Against Celsus 1 part 6/42

If, then, the Greeks would not refer us to myths and to their own histories, wishing us to believe those without reason yet to disbelieve these even after much clear evidence—

the churches of God through Jesus, composed of those who have turned from countless evils, [bear witness].

And moreover, the name of Jesus drives away distractions of mind from men, and demons, and now also diseases; and it implants a certain marvelous gentleness and composure of character, and love toward man, and kindness and mildness, in those who do not feign it for the sake of livelihood or some human needs, but who have genuinely received the word concerning God and Christ and the judgment to come.

Next to these things, Celsus, suspecting the great works wrought by Jesus which were going to be exhibited—of which we have said a few out of many—pretends to concede that those things recorded are true: as many as are recorded concerning healings, or resurrection, or concerning a few loaves that fed many, from which many fragments were left over, or whatever else he thinks the disciples have told as marvel-mongers; and he brings against them this:

"Come, let us believe that these things were really done by you."

And immediately he puts them on a common footing with the works of the sorcerers, as those who promise more marvelous things, and with the things performed by those who learned from the Egyptians—who in the midst of the marketplaces, for a few obols, sell their solemn lore, drive demons out of men, blow away diseases, summon up the souls of heroes, display costly banquets and tables and cakes and dishes that have no real existence, and set things in motion as living creatures, though they are not truly living creatures but only appear such to the imagination; and he says:

"Since then those men do these things, shall it be necessary for us to think them sons of God? Or must we say that they are the practices of wicked and ill-fated men?" You see, then, how through these words he as it were admits that magic exists—I do not know whether he be the same man as the one who wrote several books against magic;

only that, as serviceable to his present purpose, he likens the things recorded concerning Jesus to the works of magic.

And they would indeed be alike, if, as far as mere display went, he had stopped short like the conjurers when he wrought his wonders;

but as it is, none of the sorcerers, through the things he does, calls those who behold them to the reformation of their characters, nor educates by the fear of God those who are astounded at the spectacles, nor attempts to persuade the onlookers so to live as those who shall be justified by God;

and the sorcerers do none of these things, since they are unable, or do not at all intend, nor wish to busy themselves with the betterment of men, inasmuch as they themselves are full of the most shameful and most notorious sins;

but he, by the marvels which he wrought, calling those who beheld the things done to the reformation of their characters—how is it not likely that he furnished himself as an example of the best life, not only to his own genuine disciples, but also to the rest? That so the disciples too might be urged on to teach men according to the will of God, and the rest, being taught no less by his character and his marvels than by his word how they ought to live, might do all things with a view to pleasing the God who is over all.

And if such was the life of Jesus, how could anyone reasonably compare him to the deliberate purpose of the sorcerers, and not believe, according to the promise of God, that he was God appearing in a human body for the benefit of our race? After this, confounding the argument and bringing forward as common charges against Christians the things said by some particular sect, he applies them to all who derive from the divine word, saying that "God could not have such a body as yours is."

But we, in answer to these things, say that he took a body in this way—as one who sojourned in this life as human, born of a woman, and capable of a human death.

Wherefore, besides the rest, we say that he became also a great contestant, in that through his human body he was tempted in like manner as all men in all points, yet no longer as men with sin, but altogether without sin.

For it is clearly manifest to us that "he did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth;"

and God delivered him up, who knew no sin, as one pure, on behalf of all those who had sinned.

Then Celsus says that "there could not be a body of God begotten as you, O Jesus, were begotten."

...many, and in a certain sense a body of God.

But he disbelieves the things written concerning his conception from the Holy Spirit, and believes that he was begotten when a certain Panthera had ruined the virgin;

and for this reason he said that "there could not be a body of God begotten as you were begotten."

But indeed concerning these matters we have spoken more fully in the foregoing.

And he says that "neither does a body of God feed on such things"—as though he were able to demonstrate from the evangelical writings that he fed, and on what sort of things he fed.

But be it so; let him say that he ate the Passover with his disciples, not only having said this:

"With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you," but also having actually eaten; and let him say that, having thirsted, he also drank at the well of Jacob;

what is this in relation to the things said by us concerning his body? And he clearly appears to have eaten of a fish after the resurrection;

for according to us he took a body, as one born of a woman.

"But neither," he says, "does a body of God use such a voice, nor such a means of persuasion."

