The Epistle to Diognetus

1I see, most excellent Diognetus, how eager you are to learn the piety of the Christians. You are asking about them with great clarity and care. What God have they trusted? How do they worship him? Why do all of them despise the world and scorn death? Why do they neither regard the gods recognized by the Greeks nor keep the superstition of the Jews? What affection do they have for one another? And why has this new way of life appeared now and not before? I welcome your eagerness. I ask God, who supplies us with both speaking and hearing, to grant me to speak in such a way that you who hear may become better, and to grant you to hear in such a way that the one who speaks may not be grieved.

2Come then.

Cleanse yourself from all the thoughts that preoccupy your mind, strip off the habit that deceives you, and become like a new person from the beginning, since you are about to hear a new word, as you yourself have admitted.

Look not only with your eyes but also with your understanding: what substance, what form do the beings you call and consider gods actually have?

Is not one of them stone, like what you walk on?

Is not another bronze, no better than the vessels forged for our use?

Is not another wood, already rotten?

Is not another silver, needing a person to guard it so it will not be stolen?

Is not another iron, destroyed by rust?

Is not another clay, no more seemly than what is made for the most dishonorable service?

Are not all these things made of corruptible matter?

Are they not forged by iron and fire?

Did not a stonecutter shape one of them, a bronzeworker another, a silversmith another, a potter another?

Before they were stamped into their present form by these craftsmen, was not each of them just like any other, and even now, could it not be transformed again?

Could not the vessels now made from the same matter become like these, if the same craftsmen happened to work on them?

Could not these things you now worship be made by human hands into vessels like all the rest?

Are they not all deaf?

Blind?

Lifeless?

Without perception?

Without motion?

Are they not all subject to decay?

Are they not all subject to corruption?

These you call gods?

These you serve?

These you worship, and you become completely like them.

Is this why you hate Christians, because they do not consider these to be gods?

For you who think and imagine that you honor them, do you not despise them far more?

Do you not mock and insult them far more, when you worship the stone and clay ones without guarding them, but shut up the silver and gold ones and set guards over them night and day so they will not be stolen?

And as for the honors you think you offer them, if they have perception, you are rather punishing them; but if they have no perception, you are chastising them when you worship them with blood and fat.

Let one of you endure this.

Let someone allow this to be done to himself.

But no human being would willingly endure such punishment, because he has perception and reason.

The stone endures it, because it has no perception.

So do you not thereby refute its claim to perception?

3Next, I think you are especially eager to hear about why Christians do not worship God in the same way as the Jews.

Now if the Jews abstain from the worship I have just described, they are right to think that they honor one God as master of all things. But if they offer him this same kind of worship in the manner I have described, they are mistaken.

For what the Greeks offer to senseless and deaf idols as a display of foolishness, the Jews offer to God as though he needed it. One would more reasonably consider this folly, not piety.

For the one who made heaven and earth and everything in them, and who supplies all of us with what we need, would himself need none of those things which he supplies to those who think they are giving to him.

And those who think they are performing sacrifices to him with blood and fat and burnt offerings, and honoring him with these rites, seem to me no different from those who show the same devotion to deaf idols. The one group offers to things that cannot receive the honor; the other group thinks it is offering to one who needs nothing.

4But as for their timidity about foods, their superstition about the Sabbath, their boasting about circumcision, and their pretense about fasting and the new moon, these things are laughable and not worth a word. I do not think you need to learn about them from me.

For when God created things for human use, how is it not forbidden to accept some of them as well made but to reject others as useless and superfluous?

And how is it not impious to tell lies about God, as though he forbids doing something good on the Sabbath day?

And how is it not worthy of mockery to boast that the mutilation of the flesh is a mark of election, as though they are for this reason especially loved by God?

And who would consider it a sign of piety rather than of great foolishness to sit attending to the stars and the moon, keeping watch over months and days, and to divide up God's arrangements and the changes of the seasons according to their own impulses, some for festivals and some for times of mourning?

So I think you have learned sufficiently how rightly Christians keep away from the common folly and deceit and from the meddlesomeness and boasting of the Jews. But do not expect to be able to learn the mystery of their own piety from any human being.

5Christians are not distinguished from the rest of humanity by land, language, or customs. They do not live in their own cities, use a peculiar dialect, or practice a marked-out way of life. Their teaching has not been discovered by the contrivance and thought of busy people, nor do they champion a human doctrine, as some do.

They live in both Greek and non-Greek cities, as each has been allotted, and they follow the local customs in dress, food, and the rest of life. Yet they display the constitution of their own way of life, which is wonderful and admittedly paradoxical. They live in their own homelands, but as resident aliens. They share in everything as citizens, and they endure everything as foreigners. Every foreign land is their homeland, and every homeland is foreign to them.

They marry like everyone else and have children, but they do not cast out their offspring. They share a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live according to the flesh. They spend time on earth, but they hold citizenship in heaven.

They obey the established laws, and in their own lives they surpass the laws. They love everyone, and they are persecuted by everyone. They are unknown, and they are condemned. They are put to death, and they are made alive. They are poor, and they make many rich. They lack everything, and they abound in everything.

