First Apology 40–55

And hear how it was foretold also about those who proclaimed his teaching and made known his appearing, the prophet and king we mentioned speaking thus through the prophetic Spirit: “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night proclaims knowledge. There are no speeches nor words whose voices are not heard. Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world. In the sun he has set his tabernacle, and he, like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, will rejoice like a giant to run his course.” And besides these, we have thought it good and fitting to mention other words prophesied through the same David, from which you can learn how the prophetic Spirit exhorts people to live, and how it indicates the conspiracy against Christ of Herod, the king of the Jews, and of the Jews themselves, and of Pilate, your procurator among them, with his soldiers; and that he was to be believed by people of every race; and that God calls him Son and has promised to subject all enemies to him; and how the demons, as far as they can, try to escape the power of God the Father and Master of all and of Christ himself; and how God calls all to repentance before the day of judgment comes. They are spoken thus: “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of the pestilent; but his will is in the law of the Lord, and in his law he will meditate day and night. And he will be like the tree planted by the streams of water, which will give its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall off, and whatever he does will prosper. Not so the ungodly, not so, but like the chaff which the wind drives from the face of the earth. Therefore the ungodly will not rise in judgment, nor sinners in the council of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, and the way of the ungodly will perish.” “Why did the nations rage, and the peoples devise new things? The kings of the earth stood by, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ, saying: Let us break their bonds and cast away their yoke from us. He who dwells in the heavens will laugh at them, and the Lord will mock them; then he will speak to them in his anger, and in his wrath he will trouble them. But I have been set by him as king on Zion his holy mountain, proclaiming the decree of the Lord. The Lord said to me: You are my Son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession. You will shepherd them with a rod of iron; like a potter's vessels you will shatter them. And now, kings, understand; be instructed, all who judge the earth. Serve the Lord in fear, and rejoice in him with trembling. Lay hold of instruction, lest the Lord be angry and you perish from the righteous way, when his wrath is quickly kindled. Blessed are all who trust in him.”

And again, indicating by another prophecy through the same David that after being crucified Christ would reign, the prophetic Spirit spoke thus: “Sing to the Lord, all the earth, and proclaim his salvation from day to day; for the Lord is great and greatly to be praised, to be feared above all the gods; for all the gods of the nations are images of demons, but God made the heavens. Glory and praise are before his face, and strength and boasting in the place of his holiness. Give glory to the Lord, the Father of the ages. Receive grace, and enter before his face, and worship in his holy courts. Let all the earth fear before his face, and be established and not be shaken. Let them rejoice among the nations: the Lord has reigned from the tree.”

And when the prophetic Spirit speaks of things that are to come as though they had already happened, as may be seen in what we have cited, so that it may not give an excuse to readers, we will make this clear too. Things that are certainly known to be going to happen it foretells as though they had already happened; and that it must be understood so, attend closely with your mind to what is said. David said the words cited fifteen hundred years before Christ became man and was crucified, and no one of those who lived before him gave joy to the nations by being crucified, nor any of those after him. But our Jesus Christ, crucified and dead, rose again, and reigned, having ascended into heaven; and in what was proclaimed from him through the apostles among all the nations there is joy for those who expect the incorruption he has announced.

But so that no one may infer from what we have said that we assert that whatever happens happens by the necessity of fate, because it was foretold as foreknown, we will resolve this too. We have learned from the prophets, and declare it to be true, that punishments and chastisements and good rewards are rendered according to the merit of each person's actions; since if this is not so, but all things happen by fate, nothing at all is in our power; for if it is fated that this person be good and that one wicked, neither is the one to be approved nor the other to be blamed. And again, if the human race does not have the power by free choice to flee what is shameful and choose what is good, it is not responsible for whatever it does. But that it both does right and errs by free choice we prove thus. We see the same person making the change to opposite things. But if it were fated that he be either wicked or good, he would never be capable of opposites and would not change so often; nor would some be good and others wicked, since we would then be declaring fate to be the cause of good and evil and to act contrary to itself; or else that saying mentioned before would seem true, that there is no such thing as virtue or vice, but that things are considered good or evil only by opinion; which, as true reason shows, is the greatest impiety and injustice. But we say that this is inescapable fate: that those who choose the good have worthy rewards, and likewise those who choose the opposite have worthy wages. For God did not make man like the other things, such as trees and four-footed beasts, which can do nothing by choice; for he would not be worthy of reward or praise if he did not choose the good of himself but was made so; nor, if he were evil, would he justly receive punishment, not being such of himself, but being unable to be anything other than what he was made.

