Against Celsus 1 part 35/42

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. But since our own free choice is not sufficient of itself to keep the heart altogether pure, but we have need of God who creates it such, therefore it is said by him who prays with understanding:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God.” But neither shall we, as though God were in a place, inquire of someone and ask:

How shall we go to him? For God is greater than every place and contains everything whatsoever, and there is nothing that contains God.

Therefore the command given to us to go to God is not meant bodily — “You shall walk after the Lord your God”; nor is it bodily that the prophet, having cleaved to God, says in his prayer:

“My soul clings close behind you.” Celsus therefore lies against us when he says that we expect to see God with the eyes of the body, and to hear his voice with our ears, and to touch him with sensible hands.

But we know that there are organs called eyes by the divine Scriptures homonymously with the eyes of the body, and likewise also ears and hands, and — more paradoxical than these — a more divine sense, different from that which is commonly named by the multitude.

For when the prophet says:

“Open my eyes, and I will perceive the wonders out of your law,” or, “The commandment of the Lord is radiant, enlightening the eyes,” or,

“Enlighten my eyes, lest I ever sleep unto death” — no one is so thunderstruck out of his wits as to suppose that the wonders of the divine law are perceived by the eyes of the body, or that the commandment of the Lord is something that gives light to the eyes of the body, or that a sleep producing death befalls the eyes of the body.

But also, when our Savior says:

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear,” anyone who is so disposed understands that these things are spoken concerning more divine ears.

And if it is said that the word of the Lord came by the hand of Jeremiah the prophet, or of some other, or the law by the hand of Moses, or that “With my hands I sought God and was not deceived,” no one is so foolish as not to take it that there are certain hands so called figuratively, concerning which John also says:

“Our hands have handled concerning the Word of life.” And if you wish to learn from the sacred writings about the higher and non-bodily sense, hear Solomon saying in the Proverbs:

“You will find a divine sense.” We have, then, no need, as those who seek God in this way, to go off to where Celsus sends us — to the shrines of Trophonius and of Amphiaraus and of Mopsus, where he says gods are beheld in human form and, as Celsus says, not lying but even manifest and clear.

For we know that these are demons, fed on the savor of burnt fat and on blood and on the exhalations rising from sacrifices, and thus held fast in the prison-houses built out of their own craving;

such places the Greeks have reckoned to be sanctuaries of gods, but we know that such dwellings belong to deceiving demons.

After this Celsus maliciously says, concerning the aforementioned gods in human form according to him, that one will see them not once slipping by, like the one who deceived these men, but always conversing with those who wish.

And by these words he seems to have considered Jesus a mere phantom, who after the resurrection from the dead appeared to the disciples as though slipping by so as to be seen by them;

while those whom he named, calling them gods in human form, he thinks always converse with those who wish.

But how can a phantom, as he himself calls it, having slipped by for the deception of those who beheld it, after that momentary appearance accomplish so much and turn the souls of so many and instill in them conviction that one must do all things pleasingly to God as men who will be judged? And how can what is called a phantom drive out demons and work other effects by no means contemptible — not allotted to a single place like his gods in human form, but extending over the whole inhabited world and gathering and drawing by its own divinity all whom it finds inclining themselves toward the good life? After this, in reply to which we have spoken as far as we can, Celsus again says such things as these:

And these too will be told again:

How, if not apprehended by sense, will they know God? What is it possible to learn apart from sense? Then, answering this, he says:

“This is the voice not of a man nor of the soul, but of the flesh”

as of a cowardly and body-loving race;

if, closing your senses, you look up with the mind, and turning away from the flesh you raise the eyes of the soul, only thus will you see God.

And if you seek a guide <for this way>, you must flee those impostors and sorcerers who promote idols;

lest you become altogether laughable, blaspheming the other gods who are shown forth as idols, while you revere one who is more wretched than even idols truly are — one no longer even an idol but really a corpse — and seek a father like to him.

First, then, in reply to his impersonation, in which he puts into our mouths words as though spoken by us in defense of the resurrection of the flesh, it must be said that it belongs to the excellence of one who impersonates to preserve the intention and the character of the person being impersonated, but it is a fault when one attaches words that do not befit the person of the speaker.

