Against the Nations 1.29–1.51

And would that it were granted me, with the whole world gathered into the form of a single assembly, to use this speech and to be placed in the hearing of the human race! Are we then accused among you of an impious religion, and because we approach the Head and Pillar of all things with reverent service, are we called, to use your abuse, ill-omened and atheists? And who would more rightly bear the odium of these names than one who knows, or inquires after, or believes in another god besides him? Do we not all owe to him this first of all, that we exist, that we are called human beings, that, whether sent from him or fallen away, we souls are held in the blindness of this body? Does it not come to us from him that we walk, breathe, and live, and does he not, by the very power of living, make us exist and be moved with the motion of a living being? Do not the causes flow from him by which our well-being is supported through the bounty of various pleasures? This world in which you live, whose is it? Or who has granted you to hold its fruit and possession? Who gave you this common light, so that you could see, handle, and consider the things placed beneath you? Who established the fires of the sun, to serve the growth of things, so that the vital elements should not grow numb in the stupor of fixed inertia? When you believe the sun to be a god, do you not ask who its founder and maker is? Since the moon is a goddess among you, do you not likewise care to know who is her begetter and fashioner?

Does it not occur to you to consider and inquire in whose possession you dwell, on whose property you are, whose is this earth which you wear out with labor, whose this air which you breathe in and out with the breath of life, whose springs you use freely, whose water; who ordered the blasts of the winds, who devised the watery clouds, who distinguished the fruitful powers of seeds by their proper natures? Does Apollo rain for you? Does Mercury rain for you? Did Aesculapius, Hercules, or Diana devise the system of rains and storms? And how can this be, when you declare that they were born in the world and at a certain time acquired the sense of life? For if the world preceded them in antiquity of time, and nature already knew rains and storms before they were born, those born later have no right to rain and cannot intrude themselves into arrangements which they found operating here and managed by a greater author.

O greatest, O supreme Creator of things invisible! O you who are yourself unseen and never comprehended by any nature! Worthy, truly worthy are you, if indeed you may be called worthy by a mortal mouth, to whom every breathing and understanding nature should never cease to give and render thanks, before whom all life should fall on bended knee and pray with unceasing prayers. For you are the first cause, the place and space of things, the foundation of all things that exist, infinite, unbegotten, immortal, everlasting, alone; whom no bodily form outlines, no circumscription bounds; without quality, without quantity, without position, motion, or state; of whom nothing can be said or expressed by the meaning of mortal words; to understand whom we must be silent, and, so that erring conjecture may trace you as though through a shadow, nothing at all must be uttered. Pardon, supreme King, those who persecute your servants, and, as is proper to your kindness, forgive those who flee from the worship of your name and religion. It is no wonder if you are unknown; it is a greater wonder if you are known. Unless perhaps someone dares, for this remains to raving madness, to doubt and question whether this God exists or not, whether he is believed on the ascertained truth of faith or on the opinion of empty rumor. For we hear that some who are devoted to the study of philosophy partly deny that there is any divine power, partly ask every day whether there is; others build up the sum of things from chance events and random collisions and have it fashioned by the impulse of diverse elements. With these we will have no dispute at all at this time over such obstinacy; for sensible people say that to contradict foolish things is a mark of greater foolishness.

Our discussion is with those who, while agreeing that there is a race of gods, doubt about the greater, though they admit that the common and lower ones exist. What then, shall we strive with arguments and labor to establish such great things? Let this madness depart far from us, far, I say, and be averted, as the saying goes. For it is as dangerous to set out to prove the supreme God by arguments as to want to know by reasoning of this kind that he exists. And it makes no difference whether you deny him or assert and confess that he exists, since the assertion of such a thing and the denial of an unbelieving opponent are equally at fault.

Is there any human being who has not entered on the day of his first birth with the notion of this First Principle? In whom is it not inborn, not fixed, indeed almost stamped and implanted in the very womb of his mother, that there is a King and Lord, the ruler of all things that exist? Finally, if dumb animals themselves could open their mouths, if they could be loosed into the ease of our languages, indeed if trees, clods, and stones, animated by vital sense, could produce the sound of a voice and form articulate words, would they not, with nature as their guide and teacher, in the faith of uncorrupted simplicity, both understand that there is a God and cry aloud that he alone is Lord of all?

