word and power of God.

It is proposed, then, now to overthrow this statement of his, which runs thus:

'No God, O Jews and Christians, and no son of God, either came down or could come down.'

'But if you speak of certain angels, what do you call these—gods, or some other kind? Some other kind, probably—the demons.'

To Celsus, who here repeats himself—for these things have already been said by him often above—it is not necessary to discourse at greater length;

for what we have said to this point will suffice.

But a few things out of many, which seem to us to be consonant with what was said before, though not having altogether the same sense as those, we shall set forth;

in which we shall show that, having declared universally that no God came down to men, nor any son of God, he does away with both the things believed by the many concerning divine epiphanies and the things he himself said above.

For if it has been truly said by Celsus, universally, that no God and no son of God came down or could come down, clearly it has been done away that there are gods upon earth who came down from heaven, either to give oracles to men or to heal through divine responses; and neither the Pythian nor Asclepius nor any other of those reputed to do such things would be a god come down from heaven—or he would be a god, but one allotted always to dwell upon the earth and, as it were, an exile from the place of the gods; or he would be one of those who have no authority to share in the divine things there; or Apollo and Asclepius and all who are believed to do anything upon earth would be not gods but certain demons, far worse than the wise among men who, on account of virtue, ascend even to the vault of heaven.

See, then, that he who, throughout the whole treatise, did not confess himself to be an Epicurean, is shown to be deserting to Epicurus, in wishing to do away with our doctrines;

either doing away with God's sojourning, which provides for individual men, or, if he posits such a thing, falsifying Celsus's own statement.

If, then, you altogether do away with providence, you will falsify his words, in which he posits gods and providence, so as to assert that these things are true;

but if you posit providence none the less, as not agreeing with Celsus who says that neither God nor a son of God has come down or comes down to men, why will you not carefully examine, from what has been said by us concerning Jesus and from what is prophesied concerning Him, which one ought rather to reckon a God and a son of God to have come down to men—the Jesus who administered and did so many things, or those who, on the pretext of oracles and divinations, do not correct the morals of those they heal, and moreover have departed from the sincere and pure worship of reverent honour toward the Maker of all, and rend the soul of those who attend to them, on the pretext of honouring many gods, away from the one and only manifest and true God? But since, after these things, as though Jews or Christians would answer concerning those who descend to men that they are angels, he says:

'But if you speak of certain angels,' and further asks, saying:

'what do you call these? Gods, or some other kind?' Then again, as though leading us to answer, he brings in: 'Some other kind, probably—the demons.'

Come, let us consider these things too.

For we confessedly do speak of angels, who are ministering spirits sent forth for service on account of those who are to inherit salvation, ascending to bring up the prayers of men in the purest regions of the world, the heavenly ones, or even in those purer than these, the supra-heavenly ones, and again descending from there bearing to each, according to his desert, the things which God commands them to minister to those who are benefited.

These, then, having learned to call angels from their work, we find them, because they are divine, sometimes named even gods in the sacred Scriptures, but not so that we should be commanded to worship and bow down to those who minister and bring us the things of God, instead of God.

For every petition and prayer and intercession and thanksgiving must be sent up to the God over all through the High Priest who is over all angels, the living Word and God.

And we shall also make petition to the Word Himself, and intercede with Him, and give thanks, and even pray, if we are able to apprehend the proper and the looser sense of speaking concerning prayer.

For to invoke angels, without having taken up the knowledge concerning them which is beyond men, is not reasonable.

But that even, on the hypothesis, the knowledge concerning them, being something marvellous and ineffable, were apprehended, this knowledge, by setting forth their nature and the offices to which each is appointed, would not allow one to be confident in praying to any other than the God who is sufficient for all over all, through our Saviour the Son of God;

who is Word and Wisdom and Truth and whatever else the Scriptures of God's prophets and of the apostles of Jesus say concerning Him.

And it suffices, for the holy angels of God to be gracious to us and to do all things on our behalf, that our disposition toward God—so far as is possible to human nature—should imitate their resolve, as they imitate God;

and that our apprehension, so far as attainable by us, concerning His Son the Word, should not be contrary to the clearer apprehension of the holy angels concerning Him, but should daily press on toward that clarity and distinctness.

