Against Celsus, Book III

A quarrel over an ass’s shadow§1

1In the first book of our reply to Celsus’s boastful title (for he entitled the book he composed against us The True Doctrine), we dealt, as you instructed, most faithful Ambrose, and as far as we were able, with his preface, and then tested each of his statements in turn, until we ended with the speech of the Jew that he has invented against Jesus. In the second book we met, as best we could, every point in the speech that his Jew makes against us who believe in God through Christ. Now we begin this third book, in which our task is to contend with what he sets out in his own person.

He says that “Christians and Jews quarrel with one another most foolishly,” and he says that our debate with one another about Christ is no different from what the proverb calls “a fight over the shadow of an ass.” He thinks there is nothing worthy of respect in the inquiry that Jews and Christians carry on with one another, since both believe that it was prophesied by a divine Spirit that a Saviour would come to dwell among the human race, but beyond that they do not agree on whether the one prophesied has come or not.

For we Christians have believed in Jesus as the one who came in accordance with the prophecies. But most of the Jews are so far from believing in him that those of that time plotted against Jesus, and those of the present day, approving what the Jews then dared against him, speak evil of Jesus, as though by some sorcery he had pretended to be the one whose coming the prophets proclaimed, who is called Christ in the ancestral usage of the Jews.

A people without gods needed prophets§2

2Let Celsus, then, and those who are pleased with what he says against us, tell us whether it is like the shadow of an ass that the prophets of the Jews foretold the birthplace of him who would lead those who have lived good lives and those who are called God’s portion (Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:6; Deuteronomy 32:9); that a virgin would conceive Emmanuel (Isaiah 7:14); that such signs and wonders would be done by the one prophesied; that “his word will run swiftly” (Psalm 147:15), so that the voice of his apostles went out “into all the earth” (Psalm 19:4; Romans 10:18); and what he would suffer when condemned by the Jews, and how he would rise again.

Did the prophets say these things at random, with no convincing reason to move them not only to speak but also to judge their words worthy of being written down? And did so great a nation as the Jews, which long ago received a land of its own to dwell in, with no convincing reason proclaim some men as prophets and reject others as false prophets? Was there nothing among them that moved them to number the words of the later men who were held to be prophets with the books of Moses, which were believed to be sacred?

And can those who accuse Jews and Christians of foolishness show us that the nation of the Jews could have held together if there had been no promise of foreknowledge among them? Can they show that, while the nations around them each believed, according to their ancestral customs, that they received oracles and divinations from those they held to be gods, these alone, who had been taught to despise all the gods held by the nations as being not gods but demons (for their prophets said, “All the gods of the nations are demons” (Psalm 96:5)), had no one who professed to prophesy and who could hold back those who, out of longing to know the future beforehand, wished to desert to the demons of the other peoples?

Consider, then, whether it was not necessary that a whole nation taught to despise the gods of the other peoples should have had an abundance of prophets, who by that very fact showed something greater, surpassing the oracles found everywhere.

Wonders among the Jews and the Spirit in the prophets§3

3Again: were mighty works done everywhere, or in many places (as Celsus himself relates further on, telling of Asclepius doing good and foretelling the future to whole cities dedicated to him, such as Tricca, Epidaurus, Cos and Pergamum, and of Aristeas of Proconnesus, a certain man of Clazomenae, and Cleomedes of Astypalaea), while among the Jews alone, who say they are dedicated to the God of the universe, there was no sign or wonder to support and confirm their faith in the Creator of the universe, together with their hope of another and greater life? How could that be? They would at once have gone over to worshipping the demons who give oracles and heal, and abandoned the God whom they believed to help them, though only in word, and who never showed his presence at all.

But if this did not happen, and they even endured countless sufferings so as not to renounce Judaism and the law that belongs to it, suffering at one time in Assyria, at another in Persia, at another under Antiochus, is it not shown from probability, to those who disbelieve the extraordinary histories and prophecies, that such things were not fictions, but that a divine Spirit, dwelling in the souls of the prophets as in pure souls, for they were men who had taken on every toil for the sake of virtue, moved them to prophesy some things to their own contemporaries, others to those who came later, and above all concerning a Saviour who would come to dwell among the human race?

Seeking the promised one is no trifle§4

4If this is so, how are Jews and Christians disputing with one another over the shadow of an ass, when they examine, from the prophecies in which both alike believe, whether the one prophesied has come, or has not yet come at all and is still awaited? And even if, for argument’s sake, Celsus were granted that Jesus is not the one whom the prophets announced, even so, the inquiry into the meaning of the prophetic Scriptures is still no dispute over the shadow of an ass. Its aim is that the one proclaimed beforehand may be clearly shown: what sort of person he was prophesied to be, what he would do, and, if possible, when he would come.

We have already spoken earlier about Jesus being the prophesied Christ, setting out a few prophecies out of many. Neither Jews nor Christians, then, are mistaken in accepting that the prophets spoke from God. But those who are mistaken about the one prophesied and awaited hold a false opinion about who he is and what kind of person he was proclaimed to be in the true word of the prophets.

Celsus’s tale of a revolt from Egypt§5

5Next, Celsus supposes that the Jews, being Egyptians by race, left Egypt after rising in revolt against the Egyptian commonwealth and scorning the religious customs of Egypt. He says that what they did to the Egyptians they have suffered at the hands of those who joined Jesus and believed in him as Christ, and that in both cases the cause of the new movement was revolt against the commonwealth.

We must consider what Celsus has done here. The Egyptians of old treated the race of the Hebrews badly in many ways (Exodus 1:11–14), after the Hebrews had come to dwell in Egypt because of a famine that had seized Judaea (Genesis 47:4). For wronging strangers and suppliants they suffered what a whole nation was bound to suffer at the hands of divine providence, since it had conspired against the whole race of its guests, who had done it no wrong. Struck by scourges from God, they let go, grudgingly, though before long, those whom they were unjustly holding in slavery, to go wherever they wished (Exodus 12:31–32).

Since, then, the Egyptians love themselves and prefer their own countrymen, whatever they are like, even to foreigners who are more just, there is no accusation they have failed to make against Moses and the Hebrews. They do not altogether deny the wonderful works done through Moses, but they say these were done by sorcery and not by divine power. Moses, however, being no sorcerer but a devout man, dedicated to the God of the universe and sharing in a more divine spirit, both laid down laws for the Hebrews as God prompted him and recorded what had happened just as it truly was.

The Hebrew language disproves the revolt§6

6Celsus, then, did not act as a fair examiner of the story as the Egyptians tell it one way and the Hebrews another. Prejudiced beforehand in favour of the Egyptians, as though they were dearer to him, he accepted as true the account of those who wronged the strangers, and said that the Hebrews, who had been wronged, left Egypt in revolt. He did not see that so great a rebellious multitude of Egyptians, whose beginning was revolt, could not, at the very moment of revolting, have become a nation and changed its language as well, so that those who until then had used the Egyptian tongue should suddenly have full command of the Hebrew language.

But suppose, for argument’s sake, that when they left Egypt they also came to hate the language they had grown up with. Why then did they not afterwards use the language of the Syrians or of the Phoenicians, rather than establish Hebrew, a language different from both? What my argument means to show is this: it is false that certain people who were Egyptians by race revolted against the Egyptians, left Egypt, came to Palestine and settled in what is now called Judaea. For the Hebrews had an ancestral language before they went down into Egypt, and there were Hebrew letters, different from those of the Egyptians, which Moses used to write the five books that the Jews believe to be sacred.

Christians never began in revolt§7

7It is likewise false that the Hebrews, being Egyptians, had their beginning in a revolt, and false that, in the time of Jesus, others who were Jews revolted against the Jewish commonwealth and followed Jesus. For neither Celsus nor those who think as he does will be able to point to any act of revolt on the part of the Christians.

And yet, if revolt had been the cause of the Christians’ coming together (and they took their beginning from the Jews, who were permitted both to take up arms in defence of their own and to kill their enemies), the lawgiver of the Christians would not have forbidden the killing of a human being altogether, never teaching that any assault by his disciples on another man is just, even if that man is utterly unjust (for he did not think it fitting for his divine legislation to allow the killing of any human being whatever). Nor would Christians, if they had begun from revolt, have accepted laws so exceedingly gentle, under which it was their lot to be slain “like sheep” (Psalm 44:22; Romans 8:36) and never to be able to defend themselves against those who persecuted them.

Moreover, if one examines the matter more deeply, one may say of those who came out of the land of Egypt that the whole people, beyond all expectation, took up all at once the language called Hebrew, as though it were a gift from God. As one of their own prophets said, “When they came out of the land of Egypt, he heard a language he did not know” (Psalm 81:5).

Hebrew names, and God’s care for the Christians§8

8That those who left Egypt with Moses were not Egyptians may also be argued in this way. If they had been Egyptians, their names ought to have been Egyptian, since in every language the names belong to that language. But if it is clear from their names, which are Hebrew, that they were not Egyptians (for Scripture is full of Hebrew names, and of people in Egypt who gave such names to their sons), then the Egyptians’ claim that they were Egyptians driven out of Egypt with Moses is plainly false. And it is quite evident that, being descended from Hebrew ancestors according to the history recorded by Moses, they used their own language, from which they also named their sons.

As for the Christians: because they were taught not to defend themselves against their enemies, and kept the gentle and humane legislation, they have received from God what they would not have accomplished had they been given leave to make war, even if they had been very powerful: from God, who has always fought for them, and from time to time has stopped those who rose up against the Christians and wished to kill them.

For as a reminder, so that by looking upon a few contending for godliness they might be of more proven worth and despise death, a few at various times, and very easily counted, have died for the Christian worship of God, while God prevented their whole nation from being wiped out by war. For he willed that it should be established, and that the whole earth should be filled with this saving and most godly teaching. And again, so that the weaker might have respite from their anxiety about death, God provided for those who believe, scattering every plot against them by his will alone, so that neither kings nor local governors nor the populace could be inflamed against them any further.

So much in answer to what Celsus said: that revolt was the beginning, long ago, of the Jews’ coming together as a people, and later of the Christians’ coming into being.

Christians want everyone to believe§9

9In what follows he plainly lies, so let us also set out his very words. He says: “If all men should wish to be Christians, these people would no longer wish it.”

That this is false is clear from the fact that Christians, so far as it rests with them, do not neglect to sow the word in every part of the world. Some, indeed, have made it their work to travel round not only cities but also villages and farmsteads, so as to make others, too, devout toward God. And no one could say that they do this for the sake of wealth. Sometimes they do not even accept what they need for food; and if ever want of it forces them to accept it, they are content with what they need and no more, even when more people are willing to share with them and to give them more than they need.

Now, perhaps, when because of the great number who come to the word even the rich, and some people of rank, and refined and well-born women welcome those who preach the word, someone will dare to say that some become leaders in the Christian teaching for the sake of a little glory. But at the beginning, when the danger was great, above all for those who taught, no one could reasonably suspect any such thing. And even now the ill repute they have among everyone else is greater than the supposed glory they have among those who share their belief, and not all of them have even that. So it is false on its face that “if all men should wish to be Christians, these people would no longer wish it.”

Few at first, but never few§10

10See also what he says is the proof of this. “When they were beginning,” he says, “they were few and of one mind; but once they had spread into a multitude, they are cut apart and split again, and each group wants factions of its own; for this is what they wanted from the start.”

That the Christians were few at the beginning, compared with the multitude that came after, is clear. Yet they were not altogether few. For what stirred up envy against Jesus and roused the Jews to plot against him was the great number of those who followed him into the deserts: five thousand men followed him, and four thousand, not counting the women and children (Matthew 14:21; Matthew 15:38). Such was the charm in the words of Jesus that not only men wished to follow him into the wilderness, but women too, who let neither their womanly weakness nor what people might think of their following the teacher into the wilderness hold them back. Children too, wholly free from passion, followed with their parents, either going after those who had begotten them, or perhaps also led by his divinity, so that divinity might be sown in them.

But let it be granted that they were few at the beginning. How does this help to show that Christians would not wish to persuade all men of the word?

Disagreements from the very beginning§11

11He also says that they all “were of one mind,” not seeing even here that from the beginning there were disagreements among believers over the interpretation of the books believed to be divine. At any rate, while the apostles were still preaching and the eyewitnesses of Jesus were teaching what he had taught, the believers from among the Jews had no small debate with one another (Acts 15:1–7) about the Gentiles who were coming over to the word: whether they must keep the Jewish customs, or whether the “burden” (Acts 15:28) of clean and unclean foods should be lifted, as not required, from the Gentiles who had left their ancestral ways and believed in Jesus.

Moreover, in the letters of Paul, who lived in the time of those who had seen Jesus, we find things said that show that questions had been raised about the resurrection, and about its having “already taken place” (2 Timothy 2:18), and about the day of the Lord, whether it “has come” or not (2 Thessalonians 2:2). And again the saying, “turning away from the profane empty talk and the contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge, which some have professed, and so made shipwreck of the faith” (1 Timothy 6:20–21; 1 Timothy 1:19), shows that some misreadings arose from the beginning, and not, as Celsus supposes, only after believers had become many.