They are dishonored, and in their dishonors they are glorified. They are slandered, and they are justified. They are insulted, and they bless. They are mistreated, and they show honor. When they do good, they are punished as evildoers. When they are punished, they rejoice as those being made alive.

They are attacked by Jews as foreigners and persecuted by Greeks, and those who hate them cannot state the reason for their hostility.

6To put it simply, Christians are to the world what the soul is to the body.

The soul is scattered through all the members of the body, and Christians are scattered through the cities of the world.

The soul dwells in the body, but it is not of the body; and Christians dwell in the world, but they are not of the world.

The invisible soul is guarded within the visible body; and Christians are known to be in the world, yet their piety remains invisible.

The flesh hates the soul and makes war on it, though it has suffered no wrong, because the soul keeps it from enjoying its pleasures; and the world hates Christians, though it has suffered no wrong, because they oppose its pleasures.

The soul loves the flesh that hates it, and its members; and Christians love those who hate them.

The soul is shut up in the body, yet it holds the body together; and Christians are held in the world as in a garrison, yet they hold the world together.

The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tent; and Christians live as resident aliens among corruptible things, awaiting the incorruption that is in heaven.

When the soul is mistreated with food and drink, it improves; and when Christians are punished daily, they increase all the more.

God has placed them in so great a rank, which it is not lawful for them to refuse.

7For this way of life was not handed down to them as an earthly discovery, as I said. Nor do they think it worth guarding so carefully as a merely human idea. Nor have they been entrusted with a stewardship of human mysteries.

No. The invisible God himself, the Almighty and Creator of all, established from heaven among human beings the truth and the holy and incomprehensible Word, and fixed him firmly in their hearts. He did not, as someone might suppose, send to human beings some servant, or an angel, or a ruler, or one of those who administer earthly affairs, or one of those entrusted with the governments in the heavens. He sent the very Craftsman and Maker of all things, by whom he created the heavens, by whom he shut up the sea within its own bounds, whose mysteries all the elements faithfully keep, from whom the sun has received the measures of the day's courses to keep, whom the moon obeys when he commands it to shine by night, whom the stars obey as they follow the course of the moon. By him all things have been ordered, and marked out, and made subject: the heavens and the things in the heavens, the earth and the things in the earth, the sea and the things in the sea, fire, air, the abyss, the things in the heights, the things in the depths, the things in between. This is the one he sent to them.

Did he send him, as a human being might reason, for tyranny and fear and terror?

Not at all. He sent him in gentleness and meekness. As a king sending a son, a king, he sent him. As God he sent him. As a human being to human beings he sent him. As one who saves he sent him. As one who persuades, not one who uses force, for force is not present in God.

He sent the Son as one who calls, not one who pursues. He sent the Son as one who loves, not one who judges.

For he will send the Son as judge, and who will endure his coming?

Do you not see those thrown to wild beasts, that they might deny the Lord, yet are not conquered? Do you not see that the more are punished, the more others increase? These do not seem to be the works of a human being. These are the power of God. These are the proofs of his coming.

8Who among human beings had any idea at all what God is before he came? Or do you accept those empty and foolish arguments of the philosophers who are considered trustworthy? Some of them said that God is fire, and they call the very thing they are going to end up in God. Others said water, and others one or another of the elements that were created by God. And yet, if any of these arguments were acceptable, then each of the other created things could just as easily be declared God. But all this is the wonder-working and deceit of charlatans. No human being has ever seen God or known him, but he has shown himself. He has shown himself through faith, and through faith alone has it been granted to see God.

For God, the Master and Maker of all things, who made everything and set it in order, was not only loving toward humanity but also patient. He was always like this, and is, and will be: kind and good and without anger and true, and he alone is good. But when he conceived a great and unutterable thought, he shared it with his child alone. So as long as he kept his wise plan hidden in mystery and guarded it, he seemed to neglect us and take no thought for us. But when he revealed it through his beloved child and made known what had been prepared from the beginning, he gave us everything at once: to share in his benefits, and to see and understand things that none of us could ever have expected.

9So when he had already arranged everything in his own mind together with his Son, he let us go on as we wished until the former time, carried along by disorderly impulses, by pleasures and desires. He was not at all rejoicing in our sins, but bearing with them. He was not approving the season of unrighteousness that then existed, but creating the present season of righteousness. His purpose was this: after we were convicted by our own works in that former time as unworthy of life, we might now be made worthy by the kindness of God, and after we had shown that we could not enter the kingdom of God by ourselves, we might become able to do so by the power of God.

But when our unrighteousness had reached its full measure and it had been made completely clear that its wages were expected to be punishment and death, then the time came that God had appointed to reveal at last his own kindness and power. Oh, the surpassing love of God for humanity! He did not hate us, or reject us, or remember our sins against us. Instead he was patient, he bore with us, and in his mercy he took our sins upon himself. He gave over his own Son as a ransom for us: the holy one for the lawless, the innocent one for the wicked, the righteous one for the unrighteous, the incorruptible one for the corruptible, the immortal one for the mortal.

