Against Celsus 1 part 25/42

so that the teaching about souls—which are clothed in a body not by way of transmigration—may not be cast before chance ears, nor the holy things be given to dogs, nor the pearls thrown before swine.

For such a thing is impious, involving the betrayal of the secret oracles of the wisdom of God, concerning which it is rightly written:

"Wisdom will not enter into a maliciously contriving soul, nor dwell in a body enslaved to sin." But it suffices to present, after the manner of narrative, the things that have been spoken in a hidden way as though in the form of a narrative, so that those who are able may work out for themselves the matters pertaining to this place.

Let us, then, understand all those upon the earth as using one divine language; and insofar as they are in concord with one another, let them be kept in the divine language;

and let them remain unmoved from the east, so long as they hold the thoughts of the light and of the eternal radiance that comes from the light.

But these men, when they move themselves away from the east, thinking thoughts alien to the east, let them find a plain in the land of Shinar—which is interpreted "a gnashing of teeth," as a symbol of their losing the very means by which they are nourished—and let them dwell there.

Then, wishing to gather together the things of matter and to glue to heaven things not naturally fitted to be glued, that through material things they may plot against the immaterial, let them say:

"Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire." So then, as men who strengthen and fix fast the clay and material things, and who wish to make the brick into stone and the clay into pitch, and through these to build a city and a tower whose top—so far as their own supposition goes—shall reach unto heaven, in accordance with their exalted heights that rise up against the knowledge of God: let each be delivered up, according to the proportion of his movement away from the east (which has come to be greater or lesser in each of them), and according to the proportion of his fashioning of the bricks into stones and of the clay into pitch and of the building made from these, to angels—angels more or less severe, of this kind or of that—until they pay the penalties for what they have dared.

And let each one of those who created for themselves their own language be led by the angels to the regions of the earth according to their own desert—some, let us say, to a scorching land, others to one that punishes its inhabitants because it is frozen; and some to a land harder to cultivate, others to one less so; and some to a land filled with wild beasts, others to one that has fewer of them.

Then, if anyone is able—as in the figure of a narrative which both has something true in itself and also indicates something secret—let him behold also those who kept their original language, who, by not having moved from the east, remained in the east and in the eastern language;

and let him understand that these alone became the Lord's portion and his people, called Jacob, and became also the lot of his inheritance, Israel;

and let these alone be overseen by a ruler who did not take those under him for the purpose of punishment, as the others did,

(receiving punishments) more numerous indeed, but still bearable.

And conceiving this as taking place over a longer time, with healing continually being applied and these people from time to time being turned back, let him behold them being abandoned—in proportion to the sins committed—to those who obtained the other regions; yet, having earlier been punished to a lesser degree and having paid their penalty, as though disciplined, they return to their own homes;

but later let him see them being handed over to harsher rulers—as the Scriptures would name them, to the Assyrians, then to the Babylonians.

Then, even though healings are applied, let him behold them no less increasing the sins committed, and on this account being scattered by the plundering rulers of the remaining nations among the other portions.

And let their own ruler purposely overlook them being plundered by the rulers among the remaining nations;

so that he too, with good reason, as though avenging himself, having received authority to draw away from the remaining nations as many as he can, may do so, and may lay down laws for them and prescribe a manner of life by which they must live;

in order that he may lead them up to that end to which he had been leading those who did not sin from the former nation.

And through this let those who are able to behold such great matters learn that the one who obtained those who had not previously sinned is much more powerful than the rest;

since he has been able, taking choice ones from the portion of all the nations, to remove them from those who had received them for punishment, and to bring them over to laws and a manner of life that contribute to the amnesty of the sins they had previously committed.

But, as we said before, let these things be stated by us in a hidden manner, presenting the matters which those misheard who said that the regions of the earth were from the beginning apportioned to different overseers, divided up according to certain spheres of dominion, and administered in this way;

from which Celsus too, taking his cue, uttered the statements set forth above.

But since those who moved away from the east, on account of which they sinned, were given over to a reprobate mind and to passions of dishonor, and in the lusts of their hearts to uncleanness, so that being sated with sin they might come to hate it, we shall not subscribe to Celsus's view, when he asserts that, on account of the overseers apportioned to the regions of the earth, the practices among each people are rightly performed; rather, we even wish to do, not what is dear to those overseers, but otherwise than their things.

For we see that it is holy to abolish the things from the beginning customary in various places, by means of better and more divine laws, which Jesus, as the most powerful one, established—he who rescued us from the present evil age and from the rulers of this age who are being brought to nothing;

but it is unholy not to cast oneself upon the one who has appeared and been demonstrated to be purer and more powerful than all rulers—to whom God spoke, as the prophets foretold many generations beforehand:

"Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance and the ends of the earth for your possession." For he himself has become our expectation—we who from among the nations have believed in him and in his Father, the God who is over all.

