Against Celsus 1 part 8/42

for the mouth of the sinner and the mouth of the deceitful man is opened against me.' And if you observe what is written in the Psalm, you will find that, just as he was foreknown to be the betrayer of the Saviour, so too he was the cause of the betrayal and worthy, on account of his wickedness, of the curses spoken in the prophecy.

For 'let him suffer these things,' it says, 'because he did not remember to show mercy, and pursued a poor and needy man.' Therefore he was able to have remembered to show mercy and not to pursue the one whom he did pursue;

yet, though able, he did not do so, but betrayed him, so as to be worthy of the curses against him in the prophecy.

And with the Greeks we will use, in this manner, what was said to Laius—whether in the very words, or in something equivalent, as the tragic poet recorded:

It is said to him, then, by the one who knew beforehand the things that would be:

'Sow not the furrow of children against the will of the gods;

for if you beget a son, the one born will kill you, and all your house shall pass through bloodshed.'

In this too, then, it is shown that it was possible for Laius not to sow the furrow of children;

for the oracle would not have enjoined upon him what was impossible;

and it was also possible to sow, and neither of these was forced upon him.

But upon him who did not guard against sowing the furrow of children there followed, from his having sown, the events of the tragedy concerning Oedipus and Jocasta and their sons.

But the so-called 'idle argument,' being a sophism, is of this kind, stated by hypothesis to the sick man and, as a sophism, dissuading him from using a physician for health; and the argument runs thus:

'If it is fated for you to recover from your illness, then whether you bring in the physician or not, you will recover;

but also if it is fated for you not to recover from your illness, then whether you bring in the physician or not, you will not recover;

and it is either fated for you to recover from your illness, or fated for you not to recover;

in vain, therefore, do you bring in the physician.'

But elegantly there is set in counter-comparison to this argument something of the following kind:

'If it is fated for you to beget children, then whether you unite with a woman or do not unite, you will beget children;

but also if it is fated for you not to beget children, then whether you unite with a woman or do not unite, you will not beget children;

and it is either fated for you to beget children or not to beget;

in vain, therefore, do you unite with a woman.'

For as in this case, since it is impracticable and impossible to beget children without uniting with a woman, the uniting with a woman is not taken up in vain;

so if recovery from illness comes by way of medical art, the physician is necessarily called in, and false is the statement 'in vain you bring in the physician.' We have brought in all these things on account of what the most wise Celsus set forth, saying:

'Being a god he foretold, and it was wholly necessary that what was foretold should come to pass.'

For if by 'wholly' he means 'of necessity,' we will not grant it to him;

for it was possible also for it not to happen.

But if he says 'wholly' in the sense of 'it will be'—which is not prevented from being true, even though it is possible for it not to happen—this does no harm to the argument;

for it did not follow, from Jesus' having truly foretold the things concerning the betrayer or the denier, that he himself became the cause to them of impiety and an unholy deed.

...in the man; and seeing the things he would dare both from being a lover of money and from not being firmly minded toward his teacher—the things that ought (to be foretold)—he said, among many other things, also this:

'He who dipped his hand with me in the dish, that one will betray me.' And see the superficiality and the outright falsehood of such a statement of Celsus, who declared that one who has shared a man's table would not plot against him;

and if one would not plot against a man, much more would one who feasted with a god not become a plotter against him.

For who does not know that many who shared salt and table plotted against their table-companions? And the history of Greeks and barbarians is full of such examples;

and indeed the Parian iambic poet, reproaching Lycambes, who broke covenants after salt and table, says to him:

'But you set at nought a great oath, by the salt and the table.'

And those who care for love of learning in histories—giving themselves wholly to it and abandoning the more necessary studies about how one ought to live—will adduce more, showing how many who shared a table plotted against those (with whom they shared it).

Then, as if he had gathered up his argument with fitted proofs and logical sequences, he said this:

'And what is still more absurd, the god himself plotted against his table-companions, making them traitors and impious.'

For how Jesus either plotted, or made the disciples traitors and impious, he could not demonstrate except from the (false) sequence he supposed—which even any ordinary person could most easily refute.

After this he says that, if these things had been resolved by him, and being obedient to the Father he was being punished, then it is clear that to one who was a god and willed it, the things done according to his purpose were neither painful nor grievous.

And he himself did not see that he had said things contradictory to himself right at his feet.

