Against Celsus, Book IV

A prayer for words that uproot and plant§1

1In the three books before this one, holy Ambrose, we have gone through what occurred to us in reply to Celsus’s treatise. Now, having prayed to God through Christ, we dictate a fourth in reply to what comes next. May we be given words such as those of which it is written in Jeremiah, where the Lord says to the prophet: “Behold, I have put my words into your mouth as fire. Behold, I have set you this day over nations and kingdoms, to root out and to dig down, to destroy and to pull down, to build again and to plant” (Jeremiah 1:9–10; 5:14).

For we too now need words that will root out whatever stands against the truth from every soul that has been harmed by Celsus’s treatise or by thoughts like his. We need thoughts as well that will dig down the buildings of every false opinion, and the building Celsus has put up in his treatise, which is like the building of those who said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower whose top shall reach to heaven” (Genesis 11:4). And we need wisdom that pulls down every height that is lifted up “against the knowledge of God” (2 Corinthians 10:5), and the “height” of arrogance that Celsus has “lifted up” against us.

Then, since we must not stop at “rooting out and digging down” what we have named, but must “plant” a planting of God’s field in the ground of what has been rooted out, and must build God’s building and a temple of God’s glory in the place of what has been dug down (1 Corinthians 3:9), for this reason we too must pray to the Lord who gave what is written in Jeremiah, that he may give us also words for building up the things of Christ, and for “planting” the spiritual law and the prophetic words that answer to it.

Above all, in answer to what Celsus says next after the passages already treated, we need to establish that what was prophesied about Christ was rightly prophesied. For Celsus stands against both parties at once: against the Jews, who deny that the coming of Christ has taken place but hope that it will, and against the Christians, who confess that Jesus is the Christ who was prophesied. He says:

Celsus names no prophecy§2

2“That some of the Christians, and the Jews, say, the former that some god or son of a god has come down to the earth as judge of the things here, the latter that he will come down, is most shameful, and its refutation does not even need a long argument.”

And here he does seem to speak with precision. Of the Jews he says, not of some but of all, that they think someone will come down to the earth; but of the Christians, that some of them say he has come down. For he is pointing to those who show from the Jewish Scriptures that the coming of Christ has already taken place, and he seems to know that there are some sects which deny that Christ Jesus is the one who was prophesied.

We have already treated in the earlier books, as far as we were able, the fact that Christ was prophesied; so we do not take up again most of what could be said on the subject, so as not to repeat ourselves. But notice this: if he wanted, with an argument that at least seemed to hold together, to overturn faith in the prophecies, or faith that Christ will come or has come, he ought to have set out the very prophecies that we Christians and Jews use when we debate with each other. In that way he might at least have seemed to draw those who are swayed by their persuasiveness, as he regards it, away from their assent to the prophetic writings and from the faith in Jesus as the Christ that comes to them through those writings.

As it is, either because he cannot answer the prophecies about Christ, or because he does not even know in the first place what the things prophesied about him are, he sets down not a single prophetic saying, though there are countless ones about Christ; and yet he thinks he can accuse the prophetic writings without even setting out what he himself would call their persuasiveness. He does not know, however, that the Jews by no means say that the Christ will come down as God, or as Son of God, as we have also said above.

What the descent was for§3

3Having said that we claim he has come down, and the Jews that he will come down as judge, he thinks he condemns the claim on the spot as most shameful and in need of no long refutation, and he says: “What would be God’s purpose in such a descent?” He does not see that in our teaching too the descent has a purpose. In the first place, it was to turn back those whom the Gospel calls “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24; 10:6). In the second place, because of their disobedience, it was to take from them what is called the kingdom of God (Matthew 21:43) and to give it “to other tenants,” to the Christians, as distinct from the Jews of old, who “will render” to God “the fruits” of the kingdom of God “in their seasons” (Matthew 21:41), each action being a fruit of the kingdom.

Out of many answers, then, we have given a few to Celsus’s question when he said: “What, then, would be God’s purpose in such a descent?” But Celsus puts forward for himself things that neither the Jews nor we would say, when he asks: “Or is it to learn what goes on among men?” For none of us says that Christ came into human life in order to learn what goes on among men. Then, as though some would say “to learn what goes on among men,” he raises against himself, in reply to this, the objection: “Does he not know all things?” Then, as though they would answer that he does know, he raises a further difficulty: “Does he know, then, and yet not set things right, and is he not able to set them right by divine power?”

All this he says naively. For God always sets right those who listen to what is said, by his own Word, who in every generation passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). And at the coming of Christ too he sets right, by the word of the Christian faith, not those who are unwilling, but those who have chosen the better life, the life pleasing to God.

I do not know what sort of correction Celsus wanted to take place when he raised the difficulty: “Is he not able to set things right by divine power, unless he sends someone by way of nature for this purpose?” Did he, then, want the correction to come about by impressions put into men’s minds by God, God taking away their vice all at once and planting virtue in them? Another may inquire whether such a thing is consistent with nature, or possible for it. But we would say: let it be so, and let it be possible. Where, then, is what lies in our power? And where is praiseworthy assent to the truth, or acceptable refusal of falsehood?

And even if it were once granted that this is both possible and fittingly done, why should one not rather raise the question at the very start, saying something like what Celsus says: could God not by divine power have made men who did not even need correction, but were good and perfect from the outset, with vice never having existed at all? Such arguments can carry away the untrained and the unintelligent, but not one who looks into the nature of things; for if you take away the voluntary character of virtue, you have taken away its very being as well.

These matters need a whole treatise. The Greeks too have said a good deal about them in their works On Providence, and they would not have said what Celsus set out when he said: “He knows, but does not set things right, nor is he able to set them right by divine power.” We ourselves have spoken of these questions in many places, as far as we could, and the divine words have made them plain to those who are able to hear them.

The same question falls on Celsus§4

4So what Celsus brings against us and the Jews shall be said to him as well: Well, my good man, does the God who is over all know what goes on among men, or does he not know? If you hold that there is a God and a providence, as your treatise shows, he must know. And if he knows, why does he not set things right? Or are we obliged to give an account of why, knowing, he does not set things right, while you, who in your treatise do not altogether show yourself an Epicurean but profess to acknowledge providence, are not to be asked the same: why God, knowing all that goes on among men, does not set things right, nor by divine power free all men from vice?

But we are not ashamed to say that God always sends those who are to set things right; for the words that call men to what is best are present among men, since God has given them. Yet among those who serve God there are many differences, and few are those who uphold the truth wholly and purely and bring about complete correction, such as Moses and the prophets were. But beyond all these, great is the correction brought through Jesus, who did not wish only those in one corner of the world to be healed, but, as far as it lay with him, those everywhere; for he came as “Savior of all men” (1 Timothy 4:10).

God does not leave his seat§5

5After this the most noble Celsus, taking it from I know not where, raises a difficulty against us, as though we said that God himself comes down to men; and he thinks it follows from this that he leaves his own seat. For he does not know the power of God, nor that “the Spirit of the Lord has filled the world, and that which holds all things together has knowledge of what is spoken” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:7). Nor can he understand the words, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:24). Nor does he see that, according to the Christians’ teaching, “in him we all live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28), as Paul too taught in his speech to the Athenians.

So even if the God of the universe, by his own power, comes down with Jesus into the life of men, and even if the Word who was “in the beginning with God,” and who is himself “God” (John 1:1–2), comes to us, he is not displaced, nor does he leave his own seat, as though one place were empty of him and another, which did not have him before, were full. The power and divinity of God comes to dwell through whom he wills and in whom it finds room, while he neither changes place nor leaves his own place empty and fills another.

For even if we should say that he leaves one and fills another, we shall not be declaring this about place. Rather, we shall say that the soul of the wicked man, dissipated in vice, is forsaken by God, while we shall declare that the soul of one who wishes to live according to virtue, or is making progress, or already lives according to it, is filled with the divine Spirit or shares in it.

There is no need, then, for the descent of Christ, or for God’s turning toward men, that a greater seat be left behind and the things here be changed, as Celsus thinks when he says: “For if you were to change even one thing here, the very least, everything would be overturned and gone.” But if we must speak of anyone being changed by the presence of God’s power and the coming of the Word to men, we shall not hesitate to say that whoever has received the coming of the Word of God into his own soul is changed from wicked to good, from licentious to self-controlled, and from superstitious to reverent.

God does not show off like the newly rich§6

6If you want us to answer even the most ridiculous of Celsus’s remarks, listen to what he says: “But then, would God, being unknown among men and thinking himself the worse off for it, wish to become known and to put to the test both those who believe and those who do not, like the newly rich among men who love to show off? They charge God with a great and altogether mortal love of honour.”

We say, then, that God, being unknown to wicked men, would wish to be known, not because he thinks himself the worse off, but because the knowledge of him frees the one who knows him from misery. Nor is it from a wish to test those who believe or those who do not that he either comes himself, by an ineffable and divine power, to dwell in certain people, or sends his Christ. He does it so that those who believe and grasp his divinity may be freed from all misery, while those who do not believe may no longer have room even for the plea that they did not believe because they had not heard and been taught.

What argument, then, shows that it follows from our teaching that God, as we conceive him, is like the newly rich among men who love to show off? For God does not show off before us out of a wish that we should understand and perceive his surpassing greatness. Rather, wishing to plant in us the blessedness that arises in our souls from our knowing him, he works through Christ and through the Word’s continual coming among us, so that we may take up our kinship with him. So the Christian teaching charges God with no mortal love of honour.

God has always cared for human life§7

7I do not know how, after talking idle nonsense about the points we have set out, he later sets out the view that it is not because he needs to be known for his own sake, but for the sake of our salvation, that God wishes to give us knowledge of himself, so that those who accept it may become good and be saved, while those who do not accept it may be shown to be wicked and be punished. And having set this out, he raises a further difficulty, saying: “So it is only now, after so long an age, that God has remembered to set human life right, while before he did not care?”

To this too we shall say that there was never a time when God did not wish to set human life right. He has always cared for it, giving starting points for virtue so that the rational creature might be set right. For in every generation the wisdom of God, passing into souls that it finds holy, makes them friends of God and prophets (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). And in the sacred books one could find those who in each generation were holy and able to receive the divine Spirit, and how they converted the people of their own day, as far as their power allowed.

The nations allotted to angels, then given to Christ§8

8Nor is it any wonder that in certain generations there have been prophets who, through their more strenuous and vigorous lives, surpassed other prophets in receiving the divine, some of whom lived in their own time and others earlier or later. In the same way it is no wonder that there was also a certain time when something exceptional came to dwell among the human race, something that surpassed those who came before it, or even those after it. But the account of these matters holds something more mystical and deeper, which cannot easily reach the ears of the common crowd.

And to make these things clear, and to answer what is said about Christ’s coming, “So it is only now, after so long an age, that God has remembered to set the human race right, while before he did not care?”, we must touch on the doctrine of the portions and make clear why “when the Most High divided the nations, as he scattered the sons of Adam, he set the boundaries of the nations according to the number of the angels of God; and his people Jacob became the Lord’s portion, Israel the measured lot of his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:8–9). We shall need to state the reason for being born into each territory under the one to whom that territory was allotted, and how it was with good reason that “his people Jacob became the Lord’s portion, Israel the measured lot of his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:9); and why formerly “the Lord’s portion was his people Jacob, Israel the measured lot of his inheritance” (Deuteronomy 32:9), whereas of later times the Father says to the Saviour: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance, and the ends of the earth for your possession” (Psalm 2:8). For there are certain connections and sequences, unspeakable and beyond telling, in the varied ordering of human souls.

Christ, the reformer of the whole world§9

9So, whether Celsus likes it or not, after many prophets who had set right the affairs of that Israel, Christ came as the one who sets right the whole world. He did not need, as under the former dispensation, to use whips and chains and tortures against men; for his teaching was enough, when “the sower went out to sow” (Matthew 13:3), so that he might sow the word everywhere (Mark 4:14).

If a time is to come that will bound the world, a limit made necessary by its having had a beginning, and if an end is to come upon the world, and after the end a just judgement upon all, then the one who pursues these questions as a philosopher will need to establish the points of our teaching with proofs of every kind, both from the divine writings and from the logical sequence of the arguments. But the ordinary, simpler person, who cannot follow the most intricate insights of the wisdom of God, once he has entrusted himself to God and to the Saviour of our race, will need to be content with “He himself said it” of this Saviour rather than of anyone else at all.

Threats of punishment and promises of the kingdom§10

10After this, as is his habit, Celsus again establishes and proves nothing, but, as though we talked about God without holiness or reverence, he says: “That they talk on about God in this way without holiness or reverence is quite plain.” He thinks that we do these things to astonish the uneducated, and not because we speak the truth about punishments that are necessary for those who have sinned. That is why he likens us to those who, in the Bacchic mysteries, bring on the phantoms and terrors beforehand.

Now as to the Bacchic mysteries, whether there is any convincing account of them or none at all, let the Greeks speak, and let Celsus and his fellow revellers listen. We, for our part, make our defence for our own teaching, saying that our aim is to set the human race right. We do this either through the threats of punishment, which we are persuaded are necessary for the universe, and perhaps not without use even to those who will suffer them, or through the promises made to those who have lived well, which hold out the blessed life in the kingdom of God for those worthy to have him reign over them.

Moses is older than the theorists of world cycles§11

11Next, wishing to show that we say nothing remarkable or new about a flood or a conflagration, but that we misheard what Greeks or barbarians say about these things and then believed our own Scriptures about them, he says this: “This too occurred to them because they misheard those others: that in long cycles of time, and with the returns and conjunctions of the stars, conflagrations and floods take place, and that after the last flood, in the time of Deucalion, the cycle, in keeping with the alternation of the universe, requires a conflagration. This made them say, in their mistaken opinion, that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.”

To this too we shall reply: I do not know how Celsus, who has read so much and has shown that he knows many histories, failed to take note of the antiquity of Moses. Certain Greek writers record that Moses lived in the times of Inachus, father of Phoroneus, and he is admitted to be very ancient by the Egyptians, and also by those who have written on the history of Phoenicia. Anyone who wishes may read the two books of Flavius Josephus on the antiquity of the Jews (Josephus, Against Apion), to learn how Moses was older than those who said that floods and conflagrations happen in the world over long periods of time. Celsus says that Jews and Christians misheard these men and, not understanding what they said about the conflagration, said that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.

What it means that God comes down§12

12Whether there are cycles, and floods or conflagrations by cycles, or not, and whether our teaching also knows of these things, in many passages and especially where Solomon says, “What is it that has been? The very thing that shall be. And what is it that has been done? The very thing that shall be done” (Ecclesiastes 1:9), and what follows, it is not the present occasion to say. It is enough only to note that Moses and some of the prophets, who were men of the greatest antiquity, did not take from others what they say about the conflagration of the world. Rather, if we must attend to the dates and say so, it was others who misheard them and, not grasping exactly what they said, made up the idea that in each cycle the very same things recur, indistinguishable down to their individual qualities and their accidents.

We, however, ascribe neither the flood nor the conflagration to cycles and periods of the stars. We say that their cause is wickedness, spreading ever further and purged by a flood or a conflagration. And if the prophetic words speak of God coming down, the God who said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord” (Jeremiah 23:24), we take it figuratively. For God comes down from his own greatness and height when he orders the affairs of men, and above all of the wicked. And just as ordinary usage says that teachers come down to little children, and that the wise, or those making progress, come down to young people who have just turned to philosophy, not meaning that they come down bodily, so wherever in the divine Scriptures God is said to come down, it is understood in the same way as this ordinary use of the word; and so too with going up.

Our God is a consuming fire§13

13Since Celsus mocks us, saying that we claim God comes down like a torturer bearing fire, and so forces us to examine deeper doctrines out of season, we shall say a little, just enough to give our hearers a taste of a defence that overturns Celsus’s mockery of us, and then turn to what follows. The divine word says that our God is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24; Hebrews 12:29), and that “rivers of fire flow before him” (Daniel 7:10), and also that he himself comes in “like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ herb,” to refine his own people (Malachi 3:2–3).

So when he is said to be “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24), we ask what it is fitting for God to consume. And we say that God, as fire, consumes wickedness and the deeds that spring from it, which are figuratively called “wood” and “hay” and “straw.” For the wicked man is said to “build” “wood” and “hay” and “straw” upon the rational foundation already laid (1 Corinthians 3:10–12). Now if anyone can show that the writer meant these words otherwise, and can present the wicked man as building “wood” or “hay” or “straw” in a bodily sense, then clearly the fire too will be understood as material and perceptible. But if the works of the wicked man are plainly spoken of figuratively when they are called “wood” or “hay” or “straw,” how is it not obvious at once what kind of fire is meant, by which such “wood” is to be consumed? For he says: “The fire itself will test what sort of work each one has done. If anyone’s work that he has built upon it remains, he will receive a reward; if anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss” (1 Corinthians 3:13–15). And what work burned up could be meant in these words, if not everything done out of wickedness?

Our God, then, is “a consuming fire” (Deuteronomy 4:24) in the sense we have given, and so he “comes in like a refiner’s fire” (Malachi 3:2), to refine the rational nature, which is filled with the lead of wickedness and with the other impure materials that have debased the golden nature of the soul, if I may call it so, or its silver nature. So too “rivers of fire” are said to be “before” God (Daniel 7:10), who will utterly do away with the wickedness mixed through the whole soul. But this is enough in reply to the words: “This made them say, in their mistaken opinion, that God will come down like a torturer bearing fire.”

God comes down without changing§14

14Let us look also at what Celsus says next, with a grand announcement, in this way: “Further,” he says, “let us take up the argument again from the beginning with more proofs. I say nothing new, only what has long been settled. God is good and beautiful and happy, and is in what is most beautiful and best. If, then, he comes down to men, he must undergo change: a change from good to bad, from beautiful to shameful, from happiness to misery, and from what is best to what is most wicked. Who would choose such a change? Besides, it is the nature of what is mortal to be altered and remoulded, but of what is immortal to remain the same and unchanging. So God would not accept this change either.”

To this, it seems to me, the needful answer is given by explaining what the Scriptures say about the descent of God to human affairs. For this he needs no change, as Celsus thinks we say, nor any turning from good to bad, or from beautiful to shameful, or from happiness to misery, or from what is best to what is most wicked. For, remaining unchangeable in his essence, he comes down to human affairs by his providence and his ordering of things.

We, then, show that the divine writings also speak of God as unchangeable, both in the words “But you are the same” (Psalm 102:27) and in “I have not changed” (Malachi 3:6). But the gods of Epicurus, being made up of atoms and, so far as their structure goes, liable to dissolve, are busy shaking off the atoms that would destroy them. And the god of the Stoics too, since he is a body, at one time has the whole of substance as his ruling part, when the conflagration takes place, and at another comes to be in a part of it, when the world is set in order. For these men have not been able to bring out clearly the natural conception of God as in every way incorruptible, simple, uncompounded and indivisible.