But Celsus, as not having read our sacred Scriptures, answers for himself, as though on our behalf, that we say those angels who descend for the benefit of men are some other kind from God, and says it is likely that they would be called by us demons;

not seeing that the name of demons is not even neutral, as is that of men—among whom some are worthy and some base—nor worthy, as is that of the gods, which is applied not to base demonia or to images or to animals, but, by those who have known the things of God, to the truly more divine and blessed beings.

The name of demons is assigned to powers of a grosser body, which deceive and distract men and drag them down from God and from the supra-heavenly things to these earthly affairs.

After these things he sets forth such a statement concerning the Jews:

'First, then, it is worthy to wonder at the Jews, if they revere the heaven and the angels in it, but pass over its most august and powerful parts—the sun, the moon, and the other stars, both fixed and wandering;

as though it were admissible for the whole to be God, but its parts not divine; or as though those who somewhere in darkness, by an unsound sorcery, blink, or dream through dim apparitions, are said to draw near and are well worshipped, while those who prophesy so clearly and brilliantly to all—through whom rains and warmth and clouds and thunders (which they worship) and lightnings and fruits and all generation are dispensed, through whom God is revealed to them, the most manifest heralds of the things above, the truly heavenly angels—these they reckon to be nothing.'

Now in these things Celsus seems to me to have become confused, and from misheard reports of things he did not know to have been written;

for it is clear to those who examine the things of the Jews and join to them the things of the Christians, that the Jews, following the law which says in the person of God:

'There shall be no other gods for you besides me,'

'You shall not make for yourself an idol, nor any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth;

you shall not bow down to them nor serve them'—worship nothing other than the God over all, who made the heaven and all the rest.

And it is plain that those who live according to the law, worshipping Him who made the heaven, do not worship the heaven together with God.

But moreover, no one of those who serve the law of Moses worships the angels in heaven;

and likewise, as they do not worship sun and moon and the stars, the host of heaven, they abstain from worshipping the heaven and the angels in it, obeying the law which says:

'And lest you lift up your eyes to heaven, and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be led astray and worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations.'

But also, having taken to himself, as though the Jews indeed reckon the heaven a god, he adduces this against them as absurd, charging those who worship the heaven but not also the sun and the moon and the stars, that the Jews do this 'as though it were admissible for the whole to be a god, but its parts not divine';

and he seems to call the whole 'heaven,' and its parts the sun and the moon and the stars.

Now neither Jews nor Christians clearly say that the heaven is God.

But let it be granted that, according to him, it is said by the Jews that the heaven is a god, and let it be that the parts of the heaven are the sun and the moon and the stars—which is not at all true, for neither are the animals and plants upon the earth parts of the earth—;

whence, then, even among the Greeks, is it true that, if a whole be a god, its parts too are forthwith divine? The Stoics indeed clearly say that the whole cosmos is a god—they the first cause, the followers of Plato the second, and some of them the third.

Is it, then, the case according to such men that, since the whole, the cosmos, is a god, its parts too are forthwith divine;

so that not only men are divine, but also all the irrational animals, being parts of the cosmos, and besides these the plants too? And if the mountains and the rivers and the seas are parts of the cosmos, then, since the whole cosmos is a god, are the rivers and the seas too forthwith gods? But not even this will the Greeks say;

rather, those who preside over rivers and seas—demons, or gods, as those name them—these they would call gods.

And the universal proposition of Celsus becomes false even according to the Greeks who introduce providence, namely that, if anything whole be a god, its parts are altogether divine.

It follows upon Celsus's argument that, if the cosmos be a god, all things in it are divine, being parts of the cosmos.

worms and every kind of serpents, but also that of birds and that of fishes;

which not even those who say that the cosmos is a god will assert.

But the Jews who live according to the law of Moses, even if they know nothing of how to receive the hidden purpose of the law spoken concealedly and disclosing something ineffable, will say neither that the heaven is a god nor that the angels are.

And since we say that he has become confused from certain misheard reports, come, let us also clarify these things as far as is possible for us, and show that, while Celsus thinks it Jewish to worship heaven and the angels in it, such a thing is not Jewish, but is a transgression of Judaism, just as is the worshipping of sun and moon and stars, and indeed of images.

You will find, at any rate, especially in Jeremiah, the word of God, through the prophet, finding fault with the people of the Jews as worshipping such things and sacrificing to the queen of heaven and to all the host of heaven.

And the writings of the Christians also make clear, accusing the sins among the Jews, that since God had forsaken that people for certain sins, these things too were sinned by them.

