Against Celsus 1 part 5/42

"Because of the iniquities of my people he was led to death." For if, according to them, the "people" are those concerning whom the prophecy is made, how is this one said to have been led to death because of the iniquities of God's people, unless he is other than the people of God? And who is this, unless it is Jesus Christ, by whose stripes we who believe in him were healed—when he stripped off the principalities and powers that were in us, and openly made a show of them upon the tree?

But to explain each detail in this prophecy clearly, and to leave none of it unexamined, belongs to another occasion.

These things, too, have been said at greater length, as I think, of necessity, on account of the statement of Celsus's Jew which was set forth.

But it escaped Celsus, and his Jew, and all who have not believed in Jesus, that the prophecies say there are two comings of Christ: the former more subject to human passions and more lowly, that Christ, being among men, might teach the way that leads to God and leave no one in human life any ground of excuse, as though ignorant of the coming judgement; and the other glorious and wholly more divine, having nothing of human passion mingled with its divinity.

To set forth all the prophecies would take very long;

but for the present it suffices to cite the passage from the forty-fourth Psalm, which is entitled, among other things, "A Song concerning the Beloved," where God is also clearly proclaimed in these words:

"Grace is poured upon your lips;

therefore God has blessed you for ever."

"Gird your sword upon your thigh, O mighty one, in your comeliness and your beauty; and bend the bow, and prosper, and reign, for the sake of truth and meekness and righteousness; and your right hand shall guide you wonderfully."

"Your arrows are sharpened, O mighty one; the peoples shall fall under you, in the heart of the king's enemies." Now attend carefully to what follows, where he is called God:

"For your throne, O God," he says, "is for ever and ever; the sceptre of your kingdom is a sceptre of uprightness."

"You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows." And observe that the prophet, in addressing God—whose throne is for ever and ever, and the sceptre of whose kingdom is a sceptre of uprightness—says that this God has been anointed by God, who was his God;

and that he was anointed because, above his fellows, this one loved righteousness and hated iniquity.

And I remember that I pressed very hard a man who was reckoned wise among the Jews with this passage;

who, being at a loss to say anything consistent with his own Judaism in reply to it, said that the words "Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; the sceptre of your kingdom is a sceptre of uprightness" were spoken to the God of all, but the words "You have loved righteousness and hated iniquity;

therefore God, your God, has anointed you," and what follows, were spoken to Christ.

...is not schooled by fear, but chooses the good for its own sake, is a son of God;

but this one differs by far and greatly from everyone who is called a son of God on account of virtue, since he is, as it were, a kind of fountain and origin of such sons.

Paul's statement runs thus:

"For you did not receive a spirit of slavery again unto fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, in which we cry:

Abba, Father." But some, as Celsus's Jew says, will refute innumerable persons who claim that Jesus said concerning themselves the very things which were prophesied concerning him.

We do not know, then, whether Celsus was aware of any who came into the world and wished to do something similar to Jesus, and to proclaim themselves sons of God or a power of God.

But since we examine the matters relating to these points in a love of truth, we shall say that Theudas, before the birth of Jesus, arose among the Jews, calling himself someone great;

and when he had died, those who had been deceived by him were scattered.

And after him, in the days of the census—when Jesus seems to have been born—a certain Judas the Galilean drew away after himself many of the Jewish people, as one who was wise and was introducing some novelty;

and when he too had paid the penalty, his teaching was destroyed, remaining only among a very few and insignificant people.

And after the times of Jesus, Dositheus the Samaritan also wished to persuade the Samaritans that he was the Christ prophesied by Moses, and he seemed to some to have prevailed by his teaching.

But it is not unreasonable to cite what was said very wisely by Gamaliel, who is recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, in order to show how those men were strangers to the promise, being neither sons of God nor powers of his, whereas Christ Jesus truly was the Son of God.

"For if this counsel and this work be of men, it will be overthrown, just as the works of those men were overthrown when they died;

but if it be of God, you will not be able to overthrow this teaching, lest you be found even to be fighting against God." Simon the Samaritan magician also wished to draw away some by his magic.

And at that time he deceived people; but now, throughout the whole world, one cannot find Simonians numbering, I suppose, thirty—and perhaps I have stated more than there really are.

There are very few about Palestine;

but in the rest of the world his name is nowhere to be found, that name by which he wished to spread abroad a reputation about himself.