The Word humbled himself but did not change§15

15What came down to men existed “in the form of God” (Philippians 2:6), and out of love for mankind “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7), so that he could be received by men. Surely no change from good to bad took place in him, for “he committed no sin” (1 Peter 2:22); nor from beautiful to shameful, for he “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Nor did he pass from happiness to misery: he “humbled himself” (Philippians 2:8), yet he was no less blessed, even while he humbled himself for the good of our race. Nor did any change take place in him from what is best to what is most wicked; for how can kindness and love for mankind be most wicked?

Or is it time to say that the physician too, who looks on dreadful sights and handles loathsome things in order to heal the sick, passes from good to bad, or from beautiful to shameful, or from happiness to misery? And yet the physician who looks on dreadful sights and handles loathsome things does not wholly escape the risk of falling into the same ills himself. But he who heals “the wounds” of our souls through the Word of God that was in him could himself admit no evil at all.

But if Celsus thinks that the immortal God the Word, by taking up a mortal body and a human soul, is altered and remoulded, let him learn that “the Word” (John 1:14), remaining Word in essence, suffers none of the things that the body or the soul suffers. Rather, coming down at times to one who cannot look upon the flashing radiance and brightness of his Godhead, he becomes as it were “flesh” (John 1:14), and is spoken in a bodily way, until the one who has received him in this form is lifted up little by little by the Word and becomes able to behold even his primary form, if I may call it that.

The Word shows different forms to different hearers§16

16For there are, as it were, different forms of the Word, as the Word appears to each of those who are being led into knowledge, in proportion to the state of each: the one who is just beginning, or who has made a little progress or more, or is already drawing near to virtue, or has even come to live in virtue.

Hence, not in the way Celsus and those like him would have it, our God “was transfigured” and, going up “onto the high mountain” (Matthew 17:1-2; Mark 9:2), showed another form of himself, far better than the one seen by those who stayed below and could not follow him to the height. For those below did not have eyes able to see the transfiguration of the Word into what is glorious and more divine. They could barely receive him as he was, so that those who could not see his better form might say of him: “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty; but his form was without honour, falling short of the sons of men” (Isaiah 53:2-3).

Let this be said in answer to the supposition of Celsus, who did not understand the changes or transformations of Jesus that are told in the manner of historical narrative, nor what is mortal or immortal in him.

A worthier story than the myth of Dionysus§17

17Will not these things, especially when they are understood in the right way, appear far more dignified than Dionysus being deceived by the Titans, falling from the throne of Zeus, being torn to pieces by them, and afterwards being put together again and, as it were, coming back to life and going up to heaven? Or are the Greeks allowed to refer such tales to the doctrine of the soul and to interpret them figuratively, while the door is shut on us to a coherent explanation, one that everywhere agrees and harmonises with the Scriptures that come from the divine Spirit, who has dwelt in pure souls?

Celsus, then, has by no means seen the purpose of our writings, and so it is his own interpretation, not that of the Scriptures, that he attacks. Had he considered what follows for a soul that is to live in eternal life, and what one ought to think about its essence and its origins, he would not have mocked in this way the immortal one coming into a mortal body, not according to Plato’s transmigration of souls but according to some other, loftier view.

He would also have seen one exceptional descent, made out of great love for mankind, to bring back what the divine Scripture has called, in a hidden sense, “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 15:24), which had come down from the mountains; and to these the shepherd in certain parables is said to have come down, leaving on the mountains those that had not gone astray (Matthew 18:12; Luke 15:4).

The Word becomes food fitted to each§18

18By lingering over things he has not understood, Celsus makes us repeat ourselves, since we do not wish even to seem to have left any of his statements unexamined. He says next: “Either God really changes, as these people say, into a mortal body, and it has already been said that he cannot; or he himself does not change, but makes those who see him think he has, and leads them astray and lies. But deceit and falsehood are evils in every other case; one might use them only as a kind of medicine, either toward friends who are sick or mad, to heal them, or toward enemies, when one is taking care to escape danger. But no one who is sick or mad is a friend of God, nor does God fear anyone, that he should lead him astray to escape danger.”

To this one may answer partly concerning the nature of the divine Word, who is God, and partly concerning the soul of Jesus. Concerning the nature of the Word: just as the quality of foods is changed into milk in the nurse to suit the nature of the infant, or is prepared by the physician to meet the sick man’s need for health, or is made ready accordingly for the stronger man, since he is more able to take it; so God changes the power of the Word, whose nature is to nourish the human soul, for each person according to his worth. To one, as Scripture has named it, he becomes “the pure milk of the word” (1 Peter 2:2); to another, who is weaker, something like vegetables (Romans 14:2); to another, who is mature, he is given as “solid food” (Hebrews 5:14). And surely the Word does not belie his own nature when he becomes nourishment for each, as each is able to receive him; he neither leads astray nor lies.

But if someone takes the change to refer to the soul of Jesus, when it came into a body, we shall ask what he means by “change”. If he means change of essence, that is not granted, either for that soul or for any other rational soul. But if he means that, being mingled with the body, it suffers something from the body and from the place into which it has come, what absurdity follows for the teaching that, out of great love for mankind, brings a Saviour down to the human race? For none of those who earlier professed to heal could do as much as this soul showed by what it did, even coming down willingly, for the sake of our race, into the ills that are the lot of men.

Knowing this, the divine word says much in many places of the Scriptures. For the present it is enough to set out one passage of Paul, which runs thus: “Have this mind among you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count being equal with God a prize to be seized, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave; and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and granted him a name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:5-9).

No deceit in the Saviour’s coming§19

19Let others, then, grant Celsus that he does not change, but makes those who see him think he has changed. We, however, who are convinced that in the coming of Jesus among men there was no semblance but truth and plain reality, are not open to Celsus’s charge.

Even so, we will make this answer: Do you not say, Celsus, that it is sometimes permitted to use deceit and lying as a kind of medicine? What is absurd, then, in something of this kind having taken place, if something of this kind was going to bring salvation? For some words, when spoken falsely rather than truthfully, turn certain characters back, as do some words that physicians at times speak to the sick. But let this be our defence on behalf of others.

For it is not absurd that he who heals friends who are sick should heal the human race, which is dear to him, by such means as one would not use by preference, but because circumstances demand it. And the human race, being mad, had to be cured by methods that the Word saw were useful for the mad, so that they might come to their senses.

He says, too, that one does such things toward enemies, “when one is taking care to escape danger”. But God does not fear anyone, so as to escape danger by leading astray those who plot against him. It is wholly superfluous and unreasonable to answer what no one says about our Saviour.

As for the words “But no one who is sick or mad is a friend of God”, an answer has already been given in our defence on behalf of others. For whoever makes that defence says that such a dispensation takes place not for those who are already friends and are sick or mad, but for those who, through sickness of soul and the derangement of their natural reasoning, are still enemies (Romans 5:10), so that they may become friends of God. For it is plainly said that Jesus took all things upon himself for sinners (Romans 5:8), that he might “set them free” from sin (Hebrews 2:15) and make them “righteous” (Romans 5:19).

Why a cleansing coming is not absurd§20

20Next, he brings on stage, on one side, Jews who explain the reason for the coming of Christ, a coming that in their view still lies in the future, and on the other side, Christians who speak of the coming of the Son of God into human life as something that has already taken place. Come, then, let us look into these points too, as briefly as we can.

The Jews in his book say that human life, filled with every kind of wickedness, needs one sent down from God, so that the unjust may be punished and all things purified, as in the first flood (compare Genesis 6:11–13; Genesis 7:21–23). And since the Christians too are said to add other things to these, it is plain that he says these things are said by them as well.

And what is absurd in this, that when wickedness has overflowed, one will come who will cleanse the world and deal with each according to what each deserves? For it does not befit God to leave the spread of wickedness unchecked and not to renew the order of things. The Greeks, too, know of the earth being cleansed at set periods by flood or by fire, as Plato also says somewhere: “Whenever the gods cleanse the earth with waters and flood it, those in the mountains…” (Plato, Timaeus 22d), and the rest.

We must ask, then: if the Greeks say these things, is what they proclaim solemn and worth a hearing, but if we too argue for some of these very things that the Greeks praise, are these doctrines no longer good? And yet those who are concerned with setting out clearly and exactly all that has been written will try to show not only the antiquity of those who wrote these things, but also the dignity of what they said and its consistency.

The tower, Sodom and the cleansing fire§21

21I do not know how he thinks that the overthrow of the tower also took place in the same way as the flood that cleansed the earth, as the teaching of Jews and Christians would have it. For even granting that the story of the tower set down in Genesis (Genesis 11:1–9) speaks in no riddles but, as Celsus thinks, is plain, not even so does it appear that this happened to cleanse the earth; unless, perhaps, he thinks that what is called the “confusion” of tongues (Genesis 11:9) was a cleansing of the earth. Whoever is able will give an account of this at a more suitable time, when the task in hand is to set out both what sense the story in that passage has and what its higher meaning is.

He thinks that Moses, who recorded the events of the tower and the confusion of languages, corrupted the stories told about the sons of Aloeus and so recorded such things about the tower. To this it must be said that I do not think anyone told the stories of the sons of Aloeus before Homer, whereas I am persuaded that Moses recorded the events of the tower, which are much older than Homer and even than the invention of Greek letters. Who, then, is more likely to be corrupting whose stories? Do those who tell of the sons of Aloeus corrupt the events of the tower, or does the man who wrote of the tower and the confusion of languages corrupt the stories of the Aloadae? But to impartial hearers Moses plainly appears to be older than Homer.

Moses also tells in Genesis of Sodom and Gomorrah, how they were wiped out by fire because of their sin (Genesis 19:24–25). Celsus compares this with the story of Phaethon, doing everything in keeping with his one mistake, his failure to take account of the antiquity of Moses. For those who tell of Phaethon seem to be younger even than Homer, and Homer is much younger than Moses.

We do not deny, then, the cleansing fire and the destruction of the world for the removal of wickedness and the renewal of the universe, and we say that we have learned this from the prophets, out of the sacred books. Yet once the prophets, who say many things about the future, are shown, as we said above, to have spoken the truth about many things that are past, and to give proof that the divine Spirit was in them, it is plain that we must believe them about the things to come as well, or rather believe the divine Spirit in them.

The fall of Jerusalem and the new call§22

22According to Celsus, the Christians add some further points to what the Jews say, and claim that the Son of God has already been sent because of the sins of the Jews, and that the Jews, by punishing Jesus and giving him gall to drink (Matthew 27:34), drew down wrath from God upon themselves.

Let anyone who wishes prove this statement false, if the whole Jewish nation was not overthrown before even one full generation had passed since Jesus suffered these things at their hands. For it was, I think, forty-two years from the time they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem. And never, since there have been Jews, has it been recorded that they were shut out for so long a time from their venerable rites and worship, overpowered by those stronger than they. But even if at times they seemed to be abandoned because of their sins, they were none the less visited, and they returned and recovered what was their own, performing their customary rites without hindrance. So one of the facts that show Jesus to have been something divine and holy is this: that on his account so many and such great calamities have now befallen the Jews for a long time.

We shall say with confidence that they will not even be restored. For they committed the most unholy crime of all, when they plotted against the Saviour of the human race in the very city where they used to perform for God the customary rites that were symbols of great mysteries. It was necessary, then, that the city where Jesus suffered these things should be utterly destroyed, that the Jewish nation should be overthrown, and that God’s call to blessedness should pass to others, I mean the Christians. To them has come the teaching of sincere and pure devotion to God, and they have received new laws suited to the order of life established everywhere, since the laws given earlier, as to one nation ruled by kings of its own race and customs, could not all be carried out now.

Celsus likens Jews and Christians to worms§23

23After this, laughing in his usual way, he has compared the race of Jews and Christians, all of them, to a cluster of bats, or to ants coming out of a nest, or to frogs holding council around a marsh, or to worms holding an assembly in a corner of the mire and quarrelling with one another over which of them are the greater sinners, and saying: “God reveals and announces everything to us beforehand; he has left the whole world and the movement of the heavens, he has disregarded this vast earth, and he lives as a fellow citizen with us alone; to us alone he sends his heralds, and he never stops sending and seeking how we may be with him for ever.”

And in his own fiction he makes us like worms who say: “There is God, and after him come we, made by him and wholly like God (compare Genesis 1:26–28); and all things have been put under us, earth and water and air and stars; all things exist for our sake, and have been appointed to serve us.” And the worms in his account, meaning us, of course, say: “Now, since some among us do wrong, God will come or will send his Son to burn up the unjust, so that the rest of us may have eternal life with him.” And to all this he adds that such claims are more tolerable coming from worms and frogs than from Jews and Christians quarrelling with one another.

Littleness is not measured by the body§24

24In reply to this we ask those who accept what has been said against us in this way, and we say: Do you suppose that all human beings are a cluster of bats, or ants, or frogs, or worms, because of God’s surpassing greatness? Or do you leave the rest of humankind out of the picture set before us, and because of their reason and their established laws keep them as human beings, while you belittle Christians and Jews because of their doctrines, which do not please you, and so have compared them to these animals?

Whichever answer you give to our question, we shall reply by trying to show that such things have not been rightly said, whether of all human beings or of us. Suppose, first, you say that all human beings, in relation to God, are compared with these mean animals, since their littleness can in no way be compared with God’s surpassing greatness. What littleness do you mean? Answer me, you there.

If you mean the littleness of their bodies, hear this: when truth is the judge, what surpasses and what falls short is not decided by the body. For on that reckoning griffins and elephants will be better than us human beings, since they are larger and stronger and longer-lived than we are. Yet no one of sound mind would say that these irrational creatures are better than rational beings because of their bodies (for reason raises the rational being far above all irrational ones). Nor would he say that the virtuous and blessed beings are better because of their bodies, whether these are, as you say, the good demons, or, as we are accustomed to call them, the angels of God, or whatever natures there may be that surpass human beings; he would say they are better because the reason in them has been brought to perfection and formed in every virtue.

No rational soul is a worm§25

25But suppose you scorn man’s littleness not because of the body but because of the soul, on the ground that it is inferior to the other rational beings, and especially to the virtuous ones, and inferior for this reason, that wickedness is in it. Why, then, are the bad among Christians and those among Jews who live evil lives any more a cluster of bats, or ants, or worms, or frogs, than the wicked among the other nations? On this reckoning anyone at all, and above all one given over to unrestrained wickedness, is a bat and a worm and a frog and an ant compared with the rest of humankind.

So even if a man is Demosthenes the orator, with wickedness like his and the deeds he did out of wickedness, or Antiphon, who is also reckoned an orator and who denied providence in the books entitled On Truth, a title like that of Celsus, none the less these men are worms rolling about in a corner of the mire of folly and ignorance.

And yet no rational being of any kind whatever could reasonably be compared to a worm, since it has starting points for virtue. For these first sketches of virtue do not allow those who have virtue in potential, and who cannot wholly lose its seeds, to be compared to a worm. It appears, then, that human beings in general could not be worms in relation to God, for reason, which takes its beginning from the Word who comes from God, does not allow the rational living being to be thought wholly alien to God. Nor could the bad among Christians and Jews, who in truth are neither Christians nor Jews, be compared to worms rolling about in a corner of the mire any more than the other bad.

And if the nature of reason does not allow us to accept even this, then plainly we shall not insult human nature, which was made for virtue, even if it sins through ignorance, nor shall we liken it to such animals.

Who the real worms are§26

26But if, because of the doctrines of Christians and Jews that displease Celsus (doctrines he seems not to understand at all), these people are worms and ants while the rest of mankind are not, come, let us examine the doctrines of Christians and Jews that are plain to everyone at first sight, and compare them with those of the rest of mankind. Let us see whether it will not become clear, to anyone who once grants that some human beings are worms and ants, who the worms and ants and frogs really are. They are those who have fallen away from a sound conception of God and, under a semblance of piety, worship irrational animals or images, or even the things that have been made (Romans 1:23, 25), when they ought to marvel at the Maker from the beauty of what he has made (Wisdom of Solomon 13:3–5) and to worship him. Human beings, on the other hand, and anything more honourable than human beings, are those who, following reason, have been able to rise above stones and wood, and even above silver and gold, the matter that is reckoned most precious. They have risen also from the beautiful things in the world to the one who made the universe and have entrusted themselves to him. They send up their prayers to him as the only one who is able to suffice for all that exists, to watch over the thoughts of all, and to hear the prayer of all. They do everything as in the sight of one who sees all that is done, and as before one who hears all that is said they take care to say nothing that, as it reaches God, would not please him.

Unless, of course, such great piety, which is overcome neither by sufferings nor by the danger of death nor by persuasive arguments, does nothing to keep those who have taken it up from being compared any longer to worms, even if they were so compared before they came to such piety! Take those who overcome the fiercest of appetites, the appetite for sexual pleasure, which has made the hearts of many soft as wax. They overcome it for this reason: they have been persuaded that they cannot otherwise be made God’s own unless they also rise to him through self-control. Do these seem to us to be brothers of worms, kin of ants, and like frogs? And what of the splendour of justice, which preserves fellowship, fairness, humanity and kindness toward one’s neighbour and fellow human being? Does it do nothing to keep such a person from being a bat?

But those who wallow in licentiousness, as most people do, and those who go to common prostitutes as a matter of indifference and even teach that this is not at all contrary to what is fitting, are they not worms in the mire? Above all when they are compared with those who have been taught not to take “the members of Christ” and the body in which the Word dwells and make them “members of a prostitute” (1 Corinthians 6:15)? These have learned already that the “body” of a rational being, dedicated to the God of the universe, “is a temple” of the God whom they worship (1 Corinthians 6:19), and that it becomes such through a pure conception of the Creator. Guarding against destroying “the temple of God” (1 Corinthians 3:17) through unlawful intercourse, they practise self-control as piety toward God.

Those who truly bear the name of Christian§27

27And I do not yet speak of the other evils found among human beings, from which not even those who are reputed to be philosophers are readily free (for in philosophy too there are many counterfeits). Nor do I yet say that such evils abound among those who are neither Jews nor Christians, while among Christians they either do not exist at all, if you examine strictly who the Christian is, or, if they should be found, are certainly not found among those who meet together, come to the common prayers, and are not shut out from them; unless perhaps, on rare occasions, someone of that sort is found escaping notice among the many.

So we are not worms holding assembly, we who take our stand against the Jews on the basis of the writings they believe to be sacred, and who show that the one who was prophesied has come; that they have been forsaken because of their very great sins; and that we who have received the word have the best hopes with God, both from our faith in him and from a life that is able to make us, pure from all wickedness and vice, his own.