'But in vain,' he says, 'do you assail and attack us with a false and slanderous charge, as though we denied that there is a greater God, when Jupiter is named by us and held Best and Greatest, and we have built him the most august seats and huge Capitols.' You are trying to join things unlike and force them into one form by introducing confusion. For the almighty God, by the single mind of all and the common agreement of mortals, is known neither to have been begotten, nor to have been brought forth at some time into new light, nor to have begun to exist from any point of time or age. For he himself is the source of things, the sower of ages and times. They do not exist of themselves, but proceed from his everlastingness, everlasting and in infinite continuity forever. But Jupiter, as you say, has a father and a mother, grandfathers, grandmothers, and brothers; he was lately formed in his mother's womb, and, completed and finished in ten months, is said to have burst with living sense into a light unknown to him. If then this is so, how can Jupiter be the God, when it is agreed that God is everlasting, and the other is represented by you as having had a birthday and, frightened by the new experience, as having uttered a pitiful wail?

But suppose, as you wish, that they are one and do not differ in any power of divinity or majesty. Why then do you persecute us with unjust hatred? Why do you shudder at the mention of our name as at a very bad omen, if the God you worship is the one we worship too? Or why do you maintain that in the same case the gods are friendly to you and hostile and most bitter toward us? For if one religion is common to us and to you, the anger of the heavenly beings ceases; but if they are hostile to us alone, it is clear that both you and they do not know God, who, as the very indignation of the deities makes plain, is not Jupiter.

'But the gods are not hostile to you,' he says, 'because you worship the almighty God, but because you maintain that a man who was born and, what is disgraceful even for vile persons, was put to death by the punishment of the cross, was God; and you believe that he still lives, and you worship him with daily prayers.' If you please, friends, explain to us who these gods are who think that our worship of Christ is an injury to them. Janus, founder of the Janiculum, and Saturn, author of the Saturnian city? Fenta Fatua, the wife of Faunus, who is called the Good Goddess, but is better and more praiseworthy in drinking wine? Those Indigetes who creep into the river and live in the channels of the Numicius with frogs and little fish? Aesculapius and Father Liber, the one born of Coronis, the other hurled by the thunderbolt from his mother's womb? Mercury, poured out of the womb of Maia, and, what is more divine, a fair one? The bow-bearing Diana and Apollo, carried about in their mother's flight and hardly safe on wandering islands? Venus, daughter of Dione, the mistress of a Trojan man's household and the publisher of her own private charms? Ceres, born in the borders of Trinacria, and Proserpina, busy gathering flowers? The Theban or the Tyrian Hercules, the one buried in the borders of Spain, the other burned up in the flames of Oeta? The Castors, sons of Tyndareus, one accustomed to tame horses, the other a good boxer, unbeatable with the raw-hide glove? The Moorish Tisianes and Bucures, and the Syrian gods, the offspring of eggs? Apis, brought forth in the Peloponnese and called Serapis in Egypt? Isis, darkened by Ethiopian suns, mourning her lost son and her husband torn limb from limb? We pass over and skip the royal offspring of Ops, whom your authors have described in their books, who and what they were, for you to learn. These, then, hear with wounded ears that Christ is worshiped and accepted by us and regarded as a deity, and, forgetting the lot and condition that was theirs a little before, refuse to share with another what has been granted to themselves? Is this the justice of the heavenly beings, this the holy judgment of the gods? Is this not a kind of envy and greed, a sordid detraction, to wish their own fortunes alone to stand out, and the affairs of others to be pressed down and trampled in contemptible lowliness?