For among those by whom it is preserved, it is preserved from the Acts of the Apostles;

and it is Christians who say these things about him, and the plain evidence testified that Simon was nothing divine.

After this, Celsus's Jew, instead of the Magi in the Gospel, says that Chaldeans were spoken of by Jesus as having been moved to come at his birth, to worship him while still an infant as a god;

and that this was made known to Herod the tetrarch;

and that he, having sent men, slew those who had been born at that same time, thinking to destroy this one along with them, lest, having survived the requisite span of time, he should reign.

Observe, then, in this the mishearing of one who did not distinguish Magi from Chaldeans, nor consider that their professions are different, and on this account falsely accused the Gospel writing.

And I do not know how he also passed over in silence what it was that moved the Magi, and did not say that it was a star seen by them in the east, according to what is written.

Let us see, then, what is to be said also with regard to these things.

We hold that the star seen in the east was new and like none of the usual ones, neither of those in the fixed sphere nor of those in the lower spheres, but that it came to be of such a kind as those which arise from time to time—comets, or beams, or bearded stars, or jar-shaped stars, or however else the Greeks are pleased to name the differences among them.

We establish this point in the following way.

It has been observed that such stars arise upon great events and the very greatest changes among the things on earth, signifying either revolutions of kingdoms, or wars, or whatever can happen among men that is able to shake the things on earth.

And in some cases comets have arisen even when good things were about to come; and the history concerning these is set forth.

If, then, at the rise of new kingdoms or other great events the so-called comet or some similar star arises upon the earth, what wonder is it that at the birth of him who was about to bring innovation to the human race and to introduce a teaching not only to Jews but also to Greeks, and indeed to many barbarian nations, a star should have arisen? But I would say that concerning comets no prophecy is recorded, that under such a kingdom or in such times such a comet would arise;

but concerning the star that arose at the birth of Jesus, Balaam prophesied, as Moses recorded, saying:

There shall arise a star out of Jacob, and a man shall rise up out of Israel. And if it be needful also to examine what is recorded concerning the Magi at the birth of Jesus and the appearing of the star, we would say such things—some addressed to the Greeks, and others to the Jews.

To the Greeks, then, we would say that the Magi, holding intercourse with demons and invoking them for the purposes they have learned and desire, accomplish such things only so long as nothing more divine and more powerful than the demons and the incantation that invokes them appears or is uttered;

but if some more divine manifestation occurs, the workings of the demons are overthrown, being unable to withstand the light of that divinity.

It is likely, then, that at the birth of Jesus also—since a multitude of the heavenly host, as Luke recorded and as I am persuaded, praised God and said:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men—for this reason the demons grew feeble and were enfeebled, their sorcery being exposed and their working dissolved, being overthrown not only by the angels who came to the region of the earth on account of the birth of Jesus, but also by the soul of Jesus and the divinity that was in him.

The Magi, therefore, wishing to do their accustomed things and not succeeding in what they formerly did through certain incantations and sorceries, sought out the cause, judging it to be a great one; and when they saw a divine sign in heaven, they wished to see what was signified by it.

It seems to me, then, that having the prophecies of Balaam which Moses also recorded—since he too was skilled in such matters—and finding there concerning the star, and also the words 'I will show him, but not now;'

'I bless him, but he is not near'—they conjectured that the man foretold along with the star had come to live among men, and as one superior to all the demons and to the things that were wont to appear and work among them, they wished to come and worship him in advance.

They came, then, to Judea, persuaded that some king had been born, but not knowing over what kingdom he would reign, nor knowing where he would be born;

bringing gifts which—if I may so put it—they offered to one compounded, as it were, of God and mortal man: as symbols, to him as king the gold, to him as one who should die the myrrh, and to him as God the frankincense.

And they offered them after they had learned the place of his birth.

But since it was God who, surpassing the angels that succor men, was present as the Saviour of the human race, an angel requited the piety of the Magi in coming to worship Jesus, having warned them not to go to Herod but to return by another way to their own land.

And if Herod plotted against the one who had been born—even though the Jew in Celsus may not truly believe this happened—it is no wonder.

For wickedness is something blind, and, wishing as though it were stronger than destiny to overcome it,

which thing Herod also experienced; for he both believed that a king of the Jews had been born and held an assent that did not agree with this belief, not seeing that either he is altogether a king and shall reign, or he shall not reign and is being put to death in vain.