And these things too are paltry and exceedingly contemptible;

For it will be said to him that the one who is believed among the Greeks to be a god—the Pythian and the Didymean Apollo—makes use of such an utterance, namely that of the Pythia or of the prophetess at Miletus.

And he is not on this account accused among the Greeks as not being a god—neither the Pythian nor the Didymean nor any other such Greek god established in a single place.

Yet it would have been far better than this for the god to make use of an utterance that produces in the hearers, by reason of being proclaimed with power, an unspeakable persuasion.

Then, reviling Jesus, the man who—because of his impiety and wicked doctrines—is, so to speak, hated of God, says that these things were the work of some God-hated and wicked sorcerer.

And yet, if names and realities are examined rigorously, it will be impossible for any man to be hated of God, since God loves all things that exist and abhors none of the things He has made;

for He did not create anything while hating it. But if certain prophetic expressions say such a thing, they will receive this general principle of interpretation: that Scripture uses words concerning God as though He had human passions.

But what need is there to make a defense against one who supposes that, in the persuasive arguments he promises to use, he must resort to slanders and revilings, as though Jesus were a wicked man and a sorcerer? For this is the work, not of one who proves anything, but of one suffering a vulgar and unphilosophical passion; whereas one ought to set forth the matter fairly, examine it candidly, and say against it, as far as possible, whatever objections arise.

But since Celsus's Jew has here brought his argument against Jesus to a close, we too will somewhere here bring to an end the compass of our first book against him.

And, since God grants the truth that destroys false words, according to the prayer that says,

"In Your truth destroy them," we will begin in what follows the second personated discourse, in which the Jew is made by him to speak to those who have believed in Jesus the things that come next.

AGAINST THE TREATISE ENTITLED "THE TRUE DOCTRINE" BY CELSUS: BOOK TWO BY ORIGEN. In the first volume of what we have dictated against the treatise of Celsus entitled "The True Doctrine," having ended with the Jew's personated discourse against Jesus, which had received a sufficient treatment, we now propose to compose this volume, making our defense against the charges he brings against those from the people of the Jews who have believed in Jesus.

And this very first point we note: why ever did Celsus, having once decided to use personation, not introduce a Jew speaking to those who believe from among the Gentiles, but rather to those who believe from among the Jews?

For the argument would have seemed far more plausible had it been written against us [Gentiles].

But perhaps the man who professes to know everything did not perceive what was consistent in this matter of personation.

What, then, does he say to those who believe from among the Jews? This we must consider.

Believing in Jesus, they have not forsaken the ancestral law.

For they live according to it, having come to be named after the "poverty" of the law, taken in its [literal] sense.

For "Ebion" means "the poor man" among the Jews, and those from among the Jews who have received Jesus as the Christ are called Ebionites.

And Peter also appears for a long time to have kept the Jewish customs according to the law of Moses, as one who had not yet learned from Jesus to ascend from the law according to the letter to that according to the spirit;

which we have learned from the Acts of the Apostles.

For on the day after an angel of God had been seen by Cornelius, suggesting to him to send to Joppa for Simon called Peter, Peter went up to the housetop to pray about the sixth hour.

And he became hungry and wished to eat.

But while they were preparing it, a trance came upon him, and he beheld the heaven opened and a certain vessel descending, like a great sheet, let down to the earth by four corners, in which were all the four-footed beasts and creeping things of the earth and birds of the air.

And there came a voice to him:

"Rise, Peter; kill and eat."

"By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common and unclean."

And a voice came to him a second time:

"What God has cleansed, do not you call common." Observe, then, in this how Peter is presented as still keeping the Jewish customs concerning clean and unclean things.

And from what follows it is made clear that he had need of a vision, in order that he might share the words of the faith with Cornelius—who was not an Israelite according to the flesh—and with those who were with him; for he was still living as a Jew and according to the traditions of the Jews, despising those outside Judaism.

And in the Epistle to the Galatians, too, Paul makes plain that Peter, still fearing the Jews, ceased to eat with the Gentiles, and when James came to him, separated himself from the Gentiles, fearing those of the circumcision;

and the rest of the Jews, and Barnabas, did the same thing with him.

And it was indeed consistent that those sent to the circumcision should not depart from the Jewish customs, when those reputed to be pillars gave to Paul and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship—they themselves going to the circumcision, so that the others might preach to the Gentiles.

And why do I say that those who preached to the circumcision withdrew and separated themselves from the Gentiles, when even Paul himself became a Jew to the Jews, that he might gain the Jews?