Serious things breed sects§12

12Then, as if bringing a charge against the word, he reproaches us with the sects within Christianity, saying: “But once they had spread into a multitude, they split and are cut apart again, and each group wants factions of its own.” And he says that “being divided again because of their numbers, they refute one another; they still have, so to speak, one thing in common, if indeed they have even that: the name; and this alone they are nevertheless ashamed to abandon; in everything else they are ranged one here, another there.”

To this too we shall say that differing sects have never arisen in any matter unless its first principle is serious and useful to life. Since medicine is useful and necessary to the human race, and many questions are raised in it about how bodies should be treated, for this reason there are admittedly many sects in medicine among the Greeks, and I think also among the barbarians, at least among all who profess to practise medicine. Again, since philosophy professes truth and the knowledge of things that are, lays down how one ought to live, and tries to teach what benefits our race, while the matters it inquires into allow wide differences of view, for this reason a great many sects have arisen in philosophy, some more famous, others less so. And Judaism too found occasion for sects to arise in the differing interpretation of the writings of Moses and the words of the prophets.

So then, since Christianity appeared to people as something worthy of reverence, not only, as Celsus supposes, to the more slavish, but also to many of the learned among the Greeks, sects necessarily arose, not altogether because of factions and love of strife, but because a number of the learned too were eager to understand the teachings of Christianity. From this it followed that, as they interpreted differently the words that all alike believed to be divine, sects arose named after men who admired the first principle of the word, yet were moved somehow by certain plausible arguments to their disagreements with one another.

But no one could reasonably shun medicine because of the sects within it, nor would anyone who aims at what is fitting hate philosophy, using its many sects as a pretext for hating it. So neither should the sacred books of Moses and the prophets be condemned because of the sects among the Jews.

Sects show who is approved§13

13If this reasoning holds, why should we not make the same defence for the sects among Christians as well? Of these, Paul seems to me to have spoken most admirably: “For there must also be sects among you, so that those who are approved may become manifest among you” (1 Corinthians 11:19). For the man approved in medicine is the one who, having trained himself in various sects and fairly examined most of them, has chosen the best; and the man who makes great progress in philosophy is the one who, having come to know more of them, has trained himself in them and attached himself to the argument that prevailed. In the same way I would say that one who has looked carefully into the sects of Judaism and of Christianity becomes a most wise Christian.

But anyone who accuses the word because of the sects would also accuse the teaching of Socrates, from whose school there have come many schools of men who do not think alike. One might also accuse Plato’s doctrines because of Aristotle, who broke away from his school by introducing new ideas; we have spoken of him earlier too.

Celsus, it seems to me, knew of some sects that do not even share the name of Jesus with us. Perhaps he had heard talk of the so-called Ophites and Cainites, and of any other such school of thought that has arisen by breaking away from Jesus entirely. But this does nothing to show that the teaching of Christians is open to accusation.

Our union comes from God§14

14After this he says: “Their union is all the more wonderful, the more it can be shown to have been formed on no adequate basis. But there is an adequate basis: faction, the advantage it brings, and fear of outsiders; these things make their faith firm.”

To this too we shall say that our union rests on a basis of such a kind, or rather not on a basis at all but on God’s working, that its origin is God, who taught people through the prophets to hope for the coming of Christ, who would save them. For in so far as this is not truly refuted, even if unbelievers seem to refute it, so far the word is established as the word of God, and Jesus is shown to be the Son of God both before he became man and when he had become man.

And I say that even after he became man he is always found, by those who have the keenest eyes of the soul, to be most worthy of God and truly come down to us from God; and that he has neither his origin nor what followed his origin from human understanding, but from the manifestation of God, who by manifold wisdom and manifold powers established first Judaism and after it Christianity. The view has also been refuted that faction, and the advantage gained through faction, are the origin of the word that has converted so many people and made them better.

Not held together by fear§15

15That “fear of outsiders” does not hold our union together either is clear from this: by God’s will, that fear too has already been at an end for a good while now. And it is likely that the freedom from fear, as regards this life, that believers have come to enjoy will come to an end, whenever those who slander the word in every way come again to think that the cause of the faction, now so great among the multitude of believers, lies in their not being warred upon by the rulers as in former times. For we have learned from the word neither to grow slack in peace and give ourselves up to ease, nor, when the world wars against us, to lose heart and fall away from our love for the God of the universe in Jesus Christ (Romans 8:39).

So we set forth the dignity of our origin plainly, and do not, as Celsus thinks, hide it, when even in those who are only beginning instruction we instil contempt for idols and for all statues, and besides this, raising their thoughts from serving created things instead of God (Romans 1:25), we lift them up to the one who created all things. And we clearly present the one who was prophesied, both from the prophecies about him (and these are many) and from the Gospels and the words of the apostles, as these are handed on with precision to those able to hear with more understanding.

What terrors do we invent?§16

16What are these “all sorts of things” by which we draw people, or what are the “terrors” we “invent,” as Celsus writes without any proof? Let anyone who wishes show it. Unless, perhaps, Celsus means to call “invented terrors” the teaching about God as judge and about men being judged for all they have done, a teaching established with varied proof, partly from the Scriptures and partly from reasonable argument.

And yet (for truth is dear) Celsus says, near the end of his work, “May neither these people, nor I, nor any other human being cast off the doctrine that the unjust will be punished and the just counted worthy of rewards.” What terrors, then, if you take away the teaching on punishment, do we invent to draw people in?

Again, when he says that we invent “misheard versions of the ancient account” and with these pipe to people beforehand and fill their ears beforehand, “like those who make a din around people in the frenzy of the Corybantic rites,” we shall say to him: misheard versions of what ancient account? For whether it is the Greek account, which also taught about the courts beneath the earth, or the Jewish one, which among other things prophesied also about the life that follows this life, he could not show that we live by such doctrines as men who have misheard the truth, at least those of us who try to believe with reason.

Egyptian temples and the Christian faith§17

17He wants to compare the things of our faith with the practices of the Egyptians. Among them, as one approaches, there are splendid sacred precincts and groves, great and beautiful gateways, wonderful temples, magnificent pavilions all around, and rites deeply devout and full of mystery; but once one has gone in and further inside, what one sees being worshipped is a cat, or an ape, or a crocodile, or a goat, or a dog.

What, then, is there among us that corresponds to the things of the Egyptians that look solemn to those approaching, and what corresponds to the irrational animals worshipped inside, beyond the solemn gateways? Or are the prophecies, the God over all, and the teaching against images the things that even he counts solemn, while Jesus Christ crucified corresponds to the irrational animal that is worshipped? If he says this (and I do not think he will say anything else), we will answer that a good deal has already been said by us above in support of what concerns Jesus: that even what seems to have befallen him as a man has come about for the good of the universe and for the salvation of the whole world.

Egyptian symbols and the gifts of the Spirit§18

18Then he says that the things of the Egyptians, who speak with solemnity even about the irrational animals and claim that they are in some way symbols of a god, or whatever those who are styled their prophets like to call them, give those who have learned these things the impression that they were not initiated in vain.

But as for the things in our teaching that are presented to the deeply learned in Christianity from what Paul calls a gift, in the “word of wisdom” given “through the Spirit” and in the “word of knowledge” given “according to the Spirit” (1 Corinthians 12:8), Celsus does not seem to me even to have imagined them. I judge this not only from these remarks but also from what he says later, when he accuses the Christian body of driving every wise man away from the teaching of their faith and inviting only the senseless and the slavish. We shall see about this in due course, when we reach that passage.

Riddles of Egypt and the wisdom of Paul§19

19He also says that we laugh at the Egyptians, although they offer many riddles that are far from contemptible, when they teach that such practices are honours paid to eternal ideas and not, as most people think, to creatures that live for a day; but that we are simpletons, bringing into our narratives about Jesus nothing more solemn than the goats and dogs of the Egyptians.

To this too we will say: My good sir, are you right to extol the Egyptians in your discourse for offering many riddles that are far from contemptible, and obscure narratives about the animals among them, and yet wrong to accuse us, as though you were convinced that we say nothing of substance, and that everything we say is worthless and contemptible, when we set out the things concerning Jesus according to the wisdom of the word to those who are, as it were, mature in Christianity? It is of these, as people fit to hear the wisdom that is in Christianity, that Paul teaches when he says: “We speak wisdom among the mature, yet a wisdom not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are being brought to nothing; but we speak God’s wisdom in a mystery, the hidden wisdom, which God foreordained before the ages for our glory, which none of the rulers of this age has known” (1 Corinthians 2:6–8).

A challenge to read Paul's letters§20

20And we say to those who share Celsus’s mind: Did Paul, then, imagine no surpassing wisdom when he promised to speak “wisdom among the mature” (1 Corinthians 2:6)? And when, in keeping with his audacity, he says that Paul made these promises though he had nothing wise, we will answer him: First explain the letters of the man who says this. Look closely into the meaning of each expression in them, for example in the letter to the Ephesians, and to the Colossians, and to the Thessalonians, and to the Philippians, and to the Romans, and show two things: that you have understood Paul’s words, and that you can prove some of them simple-minded or silly.

For if he gives himself to reading them with attention, I know well that either he will admire the mind of the man, who conceives great things in plain language, or, if he does not admire it, he will himself appear ridiculous, whether he explains the man’s meaning as though he had understood it, or tries to contradict and overturn what he imagined Paul had in mind.

The hidden depths of the Gospels§21

21And I say nothing yet of the close study of everything written in the Gospels, each part of which holds a meaning that is large and hard to discern, not only for the many but even for some of the intelligent. That meaning contains a most profound explanation of the parables, which Jesus spoke to “those outside” (Mark 4:11), while he kept their clear sense for those who had passed beyond outward hearing and came to him privately (Mark 4:34) “in the house” (Matthew 13:36). And he will marvel when he understands why some are called “outside” and others “in the house.”

And again, who among those able to see would not be struck with wonder at Jesus’ movements: going up a mountain for certain words (Matthew 5:1), or deeds, or for his own transfiguration (Matthew 17:1–2), and below healing those who were sick and unable to go up where his disciples follow him (Matthew 17:14–18)? But now is not the time to set out what is truly solemn and divine in the Gospels, or the mind of Christ in Paul (1 Corinthians 2:16), that is, of Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24) and of the Word. But even these remarks are enough against the unphilosophical mockery of Celsus, who likens the inner and mystical things of the Church of God to the cats, or apes, or crocodiles, or goats, or dogs of the Egyptians.

Men the Greeks made into gods§22

22Omitting no kind of disparagement and ridicule of us, the buffoon Celsus, in his discourse against us, names the Dioscuri, Heracles, Asclepius, and Dionysus, who are believed among the Greeks to have become gods after being men. And he says that we cannot bear to regard these as gods, because they were men to begin with, although they displayed many noble deeds on behalf of mankind; whereas we, he says, claim that Jesus, after he died, was seen by his own devotees. He further accuses us of saying that he was seen, and that, too, as a shadow.

To this too we will say that Celsus has craftily neither stated clearly that he does not worship these as gods (for he was wary of the opinion of those who would read his writing, who would take him for an atheist if he championed anything of the truth as it appeared to him), nor, on the other hand, pretended that he himself regards them as gods; for we would have replied to either position.

Come, then, let us say this to those who do not regard them as gods. Do these men not exist at all, their soul too having perished, as some think the human soul perishes at once? Or, according to the opinion of those who say that the soul survives or is immortal, do these survive or are they immortal, being not gods but heroes? Or are they not even heroes, but simply souls? If, then, you suppose that they do not exist, we must establish our primary doctrine about the soul; but if they do exist, then here too the doctrine of immortality must be accepted, not only from those Greeks who spoke well about it, but also in accordance with what the divine teachings hold.

And we will show that these men, who worshipped many gods, cannot have come to a better place and portion after their departure from this world. We will bring forward the stories about them, in which are recorded the great licentiousness of Heracles and his womanish slavery to Omphale, and how Asclepius was struck by a thunderbolt from their Zeus. The story of the Dioscuri will also be told, that “now they live on alternate days, and now again they are dead; and they have won honour equal to the gods” (Homer, Odyssey 11.303–304), they who die over and over. How then do they think it reasonable that any of these should be regarded as a god or a hero?

The stories of the heroes set beside the story of Jesus§23

23But we, after showing from the prophetic writings what concerns our Jesus, and then comparing the history about him with the histories about them, [ … ] that no licentiousness is recorded of him. For not even those who plotted against him and sought “false testimony” against him (Matthew 26:59) found so much as a plausible ground for their “false testimony,” so as to accuse him of licentiousness. What is more, his death came about through a plot of men, and had nothing like the thunderbolt that struck Asclepius. And what is there that is solemn about the frenzied Dionysus, dressed in women’s clothing, that he should be worshipped as a god? And if those who defend these figures take refuge in allegories, we must examine separately whether the allegories are sound, and separately whether those who are torn apart by Titans and cast down from the heavenly throne can have real existence and be worthy of reverence and worship.

But our Jesus, who was seen by his own “devotees” (for I will use the word found in Celsus), was seen in truth; and Celsus slanders our message when he says that he was seen as a shadow. Let the histories about those figures be examined alongside the history of Jesus. Or does Celsus want those to be true, but these to be fictions, though they were written down by eyewitnesses, who showed by their deeds how clearly they had grasped what they had beheld, and who displayed their disposition by what they eagerly suffered for his message? And who, wishing to act in everything according to reason, would arbitrarily assent to the stories about those figures, while rushing at the accounts about this one without examination and disbelieving what is told of him?