For if he granted that he was being punished, since these things had been resolved by him, and being obedient to the Father he offered himself up, it is clear that he was being punished, and it was impossible that the things inflicted by those punishing him should not be painful;

but if to one who willed it the things inflicted were neither painful nor grievous, how did he grant 'he was being punished'? And he did not see that, having once taken up the body that comes through birth, he took it up as capable both of toils and of the grievous things that befall bodies, if we do not understand 'the grievous' as something chosen by preference.

As, then, willingly he took up a body not wholly of another nature than human flesh, so together with the body he took up also its pains and grievances, over which, as to not suffering them, he was not master—the power of bringing pains and grievances upon him resting with those who inflicted them.

But we showed before, in the foregoing, that had he willed not to come into men's hands, he would not have come.

He came, however, because he willed it, on account of what was previously shown—that his dying for men was profitable to the whole.

Next to these things, wishing to establish that what befell him was painful and grievous, and that it was impossible for him, even if he willed, to make them not such, he says:

'Why then does he wail and lament and pray that the fear of destruction may pass by, saying somewhat thus:

'O Father, if this cup can pass away?' And in these things too observe the malice of Celsus, that, not accepting the truth-loving character of those who wrote the Gospels—who could have passed over in silence the things which, as Celsus supposes, are matters of accusation, but did not keep silent for many reasons, which one will render in due time when expounding the Gospel—he accuses the gospel wording, embellishing it tragically and setting down not the things written:

for it is not found how Jesus 'laments.'

And he paraphrases 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass,' but no longer adds also that which of itself displays his piety and magnanimity toward the Father; the words next recorded he sets down as follows:

...impious men who hear the divine Scriptures and speak iniquity unto the heights.

For those men seem to have heard the 'I will kill' and often reproach us with it, but they do not even remember the 'I will make alive';

the whole text making clear that those who live for a common evil and act according to wickedness are slain by God, and that a better life is brought in to them in exchange—such as God would give to those who have died to sin.

And thus those men heard the 'I will smite' but no longer see the 'and I will heal';

which is something like what is said by a physician who has cut into bodies and made grievous wounds in order to remove from them the harmful and obstructive things, and who did not stop at the toils and the cutting, but by his treatment restored the body to the health set before it.

But they did not hear the whole of 'For he himself makes to suffer pain and again restores,' but only 'he makes to suffer pain.'

Thus, then, the Jew in Celsus too set out the 'O Father, would that this cup might pass away,' but no longer also the words that follow and those that present Jesus' preparedness and vigour for the passion.

And these matters too, having a copious exposition drawn from the wisdom of God, will reasonably be delivered to those whom Paul called 'the perfect,' when he says:

'We speak wisdom among the perfect.' For the present, deferring it a little, we briefly recall the things useful for the matter at hand.

We were saying, then, also in the foregoing, that some are utterances of the Firstborn of all creation in Jesus, such as:

'I am the way and the truth and the life,' and those like these; while others are of the man conceived according to him, such as:

'But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from the Father.'

And here too, accordingly, he depicts in his human aspect both the weakness of human flesh and the willingness of the spirit—the weakness in the 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,' and the willingness of the spirit in the 'Yet not as I will, but as you will.'

And if one must also observe the order of what was said, note that first was spoken that which, as one might say, accords with the weakness of the flesh, being one (utterance), and afterwards the things according to the willingness of the spirit, being more.

For one is the 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me,' but more are both 'Not as I will, but as you,' and 'My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.' And it should also be observed that it was not said:

'Let this cup depart from me,' but this whole thing was said piously and with deference:

'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.' And I know also a certain interpretation for the passage, that the Saviour, seeing what the people and Jerusalem would suffer in vengeance for the things daringly done against him by the Jews, said—for no other reason than out of love for them—wishing the people not to suffer what they were about to suffer, 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me';

as if to say: 'Since by my drinking this cup of punishment a whole nation will be forsaken by you, I pray, if it is possible, that this cup may pass from me, so that your portion, having dared (to act) against me, may not be wholly forsaken by you.'

But also, if, as Celsus says, nothing painful or grievous was happening to Jesus at that time, how could those after him have been able to use Jesus as an example of enduring the hardships borne for piety's sake, if he did not suffer the human experiences but only seemed to have suffered? Further, the Jew in Celsus says to Jesus' disciples, as those who fabricated these things, that 'not even while lying did you manage to cloak your fabrications plausibly.'

And to this it will be said that an easy road for cloaking such things was simply not to record them at all in the first place.

...that the same persons were both deceived about Jesus as being God and one who was prophesied, and also fabricated things about him, clearly knowing that the fabrications were not true.

Either, then, they did not fabricate but really believed thus and recorded without lying; or they recorded by lying, and did not believe these things, nor, being deceived, did they consider him to be God.

After this he says that some of the believers, as if coming from drunkenness into the state of laying hands upon themselves, alter the Gospel from its first writing threefold and fourfold and many times over, and remould it, that they might have (means) to deny against the refutations.

But I know no others who altered the Gospel than the followers of Marcion, and the followers of Valentinus, and I think also the followers of Lucanus.

This, however, when said, is no accusation against the doctrine, but against those who dared to tamper recklessly with the Gospels.

And just as the sophists, or the Epicureans, or the Peripatetics, or whoever the holders of false opinions may be, are no accusation against philosophy, so those who alter the Gospels and bring in strange heresies contrary to the intent of Jesus' teaching are no accusation against true Christianity.

And since after this the Jew in Celsus also reproaches Christians for using prophets who proclaimed beforehand the things concerning Jesus, we will say, in addition to what was said above on this point, also that...

For thus he would have seemed not to be snatching away so great a topic by means of a few little words, especially since he says that the prophetic sayings could be fitted to countless others far more plausibly than to Jesus.

And he ought indeed to have taken his stand carefully against this proof, which has prevailed among Christians as their strongest, and to have set forth, for each prophecy, how it can be fitted to others far more plausibly than to Jesus.

But he did not even perceive that this, if it were at all plausible to be said by someone against Christians, would perhaps have been plausible coming from those who are strangers to the prophetic writings;

whereas now Celsus has attached to the person of the Jew what a Jew would not have said.

For the Jew will not concede that the prophetic sayings can be fitted to countless others far more plausibly than to Jesus; rather, rendering for each one the interpretation that seems to him correct, he will try to take his stand against the Christians' understanding—not asserting things wholly convincing, but attempting to do so.

But we have already said above, anticipating this, concerning Christ's being prophesied as one who would come to the human race in two advents;

wherefore there is no longer need for us to make a defence against what is said, as by the Jew, that the prophets say the one who is to come is great and a ruler and lord of all the earth and of all the nations and armies.

In Jewish fashion, I think, and according to their rancour, he spoke—together with reviling Jesus without any proof, even plausible—that the prophets did not proclaim such a (death of) destruction.

And yet neither Jews nor Celsus nor anyone else can establish with proof that a death (of destruction) turns so many men away from the flood of evils to the life that accords with nature, with self-control and the rest of the virtues.

Celsus also threw in this:

'No one establishes a god, or a son of god, from such tokens and misheard reports, nor from such ignoble proofs.'

But he ought, having set out the misheard reports, to have refuted them, and to have demonstrated by argument the ignoble proofs;

so that, if the Christian seemed to say anything plausible, he might try to contend against it and overturn the argument.

But what he said about Jesus he met as concerning a great one, yet was unwilling to see that he had so met it, as the evident facts about Jesus present.

For as the sun, he says, illuminating all other things first displays itself, so ought the Son of God to have done.

We would say, then, that he did indeed do so;

God preparing the nations for his teaching, so that they might come under one Roman emperor, and that the unsociability of the nations toward one another, on the pretext of many kingdoms, might not make it harder for Jesus' apostles to do what Jesus commanded them, saying:

'Go and make disciples of all the nations.' And it is clear that Jesus was born in the reign of Augustus, who, so to speak, levelled the many peoples on earth through a single empire.

For it would have been a hindrance to the spreading of Jesus' teaching throughout the whole inhabited world that there were many kingdoms—not only for the reasons mentioned, but also because men everywhere would have been compelled to serve as soldiers and to fight on behalf of their fatherlands;

which used to happen before the times of Augustus, and still further back, when there was need that there be war, as between Peloponnesians and Athenians, and likewise of others against others.

How then would it have been possible for this peaceable teaching, which does not even permit avenging oneself on enemies, to prevail, unless at Jesus' coming the affairs of the inhabited world had everywhere been changed to a gentler state? After this he charges Christians with sophistry in saying that the Son of God is the very Word (Logos) itself; and he thinks he strengthens the charge by (saying) that, while professing the Son of God to be Word, we present not a pure and holy Word but a man most dishonourably led away and put to death by clubbing.