And equally blameworthy are those who, in impersonation, attribute to barbarians and uneducated men, or to household slaves who have never heard philosophical discourses nor spoken well, a philosophy which the impersonator has learned but which it was not likely the impersonated person should know; and again, on the other hand, those who attribute to wise men supposed by hypothesis, who have known divine things, the things said by uneducated men out of vulgar passions and reported out of ignorance.

Hence Homer is admired in many places for having preserved the characters of his heroes just as he conceived them from the beginning — such as that of Nestor, or of Odysseus, or of Diomedes, or of Agamemnon, or of Telemachus, or of Penelope, or of any of the rest;

whereas Euripides is mocked by Aristophanes as one who speaks out of season, because he often put into the mouths of barbarian women or household servants the words of doctrines which he had learned from Anaxagoras or some other of the wise men.

But if such is the excellence in impersonation, and such the fault, how shall one not reasonably laugh at Celsus for attributing to Christians things not said by Christians? For if he were fabricating the words of uneducated men, whence could such men be able to distinguish sense from mind, and sensibles from intelligibles, and to dogmatize in a manner similar to the Stoics, who do away with intelligible substances, concerning the apprehension of things apprehended by the senses, and that every apprehension hangs upon the senses? But if he is fabricating the words of those who philosophize and who carefully, so far as they can, examine the things of Christ, neither has he made his statements consistent even with these.

For no one who has learned that God is invisible, and that there are certain invisible creatures, that is, intelligible ones, would say, as though making a defense concerning the matters of the resurrection, the words:

“How, if not apprehended by the senses, will they know God?” or,

“What is it possible to learn apart from sense?” And it is written, not in works set apart and read by only a few studious persons, but in the more popular writings, that “The invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made;”

from which it is possible to know that, even if men in this life must begin from the senses and from sensible things, with a view to ascending to the nature of intelligible things, yet they must by no means remain among sensible things;

nor will they say that it is impossible to learn intelligible things apart from sense, by using the saying, “Who is able to learn apart from sense?” They will prove that this is not reasonably brought against this by Celsus, namely, “This is the voice not of a man nor of the soul, but indeed of the flesh.”

Saying, then, that the God of the universe is Mind, or beyond mind and being, simple and invisible and incorporeal, we shall affirm that God is apprehended by no other than that which has come to be according to the image of that Mind;

now indeed, to use the expression of Paul, “through a mirror and in a riddle,” but then “face to face.”

And a man, then — that is, a soul making use of a body, called the inner man, but also a soul — answers not the things which Celsus has written down, but the things which the man of God himself teaches.

But the voice of the flesh a Christian would not use, having learned by the Spirit to put to death the deeds of the body, and always to carry about the dying of Jesus in the body, and “Put to death your members which are upon the earth;” knowing also what is signified by “My Spirit shall not abide in these men forever, because they are flesh,” and understanding too that “Those who are in the flesh cannot please God,” and therefore doing all things to the end that he should no longer be in the flesh at all, but in the Spirit alone.

But let us see also to what he calls us, that we may listen to him as to in what manner we shall know God;

in respect of which he thinks that no one of the Christians could comprehend the things said by him, for he says:

“Nevertheless, then, let them hear, if indeed they are able to understand anything.”

What things, then, that are said by him does this philosopher wish us to hear? — this must be considered.

When he ought to be teaching us, he instead reviles us;

and when he ought to have shown his goodwill toward his hearers in the preface of his discourse, he instead speaks to those who die even unto death, in order that they may not abjure Christianity even so much as in word, and who are prepared for every torture and every kind of death;

and he says that we are also a body-loving race, we who declare:

“Even though we once knew Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know him so no longer,” and who thus readily lay down the body for the sake of piety, in a way that not even a philosopher would easily strip off his cloak.

He says to us, then, that “if, closing your senses, you look up with the mind, and turning away from the flesh you raise the eye of the soul, only thus will you see God,” and he thinks that these things — I mean what concerns the two kinds of eyes — having taken them from the Greeks, have not been philosophized about beforehand among us.

But it must be said that Moses, in recording the creation of the world, introduces man, before the transgression, as in one respect seeing and in another respect not seeing — seeing, in that it is said concerning the woman that “The woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasing to the eyes to behold and beautiful to contemplate,” but not seeing, not only in that it is said, as concerning blind eyes, by the serpent to the woman, “For God knew that on whatever day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened,” but also in the words, “They ate, and the eyes of the two were opened.”