For what else could cover our sins except his righteousness? In whom could we, lawless and impious as we are, be made righteous except in the Son of God alone? Oh, the sweet exchange! Oh, the unsearchable workmanship! Oh, the unexpected benefits! For the lawlessness of many was hidden in one righteous man, and the righteousness of one made many lawless people righteous.

So after he had convicted our nature in the former time of its inability to attain life, and had now shown the Savior able to save even what is impossible, he willed us to trust in his kindness from both of these things, and to regard him as nourisher, father, teacher, counselor, physician, mind, light, honor, glory, strength, and life, and not to worry about clothing and food.

10If you too come to desire this faith, you will first receive knowledge of the Father.

For God loved human beings. For them he made the world. To them he subjected everything on earth. To them he gave reason and mind. To them alone he permitted looking upward toward him. He formed them from his own image. To them he sent his Son, the only-begotten. To them he promised the kingdom in heaven, and he will give it to those who love him.

And once you know him, with what joy do you think you will be filled? How will you love the one who loved you first in this way?

And when you love him, you will be an imitator of his kindness. Do not be surprised that a human being can become an imitator of God. He can, when God wills it.

For happiness does not consist in lording it over one's neighbors, or in wanting to have more than the weaker, or in being rich and using force against those below oneself. No one can imitate God in these things. They are outside his majesty.

But whoever takes up the burden of his neighbor, whoever wants to benefit the one who is worse off in the very thing in which he himself is stronger, whoever supplies to those in need the things he has received from God and so becomes a god to those who receive them, this person is an imitator of God.

Then, while you are still on earth, you will see that God lives as a citizen in the heavens. Then you will begin to speak the mysteries of God. Then you will love and admire those who are punished for refusing to deny God. Then you will recognize the deceit of the world and its error, when you know the true living in heaven, when you despise what only seems to be death here, when you fear the real death, which is kept for those who will be condemned to the eternal fire, which will punish those handed over to it to the end.

Then you will admire and bless those who endure the temporary fire for the sake of righteousness, when you recognize that fire.

11I am not speaking about things that are foreign, and I am not searching in a way that goes against reason. I became a disciple of the apostles, and now I am a teacher of the nations. I serve what has been handed down in a way worthy of those who are becoming disciples of the truth.

For who, after being rightly taught and becoming a friend of the Word, does not eagerly seek to learn clearly the things the Word showed openly to his disciples? The Word appeared and spoke with boldness. The unfaithful did not understand the Word, but the Word explained things to his disciples. Those whom he counted faithful came to know the mysteries of the Father.

For this reason he sent the Word, so that he might appear to the world. He was dishonored by his own people, preached through the apostles, and believed in by the nations.

This is the one who was from the beginning. He appeared new, yet was found to be old, and he is always being born new in the hearts of the holy.

This is the one who always exists, the one acknowledged as Son today. Through him the church is enriched, and grace, being unfolded among the holy, multiplies. This grace gives understanding, reveals mysteries, announces the seasons, rejoices over the faithful, and grants gifts to those who seek. Among them the oaths of faith are not broken, and the boundaries of the fathers are not overstepped.

Then the fear of the law is sung, the grace of the prophets is known, the faith of the gospels is established, the tradition of the apostles is guarded, and the church rejoices in grace.

If you do not grieve this grace, you will come to know what the Word says, as he wishes, whenever he wishes.

For whatever we have been moved to speak out with labor by the will of the Word who commands us, we become sharers with you out of love for the things that have been revealed to us.

12When you encounter these things and hear them with eagerness, you will know all that God provides to those who love him rightly. They become a paradise of delight, causing a fruit-bearing tree to spring up within themselves, flourishing and adorned with many kinds of fruit.

For in this place a tree of knowledge and a tree of life have been planted. But the tree of knowledge does not kill; disobedience kills.

For what is written is not without meaning: God from the beginning planted a tree of knowledge and a tree of life in the middle of the paradise, showing life through knowledge. But those from the beginning did not use it purely, and through the deceit of the serpent they were stripped bare.

For there is no life without knowledge, and no secure knowledge without true life. That is why each tree was planted near the other.

The apostle saw this power at work, and when he criticized knowledge practiced for life without the truth of the commandment, he says: “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (1 Corinthians 8:1).

For the one who thinks he knows something without true knowledge that is witnessed by life has not known; he is deceived by the serpent, because he did not love to live. But the one who knows with fear and seeks life plants in hope, expecting fruit.

Let knowledge be your heart, and life the true Word, set apart.

If you carry the wood of this tree and pick its fruit, you will always harvest what is longed for in God’s presence, things the serpent does not touch and deceit does not come near. Eve is not corrupted, but is believed as a virgin.

And salvation is shown, and the apostles are given understanding, and the Lord’s Passover goes forth, and the seasons are gathered together and joined with the world, and the Word teaches the saints and rejoices, through whom the Father is glorified. To him be glory forever. Amen.