He wished, then, to kill him, holding judgments at war with one another because of his malice, being moved by the blind and wicked devil, who also from the beginning had plotted against the Saviour, having imagined him to be someone great and that he would become so.

Keeping to the sequence of events—even if Celsus does not believe it—he [Joseph] withdrew with the child and his mother into Egypt;

but Herod slew all the children in Bethlehem and in its borders, thinking thereby to slay along with them the king of the Jews who had been born.

For he did not see the sleepless guardian Power that guards and keeps for the salvation of men those who are worthy, of whom first of all in honor and in all preeminence greater was Jesus—a king, not as Herod supposed he would be, but as it became God to grant a kingdom for the benefit of the governed, to one who would confer not, so to speak, a middling and indifferent benefit upon those made subject, but would truly instruct them by the laws of God and bring them into subjection;

which thing Jesus also knew; and while denying that he was a king as the multitude understand it, but teaching the exceptional nature of his own kingdom, he says:

If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews;

but now my kingdom is not of this world. And if Celsus had seen these things, he would not have said:

But if it was that you, having grown up, should reign in his stead, why, since indeed you have grown up, do you not reign, but the Son of God thus ignobly go begging, cowering for fear and creeping about up and down? Yet it is not ignoble, by prudent management, to avoid dangers rather than to go straight against them—not for fear of death, but in order that, by sojourning usefully in this life, he might benefit others, until the fitting time should come for the man who had assumed human nature to die a death that held something useful for men;

which is plain to him who has understood that Jesus died on behalf of men;

concerning whom we have spoken according to our ability in what precedes this.

After this, since not even knowing the number of the apostles he said that Jesus, having attached to himself ten or eleven infamous men, tax collectors and the most wicked sailors, fled hither and thither with them, basely and miserably gathering food—come, let us also discuss these matters as far as we are able.

It is plain to those who read the words of the Gospels, which Celsus does not even appear to have read, that Jesus chose twelve apostles—Matthew the tax collector—and those whom he confusedly called sailors he perhaps means James and John, since, having left the boat and their father Zebedee, they followed Jesus.

For Peter and his brother Andrew, who used a casting net for their necessary food, are to be reckoned not among sailors, but, as the Scripture recorded, among fishermen.

Let it be granted, too, that Levi the tax collector followed Jesus;

but he was certainly not of the number of his apostles, except according to some of the copies of the Gospel according to Mark.

Of the rest we have not learned the occupations from which, before their discipleship to Jesus, they procured their food.

I say, then, in answer to these things also, that to those who are able to examine prudently and fairly the matters concerning the apostles of Jesus it is plain that these men taught Christianity by a divine power and succeeded in bringing men under the word of God.

For there was not in them a power of speech and an order of delivery, according to the dialectical or rhetorical arts of the Greeks, by which the hearers were won over.

It seems to me that if Jesus had chosen certain men wise in the estimation of the multitude, and capable of conceiving and speaking acceptably to crowds, and had used them as ministers of his teaching, he would most reasonably have been suspected of having employed a method like that of the philosophers who preside over some sect;

and the announcement concerning the word being divine would no longer have shone forth, inasmuch as the word and the preaching would have been in the persuasive words of wisdom that lies in phrasing and in the composition of expressions;

and the faith would have been, like the faith of the philosophers of the world concerning their doctrines, in the wisdom of men and not in the power of God;

—the Gospel records concerning them, and Celsus accordingly has believed them, since they speak truly concerning their own lack of learning—would not anyone inquire whence these men, conversing boldly not only with Jews concerning faith in Jesus but also preaching him among the rest of the nations and prevailing, had a persuasive power? For it was not that which is customary with the multitude.

And who would not say that the saying, 'Come after me, and I will make you fishers of men,' Jesus fulfilled in his apostles by a certain divine power? Which power Paul also, setting it forth, as we have said in the foregoing, declares, saying:

And my speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. For according to the things said in the prophets, they foretell prophetically concerning the preaching of the Gospel: The Lord shall give the word to those who proclaim glad tidings with great power, the King of the powers of the Beloved—that the prophecy which says,

His word shall run very swiftly, might be fulfilled.