Witnesses to Asclepius and witnesses to Jesus§24

24And again, when it is said of Asclepius that a great multitude of people, Greeks and barbarians alike, declare that they have often seen him and still see him, not as a mere apparition, but healing, doing good, and foretelling the future, Celsus thinks it right that we believe it, and does not find fault with the believers in Jesus when we believe these things. But when we assent to the disciples, who both beheld the wonders of Jesus and clearly show the good faith of their conscience, because we see their freedom from guile, so far as one can see a conscience from writings, Celsus calls us simpletons, though he cannot produce the “countless multitude,” as he says, of Greeks and barbarians who acknowledge Asclepius.

For our part, if he thinks this impressive, we clearly show a countless multitude of Greeks and barbarians who acknowledge Jesus. And some display signs that they have received something more wonderful through this faith, in the cures they perform, invoking over those who need healing nothing other than the God over all and the name of Jesus together with the history about him. For by these means we too have seen many set free from grievous afflictions, from derangements and madness, and from countless other ills, which neither men nor demons had healed.

Healing and prophecy do not prove a god§25

25Even if I grant that a certain demon who is a physician, the one called Asclepius, heals bodies, I would say to those who marvel at such a thing, or at the prophecy of Apollo: if the healing of bodies is a morally indifferent thing, something that falls to the lot not only of the good but also of the wicked, and if foreknowledge of the future is also indifferent (for the one who foreknows does not necessarily display goodness), then show how those who heal or foreknow are in no way wicked, but are proved by every means to be good, and not far from being thought gods. But they will not be able to prove that those who heal or foreknow are good, since many are said to be healed who are unworthy even to live, whom the wise man, were he a physician, would never have wished to heal, since they live as they ought not.

In the oracles of the Pythian god, too, you would find some commands that are not reasonable. I shall set out two of them for the present. He ordered that Cleomedes, the boxer, I think, be honoured with honours equal to a god's. I do not know what he saw that was so venerable in his boxing; yet he did not honour Pythagoras or Socrates with the honours of the boxer. Again, by calling Archilochus a "servant of the Muses", a man who displayed his poetic art on the vilest and most licentious subject matter and showed a licentious and impure character, he proclaimed him a pious man, in so far as he was a "servant of the Muses", who are reputed to be gods. I do not know whether even an ordinary person would say that the pious man is not adorned with every kind of moderation and virtue, or whether a decent man would say the sort of things contained in the unseemly iambics of Archilochus.

If nothing divine shows itself on its face in the medicine of Asclepius and the prophecy of Apollo, how could anyone reasonably worship them as gods, as pure beings, even if I grant that these things are so? Above all when, through the Pythian vent, the prophetic spirit, Apollo, the one pure of an earthly body, steals into the so-called prophetess through her female parts as she sits over it? We hold no such opinion about Jesus and his power. For the body born of the virgin was made up of human matter, open to human wounds and to death.

Celsus tells the story of Aristeas§26

26Let us see also what Celsus says after this, as he sets out marvels from the histories which in themselves look incredible, yet which he does not disbelieve, at least so far as his words go. First comes the story of Aristeas of Proconnesus, about whom he says this: "Then Aristeas of Proconnesus: he vanished from among men in so supernatural a way, appeared again plainly, long afterwards visited many parts of the world and reported marvels, and Apollo enjoined the Metapontines to count Aristeas among the gods; yet no one any longer regards this man as a god."

He seems to have taken the story from Pindar and Herodotus. For now it is enough to set out the words of Herodotus from the fourth book of his Histories, which run thus about him (Herodotus, Histories 4.14–15): "Where Aristeas, who said these things, came from, I have told; and the account I heard of him in Proconnesus and Cyzicus I shall tell. They say that Aristeas, who was inferior in birth to none of the citizens, went into a fuller's shop in Proconnesus and died there, and that the fuller locked up his workshop and went off to tell the dead man's relatives. When the report that Aristeas was dead had already spread through the city, a man of Cyzicus who had come from the town of Artace disputed it with those who were saying it, declaring that he had met Aristeas as he was going toward Cyzicus and had spoken with him. While he was disputing it hotly, the dead man's relatives came to the fuller's shop with what was needed to take up the body; but when the room was opened, Aristeas was to be seen neither alive nor dead. In the seventh year afterwards he appeared in Proconnesus and composed the verses which the Greeks now call the Arimaspea, and having composed them he vanished a second time.

"This is what these cities say. But this I know happened to the Metapontines in Italy two hundred and forty years after the second disappearance of Aristeas, as I found by reckoning in Proconnesus and in Metapontum. The Metapontines say that Aristeas himself appeared to them in their country and bade them set up an altar to Apollo, and beside it a statue bearing the name of Aristeas of Proconnesus. For he told them that theirs was the only country of all the Italian Greeks to which Apollo had come, and that he himself, who was now Aristeas, was following him; but at that time, when he followed the god, he was a raven. Having said this he vanished; and the Metapontines say that they sent to Delphi and asked the god what the apparition of the man might be. The Pythia bade them obey the apparition, saying that if they obeyed, it would go better for them. They accepted this and carried it out. And to this day there stands a statue bearing the name of Aristeas beside the very image of Apollo, with laurels around it; the image is set up in the marketplace. So much, then, for Aristeas."

Why believe Herodotus and not the disciples?§27

27To the story about Aristeas we must say this. If Celsus had set it out as a story, without also showing his own assent as one who had accepted it as true, we would have met his argument in another way. But he says that Aristeas vanished in a supernatural way, appeared again plainly, visited many parts of the world and reported marvels; and he also sets out the oracle of Apollo, who enjoined the Metapontines to count Aristeas among the gods, in his own voice and with assent. So we address our reply to him: How is it that you take the marvels recorded about Jesus by his disciples to be sheer fictions, and blame those who believe them, yet do not consider these stories either tall tales or fictions? And how is it that you, who accuse others of believing the marvels about Jesus without reason, show that you have believed so many such things yourself, bringing no proof about them and no argument that they happened? Or are Herodotus and Pindar held by you to be free of falsehood, while those who trained themselves to die for the teachings of Jesus, and who left to those after them such writings about the things they were convinced of, contend so hard for what you think are fictions, myths and tall tales that for their sake they live amid hardships and die by violence?

Place yourself, then, midway between what is written about Aristeas and what is related about Jesus, and see whether, from the outcome and from those who are helped to amend their characters and to revere the God over all, it is not possible to say that we must believe the things related about Jesus, as things that did not happen without God, but not the things about Aristeas of Proconnesus.

The purpose behind the wonders of Jesus§28

28For what purpose did providence work the marvels about Aristeas, and what benefit did it mean to bring to the human race by displaying things as great as you think these were? You cannot say. But when we tell the story of Jesus, we offer no ordinary defence for these things having happened: namely, that God willed to commend as saving for men the message that came through Jesus. That message was made firm through the apostles, as it were the foundations of the building of Christianity that was being laid (Ephesians 2:20), and it has grown in later times too, in which not a few healings are performed in the name of Jesus, along with certain other manifestations that are not to be despised.

And what sort of being is Apollo, who enjoins the Metapontines to count Aristeas among the gods? With what purpose does he do this, and what benefit is he arranging for the Metapontines from honouring Aristeas as a god, if they should now reckon as a god one who a little before was a man? Yet the commendations of Aristeas by Apollo, who in our view is a demon that has received as his privilege "libation and the savour of sacrifice" (Homer, Iliad 4.49), seem to you worth mention; while the commendations from the God over all and his holy angels, foretold through prophets not after Jesus had come but before he came to dwell in human life, do not move you to marvel both at the prophets who received the divine Spirit and at the one whom they prophesied?

It came about that his coming into this life was proclaimed many years beforehand, and by so many, that the whole nation of the Jews, hanging on the expectation of the one they hoped would come, fell to debating among themselves when Jesus came. A great multitude of them confessed him as Christ and believed that he was the one prophesied. But those who did not believe despised the meekness of those who, because of the teachings of Jesus, would not stir up strife even in the least, and dared to do against Jesus such things as his disciples recorded with love of truth and candour, not stealthily removing from the wonderful story about him what seems to most people to bring shame on the Christians' message.

For both Jesus himself and his disciples wished those who came to them to believe not only in his divinity and his marvels, as if he had not shared in human nature or taken on the flesh which in human beings "desires against the spirit" (Galatians 5:17). But they saw too that the power which came down into human nature and human circumstances, and took on a human soul and body, contributes by being believed, together with the more divine things, to the salvation of those who believe, who see that from him the divine and human natures began to be woven together, so that the human, by fellowship with what is more divine, might become divine, not in Jesus alone but also in all who, along with believing, take up the life which Jesus taught, the life that leads everyone who lives by the precepts of Jesus to friendship with God and fellowship with him.

The churches of God shine like lights§29

29So Apollo, as Celsus tells it, wants the Metapontines to count Aristeas among the gods. But since the Metapontines thought the plain evidence about Aristeas, a man and perhaps not a good one, stronger than the oracle that called him a god or worthy of divine honours, they were not willing to obey Apollo; and so no one regards Aristeas as a god.

About Jesus we would say this. It was to the advantage of the human race to receive him as Son of God, God come in a human soul and body; and this did not seem profitable to the gluttony of the body-loving demons or of those who think them gods. For this reason the demons on earth, who are thought to be gods by those not instructed about demons, and also those who serve them, wanted to hinder the spread of the teaching of Jesus. For they saw that the libations and the savour of sacrifices, in which they greedily took pleasure, were being done away with as the teachings of Jesus prevailed. But God, who sent Jesus, brought to nothing all the plotting of the demons, and made the gospel of Jesus prevail in every part of the world for the conversion and amendment of human beings, and made churches arise everywhere that live as a rival commonwealth to the assemblies of the superstitious, the licentious and the unjust. For such are the crowds that everywhere act as citizens in the assemblies of the cities. But the churches of God that have been made disciples of Christ, when compared with the assemblies of the peoples among whom they dwell as sojourners, are "like lights in the world" (Philippians 2:15). For who would not admit that even the worse members of the church, and those who fall short by comparison with the better, are much better than the assemblies of the peoples?

The Church beside the city assembly§30

30For the church of God at Athens, let us say, is a gentle and steady body, since it wishes to please the God over all; but the assembly of the Athenians is given to faction and can in no way be compared with the church of God there. You will say the same of the church of God at Corinth and the assembly of the people of Corinth, and, let us say, of the church of God at Alexandria and the assembly of the people of Alexandria. And if the one who hears this is fair-minded and examines the facts with a love of truth, he will marvel at him who both planned and was able to bring about the founding of churches of God everywhere, churches that live as sojourners beside the assemblies of the people in each city.

So too, if you compare the council of the church of God with the council in each city, you would find that some councillors of the church are worthy to hold citizenship in the city of God, if there is such a city anywhere in the universe, while the city councillors everywhere bring, in their own characters, nothing worthy of the pre-eminence their appointment gives them, by which they seem to stand above the citizens. So too the ruler of the church in each city must be compared with the ruler of the people in that city, so that you may perceive that, even among those councillors and rulers of the church of God who fall far short, and who live more carelessly than those of more vigorous life, it is nonetheless possible to find, as a general rule, a superiority in progress toward the virtues over the characters of those who sit as councillors and rulers in the cities.

Abaris’s arrow and Jesus taken up in glory§31

31If this is so, is it not reasonable to think of Jesus, who has been able to establish so much, that no ordinary divinity was in him, but no longer reasonable to think so of Aristeas of Proconnesus, even if Apollo wishes to assign him a place among the gods, nor of those whom Celsus lists when he says, “No one thinks Abaris the Hyperborean a god, who had such power that he was carried along on an arrow”? For with what purpose did the divinity that let Abaris the Hyperborean be carried along on an arrow bestow so great a gift on him? So that the human race might be helped in some way? Or what did he himself gain by being carried along on an arrow? And this is even granting that these things are by no means fictions but came about through the cooperation of some demon.

But if my Jesus is said to have been taken up “in glory” (1 Timothy 3:16), I see the plan in it: the God who brought this about was commending the teacher to those who saw it, so that, as men contending not for human teachings but for divine teaching, they might devote themselves with all their strength to the God over all and do everything to please him, as those who would receive at the divine judgment seat, according to their deserts, whatever they had done in this life, whether good or evil (compare 2 Corinthians 5:10).

Jesus laid down his own soul§32

32Next Celsus also spoke of the man of Clazomenae and, on the story told of him, added: “Do they not say this, that his soul often left his body and wandered about without a body? And men did not think him a god either.” To this too we shall say that perhaps some wicked demons arranged for such things to be written down (for I do not believe that they also arranged for them to happen), so that the things prophesied about Jesus and the things said by him might either be slandered as fictions like those, or not be greatly marvelled at, as having nothing more than the others.

Now my Jesus said of his own soul, which was parted from the body not by the necessity common to men but by the extraordinary authority given to him over this also: “No one takes my soul from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it again” (John 10:18). For since he had “authority to lay it down,” he laid it down when he said, “Father, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34) and, “crying out with a loud voice, he gave up the spirit” (Matthew 27:50). In this he forestalled the executioners in charge of the crucified, who cut the legs of those crucified, and cut them for this reason, that they may not suffer punishment any longer (compare John 19:31–33).