Wherefore also, as is written in the Acts of the Apostles, he offered an offering upon the altar, in order to persuade the Jews that he was not an apostate from the law.

Now if Celsus had known all these things, he would not have made the Jew speak to those who believe from Judaism, saying:

"What possessed you, O fellow-citizens, that you forsook the ancestral law and, beguiled by him with whom we were just now disputing, were most ludicrously deceived and deserted from us to another name and another way of life?" But since we have once come to speak of Peter and of those who taught Christianity to those of the circumcision, I think it not out of place to set forth a certain saying of Jesus from the Gospel according to John, together with its interpretation.

It is indeed written that He said:

"I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now;

but when He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you into all the truth;

for He will not speak from Himself, but whatever He hears He will speak." And we inquire in this passage what those many things were which Jesus indeed had to say to His disciples, but which they were not then able to bear.

Perhaps, since the apostles were Jews and brought up in the law of Moses according to the letter, He had to tell them what the true law is, and of what heavenly things the worship among the Jews was performed as a copy and shadow, and of what good things to come the law concerning foods and drinks and feasts and new moons and sabbaths contained a shadow.

And these were many things which He had to say to them;

but doctrines which had been born and bred together with them up to the man's mature age, and which had persuaded those who had received them that these things were divine and that to disturb them was impious—to convict these, in the surpassing excellence of the knowledge that is according to Christ (that is, according to the truth), as refuse and loss, so that the hearers might be persuaded—this He deferred to a more suitable season, the one after His passion and resurrection.

For it would truly have been to apply the remedy unseasonably to those who could not yet contain it, since it would have proved subversive of the opinion they had already formed concerning Jesus, namely as concerning the Christ and the Son of the living God.

And consider whether it does not contain a meaning not to be despised, thus to hear the words "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now";

for many are the points belonging to the spiritual interpretation and elucidation of the law;

and the disciples, being then born and reared among Jews, could not in any way bear them.

And I think also that, since those things were a type, but the truth was what the Holy Spirit was to teach them, for this reason it was said:

"When He comes, the Spirit of truth, He will guide you into all the truth";

into all the truth of the realities, in the types of which you, while engaged, supposed that you were rendering the true worship to God.

And indeed, according to the promise of Jesus, the Spirit of truth came upon Peter, saying to him concerning the four-footed beasts and creeping things of the earth and birds of the air:

"Rise, Peter; kill and eat." And it came to him while he was still scrupulously superstitious, for he says even to the divine voice:

"By no means, Lord; for I have never eaten anything common and unclean." And it taught him the doctrine concerning the true and spiritual foods in the words "What God has cleansed, do not you call common." And following upon that vision, the Spirit of truth, guiding Peter into all the truth, told him the many things which he could not bear when Jesus was still with him according to the flesh.

But concerning these things there will be another occasion for expounding what pertains to the interpretation of the law of Moses.

But now it is proposed to refute the ignorance of Celsus, in whom the Jew says to his fellow-citizens and the Israelites who have believed in Jesus:

"What possessed you that you forsook the ancestral law?" and what follows.

But how have they forsaken the ancestral law, who rebuke those that do not hearken to it, and who say:

"Tell me, you who read the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons"—down to "which things are an allegory," and what follows.

And how have they forsaken the ancestral law, who are always making mention in their discourses of the things of their fathers, and who say:

"Does not the law also say these things? For in the law of Moses it is written:

'Is it for the oxen that God cares? Or does He say it altogether for our sakes?' For our sakes it was written"—and what follows.

And how confusedly the Jew in Celsus says these things, when he might more plausibly have said: "Some of you have forsaken the customs on the pretext of interpretations and allegories; some, while also interpreting (as you profess) spiritually, nonetheless keep the ancestral customs no less; and some, without even interpreting, are willing both to receive Jesus as the one foretold and to keep the law of Moses according to the ancestral usage, as having in its very letter the whole mind of the Spirit."

But how could Celsus have made clear the matters pertaining to this subject—he who in what follows mentioned godless sects, utterly alien to Jesus, and others that abandon the Creator, but did not see also that there are Israelites who believe in Jesus and have not forsaken the ancestral law? For it was not his aim, as a lover of truth, to examine fully all that pertains to the subject, so that, if he found anything useful, he might accept it;

but rather, having become wholly an enemy bent on overturning things the moment he heard them, he wrote down such things as these.