And we see indeed that into all the earth went out the voice of the apostles of Jesus, and to the ends of the world their words. For this reason they are filled with power who hear the word that is proclaimed with power, which they display both by their disposition and by their life and by contending unto death for the truth.

But certain men are empty, even though they profess to believe in God through Jesus, who do not seem to be brought to the word of God under a divine power.

And although I have already above mentioned an evangelical saying spoken by the Saviour, nonetheless I will now also use it in season, setting forth both our Saviour's foreknowledge concerning the preaching of the Gospel, most divinely made manifest, and the strength of the word, prevailing without teachers over those who believe through the persuasion that is with divine power.

The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers are few;

pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth laborers into his harvest. But since Celsus also said that the apostles of Jesus were infamous men, calling them tax collectors and the most wicked sailors, concerning this too we will say that it seems—in order that he may accuse the word—he believes the things written where he wishes, but in order that he may not accept the divinity manifested as proclaimed in those same books, he disbelieves the Gospels;

whereas he ought, seeing the love of truth in the writers from their record concerning the worse things, to believe also concerning the more divine things.

Now it is written in the Catholic Epistle of Barnabas—whence Celsus perhaps took it and said the apostles were infamous and most wicked—that 'Jesus chose his own apostles, being more lawless than all lawlessness.' And in the Gospel according to Luke Peter says to Jesus:

Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord. But Paul also, in the Epistle to Timothy, he too having later become an apostle of Jesus, says that: 'Faithful is the saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief.' And I do not know how he [Celsus] forgot, or did not think to say anything concerning Paul, who after Jesus established the churches in Christ.

For it was likely that he saw the account concerning Paul to require some defense—how, after having persecuted the Church of God and bitterly contended against the believers, even to the point of being willing to hand over the disciples of Jesus to death, he afterward changed to such a degree that from Jerusalem and as far round as Illyricum he fulfilled the gospel of Christ, and made it his ambition so to preach the gospel as not to build upon another man's foundation, but where the gospel of God in Christ had not so much as been proclaimed at all.

But if we are going to reproach those who have changed on account of their former life, then it is time for us to accuse Phaedo too, even after he had taken up philosophy, since, as the story relates, Socrates brought him over from a brothel to the philosophic life.

But shall we also reproach philosophy with the prodigality of Polemon, who succeeded Xenocrates?

Whereas even there one ought rather to commend this in philosophy, that the reasoning found in those who persuaded was able to remove from such great evils men who had been taken captive by them.

And among the Greeks one single Phaedo—and I do not know if a second—and one single Polemon turned from a profligate and most wretched life and took up philosophy; but with Jesus there were not only the twelve then, but ever afterward many times as many, who, having become a choir of self-controlled men, say concerning their former state:

"For we ourselves also were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various lusts and pleasures, passing our lives in malice and envy, hateful, hating one another;"

"but when the kindness and the love toward man of God our Savior appeared, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us, we became such as we now are."

"For God sent forth his word and healed them, and delivered them from their corruptions," as he who prophesied in the Psalms taught.

And I would add this also to what has been said, that Chrysippus, in his treatise On the Cure of the Passions, attempts—in order to allay the passions of men's souls—without pretending to determine what doctrine is true, to treat those who are gripped by the passions according to the various schools, and he says that, even if pleasure be the end, the passions must be cured in this way;

and even if there be three kinds of goods, no less according to this reasoning must those who are entangled in the passions be thus delivered from them.

But the accusers of Christianity do not see how many men's passions, and how many men's flood of vice, are checked, and how many men's savage characters are tamed, by occasion of the word.

To Him, on whom they pride themselves for their public-spiritedness, they ought to confess their gratitude, since by a new method he has removed many men from many evils; and they ought at least to bear witness to him, that even if not truth, yet what is beneficial to the human race.

And since Jesus, teaching his disciples not to be rash, said to them this:

"If they persecute you in this city, flee to the other;"

"and if they persecute you in the other, flee again to the next," and by teaching he became to them an example of a steadfast life, ordering matters so as not to confront dangers vainly, unseasonably, and unreasonably—

this again Celsus maliciously misrepresents, and the Jew in his work says to Jesus that "with your disciples you flee about hither and thither."