And he took up “his soul” again when he showed himself to his disciples, having foretold it in their presence to the Jews who did not believe him: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2:19). And “he was speaking of the temple of his body” (John 2:21). The prophets too had proclaimed such a thing beforehand in many places, and in this one: “Moreover my flesh also will dwell in hope; for you will not abandon my soul to Hades, nor will you let your Holy One see corruption” (Psalm 16:9–10; Acts 2:26–27).

Cleomedes and the chest§33

33Celsus showed that he had read a good many Greek stories when he also cited the tale of Cleomedes of Astypalaea. He related that Cleomedes got into a chest and, though shut inside it, was not found within, but by some supernatural fate had flown out of it, when some men broke the chest open to seize him. If this too is a fiction, as it seems to be, it cannot be compared with the accounts of Jesus. For in the case of those men no token of the divinity reported of them is found in the life of men; but in the case of Jesus there are the churches of those who are helped, the prophecies spoken about him, the healings done in his name, and the knowledge joined with wisdom that comes from him, and the reasoned understanding found among those who have taken care to rise above bare faith and to search out the meaning in the divine Scriptures. They do this following the counsel of Jesus, who said, “Search the Scriptures” (John 5:39), and the wish of Paul, who taught that we must “know how to answer each one” as is fitting (Colossians 4:6), and of him also who said, “Always be ready to make a defence to everyone who asks you for a reason for the faith that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15).

But if Celsus wants it granted that the story is not a fiction, let him say for what purpose the power that is above man made Cleomedes fly out of the chest by some supernatural fate. For if he can present something worth mentioning, and show that a purpose worthy of God bestowed such a thing on Cleomedes, we shall judge what we ought to say in reply to him. But if he is at a loss to say anything even plausible on the point, then plainly, so far as no reason is to be found, we shall either discredit the story, siding with those who did not accept it, and charge it with being untrue, or we shall say that something demonic, like the illusions that sorcerers display by deceiving the eyes, did this also in the case of the man from Astypalaea, about whom Celsus supposes that an oracle declared that he had flown out of the chest by some supernatural fate.

We worship without temples or statues§34

34For my part, I think that these were the only ones Celsus knew. And so that he may seem to have passed over similar cases by choice, he said, “And one could name many others of this kind.” Well, let it be so, and let it be granted that there have been many such men, who did nothing at all to help the human race. What would each of them be found to be when set beside the work of Jesus and the wonders told of him, of which we have spoken at length?

After this he supposes that we, in worshipping one who, as Celsus says, “was captured and died,” have done something like the Getae, who revere Zamolxis, the Cilicians, who revere Mopsus, the Acarnanians Amphilochus, the Thebans Amphiaraus, and the people of Lebadea Trophonius. Here too we shall prove that he had no good reason to liken us to those just named. For they built temples and statues to those whom he lists; but we have taken away from the Divine the honour paid by such means, as more fitting for demons, which are somehow settled in a particular place, a place they either seize beforehand or, drawn there by certain rites and sorceries, in a manner inhabit. We, rather, look with wonder on Jesus, who has turned our mind away from everything that the senses perceive, as being not only perishable but also bound to perish, and who leads it up to honour the God over all with an upright life and with prayers. These we offer to him through one who stands, as it were, between the nature of the uncreated and the nature of all created things, who brings us the benefits that come from the Father and, in the manner of a high priest, carries our prayers to the God over all.

If these are powers, Jesus is stronger§35

35I should like to chat a little with the man who somehow says such things, in some such words as these, as befits him: Are these whom you have listed nothing, then? Is there no power at Lebadea connected with Trophonius, nor at Thebes around the temple of Amphiaraus, nor in Acarnania connected with Amphilochus, nor in Cilicia with Mopsus? Or is there in such places some being, whether a demon or a hero or even a god, working things greater than man can?

For if he says that there is nothing else about these, neither demonic nor divine, then let him at least now admit his own view as an Epicurean, one who does not think as the Greeks do, and who neither recognises demons nor even worships gods as the Greeks do. And let him be convicted of having brought forward to no purpose both what he said before, as though he accepted it as true, and what he goes on to add.

But if he says that those he lists are demons or heroes or even gods, let him see that by what he has said he will establish what he does not want: that Jesus too was something of this kind. That is why he has also been able to convince no small number of people that he came from God to dwell among the human race. And once Celsus admits this, see whether he will not be forced to say that Jesus is stronger than those with whom he has counted him. For none of those forbids the honours paid to the others; but Jesus, confident in himself as more powerful than all of them, forbids the acceptance of them as wicked demons, which have seized beforehand places on earth because they cannot touch the purer and more divine region, where the grossness that comes from the earth and from its countless evils does not reach.

Antinous is no match for Jesus§36

36After this Celsus thinks that the story of Hadrian’s favourite (I mean the story of the youth Antinous, and the honours paid him by the people of the city of Antinous in Egypt) falls in no way short of the honour we pay to Jesus. Come, then, let us refute this too, as something said out of spite. For what has the life lived as the favourite of Hadrian, who did not even keep the male youth free from womanish disorder, in common with our revered Jesus? Even those who brought countless accusations against him and told every kind of lie about him have not been able to charge him with tasting even the least licentiousness, even for a short time.

Moreover, if anyone were to examine the facts about Antinous with a love of truth and without partiality, he would find that the sorceries and rites of the Egyptians are the causes of his seeming to do something in the city of Antinous even after his death. The same is reported to have been done in the case of other temples by Egyptians and by those skilled in such matters, who settle in certain places demons that give oracles or heal, and that often also torment those who seem to have transgressed in the matter of ordinary foods or of touching a dead human body, so that they may seem to strike fear into the uneducated multitude. Such too is the one who has come to be thought a god in the city of Antinous in Egypt. Some people, who live rather like cheats, invent false tales of his mighty deeds; others, deceived by the demon settled there, and others again, convicted by a weak conscience, suppose that they are paying a penalty sent by a god from Antinous. Such too are the mysteries they perform and their supposed oracles, from which the things of Jesus are very far removed.

For it was not sorcerers, coming together to repay a favour to some king who gave orders or some governor who commanded it, who were thought to have made him a god. It was the Maker of the universe himself who, in keeping with the marvellously persuasive power in his speaking, commended him as worthy of honour, not only to men who are willing to be of sound mind, but also to demons and other invisible powers. To this day these show either that they fear the name of Jesus as stronger than they, or that they reverently accept him as their lawful ruler. For if his commendation had not been given him by God, the demons too would not withdraw from those they assail, yielding at the mere pronouncing of his name.

Why Christians will not rank Jesus with Apollo or Zeus§37

37The Egyptians, then, who have been taught to worship Antinous, will put up with it if you set Apollo or Zeus beside him, for they exalt Antinous by counting him among those gods. For here too Celsus plainly lies when he says, “Even if you set Apollo or Zeus beside him, they will not put up with it.”

But Christians have learned that their eternal life lies in knowing “the only true God,” who is over all, “and Jesus Christ, whom” he “has sent” (John 17:3). They have learned too “that all the gods of the nations are demons” (Psalm 96:5), greedy demons that wallow about the sacrifices, the blood, and the portions taken from the sacrifices, to deceive those who have not fled for refuge to the God who is over all; while the divine and holy angels of God are of another nature and another will than all the demons on earth, and are known to very few, to those who have searched into such things with understanding and care. If you set beside him Apollo and Zeus, or any of those worshipped with the savour of burnt fat, with blood, and with sacrifices, Christians will not put up with it. Some of them, in their great simplicity, do not know how to give an account of what they do, but sensibly keep what they have received. Others refuse with arguments that are not to be despised, arguments that are deeper and, as a Greek might say, esoteric and fit for those who have seen the higher mysteries. In these there is much discussion of God, and of those whom God, through the only-begotten God the Word, has honoured with a share in deity, and for that reason with the name as well. There is much discussion too of the divine angels, and of those who are opposed to the truth yet have themselves been deceived, and who out of that deception proclaim themselves gods, or angels of God, or good demons, or heroes formed by the change of a good human soul.

For just as many in philosophy suppose that they are in the truth, either because they have deceived themselves with plausible arguments or because they have rashly assented to arguments that others have put forward and devised, so too among souls outside bodies, and among angels and demons, there are some who have been drawn by plausible reasonings into proclaiming themselves gods. And because such questions cannot be found out among men with complete exactness, it has been judged safe for one who is a man to entrust himself to no one as to God except to the God who is over all alone, with Jesus Christ as arbiter, who looked most deeply into these things and handed them on to a few.

Lucky faith and tested faith§38

38As for Antinous, then, or anyone else of the kind, whether among Egyptians or among Greeks, faith in him is, if I may use the word, unlucky. Faith in Jesus, however, is either one that might seem lucky, or one that has been examined under searching tests: to the many it seems lucky, while among a very few indeed it has been examined under searching tests. And even if I say that a certain faith is lucky, as the many would call it, I refer the question of this faith too to God, who knows the causes of what is allotted to each one who comes to live the life of men.

The Greeks too will say that even among those reckoned wisest, good fortune is in many respects the cause: for instance, in having teachers of a certain kind and in falling in with the better ones, when there are also teachers of the opposing schools, and in being brought up among better surroundings. For many have had an upbringing in such conditions that they were not allowed even to form an impression of better things, but always, from their earliest years, were either kept as the boy favourites of licentious men or masters, or held in some other wretchedness that keeps the soul from looking up. It is entirely likely that the causes of these things lie in the reasons of providence, but it is not easy for men to grasp them.

I have thought it right to say this in passing, by way of digression, because of how much faith of whatever kind achieves when it has taken hold beforehand. For because of men's different upbringings it was necessary to speak of the differences among their faiths, as they believe with better or with worse fortune; and from there to go on to the point that, even for the more able, what is called good fortune and what is called bad fortune would seem to contribute to their very appearing to be more rational, and to their attaching themselves, for the most part, more rationally to doctrines. But enough of these matters.

The plain honesty of the Gospel writers§39

39We must now consider what Celsus says next. In it he says that with us too it is faith, having taken hold of our soul beforehand, that produces this kind of assent concerning Jesus. Faith does truly produce such assent in us. But see whether faith itself does not at once show what is praiseworthy in it, when we entrust ourselves to the God who is over all, giving thanks to the one who led us to such faith, and saying that it was not without God that he dared and achieved so great a thing.

We also trust the intentions of those who wrote the Gospels, discerning their reverence and their conscience, which show in their writings, for they have nothing spurious about them, nothing of the gambler's tricks, nothing made up and nothing crafty. For it is clear to us that souls which had not learned the sort of things taught by the crafty sophistry of the Greeks, which has great persuasiveness and sharpness, and by the rhetoric that wallows in the law courts, would not have been able to invent in this way matters that could carry in themselves what leads to faith and to a life in keeping with that faith.

I think too that this is why Jesus chose to use such men as teachers of his doctrine: so that there might be no room for any suspicion of plausible sophistries, and so that it might shine out plainly to those able to understand that the guilelessness of the writers' intention, which had in it much of what I may call simplicity, was counted worthy of a more divine power, a power that achieves far more than elaborate speech, the arrangement of words, and an argument that proceeds by divisions and the technical methods of the Greeks are thought able to achieve.

Common notions against idols§40

40See whether the teachings of our faith, which from the first agree with the common notions, do not win over those who listen fair-mindedly to what is said. For even though perversion, with a great deal of instruction pleading its case, has been able to plant in the many the doctrine that statues are gods, and that things made of gold and silver and ivory and stone are worthy of worship, the common notion nevertheless requires us to understand that God is in no way perishable matter, and is not honoured when he is given shape by men in lifeless materials, as though these were made “in the image” of him (Genesis 1:26), or were some kind of symbol of him.

That is why it is said at once about statues “that they are not gods” (Acts 19:26), and about such works of craft that they bear no comparison with the Maker; and a few things are said about the God who is over all, who made, holds together, and governs the universe. And at once the rational soul, as though recognising what is akin to it, casts away what until then it had supposed to be gods, and takes up a natural love for its Creator. Through its love for him, it also welcomes with the warmest regard the one who first set these things before all the nations through the disciples he had trained, whom he sent out with divine power and authority to proclaim the word about God and his kingdom (Luke 9:1–2).

The Word and the change of his body§41

41He charges us, I do not know how many times by now, about Jesus: that we consider him to be God although he was made of a mortal body, and that we think we act piously in this. It is needless to answer this any further, for more has been said above. Still, let those who make the charge know this. The one whom we consider and are persuaded to be from the beginning God and Son of God is the very Word (John 1:1), the very Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24), and the very Truth (John 14:6). As for his mortal body and the human soul in him, we say that through not only their fellowship with him but also their union and blending with him they have received what is greatest, and that, having shared in his divinity, they have been changed into God.

If anyone takes offence at our saying these things about his body as well, let him consider what the Greeks say about matter: that by its own definition it is without qualities, that it is clothed with whatever qualities the Maker wishes to put upon it, and that it often lays aside its former qualities and takes on better and different ones. If such views are sound, what is surprising in this, that by the providence of God, who willed it, the quality of mortality in the body of Jesus was changed into an ethereal and divine quality?

Perishable flesh and the gods of myth§42

42It was not, then, as a trained reasoner that Celsus spoke when he compared the human flesh of Jesus with gold and silver and stone and said, “It is more perishable than these.” For in strict reasoning, neither is one imperishable thing more imperishable than another imperishable thing, nor one perishable thing more perishable than another perishable thing. But even granting that it is more perishable, we shall still say this in reply: if the matter that underlies all qualities can exchange its qualities, how can it not be possible for the flesh of Jesus also to exchange its qualities and become such as it had to be in order to dwell in the ether and the regions above it, no longer having the properties of fleshly weakness, nor the things that Celsus called “more foul”?

Nor in this does he act as a philosopher. For what is properly foul is such because of wickedness, and the nature of a body is not foul; for it is not insofar as it is the nature of a body that it has wickedness, which is what gives rise to foulness.

Then, since he foresees the defence we make about the change of his body, he says: “But once he has put these off, then, it seems, he will be a god. Why then not rather Asclepius, Dionysus, and Heracles?” We shall reply: What great deed did Asclepius or Dionysus or Heracles accomplish? And whom will they be able to show as improved in character and made better by their words and their life, so that they should become gods? Let us read the many stories about them and see whether they kept themselves clean of licentiousness, or injustice, or folly, or cowardice. If nothing of the kind were found in them, Celsus's argument in putting those just named on a level with Jesus would be strong. But if it is clear, even though some better things are reported of them, that they are recorded to have done countless things contrary to right reason, how can you still say with good reason that they, rather than Jesus, became gods when they put off the mortal body?

The tomb of Zeus in Crete§43

43After this he says of us that we “laugh at those who worship Zeus, because his tomb is shown in Crete, and none the less revere the one from the tomb, not knowing how and in what sense the Cretans do such a thing.” Notice, then, that in these words he makes a defence for the Cretans, for Zeus and for his tomb, hinting at figurative meanings according to which the myth about Zeus is said to have been fashioned; but he accuses us, who admit that our Jesus was buried but declare that he was also raised from the tomb, which is something the Cretans do not go on to relate about Zeus.

Since he seems to plead for the tomb of Zeus in Crete when he says, “not knowing how and in what sense the Cretans do this,” we shall answer that even Callimachus of Cyrene, who read a vast number of poems and gathered up almost the whole of Greek history, knows of no figurative interpretation in the stories about Zeus and his tomb. That is why he reproaches the Cretans in the hymn he wrote to Zeus, saying: “Cretans are always liars; for the Cretans even built a tomb, O lord, for you; but you did not die, for you are for ever” (Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 8–9).

Yet the man who said, “you did not die, for you are for ever,” while denying that Zeus was buried in Crete, records that the beginning of death came about for Zeus; for the beginning of death is birth upon earth. He speaks thus: “Among the Parrhasians Rhea lay down and bore you” (Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 10). Since he denied the birth of Zeus in Crete because of his tomb, he ought to have seen that from his birth in Arcadia it followed that the one who had been born should also die. Callimachus also says this about these matters: “Zeus, some say you were born on the mountains of Ida; Zeus, others say in Arcadia. Which of them, father, have lied? Cretans are always liars” (Callimachus, Hymn to Zeus 6–8), and so on.

Celsus has led us into these matters by his unfairness about Jesus. He agrees with what is written, that he died and was buried, but he regards it as a fiction that he also rose from the dead, and this although countless prophets foretold this too, and there are many signs of his appearing after death.

The charge that Christians shun the educated§44

44Next after this Celsus brings forward what is said, contrary to the teaching of Jesus, by a very few who are thought to be Christians, not, as he supposes, the more intelligent, but the most ignorant; and he says that they give orders such as these: “ ‘Let no one who is educated come near, no one wise, no one sensible; for these things are counted evil among us. But if anyone is ignorant, if anyone is foolish, if anyone is uneducated, if anyone is a child, let him come with confidence.’ For by admitting outright that these are worthy of their God, they make it plain that they wish to persuade, and are able to persuade, only the simple-minded, the low-born and the dull, slaves, silly women and little children.”

To this too we reply as follows. Suppose that, while Jesus teaches about self-control and says, “Whoever looks at a woman so as to desire her has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28), someone saw a few, out of so many who are thought to be Christians, living licentiously. He would be entirely reasonable in blaming them for living contrary to the teaching of Jesus, but he would act entirely unreasonably if he fastened the charge against them on the teaching itself. In the same way, if the teaching of Christians is found to summon people to wisdom as much as any other, then the blame must fall on those who plead in defence of their own ignorance, and who say, not the things Celsus recorded (for even if some are unlettered and ignorant, they do not speak so shamelessly), but other things, far milder, that turn people away from the pursuit of wisdom.

The ancient Scriptures call us to wisdom§45

45That our teaching wants us to be wise must be shown both from the ancient Jewish writings, which we also use, and no less from those written after Jesus and believed in the churches to be divine. It is written in the fiftieth Psalm that David, in his prayer to God, says: “You have made plain to me the hidden and secret things of your wisdom” (Psalm 51:6). Indeed, anyone who reads the Psalms would find the book full of many wise doctrines. Solomon too was approved because he asked for wisdom (1 Kings 3:9–12; 2 Chronicles 1:10–12); and in his writings one can see the traces of his wisdom, which hold great depth of thought in few words. In them you would find many praises of wisdom and many exhortations to take up wisdom.

So wise indeed was Solomon that the queen of Sheba, when she heard “his name” “and the name of the Lord,” came “to test him with riddles” (1 Kings 10:1). She “spoke to him all that was in her heart, and Solomon explained to her all her words; there was not a word passed over by the king that he did not explain to her. And the queen of Sheba saw all the understanding of Solomon” (1 Kings 10:2–4) and all that belonged to him; “and she was beside herself, and she said to the king, ‘True was the report that I heard in my own land about you and about your understanding; and I did not believe those who told me until I came and my eyes had seen; and see, they did not tell me the half. You have added wisdom and good things to them beyond all the report that I heard’ ” (1 Kings 10:5–7).

It is written of him that “the Lord gave Solomon understanding and very great wisdom, and largeness of heart like the sand that is beside the sea. And wisdom was multiplied in Solomon exceedingly, beyond the understanding of all the ancients and beyond all the wise men of Egypt. And he was wiser than all men, and wiser than Gethan the Ezarite, and Emad, and Chalcadi, and Arada, the sons of Mad; and he was renowned among all the nations round about. And Solomon spoke three thousand parables, and his songs were five thousand. And he spoke of the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out through the wall; and he spoke of the fishes and the beasts. And all the peoples came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and from all the kings of the earth, who heard of his wisdom” (1 Kings 4:29–34).

Our teaching so wants there to be wise men among believers that, to exercise the understanding of its hearers, it has spoken some things in riddles, some in what are called dark sayings (Proverbs 1:6), some through parables, and others through puzzles. And one of the prophets, Hosea, says at the end of his words: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? Or who is prudent, and will know them?” (Hosea 14:9). Daniel, and those who were taken captive with him, made such progress even in the learning practised in Babylon by the wise men around the king that they were shown to surpass them all “tenfold” (Daniel 1:20). And in Ezekiel it is said to the ruler of Tyre, who prided himself greatly on his wisdom: “Are you wiser than Daniel? Has not every secret been shown to you?” (Ezekiel 28:3).

Wisdom in the writings after Jesus§46

46If you go on to the books written after Jesus as well, you would find that the crowds of believers hear the parables as those who are outside (Mark 4:11) and worthy only of the outward teachings, while the disciples learn privately the explanations of the parables. For Jesus “privately explained everything to his own disciples” (Mark 4:34), honouring above the crowds those who laid claim to his wisdom. He promises to those who believe in him that he will send “wise men and scribes,” saying: “See, I will send you wise men and scribes, and some of them they will kill and crucify” (Matthew 23:34).

Paul too, in his list of the gifts given by God, placed first the word of wisdom; second, as ranking below it, the word of knowledge; and third, lower still, faith (1 Corinthians 12:8–9). And because he valued the word above miraculous workings, he therefore sets “workings of powers” and “gifts of healings” in a lower place than the gifts of the word (1 Corinthians 12:9–10).

Stephen, in the Acts of the Apostles, bears witness to the wide learning of Moses, no doubt taking this from ancient writings that had not reached many; for he says: “And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (Acts 7:22). For this reason it was also suspected that he might be working his wonders not, as he professed, because he had come from God, but by the learning of the Egyptians, in which he was wise. For it was because he suspected something of this kind about him that the king called the enchanters of the Egyptians, and the wise men, and the sorcerers (Exodus 7:11); and they were proved to be nothing compared with the wisdom in Moses, which surpassed all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

Worldly wisdom and the wisdom of God§47

47But it is likely that what Paul wrote in the First Letter to the Corinthians, addressed as it was to Greeks who were greatly puffed up over Greek wisdom, has moved some to think that our teaching does not want wise men. Let anyone who thinks so hear this. When the word censures worthless men, it says that they are not wise about things intelligible, invisible and eternal, but that, having busied themselves with the things of sense alone and placing everything in these, they are wise men of the world. In the same way, since there are many doctrines, it says that those which plead for matter and bodies, and assert that all things that primarily exist are bodies and that there is nothing else besides them, whether called invisible or named incorporeal, are “the wisdom of the world,” which is brought to nothing and made foolish, and the wisdom of this age (1 Corinthians 1:20; 2:6). But those which carry the soul over from the affairs of this world to the blessedness that is with God and to what is called his kingdom, and which teach people to despise all things perceived by sense and seen, as being temporary, and to hasten toward things invisible and to look at the things that are not seen (2 Corinthians 4:18), these it says are “the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7).

Paul, as a lover of truth, says of certain wise men among the Greeks, in the points where they speak truly, “that, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks” (Romans 1:21). He bears witness that they had known God; and he says too that this did not come to them without God, where he writes: “for God has shown it to them” (Romans 1:19). He is hinting, I think, at those who ascend from things visible to things intelligible, when he writes that “the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things that are made, both his eternal power and divinity, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks” (Romans 1:20–21).

Not many wise, but not none§48

48Perhaps, too, some have been led by the words, “Consider your calling, brothers: not many were wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many of noble birth; but God chose the foolish things of the world to put the wise to shame; and God chose the low-born things and the despised things, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh might boast before him” (1 Corinthians 1:26–29), to suppose that no one educated or wise or sensible comes to the word.

To such a person we shall reply that it does not say “no one wise according to the flesh,” but “not many wise according to the flesh.” And it is clear that when Paul, in his sketch of those called bishops, describes what kind of man the bishop must be, he also made him a teacher, saying that he must be able “also to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9), so that by the wisdom in him he may stop the mouths of empty talkers and deceivers (Titus 1:10–11). And just as for the office of bishop he prefers a man married once to one married twice, the “blameless” to the blameworthy, the “sober” to one who is not, the “self-controlled” to one who lacks self-control, and the “orderly” to one who is even slightly disorderly (1 Timothy 3:2), so he wants the man who is to be appointed bishop to be, above all, apt to teach (1 Timothy 3:2) and able “to refute those who contradict” (Titus 1:9).

How, then, can Celsus reasonably accuse us of saying, “Let no educated person come, no wise person, no sensible person”? No: let the educated, wise and sensible person come, whoever wishes; but let anyone who is ignorant, foolish, uneducated or childish come no less. For the word promises to heal such people too when they come, making all worthy of God.

Education is no barrier to knowing God§49

49It is false, too, that those who teach the divine word wish to persuade only “the silly, the low-born, the dull, slaves, women and little children.” The word does call these, to make them better; but it also calls those who are far above them, since Christ is “the Saviour of all men, and especially of believers” (1 Timothy 4:10), whether intelligent or simpler, and he is “the propitiation” “with the Father” “for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2).

After this, then, it is needless for us to want to defend ourselves against Celsus’s words, which run thus: “For what evil is there, in any case, in being educated, in having devoted oneself to the best teachings, and in being sensible and seeming so? What hindrance is this to knowing God? Why is it not rather a help, and a means by which one might better reach the truth?”

To be truly educated, then, is no evil, for education is a road to virtue. Yet not even the wise men of the Greeks will say that those who hold mistaken doctrines should be counted among the educated. Again, who would not agree that it is good to have devoted oneself to the best teachings? But which shall we call the best teachings, if not those that are true and summon us to virtue? Being sensible is also a fine thing, but not merely seeming so, which is what Celsus said. Being educated, having devoted oneself to the best teachings, and being sensible do not hinder the knowledge of God; they even help toward it. And it is more fitting for us to say this than for Celsus, especially if he is shown to be an Epicurean.

Christians are not market-place charlatans§50

50Let us look also at what follows in his text, which runs thus: “But surely we see, too, that those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places and go round collecting would never come forward into a gathering of sensible men, nor dare to put on their own show among them; but wherever they see adolescents, a crowd of house-slaves and a throng of foolish people, there they push their way in and preen themselves.”

See how he slanders us here as well, likening us to those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places and go round collecting. What are these most disreputable displays of ours? Or what do we do that resembles theirs, we who, through readings and through expositions of the readings, urge people to piety toward the God of the universe and to the virtues that share its throne, and turn them away from contempt for the divine and from everything done against right reason?