It is not, then, simply anyone who proclaims himself a Jew or a Christian who could say that God made the whole world and the motion of the heavens chiefly for us. But if someone is, as Jesus taught, pure “in heart” (Matthew 5:8), meek (Matthew 5:5), a peacemaker (Matthew 5:9), and one who readily endures dangers for the sake of piety (Matthew 5:10–11), such a person might with good reason have confidence in God; and, understanding the meaning of the prophecies as well, he might also say that God has shown all these things beforehand and announced them to us who believe.

God loves all that he has made§28

28Celsus has represented those he considers worms, the Christians, as saying that “God has left the motion of the heavens and disregarded the vast earth, and makes his home among us alone, sends his envoys to us, and never ceases sending and seeking how we may be with him forever.” To this we must reply that he attributes to us things that we do not say. For we read and know that God loves all things that exist and loathes none of the things he has made, for he would not have fashioned anything if he hated it (Wisdom of Solomon 11:24). We have also read: “You spare all things, for they are yours, O Lover of souls. For your imperishable Spirit is in all things. Therefore you correct little by little those who fall away, and you admonish them by reminding them of the things in which they sin” (Wisdom of Solomon 11:26–12:2).

How could we say that God has left the motion of the heavens and the whole world, and disregarded the vast earth, to make his home among us alone? We have found that in our prayers we must speak as people convinced that “the earth is full of the mercy of the Lord” (Psalm 33:5), and that “the mercy of the Lord is upon all flesh” (Sirach 18:13); and that God, being good, “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). He urges us to do the like, so that we may become his sons (Matthew 5:44–45), and teaches us to extend our good deeds to all people as far as we can. For he himself is called “the Saviour of all people, especially of believers” (1 Timothy 4:10), and his Christ is called “the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

Perhaps some of the Jews might say, not the things Celsus has recorded, but certain other naive things; but certainly not Christians, who have been taught that “God shows his own love for us in that, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). And yet “one will scarcely die for a righteous man; though for a good man someone might perhaps even dare to die” (Romans 5:7). But as it is, Jesus is proclaimed to have come for sinners everywhere, so that they may leave sin behind and entrust themselves to God; and by a usage long established in these writings he is also called the Christ of God.

How “God, then we” can be rightly understood§29

29Perhaps Celsus misheard some people saying, “There is God, and after him come we,” we whom he has called worms. He acts like those who find fault with a whole school of philosophy because of things said by some rash youth who has attended a philosopher’s lectures for three days and looks down on everyone else as inferior and ignorant of philosophy. For we know that there are many beings more honourable than man. We have read that “God stood in the assembly of gods” (Psalm 82:1), gods who are not those worshipped by the rest of mankind (for “all the gods of the nations are demons,” Psalm 96:5); and we have read that “God,” standing “in the assembly of gods, judges gods in their midst” (Psalm 82:1). We know too that “although there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we are for him, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:5–6).

We know also that the angels are so far above human beings that human beings, once made perfect, become equal to angels; for “in the resurrection of the dead” the righteous “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of heaven” (Matthew 22:30; compare Mark 12:25), and they become “equal to angels” (Luke 20:36). We know that in the ordering of the universe there are some who are called thrones, others dominions, others authorities and others rulers (Colossians 1:16). And we see that we human beings, though we fall far short of these, have hope that by living well and doing everything in accordance with reason we shall rise to a likeness with all of them. And lastly, since “it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, we know that when he is revealed we shall be like God and shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).

But if someone were to say what is said by some, whether by those who understand or by those who do not understand but have misheard sound teaching, that “there is God, and after him come we,” I would interpret even this, taking “we” to mean rational beings, and still more the virtuous among rational beings. For in our view the same virtue belongs to all the blessed, so that the virtue of a human being and of God is also the same. That is why we are taught to become “perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). So no one who is noble and good is a worm swimming in the mire, no one who is pious is an ant, no one who is righteous is a frog, and no one whose soul is lit by the bright light of truth could reasonably be compared to a bat.

Made in the image, not yet in the likeness§30

30It seems to me that Celsus has also misheard the words “Let us make man according to our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), and on that basis has made the worms say, “Since we were made by God, we are in every way like him.” Yet if he had known the difference between man’s having been made “according to the image” of God and his being made “according to the likeness,” and that it is written that God said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26), but that God made man “according to the image” of God (Genesis 1:27), and not yet also “according to the likeness,” he would not have made us say that we are in every way like God.

Nor do we say that the stars too have been made subject to us. For the resurrection of the righteous, as it is spoken of and as the wise understand it, is compared to the sun and moon and stars by him who says: “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:41–42); and Daniel too prophesied of these things long ago (Daniel 12:3).

He claims that we say, “All things have been appointed to serve us.” Perhaps he has not heard the intelligent among us saying such things; perhaps, too, he does not understand in what sense it has been said that the greater among us is the servant of all (Matthew 23:11; Mark 10:44). And when Greeks say, “Then sun and night serve mortals” (Euripides, Phoenician Women 546), they praise the saying and expound it; but when such a thing is either not said among us or said in another sense, Celsus slanders us even on these grounds.

In Celsus’s book we, who in his account are worms, were saying that “since some among us go wrong, God will come to us, or will send his own Son, to burn up the unrighteous, so that the rest of us frogs may have eternal life with him.” And see how this solemn philosopher, like a buffoon, has turned to mockery, laughter and ridicule the divine proclamation about judgment and about the punishment “against the unrighteous” and the reward for the righteous. To all this he adds that these things “are more bearable when worms and frogs say them than when Jews and Christians, quarrelling with one another, proclaim them.”

But we will not imitate him, nor will we say the like about the philosophers who profess to know the nature of the universe, and who debate with one another about how the universe was put together, how heaven and earth and all that is in them came to be, and whether souls, being unbegotten and not created by God, are set in order by him and pass from body to body, or, being sown together with bodies, outlast them or do not outlast them. For someone could mock and revile these things too, instead of speaking of them with respect and approving the purpose of those who have devoted themselves to the search for truth, and say that these men are worms in a corner of the mire of human life, who do not take their own measure and for that reason pronounce on such great matters as though they had grasped them; and that they speak insistently, as men who have beheld them, about things that cannot be beheld without the inspiration of a higher and more divine power. “For no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him; so also no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 2:11).

But we are not mad, and we do not compare so great an understanding in men (I use “understanding” in its looser sense), one that has busied itself not with the concerns of the many but with the search for truth, to the movements of worms or of any other such creatures. Rather, as lovers of truth, we bear witness concerning some of the Greek philosophers that they came to know God, since “God made it plain to them” (Romans 1:19), even if “they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their reasonings” (Romans 1:21), and “claiming to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things” (Romans 1:22–23).

The commonwealth of the Hebrews§31

31After this, wishing to establish that Jews and Christians differ in no way from the creatures he named earlier, he says that “the Jews were runaways from Egypt, who never did anything worth mentioning, and were never of any account or number.” Now, that they were not runaways, nor Egyptians, but Hebrews who lived as sojourners in Egypt, we have already said above. But if he thinks it is proved that they were “of no account or number” from the fact that their history is scarcely to be found among the Greeks, we will say that if anyone looks closely at their commonwealth from its beginning and at the ordering of their laws, he would find that they were men who showed on earth a shadow of the heavenly life.

Among them nothing else was held to be God but the One who is over all, and none of those who make images had a place among their citizens. For there was neither painter nor sculptor in their commonwealth, since the law banished all such people from it, so that there might be no occasion for the making of statues, which lures the foolish among men and drags the eyes of the soul down from God to earth. So they had a law such as this: “Do not act lawlessly and make for yourselves a carved likeness, any image, a likeness of male or female, a likeness of any beast of those that are on the earth, a likeness of any winged bird that flies under heaven, a likeness of any creeping thing that creeps on the earth, a likeness of any fish, all that are in the waters beneath the earth” (Deuteronomy 4:16–18). Indeed, the law wished them to keep company with the truth about each thing and not to fashion other things contrary to the truth, counterfeiting what is truly male or really female, or the nature of beasts, or the kind of birds, of creeping things, or of fish.

Solemn and lofty, too, is their precept: “Do not, when you look up to heaven and see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the array of heaven, be led astray and bow down to them and serve them” (Deuteronomy 4:19). And what a commonwealth it was, that of a whole nation in which it was not even possible for an effeminate man to be seen! Wonderful, too, is the fact that the courtesans, who inflame the young, were removed from their commonwealth (Deuteronomy 23:17). They had courts made up of the most just men, men who had given proof of a sound life over a long time, to whom judgments were entrusted; and these, because of their pure character and what in them was more than human, were called gods, by an ancestral custom of the Jews. One could see a whole nation practising philosophy; and, to give leisure for hearing the divine laws, there were the so-called sabbaths and their other ordinances, those of priests and of sacrifices, which contain countless symbols made clear to those who love learning.

From Israel’s law to the worship Jesus brought§32

32But since nothing in human nature is secure, that commonwealth too had to decay little by little and fall away from its way of life. And providence, having remodelled what was solemn in the teaching of the Jews where it needed remodelling, so as to fit people everywhere, has handed on, in their place, to believers drawn from people everywhere the solemn worship of God in the way of Jesus. He, adorned not only with understanding but also with a divine endowment, overthrew the teaching about the demons on earth, who delight in incense and blood and the fumes that rise from the reek of sacrifice, and who, like the Titans or Giants of the myths, drag men down from the thought of God. Paying no heed himself to their plotting, though they plot most of all against the better sort, he laid down laws such that those who live by them will be blessed, never flattering the demons with sacrifices and wholly despising them because of the Word of God, who helps those who look upward and toward God.

And because God willed that the word of Jesus should prevail among men, the demons have been able to do nothing, though they have tried every means to see that there should be Christians no longer. For they stirred up those who reign, the senate, the governors everywhere, and even the peoples themselves, all of them unaware of the irrational and wicked working of the demons, against the word and those who believe in it. But the Word of God, mightier than all, even when hindered, taking the hindrance as food, so to speak, for its growth, went forward and spread over more and more souls; for God willed this.

Even if we have said this by way of digression, we have said it, I think, of necessity. For we wished to answer what Celsus says about the Jews, that, as he would have it, they were “runaways from Egypt,” and that these men, beloved of God, “never did anything worth mentioning.” And to the claim that they “were of no account or number,” we say that, as “a chosen race” and “a royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9; Exodus 19:6), withdrawing and avoiding mingling with the many so that their morals might not be corrupted, they were guarded by the divine power. They neither desired, as most men do, to win other kingdoms for themselves, nor were they forsaken, so as to become easy targets for plots because of their few numbers and, as far as their few numbers went, to perish utterly. And this held as long as they were still worthy of God’s protection. But when, as a whole nation that was sinning, they had to turn back to their God through hardships, they were forsaken, sometimes more and sometimes less, until, under the Romans, having committed the greatest sin in killing Jesus, they were forsaken completely.

The fathers named in prayers and spells§33

33Next after this, Celsus, running over the contents of the first book of Moses, which is entitled Genesis, says that “they set about tracing their descent back to a first stock of sorcerers and deceivers, calling to witness faint and ambiguous sayings hidden away somewhere in darkness, and misinterpreting them to the ignorant and foolish; and this though, in all the long time before, no one had ever so much as laid claim to such a thing.” In these words he seems to me to have stated what he meant very obscurely. And it is likely that he contrived the obscurity of this passage on purpose, since he saw that the argument which establishes that the Jewish nation comes from these particular ancestors is strong; and yet, on the other hand, he did not want to seem ignorant of a matter concerning the Jews and their race that is not to be lightly dismissed.

It is clear, then, that the Jews trace their descent from the three fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Their names, joined to the title of God, have such power that the formula “the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6) is used not only by those of that nation in their prayers to God and in charming away demons, but also by nearly all who busy themselves with spells and magic. For in magical writings this kind of invocation of God is found in many places, as is the use of the name of God as proper to these men, in dealings against the demons. These facts, then, which Jews and Christians bring forward as proof that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the fathers of the Jewish nation, were holy men, Celsus seems to me not to have been wholly ignorant of, and yet not to have set out clearly, since he could not answer the argument.

The patriarchs are known only from Genesis§34

34For we put this question to all who use such invocations of God: “Tell us, sirs, who Abraham was, how great Isaac was, and what power Jacob had, that the title ‘God’, joined to their name, works such mighty deeds? From whom have you learned, or from whom can you learn, the facts about these men? And who took the trouble to write down their history, whether one that on its face exalts the men in secret writings, or one that by hidden meanings hints at great and wonderful things to those able to contemplate them?”

Then, when we ask and no one can show from what history at all the facts about these men come, whether Greek or barbarian, or not a history but some mystical record, we shall bring forward the book entitled Genesis, which contains the deeds of these men and God’s oracles to them. And we shall say: May it not be that the very fact that you too make use of the names of these three founders of the nation, because you see plainly that calling on them achieves results not to be despised, shows the divine character of these men? And we receive these men from no other source than the sacred books held among the Jews.

What is more, “the God of Israel” (Exodus 5:1), “the God of the Hebrews” (Exodus 3:18), and “the God who drowned the king of the Egyptians and the Egyptians in the Red Sea” (Exodus 14:27–28; 15:4) are often named and called upon against demons or certain wicked powers. And we learn the history of what is named, and the meaning of the names, from the Hebrews, who honour these things and tell of them in their ancestral writings and their ancestral language.

How then can the Jews, in trying to trace their descent from the first seed of these men, whom Celsus has supposed to be sorcerers and vagabonds, be shamelessly trying to trace themselves and their origin back to them, when the names of these men, being Hebrew, bear witness on behalf of the Hebrews, who have their sacred books in the Hebrew language and letters, that their nation is akin to these men? For even to this day the Jewish names, which belong to the Hebrew language, have been taken either from their writings or simply from what words mean in the Hebrew tongue.

Celsus asserts but never proves§35

35And you who read Celsus’s writing, see whether it is not these things that his words hint at: “they set about tracing their descent back to a first stock of sorcerers and deceivers, calling to witness faint and ambiguous sayings hidden away somewhere in darkness.” For these names are hidden, and are not in the light or in the knowledge of the many. In our view they are not ambiguous, even if they are taken up by those who are strangers to our worship of God. But in the view of Celsus, who does not show what is ambiguous about the sayings, the charge has been tossed in, I do not know how.

Yet, if he wished to overturn fairly the genealogy which he thought the Jews, who boast of Abraham and his descendants, had most shamelessly adopted, he ought to have set out everything that bears on the subject. He ought first to have pleaded its case with whatever plausibility he thought it had, and after that to have overturned it nobly with what seemed to him the truth and with the arguments for that truth.

But neither Celsus nor anyone else, in treating the nature of names used for works of power, will be able to give an exact account of them and to prove that the men were contemptible whose very names have power not only among their own people but also among strangers.

He ought also to have shown how we deceive our hearers, as he supposes, by misinterpreting what concerns these names “to the ignorant and foolish”, while he himself, who boasts that he is neither ignorant nor foolish, gives the true interpretation of them.

He has also tossed in, in what he says about these names from which the Jews trace their descent, that never in all the long time before had there been any dispute over such names, but that now the Jews dispute about them with certain others, whom he did not name. Let anyone who wishes show who these claimants are, who argue against the Jews, with even some show of plausibility, that Jews and Christians do not give a sound report about the men to whom the names belong, while others are the ones who have grasped the wisest and truest things about them. But we are persuaded that no one will be able to do such a thing, since it is evident that the names have been taken from the Hebrew language, which is found among the Jews alone.

Hesiod came long after Moses§36

36After this Celsus sets out material from history outside the divine word, about people who have laid claim to antiquity, such as the Athenians, Egyptians, Arcadians and Phrygians, who say that certain earth-born men arose among them, and each of whom offers proofs of it. And he says that “the Jews, huddled together in some corner of Palestine, utterly uneducated, and not having heard of these things sung long ago by Hesiod and countless other inspired men, put together a most incredible and tasteless tale: a man moulded by the hands of God and blown into (Genesis 2:7), a little woman made from his side (Genesis 2:21–22), commandments of God (Genesis 2:16–17), and a serpent working against these commandments, the serpent getting the better of God’s orders (Genesis 3:1–6). They tell a sort of myth, as if to old women, and most impiously make God weak from the very beginning, unable to persuade even the one man whom he himself had moulded.”

In these words the widely read and learned Celsus, who charges both Jews and Christians with ignorance and lack of education, plainly shows how accurately he knew the dates of each writer, Greek and barbarian! For he thinks that Hesiod and countless others, whom he calls inspired men, are older than Moses and his writings: Moses, who is shown to be much older than the Trojan War.

So it was not the Jews who put together a most incredible and tasteless tale about the earth-born man, but Celsus’s “inspired men”, Hesiod and his countless others. Having neither learned nor heard the far older and most venerable accounts in Palestine, they wrote such histories about the ancients as their theogonies too, ascribing birth to gods, so far as it lay with them, and countless other things.

With good reason, then, Plato expels from his commonwealth Homer and those who write such poems, as corrupters of the young (Plato, Republic 398a; 607a). Plato plainly did not think that those who left such poems behind were inspired men. But Celsus the Epicurean, who is better able to judge than Plato, if indeed he is the same man who composed two other books against the Christians, has perhaps, out of a wish to quarrel with us, called “inspired” those whom he did not think inspired.

The hands and the breath of God§37

37He charges us with bringing in a man moulded by the hands of God, although the book of Genesis speaks of God’s hands neither at the making of man (Genesis 1:26–27) nor at his moulding (Genesis 2:7). It is Job and David who said, “Your hands made me and moulded me” (Job 10:8; Psalm 119:73). On these words “there is much to say” (Hebrews 5:11) in order to bring out what those who spoke them meant, not only about the difference between making and moulding but also about the hands of God.

Those who have not understood these hands, or similar expressions of the divine Scriptures, think that we ascribe to the God over all a shape such as the human shape. On their reasoning it would follow that we also think there are wings on God’s body, since the Scriptures about our God, taken literally, say this too (see Psalm 17:8; 91:4). But the present treatise does not require us to explain these things now; for we have examined them as our main subject, as far as we could, in our commentaries on Genesis.

Next, see Celsus’s malice in what follows. Our Scripture says of the moulding of man: “And he breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul” (Genesis 2:7). But he, wishing maliciously to mock “he breathed into his face the breath of life”, though he has not even understood in what sense it was said, wrote that they put together “a man moulded by the hands of God and blown into”. He did this so that someone might suppose “blown into” was said in the way wineskins are blown up, and laugh at “he breathed into his face the breath of life”. Yet this was said figuratively and needs an explanation, one showing that God gave man a share of the incorruptible Spirit, as it is said: “Your incorruptible Spirit is in all things” (Wisdom of Solomon 12:1).

Hesiod’s Pandora and the woman from the rib§38

38Then, since his set purpose was to speak ill of what is written, he also mocked the passage, “God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs and filled up flesh in its place; and he built the rib which he had taken from Adam into a woman” (Genesis 2:21–22), and what follows. He did not even set out the wording, which could have made the hearer notice that it is spoken figuratively. And he would not even acknowledge that such things are taken as allegory, although later he says that the more reasonable of the Jews and Christians, ashamed of these things, try somehow to allegorize them.

One may say to him: Is it, then, that what your inspired Hesiod said about the woman in the form of a myth is taken as allegory, that she was given to men by Zeus as “an evil” “in return for fire” (Hesiod, Works and Days 57), while the woman taken from the rib of the man who slept after a “trance,” and built by God, seems to you to have been told without any meaning and without any hidden sense? But it is not fair-minded to refrain from laughing at those verses as a myth, and to admire them as philosophy told in a myth, and yet to sneer at these words, resting the mind on the wording alone, and to think that they will turn out to mean nothing. For if one must find fault with things said under hidden meanings because of the bare wording, see whether it is not rather Hesiod’s verses that will incur laughter, though he was, as you say, an inspired man, and wrote such things as these:

“Then Zeus the cloud-gatherer, in anger, said to him: ‘Son of Iapetus, you who know counsels beyond all others, you rejoice that you stole fire and outwitted my mind, a great sorrow for yourself and for men who are to come. To them, in return for fire, I will give an evil in which all may delight in their hearts, embracing their own evil.’ So he spoke; and the father of men and gods brought it to pass. He bade far-famed Hephaestus with all speed to mix earth with water, and to put in it a human voice and strength, and to make it like the immortal gods in face, a maiden’s fair and lovely form; and he bade Athena teach her crafts, to weave the richly worked web; and golden Aphrodite to shed grace about her head, and painful longing and cares that wear out the limbs; and to put in her the mind of a dog and a thievish nature he charged Hermes, the guide, the slayer of Argus. So he spoke; and they obeyed Zeus, the lord, the son of Cronus. At once the famous lame god moulded from earth the likeness of a modest maiden, by the counsels of the son of Cronus; the goddess, grey-eyed Athena, girded and adorned her; about her the divine Graces and queenly Persuasion set golden necklaces upon her skin, and the lovely-haired Seasons crowned her with spring flowers; and Pallas Athena fitted every ornament to her body. And in her breast the guide, the slayer of Argus, wrought lies and wheedling words and a thievish nature, by the counsels of loud-thundering Zeus; and the herald of the gods put a voice in her, and named this woman Pandora, because all who have their homes on Olympus gave her as a gift, a sorrow to men who eat bread” (Hesiod, Works and Days 53–82).

Laughable on its face, too, is what is said about the jar: “For before this the tribes of men lived on the earth far from evils, without hard toil and painful diseases, which bring men their dooms. But the woman lifted the great lid from the jar with her hands and scattered them, and devised grievous sorrows for men. Hope alone remained there within, in an unbreakable house, under the lip of the jar, and did not fly out of the door; for before that she had put the lid on the jar” (Hesiod, Works and Days 90–98).

To the man who solemnly allegorizes these things, whether he succeeds in the allegory or not, we will say: Is it only the Greeks who may philosophize under a hidden meaning, and the Egyptians as well, and those of the barbarians who pride themselves on mysteries and on truth, while the Jews alone, with their lawgiver and their writers, seemed to you the most senseless of all men, and this nation alone has received no share of any power of God, the nation that was taught, in so lofty a way, to rise up to the uncreated nature of God, to fix its gaze on him alone, and to look for its hopes from him alone?

Plato’s garden of Zeus and the paradise of God§39

39Celsus also lampoons the story of the serpent, as one who works against God’s commands to man (Genesis 3:1–5), and supposes the account to be a myth like the tales that old women pass on. He deliberately did not name God’s “paradise,” nor say how “God” is said to have planted it “in Eden toward the east” (Genesis 2:8), and then to have made spring up “out of the ground every tree beautiful to see and good for food, and the tree of life in the middle of the paradise, and the tree of knowing good and evil” (Genesis 2:9), with what is said after these words, which could of themselves move a well-disposed reader to see that all this is expressed in figures, and not unworthily. Since he has done this, come, let us set beside it what Socrates says about Love in Plato’s Symposium, words which Plato gave to Socrates as more dignified than those of all who spoke about Love in the Symposium. Plato’s wording runs as follows:

“When Aphrodite was born, the gods held a feast, and among the rest was Resource, the son of Cunning. When they had dined, Poverty came to beg, as one does when there is feasting, and she was about the doors. Now Resource, drunk with nectar (for there was not yet wine), went into the garden of Zeus and, weighed down, fell asleep. Poverty, then, because of her own lack of resource, plotted to have a child by Resource; she lay down beside him and conceived Love. That is why Love has become the follower and attendant of Aphrodite, since he was begotten at her birthday feast, and also because he is by nature a lover of the beautiful, and Aphrodite is beautiful. Since Love, then, is the son of Resource and Poverty, his lot is this. First, he is always poor, and far from being tender and beautiful, as most people think, he is hard and parched, barefoot and homeless. He always lies on the ground, without bedding, sleeping in doorways and on the roads under the open sky; having his mother’s nature, he always lives with want. But after his father again he lays plots for the beautiful and the good. He is brave, headlong and intense, a formidable hunter, always weaving some scheme, eager for understanding and full of resource, philosophizing all through his life, a formidable enchanter, sorcerer and sophist. By nature he is neither immortal nor mortal: at one time on the same day he flourishes and lives, when he has plenty, and at another he dies, and comes to life again through his father’s nature. But what he gains is always slipping away, so that Love is never either destitute or rich. And again he is in the middle between wisdom and ignorance” (Plato, Symposium 203b–e).

Now, if those who read this imitate Celsus’s malice (far be that from Christians), they will laugh at the myth and make a mockery of so great a man as Plato. But if, examining philosophically what is said in the form of a myth, they are able to find Plato’s purpose […]: how he managed to hide, for the sake of the many, the doctrines that seemed great to him under the form of a myth, and yet to speak, as he had to, to those who know how to find, from myths, what the author of these things meant about the truth.

I have set out this myth from Plato because of “the garden of Zeus” in it, which seems to have some likeness to the paradise of God; and because of Poverty, who may be compared with the serpent there; and because of Resource, plotted against by Poverty, who may be compared with the man plotted against by the serpent. It is not at all clear whether Plato came upon these things by chance, or whether, as some think, on his journey to Egypt he met also those who study the philosophy of the Jews, learned some things from them, and kept some while altering others, taking care not to offend the Greeks by keeping wholly to the wisdom of the Jews, a people in bad repute with the many because of the strangeness of their laws and their peculiar way of life.

But this was not the time to explain either Plato’s myth or the story of the serpent and of God’s paradise and all that is recorded to have taken place in it; for we dealt with these matters as our main subject, as well as we could, in our commentaries on Genesis.

Adam is every man§40

40When he says that “the story of Moses most impiously brings in God as weak straight away, from the very beginning, and unable to persuade even one man whom he himself had formed,” to this too we shall say that the charge is like a complaint against the existence of wickedness, which God has not been able to prevent even in a single man, so that at least one man might be found who from the beginning had never tasted wickedness. For just as those who care to defend providence make their defence on this point with arguments neither few nor contemptible, so too those will philosophize about Adam and his sin who know that the name Adam, in Greek, is “man,” and that in what seems to be about Adam, Moses is giving an account of the nature of man.

For “in Adam,” as the word says, “all die” (1 Corinthians 15:22), and they were condemned “in the likeness of Adam’s transgression” (Romans 5:14), the divine word saying these things not so much of one particular man as of the whole race. Indeed, in the sequence of what is said as though of one man, the curse of Adam is common to all (Genesis 3:17–19); and as for what is said against the woman, there is no woman of whom it is not said (Genesis 3:16). And the man who is cast out of paradise with the woman (Genesis 3:23–24), clothed in the “garments of skins” (Genesis 3:21) which, because of the transgression of humankind, God made for those who had sinned, holds a secret and mystical meaning, beyond the descent of the soul as Plato tells it, which sheds its wings and is carried down here “until it lays hold of something solid” (Plato, Phaedrus 246c).

The ark is no strange tale§41

41Next he says this: “Then a flood, and a strange ark with everything inside it (Genesis 6:14–7:16), and a dove and a crow as messengers (Genesis 8:6–12), counterfeiting and tampering with the story of Deucalion. For I do not suppose they expected that these things would come to light; they simply told myths to little children.”

Here too, see the man’s unphilosophical hatred of the most ancient Scripture of the Jews. For he could find nothing to say against the story of the flood, and he did not notice what he could have said against the ark and its measurements: that if one takes, as the many do, the statement of “three hundred cubits” for the length “of the ark,” “and fifty” for the breadth, “and thirty” for the height (Genesis 6:15), it was not possible to claim that it held the animals of the earth, the clean by fourteen of each kind and the unclean by four (Genesis 7:2–3). Instead he simply said “strange, with everything inside.”

For what is strange about it, when the record says it was a hundred years in the making, and narrowed from the three hundred cubits of its length and the fifty of its breadth until the thirty cubits of its height ended in a single cubit of length and breadth (Genesis 6:16)? Why was the structure not rather a marvel, like a very great city, since its measurements are given as squares, so that its length at the base is ninety thousand and its breadth two thousand five hundred? Why should one not admire the design that made it firmly braced and able to withstand a storm that brought on a flood? For it was smeared not with pitch or any other such material, but solidly with asphalt (Genesis 6:14). And is it not a marvel that, by the providence of God, embers of life of every kind were brought inside, so that the earth might again have the seeds of all living creatures (Genesis 7:3), God making use of a most righteous man (Genesis 6:9), who was to be the father of those who came after the flood?

The dove, the raven and the charge of forgery§42

42Celsus has tossed in the matter of the dove so as to seem to have read the book of Genesis, though he could say nothing to prove that the story of the dove is a fiction (Genesis 8:8–12). Then, since it is his habit to reword what is written so as to make it more laughable, he has changed “the raven” into a crow (Genesis 8:7), and he thinks that Moses recorded these things while tampering with the story of Deucalion told among the Greeks, unless perhaps he does not even think the writing is by Moses, but by a number of people. For that is what these words show: “counterfeiting and tampering with the story of Deucalion,” and these as well: “For I do not suppose they expected that these things would come to light.”

But how could those who gave writings to a whole nation not expect them to come to light, when they even prophesied that this worship of God would be preached to all the nations? And when Jesus said to the Jews, “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:43), what else was he arranging but that he himself, by divine power, should bring into the light the whole of the Jewish Scripture, which contains mysteries of the kingdom of God? Then, if they read the theogonies of the Greeks and the stories about the twelve gods, they lend them dignity by allegories; but when they wish to mock ours, they say these were simply told as myths to little children.

The patriarchs’ troubles and Jacob’s marked flocks§43

43He speaks of “a most absurd and untimely begetting of children”; although he has not named it, he clearly means that of Abraham and Sarah (Genesis 18:11–14; Genesis 21:1–2). And when he tosses in “the plots of brothers,” he means either Cain plotting against Abel (Genesis 4:8) or, besides him, Esau against Jacob as well (Genesis 27:41); and by “a father’s grief” perhaps Isaac’s at Jacob’s going away, and perhaps also Jacob’s over Joseph, who was sold into Egypt (Genesis 37:28; Genesis 37:34–35). And in writing of “the treacheries of mothers,” I think he means Rebekah, who contrived that Isaac’s prayers should reach Jacob first, and not Esau (Genesis 27:5–29).

If we say that God shared most closely in the life of all these, what absurdity do we commit, since we are convinced that he never withdraws his own divinity from those who have devoted themselves to him and live nobly and with vigour?

He has mocked the wealth Jacob gained while with Laban, not understanding what the words refer to: “And the unmarked were Laban’s, and the marked were Jacob’s” (Genesis 30:42). And he says that God “gave his sons little donkeys and little sheep and camels”; and he did not see that “all these things happened to them as figures, and were written for our sake, upon whom the ends of the ages have come” (1 Corinthians 10:11). Among us, characters of many colours, made “marked” by the word of God, live as citizens, given as a possession to him who is figuratively called Jacob. For those from the nations who believe in him were signified by what is written about Laban and Jacob.

The wells of the righteous and Paul’s allegory§44

44Far from grasping the intent of what is written, he says that God also “gave wells to the righteous.” For he did not observe that the righteous do not build cisterns but dig “wells” (Genesis 26:18–22), seeking to find the spring that lies within and the source of good things fit to drink, since they also take in a figurative sense the commandment that says: “Drink waters from your own vessels and from the spring of your own wells. Let not your waters overflow outside your own spring, but let your waters pass through into your streets. Let them be yours alone, and let no stranger share them with you” (Proverbs 5:15–17).

In many places the word has made use of events that really happened and recorded them to set forth greater things, conveyed by a hidden sense. Of this kind are the passages about wells, and about the marriages and the various unions of the righteous; someone will more fittingly try to make these clear in commentaries on those very passages. That wells were indeed built by the righteous in the land of the Philistines, as is recorded in Genesis (Genesis 26:15–18), is plain from the wonderful wells shown at Ascalon, which are worthy of note because their construction is strange and unlike that of other wells.

That brides and maidservants are to be taken in a figurative sense is not our own teaching; we have received it from wise men of old. One of them said, stirring his hearer to figurative interpretation: “Tell me, you who read the law, do you not hear the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman. But the son of the slave woman was born according to the flesh, the son of the free woman through the promise. These things are spoken in allegory: for these women are two covenants, one from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery, which is Hagar” (Galatians 4:21–24); and a little later: “But the Jerusalem above,” he says, “is free, which is our mother” (Galatians 4:26). Whoever cares to take up the Epistle to the Galatians will learn in what way the passages about the marriages and the unions with maidservants have been allegorised; for the word wishes us too to imitate not what are thought to be the bodily acts of those who did these things, but, as the apostles of Jesus are accustomed to call them, the spiritual ones.

Lot and his daughters§45

45He ought to have welcomed the love of truth in those who wrote the divine Scriptures, who did not hide even what is unseemly, and so been led to accept the rest too, even the more marvellous things, as not invented. But he has done the opposite: the story of Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:30–38), which he neither examined according to the letter nor searched out by its higher sense, he called “more lawless than the crimes of Thyestes.”

Now there is no need to speak at present of the figurative sense of the passage: what Sodom is, and what is meant by the word of the angels to the man escaping from there, when they say, “Do not look behind you, nor stop anywhere in the whole surrounding region; escape to the mountain, lest you too be swept away” (Genesis 19:17); and who Lot is, and who his wife, who became “a pillar of salt” (Genesis 19:26) because she turned back; and who his daughters are, who made their father drunk so as to become mothers by him (Genesis 19:32–36).

But come, let us in a few words ease what seems unseemly in the story taken literally. The Greeks too inquired into the nature of things good, evil and indifferent; and those of them who hit the mark place good and evil in the will alone, and say that all things considered apart from the will are, in their own nature, indifferent, but that the will, when it uses these as it ought, is praiseworthy, and when it does not, blameworthy. So they have said, in their treatment of indifferent things, that in its own nature intercourse with daughters is indifferent, even though one must not do such a thing in established societies. And by way of hypothesis, to show that such a thing is indifferent, they have taken the case of a wise man left alone with his daughter after the whole human race has been destroyed, and they ask whether the father will fittingly come together with his daughter, so that, on that very hypothesis, the whole human race may not perish.

Is this, then, soundly said among the Greeks, with the far from contemptible school of the Stoics arguing for it? And when young girls who have heard of the burning of the world but have not understood it clearly see fire spreading over their city and their land (Genesis 19:24–25), and, supposing that an ember of the human race has been left in their father and themselves (Genesis 19:31), wish on that supposition to found the world again, will they be worse than the wise man of the Stoics’ hypothesis, who fittingly comes together with his daughters when all mankind has perished?

I am not unaware that some, offended at the intention of Lot’s daughters, have judged the deed unholy, and have said that from unholy unions accursed nations were born, the Moabites and the Ammonites (Genesis 19:37–38). And indeed the divine Scripture is not found clearly approving such a deed as well done, nor charging and blaming it. But however the event stands, it is taken up into a figurative sense, and it also has some defence in itself.

What Celsus leaves out about Joseph§46

46Celsus tosses in besides “the hatred,” I suppose of Esau toward Jacob (Genesis 27:41), a man acknowledged in Scripture to be base. And without setting out clearly the story of Simeon and Levi, who avenged the outrage done to their sister when she was violated by the son of the king of Shechem (Genesis 34:1–31), he accuses them. He speaks of “brothers selling,” meaning the sons of Jacob, and “a brother being sold,” meaning Joseph, and “a father deceived,” meaning Jacob, since he suspected nothing of his sons when they showed him Joseph’s “many-coloured coat” (Genesis 37:32), but believed them and “mourned” for Joseph as lost while he was a slave in Egypt (Genesis 37:33–35).

But see how Celsus has gathered material from the history in hatred and not in love of truth. So, where the history seemed to him to contain grounds for accusation, he sets it out; but where it gives a notable display of chastity, when Joseph did not yield to the passion of the woman held to be his mistress, who now pleaded with him and now threatened him (Genesis 39:7–20), he did not so much as mention the history. For we would see that Joseph was far nobler than anything told of Bellerophon, since he chose to be shut up in prison rather than lose a chaste mind. Indeed, though he could have defended himself and argued his case against the woman who accused him, he kept a noble silence, entrusting his cause to God.

Joseph’s rise and the going out from Egypt§47

47After this Celsus, for form’s sake and very obscurely, recalls the dreams of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker and of Pharaoh, and their interpretation (Genesis 40:1–41:36), as a result of which Joseph was brought out of prison and entrusted by Pharaoh with the second throne over the Egyptians (Genesis 41:14; Genesis 41:40–43). What absurdity, then, did the account of the history contain, even taken by itself, that he should set it down as part of his accusation, he who gave the title True Doctrine to a book that sets out no doctrines but accuses Christians and Jews?

He also says that the one who had been sold did things as a favour to the brothers who sold him, when they were starving and had been sent with their donkeys to trade (Genesis 42:1–3; Genesis 42:26), though Celsus does not even make clear what these things were. He sets down the recognition as well (Genesis 45:1–15), with what purpose I do not know, or what absurdity he means to point out in the recognition. For not even Momus himself, so to speak, could reasonably find fault with these things, which even apart from their figurative sense have great appeal.

He also sets down that Joseph, who had been sold as a slave, was set free and returned in procession to his father’s tomb (Genesis 50:7–13), and he thinks the account contains grounds for accusation, saying: “by whom” (that is, plainly, Joseph) “the splendid and godlike race of the Jews, spread abroad in great numbers in Egypt, was ordered to live as aliens somewhere outside and to tend flocks in despised places.” And out of his own hostile disposition he has added that they were ordered to tend flocks in despised places, without showing how Goshen, the district of Egypt, is despised (Genesis 46:34; Genesis 47:6). And he called the departure of the people from Egypt a flight, without so much as recalling what is written in Exodus about the departure of the Hebrews from the land of Egypt (Exodus 12:31–42).