For in the Acts of the Apostles it is written concerning the Jews that 'God turned and gave them over to serve the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:

Did you offer slain beasts and sacrifices to me forty years in the wilderness, O house of Israel? And you took up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of the god Rephan, the figures which you made to worship them.' And in Paul, who was accurately instructed in the things of the Jews and afterwards became a Christian through the paradoxical appearance of Jesus, such things are said in the Epistle to the Colossians:

'Let no one disqualify you, delighting in self-abasement and worship of the angels, intruding into the things he has seen, vainly puffed up by the mind of his flesh, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, being supplied and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with the growth of God.' But Celsus, having neither read nor learned these things, has somehow represented the Jews as not transgressing the law in worshipping the heaven and the angels in it.

Still being somewhat confused, and not having carefully observed the matters of this passage, he supposed that the Jews, induced by the incantations used in trickeries and sorceries, worship the angels in heaven on account of certain apparitions appearing through the incantations to those who chant them; not perceiving that this too, for those at least who do such things, was done contrary to the law, which says:

'You shall not follow ventriloquists, nor cleave to enchanters so as to be defiled by them;

I am the Lord your God.' He ought, therefore, either not to have referred these things at all to the Jews—he who observes Jews as keeping the law and says that they are those who live according to the law—or, in referring them, to have shown that it was the transgressing Jews who did such things.

But again, just as those transgress the law who in some darkness worship in secret out of sorcery, blinking and dreaming through dim apparitions, worshipping those said to draw near, and such things;

so also those who sacrifice to sun and moon and stars transgress the law exceedingly well.

And it was not possible, according to the same man, to say that the Jews both guard against worshipping sun and moon and stars, and yet do not guard against the like in the matter of heaven and the angels.

But if we must make our defence—we who equally do not worship angels and sun and moon and stars—concerning our not worshipping even those called by the Greeks the manifest and sensible gods, we shall say that the law of Moses too knows these to have been apportioned by God to all the nations under heaven, but no longer to those taken as a chosen portion for God beyond all the nations upon earth.

It is written, at any rate, in Deuteronomy:

'The Lord your God has apportioned them to all the nations that are under the whole heaven.

But the Lord God took us and led us out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of inheritance for Himself, as at this day.' A chosen race, therefore, and a royal priesthood and a holy nation and a people called by God for His own possession, is the people of the Hebrews, concerning whom it was foretold to Abraham from the voice of the Lord to him:

'Look up to heaven and number the stars, if you are able to count them.

So shall your seed be'—he was not, while having the hope of becoming thus, like the stars in heaven, to worship those to whom, by understanding and keeping the law of God, they were destined to be made like.

For indeed it was said to them:

'The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are this day as the stars of heaven in multitude.' And in Daniel too such things are prophesied concerning those at the resurrection:

'And at that time your people shall be saved, every one that is found written in the book;

and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproach and everlasting shame;

and those who understand shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and of the many righteous, like the stars forever and ever.' Whence Paul too, taking it up in the passages concerning the resurrection, says:

'There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies;

but one is the glory of the heavenly, and another that of the earthly.

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.' It was not reasonable, then, that those who were taught grandly to ascend above all the works of creation and to hope for the best things concerning themselves with God in the fairest life, and who heard 'You are the light of the world' and 'Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in the heavens'—practising to possess the bright and unfading wisdom, or even having received it, it being a radiance of eternal light—should be so struck with amazement at the sensible light of sun and moon and stars as, on account of that sensible light of theirs, to think themselves somehow lower, possessing so great an intelligible light of knowledge and a true light and a light of the world and a light of men, and should bow down to those;

those whom, if indeed they ought to be worshipped, it would not be necessary to worship on account of the sensible light admired by the many, but on account of the intelligible and true light, if indeed the stars in heaven are rational living beings, earnest, and were enlightened with the light of knowledge by the Wisdom which is a radiance of eternal light. For indeed their sensible light is the work of the Maker of all things;

but their intelligible light has perhaps proceeded from themselves also, even out of the free will within them.

And this light too ought not to be worshipped by one who beholds and understands the true light, by participation in which these too, if indeed they have been enlightened, are enlightened; nor by one who beholds the Father of the true light, God, concerning whom it is well said:

'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' And just as those who worship sun and moon and stars because the light is sensible and heavenly would not worship a spark of fire or a lamp upon earth, seeing the incomparable superiority of those reckoned worthy to be worshipped over the light of sparks and lamps;

so those who have understood how God is light, and have apprehended how the Son of God is true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world, and who also understand how He says:

'I am the light of the world,' would not reasonably worship the, as it were, small spark, as compared with light, when God, the true light, is in sun and moon and stars;

the divinity of God exceeding by an excelling superiority, and further His Only-begotten too excelling the rest.