Now their eyes of sense were opened, which they had done well to keep closed, in order that, not being distracted, they might not be hindered from seeing with the eye of the soul;

but those eyes of the soul which until then they had as seeing, and rejoicing in God and in his paradise, these, I think, they closed because of sin.

Hence also our Savior, knowing this twofold kind of eyes in us, says:

“For judgment I came into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may become blind” — hinting by “those who do not see” at the eyes of the soul, which the Word makes to see, and by “those who see” at the eyes of the senses.

But the Word blinded these, so that the soul might gaze without distraction upon what it ought to see.

In everyone, then, who lives as a Christian ought, the eye of the soul has been awakened while the eye of sense-perception is closed shut.

And in proportion to the awakening of the higher eye and the closing of the eyes of sense-perception, each one comes to understand and behold the God who is over all and His Son, who is the Word and Wisdom, and the rest.

Next, after the points examined, Celsus directs his discourse as though to all Christians, a discourse that would have been fitting to address—if at all—to those who confessedly are utterly alien to the teaching of Jesus.

For the Ophians, as we said in the earlier sections, who altogether deny Jesus, or any others who hold views similar to theirs, are the ones who promote idols—deceivers and sorcerers.

And those are the ones who wretchedly memorize the names of the gatekeepers.

In vain, then, does he say against Christians the words:

"deceivers and sorcerers, and promoters of idols."

And not even knowing that such people, no less than Celsus himself, malign Jesus and all the worship of God that accords with Him as sorcerers, together with Celsus he says, confounding us with those people in his own discourse:

"So that you may not be altogether ridiculous, blaspheming the other so-called gods as idols, while you revere one who is more wretched than even the idols themselves—indeed one who is not even an idol but truly a corpse—and seeking out a father like to him."

For that, not knowing what Christians say and what those who fabricate such myths say, but supposing that the charges brought against those people apply also to us, he utters these things against us which do not belong to us—this is clear from what follows: "For the sake of such deception, then, and those marvelous counselors and those demonic formulas addressed to the lion, the amphibian, the ass-faced one, and the other divine gatekeepers, whose names you wretches miserably memorize, you are wickedly possessed; <you are led off> and impaled."

And he did not see that none of those who hold the lion-faced one, the ass-faced one, and the amphibian to be gatekeepers of the ascent will stand firm unto death even for what appears to him to be the truth.

But what is done by us, through (so to speak) an excess of piety—since we yield ourselves up to death in every manner—and the being impaled, he attributes to those people who suffer none of these things;

and he reproaches us who are impaled for the sake of piety with those people's mythmaking about the lion-faced one and the amphibian and the rest.

It is not, therefore, on Celsus' account that we shun the discourse about the lion-faced one and the rest, for we never received any such thing in the first place;

but following the teaching of Jesus, we say the opposite of those people, not agreeing that Michael is of such a form in his countenance, or that some other of the beings previously listed is of such a kind.

We must also consider whom Celsus wishes us to follow, as those who will not lack ancient leaders and holy men.

He refers us to inspired poets, as he says, and wise men <and> philosophers, without giving them names; and while promising to point out the guides, he declares quite indefinitely "the inspired poets and wise men and philosophers."

But if he had given the names of each of these, it would have seemed reasonable for us to contend that he is giving us, as guides, men who are blind concerning the truth, so that we might stumble; or, if not entirely blind, at least men who have erred concerning many of the doctrines of the truth.

Whether, then, he wishes Orpheus to be an inspired poet, or Parmenides, or Empedocles, or even Homer himself, or Hesiod—let whoever wishes show how those who employ such guides will travel a better road and be benefited concerning the affairs of life, compared with those who, on account of the teaching of Jesus Christ, have abandoned all images and shrines, and indeed all Jewish superstition too, and who look up, through the Word of God, to the one God alone, the Father of the Word.

