A Plea for the Christians 23

You who surpass everyone in understanding might say: “Why, then, do some of the idols work, if those for whom we set up the statues are not gods? It is not likely that lifeless and motionless images have power by themselves, without something to move them.” That in certain places, cities, and nations some effects are produced in the name of idols, we too do not deny. But if some people have been helped and others harmed, we will not for that reason consider gods those who produced the effects in either case. We have examined precisely both why you think the idols have power, and who they are that produce the effects, trading on the idols' names. As I am about to show who works through the idols, and that they are not gods, I must call on some witnesses from philosophy as well. Thales first divides beings, as those who have studied him closely record, into God, demons, and heroes. By God he means the mind of the world; by demons he understands beings of the nature of soul; and by heroes the separated souls of human beings, the good heroes being good souls and the bad ones evil souls. Plato, suspending judgment on other matters, also divides them into the uncreated God, those made by the uncreated God to adorn the heaven, namely the planets and the fixed stars, and demons. About these demons he himself declines to speak, but thinks it right to heed those who have spoken of them: “To speak about the other demons and to know their origin is beyond us; but we must believe those who have spoken before, who were, as they said, offspring of the gods, and who surely knew their own ancestors. It is impossible, then, to disbelieve the children of gods, even if they speak without plausible or necessary proofs; since they claim to be reporting family matters, we must follow custom and believe them. So, then, according to them, let the origin of these gods be held and told as follows: of Earth and Heaven were born Ocean and Tethys; of these Phorcys, Kronos, and Rhea, and those with them; of Kronos and Rhea, Zeus and Hera and all those whom we know to be called their brothers and sisters, and further others, their descendants.” Now Plato conceived of the eternal Mind and of God grasped by reason, and declared his attributes: true being, the single nature, the good flowing from him, which is truth; he spoke of the first power, and said that “all things are about the King of all, and all things are for his sake, and he is the cause of all,” and of the second and the third: “the second about the second things, and the third about the third.” Did such a man think it beyond him to learn the truth about beings said to have come from perceptible things, earth and heaven? It cannot be said. But because he thought it impossible for gods to beget and be born, since an end follows whatever comes into being, and, what is even more impossible, to change the minds of the many, who accept the myths without examining them, for these reasons he said that it was beyond him to know and to speak of the origin of the other demons, since he could neither learn nor declare that gods are begotten. And his saying, “The great leader in heaven, Zeus, driving a winged chariot, goes first, ordering all things and caring for them, and there follows him a host of gods and demons,” does not refer to the Zeus said to be born of Kronos. Here the name belongs to the Maker of all things. Plato himself makes this clear: having no other name to signify him, he used the popular name, not as proper to God but for the sake of clarity, since it is not possible to present God to everyone as he really is; and he added the word “great” to distinguish the heavenly from the earthly, the uncreated from the created, who is younger than heaven and earth, and younger than the Cretans, who stole him away so that he would not be killed by his father.