These things, moreover, have been said by us not only in reply to what was set forth concerning the overseers, but they also, in a measure, anticipate the things said against us by Celsus, in which he says:

"I will ask them: whence have they come, or whom do they have as the founder of their ancestral laws?"

They will say, "No one"—those very people who have themselves set out from there and who bring their teacher and chorus-leader from nowhere else;

and yet they have departed from the Jews.

We, therefore, each of us, have come in the last days, when our Jesus had sojourned among us, to the manifest mountain of the Lord—the Word who is above all word—and to the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.

And we see in what manner this house is built upon the tops of the mountains—that is, upon all the prophetic words, which are its foundation.

And this house is exalted above the hills, which seem to profess among men something exceptional in wisdom and truth.

(That is, above all that boasts itself against) the godliness of Jesus Christ.

"Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will declare to us his way, and we will walk in it."

"For out of those in Zion went forth a law," and it has been transferred to us as a spiritual law.

"But also the word of the Lord went forth from that Jerusalem," that it might be distributed everywhere and judge among the nations, choosing out those whom it sees to be obedient, but reproving the many people who are disobedient.

And we say, to those who ask us whence we have come or whom we have as our founder, that we have come, according to the precepts of Jesus, to beat our warlike and insolent rational swords into ploughshares, and to refashion into pruning-hooks the spears that formerly belonged to our fighting spirit.

For we no longer take up the sword against any nation, nor do we learn war any more, having become through Jesus sons of peace—he who is our leader—instead of the ancestral customs in which we were strangers to the covenants, receiving a law for which, confessing thanks to him who delivered us from error, we say:

"How false were the idols our fathers acquired, and there is none among them that sends rain." Our chorus-leader, then, and teacher, having come forth from the Jews, dispenses to the whole inhabited world the word of his own teaching.

And these things, anticipating much, we have refuted to the best of our ability against the passage of Celsus that is brought against many, joining them to his statements set forth above.

But that we may not pass over the things said by Celsus in the intervening passages, let us set forth these also.

One might also use Herodotus as a witness to this point, who speaks thus:

"For the inhabitants of the cities of Marea and Apis, dwelling in the parts of Egypt bordering on Libya, considering themselves to be Libyans and not Egyptians, and being vexed at the religious observance concerning the sacred rites, wishing not to be debarred from cows' flesh, sent to Ammon, declaring that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians;

for, they said, they dwelt outside the Delta and were not in agreement with them, and they wished to be permitted to taste of all things."

"But the god would not permit them to do this, declaring that Egypt is that land which the Nile waters when it overflows, and that those are Egyptians who, dwelling below the city of Elephantine, drink from that river." These things are recorded by Herodotus.

(Celsus then adds:) But Ammon is in no way worse at conducting the embassies of divine matters than the angels of the Jews;

so that there is nothing unjust in each people observing their own customs.

Indeed, we shall find that what differs among them is very great according to the various nations, and yet each of them seems to consider their own ways especially good;

Among the Ethiopians, those who inhabit Meroë worship Zeus and Dionysus alone; the Arabians worship Urania and Dionysus, these two alone; all the Egyptians worship Osiris and Isis; the people of Saïs worship Athena; while the people of Naucratis, who began this not long ago, have given the name Sarapis, and the rest worship according to their laws, each people as they will.

And some abstain from sheep, revering them as sacred; others from goats; others from crocodiles; others from cows; while from swine they abstain out of loathing.

Among the Scythians, indeed, it is even held honorable to feast upon human beings.

And there are some among the Indians who even think it a pious deed to eat their own fathers.

And somewhere the same Herodotus says:

I shall again make use of his very words for the sake of credibility:

For if one were to set before all mankind the task, bidding them choose out the fairest customs from among all customs, each people, having examined them, would choose their own;

so convinced is each people that their own customs are by far the fairest of all.

It is therefore not likely that any man, save a madman, would make such things into a laughingstock.

That all men hold this view concerning their customs may be established by many other proofs as well, and among them by this one in particular.

Darius, during his reign, summoned those of the Greeks who were present and asked them at what price they would consent to eat the bodies of their dead fathers;

and they replied that they would not do this for any price whatsoever.

Darius after this summoned those of the Indians called Callatiae, who do eat their parents, and asked them, in the presence of the Greeks who learned through an interpreter what was said, for what price they would consent to burn their dead fathers with fire;

and they cried aloud, bidding him utter no such ill-omened words.

Such, then, are these customs as they are established; and Pindar seems to me to have spoken rightly when he declared that custom is king of all. Through these passages, Celsus' argument seems to be making its way toward the claim that all men ought to live according to their ancestral traditions, and could not be blamed on this account;

but that Christians, having forsaken their ancestral traditions and not constituting any single nation as the Jews do, are culpable for attaching themselves to the teaching of Jesus.

Let him then tell us whether those who pursue philosophy and are taught not to be superstitious will be acting fittingly when they abandon their ancestral customs—even to the point of eating what is forbidden in their native lands—or whether they will be doing something contrary to what is fitting. For if, because of philosophy and the lessons that oppose superstition, they do not keep their ancestral customs and would even eat what their forefathers forbade them, why should not Christians too, when reason persuades them not to busy themselves with images and statues, nor even with the works of God's craftsmanship, but to rise above them and present the soul to the Creator—why should they not, doing what is analogous to the philosophers, do this without blame? But if, in order to safeguard the thesis he has set before himself, Celsus, or those who approve of his views, should say that even one who has become a philosopher will keep the ancestral customs,

then it would be time for philosophers—to take an example—to become utterly ridiculous among the Egyptians by refraining from eating an onion in order to keep their ancestral customs, or by abstaining from certain parts of the body such as the head and the shoulder, lest they transgress what was handed down to them by their fathers.

And I do not yet speak of those Egyptians who shudder at the bodily indecencies expelled in flatulence—that if one were to philosophize on the basis of such notions and yet keep his ancestral customs, he would be a ridiculous philosopher, doing unphilosophical things.

In the same way, then, the man who has been led by reason to worship the God of all things, yet because of his ancestral customs remains down below among the images and the man-made statues, unwilling to ascend by deliberate choice to the Creator, would be very like those who have learned the lessons of philosophy yet fear what is not fearful, and reckon it impiety to eat such-and-such a thing.

And what sort of being, after all, is Herodotus' Ammon, whose words Celsus has taken over as a demonstration that each should keep his ancestral customs? For their Ammon does not allow the inhabitants of the city of Marea and of Apis, who dwell on the borders adjoining Libya, to be indifferent about the use of cows' flesh;

yet this matter is not only in its own nature indifferent, but also presents no obstacle to anyone's being noble and good.

And if their Ammon had forbidden the use of cows because the animal is useful for agriculture, and besides because it is chiefly through the females that their kind is multiplied, the argument might perhaps have carried some plausibility;

but as it is, he simply wills that they, as people who drink of the Nile, should keep the Egyptian laws concerning cows.

And here Celsus, mocking the angels who among the Jews bear God's messages, declared that Ammon is no worse at conveying the message of the daemons than are the angels of the Jews;

but he did not examine their words and their manifestations, to see what they intend.

For he would have seen that it is not for cows that God cares—even where He seems to be legislating about cows or irrational animals—but that the things written for the sake of men, under the guise of being about irrational animals, contain a certain account of nature.

Celsus, then, says that each one does nothing wrong in wishing to observe his own established religious customs;

and it follows, according to him, that the Scythians do nothing wrong, since it is according to their ancestral customs that they feast upon men.

And those of the Indians who eat their fathers think they are doing pious deeds—and, according to Celsus, do nothing wrong, or at least nothing unjust.

He sets out, at any rate, a passage of Herodotus that argues in favor of each one's making fitting use of his ancestral laws, and he seems to approve those Indians in Darius' time, called Callatiae, who devour their parents, since, when Darius inquired at what price they would be willing to lay aside this custom, they cried out aloud and bade him speak no ill-omened words.

The written law is opposed to God's, when it grieves the citizens under the pretext of foreign laws;

but where the law of nature—that is, of God—commands the contrary of the written law, consider whether reason does not require us to bid a long farewell to what is written and to the will of the legislators, and to give ourselves over to God the Legislator and to choose to live according to His word, even if we must do this amid dangers and countless toils and deaths and disgrace.

For it would indeed be absurd that, when the things pleasing to God are other than the things pleasing to certain of the laws in the cities, and when it is impossible to please both God and those who champion such laws, one should despise the deeds by which one will please the Creator of all, and instead choose those by which one will be displeasing to God yet pleasing to the laws that are no true laws and to their friends.

And if it is reasonable in other matters to prefer the law of nature, which is the law of God, to the written law that men have framed in opposition to the law of God, how much more must this be done in matters concerning God? And we shall not, like the Ethiopians who dwell about Meroë, worship Zeus and Dionysus alone, as is pleasing to them; nor indeed shall we honor Ethiopian gods in the Ethiopian manner at all;

nor shall we hold, as the Arabians do, that Urania and Dionysus alone are gods—nay, we shall not regard them as gods at all, in whose case the female and the male are glorified; for the Arabians worship Urania as female and Dionysus as male;

nor shall we, like all the Egyptians, regard Osiris and Isis as gods, nor shall we range alongside them, after the manner of the people of Saïs, the goddess Athena.

And if to the people of Naucratis it seemed good to the elders to worship other gods, but to those who began only yesterday and the day before to worship Sarapis, a god who never at any time came into being,

we shall not on that account also declare that there is some new god, who did not previously exist and was not known to men.

But the Son of God, the firstborn of all creation, even if He seemed but recently to have become man, is by no means on that account new.

For the divine Scriptures know Him to be the most ancient of all created works, and that it was to Him that God spoke concerning the fashioning of man:

"Let us make man according to our image and likeness." Now I wish to set forth in what way it is unreasonable for Celsus to say that each one should worship his own ancestral gods.

For he says that the Ethiopians who inhabit Meroë know only two gods, Zeus and Dionysus, and worship these alone; while the Arabians likewise know only two—Dionysus, as the Ethiopians do, and Urania, who is peculiarly their own.

And according to his own account, neither do the Ethiopians worship Urania nor the Arabians Zeus.

If, then, one of the Ethiopians, having come by some circumstance to live among the Arabians, were reckoned impious for not worshiping Urania, and on this account were brought into peril of death, will it befit the Ethiopian to die, or to act contrary to his ancestral customs and worship Urania? For if it befits him to act contrary to his ancestral customs, he will, by Celsus' own reasoning, be doing what is unholy;

but if he should be led off to death, let Celsus show the reasonableness of choosing death—I do not know whether the doctrine of the Ethiopians teaches one to philosophize about the immortality of the soul and the honor that attends piety, if one worships, according to one's ancestral laws, beings reputed to be gods.

And the like may be said also concerning the Arabians, supposing they had by some circumstance come to sojourn among the Ethiopians about Meroë.

For these too, having been taught to worship only Urania and Dionysus, will not worship Zeus along with the Ethiopians;

and if, being reckoned impious, they should be led off to death, let Celsus say what they could reasonably do.

As for the myths concerning Osiris and Isis, it is superfluous and untimely for us to recount them now.

And even if the myths are taken allegorically, they will teach us to worship lifeless water and the earth that lies beneath men and all living creatures.

For so, I suppose, they interpret Osiris as standing for water and Isis for earth.

We have read in Numenius the Pythagorean concerning his fashioning, namely that he partakes of the substance of all the animals and plants that are governed by nature;

so that it might be made evident that, by means of imperfect rites and the conjurings that summon daemons, a god is fashioned not by image-makers alone, but also by sorcerers and poisoners and by the daemons charmed by their incantations.

We must therefore seek what is fitting food and unfit food for the rational and gentle living being that does all things with reckoning, and not by mere caprice revere sheep or goats or cows.

And to abstain from these is moderate enough, for much benefit comes to men from these animals;

but to spare crocodiles as well, and to reckon them sacred to some god or other dreamed up in myth—how is this not the most foolish thing of all? For it is the mark of utterly thunderstruck minds to spare animals that do not spare us, and to cherish creatures that devour men.

But to Celsus those who, according to certain ancestral customs, worship and cherish crocodiles are pleasing, and no word has been written by him against them;

yet Christians appear to him blameworthy, who are taught to loathe wickedness and to turn away from the deeds that come of wickedness, but to revere and honor virtue as begotten by God and as being the Son of God.

For we must not, on account of its feminine name, suppose that wisdom and righteousness are also female in substance—which, according to us, are the Son of God, as His genuine disciple has set forth, saying of Him:

"Who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." And so, even if we speak of a second God, let them know that by the second God we mean nothing other than the virtue that comprehends all virtues, and the reason that comprehends every reason whatsoever of the things created according to nature and in due primacy, and unto the profitable ordering of the whole;

and we affirm that this reason has been most intimately united and made one with the soul of Jesus, above every other soul, since He alone has been able perfectly to contain the supreme participation in the Reason-itself and the Wisdom-itself and the Righteousness-itself.

And since Celsus, after saying such things about the diverse laws, adds that "Pindar seems to me to have spoken rightly when he declared that custom is king of all," come, let us discuss this point as well.