Philosophers, indeed, would pray to collect so many hearers for discourses that summon them to what is good; and this is what some of the Cynics in particular have done, conversing in public with whoever happens to be passing. Will they say, then, that these men too, who do not gather those thought to be educated but call hearers from the crossroads and bring them together, are like those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places and go round collecting? Yet neither Celsus nor anyone who thinks as he does finds fault with those who, out of what they regard as love for humanity, address their discourses even to the common, uneducated people.

How Christians test and admit their hearers§51

51If those men are not to blame for doing this, let us see whether Christians do not summon the crowds to goodness and nobility of character even more, and better, than they do. For the philosophers who converse in public do not sort out their hearers: whoever wishes stands and listens. Christians, on the other hand, first test, as far as they can, the souls of those who wish to hear them, and first instruct them privately; then, when the hearers seem, before entering the common assembly, to have made enough progress toward the will to live well, they bring them in. They form a separate class of those who are just beginning and being introduced and have not yet received the sign of their cleansing, and another of those who have shown, as far as they can, that their purpose is to want nothing other than what Christians hold. Among them certain persons are appointed to inquire into the lives and conduct of those who come forward, so that they may bar from their common assembly those who do disreputable things, while those who are not such they welcome with their whole soul and make better day by day.

And what a discipline they keep toward those who sin, especially the licentious, whom they drive out of the community, these people who, according to Celsus, are like those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places! The revered school of the Pythagoreans used to build cenotaphs for those who fell away from their philosophy, reckoning that they had become dead men. But Christians mourn as dead those who have been overcome by licentiousness or some other outrage, as men lost and dead to God. And if they show a change worth noting, they receive them back later, as men risen from the dead, after a longer time than is required of those being introduced at the start; but those who have fallen after coming to the word they do not enroll in any office or position of leadership in what is called the church of God.

Deeper teaching kept for able hearers§52

52Consider, then, what Celsus says next, “Surely we see, too, those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places and go round collecting,” and see whether it is not said with plain falsehood and by a comparison that does not fit. Of these people to whom Celsus likens us, those who put on the most disreputable displays in the market-places and go round collecting, he says that they would never come forward into a gathering of sensible men, nor dare to put on their own show among them, but that wherever they see adolescents, a crowd of house-slaves and a throng of foolish people, there they push their way in and preen themselves. In saying this he does nothing but abuse us, like the women at the crossroads whose aim is to speak ill of one another.

For we do everything in our power so that our gathering may be made up of sensible men; and we venture to bring into the open what is finest and most divine among us in our discourses to the assembly at those times when we have plenty of intelligent hearers. But we conceal the deeper things and pass them over in silence when we see that those who come together are simpler and need teachings figuratively called “milk” (1 Corinthians 3:2).

Milk for beginners, solid food for the mature§53

53For our Paul, writing to the Corinthians, who were Greeks but not yet cleansed in their ways, says: “I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, for you were not yet able to take it. Indeed, even now you are still not able, for you are still fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and walking in a merely human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:2–3). The same man, knowing that some things are food for a more mature soul, while the teachings for beginners are likened to the milk of infants, says: “And you have come to need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food belongs to the mature, to those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil” (Hebrews 5:12–14).

Would those, then, who believe that these words are well spoken suppose that what is fine in the word would never be spoken in a gathering of sensible men, but that wherever they see adolescents, a crowd of house-slaves and a throng of foolish people, there they bring the divine and sacred things into the open and preen themselves on them before such people? No: it is plain to anyone who examines the whole intent of our writings that Celsus, hating the Christian race just as the uneducated common people do, says such things without examination, and falsely.

The word invites the foolish to wisdom§54

54We admit that we want to educate everyone with the word of God, even if Celsus does not wish it, so as to give adolescents too the encouragement that suits them, and to show house-slaves how, by taking on a free spirit, they may be made noble by the word. Those among us who champion Christianity say plainly enough that they are debtors “to Greeks and barbarians, to the wise and the foolish” (Romans 1:14). For they do not deny that they must heal the souls of the foolish too, so that, as far as possible, they may lay aside their ignorance and hasten toward greater understanding. They hear Solomon also when he says, “And you who are foolish, apply your heart” (Proverbs 8:5), and, “Whoever of you is most foolish, let him turn aside to me; and to those who lack sense I, Wisdom, give this charge, saying: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine I have mixed for you; forsake folly, that you may live, and set your understanding straight in knowledge” (Proverbs 9:4–6).

I would also say this, in view of the charges in Celsus’s argument: Do not those who practise philosophy invite adolescents to hear them? Do they not call young men who have lived the worst of lives to better things? And do they not want house-slaves to practise philosophy? Or are we too to accuse philosophers of turning house-slaves toward virtue: Pythagoras, who turned Zamolxis; Zeno, who turned Persaeus; and, only the other day, those who turned Epictetus toward philosophy? Or is it allowed to you Greeks to call adolescents, house-slaves and foolish people to philosophy, while we, when we do this, do not do it out of love for humanity, though we wish to heal every rational nature with the medicine of the word and to bring it into kinship with God, who made all things?

This, then, would be enough in answer to Celsus’s abuse, for it is abuse rather than accusation.

Celsus paints Christians as household workmen§55

55Since, taking pleasure in his account of insults against us, he has added still other things, come, let us set these out as well and see whether it is the Christians who disgrace themselves, or Celsus by what he says. He says: “We see, too, in private houses, wool-workers and cobblers and fullers and the most uneducated and boorish people, who do not dare to utter a word in front of their older and wiser masters; but whenever they get hold of the children privately, and some foolish women along with them, they pour out some astonishing things: that the children must not heed their father and their teachers, but must obey them; that the father and teachers talk nonsense and are senseless, and neither know nor can do anything truly good, their minds already taken up with empty chatter; but that they alone know how one ought to live, and if the children obey them, they will be blessed and will make their home happy.

“And if, while they are speaking, they see one of the schoolteachers coming by, or someone wiser, or even the father himself, the more cautious of them scatter in fright, while the bolder egg the children on to throw off the reins, whispering such things as this: that while the father and the teachers are present they will be neither willing nor able to explain anything good to the children, for they shrink from the stupidity and coarseness of those men, who are utterly corrupt, far gone in wickedness, and who punish them; but if the children wish, they must leave their father and their teachers and go with the women and their little playmates to the women’s quarters, or the cobbler’s shop, or the fuller’s shop, so that they may receive perfection. And by saying these things they win them over.”

What we really teach women and boys§56

56See, then, in this passage too, how he mocks those among us who teach the word and try in every way to raise the soul up to the Creator of the universe, who show that one must despise all things that are perceived by the senses, temporary and seen (compare 2 Corinthians 4:18), and must do everything in order to attain fellowship with God, the contemplation of things intelligible and invisible, and a blessed life with God and with those who belong to God; and how he compares them to the wool-workers in houses, and to the cobblers and fullers and the most boorish of men, as men who invite children, mere infants, and women to base things, so that they will abandon father and teachers and follow them.

From what sober-minded father, or from what teachers of nobler things, do we draw away children and women? Let Celsus show it; and in the case of the children and women who come to our teaching, let him set side by side and compare whether any of the things they used to hear was better than ours, and in what way we draw children and women away from fine and noble studies and invite them to worse ones. But he will not be able to show any such thing against us. On the contrary, we draw women away from licentiousness and from the perversion that comes from their companions, and from all mad love of theatres and dancing, and from superstition; and the boys who are just reaching manhood and swelling with sexual desires we bring to self-control, setting before them not only the shamefulness that lies in these sins, but also the state in which the soul of the wicked will be because of such things, what penalties it will pay, and how it will be punished.

Which teachers talk nonsense?§57

57And which are the teachers we say talk nonsense and are senseless, the ones Celsus stands up for as teaching better things? Unless perhaps he thinks that those who invite women to superstition and to licentious spectacles are good teachers of women and do not talk nonsense, and also that those are not senseless who lead the young and drive them along toward all the disorderly things that we know are done by them in many places.

We, for our part, invite even those who come from the doctrines of the philosophers, as far as we can, to our worship of God, showing how excellent and pure it is. But since by what he said Celsus has made out that we do not do this, but call only the foolish, we would say to him: If you were charging us with drawing away from philosophy those already devoted to it, you would not be speaking the truth, though your argument would have some plausibility. But as it is, since you say that we draw those who come to us away from good teachers, show us teachers other than the teachers of philosophy, or those who have devoted themselves to some useful subject. But he will have nothing of the kind to show.

We do promise, openly and not in secret, that those will be blessed who live according to the word of God, who look to him in all things, and who carry out whatever they do as in the sight of God who watches them. Are these, then, the lessons of wool-workers and cobblers and fullers and the most uneducated rustics? But he will not be able to show it.

Before good fathers we speak freely§58

58But the people Celsus describes, who resemble the wool-workers in houses and are like the cobblers and fullers and the most uneducated rustics, “while the father and teachers are present,” he says, “will be neither willing to say anything nor able to explain anything good to the children.” To this too we shall reply: What sort of father do you mean, sir, and what sort of teacher? If one who welcomes virtue, turns away from vice and embraces what is better, then hear this: we shall speak our teaching to the children with great confidence, as men who stand well with such a judge. But if, in front of a father notorious for his opposition to virtue and nobility of character, and in front of those who teach things contrary to sound reason, we keep silent, do not blame us for this either, for you have no good reason to blame us.

You yourself, at any rate, when you hand on the sacred rites of philosophy to young men and sons whose fathers consider philosophy an idle and useless thing, will not speak to the boys in front of their worthless fathers; rather, wishing to separate from their wicked fathers the sons who have been drawn toward philosophy, you will watch for opportunities so that the words of philosophy may reach the young.

We shall say the same about the teachers as well. If we turn the young away from teachers who teach the indecencies of comedy, and licentious iambic verse, and whatever else neither reforms the speaker nor benefits hearers who do not know how to listen to poems as philosophers do and to pick out from each what tends to the benefit of the young, then in doing this we are not ashamed to admit what we do. But if you show me teachers who train the young beforehand for philosophy and exercise them in philosophy, I shall not turn the young away from them. Rather, once they have been trained beforehand, as it were, in the general course of studies and in philosophical reasoning, I shall try to lead them up to the majestic and lofty eloquence of Christians, hidden from the many, who discuss the greatest and most necessary matters, and who demonstrate and show that these were treated philosophically by the prophets of God and the apostles of Jesus.

First healing, then the mysteries§59

59Then after this Celsus, aware that he has abused us rather too bitterly, says, as though defending himself: “That I am making no harsher accusation than the truth compels, let anyone judge from the following as well. Those who summon people to the other rites of initiation proclaim beforehand: ‘Whoever has clean hands and intelligent speech’; and others again: ‘Whoever is pure from every defilement, whose soul is conscious of no evil, and who has lived well and justly.’ These are the proclamations of those who promise purification from sins. But let us hear whom these people summon. ‘Whoever is a sinner,’ they say, ‘whoever is without understanding, whoever is a child, and, in a word, whoever is wretched, him the kingdom of God will receive.’ Do you not mean by ‘the sinner’ the unjust man, the thief, the housebreaker, the poisoner, the temple-robber and the grave-robber? Whom else would a robber summon by public proclamation?”

To this we reply that it is not the same thing to call those who are sick in soul to healing, and those who are healthy to the knowledge and understanding of diviner things. We know both of these. At the beginning, when we invite people to be healed, we urge sinners to come to the teachings that teach them not to sin, those without understanding to the teachings that produce understanding, children to rise in mind to manhood, and, in a word, the wretched to happiness, or, to use the more proper word, to blessedness. But when those among them who are making progress show that they have been cleansed by the Word and, as far as they can, have lived a better life, then we call them to our own rites of initiation, for “we speak wisdom among the perfect” (1 Corinthians 2:6).

Who may come to the Christian mysteries§60

60And since we teach that “wisdom will not enter a soul that plots evil, nor dwell in a body in debt to sin” (Wisdom of Solomon 1:4), we say: Whoever has clean hands, and for that reason lifts up “holy hands” (1 Timothy 2:8) to God, and, because he performs lofty and heavenly deeds, can say, “The lifting up of my hands is an evening sacrifice” (Psalm 141:2), let him come to us. And whoever has intelligent speech, because he meditates on the law of the Lord “day and night” (Psalm 1:2), and because he has “faculties trained by practice to distinguish good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14), let him not hesitate to come to solid food for the mind (Hebrews 5:14), food fit for athletes of piety and of every virtue.

And since “the grace” of God is “with all who love” the Teacher of the lessons of immortality “in incorruption” (Ephesians 6:24), whoever is pure not only from every defilement but also from the sins that are thought to be lesser, let him with confidence be initiated into the mysteries of the worship of God taught by Jesus, mysteries that are rightly handed on only to the holy and pure.

Celsus’s man of the mysteries, then, says: “Let him come whose soul is conscious of no evil.” But the one who, following Jesus, leads initiates to God will say to those who have been purified in soul: He whose soul has for a long time been conscious of no evil, and especially since he came to the healing of the Word, let him hear also the things that Jesus spoke in private to his true disciples (compare Mark 4:34). So, in setting the practice of those who initiate people among the Greeks against those who teach the doctrine of Jesus, Celsus does not know the difference between the wicked, who are called to healing, and those already most pure, who are called to the deeper mysteries.