And who are the wise men or philosophers from whom Celsus wishes us to hear many divine things—we who have abandoned Moses, the servant of God, and the prophets of the Maker of the universe, who truly and by divine inspiration uttered countless things—and have abandoned Him too who shone upon the human race and proclaimed the way of godliness, and who left no one, so far as in Him lay, untasting of His own mysteries, but out of His surpassing love of mankind was able to give theology to the more intelligent, capable of raising the soul from the things of this world, yet no less condescended also to the lower capacities of unlettered men and simpler women and household servants, and, in a word, of those helped by none but Jesus alone toward living, as far as possible, a better life with such doctrines about God as they were able to receive? Then, after this, as though to a more effective teacher of theological matters, he refers us to Plato, citing his words from the Timaeus, which run thus:

"...but it is impossible to declare him to all." Then he adds to these the words, saying:

"See how a way to truth is sought by inspired men and <philosophers>, and how Plato knew that it was impossible for all to walk in it."

"And since for this reason it has been devised by wise men, that we might gain some conception of the Unnameable and First—a conception that makes Him manifest either by synthesis with other things, or by analysis from them, or by analogy—I am willing indeed to teach what is otherwise unspeakable; but I should be surprised if you could follow, bound as you are wholly to the flesh and seeing nothing pure."

Now in a lofty manner, and not contemptibly, Plato sets forth the words here quoted.

But consider whether the divine Word does not introduce in a more philanthropic way the Word who in the beginning was God with God becoming flesh, so that the Word might be able to reach to all—the Word whom Plato says it is impossible to declare to all, even for the one who has found Him.

Let Plato, then, say that it is a hard task to find the Maker and Father of this universe, thereby intimating that it is <not> impossible for human nature to find God in a manner worthy of Him, or if not worthily, at least to a greater degree than the many;

for if this were true, and God were in truth found by Plato or by some one of the Greeks, they would not have revered anything else and called it God and worshiped it, either abandoning this true God or taking up alongside Him things not to be taken up alongside so great a God.

But we declare that human nature is not sufficient in any way whatever to seek God and find Him purely, unless it is helped by the One sought, who is found by those who confess—after they do on their part what they can—that they have need of Him, He manifesting Himself to those to whom He judges it reasonable to appear, in so far as it is natural for God to be known by man, and for the soul of man, while still in the body, to know God.

But also, when Plato says that it is impossible to declare to all the Maker and Father of the universe whom one has found, he does not say that He is unspeakable and unnameable, but rather that, being speakable, He can be declared to a few.

Then, as though having forgotten the words of Plato that he had cited, Celsus says that God is unnameable in these terms:

"And since for this reason it has been devised by wise men, that we might gain some conception of the Unnameable and First."

But we say that not only God is unspeakable, but also certain others of the beings that are after Him;

which Paul, constrained, says he indicated in the words:

"He heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter," using "he heard" in the sense of "he comprehended," analogously to "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

We say, then, that to see the Maker and Father of the universe is indeed a hard task.

But He is seen not only according to the saying "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," but also according to what is said by the Image of the invisible God in the words "He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me."

For in these words no one of sound mind would say that Jesus, in uttering them, was referring them to His perceptible body that is seen by men, when He said:

"He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me."

For if so, then according to this all those too would have seen the Father, God, who said:

"Crucify, crucify him!"—and Pilate, who received authority over His human nature—which is absurd.

But that the words "He who has seen me has seen the Father who sent me" are not to be referred to the more ordinary interpretation is clear from what was said to Philip:

"Have I been with you so long a time, and you have not known me, Philip?" And this He said to him when he had requested and said:

"Show us the Father, and it suffices us." Whoever, then, has understood how one ought to hear concerning the only-begotten Son of God, who is God, the firstborn of all creation, in that the Word became flesh, will see how, by beholding the Image of the invisible God, one will come to know the Father and Maker of this universe.

And the Word of God, when He said:

"No one knows the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him," declares that God is known by some divine grace, which comes to be in the soul not without God but accompanied by a certain divine inspiration.

For it is likely that the knowledge of God is greater than human nature can attain—wherefore there are so many errors among men concerning God—but that by the kindness and love of God toward man, and by a marvelous and more divine grace, the knowledge of God reaches those who have been foreknown by God's foreknowledge as destined to live worthily of Him who is known, in no way debasing the piety toward Him, neither being led off to death by those who are ignorant of what piety really is and who fashion piety to be anything whatever rather than what piety truly is, nor being reckoned most ridiculous.

And I think that God, seeing also the arrogance and the disdain toward others of those who pride themselves greatly on having known God and on having learned divine things from philosophy, yet who, like the most uneducated, resort to images and their temples and the much-talked-of mysteries, chose the foolish things of the world—namely the simplest among Christians, who live more moderately and more purely than many philosophers—in order to put to shame the wise, who are not ashamed to consort with lifeless things as with gods or images of gods.