Then the Jew in him says to those who have believed from among the people: "Yesterday and the day before, and at the time when we were punishing this fellow who was deluding you, you deserted the ancestral law"—knowing nothing accurate in the things he was saying, as we have shown.

And after these things it seems to me to involve a certain cleverness, namely: "Or how is it that you begin from our sacred writings, but as you go on dishonor them, having no other source to name for your teaching than our law?" For truly, for Christians the introduction is from the sacred writings of Moses and the prophetic scriptures;

and after the introduction, in the interpretation and elucidation of them, lies the progress for those being introduced, as they seek the mystery according to revelation, kept silent through eternal ages but now made manifest in the prophetic utterances and in the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And not, as you say, do those who advance dishonor the things written in the law, but they rather invest them with greater honor, by demonstrating how great a depth of wise and ineffable words those writings possess—things not contemplated by the Jews, who read them more superficially and after the manner of fables.

And what is strange about the law being the beginning of our teaching, that is, of the gospel—since our Lord Himself also says to those who do not believe in Him:

"If you believed Moses, you would believe Me;

for he wrote of Me.

But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?" But also one of the evangelists, Mark, says:

"The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet:

'Behold, I send My messenger before Your face, who will prepare Your way before You,'" showing that the beginning of the gospel hangs upon the Jewish writings.

What, then, is said against us by the Jew in Celsus in the words:

For if someone foretold to you that the Son of God would come to men, this man was our prophet and the prophet of our God.

Now what charge does this bring against Christianity, if John, who baptized Jesus, was a Jew? For it does not follow, because he was a Jew, that everyone who believes—whether he comes to the Word from among the Gentiles or from the Jews—must keep the law of Moses according to the letter.

After this, even though Celsus repeats himself concerning John, now saying a second time that he suffered punishment among the Jews for some wrongdoing, yet we shall not resume the defense, being content with what has already been said.

Next, since the Jew in his book disparages as stale the teachings about the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of God, honor for the righteous and fire for the unrighteous, and asserts that the Christians are taught nothing new in these matters, he supposes that he is overthrowing Christianity.

We must say to him that our Jesus, seeing that the Jews were doing nothing worthy of the teachings found in the prophets, taught by a parable that the kingdom of God would be taken away from them and given to those from among the Gentiles.

Therefore one can truly see that all the things of the present-day Jews are myths and idle tales—for they do not have the light of the knowledge of the Scriptures—while the things of the Christians are truth, able to lift up and elevate a man's soul and mind, persuading him to hold a citizenship not like that of the Jews below, somewhere down here, but in the heavens.

This is evident to those who behold the greatness of the conceptions contained in the law and the prophets, and who are able to set them forth to others as well.

But let it even be granted that Jesus observed all the customs of the Jews, down to their very sacrifices.

What does this contribute toward the conclusion that one ought not to believe in him as the Son of God? Jesus, then, is the Son of the God who gave the law and the prophets.

And we who belong to the Church do not transgress him; rather, we have indeed fled from the myth-makings of the Jews, while we are made sober and instructed by the mystical contemplation of the law and the prophets.

For the prophets too, so as not to bring the mind of what is said to rest in the plain narrative, nor in the legislation according to the words and the letter, in one place say, as though about to set forth a narrative:

"I will open my mouth in parables, I will utter dark sayings from of old"; while in another place, praying concerning the law as obscure and needing God in order to be understood, they say in prayer:

But let them show where even the appearance of a word spoken in arrogance is to be found in the case of Jesus.

"Learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls." Or how is he arrogant who, when supper was taking place, laid aside his garments before the disciples, girded himself with a towel, poured water into the basin, washed each one's feet, rebuked the one unwilling to offer them, and said:

"If I do not wash you, you have no part with me"? Or how is he arrogant who says:

"And I am among you as one who serves, not as one who reclines at table"? Let someone prove whom he deceived, and let him point out both great and small lies, in order to show that Jesus told great lies.

There is also another way to refute him,

namely, that just as one lie is not more a lie than another lie, so neither is it more greatly a lie;

just as one truth is not more true than another truth, nor more greatly true.

But what were the impious deeds of Jesus? Let him declare them—especially the Jew in Celsus's book.

Or is it impious to set aside bodily circumcision, the bodily Sabbath, bodily feasts, bodily new moons, and clean and unclean things, and to transfer the mind to a law of God that is worthy, true, and spiritual—together with the recognition that he who is an ambassador on behalf of Christ becomes a Jew to the Jews, that he might win the Jews, and to those under the law as one under the law, that he might win those under the law? And he says that many others would appear of the same kind, to those willing to be deceived, as Jesus was.

