Against Celsus 1 part 30/42

and he asserted that these—the supposed elders of our doctrine—promised nothing good, but everything tending to the harm of men.

Such were the things said by Celsus against Christians, so that they may be refuted by the great majority, who have ascertained by experience that such things are false, from having lived together with very many Christians and having neither perceived nor even heard anything of the kind concerning them.

After these things, as though forgetting that his purpose is to write against Christians, he says that a certain Dionysius, an Egyptian musician who conversed with him, told him concerning matters of magic that it has power against the uneducated and those corrupt in their morals, but against those who have studied philosophy it is unable to do anything, inasmuch as they have taken thought for a healthy regimen of life.

If, then, it were our present purpose to treat of magic, we would have added a few things to what we have said about it above for this purpose;

but since one must speak the more pertinent things in reply to Celsus's treatise, concerning magic we say that whoever wishes to examine whether ever even philosophers are susceptible to it or not, let him read the things written by Moeragenes in his Memoirs of Apollonius of Tyana, the magus and philosopher;

in which he—not a Christian but a philosopher—said that some not ignoble philosophers were captured by the magic in Apollonius, having gone in to him as to a sorcerer;

in which I think he also gave an account concerning the famous Euphrates and a certain Epicurean.

But we affirm, having ascertained it also by experience, that those who according to Christianity worship, through Jesus, the God who is over all, and who live according to his gospel, using the prescribed prayers continually and fittingly night and day, are susceptible neither to magic nor to demons.

For truly, "The angel of the Lord shall encamp round about those who fear him, and shall deliver them from all evil";

and the angels of the little ones in the church, appointed to preside over them, are said to behold continually the face of the Father who is in heaven—whatever the "face" may be, and whatever the "beholding" may be.

Next after these things, from another starting-point, Celsus says such things as these against us:

"They err most impiously in certain things, and concerning this greatest ignorance—likewise led astray from divine riddles—making a certain adversary to God, calling the same one 'devil' and, in the Hebrew tongue, 'Satan.'"

"Now in any case these are utterly mortal notions and not even holy to speak—namely, that the greatest God, wishing to benefit men in some way, has one who works against him, and is powerless."

"So the Son of God, then, is defeated by the devil, and, being punished by him, teaches us also to despise the punishments under him, foretelling that Satan too, appearing in like manner, will display great and wonderful works, usurping the glory of God;

by whom one must not be charmed and turned aside to him, but must believe in himself alone."

"These things are plainly those of a man who is a sorcerer, plying a trade and guarding himself in advance against those who hold opposing opinions and rivals collecting followers."

Then next after these, wishing to set forth the riddles concerning Satan which he thinks we introduce from having misheard, he says that the ancients hint at a certain divine war, Heraclitus speaking thus:

"One must know that war is common and strife is justice, and that all things come to pass according to strife and necessity";

and Pherecydes, who was much more ancient than Heraclitus, composing a myth of an army arrayed against an army, and giving Cronus as leader of the one and Ophioneus of the other, and recounting their challenges and contests, and that agreements were made between them, that whichever of them should fall into Ogenos (Ocean), these should be the defeated, while those who had thrust them out and conquered should have heaven.

And he says that the mysteries concerning the Titans and Giants who are reported to make war on the gods hold to this same purport, as do the things among the Egyptians concerning Typhon and Horus and Osiris.

Then, having set forth such things and not having explained in what way those are matters of a superior account while these are mishearings of them, he reviles us, saying that those are not similar to the things concerning the devil-demon or—what they say is truer—the human sorcerer holding opposing opinions.

And he hears Homer too in this way, as hinting at things similar to Heraclitus and Pherecydes and those who introduce the mysteries concerning the Titans and Giants, in these words of Hephaestus to Hera, where he says:

"For once before, when I was eager to defend you, he seized me by the foot and hurled me from the divine threshold," and these words of Zeus to Hera:

"Do you not remember when you hung on high, and from your two feet I suspended two anvils, and about your hands I cast a band of gold, unbreakable? And you hung in the upper air and the clouds;

and the gods were indignant throughout high Olympus, but were unable to release you by standing near;

and whomever I caught, I would seize and hurl from the threshold, until he reached the earth with little strength left."

And indeed, expounding the Homeric verses, he says that the words of God to matter are the words of Zeus to Hera, and that the words to matter hint that from the beginning, matter being in a disordered state, God took it in hand and bound it together by certain proportions and set it in order; and that those demons concerned with it who are insolent, these he casts away, punishing them by the journey down here.