A different calling from the robber’s§61

61It is not, then, to the mysteries and to a share in the wisdom hidden “in a mystery,” “which God foreordained before the ages for the glory” of his righteous ones (1 Corinthians 2:7), that we call the unjust man, the thief, the housebreaker, the poisoner, the temple-robber, the grave-robber, and whatever others Celsus might name in his exaggeration; we call them to healing. For in the divinity of the Word there are, on the one hand, healing remedies for those who are “sick,” about whom the Word said: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12; Mark 2:17). And there are, on the other, remedies that show to those who are pure in soul and body “the revelation of the mystery that was kept in silence through eternal ages, but is now made manifest through the prophetic writings” (Romans 16:25–26) and through “the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Timothy 6:14; compare 2 Timothy 1:10), an appearing that shines upon each of the perfect and enlightens the ruling part of the soul for an unerring knowledge of things as they are.

But since, exaggerating his charges against us, he adds to those whom he named among the foulest of men the words, “Whom else would a robber summon by public proclamation?”, we shall reply to this as well: A robber calls such people in order to use their wickedness against those whom he wishes to murder and rob. But a Christian, even if he calls those whom the robber calls, calls them with a different calling, so that he may bind up “their wounds” with the Word (Luke 10:34) and pour on the soul inflamed with evils the remedies that come from the Word, which answer to the wine and oil and poultice and the other aids of the medicine of the soul.

The physician sent to sinners§62

62Next he misrepresents what has been said and written to exhort those who have lived badly, calling them to repentance (Luke 5:32) and to the reform of their souls, and he says that we claim God was sent to sinners. In this too he acts like someone who would find fault with people for saying that a most humane king had sent the physician because of those in the city who were in a bad way. So God the Word was sent: as physician to sinners (Matthew 9:12), and as teacher of divine mysteries to those who are already pure and no longer sin.

Celsus could not tell these apart, for he did not care to learn, and he says: "Why was he not sent to those without sin? What evil is it not to have sinned?" To this we say that if by "those without sin" he means those who no longer sin, then our Saviour Jesus was sent to them too, though not as a physician. But if he means those who have never sinned at all (for he made no distinction in his wording), we shall say that no human being can be without sin in that sense. We say this while making an exception of the man understood in Jesus, "who committed no sin" (1 Peter 2:22).

Celsus speaks maliciously about us, as though we claimed that "God will receive the unjust man if he humbles himself because of his wickedness, but will not receive the just man if he looks up to him with virtue from the beginning." We say that it is impossible for a human being to look up to God with virtue from the beginning. For evil must first exist in human beings, as Paul too says: "When the commandment came, sin came to life again, and I died" (Romans 7:9-10). Nor do we teach about the unjust man that it is enough for him to humble himself because of his wickedness in order to be received by God. Rather, if he condemns himself for his former deeds and walks "humble" over them, and "well ordered" in his later conduct (Plato, Laws 716a), God will accept him.

Humbling oneself before God is not flattery§63

63Then, not understanding the sense in which it is said, "Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled" (Luke 14:11; Luke 18:14), not having learned even from Plato that the noble and good man walks "humble and well ordered" (Plato, Laws 716a), and not knowing either that we say, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time" (1 Peter 5:6), he says that "men who rightly preside over justice stop those who lament over their crimes from making piteous, wailing speeches, so that they may not be judged by pity rather than by truth; but God, it seems, judges not by truth but by flattery."

Yet what flattery, what piteous and wailing speech, takes place according to the divine Scriptures when the sinner says in his prayers to God: "I made my sin known, and I did not hide my lawlessness; I said, I will confess my lawlessness against myself to the Lord" (Psalm 32:5), and the words that follow? Or can he show that such conduct on the part of sinners, when they humble themselves under God in their prayers, does not help to convert them?

Confused by his eagerness to accuse, he contradicts himself. In one place he implies that he knows a man who is without sin and just, who looks up to God with virtue from the beginning; in another he accepts what we say: "What man is perfectly just, or who is without sin?" For he speaks as one who accepts it: "This is fairly true, that the human race is somehow by nature inclined to sin." Then, as though not everyone were called by the word, he says: "So one ought simply to have called everyone, if indeed all sin."

Yet we showed earlier that Jesus said: "Come, all you who labour and are burdened, and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28). All human beings, then, "labouring and burdened" because of the nature of sin, are called to the rest that is found with the Word of God. For God sent forth "his Word, and healed them, and rescued them from their corruptions" (Psalm 107:20).

The tax collector and the Pharisee§64

64He also says: "What, then, can this preference for sinners be?" and adds other things of the same kind. We shall answer that, taken absolutely, a sinner is not preferred to one who is not a sinner. But sometimes a sinner who is aware of his own sin, and for that reason goes on to repentance, humble over what he has done wrong, is preferred to one who is thought to be less of a sinner but does not consider himself a sinner; instead he exalts himself over certain better qualities that he believes he finds in himself, and is puffed up about them.

For those willing to read the Gospels fairly, this is made plain by the parable about the tax collector who said, "Be merciful to me, the sinner" (Luke 18:13), and about the Pharisee who boasted with a kind of wicked conceit and said, "I thank you that I am not like the rest of men, robbers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector" (Luke 18:11). For Jesus adds to his account of both: "This man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and everyone who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:14).

So we do not blaspheme God, nor lie about him, when we teach every person, whoever he may be, to be aware of human smallness compared with the majesty of God, and always to ask of him what our nature lacks, since he alone is able to supply what is wanting in us.

Who comes to the faith, and why§65

65He supposes that we say such things to exhort sinners because we are unable to win over any man who is truly good and just, and that for this reason we open our gates to the most unholy and abandoned. But if anyone would consider our assembly fairly, we can point to more who have turned from a life that was not very bad than who have turned from the most abandoned sins.

For those who are conscious of better things in themselves, and who pray that what is preached about God's reward to the better may be true, are naturally readier to assent to what is said than those who have lived very wickedly. These are kept by their very conscience from accepting that they will be punished by the Judge of all with a punishment that would befit one who has sinned so greatly, and that the Judge of all would inflict without going against right reason. Sometimes, too, even if the utterly abandoned wish to accept the teaching about punishment because of the hope set on repentance, they are held back by their habit of sinning. Long steeped in it, and stained fast by vice, as it were, they can no longer easily turn away from it to a settled life, a life according to right reason.

Celsus too grasped this, I do not know how, and in what follows he says: "And yet it is surely plain to everyone that no one could completely change those who are naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to it, not even by punishing them, much less by showing mercy. For to change nature completely is exceedingly hard. But those without sin are better partners in life."

Philosophers too know that people can change§66

66Here too Celsus seems to me badly mistaken, in not allowing complete change to those naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to doing it, since he thinks that they are not healed even by punishments. For it is plain that all of us human beings are naturally inclined to sin, and some are not only inclined to sin but also accustomed to it; yet not all human beings are incapable of complete change. For in every school of philosophy, and in the divine word as well, there are men recorded to have changed so much that they are held up as a pattern of the best life. Some cite, among the heroes, Heracles and Odysseus; among later men, Socrates; and among those of very recent times, Musonius.

So Celsus spoke falsely, not only by our account, when he said that it is plain to everyone that those naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to it could not be brought by anyone, not even under punishment, to a complete change for the better. He spoke falsely also by the account of those who have practised philosophy nobly and have not despaired that it is possible for human beings to take up virtue. But even if he did not set out precisely what he meant, we shall nonetheless give him a fair hearing, and even so we shall show that he does not speak soundly. For he said: "No one could completely change those who are naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to it, not even by punishing them"; and we have overturned, as best we could, the sense his words plainly give.

Phaedo and Polemo§67

67It is likely that he means something like this: that no one could completely change, not even by punishing them, those who are not only naturally inclined but also accustomed to sins of this kind, the sort committed by the most abandoned. This too is shown to be false from the history of certain men who became philosophers. For who would not rank among the most abandoned the man who somehow brought himself to submit to a master who put him in a brothel, so that he would receive anyone who wished to shame him? Such things are told of Phaedo. And who will not say that the vilest of all men was the one who burst into the school of the most venerable Xenocrates with a flute-girl and a band of revellers who shared his debauchery, to insult a man whom even his companions admired?

Yet teaching had the power to turn even these men and to make them advance so far in philosophy that the one was judged by Plato worthy to recount Socrates' discourse on immortality and to portray his steadfastness in prison: how he paid no heed to the hemlock, but fearlessly, with complete calm of soul, discussed matters so many and so great that even those who are thoroughly composed and troubled by no circumstance can hardly follow them; and the other, Polemo, turning from a profligate into a man of the greatest self-control, succeeded to the school of Xenocrates, a man renowned for his dignity. So Celsus does not speak the truth when he says that no one could completely change those who are naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to it, not even by punishing them.

The power of the apostles’ words§68

68Still, that the order, composition and style of philosophical discourses should have done such things for the men just named and for others who had lived badly is not very surprising. But when we consider the words that Celsus calls unlearned, filled with power as though they were charms, and observe those words urging whole multitudes at once to pass from licentiousness to the steadiest of lives, from injustice to a better life, and from cowardice or unmanliness to such firmness that they despise even death because of the piety that has shown itself in them, how shall we not rightly marvel at the power within it?

For "the word" of those who first served as ambassadors of these things and laboured to found churches of God, and their "preaching" as well, came with persuasion, but not the kind of persuasion found in those who profess the wisdom of Plato or of any other philosopher, men who had nothing beyond human nature. But the demonstration given by God in the apostles of Jesus was persuasive, coming "from the Spirit and power" (1 Corinthians 2:4). That is why their word, or rather the Word of God, ran with the utmost speed and keenness, changing through them many of those naturally inclined to sin and accustomed to it. No human being could have changed them, not even by punishing them; but the Word remade them, forming and shaping them according to his own will.

Changing a nature grown evil§69

69Celsus, drawing the consequence of his own view, says: “To change a nature completely is exceedingly hard.” But we know that every rational soul has one nature, and we hold that none was fashioned evil by the Creator of all things, but that many have become evil through their upbringing, through perversion and through the talk that surrounds them, so that in some people evil has even become second nature. And we are persuaded that for the divine Word to change an evil that has become second nature is not only not impossible but not even very hard, provided only that a person accepts that he must entrust himself to the God over all and do everything with a view to pleasing him. With him it is not true that “the base and the noble are held in one honour,” nor that “the idle man and the man who has done much die alike” (Homer, Iliad 9.319–320).

And if for some people change is very hard indeed, the cause must be said to lie in their assent, which shrinks from accepting that the God over all is a just judge of each person for all that he has done in life. For choice and training have great power even over things that seem hardest and, to speak in hyperbole, all but impossible. Or is it the case that human nature, when it has resolved to walk on a rope stretched high in the air across the middle of the theatre, and to carry so many and such heavy weights while doing it, has been able by training and attention to accomplish such a feat, but when it resolves to live by virtue it is incapable, even if it had formerly become utterly base? Consider whether the man who says such things is not finding fault with the nature that made the rational creature rather than with the creature that was made, if it has made human nature capable of things so hard and of no use whatever, but incapable of reaching its own blessedness. But this too is enough in answer to “For to change a nature completely is exceedingly hard.”

Next he says: “Those who are without sin are better companions in life.” He does not make clear whom he calls sinless, whether those who were so from the beginning or those who became so by a change. Those who were so from the beginning cannot exist; those who became so by a change are rarely found, and they become such through having come to the saving Word. They do not come to the Word already being such; for without the Word, and the perfect Word at that, it is impossible for a man to become sinless.

What God can and cannot do§70

70Then he raises an objection, as though we said it: “God will be able to do all things.” He does not even see how this is said, what “all things” are included in it, or how God is able. There is no need to speak of these matters now; for he himself did not take a stand against the saying, though he could have done so plausibly. Perhaps he did not follow the plausible case that could be made against it, or he followed it but also saw the reply to that argument. In our view God can do all things that he can do without departing from being God, from being good and from being wise.

But Celsus, as one who has not understood how God is said to be able to do all things, says: “He will not wish anything unjust,” granting that he can do even what is unjust, but does not wish to. We say that, just as what sweetens by nature, because it is sweet, cannot make things bitter against the one cause by which alone it acts, and what gives light by nature, because it is light, cannot make things dark, so neither can God do injustice; for the power to do injustice is contrary to his deity and to all the power that accords with it. And if any being can do injustice because its nature is fitted for injustice as well, it can do injustice since it does not have in its nature the inability ever to do injustice.

Whom God relieves and accepts§71

71After this he takes for granted what is not conceded by those who believe more rationally, though it is perhaps held by some foolish people: that God, like those who are slaves to pity, is a slave to pity for those who wail, and so relieves the wicked, while he casts away the good who do nothing of the sort, which is most unjust. For in our view God does not relieve any wicked man who has not yet turned to virtue, and he casts away no one who is already good; nor does he relieve anyone who wails, or show him mercy, to use “mercy” in its more ordinary sense, on account of his wailing.

But those who have condemned themselves severely for their sins, so that on this account they mourn and lament for themselves, as it were, as lost, so far as their past deeds go, and who show a notable change, God accepts for the sake of their repentance; so too those who have changed from a most wicked life. For virtue grants such people an amnesty, when it comes to dwell in their souls and has cast out the evil that had seized them before. And even if it is not virtue but notable progress that arises in the soul, this too is enough, in proportion to how far the progress goes, to cast out and blot out the flood of evil, so that it is almost no longer found in the soul.

True wisdom does not lead astray§72

72Then, as though speaking in the person of the one who teaches our doctrine, he says: “For the wise turn away from what we say, led astray and hampered by their wisdom.” To this too we shall reply: if wisdom is knowledge of things “divine and human” and of their causes, or, as the divine word defines it, “a breath of the power of God and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty” (Wisdom of Solomon 7:25), and “a radiance of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of his goodness” (Wisdom of Solomon 7:26), then no one who is wise would turn away from what is said by a Christian who has knowledge of Christianity, nor would he be led astray or hampered by wisdom. For it is not true wisdom that leads astray, but ignorance; and of all that exists only knowledge is firm, and truth; and these come from wisdom.

But if, departing from the definition of wisdom, you call wise the man who lays down any doctrine whatever with the help of certain sophisms, we shall say that the man who is wise by what you call wisdom does indeed turn away from the words of God, led astray by plausible arguments and sophisms and hampered by them. And since, as our teaching says, “wisdom is not knowledge of wickedness” (Sirach 19:22), and “knowledge of wickedness,” if I may call it so, is found in those who hold false opinions and are deceived by petty sophisms, I would therefore call it ignorance rather than wisdom in such people.

Lawgivers and the unschooled crowd§73

73After this he again abuses the man who champions Christianity, and pronounces that he recounts laughable things, but he does not prove, or even clearly set out, the things he calls laughable. In his abuse he says that no sensible man is persuaded by the teaching, being misled himself by the great number of those who come to it. In this too he acts like a man who would say, because of the great number of unschooled people who are guided by the laws, that no sensible man obeys, let us say, Solon or Lycurgus or Zaleucus or any of the others, and especially if he takes “sensible” to mean the man whose character is shaped by virtue. For just as with such people the lawgivers, according to what seemed useful to them, put them under such a discipline and such laws, so God, giving laws in Jesus to men everywhere, guides even those who are not sensible, so far as such people can be guided toward the better.

The God who speaks in Moses knew this, as we have also said above, and says: “They moved me to jealousy with what is no god; they provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will move them to jealousy with what is no nation; with a senseless nation I will provoke them to anger” (Deuteronomy 32:21). Knowing it, Paul too said: “God chose the foolish things of the world to put the wise to shame” (1 Corinthians 1:27). By “the wise” he means, in a broad sense, all who seem to have advanced in learning but have fallen away into godless polytheism, since “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 birds and four-footed beasts and creeping things” (Romans 1:22–23).

Seeking the foolish and the clever§74

74He also charges the teacher with seeking out the foolish. To him we would say: Whom do you call foolish? For strictly speaking every base man is foolish. If, then, you call the base foolish: when you bring men to philosophy, do you seek to bring the base or the worthy? It cannot be the worthy, for they have already become philosophers. The base, then; and if the base, the foolish. And you seek to bring many such men to philosophy; so you too seek the foolish. As for me, even if I seek those who are called foolish in this sense, I do the same as a humane physician would if he sought out the sick in order to bring them remedies and make them strong.

But if you call foolish those who are not quick-witted but the more grotesque among men, I will answer you that I try to improve these too as far as I can, but it is not from these that I wish to form the assembly of Christians. For I rather seek the more quick-witted and sharper, since they can follow the explanation of the riddles and of the things said in a hidden way in the Law and the Prophets and the Gospels. These you have despised as containing nothing worth mention, without having examined the meaning in them or tried to enter into the intention of those who wrote them.

Which physicians do we turn people from?§75

75After this he says that the man who teaches the things of Christianity acts much like one who promises to make bodies well, yet turns people away from heeding skilled physicians, because they would expose his own lack of skill. To this too we shall reply: Which physicians do you mean, from whom we turn away the unlearned? For you surely do not suppose that we bring our call to the word to people who study philosophy, so that you might take them to be the physicians from whom we turn away those we summon to the divine word. Either, then, he gives no answer, since he cannot name the physicians, or he must fall back on the unlearned, who themselves go about repeating like slaves what is said of many gods and whatever else the unlearned might say. Either way he will be shown to have brought into his argument, to no purpose, the man who turns people away from skilled physicians.

And even supposing that we turn away from the philosophy of Epicurus, and from the physicians reckoned Epicureans after Epicurus, those who have been deceived by them, how shall we not be acting with the best of reason when we draw them away from a grievous disease which the physicians of Celsus have put into them, the disease of doing away with providence and bringing in pleasure as a good? Or let it be granted that we draw those whom we urge toward our word away from other physicians, philosophers of the Peripatetic school, who do away with providence toward us and with the relation of the divine to human beings. How shall we not make those we have converted godly, and heal them, by persuading them to devote themselves to the God who is over all, and free those who listen to us from great wounds, the wounds that come from the arguments of so-called philosophers?

Let it be granted too that we turn others away from Stoic physicians, who bring in a God who can perish and say that His substance is a body that can be changed throughout, altered and transformed, and who at some time destroy all things and leave God alone. How shall we not, in this case also, free from evils those who listen to us, and bring them to the godly doctrine that teaches them to devote themselves to the Creator and to marvel at the father of the Christian teaching, who out of the greatest love for mankind arranged for teachings that turn souls back to be sown throughout the whole human race? And if we heal those who have caught the folly of transmigration from physicians who bring the rational nature down, sometimes into any irrational nature at all, and sometimes even into a nature without sense-impressions, how shall we not make better in soul those who listen to a doctrine that does not teach that the wicked man is given insensibility or irrationality as his share of punishment, but shows that the pains and punishments God brings on the wicked are remedies meant to turn them back? For Christians who live wisely guide the simpler ones with this in mind, as fathers guide their very little children.

We do not, then, turn to children and foolish rustics and say to them, “Flee the physicians.” Nor do we say, “Take care that none of you ever lays hold of knowledge.” Nor do we assert that knowledge is an evil, nor are we so mad as to say that knowledge leads people astray from health of soul. Nor would we ever say that anyone perishes from wisdom, we who do not say even when we teach, “Attend to me,” but, “Attend to the God of the universe, and to Jesus, the teacher of the lessons about Him.” None of us is such a braggart as to say to his disciples what Celsus put into the mouth of the teacher: “I alone will save you.” See, then, how many lies he tells about us. Nor do we say that the true physicians destroy those they promise to heal.

Who is really drunk§76

76He also brings a second comparison against us, saying that our teacher acts as if a drunkard went in among drunkards and accused the sober of being drunk. Then let him show from the writings, say, of Paul, that the apostle of Jesus was drunk and that his words were not sober; or from what John wrote, that his thoughts do not breathe the spirit of a man of sound mind, free from the drunkenness that comes from vice. No one, then, who is of sound mind and teaches the Christian doctrine is drunk; rather, Celsus says this as he reviles us in a way unworthy of a philosopher.

And let Celsus say which sober people we who uphold the doctrines of the Christians accuse. For in our view all who speak to lifeless things as to a god are drunk (Wisdom of Solomon 13:17). And why do I say drunk? Rather they are mad, who hurry to the temples and bow down to statues or animals as gods. And no less mad than these are those who think that things made by common craftsmen, and at times by the most worthless of men, have been fashioned to honour true gods.

Who is really blind§77

77After this he likens the teacher to a man with diseased eyes and the learners to people with diseased eyes, and says that this man, among those whose eyes are diseased, charges the keen-sighted with being blind. Which Greeks, then, would we say do not see, in our view, if not those who, from the vast magnitude of the things in the world and the beauty of what has been created (Wisdom of Solomon 13:5), cannot look up and see that one must worship, admire and revere Him alone who made these things, and that nothing made by human beings and used in honour of gods could rightly be revered, whether apart from God the Creator or together with Him? For to compare things that admit of no comparison at all with the infinite One, who surpasses all created nature beyond measure, is the work of those whose minds are blind.

We do not, then, say that the keen-sighted have diseased eyes or are blind. Rather we declare that those who, in ignorance of God, wallow in temples and statues and what are called holy festivals have been blinded in mind; above all when, besides their impiety, they also live in licentiousness, not even seeking what deed might be honourable, but doing everything that deserves shame.

Not the wicked but the simple§78

78After charging us with so much, he wants to make it plain that he has other things he could say but passes them over in silence. His words run thus: “These things and the like I find fault with, so as not to list them all; and I say that they do wrong in insulting God, in order to lead on wicked men with empty hopes and persuade them to despise better things, on the ground that if they keep away from them it will be better for them.”

To this one might reply, from what actually happens among those who come to Christianity, that it is not so much the wicked who are led on by the word as the simpler sort and, as most people would call them, the unpolished. For these people, through fear of the punishments that are proclaimed, a fear which moves them and urges them to keep away from the things that bring punishment, try to give themselves to the worship of God that Christianity teaches. And the word so masters them that, through fear of what the word calls eternal punishments (Matthew 25:46), they despise every torment men devise against them, and death with countless pains. No one of sound mind would say that this is the work of wicked choices.

How can self-control and chastity, or generosity and readiness to share, be practised out of a wicked choice? Nor can the fear of God spring from such a choice, the fear to which the word, as something useful for the many, calls those who cannot yet see what is to be chosen for its own sake and choose it as the greatest good, above every promise. From all this it follows that such things do not by nature arise in one who chooses to live in wickedness.

The best laws the many could bear§79

79But suppose someone imagines that, in these matters, it is superstition rather than wickedness that marks most of those who believe the word, and he charges our word with making people superstitious. We shall say to him that one of the lawgivers, when asked whether he had laid down the best laws for his citizens, replied, “Not the best absolutely, but the best of those they could receive” (Plutarch, Life of Solon 15). So too the father of the Christian doctrine might say: “I have laid down the best laws and teaching that the many could receive for the improvement of their character. I threaten sinners with pains and punishments that are not false, but true and necessary, and brought to bear for the correction of those who resist, even though they do not wholly understand the purpose of the one who punishes, or what the pains are meant to do.” For this too is spoken for their benefit, both in keeping with the truth and, to good purpose, with something held back.

Yet, on the whole, those who uphold the teachings of Christianity do not lead on the wicked. Nor do we insult the divine. For what we say about it is true; and to the many it seems clear, though it is not as clear to them as it is to the few who give themselves to studying the things of the word with philosophy.

Empty hopes and the philosophers§80

80Celsus also says that those who become Christians are led on by empty hopes. Since he thus finds fault with the doctrine of the blessed life and of fellowship with the divine, we shall say to him: By your reasoning, sir, those also who have accepted the teaching of Pythagoras and Plato about the soul are led on by empty hopes, the teaching that the soul is by nature able to rise to the vault of heaven and, in the place above the heavens, to behold the sights that the blessed spectators see (Plato, Phaedrus 247b–c). By your account, Celsus, those too who have accepted that the soul survives, and who live so as to become heroes and to spend their days with the gods, are led on by empty hopes. And perhaps those persuaded that the mind which comes “from outside” (Aristotle, Generation of Animals 736b) is immortal, and will continue its life as mind, might also be said by Celsus to be led on by empty hopes.

Let him, then, no longer hide his own school, but confess that he is an Epicurean, and do battle against what Greeks and barbarians have said, in terms far from contemptible, about the immortality of the soul, or its survival, or the immortality of the mind. Let him show that these are arguments that deceive with empty hopes those who assent to them, while the arguments of his own philosophy are free of empty hopes, and either lead to good hopes or, what better fits his position, instil no hope at all, since the soul is at once utterly destroyed. Unless, indeed, Celsus and the Epicureans will deny that their own hope is empty, the hope about their end, pleasure, which on their view is the good: “the stable condition of the flesh,” and the expectation of it which Epicurus holds sure (Epicurus, fragment 68 Usener).

Nothing better than trust in God§81

81Do not suppose that, in a way unfitting for the Christian doctrine, I have brought in against Celsus those who have taught philosophy on the immortality or the survival of the soul. Since we share some things with them, we shall find it easier to show that the blessed life to come will belong only to those who have accepted the worship of God that Jesus teaches, and a devotion to the Creator of the universe that is sincere and pure and unmixed with anything at all that is created.

Let anyone who wishes show which better things we persuade people to despise. Let him set against one another, on the one side, the blessed end that we teach, an end with God in Christ, that is, in the Word and Wisdom (1 Corinthians 1:24, 30) and all virtue, which will come to those who have lived blamelessly and purely and have taken up an undivided and unbroken love for the God of the universe, and will meet them as the gift of God; and on the other side, the end set forth by each philosophical school among Greeks or barbarians, or promised by a mystery. Let him show that the end held by one of the others is better than ours, and that it holds together as true, while ours befits neither the gift of God nor those who have lived well; or that these things were not spoken by the divine Spirit who filled the souls of the pure prophets. Let anyone who wishes show that words admitted by all to be human are better than words shown to be divine and proclaimed by divine inspiration.

And what better things do we teach those who accept our word that they will do better to be rid of? If it is not too bold to say so, it is plain at once that nothing can be conceived as better than to entrust oneself to the God who is over all, and to give oneself to a teaching that draws a person away from everything created and brings him, through the Word, who is animate and living, who is also living Wisdom and the Son of God, to the God who is over all.

But since the third book of what we have dictated against the treatise of Celsus has now reached a sufficient length with these words, we shall bring our discourse to a close here, and in the books that follow we shall contend against what Celsus wrote next.