And we shall say that what is recorded concerning Aristotle is similar to the slander he has framed against Jesus and the disciples;

for he, seeing that a tribunal was about to be convened against him as against an impious man, on account of certain doctrines of his philosophy which the Athenians reckoned impious, withdrew from Athens and held his discourses in Chalcis, justifying himself to his acquaintances and saying:

"Let us depart from Athens, that we may not give the Athenians a pretext to incur a second pollution like that against Socrates, and that they may not a second time sin against philosophy." And Celsus says that Jesus, with his disciples, went about gathering their food in a shameful and beggarly manner.

Let him declare whence he got the "shameful" and "beggarly" character of this gathering;

for in the Gospels certain women, having been healed of their infirmities—among whom was also Susanna—provided food for the disciples out of their substance.

And which of those who pursue philosophy and have devoted themselves to the benefit of their pupils did not receive from them the things needful for his wants? Or did those men do this fittingly and well, but when the disciples of Jesus do the same, they are accused by Celsus of gathering their food shamefully and beggarly? After this, the Jew in Celsus next says to Jesus:

"And why, when you were still an infant, was it necessary for you to be carried off into Egypt, lest you be slain? For it was not likely that a god should be in dread of death."

"An angel came commanding you and your own household to flee, lest, being left behind, you should die."

"And could not the great God, who had already sent two angels on your account, guard you on the spot—his own Son?" Celsus supposes that by these words we hold that there was nothing divine in a human body and soul in the case of Jesus, but that his body too was such as the myths of Homer introduce.

At any rate, jesting at the blood poured out on the cross by Jesus, he says that it was not "ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods."

But we, believing in Jesus, who concerning the divinity in himself says:

"I am the way and the truth and the life," and whatever is similar to these, and who, concerning the fact that he was in a human body, declares this:

"But now you seek to kill me, a man who has spoken the truth to you,"—we say that he became a certain composite being.

And it was fitting that he who provided for his sojourn in this life as a man should not unseasonably confront the danger that reached even to death.

And in this way too it was necessary for him to be led by those who reared him, who were directed by a divine angel;

first the one who gave the oracle said:

"Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife;"

"for that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit;" and a second time:

"Arise, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you;"

"for Herod is about to seek the child to destroy him." In these things there seems to me to be nothing very paradoxical in what is recorded.

For it is said that in a dream, in either passage of the Scripture, an angel spoke these things to Joseph;

and that things should be revealed to certain persons in a dream to do such things happens to many others also, whether it be an angel or something whatsoever that presents images to the soul.

What then is absurd in the fact that he who once became man should also, according to human manner, be guided so as to avoid dangers—not because such a thing could not have come about otherwise, but because it was needful that whatever was practicable should be ordered in a methodical and orderly way concerning the salvation of Jesus? And it was better that the child Jesus should withdraw from Herod's plot and go away with those who reared him into Egypt until the death of the one plotting against him, than that the providence concerning Jesus should hinder man's free will, when Herod wished to slay the child, or that there should be about Jesus what the poets call "the cap of Hades," or something similar, or that those who came to kill him should be struck blind, like those in Sodom.

For the exceedingly paradoxical character of the help given to him, made more conspicuous than need be, would not have been serviceable to his purpose of teaching that, as a man attested by God, he had something more divine in the visible man—

which was the Son of God in the proper sense, God the Word, the power of God and the wisdom of God, he who is called Christ.

But it is not the proper occasion now to expound the matters concerning the composite being, and the elements of which the incarnate Jesus was composed, since there is a certain inquiry—if I may so call it—proper to believers regarding this topic.

After this, the Jew in Celsus says, in the manner of some learning-loving Greek educated in Greek lore, that "the ancient myths, in assigning a divine birth to Perseus and Amphion and Aeacus and Minos—not that we ourselves believed even these—nevertheless displayed great and marvelous works of theirs, truly beyond man, so that they might not seem incredible;"

"but you, what fair or marvelous thing have you done in deed or word? You showed us nothing, although we challenged you in the temple to furnish some clear token that you were the Son of God."

In answer to this it must be said that let the Greeks show us, in the case of any one of those enumerated, some work both beneficial to life and brilliant, extending even to later generations and so great as to produce credibility for the myth concerning them, which alleges that they were born of a divine seed.

But indeed they will show nothing—nor anything by far less great—concerning the men whom they recorded, comparable to those whom Jesus presented.