駁瑟蘇斯 第 1 章 第 20/42 段

'At any rate, the allegories that seem to have been written concerning them are far more shameful and absurd than the myths, joining together, with a certain marvelous and utterly senseless folly, things that can in no way at all be made to fit together.'

He seems to say these things concerning the writings of Philo, or even of those still more ancient, such as the works of Aristobulus.

But I conjecture that Celsus has not read the books, since in many places they seem to me to be so successful that even those who philosophize among the Greeks would be won over by what is said in them;

in which not only the style has been polished, but also the thoughts and doctrines and the use of the myths which, as he supposes, come from the Scriptures.

And I know also Numenius the Pythagorean, a man who expounded Plato far better and championed the Pythagorean doctrines, in many places of his writings setting forth the things of Moses and the prophets and not implausibly interpreting them figuratively—as in the work called Epops, and in the books On Numbers, and in those On Place.

And in the third book On the Good he sets forth also a certain history concerning Jesus—not mentioning His name—and interprets it figuratively;

but whether successfully or unsuccessfully, it is for another occasion to say.

He sets forth also the history concerning Moses and Jannes and Jambres.

But we do not pride ourselves on that; rather we approve of him over Celsus and other Greeks, in that he was willing, in a love of learning, to examine our things too, and was moved to treat them as figuratively interpreted and not foolish writings.

And next to these, Celsus, having selected from all the writings—those containing allegories and expositions in no contemptible diction—the more trivial one, capable indeed of contributing something toward faith for the many and simpler sort, but not able to move the more intelligent, says:

'Such, indeed, is the controversy of a certain Papiscus and Jason that I came to know, worthy not of laughter but rather of pity and hatred.'

'It is not my purpose, then, to refute these things;

for they are somehow plain to everyone, especially if one would endure and bear to listen to their writings.'

'But rather I wish to teach nature this: that God made nothing mortal;

but God's works are all that are immortal, while the mortal things are the works of those.'

'And in this respect, indeed, the body of a bat or a worm or a frog or a man will in no way differ;

for the matter is the same, and their corruptibility is alike.'

Nonetheless I would wish that anyone whatever, having heard Celsus inveighing and asserting that the writing entitled 'A Controversy of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ' is worthy not of laughter but of hatred, should take into his hands the little treatise and endure and bear to listen to the things in it, that he might thereupon condemn Celsus, finding nothing worthy of hatred in the book.

And if anyone reads it without bias, he will find that the book does not even move one to laughter—a book in which is recorded a Christian conversing with a Jew from the Jewish Scriptures and showing that the prophecies concerning the Christ fit Jesus, even though the other party, in the person of the Jew, stands his ground against the argument not ignobly nor unbecomingly.

But I do not know how, bringing together things incompatible and not naturally able to coexist in human nature, he said that that book is worthy of pity and of hatred.

For everyone will agree that the one who is pitied is not hated, while he is pitied, and that the one who is hated is not pitied, while he is hated.

And he says he does not propose to refute these things, because he supposes them to be in some way plain to everyone, even before the logical refutation that might be brought, as being base and worthy of pity and hatred.

But we exhort the reader of this defense, written against the accusation of Celsus, to bear and to listen to our writings, and, so far as he is able, to conjecture from what is written the intention of the writers, and their conscience and disposition;

for he will find men who strain ardently for the things they have believed, and some who also make clear that they record a history they have seen and grasped, as something paradoxical and worthy of writing, for the benefit of those who shall hear.

Or let someone dare to say that it is not the fountain and source of all benefit to believe in the God of the universe and to do all things with reference to pleasing Him in everything whatsoever, and to do nothing displeasing to Him, nor even to think it, seeing that not only words and deeds but also reasonings will be judged.

And what other doctrine could more effectively turn human nature toward living well than faith, or the apprehension that the God who is over all oversees all things said and done and even thought by us? Let whoever wishes set alongside it another way that both turns and improves not merely one or two but, so far as possible, as many as possible, that one may, by comparing both ways, accurately discern the doctrine that disposes men toward the good.

But since, in the passage of Celsus which I set out, which paraphrases certain things from the Timaeus, it is written that God made nothing mortal but only the immortal things, while the mortal things are the works of others,

and the soul is God's work, while of the body the nature is other,

and the body of a man will in no way differ from the body of a bat or a worm or a frog;

for the matter is the same, and their corruptibility is alike—

come, let us discuss these things briefly, refuting the man who either does not admit his own Epicurean opinion, or, as one might say, later changed to better views, or, as might also be said, is the namesake of the Epicurean.