We have set these things out as well, to show that Celsus placed under the heading of accusation and idle talk even things that do not appear, even according to the letter, to deserve accusation, without establishing by argument what he thinks is bad in our Scripture.

The shameful myths are the Greeks’ own§48

48Then, like a man who has given himself over to nothing but hatred and hostility toward the teaching of Jews and Christians, he says that “the more reasonable among both Jews and Christians allegorize these things.” He says that “being ashamed of them, they take refuge in allegory.” One might answer him: if myths and fictions, whether written with a hidden meaning or in any other way at all, are to be called shameful when taken in their first sense, to which should this be said to apply if not to the stories of the Greeks? In them sons who are gods castrate fathers who are gods, and fathers who are gods swallow sons who are gods; a goddess mother hands the father “of men and gods” (Homer, Iliad 1.544) a stone in place of her son; a father has intercourse with his daughter; and a wife binds her husband, taking as her helpers in the binding the brother of the one being bound and his daughter (Homer, Iliad 1.399–400).

And why need I list the absurd stories of the Greeks about the gods, which are plainly shameful even when they are allegorized? Why, Chrysippus of Soli, who is thought to have adorned the Stoa of the philosophers with many intelligent writings, gives a false interpretation of the painting at Samos in which Hera was painted doing an unspeakable act with Zeus. For this venerable philosopher says in his writings that matter has received the seminal principles of god and holds them in itself for the ordering of the universe; for in the painting at Samos Hera is matter and Zeus is god.

It is for these reasons, and because of such myths and countless others, that we are unwilling to call the God over all “Zeus” even in name, or the sun “Apollo,” or the moon “Artemis.” Rather, practising pure piety toward the Creator and speaking well of his beautiful works, we do not defile divine things even in their names. In this we accept the words of Plato in the Philebus, where he would not accept pleasure as a goddess: “For my fear, Protarchus,” he says, “concerning the names of the gods is of this kind” (Plato, Philebus 12c). We, then, truly have “fear” concerning the name of God and of his beautiful works, so that we do not accept any myth, even on the pretext of a figurative meaning, to the harm of the young.

The writers of Scripture read it figuratively§49

49If Celsus had read the Scripture without prejudice, he would not have said that our writings “are not such as to admit allegory.” For from the prophecies, in which events drawn from history are written, but not as history, one may be led to see that the histories too were written with a figurative meaning as their aim, and were arranged with the greatest wisdom, with regard both for the multitude of those who believe more simply and for the few who wish, or are even able, to examine matters with understanding. And if it were those among Jews and Christians today whom Celsus counts reasonable who allegorized what is written, Celsus might perhaps be thought to be saying something plausible. But since the fathers and writers of the doctrines themselves interpret such things figuratively, what else is one to suppose than that they were written so as to be read figuratively in their primary sense?

We shall set out a few passages out of very many, to show that Celsus slanders the Scriptures in vain as incapable of admitting allegory. Paul, the apostle of Jesus, says: “It is written in the law, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain’ (Deuteronomy 25:4). Is it for oxen that God cares? Or does he speak entirely for our sake? It was written for our sake, because the one who ploughs ought to plough in hope, and the one who threshes ought to thresh in hope of a share” (1 Corinthians 9:9–10). And elsewhere the same apostle says: “For it is written, ‘For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). This mystery is great; but I speak with reference to Christ and to the church” (Ephesians 5:31–32). And again in another place: “We know that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10:1–2).

Then, interpreting the story of the manna (Exodus 16:14–15) and the account of the water that is recorded to have come miraculously out of a rock (Exodus 17:6; Numbers 20:11), he says this: “And all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from a spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:3–4). And Asaph, showing that the histories in Exodus and Numbers are “riddles” and “parables,” as is written in the book of Psalms, begins in this way when he is about to recall them: “Pay attention, my people, to my law; incline your ear to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in parables; I will utter riddles from of old, such things as we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us” (Psalm 78:1–3).

The prophet prays to see the hidden things§50

50Moreover, if the law of Moses had contained nothing written in it to be made known through hidden meanings, the prophet would not have said to God in his prayer: “Uncover my eyes, and I shall perceive your wonders out of your law” (Psalm 119:18). But as it is, he knew that a “veil” of ignorance lies upon the heart of those who read but do not understand what is said figuratively (2 Corinthians 3:15). This “veil is taken away” (2 Corinthians 3:16) as God’s gift, when he hears the one who has done all that lay in his power, who by practice has trained his senses to distinguish good and evil (Hebrews 5:14), and who says again and again in prayer: “Uncover my eyes, and I shall perceive your wonders out of your law” (Psalm 119:18).

Who, reading of a dragon that lives in the river of Egypt, and of fish lurking in its scales (Ezekiel 29:3–4), or of the mountains of Egypt filled “with the dung” of Pharaoh (Ezekiel 32:6), is not moved at once to ask who it is that fills the mountains of the Egyptians with so much of his foul-smelling “dung,” and what the mountains of the Egyptians are? And what are the rivers in Egypt about which this same Pharaoh boasts, saying, “The rivers are mine, and I made them” (Ezekiel 29:3)? And who is the dragon that corresponds to those rivers, as the interpretation will show them to be, and who are the fish in its scales?

But why need I establish further what needs no establishing? Of such things it is said: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? Or who is discerning, and will know them?” (Hosea 14:9). I have extended my argument at some length because I wished to show that Celsus was not right in saying that “the more reasonable among Jews and Christians try somehow to allegorize these things, but they are not such as to admit any allegory; they are plainly fables of the silliest kind.” For it is the stories of the Greeks, far more, that are fables, and not only of the silliest kind but also of the most impious. For our writings have had regard also for the multitude of simpler people, and this the makers of the Greek fictions did not take care to do. That is why Plato, with good reason, banishes such myths and such poems from his own republic (Plato, Republic 2.377b–3.398b).

Philo, Aristobulus and Numenius§51

51He also seems to me to have heard that there are writings containing allegories of the law. If he had read them, he would not have said: “At any rate, the allegories that are thought to have been written about them are far more shameful and absurd than the myths, for they join together, with an astonishing and utterly senseless folly, things that can in no way whatever be fitted together.” He seems to say this about the writings of Philo, or even of men still more ancient, such as the writings of Aristobulus. But I conjecture that Celsus has not read these books, since in many places they seem to me so successful that even the philosophers among the Greeks would be won over by what they say. In them not only is the style carefully worked, but so also are the thoughts, the doctrines, and the use made of what Celsus takes to be myths from the Scriptures.

I know also of Numenius the Pythagorean, a man who expounded Plato far better and who championed the doctrines of the Pythagoreans. In many places in his writings he sets out passages of Moses and the prophets and gives them a figurative interpretation that is not unpersuasive, as in the work called The Hoopoe, and in the books On Numbers and On Place. In the third book On the Good he even sets out a story about Jesus, without saying his name, and interprets it figuratively; whether successfully or not is a question for another time. He also sets out the story about Moses and Jannes and Jambres (Exodus 7:11; 2 Timothy 3:8). We do not take pride in that; but we do welcome him more than Celsus and other Greeks, because out of love of learning he was willing to examine our writings as well, and was moved by them as writings to be read figuratively and not as foolish ones.

The dialogue of Jason and Papiscus§52

52Next after this, Celsus picks out, from all the writings that contain allegories and narratives in a style that is not to be despised, the humblest one, a work that can contribute something toward faith for the many and simpler people but is certainly not able to move the more intelligent. He says: “Such, for example, is a disputation between a certain Papiscus and Jason that I have come across, which deserves not laughter but rather pity and hatred. It is not my purpose, then, to refute these things; for they are plain to everyone, I suppose, especially if anyone will be patient and bear to listen to the writings themselves. I would rather teach the nature of things: that God made nothing mortal, but the works of God are all the things that are immortal, and mortal things are the works of those immortal beings. The soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature. And in this respect the body of a bat, or of a maggot, or of a frog, will not differ at all from that of a human being; for the matter is the same, and what is perishable in them is alike.”

Nevertheless, I should like anyone whatever who has heard Celsus speaking so vehemently, and declaring that the writing entitled Disputation of Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ deserves not laughter but hatred, to take this little treatise in his hands and be patient and bear to listen to what is in it, so that he may condemn Celsus at once, since he will find nothing in the book that deserves hatred. If anyone reads it without prejudice, he will find that the book does not even move one to laughter. In it a Christian is recorded arguing with a Jew from the Jewish Scriptures and showing that the prophecies about the Christ fit Jesus; though the other, in the role of the Jew, holds his ground against the argument in a way that is neither ignoble nor unfitting.

Pity and hatred cannot go together§53

53I do not know how Celsus could bring together things that do not mix and that by nature cannot occur at the same time in human nature, and say that the book deserves pity and hatred. For everyone will agree that someone who is pitied is not hated while he is pitied, and someone who is hated is not pitied while he is hated. Celsus says that it is not his purpose to refute these things, because he thinks they are plain to everyone even before any reasoned refutation is brought against them, as worthless and deserving of pity and hatred. But we urge the reader of this defence, written against Celsus’s accusation, to bear with our writings and listen to them, and, as far as he can, to infer from what is written the purpose of those who wrote it, their conscience, and their disposition. For he will find men who contend ardently for what they have come to believe, and some who make it clear that they are recording a story they had seen and understood, as something marvellous and worth writing down for the benefit of those who were to hear it.

Or let someone dare to say that it is not the source and beginning of every benefit to believe in the God of the universe, to do everything with a view to pleasing him in every matter whatever, and not even to think of anything that displeases him, since not only our words and deeds but even our thoughts will be judged. And what other teaching could more forcefully lead human nature to live well than faith, or the conviction, that the God over all watches over everything we say and do, and even what we think? Let anyone who wishes compare with it another way that both converts and improves, not just one or two people, but as many as possible, so that by comparing the two ways one may understand exactly which teaching disposes people toward the good.

Celsus declares but does not teach§54

54In the passage of Celsus that I set out, which paraphrases certain things from the Timaeus (Plato, Timaeus 41a–d), it is written that God made nothing mortal, but only immortal things, while mortal things are the works of others; that “the soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature”; and that a man’s body will differ in nothing from the body of a bat or a maggot or a frog, “for the matter is the same, and what is perishable in them is alike.” Come, then, let us discuss these points too for a little while. We shall be refuting a man who either does not acknowledge his own Epicurean opinion, or, as someone might say, later changed over to better views, or even, as another might say, is a namesake of the Epicurean.

For in declaring such things, having set out to speak against not only us but also the far from contemptible school of philosophers who follow Zeno of Citium, he ought to have proved that the bodies of living creatures are not works of God, and that the great skill shown in them did not come from the first Mind. So too with the countless plants of every kind, which are governed by an indwelling nature that has no sense-impressions, and which came into being to serve a use of no small account in the universe, for men and for the animals that serve men, whatever else may be true of them: he ought not only to have declared but also to have taught that it was not some perfect mind that implanted so many qualities in the matter of plants.

And if once he made gods the craftsmen of all bodies, on the ground that the soul alone is God’s work, how would it not have been consistent for one who divides up so many works of craft and assigns them to many to establish, with some argument of real weight, differences among the gods: some fashioning the bodies of men, others, let us say, those of cattle, and others those of wild beasts? Seeing gods as the craftsmen of serpents and asps and basilisks, some of them makers of each particular species of these, and others makers of the species of each plant and each herb, he ought to have stated the reasons for these divisions. For perhaps, had he given himself to examining the questions of this topic with precision, he would either have held to one God, the Maker of all, who made each thing for some end and for the sake of something; or, if he did not hold to this, he would have seen what defence he must make about the perishable, a thing indifferent in its own nature, and that there is nothing absurd in a world composed of unlike things having come into being from one Craftsman, who fashions the differences of species for the good of the whole.

Or at the very least he ought not to have pronounced on so great a doctrine at all, if he was not going to prove what he professed to teach. Unless, perhaps, the man who blames those who profess bare faith wanted us ourselves to believe what he declared, even though what he professed was not to declare but to teach.

What Moses wrote of the making of the world§55

55I am not yet saying that, if he had, as he puts it, “been patient and borne to listen to the writings” of Moses and the prophets, he would have noticed why the words “God made” are applied to heaven and earth (Genesis 1:1), and to what is called the firmament (Genesis 1:7), and further to the lights and the stars (Genesis 1:16); after these to the great sea creatures and every soul “of creeping living things, which the waters brought forth according to their kinds,” and every winged bird “according to its kind” (Genesis 1:21); next to the wild beasts “of the earth according to their kind,” and the cattle “according to their kind,” and all the creeping things “of the earth according to their kind” (Genesis 1:25); and last of all to man (Genesis 1:27). But “made” is not said of other things. For light, the text is content with “light came to be” (Genesis 1:3); and for the gathering into one of all the water beneath the whole heaven, with “it was so” (Genesis 1:9). It is the same with the things that sprouted from the earth, when “the earth brought forth plants of grass, sowing seed according to their kind and likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in it, according to its kind, on the earth” (Genesis 1:12).

He would also have asked to whom, whether to one or to more than one, the written commands of God about the coming into being of each part of the world were spoken. And he would not lightly have accused, as unintelligible and holding no hidden meaning, what was written here either by Moses or, as we would say, by the divine Spirit in Moses, by whom he also prophesied. For Moses knew “the things that are, the things that will be, and the things that were before” (Homer, Iliad 1.70) better than the seers whom the poets speak of as having known them.

The same matter underlies the heavens§56

56Further, Celsus says: “The soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature. And in this respect the body of a bat or a maggot or a frog or a man will differ in nothing; for the matter is the same, and what is perishable in them is alike.” To this argument of his too we must reply: if, because the same matter underlies the body of a bat or a maggot or a frog or a man, these bodies will differ in nothing from one another, then clearly the bodies of these creatures will differ in nothing from the sun or the moon or the stars or heaven, or from any other of those that the Greeks call gods perceived by the senses. For the same matter underlies all bodies, and by its own definition it is without quality and without shape. From whom it receives its qualities, on Celsus’s view, since he will not have anything perishable be a work of God, I do not know. For by Celsus’s own argument what is perishable in anything whatever that has come into being from the same underlying matter must be alike.

Unless, perhaps, hard pressed at this point, Celsus will leap away from Plato, who makes the soul out of a kind of mixing bowl (Plato, Timaeus 41d), and take refuge with Aristotle and the Peripatetics, who say that the ether is immaterial and is of a fifth nature beside the four elements. Against this argument both the followers of Plato and those of the Stoa have taken a stand, and done so with credit. And we too, whom Celsus despises, shall take a stand against it, since we are called upon to explain and establish what is said in the prophet as follows: “The heavens will perish, but you will remain; and they will all grow old like a garment, and like a cloak you will roll them up, and they will be changed. But you are the same” (Psalm 102:26–27). Still, even these points are enough against Celsus, who declared that “The soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature.” From his argument it followed that the body of a bat or a maggot or a frog differs in nothing from the ethereal body.

Matter takes the qualities God wills§57

57See, then, whether we should side with a man who brings such doctrines to his accusation of Christians, and abandon the argument that allows a difference among bodies because of the qualities laid upon bodies and found in them. For we too know that there are “both heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,” and that the “glory” of “heavenly” bodies is one thing and that of “earthly” bodies another (1 Corinthians 15:40); nor is it the same even among the “heavenly” ones, for “the glory of the sun is one thing, and the glory of the stars another,” and among the stars themselves “star differs from star in glory” (1 Corinthians 15:41). That is why, since we accept the resurrection “of the dead,” we say that changes take place in the qualities that are in bodies. For some of them, sown “in corruption, are raised in incorruption” (1 Corinthians 15:42); sown “in dishonour, are raised in glory”; and sown “in weakness, are raised in power” (1 Corinthians 15:43); and bodies sown natural are raised spiritual (1 Corinthians 15:44).

All of us who have accepted providence establish that the underlying matter can receive whatever qualities the Creator wills. By God’s will there is now such-and-such a quality in this matter, and afterwards another, let us say, better and different. There are also fixed courses for the changes in bodies, from the time the world has existed and for as long as it exists — whether a new and different course will take their place after the destruction of the world, which our writings call the consummation (Matthew 24:3), I do not know. Since that is so, it is no wonder if at present, as most people say, a serpent arises from a dead man, reshaped out of his spinal marrow, and a bee from an ox, a wasp from a horse, a beetle from an ass, and, in short, worms from most things. Celsus thinks this proves that none of these is a work of God, and that the qualities, ordered from I know not where so that these arise from those, are not the work of some divine reason that changes the qualities in matter.

Which soul is God’s work?§58

58We say this further to Celsus, who said, “The soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature,” and who tossed out so great a doctrine not only without proof but also without drawing distinctions; for he did not make clear whether every soul is God’s work or only the rational soul. So we say to him: if every soul is God’s work, then clearly the souls of irrational and utterly worthless creatures are so too, so that every body as well is of another nature than the soul. And indeed in what follows, where he says that irrational animals are dearer to God than we are and have a purer notion of the divine, he seems to represent not only the soul of men but much more the soul of irrational animals as God’s work; for this follows from saying that they are dearer to God than we are.

But if only the rational soul is God’s work, then, first, he did not make this clear; and second, from his having spoken of the soul without distinction, taken to mean that not every soul but only the rational soul is God’s work, it follows that not every body is of another nature either. And if not every body is of another nature, but the body of each living creature corresponds to its soul, clearly the body of a creature whose soul is God’s work would differ from a body in which there dwells a soul that is not God’s work. And so it will be false that the body of a bat or a maggot or a frog will differ in nothing from that of a man.

Bodies differ by those who dwell in them§59

59For it is absurd that stones should be thought purer or more defiled than other stones, and buildings than other buildings, according as they were built for the honour of the divine or to receive the most dishonoured and accursed bodies, while bodies are held not to differ from bodies according as those who have dwelt in them are rational or irrational, and, among rational beings, according as they are the more virtuous or the worst of men. Indeed, this is what has led some to dare to deify the bodies of eminent men, as having received a virtuous soul, and to cast out or dishonour the bodies of the worst. Not that this has been done altogether soundly; but it took its beginning from a sound notion. Or will the wise man, after the death of Anytus and Socrates, take the same care over the burial of the body of Socrates as over that of Anytus, and build a like mound or tomb for both?

We have said these things because of the phrase “none of which is a work of God.” The “which” refers to the body of a man, or to the serpents that come from that body; to the body of an ox, or to the bees that come from an ox’s body; and to the body of a horse or an ass, and to the wasps that come from a horse and the beetles that come from an ass. Because of these words we were compelled to take up again the saying too: “The soul is the work of God, but the body is of another nature.”

One nature shared by all bodies§60

60Next he says that “the nature of all the bodies named above is common, and one, passing into a change that turns back and returning again.” To this too it is plain from what has already been said that the nature is common not only to the bodies listed before but also to the “heavenly” ones (1 Corinthians 15:40). And if this is so, it is plain that on his view (though I do not know whether in truth as well) the nature of all bodies is one, passing into a change that turns back and returning again.

It is plain, too, that this is so on the view of those who make the world perishable. But those who do not make it perishable, and who at the same time do not admit a “fifth body”, will also try to show that on their view too the nature of all bodies is one, passing into a change that turns back and returning again. In this way even what perishes persists, passing into change. For the substrate, matter, persists when the quality perishes, according to those who hold that matter is uncreated.

If, however, some argument can show that matter is not uncreated but has come into being for some purpose, it is plain that it will not have the same nature as regards permanence as it would have if it were supposed uncreated. But it is not our present business, as we meet Celsus’s charges, to treat these questions of natural philosophy.

Is nothing born of matter immortal?§61

61He says also that “nothing born of matter is immortal.” To this it will be said that, if nothing born of matter is immortal, then either the whole world is immortal and is not something born of matter, or the world itself is not an immortal thing either.

If, then, the world is immortal, which is the view even of those who said that only the soul is God’s work and who say that it came from a mixing bowl (Plato, Timaeus 41d), let Celsus show that the world did not come into being from matter without qualities, if he is to keep his saying that “nothing born of matter is immortal.” But if, since the world is born of matter, the world is not immortal, is the world then mortal, and does it perish, or not? For if it perishes, it will perish as a work of God. Then, when the world perishes, what will the soul, the work of God, do? Let Celsus tell us.

But suppose he twists the notion of “immortal” and says that the world is immortal by being perishable and yet not perishing, as being capable of death but not in fact dying. Then plainly, on his view, there will be something at once mortal and immortal, by being capable of both; there will be a mortal thing that does not die; and what is not immortal by nature will be called immortal in a special sense, because it does not die. In what sense of the word, then, will he be drawing his distinction when he says that “nothing born of matter is immortal”? And you see that the ideas in his writings, when they are pressed and put to the test, are shown up as admitting nothing sound and beyond dispute.

After saying this he adds: “On this subject so much is enough; and if anyone is able to hear and inquire further, he will know.” Let us then, who are without understanding in his view, see what has come of our being able to hear him and inquire even a little.

Celsus misreads Plato on the amount of evil§62

62After this he thinks that we can learn, from a few little phrases, what has been inquired into in many ways about the nature of evils, through many arguments not to be lightly dismissed, and has been interpreted in different ways. He says: “Evils in the things that exist could become neither fewer nor more, in the past, now, or hereafter. For the nature of the whole is one and the same, and the origin of evils is always the same.”

This too seems to have been paraphrased from what is in the Theaetetus, where Socrates in Plato says: “But it is not possible for evils to perish from among men, nor for them to be established among the gods” (Plato, Theaetetus 176a), and what follows. And it seems to me that the man who encompasses the truth in this one treatise, and gives his book against us the title True Doctrine, has not even listened to Plato carefully.

For the passage in the Timaeus that says, “When the gods cleanse the earth with water” (Plato, Timaeus 22d), has shown that the earth, when it is cleansed by the waters, has fewer evils than in the time before it was cleansed. And we say, following Plato, that evils are at times fewer, because of the passage in the Theaetetus that says that “evils” cannot “perish from among men.”

Evils are not fixed in number§63

63I do not know how, while he posits providence, at least so far as the words of this book go, he says that evils are neither more nor fewer but, as it were, fixed. In this he does away with a most excellent doctrine, that vice is without bounds and that evils are by their very definition without limit.

And from his claim that evils have been, are, and will be neither fewer nor more, it seems to follow that things stand as they do on the view of those who hold that the world is imperishable. On their view the balance of the elements comes from providence, which does not allow any one of them to gain the upper hand, so that the world may not perish. In the same way some providence, as it were, stands over the evils, which happen to be just so many, so that they become neither more nor fewer.

Celsus’s argument about evils is refuted in another way too, from the philosophers who have examined the questions of good and evil, and from history. They have shown that at first courtesans hired themselves out to any who wished, outside the city and wearing masks. Later, growing scornful, they laid the masks aside; and since the laws did not allow them to enter the cities, they stayed outside them. But as corruption grew greater day by day, they dared to enter even the cities. Chrysippus says this in his Introduction to Goods and Evils.

From this one may gather, as a case of evils becoming more and fewer, that the men called “two-way men” once stood out in public, taking both the passive and the active part and slaves to the lusts of those who came in to them, and that later the market officials drove them out. And about countless things that have come into human life from vice as it spread abroad, one may say that formerly they did not exist. The most ancient histories, at any rate, though they accuse sinners of countless things, know nothing of those who practise unspeakable vices.

One nature does not mean a fixed amount of evil§64

64From these things and others like them, how can Celsus fail to look ridiculous when he thinks that evils could never become more or fewer? For even if the nature of the whole is one and the same, it does not at all follow that the origin of evils too is always the same.

For take a particular man. His nature is one and the same, yet things are not always the same with his ruling part, his reason and his actions. At one time he has not yet taken on reason; at another he has taken on vice along with reason, and this vice spreads further or less far. And there are times when he has been turned toward virtue and advances further or less far; and sometimes he even reaches virtue itself, which is found in more contemplations or in fewer.

So it is possible to say all the more of the nature of the whole that, even if it is one and the same in kind, the same things, or things of the same kind, do not always happen in the whole. For there are not always good harvests, nor always failed ones, nor always heavy rains, nor always droughts. So, too, the plenty or the dearth of better souls is not fixed, nor is the spread of worse souls, further or less far.

Indeed, for those who wish to examine everything as precisely as they can, the account of evils is necessary: evils do not always remain in the same state, because of providence, which either preserves what is on earth or cleanses it with floods and conflagrations; and perhaps not only what is on earth but also what is in the whole world, which needs cleansing whenever vice grows great in it.

Why the origin of evil is hard to know§65

65After this Celsus says: “What the origin of evils is, is not easy to know for one who has not studied philosophy. But it is enough to say to the multitude that evils are not from God, but cling to matter and have their home among mortals. The cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and by the appointed revolutions it must be that the same things always have been, are, and will be.”

Celsus says that the origin of evils is not easy to know for one who has not studied philosophy. He speaks as though the man who studies philosophy could know their origin easily, while the man who does not cannot easily see the origin of evils, yet can know it, even if only with toil. But to this too we say that the origin of evils is not easy to know even for one who has studied philosophy. Perhaps it is not possible even for such men to know it clearly, unless by the inspiration of God it is made plain what evils are, and shown how they came to exist, and understood in what way they will be done away with.

At any rate, ignorance about God is itself among evils, and the greatest evil is not to know the way to serve God and to show Him reverence. Certainly, even according to Celsus, some of those who studied philosophy did not know this, as is plain from the different schools in philosophy. But according to us, no one will be able to know the origin of evils who has not recognised that it is an evil to think that reverence for God is kept safe in the laws established in states as they are commonly understood.

Nor will anyone be able to know the origin of evils who has not grasped what concerns the one called the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41): who this one was before he became the devil, how he became the devil, and what caused those called his angels to fall away with him. Whoever is to know this origin must also have understood more precisely about demons: that they are not God’s handiwork in so far as they are demons, but only in so far as they are rational beings of some kind; and from what cause they have come to be such that their ruling part came to exist in the condition of demons. If, then, any other subject among human questions needing examination is hard for our nature to track down, the origin of evils may be counted among these.

Evil lies in the ruling part, not in matter§66

66Then, as though he had something more secret to say about the origin of evils but kept silent about it and said only what suits the multitude, he says that it is enough to say to the multitude about the origin of evils that “evils are not from God, but cling to matter and have their home among mortals.”

Now it is true that evils are not from God. For according to our Jeremiah too it is plain that “out of the mouth of the Lord will not come forth evil things and the good” (Lamentations 3:38). But it is not true, in our view, that matter, having its home among mortals, is the cause of evils. For the ruling part of each person is the cause of the vice that exists in it, and this vice is what is evil; and the actions that come from it are evils too. And in our view, speaking strictly, nothing else is evil.

But I know that this subject needs much working out and proof. These can come, by the grace of God who enlightens the ruling part, to the one whom God has judged worthy of the knowledge of this subject too.

If all things recur, nothing is in our power§67

67I do not know how Celsus, writing against us, thought it useful to toss in a doctrine that needs a great deal of proof, even if only plausible proof, to establish as far as possible that “the cycle of mortal things is alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions it is necessary that the same things always have been, are, and will be.” If this is true, what lies in our power is abolished.

For if “according to the appointed revolutions it is necessary that the same things always have been, are, and will be” in the cycle of mortal things, then clearly Socrates must always practise philosophy and always be accused on the charge of new divinities and of corrupting the young; Anytus and Meletus must always accuse him; and the council on the Areopagus must always vote to condemn him to death by hemlock. In the same way, according to the appointed cycles, Phalaris must always rule as a tyrant, Alexander of Pherae must always commit the same cruelties, and those condemned to Phalaris’s bull must always bellow inside it. If this is granted, I do not know how what lies in our power will be kept safe, or how praise and blame will be reasonable.

Against such a hypothesis this will be said to Celsus: if the cycle of mortal things is always alike from beginning to end, and according to the appointed revolutions it is necessary that the same things always have been, are, and will be, then according to the appointed cycles Moses must always go out of Egypt with the people of the Jews, and Jesus must come again to dwell in this life to do the same things that he has done, not once but countless times, cycle after cycle. Indeed, the same Christians too will exist in the appointed revolutions, and Celsus will write this book again, having written it countless times before.

The Stoic doctrine of worlds that return§68

68Celsus, then, says that only the cycle of mortal things, according to the appointed revolutions, by necessity always has been, is, and will be. But most of the Stoics say that it is not only the cycle of mortal things that is of this kind, but also that of immortal beings and of those they hold to be gods. For after the conflagration of the universe, which has happened countless times and will happen countless times, the same order of all things from beginning to end has come about and will come about.

Yet the men of the Stoa, trying somehow to remedy the absurdities, say, I do not know how, that in each cycle all will be indistinguishable from those of the earlier cycles, so that it is not Socrates who comes into being again but someone indistinguishable from Socrates, who will marry a woman indistinguishable from Xanthippe and be accused by men indistinguishable from Anytus and Meletus. But I do not know how the world is always the same, and not one world indistinguishable from another, while the things in it are not the same but indistinguishable.

However, the principal argument against both Celsus’s words and those of the Stoa will be examined more suitably elsewhere, since at the present time, and for the task now before us, it is not fitting to dwell at length on these matters.

God tends a changing world like a farmer through the seasons§69

69After this he says: “Nor have the things that are seen been given to man; but each thing comes into being and perishes for the sake of the preservation of the whole, according to the exchange I spoke of before, from one into another.” It is superfluous to spend more time refuting this, since we have already set out the refutation as best we could.

A reply has also been given to this: “Neither good things nor evil things among mortals could become fewer or more.” And we have spoken as well to this: “Nor does God need a new correction.” But God does not, like a man who has built something defectively and made it with too little skill, apply a correction to the world when he cleanses it by a flood or a conflagration. Rather, he is checking the outpouring of evil so that it spreads no further; and I think that he is also doing away with it altogether, in due order, to the benefit of the whole. Whether, after evil has been done away with, there is reason for it to come into being again or not, such questions will be examined in a discussion devoted to them.

So God does indeed always will to repair faults by a new correction. For even if everything was ordered by him in the most beautiful and most secure way in the making of the universe, he nonetheless needed a kind of healing art for those sick with evil and for the whole world, which evil has, as it were, defiled. And nothing has been neglected by God, or will be neglected, since at each time he does what it was fitting for him to do in a world that is changeable and subject to alteration.

And just as a farmer does different kinds of farm work on the land and on what grows from it according to the different seasons of the year, so God orders whole ages as if they were, so to speak, years, doing in each of them whatever the reasonable order of the universe itself requires, which God alone grasps most clearly, as it truly is, and carries out.

The wicked serve the whole but remain to blame§70

70Celsus has put forward an argument of this kind about evils: “Even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil; for you do not know what benefits you, or another, or the whole.” The argument has something cautious in it, but it also suggests that the nature of evils is not altogether wicked, because what is thought to be evil in particular cases may benefit the whole.

Nevertheless, so that no one may mishear what is said and find in it an occasion of ruin, as though his wickedness too were useful to the universe, or at least could be useful, this will be said: since what lies in each person’s power is kept safe, even if God makes use of the wickedness of the bad for the ordering of the universe, assigning them to a use for the universe, such a person is no less blameworthy, and it is as one blameworthy that he has been assigned to a use that every individual would pray to escape but which is useful to the whole.

It is as if, in the case of cities, someone were to say that a man who had committed certain crimes, and for those crimes was condemned to certain public works useful to the community, does something useful for the whole city, while he himself has come into a wretched state, one in which no one with even a moderate amount of sense would want to be.

Paul too, the apostle of Jesus, teaches us that even the very worst will contribute something to the use of the universe, but will through their own fault be in a wretched state, and that the most virtuous will also be most useful to the universe and, through their own doing, will be set in the finest place. He says: “In a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of clay, some for honour and some for dishonour. If anyone, then, cleanses himself, he will be a vessel for honour, sanctified and useful to the master, prepared for every good work” (2 Timothy 2:20–21).

I take it that these things too had to be set out in answer to “Even if something seems evil to you, it is not yet clear whether it is evil; for you do not know what benefits you or another,” so that no one may take from what is said on this subject an occasion for sinning, as though he will be useful to the whole through his sin.

Scripture speaks to us as we speak to children§71

71After this Celsus, failing to understand them, ridicules the passages in the Scriptures that speak of God as though he were subject to human passions, the passages in which words of wrath are spoken against the ungodly and threats against those who have sinned. To this we must say: just as we, when we talk with very young children, do not aim in our speech at the full measure of our own ability, but adapt ourselves to the weakness of those in our charge and say, and also do, what seems to us useful for turning the children back and correcting them, as children, so the Word of God seems to have arranged what has been written, measuring what was fitting in the telling by the capacity of the hearers and by what would be useful to them.

And in general, about this manner of speaking of God, it is said in Deuteronomy: “The Lord your God bore your ways, as a man might bear the ways of his son” (Deuteronomy 1:31). Bearing, as it were, the ways of a man for the benefit of human beings, the Word says such things. For the many did not need God, where he is represented as speaking, to say what was to be said to such people in a way befitting himself.

But whoever cares about the clear meaning of the divine writings will find from them the things that are called spiritual for those who are called spiritual (1 Corinthians 2:13), comparing the intent of what is said to the weaker with that of what is announced to the more advanced, since both often lie in the same expression for anyone who knows how to hear it.

God’s wrath is discipline, not passion§72

72We do, then, speak of the wrath of God; but we say that it is not a passion of his. It is something employed to discipline, by sterner methods, those who have committed sins so many and of such a kind. That what is called the wrath of God, and what is named his anger, disciplines, and that this is the teaching of the Word, is clear from what is said in the sixth Psalm: “Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, nor discipline me in your wrath” (Psalm 6:1); and in Jeremiah: “Discipline us, Lord, but with judgment and not in anger, lest you make us few” (Jeremiah 10:24).

And anyone who reads in the second book of Samuel of the “wrath” of God that moved David to number the people (2 Samuel 24:1), and in the first book of Chronicles of “the devil” (1 Chronicles 21:1), and compares the texts with each other, will see to whom the wrath is to be assigned. Paul says that all human beings have become “children” of this wrath, in the words: “We were by nature children of wrath, like the rest” (Ephesians 2:3).

That wrath is not a passion of God, but that each person prepares it for himself through his sins, Paul will make plain where he says: “Or do you despise the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is leading you to repentance? But by your hardness and your unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and of the revelation of the righteous judgment of God” (Romans 2:4–5). How then can each person “store up wrath for himself on the day of wrath” if “wrath” is understood as the passion? And how can a passion of wrath discipline? Moreover, the Word that teaches us never to be angry at all, and says in the thirty-sixth Psalm, “Cease from wrath, and forsake anger” (Psalm 37:8), and says also in Paul, “You too, put away all these: wrath, anger, malice, slander, foul talk” (Colossians 3:8), would not fasten on God himself the passion from which it wishes to free us entirely.

That what is said about the wrath of God is meant figuratively is clear also from the fact that sleep is recorded of him. As if waking him from it, the prophet says: “Rise up; why do you sleep, Lord?” (Psalm 44:23). And again he says: “And the Lord awoke like one who sleeps, like a mighty man reeling from wine” (Psalm 78:65). If, then, sleep means something else, and not what the obvious reading of the words shows, why should wrath not be understood in a similar way too?

The threats, moreover, are announcements of what will befall the wicked. It is as if someone were to call the words of a physician threats as well, when he says to his patients: “I will cut you and apply cauteries to you if you do not obey my rules and keep to this diet and conduct yourself in this way.”

We, then, do not attach human passions to God, nor do we hold impious opinions about him; nor do we go astray when we set out the accounts about him from the Scriptures themselves, compared with one another. And those among us who act with understanding as ambassadors of the Word have no other aim than to free their hearers from simple-mindedness as far as they can, and to make them wise.

The wrath the Jews stored up, and Celsus’s boast about all nature§73

73In keeping with his failure to understand what is written about the wrath of God, he says: “Is it not laughable that a man, angered at the Jews, destroyed them all, young and old, and burned them out, so that they came to nothing, while God the greatest, as they say, being angry and wrathful and threatening, sends his Son, and he suffers such things?”

Well then, if the Jews, after doing to Jesus what they dared to do against Him, perished young and old and were burned out, they suffered these things from no other wrath than the one they stored up for themselves (Romans 2:5). The judgment of God against them, which came about by God’s appointment, is called “wrath” by a certain ancestral usage of the Hebrews. And the Son of the greatest God does indeed suffer, by His own will, for the salvation of human beings, as we have said above as far as we were able.

After this he says: “But so that the argument may not be about the Jews only (for that is not what I am saying), but about the whole of nature, as I promised, I shall make what I said before clearer.” Who, being modest and aware of human weakness, could read these words and not shrink from the offensiveness of a man who promised to give an account of the whole of nature, and who boasted just as he did in the title he dared to set on his book? Let us see, then, what it is that he promises to say about the whole of nature, and what he promises to make clear.

Providence cares first for rational beings§74

74Next, at great length, he charges us with saying that God made all things for man. And he wants to show, from the natural history of animals and the shrewdness that shows itself in them, that all things have come into being no more for the sake of human beings than for the sake of the irrational animals. He seems to me to say something like those who, out of enmity toward those they hate, accuse them of the very things for which their own dearest friends are praised. For just as with these, hatred blinds them so that they do not see that they are accusing even their dearest friends by the very things through which they think they are speaking ill of their enemies, so in the same way Celsus too, his reasoning thrown into confusion, has not seen that he is also accusing the philosophers of the Stoa. They rightly set man, and in a word the rational nature, above all irrational things, and they say that providence made all things primarily for its sake. And the rational beings, which come first, stand in the place of children being born, while the irrational and the lifeless stand in the place of the afterbirth that is formed along with the child.

And I think that, just as in cities those who look after the goods for sale and the market look after them for no other reason than for the sake of human beings, yet dogs too and others of the irrational animals have a share in the plenty, so providence takes thought primarily for rational beings, and it has followed that the irrational animals also enjoy what is made for human beings. And just as a man is wrong who says that the market officers look after human beings no more than dogs, since the dogs too share in the plenty of the goods for sale, so much more do Celsus and those who think as he does commit impiety against God, who takes thought for rational beings, when they say: “Why are these things produced as food for human beings rather than for plants, for trees and grasses and thorns?”

Thunder, rain and growing things are the work of providence§75

75For first he thinks that thunders and lightnings and rains are not works of God, and here he is already showing himself an Epicurean more openly. Second, he says that even if one should grant that these are works of God, they are produced no more as food for us human beings than for plants, for trees and grasses and thorns. In this, like a true Epicurean, he grants that these things happen by chance and not by providence. For if these things are no more useful to us than to plants and trees and grasses and thorns, it is plain either that they do not come from providence at all, or that they come from a providence that takes no more thought for us than for trees and grass and thorn. Each of these is impious on its face; and to take a stand and argue against such things in reply to a man who accuses us of impiety is foolish, for it is plain to everyone from what has been said who the impious one is.

Then he says: “Even if you say that these things grow for human beings” (he plainly means the plants and trees and grasses and thorns), “why will you say that they grow for human beings rather than for the most savage irrational animals?” Let Celsus, then, say plainly that the great variety of the things that grow on the earth is not the work of providence, but that some chance meeting of atoms made such a great range of qualities, and that it is by chance that so many kinds of plants and trees and grass are like one another; and that no craftsman’s reason gave them their being, nor do they have their origin from a Mind that surpasses all wonder.

But we Christians, who are devoted to the God who created these things, and to Him alone, give thanks for these things too to Him who fashioned them as well, because He has made ready for us so great a home, and for our sake for the animals that serve us: “He makes grass spring up for the cattle, and green plants for the service of men, to bring forth bread from the earth, and that wine may gladden the heart of man, that his face may shine with oil, and that bread may strengthen the heart of man” (Psalm 104:14–15).

And if He has prepared food even for the most savage of the animals, it is no wonder; for others too among those who have pursued philosophy have said that these animals also came into being to give exercise to the rational animal. And one of the wise men among us says somewhere: “Do not say, ‘What is this? What is this for?’ For all things have been created for their use” (Sirach 39:21); and, “Do not say, ‘What is this? What is this for?’ For all things will be sought out in their time” (Sirach 39:17).

Why God made man needy§76

76Next, Celsus, wishing to maintain that providence made what grows on the earth no more for us than for the most savage of the animals, says: “We, for our part, toiling and labouring hard, feed ourselves barely and with great effort, while for them ‘all things grow unsown and untilled’ (Homer, Odyssey 9.109).” He does not see that God, wishing to exercise human understanding on every side, so that it might not stay idle and never devise the arts, made man needy, so that by his very neediness he might be compelled to find out arts, some for food and others for shelter. For it was better for those who were not going to seek things divine and to pursue philosophy to be in want, so that they would use their understanding to find out arts, than to have plenty of everything and neglect their understanding.

At any rate, the lack of what life needs brought into being farming, vine-dressing and the arts of gardening, and also carpentry and smithing, which make tools for the arts that serve the getting of food. The lack of shelter brought in weaving, which comes after carding and spinning, and also building; and so understanding rose even to architecture. And want of necessities has caused the things produced in other places to be carried, by seafaring and the pilot’s art, to those who do not have them. So for these reasons too one might admire providence, which, for our good, made the rational being needier than the irrational animals. For the irrational animals have their food ready to hand, since they have not even a starting point for the arts; and they have a natural covering, for they are clad with hair or feathers or scales or shells.

Let this, then, be said by us in defence against the passage in Celsus that says: “We, for our part, toiling and labouring hard, barely feed ourselves, while for them ‘all things grow unsown and untilled.’”

Euripides on the sun and night that serve mortals§77

77Next, forgetting that his aim is to accuse Jews and Christians, he raises against himself an iambic line of Euripides that runs counter to his own view; and, coming to grips with what was said, he charges it with being badly said. Celsus’s words run thus: “And if you quote the line of Euripides, that ‘sun and night serve mortals’ (Euripides, Phoenician Women 546), why do they serve us more than the ants and the flies? For to them too night comes for rest, and day for seeing and working.”

It is clear, then, that not only some of the Jews and Christians have said that the sun and the things in heaven serve us, but also the man whom some call the philosopher of the stage, who had been a hearer of Anaxagoras’s teaching on nature. From one rational being, man, he speaks by synecdoche of all rational beings, and says that the things set in order in the universe serve them; and these things in turn are shown by synecdoche in the words “sun and night.” Or perhaps the tragic poet also called the day “sun”, after the sun that makes the day, teaching that the things which most need day and night are those beneath the moon, and of these none so much as the things on earth.

Day and “night,” then, “serve mortals,” since they come into being for the sake of rational beings. And if ants and flies, which work by day and rest at night, also have a share in what has come into being for human beings, we must not say that day and night come into being for ants and flies as well, nor that they come into being for nothing; but we must hold that these things came into being by providence for the sake of human beings.

Understanding makes man master of the beasts§78

78Next he raises against himself what is said as if on behalf of human beings, that the irrational animals were fashioned for their sake. And he says: “If someone should call us rulers of the animals, because we hunt the other animals and feast on them, we shall say: Why were we not rather made for their sake, since they hunt us and eat us? What is more, we need nets and weapons and many men to help us, and dogs, against the beasts we hunt; but to them nature has given weapons at once and of themselves, and easily makes us subject to them.”

And here too you see in what way understanding has been given to us as a great help, stronger than any weapon the beasts seem to have. At any rate we, who are much weaker in body than the animals and very much smaller than some of them, master the beasts by our understanding, and hunt even elephants, huge as they are. Those that are by nature able to be tamed we bring under our own civilised life; and against those that are not, or that do not seem to offer us any use from taming, we take our stand with such security for ourselves that, when we wish, we keep such great beasts shut up, and when we need the food that comes from their bodies, we kill them just as we do the animals that are not wild. So the Creator has made all things servants of the rational animal and of its natural understanding.

We need dogs for some purposes, for example to guard flocks of sheep or herds of cattle or herds of goats, or houses; for others we need oxen, as for farming; and for others we use beasts of burden or animals that carry loads. So too the race of lions and bears and leopards and boars and the like is said to have been given to us to exercise the seeds of courage in us.

Men and beasts at the beginning§79

79Next, addressing the race of men who perceive their own superiority over the irrational animals, he says: “As for what you say, that God has given us the power to catch wild beasts and make use of them, we shall reply that, in all likelihood, before there were cities and arts and such ways of living together, and weapons and nets, men were carried off and eaten by wild beasts, while wild beasts were very seldom caught by men.”

Observe, in answer to this, that even if men catch wild beasts and wild beasts carry off men, there is a great difference between those who prevail by understanding and the beasts that get the better, by savagery and cruelty, of men who do not use their understanding to keep from suffering anything at the hands of beasts.

And the words “before there were cities and arts and such ways of living together” come, I think, from a man who has forgotten what he said earlier: that the world is unbegotten and indestructible, and that only the things on earth suffer floods and conflagrations, and that not all of them meet with these at once. Just as those who hold that the world is unbegotten cannot speak of its beginning, so neither can they speak of a time when there were no cities at all and the arts had not yet been discovered.

But let us grant him this too; it agrees with our own views, though no longer with his, or with what he said earlier. What has this to do with the claim that at the beginning men were certainly carried off and eaten by wild beasts, while the beasts were not caught by men? For if the world came into being by providence, and God presides over the universe, the first sparks of the human race, when it began, must have come under some protection from higher beings, so that at the beginning there was fellowship between the divine nature and men. The poet of Ascra had this in mind when he said: “For then the feasts were shared, and the seats were shared, by immortal gods and mortal men” (Hesiod, Catalogue of Women, fragment 1.6–7).

God watched over the first men§80

80The divine account in Moses, too, shows the first men hearing a more divine voice and oracles (Genesis 3:8), and sometimes seeing visits made to them by angels of God (Genesis 18:1–2; 19:1). For it is likely that at the beginning of the world human nature was given more help, until, having made progress in understanding and the other virtues and in the discovery of the arts, men could live on their own as well, without always needing those who serve the will of God to guard and manage them through wondrous appearances.

It follows from this that it is false to say that at the beginning men were carried off and eaten by wild beasts, while wild beasts were very seldom caught by men. From this, then, it is clear that what Celsus says in these words is also false: “So in this respect, at least, it was rather men that God made subject to the beasts.” For God did not make men subject to the beasts. Rather, he granted that the beasts should be caught by human understanding and by the arts against them that arise from understanding. For it was not without God that men contrived for themselves safety from the beasts and mastery over them.

Bees and ants do not reason§81

81Our noble friend does not see how many philosophers there are, philosophers who bring in providence and say that it makes all things for the sake of rational beings, whose useful doctrines he is doing away with, as far as he can, along with the agreement of Christians with philosophy on these points. Nor does he see how great a harm, one that hinders piety, comes from accepting that in God’s sight man differs in no way from ants or bees. He says: “If men are thought to differ from the irrational animals because they live in cities and have a constitution, offices and governments, this is nothing to the point; for so do ants and bees. Bees, at any rate, have a leader, and they have a following and service, wars and victories and the capture of the defeated, cities and even outskirts, the handing on of work in turn, and penalties against the idle and the wicked; at any rate they drive away and punish the drones.”

Here too he has not seen how what is accomplished by reason and rational thought differs from what comes about from irrational nature and mere physical make-up. For these latter, no reason dwelling within the creatures that do them is responsible, since they have none; rather, the most ancient Word, who is the Son of God and King of all that is subject to him, has made an irrational nature which, being irrational, comes to the help of those not granted reason.

Cities, then, came into being among men together with many arts and an ordering of laws. And the constitutions, offices and governments among men are either those so called in the proper sense, which are certain virtuous dispositions and activities, or those given these names in a looser sense, because they imitate the former as far as they can. For it was by looking to those that successful lawgivers established the best constitutions, offices and governments.

None of these can be found among irrational creatures, even if Celsus carries over to ants and bees the names that belong to reason and are assigned to rational beings: city, constitutions, offices and governments. For these things we must in no way commend the ants or the bees, since they do not act with reasoning. We must rather marvel at the divine nature, which has extended even to irrational creatures something like an imitation of rational beings, perhaps to put rational beings to shame: so that, looking at ants, they may become more industrious and more careful to store up what is useful to them (Proverbs 6:6–8), and, observing bees, they may obey their governments and share out the useful tasks of the commonwealth for the safety of their cities.

Man works together with providence§82

82Perhaps, too, in what one might call the wars of the bees a lesson is laid up: that wars among men, if ever they must be fought, should be just and orderly. And there are no cities and outskirts among bees; rather, the hives and the six-sided cells, the labours of the bees and the handing on of them among them, exist for the sake of men, who need honey for many purposes, both for treating ailing bodies and as pure food.

Nor should what the bees do against the drones be compared with the penalties against the idle and the wicked in cities and with the punishments inflicted on them. But, as I said before, in these things we must marvel at nature; and we must commend man, who can reason about all things and set all things in order, as one who works together with providence, accomplishing works not of God’s providence alone but also of man’s own.

Ants, burdens and the image of God§83

83Having spoken of the bees, in order to belittle, as far as he can, the cities, constitutions, offices and governments, and the wars for the fatherland, not of us Christians only but of all men, Celsus next goes on to set out a eulogy of ants. His aim is that by praising them he may overthrow, through his comparison with ants, men’s careful management of their food, and cast down their forethought in providing for winter as having nothing more in it than the irrational foresight he supposes ants to have.

Which of the simpler sort of people, who do not know how to look into the nature of all things, would Celsus not turn aside, as far as he can, from helping those weighed down by burdens and sharing their toils, when he says of ants that “whenever they see one of them tiring, they take up one another’s loads”? For a man who needs the training that comes through reason, and has no understanding of it, will say: “Since, then, we differ in nothing from ants even when we help those who are worn out from carrying very heavy loads, why should we do such a thing to no purpose?”

Ants, being irrational animals, would not be lifted up to think highly of themselves because their works are compared with those of men. But men, who through reason are able to hear how their fellow-feeling is being belittled, would be harmed, as far as it rests with Celsus and his words. He did not see that, in wishing to turn the readers of his book away from Christianity, he also discourages the compassion that even those who are not Christians feel toward people carrying the heaviest of loads. If he had been a philosopher with even some sense of human fellowship, he ought not only to have refrained from destroying, along with Christianity, what is useful among men, but also, if it were possible, to have lent his support to the good things that Christianity holds in common with other men.

And if ants also remove the sprouting parts of the grain they store up, so that it does not swell but lasts them through the year as food, we must not suppose that reasoning in the ants is the cause of this, but nature, the mother of all, which has ordered even irrational creatures, so as to leave not even the smallest thing without some trace of the reason that comes from nature.

Unless, perhaps, Celsus covertly means by this (for in many things he wants to follow Plato) that every soul is of the same kind, and that the soul of a man differs in nothing from that of ants and bees. This is the view of one who brings the soul down from the vault of heaven not into the human body alone, but into the other bodies as well. Christians will not be persuaded by this. They have already learned that the human soul was made “in the image” of God (Genesis 1:27), and they see that it is impossible for a nature fashioned “in the image” of God to wipe out its features entirely and take on others, made after the images of who knows what among the irrational creatures.

Do ants hold conversations?§84

84Since he also says that the living “set apart a special place for the ants that die, and this serves them as ancestral tombs,” we must reply that the more he speaks in praise of irrational animals, the more, even against his will, he magnifies the work of the Word who set all things in order, and shows the skill that is in men, which can adorn in words even the advantages that irrational creatures have by nature.

But why do I say “irrational”? For Celsus thinks that the creatures which, by the common notions of all men, are called irrational are not irrational at all. At any rate he does not think even ants are irrational, this man who promised to speak about the whole of nature and boasted of truth in the title of his book. For he speaks of ants as conversing with one another, in these words: “And indeed, when they meet one another they converse, and that is why they do not lose their way. So there is among them a full measure of reason, common notions of certain universals, utterance, objects and meanings.”

For one person’s conversing with another takes place in an utterance that makes known some meaning, and often reports about what are called objects. To say that these exist among ants as well, how could that not be the most ridiculous thing of all?

The view from heaven§85

85And he is not ashamed to add to this, so as to display, even to those who will come after him, how disgraceful his own doctrines are, saying: “Come then, if someone were to look down from heaven upon the earth, how would what we do seem to differ from what ants and bees do?”

Now does the one who, on his supposition, looks from heaven to earth at what men do and what ants do, look at the bodies of men and ants, yet fail to perceive the rational ruling faculty, moved by reasoning, and again the irrational ruling faculty, moved irrationally by impulse and impression together with a certain natural make-up beneath it? But it is absurd that one who looks from heaven at the things on earth should want to look at the bodies of men and ants from so great a distance, and should not much rather see the natures of their ruling faculties and the source of their impulses, whether rational or irrational. And if he once sees the source of all impulses, he would clearly also see the difference, and the superiority of man not only over ants but over elephants too.

For one who looks from heaven will see in irrational creatures, however large their bodies may be, no other principle than, if I may call it so, irrationality; but in rational beings he will see reason, which men share with divine and heavenly beings, and perhaps with the God over all himself. That is why man is said to have been made “in the image” of God (Genesis 1:27); for the “image” of the God over all is his Word (Colossians 1:15).

Snakes, eagles, and so-called sorcery§86

86Next, as though he were straining to drag the human race still lower and make it like the irrational animals, and wished to leave out nothing recorded of the irrational animals that points to something greater in them, he says that the arts of sorcery are found in some of the irrational animals too, so that men should not pride themselves on this either, as something peculiar to them, nor wish to hold superiority over the irrational animals. He says this: “If men take any pride in sorcery as well, then in this too snakes and eagles are wiser. At any rate they know many antidotes and remedies against harm, and even the powers of certain stones for the safety of their young. If men happen upon these, they think they possess something marvellous.”

First, I do not know how he came to give the name sorcery to the animals’ experience, or some natural grasp, of natural antidotes, for the name sorcery is commonly given to something else; unless, perhaps, as an Epicurean he wishes covertly to discredit all use of such things, as if it belonged to what sorcerers profess. But let it be granted him that men pride themselves greatly on knowing these things, whether they are sorcerers or not. How does it follow that in this respect snakes are wiser than men, because they use fennel to sharpen their sight and quicken their movement? They grasp this single natural thing not by reasoning but from their constitution. Men, however, do not come to such a thing from bare nature, as snakes do, but partly from experience, partly from reason, and sometimes from reflection and by systematic knowledge. So too, even if eagles find the stone called the eagle-stone and carry it to the nest for the safety of the young in it, how does it follow that eagles are wise, and wiser than men, when men found by experience the natural aid given to eagles and, through reasoning, used it with understanding?

Animal instinct and the riddles of Proverbs§87

87Suppose that other antidotes too are known to the animals. What does this do to show that it is not nature but reason that finds these things in the animals? For if reason were what found them, there would not be found in snakes, in a fixed and limited way, this one thing alone (or say a second and a third as well), and some other thing in the eagle, and so with the rest of the animals; there would be as many as are found among men. As it is, the very fact that the aids are fitted, in a fixed way, to the particular nature of each animal makes it plain that there is no wisdom or reason in them, but a natural constitution suited to such things for the preservation of the animals, a constitution made by the Word.

And yet, had I wished to meet Celsus head on in this matter, I could have used a passage of Solomon from Proverbs, which runs thus: “There are four things that are least upon the earth, but these are wiser than the wise: the ants, who have no strength, who prepare their food in summer; and the rock badgers, a people not strong, who have made their homes in the rocks; the locust has no king, and marches in good order at a single word of command; and the lizard, which leans on its hands and is easily caught, dwells in the strongholds of a king” (Proverbs 30:24–28). But I do not use these words as though their meaning were plain. In keeping with the title (for the book is entitled Proverbs), I search into them as riddles. For it is the custom of these men to divide into many kinds the sayings that show one thing on their face and announce another in a hidden sense, and one of these kinds is the proverb. That is why in our Gospels too it is written that our Saviour said: “These things I have spoken to you in proverbs; the hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in proverbs” (John 16:25). It is not, then, the ants we see that are wiser even “than the wise” (Proverbs 30:24), but those that are signified, as it were, in the form of proverbs. The same must be said of the other animals.