What law, my good sir, do you say is king of all? If you mean the laws of the various cities, this is false;

for not all men are ruled by the same law;

and it should, if anything, have been said:

laws are kings of all—for of each nation among all peoples some law is king.

But if you understand "law" in its proper sense, this is the one that is by nature king of all;

even though some, like robbers, having revolted from the law, deny this law and live in a robber-like and unjust manner.

We Christians, therefore, having come to recognize the law that is by nature king of all—the very law that is identical with the law of God—endeavor to live according to it, having bidden a long farewell to the laws that are no true laws.

Let us also look at what Celsus says next, in which there is exceedingly little about Christians but a great deal about the Jews.

If, then, the Jews in these matters keep close to their own law, there is nothing blameworthy in them, but rather in those others who have forsaken their own customs and lay claim to the customs of the Jews.

But if they pride themselves as knowing something wiser, and turn away from association with others as not being equally pure, they have already heard that not even their doctrine concerning heaven is peculiarly their own; but—to pass over everything else—it was held also by the Persians long ago, as Herodotus somewhere makes clear.

For "they are accustomed," he says, "to offer sacrifices to Zeus by ascending to the highest peaks of the mountains, calling the whole circle of heaven Zeus."

I therefore think it makes no difference whether one calls Zeus "the Most High," or "Zen," or "Adonai," or "Sabaoth," or "Amoun," as the Egyptians do, or "Papaeus," as the Scythians do.

Nor, indeed, would they be holier than others on this account, that they are circumcised; for the Egyptians and the Colchians did this before them.

For this too the Egyptians practised earlier.

For this also was a custom of the Egyptians; and moreover they abstained from goats and sheep and oxen and fishes, while Pythagoras and his disciples abstained from beans and from all living creatures.

(Celsus says:) It is likely that these men are in good repute with God and are loved by him in some way differently from the rest, and that angels are sent down from there to them alone, as though they had been allotted some kind of land of the blessed.

For we see both the men themselves and the kind of land of which they have been deemed worthy.

(Celsus says:) So then let this chorus depart, having paid the penalty for its boastfulness, since it does not know the great God but has been led astray and deceived by the sorcery of Moses, and has become his disciple to no good end.

It is clear that in these words he accuses the Jews of falsely supposing themselves to be a chosen portion, above all the nations, of the God who is over all.

And so he charges them with boastfulness, as boasting of the great God yet not knowing him, but being led astray by the sorcery of Moses and deceived by him, having been made his disciples to no good end.

Now in part we have spoken in the preceding chapters concerning the august and exceptional polity of the Jews, during the time when the symbol of the city of God and of his temple and of the priestly service rendered to him at his altar stood firm among them.

But if anyone, fixing his mind on the intention of the lawgiver and on the polity according to him, and examining their affairs, were to compare them with the present conduct of the rest of the nations, he would admire no others more than these, as men who, so far as is possible among human beings, have stripped away all that is useless to the human race and accepted only what is profitable.

Therefore there were among them no gymnastic or theatrical or equestrian contests, nor women selling their bloom to anyone who wished to sow seed vainly and to outrage the nature of human seed.

And what a thing it was among them to be taught from the very tenderest age to rise above all sensible nature and to think that God is in no way established within it, but to seek him above and beyond all bodies! And how great a thing it was that, almost together with their birth and the completion of reason, they were taught the immortality of the soul, the places of judgment beneath the earth, and the honours of those who have lived well! These things were proclaimed in a more mythical manner to children and to those who still thought as children; but to those already seeking the truth and wishing to make progress in it, the things that had been, so to speak, myths were transformed into the truth hidden within them.

But I think that, in a manner worthy of their being called a portion of God, they despised all divination as vainly bewitching men and as coming from wicked demons rather than from some better nature, and sought knowledge of things to come in souls which, through their utmost purity, had received the Spirit of the God who is over all.

And the law that no one springing from the same doctrines may serve as a slave for more than six years—how is this not reasonable, and wronging neither master nor slave? What need is there to say? The Jews, then, would not protect their own law in the same way as the rest of the nations.

For it would be blameworthy in them, and would bring upon them the charge of insensibility concerning the superiority of their laws, if they were to think that these had been written in the same way as the others, those of the nations.

And even if Celsus does not wish it, the Jews know something wiser, not only than the multitude, but even than those who seem to be philosophers; for the philosophers, after their august discourses in philosophy, fall down before idols and demons, whereas even the lowest of the Jews looks to the God who is over all alone.

And rightly, so far as this is concerned, they pride themselves and turn away from fellowship with others as accursed and impious.

And would that they had not sinned by transgressing the law—first by killing the prophets, and afterwards by plotting against Jesus!