We worship one who was born a man. What of it? Do you worship no one who was born a man? Not one and another? Not countless others? Indeed, have you not taken all those whom you now have in your temples from the number of mortals and presented them to heaven and the stars? For if perhaps it escapes you that they were of human lot and common condition, unroll the most ancient writings and run through the works of those who, living near antiquity, set everything down in clear truth without any flattery. You will surely learn from what fathers and mothers each one was begotten, in what region they were born, of what nation, what they did, carried out, endured, and practiced, what fortunes of adversity and prosperity they experienced in their undertakings. But if, knowing that they were carried in wombs and lived on the fruits of the earth, you nevertheless reproach us with the worship of one born a man, you act quite unjustly, in establishing as damnable in us what you yourselves regularly do, or in refusing to allow others likewise what you permit yourselves.

But let us grant for a while, yielding to your opinions, that Christ was one of us, of one mind, soul, body, weakness, and condition. Is he not worthy to be called God by us and regarded as God because of such great gifts? For if you have enrolled among the gods Liber because he discovered the use of wine, Ceres because she discovered bread, Aesculapius because he discovered herbs, Minerva because she discovered the olive, Triptolemus because he discovered the plow, and finally Hercules because he overcame and subdued wild beasts, robbers, and many-headed water snakes: with what honors must he be honored by us, who led us from great errors by instilling the truth; who, when we were walking about as though blind and without any guide, brought us back from precipices and pathless places to more level ground; who showed, what is most fruitful and saving for the human race, what God is, who, how great, and of what kind; who allowed and taught us to grasp and understand, as far as our littleness could, his deep and unspeakable heights; who most kindly made known by what author, by what Father this world was established and founded; who revealed the manner of its origin and its matter, never before grasped by anyone's knowledge; from where the life-giving heat of the sun is drawn from its fires; why the moon, always in motion, takes up its light and darkness again, whether for the same reasons as is believed or for others; what the origin of living creatures is; what principles seeds have; who fashioned man himself, who formed him, or from what kind of matter he established the very structure of bodies; what sense is, what the soul is; whether it flew to us of its own accord or was sown and begotten with our very flesh; whether it lives sharing in death or has been given the everlastingness of immortality; what state awaits us when we depart, dissolved, from our limbs; whether we shall see, or shall have no memory of our sensation and recollection; who restrained our arrogance and made our necks, raised in pride, recognize the measure of their weakness; who showed that we are unformed creatures, trusting in vain opinions, grasping nothing, knowing nothing, and not seeing what lies before our eyes; who, what surpassed and exceeded all gifts, led us across from false religions to the true religion; who raised us from lifeless images formed from the vilest clay to the stars and to heaven, and made us join words of supplication and converse in prayer with God the Lord of all things.

Only lately, O blindness, I used to worship images just taken from the furnaces, gods made on anvils and by hammers, elephants' bones, paintings, ribbons on ancient trees. Whenever I saw a smooth stone smeared with olive oil, I would flatter it, as though a present power were in it; I would speak to it and ask benefits of a senseless block. And I heaped grave insults on the very gods whom I had persuaded myself existed, when I believed them to be wood, stones, and bones, or to dwell in such material. Now, led into the ways of truth by so great a teacher, I know what all these things are, I think worthy things of the worthy, I offer no insult to the divine name, and I give to each person or head what is due, in unconfused ranks and dignities. Is Christ, then, not to be held God by us, and is he not to be honored with all the worship of divinity that can be conceived, even the greatest, from whom we have long received such great gifts while living, and expect greater when the day comes?

'But he died fastened to a gibbet.' What has that to do with the case? For neither does the kind and ugliness of his death change his words or deeds, nor will the authority of his teachings seem less because he departed from the bonds of the body not by natural dissolution but by violence done to him. Pythagoras of Samos was burned alive in a temple on an unjust suspicion of seeking tyranny: did what he taught lose its force because he did not breathe out his life of his own accord but was attacked with cruelty? Likewise Socrates, condemned by the judgment of his city, suffered capital punishment: were his discussions of morals, virtues, and duties made void because he was driven from life unjustly? Countless others, eminent in glory, virtue, and reputation, have suffered the most bitter forms of death, like Aquilius, Trebonius, and Regulus: were they therefore judged disgraceful after their lives, because they perished not by the common law of fate but torn and tortured by the harshest kind of death? No innocent person cruelly killed is ever infamous, nor is he stained with the mark of any disgrace who suffers heavy punishments not for his own deserts but by the savagery of a torturer.

And yet, you who laugh because we worship a man who died an ignominious death, do you not also honor Father Liber, torn limb from limb by the Titans, by consecrating shrines to him? Did you not, after the punishment and torment of the thunderbolt, name Aesculapius, the discoverer of medicines, guardian and protector of health, well-being, and safety? Do you not invite the great Hercules himself with sacrifices, victims, and burnt incense, though you yourselves say that he was burned alive after his sufferings and consumed on a funeral pyre? Do you not, with the loud cry of the Galli, invoke that Phrygian Attis, mutilated and stripped of his manhood, as a gracious god, a holy god, in the inner shrines of the Great Mother? Do you not say that Romulus himself, the father of the senators, torn in pieces by a hundred hands, is Quirinus, son of Mars, and honor him with priests and sacred couches, worship him in the most splendid temples, and after all this swear that he ascended into heaven? So either you too are to be laughed at, who think gods and worship men killed by the most grievous tortures, or, if there is a sure reason why you think you should do this, allow us also to know for what causes and reasons we do it.

'You worship one who was born a man.' Even if that were true, as was said in earlier places, he ought still to be called and named God for the many and so generous gifts that have come to us from him. But since he is God in sure fact and without the ambiguity of any serious doubt, do you think we will deny that he is worshiped by us as fully as possible and called the protector of our body? 'Is that Christ God, then?' someone will say, raging, angry, and excited. God, we will answer, and God of the inner powers, and, what may torture the unbelieving with still bitterer pain, sent to us by the supreme King for a matter of the greatest importance. Perhaps, grown madder and more furious, he will demand proof that the matter is as we say. There is no greater proof than the credibility of the things he did, than the newness of his mighty works, than all the decrees of fate conquered and dissolved, which peoples and nations saw done in their own daylight with no one disagreeing, and which even those whose ancient and ancestral laws he showed to be full of vanity and the emptiest superstition do not dare to accuse of falsehood.

Perhaps he will come back at us again with many other of those slanderous and childish cries: 'He was a magician; he did all those things by secret arts; he stole from the inner shrines of the Egyptians the names of powerful angels and hidden lore.' What do you say, little children, chattering with the loquacity of a rash tongue about things you have not found out and do not know? Were those things that were done, then, tricks of demons and games of magic arts? Can you point out and show us anyone among all those magicians who have ever existed through the ages who did anything like Christ, in the thousandth part? Who did it without any power of incantations, without the juices of herbs and grasses, without any anxious observance of sacred libations and times? For we do not press you or ask what they promise to do, or in what kinds of acts all their teaching and experience usually consists. For who does not know that they either strive to foreknow what is coming, which necessarily comes by its own ordering whether they will or no; or to send a deadly wasting disease on whom they please; or to break the affections of families; or to open without keys what is shut; or to bind mouths in silence; or to weaken, urge on, or slow down horses in the races; or to send on the wives and children of others, whether male or female, the flames of forbidden love and frenzied desires; or, if they seem to attempt anything useful, that they can do it not by their own power but by the power of those whom they invoke?

Yet it is established that Christ, without any aids from things, without the observance of any rite or rule, did all that he did by the power of his name; and, as was proper, fitting, and worthy of the true God, he gave us with bountiful generosity nothing hurtful or harmful, but what was helpful, saving, and full of power to aid us. What do you say again?

Was he, then, a mortal, or one of us, at whose command, at whose voice uttered in ordinary everyday words, illnesses, diseases, fevers, and other torments of the body fled? Was he one of us, whose presence, whose sight that race of demons sunk in people's inward parts could not bear, and, terrified by a new power, gave up possession of their limbs? Was he one of us, whose command foul leprosies obeyed, driven out at once, leaving evenness of color on the stained skin? Was he one of us, at whose light touch flows of blood stopped and checked their excessive issue? Was he one of us, whose hands the waters of dropsy fled, that penetrating fluid shrank away, and the swollen inward parts subsided in a healthy dryness? Was he one of us, who commanded the lame to run, and it was already done; the maimed to stretch out their hands, and their joints unfolded motions they had had from birth; the paralyzed to rise, and they were already carrying back their own beds, who a little before had been carried on others' shoulders; the blind to see, and they were already beholding the sky and the day, though born without eyes?

Was he one of us, I say, who healed at a single intervention a hundred or more afflicted with various infirmities and diseases? At whose mere voice the raging and maddened seas grew calm, and the whirlwinds of storms and tempests subsided? Who walked through the deepest waters with his foot unwet and trod the back of the sea, while the waves themselves were amazed and nature came under his service? Who fed five thousand of his followers from five loaves, and, so that it might not seem a trick to those unbelieving and hard people, heaped up the hollows of twelve baskets with the leftover fragments? Was he one of us, who commanded souls long since breathed out to return to their bodies, those buried to come out of their tombs, and, after the third day of the funeral, to be freed from the grave-clothes of the undertakers? Was he one of us, who saw clearly in the hearts of the silent what each was pondering, what they held in their hidden thoughts? Was he one of us, who, when he uttered a single word, was thought by different peoples speaking different languages to be using familiar sounds of words and each one's own speech? Was he one of us, who, when he taught his followers the duties of a sure religion, suddenly filled the whole world, and showed how great and who he was by the revealed immensity of his name? Was he one of us, who, after laying aside his body, showed himself in open light to countless people, who gave and received speech, taught, rebuked, and admonished; who, so that they might not think themselves deceived by empty imaginings, showed himself once, twice, and often in familiar conversation; who even now appears to righteous men, undefiled and loving him, not in empty dreams but in the form of pure simplicity; whose name, when heard, puts harmful spirits to flight, imposes silence on prophets, makes soothsayers unable to be consulted, and causes the actions of arrogant magicians to fail, not by the dread of the name, as you say, but by the free exercise of a greater power?

We have set out these things in summary, not on the principle that the greatness of the doer is to be seen in these mighty works alone. For how great these are, or how slight and trifling they will be found, if it should be granted to know from what realms he came to us, as the minister of what deity. The things he did and performed were not done so that he might boast of himself with empty display, but so that hard and unbelieving men might know that what was promised was not false, and might now learn from the kindness of his works to guess what the true God is. At the same time we want this also to be known, since the account of his deeds has been given in summary as was said: that Christ was not only able to do what he did, but even overcame the ordinances of fate. For if, as is plain and agreed, infirmities and sufferings of the body, contraction of the sinews, and loss of sight happen and are imposed by the decrees of fate, and Christ alone corrected, restored, and healed these things, it is clearer than the sun itself that he was more powerful than the fates, since he loosed and conquered what had been bound fast by everlasting bonds and immovable necessity.

'But in vain,' someone says, 'do you claim so much for Christ, since we know, and have known, that other gods have often given remedies to many sufferers and cured the diseases and illnesses of many people.' I do not inquire, I do not demand, which god, or when, or whom he helped, or what broken person he restored to health. I only want to hear this: whether, without the addition of any material, that is, of any medicine, he ordered diseases to fly away from people at a touch, or by command caused the cause of illnesses to die and the bodies of the weak to return to their proper nature. For Christ is known, either by putting his hand to the afflicted parts or by the command of a simple word, to have opened the ears of the deaf, driven blindness from the eyes, given speech to the dumb, loosened the bonds of the joints, given walking to the crippled, and to have been accustomed to heal by word and command shivering fevers, leprosies, dropsies, and all other kinds of illness which some unkind cruelty has willed human bodies to endure. What have all the gods done like this, from whom you say help has been brought to the sick and those in danger? If ever, as rumor has it, they have given healing to some, they either ordered some food to be taken, or a drink of some quality to be drunk, or the juices of herbs and grasses to be laid on the troublesome parts, or ordered walking, rest, or abstaining from something harmful. That this is nothing great nor worthy of any astonishment is plain if you will attend: for physicians cure in the same way, a creature born of the earth, not relying on true knowledge but placed in a conjectural art and wavering in the estimates of guesswork. But there is no special power in removing what is harmful by medicines: those are benefits of things, not powers of those who cure; and though it is praiseworthy to know which medicine suits which people or by what art they are to be cured, the place for this praise is found in a man, not in a god. For it is not shameful for a man to have improved someone's health by things taken from outside; it is unbecoming to a god not to be able to give health and safety by himself, but only with the help of external things.

And since you compare the benefits of health given by other deities with those given by Christ, how many thousands of sick people do you want us to show you, how many afflicted with wasting diseases, who obtained no healing at all, though they went as suppliants through all the temples, though they lay prostrate before the faces of the gods and swept the very thresholds with their kisses, though, as long as life remained to them, they wearied Aesculapius himself, the giver of health as they call him, with prayers and summoned him with most pitiable vows? Do we not know that some died of their ills, that others grew old in the torments of disease, that others began to fare worse after they had spent days and nights in continual prayers and in pious expectation? What use is it, then, to show that one or two were perhaps cured, when no one helped so many thousands and all the shrines are full of the wretched and unhappy? Unless perhaps you will say that the gods bring help to the good and disregard the miseries of the wicked. Yet Christ helped good and bad alike, and no one was rejected by him who asked for help in hard circumstances against the attacks and injuries of fortune. For this is the mark of the true God and of royal power: to deny his kindness to no one, and not to consider who deserves it or not, since it is natural weakness, not the choice of will or judgment, that makes a person a sinner. Moreover, to say that the gods bring help to sufferers according to their merits is to leave the matter open and make what you assert doubtful, so that both the one who was made well may seem to have been saved by chance, and the one who was not may be believed to have been unable to drive out his illness, not because of his deserts, but because of the weakness of the divine power.

What of this, that these mighty works, which we have set out in summary and not as the greatness of the matter demanded, he not only performed by his own power, but, what was more sublime, allowed many others to attempt and to perform with the addition of his name? For since he saw that you would be deniers of the things he had done and of his divine work, so that no suspicion might arise that he had lavished those gifts and benefits by magic arts, from that immense multitude of people who followed his favor in wonder he chose fishermen, craftsmen, rustics, and unskilled people of that kind, to be sent through various nations and perform all those miracles without any pretense or aids. He by a word checked the tortures of racked limbs, and they by a word checked the racking of frenzied sufferings. He by a single command drove demons from bodies and restored their senses to the senseless; they too, by no other command, restored to health and soundness those tormented by them ... He wiped away the marks of whitening leprosy by laying on his hand; they too restored the outlines of bodies by a not dissimilar touch. He commanded dropsical and swollen inward parts to recover their natural dryness; and his servants in this way stopped the wandering waters and bade them flow away by their own channels, away from the ruin of the body. He, within the interval of a single word, curbed from further feeding ulcers of great size that refused to accept healing; and they in the same way forced the stubbornness of a savage cancer, its spreading growths confined, to form a scar. He gave walking to the lame, sight to the blind, called back the slain to life; and they no less loosened the contraction of sinews, filled with light eyes already lost, and commanded the dead to return from their tombs, reversing the funeral rites. Nor was anything done by him, to the astonishment of all, that he did not give entirely to those little and rustic men to do, and place under their power.

What do you say, unbelieving, difficult, hard minds? Did that Jupiter of the Capitol give such power to any mortal? Did he endow a curio or the chief pontiff, or indeed his own priest, the flamen Dialis, with such a right? I will not say to raise the dead, nor to restore light to the blind, nor to give back the proper position of their limbs to the bent and the paralyzed, but to suppress a pimple, a hangnail, or a pustule by the command of the voice or the touch of the hand. Was that, then, a human thing, or could such a right be given, such freedom proceed, from a mouth fed on earthly dung, and not something divine and holy, or, if the matter allows any higher term, more than divine and holy? For if you yourself do what you can, and what befits your strength and power, wonder has nothing to exclaim at: you will have done what you could, and what your strength ought to perform, so that the work and the worker were equal. To be able to transfer your right to a man, and to give to a most fragile thing and share with it the doing of what you alone can do, belongs to a power placed above all things and holding under itself the causes of all things and the natures of reasons and faculties.