For, making such assertions and stating things contrary, he ought to have established—not only against us, but also against the not ignoble school of philosophers descended from Zeno of Citium—that the bodies of animals are not works of God, and that the so great artistry concerning them did not come from the first Mind.

And he ought, concerning the so many and various plants—governed by an indwelling nature devoid of imagination, and brought into being for use, no contemptible part in the whole, of men and of the animals that serve men, or of whatever else exists—not merely to assert but also to teach that it was not some perfect Mind that wrought such great qualities into the matter of the plants.

...the so many creations, and to one who grants, with some not contemptible reasoning, a distinction of gods—some fashioning human bodies, others, say, those of cattle, and others those of wild beasts? And he ought, seeing gods who are makers of serpents and asps and basilisks, and others makers of each according to insect kind, and others according to the kind of each plant and each herb, to state the causes of these distributions.

For perhaps, if he had given himself to the exactness of the examination of these matters, he would either have preserved one God as the maker of all, who made each thing for some end and for some purpose, or, not preserving this, he would have seen what he must say in defense concerning a thing that is, by its own nature, indifferent—the corruptible—and that there is nothing absurd in the world, composed of dissimilar parts, having come into being by one craftsman, who fashions the distinctions of forms in a manner advantageous to the whole.

Or, at the very least, he ought not even to have begun to make pronouncements concerning so great a doctrine, if he was not going to establish the very things he professed to teach;

unless indeed the one who accuses those who profess mere faith himself wished us to believe the things he asserted, although he professed not to assert but to teach.

I do not yet say that, if he had endured and borne to listen to what he calls the writings of Moses and the prophets, he would have observed why it is that of the one thing it is set down that 'God made' (concerning heaven and earth and the so-called firmament, and further the luminaries and the stars, and after these the great sea-monsters and every living creature of creeping things which the waters brought forth according to their kinds, and every winged fowl according to kind, and next to these the beasts of the earth according to kind and the cattle according to kind and all the creeping things of the earth according to their kinds, and last of all the man), but, the word 'He made' not being said concerning some other things, the account is content, concerning light, with 'There came to be light,' and concerning the gathering into one of all the water beneath all the heaven, with 'It came to be so,' and likewise also concerning the things that sprang up from the earth, when 'the earth brought forth a herb of grass sowing seed according to kind and according to likeness, and a fruitful tree making fruit, whose seed is in itself according to kind upon the earth.'

And he would have inquired to whom, or to whom, the written commands of God concerning the coming-into-being of each part of the world were spoken, and he would not have readily accused as void of intelligence and possessing no hidden understanding the things either written by Moses in these passages, or, as we would say, by the divine Spirit in Moses, from whom he also prophesied;

since he knew the things that are, and the things that shall be, and the things that were before, better than what is said among the poets concerning the seers, who knew these things.

And further, since Celsus says that 'the soul is God's work, while of the body the nature is other,'

'and in this respect the body of a bat or a worm or a frog or a man will in no way differ;

for the matter is the same, and their corruptibility is alike'—it must be said, in reply to this argument of his, that if, because the same matter underlies the body of a bat or a worm or a frog or a man, these bodies will in no way differ from one another, then plainly the bodies of these will in no way differ from the body of the sun or the moon or the stars or the heaven, or of any other thing called by the Greeks a perceptible god.

For the same matter, underlying all bodies, is by its own definition without quality and without form; from whom—I do not know, according to Celsus, who is unwilling that any corruptible thing be a work of God—it receives its qualities.

For the corruptibility of everything whatsoever that has come into being from the same underlying matter must, according to Celsus, on his own argument, be alike.

Unless indeed here Celsus, hard pressed, will leap away from Plato—who makes the soul from a certain mixing-bowl—and take refuge with Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who assert that the aether is immaterial and is of a fifth nature beyond the four elements;

against which argument both those of Plato and those of the Stoa have taken their stand not ignobly.

'The heavens shall perish, but You shall remain;

and they all shall grow old like a garment, and like a cloak You shall roll them up, and they shall be changed.'

'But You are the same.' However, even these things suffice against Celsus, who asserted that 'the soul is God's work, while of the body the nature is other';

from whose argument it followed that the body of a bat or a worm or a frog in no way differs from the aetherial body.

