駁瑟蘇斯 第 1 章 第 28/42 段

We do not, then, say to everyone who approaches, "First believe that He whom I set forth to you is the Son of God"; but to each one, according to what befits his character and condition, we bring the word, having learned to know how we ought to answer each individual.

And there are some to whom, since they are unable to do more than be exhorted to believe, we proclaim only this; but to others we approach, so far as is possible, demonstratively, through questions and answers.

Neither do we say what was uttered by Celsus in mockery, that "believe that He whom I set forth to you is the Son of God, even though He was bound most dishonorably or punished most shamefully, and even though only yesterday and the day before He was, in the eyes of all, rolled about most reproachfully"; nor do we say:

"Believe in Him all the more for this reason."

For to each one we try to speak even more than what we set forth above.

After these things Celsus says that, if these people—meaning Christians—put forward this one, and others another, while the cry common to all and ready at hand is:

"Believe, if you wish to be saved, or else depart";

what will those who truly wish to be saved do? Must they cast lots and divine where they should turn and to whom they should attach themselves? And to this too, setting out from what is evident, we will say the following:

if there were many recorded, like Jesus, as having sojourned in the life of men as sons of God, and each of them had drawn certain people to himself, so that, because of the similarity of the claim to be the Son of God, the one attested by those who believe in him was a matter of dispute, then there would have been room for the saying, "if these put forward this one, and others another, and the cry common to all and ready at hand is:

believe, if you wish to be saved, or else depart," and the rest;

but as it is, Jesus alone has been proclaimed throughout the whole inhabited world as having sojourned among the race of men, the only Son of God.

For those who supposed, like Celsus, that He dealt in marvels, and on that account wished likewise to deal in marvels, so that they too might similarly gain mastery over men, were proved to be nothing—both Simon the Samaritan magician, and Dositheus who came from the same country as he; since the one claimed that he himself was the power of God called Great, and the other that he too was the Son of God.

For nowhere in the inhabited world are there Simonians;

and indeed, in order to draw more people to himself, Simon removed from his disciples the danger of death which Christians were taught to choose, by teaching them to be indifferent toward idolatry.

But neither were the Simonians plotted against from the beginning;

for the wicked demon who plots was aware that none of his own purposes would be undone by the teachings of Simon, as they were by the teaching of Jesus.

The Dositheans never flourished even in earlier times;

and now they have utterly died out, so that their entire number is said not to amount even to thirty.

Judas the Galilean too, as Luke wrote in the Acts of the Apostles, wished to call himself someone great, and before him Theudas;

but since their teaching was not of God, they were destroyed, and all who had been persuaded by them were at once scattered.

We do not, then, divine by casting dice, as to which way we should turn and to whom we should attach ourselves, as though many could distract us from the proclamation that He has come from God to visit the human race.

But enough also concerning these matters.

Therefore we pass on to another accusation of Celsus, who, not even knowing our actual words but speaking from things half-heard, alleged that we say human wisdom is foolishness with God, whereas Paul says:

"The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." And Celsus says that the reason for this has already been stated long ago.

He supposes the reason to be our wish, through this saying, to win over only the uneducated and the foolish.

But, as he himself noted, he said the same thing above, and we replied to that argument as far as we were able.

Nevertheless he wished to show that even this was fabricated by us and taken from the wise men among the Greeks, who said that human wisdom is one thing and divine wisdom another.

And indeed he sets out sayings of Heraclitus, one in which he says:

"For human character does not possess insight, but the divine does"; and another:

"A man is called childish by a deity, just as a boy is by a man." And he also sets out the following from the Apology of Socrates written by Plato:

"For I, O men of Athens, have gained this name through nothing else than a kind of wisdom."

"What sort of wisdom is this? Such, perhaps, as is human wisdom;

for in truth I am likely to be wise in this respect." These, then, are the things Celsus sets out.

But from Plato's letter to Hermeias, Erastus, and Coriscus I will also adduce the following:

"For Erastus and Coriscus, in addition to this fair wisdom concerning the Forms, I say—old though I am—that they have need of a wisdom that guards against the wicked and unjust, and of a certain defensive power.

For they are inexperienced, because they have spent a large part of their life with us, who are moderate men and not bad;

this is just why I said they had need of these things, lest they be compelled to neglect the true wisdom and to attend more than they ought to the human and necessary kind." Accordingly, by these words, there is one wisdom that is divine and another that is human.