Then let the Jew in Celsus's book point out, not many, nor even a few, but even one such person as Jesus was—one who introduced to the human race a teaching and doctrines that, by the power within him, are beneficial to life, and who turns men away from a flood of sins.

He says that this charge is brought against the Jews by those who believe in Christ, namely, that they have not believed in Jesus as God.

Concerning this also we have made our defense above, showing at the same time in what sense we conceive of him as God, and in what respect we call him man.

"But how," he says, "did we, who have declared to all men that one would come from God to punish the unrighteous, dishonor him when he came?" To answer this, being utterly silly, does not seem to me reasonable.

It is as if someone else were to say:

"How could we, who have taught self-control, have done anything licentious; or how, being advocates of justice, could we have acted unjustly?" For just as those things are found among men, so it was a human thing that those who profess to have believed the prophets, when they speak of a Christ who is to come, should disbelieve in the one who had come according to what was prophesied.

But if one must add yet another reason, we shall say that the prophets foretold this very thing.

"You shall indeed hear but never understand, and you shall indeed see but never perceive."

"For the heart of this people has grown dull"—and what follows.

And let them tell us what they hear and what they see, for it is prophesied to the Jews that they would not understand what is said and would not see what is seen in the way they ought.

But indeed it is clear that, when they saw Jesus, they did not perceive who he was, and when they heard him, they did not understand from his words the divinity within him, which was transferring God's oversight from the Jews to those of the Gentiles who believe in him.

One can therefore see that, after the coming of Jesus, the Jews were utterly forsaken, possessing nothing of those things which they formerly considered sacred, and not even any sign of there being any divinity among them.

For there are no longer prophets nor wonders, traces of which are at least to some extent found among the Christians, and indeed some even greater ones;

and if we are to be believed when we say it, we ourselves also have seen them.

But the Jew in Celsus's book says:

"Why did we dishonor the one whom we had proclaimed beforehand? Was it in order that we might be punished more than the rest?" To this also one may reply that the Jews, more than the rest, will suffer not only at the judgment that is believed in, but indeed have already suffered, on account of their unbelief in Jesus and all the other outrages they committed against him.

...from their mother-city and their own place, on account of their ancestral religion—or are the Jews alone? They have suffered this as the most ignoble of peoples; for even though they had sinned in many things, in nothing so much as in what was dared against our Jesus.

After this the Jew says:

"But how were we to regard as God this man who, as was reported, displayed none of the things he promised, and who, when we had convicted and condemned him and judged him worthy of punishment, was caught while hiding and trying to escape in the most shameful manner, and was betrayed by the very ones he called his disciples? Yet," he says, "if he were God, it would not have been possible for him either to flee or to be led away bound, and least of all to be abandoned and handed over by those who were with him, who shared every private thing with him, who treated him as their teacher, and who regarded him as Savior and Son of the most high God and an angel."

To this we shall say that not even we suppose the body of Jesus, which was then seen and perceptible to the senses, to be God.

And why do I speak of the body? Not even the soul, concerning which it is said:

"My soul is very sorrowful, even to death." But just as, according to the doctrine of the Jews, the one who says:

"I am the Lord, the God of all flesh," and:

"Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me"—he is believed to be God, using as an instrument the soul and body of the prophet; while, according to the Greeks, the one who says:

"I know the number of the sand and the measures of the sea, and I understand the dumb, and hear him who does not speak"—he is held to be a god, speaking and being heard through the Pythia;

so, according to us, the Word, who is God and Son of the God of all, spoke in Jesus the words:

"I am the way, and the truth, and the life," and:

"I am the living bread which came down from heaven," and whatever else is similar to these.

We therefore reproach the Jews for not regarding as God this one who is in many places testified to by the prophets as being a great power and God, according to the God of all and Father.

For we say that it was to this one that the Father, in the creation-account according to Moses, commanded when he said:

"Let there be light," and "Let there be a firmament," and the rest of whatever God commanded to come into being; and it was to this one that he said:

"Let us make man in our image and likeness";

and the Word, having been commanded, made all the things that the Father enjoined upon him.

And we say these things not as putting them forward of ourselves, but as believing the prophecies current among the Jews;

in which it is said concerning God and his works of creation, in these very words, things to this effect: