Against the Heathen 1–10

The knowledge of true religion and of the truth of all things does not need teaching from human beings so much as it has its own evidence in itself; for it all but cries out daily through its works, and shows itself brighter than the sun through the teaching of Christ. Yet since you desire to hear about it, come, blessed one, let us set out, as far as we are able, a few points of the faith in Christ. You could find it for yourself from the divine Oracles, but you love to hear it from others as well. For the holy and God-inspired Scriptures are sufficient for proclaiming the truth; and there are also many treatises composed on these matters by our blessed teachers, and whoever reads them will understand something of the interpretation of the Scriptures and will be able to attain the knowledge he longs for. But since we do not now have the treatises of the teachers in hand, it is necessary to tell and write to you what we learned from them, I mean the faith in Christ the Savior, so that no one may think the teaching of our doctrine cheap, or suppose faith in Christ to be irrational. This is what the Greeks slander and scoff at, laughing loudly at us and holding up nothing but the cross of Christ. For this especially one would pity their insensibility: in slandering the cross they do not see that its power has filled the whole world, and that through it the works of the knowledge of God have been made manifest to all. For if they too had truly turned their minds to his divinity, they would not have mocked so great a thing; rather they too would have recognized him as the Savior of the universe, and the cross as having become not a harm but a healing of creation. For if, since the cross took place, all idolatry has been overthrown, and every apparition of demons is driven away by this sign, and Christ alone is worshiped, and through him the Father is known; and if those who speak against it are put to shame, while he daily wins over the souls of those who speak against it without their seeing it, how (one might reasonably say to them) can the matter still be thought human, and not rather confessed that the one who mounted the cross is the Word of God and the Savior of the universe? These people seem to me to suffer something like a man who slanders the sun when it is covered by clouds, yet admires its light, seeing that the whole creation is lit up by it. For as the light is beautiful, and the sun, the source of the light, more beautiful still, so, since it is a divine thing that the whole world has been filled with the knowledge of him, the author and leader of such an achievement must be God and the Word of God. We speak, then, as far as we can, first refuting the ignorance of the unbelievers, so that, once the falsehoods have been refuted, the truth may thereafter shine forth by itself, and you too, my friend, may take courage that you have believed the truth and that in knowing Christ you have not been deceived. And I think it fitting for you, a lover of Christ, to discuss the things concerning Christ, since I am persuaded that you hold the knowledge of him and faith in him more precious than all things.

In the beginning there was no evil; for not even now does it exist among the saints, nor does it exist at all as far as they are concerned. Human beings later began to conceive it and to shape it to their own hurt; and from this they also invented for themselves the idea of idols, reckoning things that are not as though they were. For God, the maker and king of all, who is beyond all being and all human thought, since he is good and surpassingly beautiful, made the human race after his own image through his own Word, our Savior Jesus Christ. Through its likeness to him he made man a beholder and knower of the things that are, giving him also a notion and knowledge of his own eternity, so that, keeping this sameness, he might never depart from his conception of God nor leap away from the company of the saints, but, having the grace of the giver, and having also the power that is his own from the Father’s Word, might rejoice and converse with the Divine, living the untroubled and truly blessed, immortal life. For having nothing to hinder his knowledge of the Divine, he always beholds through his purity the image of the Father, God the Word, after whose image he himself was made; and he is filled with wonder as he contemplates the providence that is exercised through him over the universe, rising above sensible things and every bodily image, and joined by the power of the mind to the divine and intelligible things in the heavens. For when the human mind does not keep company with bodies, and has nothing of the desire for them mixed into it from outside, but is wholly on high, at home with itself as it was made in the beginning, then, passing beyond sensible things and everything human, it is lifted up on high, and seeing the Word, sees in him also the Father of the Word, delighting in the contemplation of him and being renewed by its longing for him. So the sacred Scriptures say that the first man to come into being, who in the Hebrew tongue was named Adam, had his mind directed to God at the beginning with unashamed boldness, and lived with the saints in the contemplation of intelligible things, which he enjoyed in that place which holy Moses figuratively called paradise. For the purity of the soul is able to behold God reflected in itself as in a mirror, as the Lord also says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

Thus, then, the Creator, as has been said, fashioned the human race, and willed that it should remain so. But human beings, neglecting the better things and growing slack in grasping them, sought rather what was nearer to themselves. Nearer to them were the body and its senses. So they withdrew their minds from intelligible things and began to consider themselves; and in considering themselves, and taking hold of the body and the other sensible things, and being deceived as though these were their own, they fell into desire for themselves, preferring their own things to the contemplation of divine things. Lingering among these and unwilling to withdraw from what was nearer, they shut up their soul in the pleasures of the body, confused and defiled with every kind of desire, and they altogether forgot the power they had from God in the beginning. One may see that this is true from the first-formed man as well, as the sacred Scriptures tell of him. For he too, as long as he kept his mind on God and the contemplation of him, turned away from contemplation of the body; but when, at the serpent’s counsel, he departed from his thought of God and began to consider himself, then they fell into bodily desire, and “knew that they were naked,” and knowing it they were ashamed. They knew themselves naked not so much of clothing as that they had become naked of the contemplation of divine things and had turned their thought to the opposite. For having departed from the consideration of the One who is, I mean God, and from longing for him, they then entered into various and particular desires of the body. Then, as tends to happen, having conceived a desire for each thing and for many things, they began to cling to them, so that they even feared to let them go. From this came cowardice and fears and pleasures and mortal thoughts upon the soul. For being unwilling to depart from its desires, it fears death and its separation from the body. And again, when it desires and does not obtain what it desires, it learns to murder and to do wrong. How it does these things it is reasonable to show as far as we can.

Having departed from the contemplation of intelligible things, misusing the particular activities of the body, taking delight in the contemplation of the body, and seeing that pleasure was good for it, the soul went astray and misused the name of the good, and thought that pleasure was the truly good itself; as if a man deranged in mind, demanding a sword against those he meets, were to think this to be sound sense. Having fallen in love with pleasure, it began to pursue it in various ways. For being by nature easily moved, even if it has turned away from good things, it does not cease to move. It moves, then, no longer according to virtue, nor so as to see God; but, reasoning about things that are not, it perverts the capacity it has, misusing it for the desires it has invented, since it was also made with free will. For as it can incline toward good things, so it can also turn away from them; and when it turns away from the good, it necessarily reasons about the opposite; for it cannot cease from moving altogether, being, as I said before, by nature easily moved. And knowing its own free will, it sees that it can use the members of the body in both directions, toward the things that are and the things that are not. The things that are are the good; the things that are not are the evil. I call good things “things that are” because they have their patterns from God who is; and I call evil things “things that are not” because, not being, they have been fashioned by human imaginings. For the body has eyes for seeing the creation and knowing the Creator through its all-harmonious order; it has hearing for listening to the divine oracles and the laws of God; it has hands both for doing necessary work and for stretching out in prayer to God. But the soul, having departed from the contemplation of good things and from moving among them, now wanders and moves toward the opposite. Then, seeing, as I said, what it is capable of, and misusing it, it perceived that it can also move the members of the body to the opposite; and so, instead of looking at the creation, it turns the eye to lusts, showing that it can do this too; and it thinks that as long as it is moving at all it keeps its own dignity and does not sin in doing what it is able to do, not knowing that it was made not simply to move but to move toward what it ought. That is why the apostolic voice also charges: “All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable.”

But human daring, looking not to what is profitable and fitting but to what is possible, began to do the opposite. So, moving the hands to the opposite, it made them murder; it led the hearing into disobedience, and the other members into adultery instead of lawful childbearing; the tongue, instead of good speech, into blasphemy, abuse, and perjury; the hands again into stealing and striking fellow human beings; the sense of smell into all kinds of erotic perfumes; the feet into swiftness to shed blood; and the belly into drunkenness and insatiable gluttony. All these are the vice and sin of the soul. And their cause is nothing else but the turning away from the better things. Think of a charioteer who has mounted his horses in a stadium: he ignores the goal toward which he ought to drive and, turning away from it, simply drives the horse as he can (and he can as he wishes); often he charges at those he meets, and often he drives over precipices, carried wherever the speed of the horses bears him, and he thinks that by running like this he has not missed the goal, for he looks only at the running and does not see that he has gone outside the goal. So also the soul, turning away from the road toward God, and driving the members of the body beyond what is fitting, or rather being driven along with them by itself, sins and fashions evil for itself, not seeing that it has strayed from the road and gone outside the goal of truth. To this goal the Christ-bearing man, blessed Paul, looked when he said: “I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of Jesus Christ.” Looking toward the good, the saint never did evil.

Some of the Greeks, then, having strayed from the road and not having known Christ, declared that evil has a real existence of its own. They err in one of two ways. Either they deprive the Creator of being the maker of the things that are; for he would not be Lord of the things that are if, as they say, evil has its own subsistence and being. Or else, wishing him to be the maker of all things, they must of necessity make him the maker of evil too; for according to them evil too is among the things that are. But this would be seen to be absurd and impossible; for evil does not come from the good, nor is it in it, nor through it; otherwise the good would no longer be good, since it would have a mixed nature or be the cause of evil. Those of the heresies, too, having fallen from the church’s teaching and made shipwreck concerning the faith, also madly hold that evil has a real existence; and they invent for themselves, besides the true Father of Christ, another god, unbegotten, maker of evil and author of wickedness, who is also the fashioner of creation. These one could easily refute both from the divine Scriptures and from the very understanding that is in human beings, from which they invent these things in their madness. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, confirming the words of Moses, says in his own Gospels: “The Lord God is one”; and: “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth.” If God is one, and he is Lord of heaven and earth, how could there be another God besides him? And where will their God even be, when the only and true God fills all things within the compass of heaven and earth? And how could there be another maker of the things of which God, the Father of Christ, is himself Lord, according to the Savior’s word? Unless perhaps they say that, the two being equally matched, the evil one is able to become lord of what belongs to the good God. But if they say this, see into what impiety they fall; for among those of equal power, the superior and better could not be found. For if the one exists against the will of the other, the power and the weakness of both are equal: equal, in that by existing they overcome each other’s will; and weakness in both, in that things turn out for them against their will and wishes. For the good exists against the will of the evil one, and the evil one exists against the will of the good.

Moreover, one might say this to them too: if the visible works belong to the evil one, what is the work of the good? For nothing appears except the creation of the Creator alone. And what evidence is there that the good one exists, if there are no works of his by which he might be known? For a maker is known from his works. And how at all could there be two principles opposed to each other, or what is it that divides them so that they exist apart from each other? For they cannot exist together, since they destroy one another; nor could one be in the other, because their natures are unmixed and unlike. So the divider will turn out to be a third thing, and itself God. But of what nature would this third be? Of the good, or of the evil? That will be unclear; for it cannot be of both. Since, then, such reasoning of theirs proves unsound, the truth of the church’s knowledge must shine out: that evil did not come from God nor exist in God, neither from the beginning, nor is it any kind of being. Rather, human beings, through the absence of the conception of the good, began to imagine for themselves and to fashion things that are not, whatever they wish. As someone, when the sun is shining and the whole earth is lit by its light, might shut his eyes and imagine darkness for himself when there is no darkness, and then walk about wandering as though in darkness, often falling and going down over precipices, thinking there is no light but darkness (for while he thinks he sees, he does not see at all), so also the soul of human beings, shutting the eye by which it is able to see God, has imagined evils for itself. Moving among them, it does not know that, though it thinks it is doing something, it is doing nothing; for it is fashioning things that are not. And it did not remain such as it was made, but appears such as it has defiled itself. For it was made to see God and to be enlightened by him; but instead of God it sought corruptible things and darkness, as the Spirit somewhere says in writing: “God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices.” In this way, then, the discovery and invention of evil came about for human beings from the beginning and took shape. How they also descended into the madness of idols must now be told, so that you may know that the invention of idols came wholly not from good but from evil. And what has an evil beginning can never be judged good in anything, since it is wholly bad.

Not content with inventing evil, the soul of human beings gradually began to lead itself on into worse things. Having learned the differences between pleasures, girded itself with forgetfulness of divine things, and taken pleasure in the passions of the body and in present things alone and in opinions about them, it thought that nothing existed beyond what is seen, and that only temporary and bodily things are good. Turning away and forgetting that it was made after the image of the good God, it no longer sees through the power within it God the Word, after whom it was made; but having gone outside itself, it reasons about and fashions things that are not. For having hidden by the entanglements of bodily desires the mirror, as it were, that is in it, through which alone it could see the image of the Father, it no longer sees what a soul ought to perceive; it is carried about in every direction and sees only what strikes the senses. Hence, full of every fleshly desire and confused by its opinions about these things, it at last fashions the God whom it has forgotten in its understanding in bodily and sensible things, giving the name of God to visible things and glorifying only these, whatever it wishes and sees as pleasant. Evil, then, is the cause that goes before idolatry. For human beings, having learned to invent for themselves evil, which does not exist, in the same way invented for themselves gods that do not exist. Suppose someone plunged into the depths no longer saw the light or what appears in the light, because his eyes were turned downward and the water was poured over him, and, perceiving only what is in the depths, thought that nothing existed beyond these things, but that what he saw were the real things that exist. So the senseless people of old, plunging into fleshly desires and imaginings, and forgetting the thought and glory of God, using a dim reasoning, or rather unreason, fashioned visible things into gods, glorifying the creature rather than the Creator and deifying the works rather than their cause and maker, God the Master. And as, in the example given, those who plunge into the depths rush into darker and deeper places the further they go down, so it has happened to the human race. For they did not keep their idolatry simple, nor did they stay with what they began with; but the longer they lingered in the first things, the more novel superstitions they devised for themselves; and not being satisfied with the first, they filled themselves again with other evils, advancing in the most shameful things and stretching their impiety still further. The divine Scripture testifies to this too, saying: “When the ungodly man comes into the depth of evils, he despises.”

For as soon as the thought of human beings leapt away from God, and they went down in their notions and reasonings, they first gave the honor due to God to the heaven, the sun, the moon, and the stars, thinking them not only gods but also the causes of the things that come after them. Then, sinking further in their dark reasonings, they called the ether and the air and the things in the air gods. Advancing in evils, they celebrated as gods the elements and the principles of the composition of bodies, the hot and the cold, the dry and the wet substance. And as those who have fallen completely crawl on the ground like land snails, so the most impious of human beings, having fallen and sunk down from the conception of God, then set up human beings and the forms of human beings as gods, some while still living, others after death. Planning and reasoning still worse things, they transferred the divine and supramundane name of God to stones and wood and creeping things, of water and of land, and to the wild beasts without reason, assigning to them every honor due to God and turning away from the true and really existing God, the Father of Christ. Would that the daring of the senseless had stopped even at these, and that they had not gone further and defiled themselves with impieties! For some have sunk so low in thought and been so darkened in mind that they have even invented and deified things that do not exist at all anywhere, nor appear among created things. Mixing the rational with the irrational, and joining together things unlike in nature, they worship them as gods: such are the dog-headed, snake-headed, and ass-headed gods among the Egyptians, and the ram-headed Ammon among the Libyans. Others, dividing up the parts of bodies, head, shoulder, hand, and foot, each by itself, set each up among the gods and deified it, as if they were not content to direct their worship to the whole body entire. Others, increasing their impiety, have deified and worship the very pretext for inventing these things and for their own wickedness, pleasure and desire: such is their Eros, and the Aphrodite at Paros. And some of them, as if competing in the worse things, dared to set their own rulers or their rulers’ children among the gods, either out of honor for those who had ruled or from fear of their tyranny: like Zeus, famous among them in Crete, Hermes in Arcadia, Dionysus among the Indians, Isis, Osiris, and Horus among the Egyptians, and now Antinous, the favorite of Hadrian, emperor of the Romans. Although they know he was a man, and not a respectable man but one full of licentiousness, they worship him through fear of the one who commanded it. For Hadrian, when he stayed in the land of the Egyptians, ordered that Antinous, the servant of his pleasure, be worshiped after his death; he loved the boy even after his death, yet he provided a proof against himself and evidence against all idolatry, that it was invented among human beings in no other way than through the lust of those who fashioned it, as the Wisdom of God also testifies beforehand, saying: “The invention of idols is the beginning of sexual immorality.” And do not wonder, or think what is said far from credible, since not long ago, or perhaps even until now, the Roman senate decrees that the emperors who have ruled them from the beginning, either all of them or whichever they wish and decide, are among the gods, and writes that they are to be worshiped as gods. Those whom they hate they acknowledge as enemies and call men by nature; those whom they favor they command to be worshiped for their good deeds, as if they had the power to make gods, though they themselves are men and do not deny that they are mortal. Yet if they make gods, they ought rather to be gods themselves; for the maker must be better than what is made, and the judge necessarily rules over the one judged, and the giver surely bestows what he has; just as every king bestows what he has and is better and greater than those who receive it. If, then, they decree as gods whomever they wish, they themselves ought first to be gods. But the remarkable thing is this: by dying like men themselves, they prove that their verdict about those they have deified is false.

This custom is not new, nor did it begin with the Roman senate; it had been practiced long before as a preparation for the idea of idols. For the gods celebrated of old among the Greeks, Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Hephaestus, and Hermes, and among the females Hera, Demeter, Athena, and Artemis, were decreed to be called gods by the ordinances of Theseus, of whom the Greeks tell; and those who made the ordinances are mourned as men who died, while those for whom they made them are worshiped as gods. What contradiction and madness! Knowing the one who made the ordinances, they give the preference to those for whom he made them. Would that this idol-madness had stopped at males, and that they had not brought the divine name down upon females! For women, with whom it is not safe even to take common counsel about affairs, they worship and revere with the honor due to God: such as those ordained by Theseus, whom we have mentioned, and among the Egyptians Isis, Kore, and Neotera, and among others Aphrodite. The names of the others I think it not even decent to mention, for they are full of every kind of ridicule. For many, not only in ancient times but in our own days too, having lost those dearest to them, brothers, relatives, and wives, and many women, having lost husbands, all of whom nature proved to be human beings and mortal, painted portraits of them because of their great grief, devised sacrifices, and set them up; and those who came after, on account of the image and the artist’s skill, worshiped them as gods, suffering a thing contrary to nature. For those whom their parents mourned as not gods (had they known them to be gods, they would not have lamented them as perished; indeed it was because they thought them not only not gods but not existing at all that they had them portrayed in an image, so that, seeing a semblance of them through the image, they might console themselves for their no longer existing), to these, nevertheless, the senseless pray as to gods and invest them with the honor of the true God. In Egypt, at any rate, even now the lament for the loss of Osiris, Horus, Typhon, and the others is performed; and the bronze vessels at Dodona and the Corybantes in Crete prove that Zeus is not a god but a man, and one born of a father who devoured flesh raw. And the remarkable thing is that even Plato, the one deemed most wise among the Greeks, who boasted much of having thought about God, goes down to the Piraeus with Socrates to worship Artemis, fashioned by human art.