And the human wisdom is what we call the wisdom of the world, which is foolishness with God;

but the divine wisdom, being other than the human—if indeed it is divine—comes by the grace of God, who bestows it on those who have prepared themselves fit to receive it, and especially on those who, from knowing the difference between the two kinds of wisdom, say in their prayers to God:

"For even if anyone be perfect among the sons of men, yet if the wisdom that comes from You be absent, he shall be reckoned as nothing." And we say that human wisdom is the gymnasium of the soul, but divine wisdom is its goal;

which is also called the solid food of the soul by him who said:

"But solid food is for the mature, for those who because of practice have their faculties trained to distinguish good from evil." And this doctrine is truly ancient—not, as Celsus supposes, with the antiquity of these matters being traced back to Heraclitus and Plato.

For earlier than these, the prophets distinguished concerning the two kinds of wisdom;

for it is said of him who is wise according to divine wisdom that he "shall not see corruption," it says, "when he sees the wise dying."

The divine wisdom, then, being other than faith, is the first of what are called the gifts of God; and after it, second—for those who know how to be exact about such things—comes what is called knowledge; and third, since even the simpler folk who draw near to godliness must, according to their ability, be saved, comes faith.

Therefore it is said by Paul:

"For to one is given through the Spirit a word of wisdom, to another a word of knowledge according to the same Spirit, and to another faith in the same Spirit." For this reason you would not find ordinary people partaking of the divine wisdom, but those who excel and surpass all who adhere to Christianity; nor does anyone expound the things concerning the divine wisdom to the most uneducated, or to slaves, or to the most ignorant.

And yet Celsus calls others most uneducated and slaves and most ignorant—namely, those who do not know his affairs and have not been trained in the learning of the Greeks;

but we call most uneducated those who are not ashamed to address lifeless things, and to invoke the powerless concerning health, and to ask of the dead concerning life, and to entreat the utterly helpless concerning aid.

And even if some say that these images are not the gods themselves, but imitations of the true gods and symbols of them, these too are no less uneducated, slaves, and ignorant, since they imagine that imitations of divinity exist in the hands of craftsmen;

so that even the lowest among us are freed from this lack of education and this ignorance, and we say that the divine hope is conceived and grasped by the most prudent.

We also say that it is not possible for one who has not been exercised in human wisdom to make room for the more divine wisdom, and we confess that all human wisdom is foolishness in comparison with the divine.

Then, while he ought to contend over the doctrine, he instead calls us sorcerers and says that we flee headlong from the more cultivated as not being ready to be deceived, but ensnare the more boorish.

For he did not see that from the beginning and from the first, our wise men were educated even in external learning—Moses in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and Daniel, Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael in all the letters of the Assyrians, so that they were found to be ten times better than all the wise men there.

And even now the churches have, in proportion to their multitudes, a few wise men who have come over even from what is called among us wisdom according to the flesh, and they also have those who have advanced from that wisdom to the divine wisdom.

Then after this Celsus, as though confused about the matter of humility and not having understood it carefully, wishes to disparage the humility that is among us, and supposes it to be a misunderstanding of Plato's words, who says somewhere in the Laws:

"God indeed, as the ancient saying has it, holding the beginning, end, and middle of all that exists, accomplishes His course by a straight path, proceeding according to nature;

and Justice ever follows Him as the avenger of those who fall short of the divine law; and he who is to be happy follows her, clinging to her, lowly and orderly."

He fails to see that among writers far more ancient than Plato it was said in a prayer:

"Lord, my heart is not lifted up, neither are my eyes raised too high; neither have I walked in great matters, nor in things too wonderful for me, but rather I was humble-minded." And by these words it is at the same time made clear that the humble-minded person is by no means humbled in an unseemly and ill-omened way, flung down upon his knees and stretched out prone, clothed in the garb of the wretched and heaping dust upon himself.

For he who is humble-minded according to the prophet, walking in great and wonderful things that are above himself—in the truly great teachings and the wonderful thoughts—humbles himself under the mighty hand of God.

But if some, on account of their lack of training, fail to make clear the doctrine concerning humility and so act in such ways, the teaching is not to be blamed, but pardon should be granted to the lack of training of those who indeed set before themselves the better things but, through their unrefinement, fall short.

According to Plato's "lowly and orderly," the one who is lowly and orderly is he who is orderly because he walks in great and wonderful things above himself;

and lowly, since even while engaged in these things he humbles himself willingly—not under just anyone, but under the mighty hand of God—through Jesus, the teacher of such lessons;

who, though He counted it not robbery to be equal with God, yet emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, and being found in fashion as a man He humbled Himself, becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

And so great a doctrine is that concerning humility, that it does not have just any chance teacher about it, but our Saviour Himself, so great as He is, declares:

"Learn of Me, for I am meek and lowly in heart, and you shall find rest for your souls." After this, Celsus deals with the saying of Jesus against the rich, when He said:

"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," and he asserts outright that it was taken from Plato, that Jesus corrupted the Platonic saying, in which Plato said that it is impossible for one to be exceptionally good and at the same time exceptionally rich. But who, even if able only moderately to attend to facts—not only among those who believe in Jesus but also among the rest of mankind—would not laugh at Celsus, on hearing that Jesus, who was born and brought up among the Jews and reputed to be the son of Joseph the carpenter, and who had not learned letters—not only those of the Greeks but not even those of the Hebrews (as the truth-loving Scriptures concerning Him testify)—read Plato, and being pleased with his saying declaring concerning the rich that it is impossible to be exceptionally good and rich, corrupted it and made it into "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God"? And if Celsus had been a lover of truth in reading the Gospels, rather than reading them with hatred and hostility, he would have considered why a camel—an animal crooked in its very build—was introduced and compared to the rich man, and what he meant by the narrow eye of the needle, since he calls narrow and pressed the way that leads to life; and that this animal is recorded as unclean according to the Law, having something acceptable in that it chews the cud, yet something blameworthy in that it does not divide the hoof.

He would also have examined how often the camel is mentioned in the divine Scriptures and in what connections, in order to perceive the intent of the saying concerning the rich;

nor would he have left unexamined the fact that the poor are blessed by Jesus while the rich are pronounced wretched—whether He meant these things of the sensible (literal) poor and rich,

or whether the Word knows of a certain poverty that is altogether blessed and a wealth that is altogether blameworthy;

for not even an ordinary person would indiscriminately praise the poor, of whom the majority are most base in their characters.

But since next, wishing to belittle what is written among us concerning the kingdom of God, he set forth none of these things as though they were not even worthy of record in his work—perhaps because he did not even know them—but sets out sayings of Plato from the letters and from the Phaedrus, as though these were spoken with divine inspiration, while our writings contain nothing of the sort;

come, let us by way of comparison set a few things beside what was said by Plato—not implausibly, indeed, yet not in such a way as to dispose the philosopher worthily, even in his own eyes, to conduct himself with piety toward the Maker of all things;

a piety which he ought not to have adulterated nor defiled by what we name idolatry, and which the common people, using the word, would call superstition.

Now in a certain Hebrew manner it is said concerning God in the seventeenth psalm that "God made darkness His hiding place";

his more limited power of comprehending God.

Now, in order to make plain that the knowledge of God reaches men but rarely and is found in very few, Moses is recorded to have entered into the thick darkness where God was;

"Moses alone shall draw near to God, but the rest shall not draw near." And again, in order that the prophet might set forth the depth of the doctrines concerning God—unattainable by those who do not possess the Spirit that searches all things, even the deep things of God—he said:

"The deep is his covering as with a garment." Moreover our Saviour and Lord, the Word of God, in setting forth the greatness of the knowledge of the Father—how it is principally and worthily apprehended and known by him alone, and secondarily by those whose ruling faculty is enlightened by the Word and God himself—says:

"No one knows the Son except the Father, neither does anyone know the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." For no one can know the Unbegotten and Firstborn of all created nature so worthily as the Father who begot him, nor know the Father as does his living Word and Wisdom and Truth;

by partaking of whom there is taken away from the Father what is called the darkness which he made his hiding-place, and what is called his covering, the deep, and who thus reveals the Father, so that whoever is able to know him does know him.

These few things, out of the very many that have been conceived concerning God by the holy men, I have thought fit to set down, showing that, compared with the Platonic sayings admired by Celsus, there is something more venerable for those who have eyes capable of beholding the venerable things of the Scriptures—the sacred writings of the prophets.

Now the passage of Plato which Celsus quoted runs in this manner:

"Around the King of all are all things, and for his sake are all things, and he is the cause of all that is fair."

"And the second is concerned with the things that are second, and the third with the things that are third."