Consider, then, whether we ought to attach ourselves to one who, with such doctrines, accuses the Christians, abandoning a doctrine that grants a difference, on account of the qualities attached to the bodies and concerning the bodies.

For we too know that there are both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, and that the glory of the heavenly bodies is one and that of the earthly is another, and that not even among the heavenly is it the same;

for the glory of the sun is one, and the glory of the stars is another, and even among the stars themselves, star differs from star in glory.

Therefore, accepting the resurrection of the dead, we say that there come to be changes of the qualities in the bodies;

since some of them, sown in corruption, are raised in incorruption, and sown in dishonor are raised in glory, and sown in weakness are raised in power, and sown natural bodies are raised spiritual.

And that the underlying matter is receptive of the qualities which the Creator wills, all of us who accept providence maintain;

and that, when God wills, such-and-such a quality now belongs to this matter, and next such-and-such, say, a better and more excellent one.

And since there are also ordered courses of the changes in bodies, from the time the world exists and for as long as it exists, I do not know but that, when a new and different course succeeds after the destruction of the world—which our doctrines name the consummation—it is not to be wondered at if, at the present time, out of a dead man there is transformed a serpent, as the many say, arising from the spinal marrow, and out of an ox a bee, and out of a horse a wasp, and out of an ass a beetle, and simply, out of most creatures, worms.

But Celsus supposes that this establishes that none of these things is a work of God, but that the qualities—arranged, I know not how, so that these things come from those—are not the work of some divine reason that exchanges the qualities in the matter.

And we say this too to Celsus, who said:

'the soul is God's work, while of the body the nature is other'—who not only cast out so great a doctrine without establishing it, but also without distinction;

for he did not make clear whether every soul is God's work, or only the rational one.

For if every soul is God's work, plainly also that of the irrational and most lowly creatures, so that of every body the nature would be other than that of the soul.

Yet it seems that in what follows, where he says that the irrational animals are more beloved of God than we, and have a purer conception of the divine, he means to establish that not only the soul of men but much more even the soul of the irrational animals is a work of God;

for this follows from those being said to be more beloved of God than we.

But if only the rational soul is God's work, in the first place he did not make this clear;

and secondly, it follows, from his having spoken indistinctly concerning the soul—as though not every soul but only the rational one were God's work—that the nature of not every body is other.

But if the nature of not every body is other, but the body of each animal is proportionate to its soul, it is plain that, where the soul is God's work, the body of that soul would differ from the body in which dwells a soul that is not God's work.

And thus it will be false that the body of a bat or a worm or a frog in no way differs from that of a man.

For indeed it is absurd that stones should be reckoned purer or fouler than stones, and buildings than buildings, according as they are constructed for the honor of the divine or for the reception of the most dishonored and accursed bodies, while bodies do not differ from bodies according as those that dwell in them are rational or irrational, and, among the rational, the more earnest or the basest of men.

Such a notion has led some to dare to deify the bodies of distinguished men, as having received an earnest soul, but to cast away or dishonor those of the basest men;

...had its origin in a sound conception.

Or will the wise man, after the death of Anytus and Socrates, take equal thought for the burial of the body of Socrates and that of Anytus, and construct for both a similar mound or tomb? And these things, indeed, on account of the word 'of which'—'of which none is a work of God'—the 'of which' being referred to the body of the man, or to the serpents that come from the body, and to that of the ox, or to the bees that come from the body of the ox, and to that of the horse or the ass, and to the wasps from the horse and the beetles from the ass—on account of which we were compelled to take up again the saying, 'the soul is God's work, while of the body the nature is other.'

Then next he says that the nature of all the aforementioned bodies is common and one, passing through a cyclic interchange and returning.

And to this also it is plain, from what has been said before, that not only is the nature of the previously enumerated bodies common, but also that of the heavenly bodies.

And if this is so, it is plain that, according to him—though I do not know whether also according to the truth—the nature of all bodies, passing through a cyclic interchange, is one, returning again.

And it is plain that, according to those who hold that the world is destroyed, this is so;

but even those who do not hold that it is destroyed, while not admitting a fifth body, will try to show that even according to them the nature of all bodies is one, passing through a cyclic interchange and returning.

And thus that which perishes also remains, by way of change;

for the underlying matter remains, the quality perishing, according to those who introduce it as ungenerated.

If, however, some argument is able to show that it is not ungenerated, but came into being for some need, it is plain that it will not have the same nature concerning permanence as if it had been posited as ungenerated.

But it is not our present purpose, in meeting the accusations of Celsus, to philosophize about nature.

And he says that nothing born of matter is immortal.

And to this it will be said that, if nothing born of matter is immortal, then either the whole world is immortal and not, as it were, born of matter, or it itself is not an immortal thing.

If, then, the world is immortal—which is also the view of those who say that only the soul is God's work and that it came from a certain mixing-bowl—let Celsus show that it did not come from qualityless matter, keeping to his principle that nothing born of matter is immortal;

but if, since the world is born of matter, the world is not immortal,

then the world is mortal: is it then also being destroyed, or not? For if it is being destroyed, it will, as a work of God, be being destroyed;

then let Celsus say what the work of God, the soul, will do in the destruction of the world;

but if, distorting the conception of the immortal, he shall say that it is immortal in the sense of being corruptible but not actually corrupted—as receptive of death yet not dying—it is plain that, according to him, there will be something at once mortal and immortal, by being receptive of both, and there will be a mortal thing that does not die, and that which is not by nature immortal will be properly called immortal by reason of its not dying.

According to which signification, then, will he, drawing the distinction, say that nothing born of matter is immortal? And you see that the thoughts in his writings, when pressed and tested, are exposed as not admitting of the noble and irrefutable.

And having said these things, he adds that 'concerning this, so much suffices;

and if anyone is able to hear and to inquire further, he shall know.'

Let us then, the 'foolish' according to him, see what followed upon our being able to hear him even a little and to inquire.

Next to these, the matters that have been variously inquired into through many and not contemptible arguments concerning the nature of evils, and diversely interpreted, he supposes we can learn through a few little phrases, saying:

'Evils among existing things could neither before, nor now, nor again become less or more;

for the nature of the universe is one and the same, and the generation of evils is always the same.'

And these too seem to have been paraphrased from the things in the Theaetetus, in which the Socrates of Plato said:

'But it is neither possible for evils to perish from among men, nor for them to be established among the gods,' and what follows.

And it seems to me that he who embraces the truth in this one writing, and who entitles his own book against us 'A True Discourse,' has not even accurately heard Plato.

But Plato's saying, 'When the gods cleanse the earth with water,' has shown that the earth, being cleansed with the waters, has fewer evils than in the time before its being cleansed.

We also say, in agreement with Plato, that evils are at times fewer, on the basis of the passage in the Theaetetus which declares that evils cannot be done away with from among men.

But I do not know in what way Celsus, while positing a providence (at least so far as the wording of this his book goes), says that evils are neither more nor fewer but as it were fixed in number; for in this he overthrows a most excellent doctrine—namely, that vice and evils are indefinite and, by their own nature, unbounded.

And it seems to follow, from his claim that fewer or more evils have never come to be, nor are, nor will be, that—just as, according to those who hold the world to be incorruptible, the equipoise of the elements arises from providence, which does not allow any one of them to gain the upper hand, lest the world be destroyed—

so likewise some sort of providence is set over evils, which are of such a fixed amount, so that they may neither become more nor fewer.

Celsus's argument about evils is refuted in yet another way, drawn from the philosophers who have examined the questions of goods and evils and have shown, also from history, that at first the courtesans, wearing masks, hired themselves out outside the city to whoever wished; then later, growing contemptuous, they laid aside their masks, and, not being permitted by the laws to enter the cities, remained outside them; but as the corruption grew greater day by day, they even dared to enter into the cities.

These things Chrysippus relates in his Introduction concerning goods and evils.

Hence, since evils become more and fewer, it is possible to gather that those called 'the ambiguous ones' once held a public station, suffering and being treated [shamefully] and serving the lusts of those who came in;

but afterwards the market-overseers (aediles) drove them out.

And concerning countless things that, from the outpouring of vice, have entered into the life of men, one can say that formerly they did not exist.

The most ancient histories, at any rate—though they accuse sinners of ever so many things—know nothing of those who commit unspeakable acts.

How, from these and similar instances, does not Celsus appear ridiculous, supposing that evils could never become either more or fewer? For even if the nature of the whole is one and the same, the generation of evils is by no means always the same.

For just as, although the nature of some particular man is one and the same, the things concerning his governing faculty, his reason, and his actions are not always the same—at one time he has not yet received reason, at another along with reason he has vice, and this vice now pouring out more, now less; and there are times when he is turned toward virtue and advances more or less, and sometimes even attains virtue itself, set forth in more contemplations or in fewer—

so one may say all the more concerning the nature of the whole that, even if it is one and the same in kind, yet the same things do not always happen, nor things of the same kind, within the whole;

for there are not always good harvests nor always bad ones, nor always heavy rains nor droughts; and just so neither are there ordered abundances of better souls nor dearths of them, nor a greater or lesser outpouring of worse ones.