Celsus, however, thinks the books of Jews and Christians utterly simple and unlearned, and supposes that those who interpret them allegorically do so by forcing the intention of the writers. Let Celsus, then, stand refuted by these things too, as one who slanders us to no purpose; and let his argument about snakes and eagles, in which he declared them wiser than men, stand refuted as well.

Celsus says the animals are nearer to God§88

88Wishing to show at still greater length that even notions about the divine are not the special mark of the human race above all mortal things, and to declare that some of the irrational animals too have notions about God, about whom such disagreements have arisen even among the sharpest of men everywhere, Greeks and barbarians alike, he says: “If man is thought to excel the other animals because he has grasped notions of the divine, let those who say so know that many of the other animals too will lay claim to this. And with very good reason. For what could one call more divine than to foreknow and foretell what is to come? This, then, men learn from the other animals, and above all from birds; and those who understand the signs they give are the diviners. If, then, birds and all the other prophetic animals, having foreknowledge from God, teach us through signs, they seem by so much to be nearer by nature to converse with the divine, and to be wiser and dearer to God. The men of understanding say that these creatures also have converse among themselves, plainly holier than ours, and that they themselves somehow understand what is said and show in deed that they understand: when they have foretold that the birds said they would go off somewhere and do this or that, they show them going there and doing just what they had foretold. And nothing seems to keep its oaths better than the elephant, or to be more loyal toward the divine, surely because elephants have knowledge of it.”

See in these words how many questions disputed among philosophers, not only among the Greeks but also among the barbarians, he snatches up and sets out as agreed. These philosophers either discovered, or learned from certain demons, what concerns omen-birds and the other animals from which, it is said, certain prophecies come to men. For first, it has been asked whether there is any art of augury, and in a word any divination through animals, or not. Second, among those who have accepted that divination through birds exists, there is no agreement on the cause of the manner of the divination. For some say that the animals are moved by certain demons or prophetic gods: birds to different flights and different cries, the others to this or that kind of movement. Others say that their souls are more divine and fitted for this, which is most unconvincing.

Should we go to the birds for teachers?§89

89Celsus, then, since by these arguments he wished to prove the irrational animals more divine and wiser than men, ought to have established at greater length that such divination exists. After that he ought to have set out its defence more clearly, rejecting with proof the arguments of those who do away with such divinations, and overturning with proof as well the arguments of those who said that the animals’ movements for prophesying come from demons or gods. And after that he ought to have established that the soul of the irrational animals is more divine. Had he done so, and shown a philosopher’s habit of mind on matters so great, we would have opposed his plausible arguments as far as we were able: overturning the claim that the irrational animals are wiser than men, and proving false the claims that they have holier notions of the divine than ours and that they hold some holy converse with one another.

As it is, the man who reproaches us for believing in the God who is over all expects us to believe that the souls of birds have more divine and clearer notions than men. If this is true, birds have clearer notions about God than Celsus has; and it is no wonder that they surpass Celsus, who belittles man to such a degree. But indeed, so far as Celsus is concerned, birds have greater and more divine notions, I do not say than we Christians, or than the Jews who use the same Scriptures as we do, but even than the theologians among the Greeks; for they were men. According to Celsus, then, the race of supposedly prophetic birds has grasped the nature of the divine better than Pherecydes and Pythagoras and Socrates and Plato. Then we ought indeed to go to the birds as our teachers, so that, just as on Celsus’s view they teach us by divination what is to come, so too they may free men from doubting about the divine, by handing on the clear notion of it they have grasped. It follows, then, for Celsus, who thinks birds superior to men, that he should use birds as his teachers, and none of those who have pursued philosophy among the Greeks.

Prophetic birds cannot foresee their own danger§90

90We, for our part, must say a few things out of many in answer to what is before us, so as to refute his false opinion, ungrateful as it is toward the One who made him. For Celsus too, being “a man” who was “in honour,” “did not understand” (Psalm 49:20). That is why he was not even “compared” (Psalm 49:20) with the birds and the other irrational animals that he thinks prophetic. Instead, yielding them the first place, and going further than the Egyptians, who worship irrational animals as gods, he made himself subject to the irrational animals, and, as far as it lay with him, the whole human race too, as though it thought worse and less about the divine than they do.

First of all, then, let it be asked whether divination through birds and the other animals believed to be prophetic exists or does not exist. For the argument advanced on either side is not easy to despise. On the one hand, it urges us not to accept such a thing, so that the rational creature may not abandon the oracles of demons and use birds in their place. On the other hand, it presents the evidence, attested by many, that many people have been saved from the greatest dangers by trusting divination through birds.

For the present, let it be granted that augury is real, so that even so I may show those already prejudiced in its favour that, even if this is granted, man’s superiority over the irrational animals, even over the prophetic ones themselves, is great and beyond any comparison with them. We must say, then, that if there were in them some divine nature that foreknew the future, and so rich that out of its abundance it could show what is to come even to any man who wished, plainly they would have known their own affairs much sooner. And knowing their own affairs, they would have taken care not to fly up over a place where men had set snares and nets against them, or where archers, taking aim at flying creatures, were loosing arrows at them. Surely eagles too, if they foreknew the plot against their young, whether of snakes that climb up to them and destroy them or of men who take them for sport or for some other use and keeping, would not have nested where they were going to be plotted against. And, in a word, none of these animals would ever have been caught by men, if it were more divine and wiser than men.

Homer’s birds and serpents foresaw nothing§91

91Moreover, if birds of omen fight with birds of omen, and if, as Celsus says, the prophetic birds and the other irrational animals, having a divine nature, notions of the divine and foreknowledge of the future, foretold such things to others, then Homer’s sparrow would not have nested where a serpent was going to destroy her and her young, nor would the serpent in the same poet have failed to guard against being seized by the eagle.

For Homer, so admirable a poet, says this about the first: “Then a great sign appeared: a serpent, blood-red on its back, terrible, which the Olympian himself sent forth into the light, darted out from beneath the altar and sped to the plane tree. There were the young of a sparrow, helpless nestlings, on the topmost bough, cowering under the leaves, eight of them, and the mother that bore them was the ninth. There it devoured them as they chirped piteously, while the mother fluttered round, wailing for her dear young; then, coiling itself, it caught her by the wing as she shrieked around it. But when it had eaten the sparrow’s young and the mother herself, the god who had shown it made it conspicuous; for the son of crooked-counselling Cronus turned it to stone. And we stood and marvelled at what had come to pass. So, when the dread portents of the gods broke in upon the hecatombs…” (Homer, Iliad 2.308–321).

And about the second he says: “For a bird had come upon them as they were eager to cross, an eagle flying high, skirting the host on the left, bearing in its talons a monstrous blood-red serpent, alive and still writhing; and it had not yet forgotten the fight, for it struck its captor on the breast beside the neck, bending itself backward; and the eagle, stung with pain, flung it from him to the ground and cast it down in the midst of the throng, and itself, with a scream, flew off on the blasts of the wind. And the Trojans shuddered when they saw the glittering snake lying in their midst, a portent of Zeus who bears the aegis” (Homer, Iliad 12.200–209).

Was the eagle, then, prophetic, and the serpent not prophetic, although the augurs use this animal too? What, then? Since the arbitrary choice of one over the other is easily refuted, would not the view that both are prophetic be refuted as well? For if the serpent had been prophetic, would it not have guarded against suffering this from the eagle? One could find countless other examples like these, showing that it is not the animals that have in themselves a prophetic soul. Rather, according to the poet and most men, “the Olympian himself sent it forth into the light” (Homer, Iliad 2.309); and in a certain sign Apollo too uses a hawk as his messenger, for the “falcon” is said to be “Apollo’s swift messenger” (Homer, Odyssey 15.526).

Demons work through wild animals§92

92In our view, however, certain wicked demons, Titan-like or Giant-like, if I may so name them, who have become impious toward what is truly divine and toward the angels in heaven, and have fallen from heaven, and wallow among the grosser and unclean bodies on earth, have some power of discerning the future, since they are bare of earthly bodies. Occupied with this kind of work and wishing to lead the human race away from the true God, they slip into the more rapacious and wilder animals, and others more cunning, and move them to whatever they wish, whenever they wish; or they turn the imaginations of such animals toward flights and movements of this sort. Their aim is that men, caught by the divination found in irrational animals, may not seek the God who encompasses the universe, nor inquire into the pure worship of God, but may sink in their thinking down to the earth, and to birds and serpents, and besides to foxes and wolves.

For those skilled in these matters have observed that the clearer forecasts come through animals of this kind. The reason is that the demons cannot do as much in the tamer animals as they can work in these, because of the close likeness between wickedness and what is found in such animals, which is not wickedness, but something like wickedness.

Why Moses called the prophetic animals unclean§93

93Hence, if I have admired anything else in Moses, I will declare this too worthy of admiration. He understood the different natures of animals, and, whether he learned from God about them and about the demons akin to each animal, or found it out himself as he rose by wisdom, in his ordinance concerning animals he said that all those reckoned prophetic by the Egyptians and the rest of mankind are unclean, and that, in general, those not of this kind are clean (Leviticus 11:1–47; Deuteronomy 14:3–20). Among the unclean in Moses are the wolf, the fox and the serpent, the eagle, the hawk and the like (Leviticus 11:13–19, 27, 42; Deuteronomy 14:12–18). And, in general, not only in the Law but also in the Prophets you would find these animals taken as examples of the very worst things, and you would never find a wolf or a fox named in connection with anything good.

It seems, then, that there is a certain fellowship between each kind of demon and each kind of animal. And just as among men some are stronger than others, not necessarily because of their character, in the same way some demons may be more powerful than others in morally indifferent matters. Some of them use these animals to deceive men, according to the will of the one who in our teaching is called “the ruler of this age” (John 12:31; 1 Corinthians 2:6), while others give their forewarnings through another kind. And see how foul the demons are, so that even weasels are used by some to reveal the future.

And you, judge for yourself which is better to accept: that the God over all and His Son move birds and the other animals to divination; or that those who move such animals, and not men, though men are present, are wicked demons, and, as our sacred writings have named them, “unclean” (Matthew 10:1).

Omens from men, and sneezing§94

94If the soul of birds is divine because the future is foretold through them, must we not rather say, where omens are taken from men, that the soul of those through whom the omens are heard is divine? On such men’s view, then, the “grinding woman” in Homer was a divine being (Homer, Odyssey 20.105–119), when she said of the suitors: “May they dine here now for the last and latest time.” So she was divine, while so great a man as Odysseus, the friend of Homer’s Athena, was not divine; but, understanding the omens spoken by the divine grinding woman, he rejoiced, as the poet says: “And godlike Odysseus rejoiced at the omen” (Homer, Odyssey 20.120).

Now see: if birds have a divine soul and perceive God, or, as Celsus calls it, “the gods”, then plainly we men too, when we sneeze, sneeze from some divinity and prophetic power that is in us, in our soul. For this too is attested by many. That is why the poet says, “And he sneezed as one was praying”; and why Penelope says, “Do you not see that my son sneezed at your words?” (Homer, Odyssey 17.545).

God speaks through prophets, not birds§95

95What is truly divine does not use irrational animals, nor just any men, for the knowledge of the future, but the holiest and purest souls of men, which it fills with God and makes prophets (Wisdom of Solomon 7:27). Therefore, if anything else in the law of Moses is wonderfully said, sayings like these must also be counted among them: “You shall not practise augury, nor watch birds” (Leviticus 19:26); and elsewhere: “For the nations, whom the Lord your God will destroy from before you, will listen to omens and divinations; but to you the Lord your God has not granted it so” (Deuteronomy 18:14); and then, next, he says: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet from among your brothers” (Deuteronomy 18:15).

And once, when God wished to turn people away from augury through an augur, He caused a spirit in the augur to say: “For there is no augury in Jacob, nor divination in Israel; in due time it will be told to Jacob and to Israel what God will accomplish” (Numbers 23:23).

Knowing these things, and others like them, we wish to keep the commandment spoken in a mystical sense: “Keep your heart with all watchfulness” (Proverbs 4:23), so that none of the demons may set foot on our ruling faculty, and no spirit of the opposing powers may turn our imagination to what it wishes. And we pray that “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God” may shine “in our hearts” (2 Corinthians 4:6), while the Spirit of God dwells in our imagination and shapes in us images of the things of God; since “all who are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Romans 8:14).

Foreknowledge is not in itself divine§96

96We must know that foreknowing the future is not in every case divine. In itself it is something indifferent, and it falls to bad and good alike. Physicians, at any rate, foreknow certain things from the art of medicine, even if they are bad in character; and so too pilots, even if they are wicked, foreknow signs of weather, violent winds and changes in the air, from a certain experience and observation; and surely no one will say on that account that they are divine, if they happen to be wicked in character.

False, then, is what Celsus says: “What could one call more divine than to foreknow and foretell the future?” False also is the claim that “many animals lay claim to a notion of the divine”; for none of the irrational animals has a notion of God. False also is the claim that the irrational animals are “nearer to converse with the divine”; since even among men those who are still bad, even if they make the utmost progress, are far from converse with the divine.

Only those, then, who are truly wise and genuinely devout are nearer to converse with the divine. Such are our prophets, and Moses, to whom, because of his great purity, Scripture bore witness, saying: “Moses alone shall draw near to God, but the rest shall not draw near” (Exodus 24:2).

Are beasts dearer to God than wise men?§97

97How impiously the man who charges us with impiety has said that the irrational animals are not only wiser than human nature but also dearer to God! Who would not be repelled on listening to a man who says that the serpent, the fox, the wolf, the eagle and the hawk are dearer to God than human nature? It follows that he must say that, if these animals are dearer to God than men, then plainly these animals are dearer to God than Socrates, Plato, Pythagoras, Pherecydes and the theologians he praised a little earlier.

One might well pray for him, saying: “If these animals are dearer to God than men, may you become dear to God along with them, and be made like those who, on your view, are dearer to God than men.” And let him not suppose that such a wish is a curse. For who would not pray to become in every way like those who he is convinced are dearer to God, so that he too, like them, may become dear to God?

Celsus, wishing the converse of irrational animals to be holier than ours, attributes this account not to ordinary people but to men of understanding. But in truth the men of understanding are the good, for no bad man has understanding. He speaks, then, in this way: “Men of understanding say that these creatures too have converse, plainly holier than ours, and that they themselves somehow know what is said, and show in deed that they are not ignorant of it, when, having foretold that the birds said they would go off somewhere and do this or that, they show them going there and doing what they had already foretold.”

Now in truth no man of understanding has recorded such things, and no wise man has said that the converse of irrational animals is holier than that of men. But if, to examine Celsus’s views, we look at what follows from them, it is plain that on his view the converse of irrational animals is holier than the solemn discourses of Pherecydes, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and the philosophers; which on its very face is not only incongruous but utterly absurd.

And even if we were to believe that some, having learned from the inarticulate cry of birds that the birds will go off somewhere and do this or that, foretell it, we shall say that this too has been shown to men in symbols by the demons, with the aim that man should be deceived by the demons and his mind dragged down from heaven and God to earth and to things lower still.

Elephants, storks and the phoenix§98

98I do not know how Celsus came to hear even of an oath sworn by elephants, and that they are more faithful toward the divine than we are, and have knowledge of God. For I know many wonderful things that are recorded about the nature of this animal and its tameness, but I am not aware that anyone has spoken of an elephant’s oaths. Unless, perhaps, he has given the name of oath-keeping to their tameness, and to the compact, as it were, which they keep with men once they have come under men’s control; and even that is false. For it is recorded, if only rarely, that elephants which seemed tame have turned savage against men and killed people, and for this were condemned to be put to death as no longer of use.

After this he brings in what is recorded about the stork, that it repays its parents’ care and carries food to those who begot it, in order to prove, as he supposes, that storks are more pious than men. To this we must say that storks do this too not from a considered grasp of duty, nor from reasoning, but from nature. The nature that formed them wished to set forth, in animals without reason, an example that could shame men into repaying the kindness of those who begot them. If Celsus had known how great the difference is between doing these things by reason and performing them without reason, by nature, he would not have said that storks are more pious than men.

Further, as though he were standing up for the piety of animals without reason, Celsus brings in the Arabian creature, the phoenix: at intervals of many years it visits Egypt, bringing its father, who has died and been buried in a ball of myrrh, and lays him down where the precinct of the sun is. This too is recorded. But if it is true, it may also be a work of nature. For divine providence has been lavish in setting before men, in the differences among living things as well, the variety in the ordering of what is in the world, a variety that reaches even to the birds; and it has brought into being a certain “only-begotten” creature, so that by this too it might cause men to wonder not at the creature but at the One who made it.

All things made for the rational creature§99

99Since, then, Celsus adds to all this the words: “So all things have not been made for man, any more than for the lion, or the eagle, or the dolphin, but so that this world, as the work of God, might come to be whole and complete in all its parts. It is for this that all things have been measured out: not for one another, except incidentally, but for the whole. God cares for the whole, and providence never forsakes it; it does not grow worse, nor does God bring it back to himself after a time; nor is he angry on account of men, any more than on account of apes or mice; nor does he threaten these creatures, each of which has received its own lot in its place”, come, let us answer this, if only briefly.

I think I have shown from what was said earlier how all things have been made for man and for every rational being; for it is chiefly for the sake of the rational living being that all things have been created. So let Celsus say that things were not made for man, any more than for the lion or the other creatures he names. We, for our part, will say: the Creator did not make these things for the lion, or the eagle, or the dolphin, but made all things for the sake of the rational living being, and “so that this world, as the work of God, might come to be whole and complete in all its parts.” For we must agree with this, since it is well said. God cares, not, as Celsus thinks, for the whole alone, but beyond the whole, and in a special way, for every rational being. And providence will never forsake the whole. For even if some part of the whole grows worse because the rational being sins, God so orders things as to make a cleansing of it and, in time, to turn the whole back to himself. Nor indeed is he angry on account of apes or mice; but on men, because they have transgressed the starting points that nature gave them, he brings retribution and punishment. These he threatens through the prophets and through the Saviour who came to dwell among the whole human race, so that through the threat those who hear may turn, while those who neglect the words that call them to turn may pay the penalty they deserve. It is fitting for God to impose such penalties, according to his own will and for the good of the whole, on those who need healing and correction of this kind, and so painful.

But since this fourth book has now reached a sufficient length, we will bring our discourse to a close about here. May God grant, through his Son, who is God the Word (John 1:1), and Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24), and Truth (John 14:6), and Righteousness (1 Corinthians 1:30), and whatever else the sacred Scriptures say of him when they speak of him as God, that we may begin the fifth book also, for the benefit of those who will read it, and bring it too to a good end, with his Word coming to dwell in our soul.