"The human soul therefore yearns to learn about these things—what sort of things they are—looking to those that are akin to itself, none of which it apprehends adequately."

"But concerning the King and the things of which I spoke, there is nothing of this kind." I could also have cited what is written about those whom the Hebrews call Seraphim, recorded in Isaiah, who cover the face and feet of God, and what is said about those named Cherubim, which Ezekiel described, and as it were their forms, and in what manner God is said to ride upon the Cherubim;

but since these things are spoken in a very veiled manner, on account of those who are unworthy and profane, who cannot follow the loftiness and majesty of theology, I have not thought it fitting to discuss them in this treatise.

Next to these things, Celsus says that certain Christians, having misunderstood Platonic expressions, boast of a supra-celestial God, ascending above the heaven of the Jews.

But in this he does not make clear whether they also ascend above the God of the Jews, or only above the heaven by which they swear.

Now concerning those who proclaim another God besides the one worshipped also by the Jews, it is not our present purpose to speak; but it is, to make a defence on our own behalf, and to show that our prophets, who came from the Jews, could not have borrowed anything from Plato;

for they were older than he.

Therefore neither did we take from Plato the saying which declares:

"Around the King of all are all things, and for his sake are all things." Rather, we have learned these things expressed more excellently from the prophets, since Jesus and his disciples made clear the meaning of the Spirit in the prophets—which was none other than the Spirit of Christ. Nor was the philosopher the first to set forth the things concerning the supra-celestial place; rather David long ago set forth the profundity of the multitude of contemplations concerning God which exist among the things that transcend the sensible, when he said in the book of Psalms:

"Praise God, you heavens of heavens, and you waters that are above the heavens."

they have written, and furthermore that, having encountered the prophetic words, he set them forth, in which he said:

"The supra-celestial place no poet of this world has ever sung, nor will any sing worthily," and what follows, among which is also this: "For the truly existing being, colourless and formless and intangible, is visible to the mind alone, the pilot of the soul, and around it dwells the kind of true knowledge that has this place." And our Paul, instructed by those words and longing for the things above the world and above the heavens, and doing all things for their sake that he might attain them, says in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians:

"For our momentary light affliction is working for us, beyond all measure, an eternal weight of glory, while we look not at the things that are seen but at the things that are not seen;

for the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are not seen are eternal." For he plainly sets forth, to those able to hear, the sensible things, calling them "seen," and the intelligible things, apprehensible by the mind alone, naming them "not seen."

And this man knows that the sensible and seen things are temporary, but the intelligible and unseen things are eternal;

and wishing to attain to the contemplation of those things, helped by his longing for them, he considered all affliction to be nothing and a light thing;

and even during the very time of affliction and toils, being in no way weighed down by them, but lightening every hardship through his contemplation of those things;

since we too have a great High Priest, who by the greatness of his power and mind has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, who has promised to those who genuinely learn divine things and live worthily of them, that he will lead them onward to the things above the world:

"That where I am, there you may be also." Therefore we, after the toils and struggles here, hope to come to the summit of the heavens, and, having received springs of water leaping up to eternal life according to the teaching of Jesus, and having attained rivers of contemplations, we hope to be together with what are called the waters above the heavens, which praise the name of the Lord.

And insofar as we praise him, we shall not be carried about by the revolution of the heaven, but we shall ever be in the contemplation of the invisible things of God, which are no longer understood by us through the things made since the creation of the world, but as the genuine disciple of Jesus named them, when he said:

"But then face to face," and this:

"When that which is perfect comes, that which is in part shall be done away."

Seven heavens, or any strictly limited number of them, the Scriptures current in the churches of God do not announce; but they speak of heavens, whether the spheres of what the Greeks call the planets, or whether the words seem to teach something else more ineffable.

And as for there being a way for souls to the earth and from the earth, Celsus, following Plato, says it comes about through the planets;

but Moses, our most ancient prophet, says that in a vision a divine dream was seen by our patriarch Jacob—a ladder reaching to heaven, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon it, and the Lord supported upon the top of it—whether hinting at these things or at certain things greater than these in his account of the ladder;

concerning which a book was also composed by Philo, worthy of intelligent and prudent examination among those who love the truth.

Next to these things, Celsus, wishing to display his own erudition in his treatise against us, sets forth also certain Persian mysteries, in which he says:

"These things are also hinted at by the teaching of the Persians, and by the rite of Mithras, which is observed among them."

"For there is in it a symbol of the two revolutions in heaven, namely that of the fixed stars and that distributed among the planets, and of the passage of the soul through them."

"A ladder with seven gates, and upon it an eighth gate."

"The first of the gates is of lead, the second of tin, the third of bronze, the fourth of iron, the fifth of an alloy of coinage, the sixth of silver, and the seventh of gold."

...and the soft nature of tin; the third gate they assign to Jupiter, the brazen and firm one; the fourth to Mercury, for both iron and Mercury are enduring in all works, mercantile, and much-toiling; the fifth to Mars, the one of the alloy, uneven and varied; the sixth, the silver one, to the Moon; the seventh, the golden one, to the Sun—imitating their colours.

Next he examines the reason for the order of the stars thus enumerated, which is indicated through symbols in the names of the various materials, and he attaches musical theories to the Persian theology that he sets forth;

and he ambitiously sets forth, in addition to these, a second account as well, again connected with musical theories.

But it seemed to me that to set down this passage of Celsus here would be out of place and similar to what he himself has done, when he inopportunely brought into his accusation against Christians and Jews not only the things of Plato (as if to be content with those would suffice), but also, as he says, the Persian mysteries of Mithras and the account of them.

For whatever the case may be with these things—whether falsely or truly stated by those who revere the things of Mithras, and by the Persians—

why then did he set forth these things rather than any of the remaining mysteries together with their account? For the Mithraic mysteries do not seem to be more notable among the Greeks than the Eleusinian, or those of Hecate delivered to the initiates in Aegina.

And if he wished rather to set forth barbarian mysteries together with their account, why not rather the Egyptian ones, in which many take pride, or the Cappadocian mysteries concerning Artemis at Comana, or the Thracian ones, or even those of the Romans themselves, in which the noblest of the senators are initiated? But if it seemed to him out of place to adduce any of those, as in no way contributing to the accusation of Jews or Christians, how was not the same thing equally out of place in his case also, in the exposition of the Mithraic mysteries? And if anyone should wish to find grounds for the more mystical contemplation concerning the entrance of souls into divine things—not from the most obscure sect he cited, but from books, partly Jewish and read in their synagogues, which Christians also accept, and partly belonging to Christians alone—let him read what was seen by the prophet at the end of Ezekiel's prophecy, in which various gates are described, hinting at certain things concerning the diverse entrance of the more divine souls into the higher realms;

and let him also read from the Revelation of John what is said concerning the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and its foundations and its gates.

And if it is possible to learn through symbols the way also that has been indicated of those who shall journey to divine things, let him read the book entitled Numbers of Moses, and let him seek out one able to initiate him into the things written there concerning the encampments of the children of Israel—which are arranged toward the eastern parts as first, which toward the south-west or the south, which toward the sea, and which last toward the north.

For he will see in those passages contemplations not to be despised, nor, as Celsus supposes, requiring some foolish hearers and slaves;

for he will distinguish who are among them, and what is the nature of the numbers enumerated in them and fitted to each tribe—concerning which it now seems to us inopportune to set forth.

But let Celsus and those who read his book know that nowhere in the genuine and divinely accredited Scriptures are seven heavens mentioned;

nor do our prophets, taking from the Persians or the Cabeiri, say any such thing, nor do the apostles of Jesus, nor the Son of God himself.

Next to the argument taken from the Mithraic mysteries, Celsus undertakes to set forth a certain rite of the Christians, so that whoever wishes may compare it with the aforesaid Persian rite, and, having set them side by side and laid bare also the Christian things, may thus behold the difference between them.

And where he knew names of sects to mention, he did not hesitate to set forth those he thought he knew;

but where he ought rather, if indeed he knew, to have done this and to have taught which sect uses the diagram he described, this he did not do.

I think he set forth the contents of the diagram, in part, from the misunderstood notions of the most obscure sect of the Ophians.

But we, in our love of learning, have come upon this very thing, in which we found the fabrications of men—as Paul named them—who creep into houses and take captive weak women laden with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

And the diagram had so much implausibility that not even the easily-deceived weak women, nor the most boorish of men, nor those ready to be led away by any plausible thing whatever, would have given their assent to the diagram.

At any rate, although we have travelled through many regions of the earth and sought out those who everywhere profess to know something, we have met no one who took seriously the teachings of the diagram.