And indeed the discourse about evils is necessary for those who wish, as far as possible, to be exact about all things, since evils do not always remain in the same state, on account of the providence that either preserves the things on earth or purges them by floods and conflagrations—and perhaps not only the things on earth but also those in the whole cosmos, which needs a purgation whenever much vice arises within it.

After this Celsus says:

"What the origin of evils is, is not easy to know for one who has not philosophized; yet it suffices for the multitude to be told that evils are not from God, but cleave to matter and dwell among mortal things;

and the cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and, according to the appointed revolutions, the same things must always have come to be, and be, and be about to be."

And to this we say that the origin of evils is not easy to know even for one who has philosophized, and perhaps not even by these is it possible to know it purely, unless by the inspiration of God it be made clear what the evils are, and shown how they came into being, and understood in what manner they will be done away.

At any rate, since ignorance about God is among the evils, and since not knowing the manner of God's worship and of piety toward Him is the greatest evil, certainly even according to Celsus some of those who have philosophized have not known it—as is clear from the differing schools in philosophy;

but in our view no one who has not recognized that it is an evil to suppose that piety is preserved within the laws established according to what are more commonly thought of as polities will be able to know the origin of evils.

And no one will be able to know the origin of evils who has not grasped the matters concerning the so-called devil and his angels—who this one was before he came to be the devil, and how he became the devil, and what the cause was of those called his angels apostatizing together with him.

And whoever intends to know this must also have grasped more accurately the matters concerning demons—that they are not, qua demons, creations of God, but only qua certain rational beings—and whence they came to become such, so that, in the condition of demons, their governing faculty came to subsist.

If, then, any topic among those that need examination in human affairs is hard for our nature to track down, the origin of evils may well be ranked among these.

Then, as though he had something more arcane to say about the origin of evils but kept silent on those things and spoke what was suited to the multitudes, he says that it suffices to have told the multitude, concerning the origin of evils, that evils are not from God but cleave to matter and dwell among mortal things.

Now it is true that evils are not from God;

for it is clear also from our Jeremiah that "Out of the mouth of the Lord shall not go forth evils and good."

But that matter, dwelling among mortal things, is the cause of evils, is in our judgment not true.

For the governing faculty of each person is the cause of the vice that subsists in him, which vice is the evil itself;

and the actions proceeding from it are also evils, and nothing else, strictly speaking, is in our view an evil.

But I know that the argument needs much elaboration and demonstration, things which, by the grace of God who enlightens the governing faculty, can come to one who is judged by God to be worthy also of the knowledge concerning this topic.

I do not know how it seemed useful to Celsus, in writing against us, to fling out a dogma needing much demonstration—even if only seeming demonstration—to establish, so far as possible, that the cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and that, according to the appointed revolutions, the same things must always have come to be, and be, and be about to be.

If this were true, free will would be abolished.

For if, according to the appointed revolutions, the same things must always have come to be, and be, and be about to be in the cycle of mortal things, it is clear that of necessity Socrates must always philosophize and be accused on the charge of introducing new divinities and corrupting the youth, and Anytus and Meletus must always accuse him, and the Council on the Areopagus must condemn him to death by hemlock.

And so, according to the appointed cycles, Phalaris must always tyrannize, and Alexander of Pherae must always commit the same cruelties, and those condemned into Phalaris's bull must always bellow within it;

and if these things be granted, I do not see how free will can be preserved, or how praise and blame can reasonably exist.

It may be said to Celsus, against such a hypothesis, that if the cycle of mortal things is ever alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions the same things must always have come to be, and be, and be about to be, then of necessity, according to the appointed cycles, Moses with the people of the Jews must always go out from Egypt, and Jesus must again sojourn in this life to do the same things which he has done not once but infinitely often according to the cycles;

and [Celsus] will write this very book, having written it infinitely often before.

Now Celsus says that only the cycle of mortal things, according to the appointed revolutions, must of necessity always have come to be, and be, and be about to be;

but most of the Stoics say that not only the cycle of mortal things is such, but also that of the immortals and of the gods according to their reckoning.

For after the conflagration of the universe—which has occurred infinitely often and will occur infinitely often—the same order of all things has come to be and will be from beginning to end.