And concerning this too it has been said above in summary form against Celsus' accusations;

wherein it was demonstrated that the Firstborn of all creation took up a body and a human soul, and that God commanded concerning all the so many things in the world, and they were created, and that the one who received the command was God the Word.

And since it is a Jew who says these things in Celsus, we shall not unfittingly use the (text):

'He sent forth his word and healed them, and delivered them out of their corruptions';

which we also mentioned above.

But I, having met with many Jews, even those professing to be wise, have heard none commending the Son of God's being the Word, as Celsus said, attaching also this to the person of the Jew, who says:

'For if indeed the Word is for you the Son of God, then we too commend it.'

And it has been said before by us that Jesus can be neither a braggart nor a sorcerer;

so it is not necessary to repeat what has been said, lest, in response to Celsus' tautologies, we ourselves also fall into tautology.

And in finding fault with the genealogy, he in no way named the matters which are even investigated among Christians and adduced by some as accusations—namely the discrepancy of the genealogies.

For the truly arrogant Celsus, who professes to know all things of the Christians, did not know how to raise a sensible difficulty against the Scripture.

But he says that those who drew up the genealogy were presumptuous in tracing Jesus from the first man and from the kings among the Jews.

And he thinks he brings in something noble, that the carpenter's wife, being of so great a lineage, would not have been ignorant of it.

But what has this to do with the argument? Suppose she was not ignorant;

how does that harm what is at issue? Or suppose she was ignorant;

whence (does it follow) that, because she was ignorant, she was not descended from the first man and her lineage was not traced back to those who reigned among the Jews? Or does Celsus think it necessary that the poorer be born of altogether poorer ancestors, or kings of kings? It seems to me vain to dwell on the argument, since it is manifest that even in our own times some who are poorer than Mary have come from rich and renowned forebears, and some held to be of the most obscure nations have become even kings.

...(if he believes the things) of the Christians, yet disbelieves in those who establish the divinity in Jesus, we will say to him:

'O fellow, either disbelieve everything and think you have no ground to accuse, or, believing all, marvel that the Word of God became man and willed to benefit the whole human race.'

And a noble work of Jesus is that to this very day those whom God wills are healed by his name.

And concerning the eclipse in the time of Tiberius Caesar, in whose reign Jesus also seems to have been crucified, and concerning the great earthquakes that then occurred, Phlegon too recorded it, in the thirteenth or, I think, the fourteenth book of his Chronicles.

Making sport, as he supposes, of Jesus, the Jew in Celsus is recorded as knowing the Bacchus of Euripides who says:

'The god himself will free me, whenever I will.'

Now Jews do not greatly pursue Greek learning. But suppose some Jew did become such a lover of letters;

how then is it that Jesus, since he did not free himself when bound, was therefore also unable to free himself? Let him rather believe, from my own Scriptures, that Peter too, bound in prison, came out when an angel loosed his chains, and that Paul with Silas at Philippi in Macedonia, bound in the stocks, was released by divine power, when also the doors of the prison were opened.

But it is likely that Celsus laughs at these things, or even has not at all read the history;

for he would have seemed to say against it that certain sorcerers too loose bonds and open doors by incantations, so as to make the deeds of sorcerers common with the things recorded among us.

'But neither,' he says, 'did the one who condemned him suffer anything, such as Pentheus going mad or being torn apart.'

But he did not see that it was not so much Pilate who condemned him—who indeed knew that the Jews handed him over out of envy—as the Jewish nation;

which has been condemned by God, torn apart and scattered over all the earth, more than the dismemberment of Pentheus.

And why too did he willingly pass over the matter of Pilate's wife, who had seen a dream and was so moved by it that she sent to her husband, saying:

'Have nothing to do with that righteous man;

for today I have suffered many things in a dream because of him?' And again, passing over in silence the things that display Jesus' divinity, Celsus reproaches us from what is written in the Gospel concerning Jesus, adducing those who mocked him and put a scarlet robe on him and the crown of thorns and the reed in his hand.

Whence then, O Celsus, did you learn these things, except from the Gospels? Did you, then, see these things as worthy of reproach, while those who recorded them did not perceive that you and your like would laugh, but others would take an example of despising those who laugh and scoff at piety—despising them for the sake of him who readily died for it? Rather marvel at their love of truth, and at the nobility of him who willingly suffered these things for men and endured them with all forbearance and longsuffering;

for it has not been recorded that he wailed, or conceived or uttered anything ignoble from having been condemned.

As to 'Why, if not before, then now at least does he not display something divine, and rescue himself from this shame, and bring justice upon those who insult both himself and the Father?'—it must be said that one may say something similar to the Greeks too, who introduce providence and accept that divine signs occur: why ever does God not punish those who insult the divine and do away with providence? For as the Greeks may make a defence against these things, so we too will say things similar, or even better.

And there occurred too a divine sign from heaven, the eclipse of the sun, and the other marvels, making manifest that the one crucified had something divine and more than the many.

What does he say, even of the body being impaled? 'What kind of ichor, such as flows in the blessed gods?' He, then, is making sport; but we, from the worthy Gospels—even if Celsus does not wish it—will establish that the mythical and Homeric ichor did not flow from his body;

rather, when he was already dead, 'one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and there came out blood and water.'

He (John) knows that he speaks the truth. Now of other dead bodies the blood congeals and pure water does not flow out; but in the case of the dead body of Jesus, the marvel was that even about the dead body there were blood and water poured out from the sides.

But if, for the sake of accusing Jesus and Christians, he brings from the Gospel even phrases not well interpreted, while keeping silent about the things that present Jesus' divinity, let him be willing to hear the divine signs: let him read the Gospel and see that 'the centurion and those with him keeping watch over Jesus, seeing the earthquake and the things that happened, feared greatly, saying:

'This man was the Son of God.' After this, he who took phrases from the Gospel which he thinks worthy of accusation reproaches Jesus with the vinegar and the gall, as though he rushed greedily to drink and did not endure the thirst, as even an ordinary man often endures.

And this, taken by itself in its figurative sense, is a matter for (deeper) exposition;

but for now what is said may receive a more general answer of this kind to the difficulties raised, namely that the prophets foretold this too.

For it is written in the sixty-eighth Psalm, from the person of Christ:

'And they gave me gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.' Or let the Jews say who it is that says these things in the prophet, and let them point out from history the one who took gall for his food and was given vinegar to drink;

or let them even dare to say that the Christ whom they think will come is destined to be in these circumstances, that we may say:

what harm, then, is there in the prophesied thing's having already come to pass? This very thing too, foretold so many years before, is sufficient, together with the other prophetic foreknowledges, to move one who examines the whole matter fairly to assent to Jesus as the prophesied Christ and Son of God.

After this the Jew says to us further:

'These things, then, you bring as a charge against us, O most faithful ones, because we do not consider this man a god, nor agree with you that he endured these things for men's benefit, that we too might despise punishments?' And to these things we will say that we do bring a charge against Jews, who were nurtured in the Law and the prophets that proclaim Christ beforehand, since they neither dissolve the things adduced by us to them as proof that this is the Christ—thereby furnishing an excuse for not believing the (proposed) solution—nor, while not dissolving them, do they believe in the one prophesied, who plainly showed, in those who became his disciples and even after the time of his incarnation, that he endured these things for men's benefit; having as the aim of his first advent not to judge the affairs of men, and, before teaching and bearing witness about what must be done, not to punish the wicked and save the good, but rather to sow his word marvellously, and with a more divine power, to the whole human race, as the prophets too presented these things.

And we further charge them, since they did not believe him when he displayed the power he possessed, but said that it was by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that he cast the demons out of men's souls.

And we charge them that, slandering even his love for mankind—he who overlooked not only no city but not even any village of Judaea, that he might everywhere proclaim the kingdom of God—they accuse him of error, as one wandering and roaming distractedly in an ignoble body;

for it is not ignoble to endure so many toils for the benefit of those everywhere who are able to hear.

And how is it not an outright falsehood that he did not even persuade his own disciples—who indeed at that time suffered something human from cowardice, for they had not yet been sharpened to courage—yet did not lay aside what had been judged by them concerning Christ? For Peter, after his denial, becoming aware of the evils into which he had fallen, went out and wept bitterly;

and the rest, struck down by their despondency over him—for they still marvelled at him—were confirmed through his appearing, to believe yet more and more firmly than before that he was the Son of God.