And he says that Pherecydes, having understood these Homeric verses in this way, said:

"Beneath that region is the Tartarean region;

and the daughters of Boreas guard it—the Harpies and Thyella (Storm)—there, where Zeus casts out whichever of the gods commits insolence." And he says that the all-beautiful robe of Athena, beheld by all in the procession of the Panathenaea, holds to such notions.

"For it is shown from it," he says, "that a certain motherless and undefiled daimon prevails over the earth-born ones when they wax bold."

And having approved the fictions of the Greeks, he adds, in accusation of our doctrines, such things as this: that we teach "that the Son of God is punished by the devil, and we too, in order that, being punished by the same one, we might endure."

"And these things are utterly ridiculous;

for he ought, I think, to have punished the devil, but not to threaten the men slandered by him."

See, then, whether the one who accuses us as erring most impiously and being led astray from divine riddles does not himself plainly err, not having considered that the writings of Moses—not only much more ancient than Heraclitus and Pherecydes, but even than Homer—introduced the account concerning this evil one who fell from the heavenly places.

For the serpent—from whom the Ophioneus in Pherecydes is derived—having become the cause of man's being cast out of the divine paradise, hints at some such things, having deceived the female sex by a promise of divinity and greater things;

and the man is said to have followed her.

And the destroyer in the Exodus of Moses—who else could he be than the one who is the cause of destruction to those who obey him and do not resist him and do not contend against his wickedness? Moreover, the scapegoat in Leviticus, whom the Hebrew Scripture named Azazel, was none other;

whom the one who held the lot for the wilderness had to send away and avert;

for all those who, because of wickedness, are of the portion of the worse one, being opposed to those of the portion of God, are desolate of God.

But also the sons of Belial in Judges—of whom else are they called sons, than of this one, on account of their wickedness? And plainly, besides all these, in the still more ancient book of Job himself, even Moses's, the devil is recorded as presenting himself before God and asking for authority against Job, that he might surround him with the heaviest circumstances—first by the destruction of all his possessions and of his children, and second by surrounding Job's whole body with what is called the wild elephantiasis.

For I pass over the things from the Gospels concerning the devil tempting the Saviour, lest I seem to bring forward, from more recent writings, the things concerning the subject under inquiry against Celsus.

And in the last parts of Job, in which the Lord, through a whirlwind and clouds, spoke to Job the things recorded in the book named after him, there is no little to be gathered concerning the dragon that is said.

I do not yet speak of the things from Ezekiel, as concerning Pharaoh or Nebuchadnezzar or the ruler of Tyre, or the things from Isaiah, in which the king of Babylon is lamented;

what beginning and origin he had, and that wickedness arose from certain ones who shed their wings and followed the first one who shed his wings.

For it was not possible for that which is good by accident and as a supervening thing to be like that which is good in essence;

which—to one who, so to speak, takes up the living bread for his own preservation—could never befall.

But if it befalls anyone, it befalls through that one's own fault, when he has been careless about partaking of the living bread and the true drink;

from which, being nourished and watered, the wing is restored, even according to the most wise Solomon, who said concerning the truly rich man: "For he has prepared for himself wings like an eagle, and returns to the house of him who presides over him."

For God, who knows how to make good use of even those who came into being from wickedness as need requires, had to assign such evil ones somewhere in the universe, and to set up a contest on behalf of virtue, lying open to those who wish lawfully to strive to take it up;

so that, having been tested by the wickedness of these as gold in fire, and having done everything that they may put forth nothing counterfeit upon their rational nature, they may be shown worthy of the ascent to divine things, and may be drawn up by the Word to the highest blessedness of all and, so to speak, the summit of good things.

Now the one named in the Hebrew dialect Satan, and more Hellenized by some as Satanas, when translated into the Greek tongue, is "the adversary."

And everyone who has chosen wickedness and the life lived according to it, as one who does the things contrary to virtue, is a satan, that is, an adversary to the Son of God, who is righteousness and truth and wisdom.

But more properly the adversary is the first one who, while all were at peace and living blessedly, shed his wings and fell from blessedness;

who, according to Ezekiel, "walked blameless in all his ways, until iniquity was found in him," and being "a seal of likeness and a crown of beauty in the paradise of God," as it were having been sated with good things, came to be in destruction, according to the word spoken mystically to him:

"Thou hast come to destruction, and thou shalt not exist for ever." These few things, then, having trusted somewhat boldly and riskily in this Scripture, we have set forth—perhaps amounting to nothing;

but if anyone, having given leisure to the examination of the holy writings, should embody from every side the account concerning wickedness—both how it first arose and in what way it is destroyed—he would see that neither Celsus nor any of those dragged down by this evil demon and torn away from God and from the right conception concerning him and from his Word, has, in his soul, even dreamed of the purport of Moses and the prophets concerning Satan.

And since Celsus also throws out the things concerning the so-called Antichrist, having read neither the things in Daniel nor the things said about him by Paul, nor the things prophesied in the Gospels by the Saviour concerning his coming, a few things must be said about this too: that just as faces are not like faces, so neither are the hearts of men like the hearts of men.

It is clear that there would be in the hearts of men differences, even among those inclined toward the good—not all being shaped and formed toward it equally and similarly to one another—and among those who, through neglect of the good, dart toward the contrary;

for among these too, in some wickedness is exceedingly diffused, in others to a lesser degree;

but let them guard against the contrary.

And it had to be that the one of the extremes, the best, should be proclaimed Son of God on account of his pre-eminence, and the one diametrically opposite to him a son of the evil demon and of Satan and of the devil.

Then, since the base is characterized as being especially in the outpouring of wickedness and its extremity precisely when it counterfeits the better, on this account there come to be about the worse one, by the co-operation of his father the devil, signs and wonders and powers of falsehood.

For beyond the co-operations from demons that come to sorcerers for the basest purposes of those who deceive men, there comes a co-operation from the devil himself for the deception of the human race.

And Paul speaks concerning this so-called Antichrist, teaching and presenting with a certain concealment in what manner and when and why he will sojourn among the human race;

and see whether Paul does not set forth these things most solemnly and not worthy of any mockery, even the least:

"Now we beseech you, brethren, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our gathering together unto him, that you be not quickly shaken from your mind nor troubled, neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter as from us, as that the day of the Lord is at hand."

"Let no one deceive you by any means; for that day will not come unless the apostasy come first, and the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition, the adversary who exalts himself above all that is called God or an object of worship, so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God."

"Do you not remember that, while I was still with you, I told you these things? And now you know what restrains, so that he may be revealed in his own time;

for the mystery of lawlessness is already at work, only there is one who now restrains, until he be taken out of the way;

and then the lawless one shall be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will consume with the spirit of his mouth and will abolish by the manifestation of his coming, whose coming is according to the working of Satan with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, and with all deceit of unrighteousness for those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth that they might be saved."

"And for this cause God sends them a working of error, that they should believe the lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness." But to make each of these things clear does not befit the present work.

The prophecy concerning him has been spoken in Daniel, able to turn the one who reads it prudently and candidly to marvel at the words as being truly inspired and prophetic, in which are spoken the things concerning the coming kingdoms, beginning from the times of Daniel up to the destruction of the world.

It will be possible for the one who wishes to come upon it;

but see whether the things concerning the Antichrist are not of this kind:

"And at the latter end of their kingdom, when their sins are fulfilled, there shall arise a king bold of face and understanding riddles;

and his strength shall be mighty, and he shall destroy wonderfully and shall prosper and shall act, and shall destroy mighty ones and a holy people.

And the yoke of his collar shall prosper;

deceit shall be in his hand, and in his heart he shall be magnified, and by deceit he shall destroy many, and he shall stand up for the destruction of many, and he shall crush them like eggs in his hand." And what is said by Paul in the passage of his that I set forth, which says:

"so that he sits in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God," this too is said in Daniel in this manner:

"And upon the temple shall be the abomination of desolations, and until the consummation of time a consummation shall be given upon the desolation." So many things, then, out of more, it seemed reasonable to me to adduce, in order that the hearer might understand, even if only a little, concerning the purport of the divine words, which teach the things concerning the devil and the Antichrist;

with which being satisfied as to these matters, let us look also at another passage of Celsus, and contend against it as far as we are able.

He said, then, after the foregoing, such things as these:

"From where this very thing also occurred to them, to call him Son of God, I will indicate."

"Men of old called this world, as having come to be from God, both his child and a demigod."

"Quite alike, then, are this one and that one—a child of God."

He supposed that we call Jesus Son of God, having counterfeited the things concerning the world as having come to be from God and being his son and a god;

for he was not able, attending to the times of Moses and the prophets, to see that, in general, the prophets among the Jews prophesied that there is a certain Son of God before the Greeks and the men of old of whom Celsus speaks.

But neither did he wish to adduce what was said by Plato in his Letters—which we mentioned in the passages above—concerning the one who ordered this universe as being a Son of God;

lest he himself too be compelled by Plato, whom he often extolled, to admit that the Creator of this universe is a Son of God, and that the first and supreme God is his Father.

And if, asserting that the soul of Jesus is united to so great a Son of God by the highest participation in him, we no longer separate it from him, this is nothing to marvel at.

For the sacred words of the divine writings know also other things, which, being two by their own nature, are reckoned and are one with each other.

For instance, concerning man and woman it is said:

"They are no longer two but one flesh"; and concerning the perfect one who is joined to the true Lord, the Word and Wisdom and Truth, that "He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit."

And if he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit, who has been joined to the Lord—to the very Word and very Wisdom and very Truth—more than, or even comparably to, the soul of Jesus? And if this is so, the soul of Jesus and the firstborn of all creation, the God-Word, are not two.

Then, if when the philosophers of the Stoa say that the virtue of man and of God is the same, they do not say that the God who is over all is more blessed than the wise man among men according to them, but that the blessedness of both is equal, Celsus does not laugh at nor ridicule the doctrine;

but if the divine Word asserts that the perfect one is joined by virtue and united to the very Word, so that on this account, having ascended, we do not separate the soul of Jesus from the firstborn of all creation, he laughs at Jesus being called Son of God, not seeing what the things concerning him are that are said mystically, in secret, in the divine Scriptures.

But in order that we may bring whoever is willing to follow the consequences of doctrines and to be benefited to the acceptance of what is said, we say that the divine words declare the whole church of God to be the body of Christ, animated by the Son of God, and the members of this body, as of a whole, to be those who in some sense believe;

since, just as a soul gives life to and moves the body, which is not by nature able to move itself with vital motion, so the Word, moving toward what is fitting and energizing the whole body, the church, moves it and each member of those belonging to the church, who does nothing apart from the Word.

If, then, this has a consequence not, as I think, to be despised, what is hard in the soul of Jesus—and Jesus simply—not being separated, by the highest and unsurpassable communion with the very Word, from the only-begotten and firstborn of all creation, and in his no longer being other than he? But let these matters be thus.

Let us look also at what follows, in which, having declared in a single phrase and saying nothing even according to plausibility, he accuses the Mosaic cosmogony, saying:

"Moreover, the cosmogony too is exceedingly silly."

If, then, he had brought forward the way it appeared to him to be silly, and certain plausibilities, we too would have contended against them;

but it does not seem reasonable to me, against his bare assertion, to construct in what way it is not silly.

the heaven and the earth coming into being, and the invisible and unformed of the earth, and what the abyss is, and the darkness upon it, and what the water is and the Spirit of God borne upon it, and what the created light is, and what the firmament is as distinct from the heaven that came to be in the beginning, and so on with what follows.

And he asserted that the writing concerning the genesis of men too is exceedingly silly, neither setting down the words nor contending against them;

for he had not, I think, arguments able to overturn the fact that man was made according to the image of God.

But neither did he understand the paradise planted by God, and man's primary life in it, and the life that came to be from circumstance, when he was cast out on account of sin and settled opposite the paradise of delight.

And he who says that these things were said exceedingly sillily, let him first attend, both to each thing and to this:

"He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turns, to guard the way of the tree of life." And if indeed Moses, understanding nothing, wrote these things, but did something similar to what the poets of the Old Comedy wrote in jest:

"Proetus married Bellerophon, and Pegasus was from Arcadia";

but those men, wishing to make people laugh, composed such things, whereas it is not plausible that one who left writings to a whole nation about the things he wished to persuade those for whom he legislated—namely that they were from God—wrote irrational things and said without any sense:

"He stationed the cherubim and the flaming sword that turns, to guard the way of the tree of life," or anything else of the things said concerning the genesis of men and philosophized by the wise men among the Hebrews—this is not plausible.

Next after these things, having heaped together in bare assertions the differences of the things said by certain of the ancients concerning the genesis of the world and of men, he says that those who left our writings, Moses and the prophets, not knowing whatever the nature of the world and of men is, composed deep nonsense.

If, then, he had said in the way that seemed good to him concerning the divine writings being deep nonsense, we would have attempted to demolish the plausibilities that appeared to him concerning their being deep nonsense;

but as it is, doing the like to him and jesting, we too will assert that, never having known whatever the nature of the mind and of the word in the prophets is, Celsus composed deep nonsense, boastfully entitling it "A True Discourse."

And since he brings forward, as clear and accurately understood by him, the things concerning the days of the cosmogony for an accusation—of which some passed before light and heaven and sun and moon and stars came to be, and others after their genesis—we will note only this against him: that, surely, it did not escape Moses, who had foretold that the world was completed in being created in six days, and, forgetting himself, he then appends to these the words, "This is the book of the genesis of men, in the day that God made the heaven and the earth"? But there is no plausibility that Moses, having understood nothing, said after the things concerning the six days the words:

"In the day that God made the heaven and the earth." And if anyone thinks that these things can be referred to the words, "In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth," let him attend that, before "Let there be light, and there was light" and before "God called the light Day," it is said:

"In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth." Now to expound the account concerning intelligible and sensible things, and in what manner the natures of the days have been distributed into both kinds, is not our present purpose, nor to examine the things concerning the places;

for we have need of whole treatises for the exposition of the Mosaic cosmogony;

which we did as far as we were able, a good while before the present treatise against Celsus, out of the disposition we then had, treating of the six days of the Mosaic cosmogony.

"The Lord shall be to them an everlasting light, and God their glory."

Having misheard, I think, some wretched heresy that wrongly expounded the "Let there be light" as having been spoken by the Creator as a wish (prayer), he said:

"For surely the Creator did not, like those who kindle their lamps from neighbours, borrow light from above."

And having misheard yet another impious heresy, he said also this:

"If there was a certain god opposed to the great God, an accursed god, who did these things contrary to that one's intention, why did the other lend him the light?" To which we are so far from defending ourselves, that we rather wish, more plainly than they do, to accuse their opinion as being mistaken, and to take our stand not against the things of theirs which we do not know, as Celsus does, but against the things which we accurately know—partly having heard them from the people themselves, partly having carefully come upon their writings.

After these things Celsus says:

"But concerning the genesis and destruction of the world—whether it is ungenerated and indestructible, or generated but indestructible, or the reverse—I say nothing now about this."

Therefore neither do we say anything now about these matters;

for the present treatise does not demand it.

But neither do we say that the Spirit of the God who is over all came to be among these things here as among things alien to him, according to the text "The Spirit of God was borne above the water"; nor do we say that certain things devised wickedly, as by another Creator besides the great God against his Spirit—the higher God permitting it—needed to be put down.

Therefore let those who say these things take their leave far off, and Celsus who does not factually accuse them;

for he ought either not to have mentioned such things, or, according to what seemed to him humane, to have set them forth carefully and contended against the impious things said by them.

Nor have we ever heard that the great God, having given the Spirit to the Creator, demands it back.

Then next, foolishly bringing charges against such impious doctrines, he says:

"What god gives anything with the intention of demanding it back? For demanding belongs to one in need, but God is in need of nothing."

And to these he adds, saying as something wise against certain people:

"Why, when he lent it, did he, in lending to a bad one, not know it?" And he also says this:

"Why does he overlook a wicked Creator working against himself?" Then, I think, confusing heresies with heresies and not noting that these things belong to one heresy and those to another, he brings forward the objections raised by us against Marcion, having perhaps misheard these too from certain people who bring charges against reason cheaply and in an unlearned manner, not at all intelligently.

Setting forth, then, the things said against Marcion, and not noting that he is speaking against him, he says:

"Why does he secretly send and destroy the works of this one? Why does he force his way in stealthily and over-persuade and lead astray? Why does he charm away those condemned or accursed by this one—as you say—and lead them off in the manner of a kidnapper? Why does he teach them to run away from the lord? Why to flee the father? Why does he adopt them for himself, the father not consenting? Why does he profess to be father of others' own?" And he adds to them, as though in wonder:

"A fine god indeed, who desires to be father of sinners condemned by another, and of the disinherited, and—as they themselves say—of refuse; and who, when he sent them out to lead someone off, was unable to avenge this one when he was caught."