Athenagoras, Plea for the Christians 23

You might claim to surpass everyone in understanding, yet by what reason do some idols exercise power if they are not the gods on whom we base our statues? It is not plausible that lifeless, motionless images possess power of themselves apart from the one who moves them. We do not deny that certain effects occur in various places, cities, and nations under the name of idol-powers; but even if some people were helped and others harmed, we do not therefore regard those who worked on both sides as gods. Moreover, we have precisely investigated by what reason you believe the idols have power and who the agents are who ride upon their names. Since I am about to demonstrate who operates through the idols and that they are not gods, I must also call on witnesses from philosophy. First, Thales divides reality into God, demons, and heroes, as those who carefully study his teachings recall. He identifies God as the mind of the world, demons as psychic substances, and heroes as the separated souls of human beings—good souls counted as good, bad souls as bad. Plato, while maintaining his other doctrines, likewise cuts reality into the ungenerated God and those generated by the ungenerated into the world of heaven—the planets and the fixed stars—and into demons. Concerning these demons he himself deems it unworthy to speak, urging attention to those who have spoken about them. As for the other demons, to speak and know their generation is beyond us; we must believe those who spoke before, since they are offspring of gods, as they said, and clearly know their own ancestors. It is therefore impossible to disbelieve the children of gods, even if they speak without likely and necessary proofs, but as those claiming to report their own family matters; following the law, they are to be believed. Thus, according to them and also to us, let the genealogy concerning these gods be accepted and stated. Earth and Heaven were born, and Ocean and Tethys; from them came Phorcus, Cronus, and Rhea, and as many as followed them; from Cronus and Rhea came Zeus and Hera and all whom we know, all called their brothers, and still others born from them. Would one who has grasped the eternal mind and comprehended it by reason, and has explained the attributes belonging to it—the truly existent, the single-generated, the good flowing from it, which is truth, and concerning the first power, and how all things relate to the king of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all, and concerning two and three, the second concerning the seconds, and the third concerning the thirds—consider it a greater task than truth itself to learn the truth concerning the things said to have been generated from the sensible earth and heaven? That cannot be said. But since he regarded it as impossible for gods to be begotten and born, following the consequences of that view, and, what is even more impossible, to persuade the multitude to accept myths without examination, he declared that to know and speak concerning the generation of the other demons is greater than truth itself, since he was unable to learn or declare that gods are begotten. And what was said to him: 'The great leader in heaven, Zeus, driving a winged chariot, goes first, ordering all things and caring for them, and a host of gods and demons follows him'—this does not apply to the Zeus said to be from Cronus. For in this passage the name belongs to the poet of all things. Plato himself indicates this: lacking another significant term to add to the common name, not as if it were the god's own private name but for clarity, because it is not possible to convey the god according to his power to everyone, he employed the epithet 'great' in order to distinguish the heavenly from the earthly, the ungenerated from the generated—of the newer heaven and earth, newer also than the Cretans, who stole him away so that he would not be killed by his father.