For who in his right mind would not laugh at one who, after such great and so many discourses in philosophy about God or gods, looks intently at images and either sends up his prayer to them themselves, or through the sight of them ascends—as he imagines he must—from the visible and symbolic to the One who is apprehended by the mind? But the Christian, even the unlearned one, is persuaded that every place in the world is a part of the whole, since the whole world is the temple of God;

and praying in every place, having closed the eyes of sense-perception and raised up those of the soul, he ascends above the whole world.

And he does not even stop at the vault of heaven, but, having come in mind to the place beyond the heavens, guided by the divine Spirit and being as it were outside the world, he sends up his prayer to God concerning no trivial matters;

for he learned from Jesus to seek nothing small—that is, nothing sensible—but only the great and truly divine things, all that, being given by God, contribute toward journeying to the blessedness that is with Him, through His Son the Word, who is God.

But let us see also what he says he will teach us, whether we shall be able to follow it—in which he says that we are wholly bound to the flesh, we who, if we live rightly and according to the word of Jesus, hear the saying: "You are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you."

He says also that we see nothing pure—we who strive not to be defiled, even as far as our reasonings, by the imaginings of vice, and who say in prayer:

"Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within my inward parts," so that with the heart alone—which is by nature able to see God—being pure, we may behold Him.

But the things which he says are these:

"Being and becoming, the intelligible and the visible;

with being is truth, but with becoming is error."

"Concerning truth, then, there is knowledge, but concerning the other there is opinion;

and of the intelligible there is intellection, but of the visible there is sight."

The intelligible is known by the mind, the visible by the eye.

Just as the sun among visible things—being neither eye nor sight, yet the cause to the eye of seeing, to sight of coming into being through it, to visible things of being seen, and to all sensible things of coming to be, and indeed itself the cause of its own being seen—so too is that One among intelligible things, who is neither mind nor thought nor knowledge, but the cause to mind of thinking, to thought of existing through him, to knowledge of knowing through him, and to all intelligible things and to truth itself and to being itself the cause of their being; for he is beyond all things, intelligible only by some unspeakable power.

These things have been spoken to men who possess understanding.

And if you too understand any of them, it is well with you.

Indeed, filled with this, men of old announced many good things.

If you cannot comprehend these things, keep silent and cover up your own ignorance, and do not say that those who see are blind and that those who run are lame, while you yourselves are utterly lamed in your souls and maimed, living in the body—that is, in what is dead.

To this we will reply—we who have made it our practice to bear no hostility toward anything well said, even if those outside the faith say it well, and not to contend with them nor seek to overturn what is sound. For those who revile people who, to the best of their ability, wish to be devout toward the God of all—who accepts both the faith of the simple toward him and the rational reverence of the more intelligent toward him, as with thanksgiving they send up prayers to the Maker of all and offer them as through a High Priest who has set before men the pure worship of God—and who call such men lame in soul and maimed, and say that they live in the body that is dead, are speaking against those who from inward disposition take pains to say:

"For though we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh; for the weapons of our warfare are not fleshly but mighty before God." Let them see that they are not, by this very thing—by speaking ill of men who pray to be God's own—making their own souls lame and maiming the inner man within themselves, cutting off from him, through their slanders against others, those qualities of fairness and steadfastness which have been naturally implanted by the Creator in the rational nature.

But those who, in addition to other things, have learned from the divine word and also practice it—to bless when reviled, to endure when persecuted, to entreat when slandered—these would be the ones who have set upright the foundations of the soul and who are cleansing and preparing the whole soul,

—not in order merely by words to separate substance from becoming and the intelligible from the visible, and to join truth to substance while fleeing by every means the error that goes with becoming, looking, as they have been taught, not at the things of becoming, which are seen and therefore temporary, but at the higher things—whether one wishes to call them "substance," or, because they are intelligible, "invisible," or, because their nature lies beyond perception, "unseen."

And thus the disciples of Jesus, even while they look at the things of becoming, use them as it were as a stepping-stone toward the understanding of the nature of intelligible realities.

For "the invisible things of God, since the creation of the world"—that is, the intelligible things—"are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made," in the act of being thought.

Yet they do not stop, having ascended from the created things of the world, at the invisible things of God;