But being persuaded that the sun itself and the moon and the stars pray to the God over all through His Only-begotten, we judge that we ought not to pray to those who pray;

since they too wish rather to send us up to the God to whom they pray, than to draw us down to themselves, or to divide our power of prayer away from God and toward themselves.

And I will use this illustration too concerning them, suited to the place:

our Saviour and Lord, having once heard:

'Good Teacher,' referring him who said this to His own Father, says:

'Why do you call me good? No one is good except one—God the Father.' But if indeed the Son of the Father's love said this reasonably, being an image of the goodness of God, how would not the sun more reasonably say to those who worship it:

Why do you worship me? For 'you shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve';

whom I too, and all who are with me, worship and serve.

And even if someone is not so great a one, none the less let such a one also pray to the Word of God, who is able to heal him, and much more to His Father, who also to the righteous of old 'sent forth His word and healed them, and delivered them from their corruptions.'

God, then, according to His kindness, condescends to men not locally but providentially, and the Son of God is not only then but also always with His own disciples, fulfilling the saying, 'Behold, I am with you all the days, until the consummation of the age.' And if a branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine, it is plain that the disciples of the Word too, the intelligible branches of the true vine, the Word, cannot bear the fruits of virtue unless they abide in the true vine, the Christ of God, who is with us who are locally below upon earth, who, being with those everywhere joined to Him, and indeed also being with those who do not know Him, is everywhere.

And John, who wrote the Gospel, makes this clear in the person of John the Baptist, who says:

'There stands one in the midst of you whom you do not know, coming after me.' And it is absurd, when He who has filled heaven and earth and said:

'Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,' is with us and is near to us—for I believe Him who says:

'I am a God at hand, and not a God afar off, says the Lord'—to seek to pray to the sun, which does not reach to all things, or the moon, or one of the stars.

But let it be granted, that I may use the very words of Celsus, that the sun and the moon and the stars are prophesying rains and warmth and clouds and thunders;

is it, then, the case that, if these prophesy such great things, we ought not rather to worship and revere the God, in serving whom they prophesy, than His prophets? Let them, then, prophesy lightnings and fruits and all generation, and let them dispense all such things;

but we will not on this account worship the worshippers, just as neither Moses nor those after him who prophesied from God things better than rains and warmth and clouds and thunders and lightnings and fruits and all sensible generation.

But even if sun and moon and stars are able to prophesy prophecies better than rains, not even thus shall we worship them, but the Father of the prophecies in them, and the Word of God, their minister.

But let it be granted that they are heralds of His and truly heavenly angels; how, then, is it not even thus the case that the God proclaimed by them and announced ought rather to be worshipped than His heralds and angels? And Celsus takes to himself that we reckon sun and moon and stars to be nothing.

Concerning whom we confess that they too await the revelation of the sons of God, being for the present subjected to the vanity of material bodies, on account of Him who subjected them in hope.

He would not have declared concerning us that we say such great things—all the stars and the light, and 'Praise Him, you heavens of heavens'—as greatly praising God, to be nothing.

But Celsus does not know even this: 'For the earnest expectation of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God.

For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but on account of Him who subjected it, in hope, because the creation itself also shall be set free from the bondage of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.'

And in these things let our defence concerning our not revering sun and moon and stars come to an end.

But let us set forth the following statement also, so that after this we may, God granting, say in reply to it the things that shall be given us from the light of truth.

'And it is foolish of them to think that, when God, like a cook, applies the fire, all the rest of the race will be roasted, but they alone will remain—not only those who are then living, but also those who long ago died, rising from the earth in those very same fleshes; simply the hope of worms.'

'For what soul of a man would still long for a rotted body? Seeing that this doctrine is not even common to you and to some of the Christians, and it shows itself at once exceedingly foul and abominable and impossible.'

'For what body, wholly destroyed, is able to return to its original nature and to that very first constitution out of which it was dissolved? Having nothing to answer, they take refuge in a most absurd evasion, that everything is possible to God.'

But God can by no means do the shameful things, nor does He will the things contrary to nature;

nor, if you should desire something abominable according to your own depravity, will God be able to do this, and one must not at once believe that it will be.