And the holy prophetic Spirit taught us these things, telling us through Moses that God spoke thus to the first man who was formed: “Behold, before your face are good and evil; choose the good.” And again through Isaiah, the other prophet, that this was said as from the person of God, the Father and Master of all: “Wash yourselves, become clean, remove the wickedness from your souls; learn to do good, judge for the orphan and plead for the widow; and come, let us reason together, says the Lord; and if your sins are like scarlet, I will make them white as wool, and if they are like crimson, I will make them white as snow. And if you are willing and listen to me, you shall eat the good things of the land; but if you do not listen to me, a sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken these things.” And the words quoted, “A sword shall devour you,” do not mean that the disobedient will be killed by swords; but the sword of God is fire, of which those who choose to do evil become food. That is why it says, “A sword shall devour you; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.” If it had spoken of a sword that cuts and at once dispatches, it would not have said “devour.” So also Plato, when he said, “The blame belongs to the one who chooses, and God is blameless,” said it taking it from the prophet Moses; for Moses is older even than all the writers among the Greeks. And everything that philosophers and poets have said about the immortality of the soul, or punishments after death, or contemplation of heavenly things, or similar teachings, they were able to understand and explain because they took their starting points from the prophets. Hence there seem to be seeds of truth among all; but they are convicted of not understanding accurately when they contradict themselves. So what we say, that future events have been prophesied, we do not say because they happen by the necessity of fate; but because God foreknows what all people are going to do, and it is his decree that each person will be rewarded according to the merit of his actions, he foretells through the prophetic Spirit that what comes from him will match the merit of what is done, always leading the human race to attention and remembrance, showing that he cares and provides for them. But by the working of the evil demons death was decreed against those who read the books of Hystaspes or of the Sibyl or of the prophets, so that by fear they might turn away those who read them from receiving knowledge of what is good, and keep them as their slaves; which in the end they could not do. For we not only read them without fear, but, as you see, bring them to you for examination, knowing that they will appear acceptable to all; and if we persuade only a few, we shall have gained the greatest things; for, like good farmers, we shall receive the reward from the Master.

And that God, the Father of all, was going to bring Christ into heaven after raising him from the dead, and to keep him there until he strikes down the demons who are his enemies, and the number of those foreknown by him as becoming good and virtuous is completed, for whose sake he has not yet brought about the conflagration, hear what was said through David the prophet. These are the words: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet. The Lord will send out for you a rod of power from Jerusalem; and rule in the midst of your enemies. With you is the rule in the day of your power, in the splendors of your saints; from the womb before the morning star I begot you.” And the words “He will send out for you a rod of power from Jerusalem” foretold the mighty word that his apostles, going out from Jerusalem, preached everywhere; and although death is decreed against those who teach or even confess the name of Christ, we everywhere both embrace and teach it. And if you too read these words as enemies, you can do no more, as we said before, than kill; which brings no harm to us, but to you and all who are unjustly hostile and do not change brings eternal punishment by fire.

But lest some, reasoning absurdly to turn people away from what we teach, should say that we say that Christ was born one hundred and fifty years ago under Quirinius, and taught what we say he taught later, under Pontius Pilate, and should accuse us as though all people who were born before were not accountable, we will resolve the difficulty beforehand. We have been taught that Christ is the first-born of God, and we have declared above that he is the Word, of whom the whole race of people partakes. And those who lived with the Word are Christians, even if they were thought atheists, such as among the Greeks Socrates and Heraclitus and those like them, and among the barbarians Abraham and Ananias and Azarias and Misael and Elijah and many others, whose deeds or names we now decline to list, knowing that it would be long. So also those who lived before without the Word were useless and enemies to Christ and murderers of those who lived with the Word; but those who lived and live with the Word are Christians, and fearless and untroubled. For what reason, by the power of the Word according to the will of God the Father and Master of all, he was born a man through a virgin and was named Jesus, and was crucified and died and rose again and has ascended into heaven, a sensible person can understand from what has been said at such length. But since the proof of this is not necessary now, we will go on to the more urgent proofs for the present.

Hear, then, what was said by the prophetic Spirit, that the land of the Jews was to be laid waste. The words are spoken as from the person of the peoples wondering at what had happened. They are these: “Zion has become a desert; Jerusalem has become like a desert; the house, our sanctuary, has become a curse, and the glory which our fathers blessed has been burned with fire, and all its glorious things have fallen. And at these things you have held back, and been silent, and humbled us greatly.” And you are convinced that Jerusalem has been laid waste, as was foretold. And it was said also about its desolation, and that none of them would be permitted to live there, through Isaiah the prophet thus: “Their land is a desert; before them their enemies will devour it, and none of them shall dwell in it.” And you know well that it is guarded by you so that no one may be in it, and that death has been decreed against any Jew caught entering it.

And hear what was said, that our Christ was foretold to heal all diseases and raise the dead. These are the words: “At his coming the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the stammerers shall be clear; the blind shall see, and the lepers shall be cleansed, and the dead shall rise and walk.” And that he did these things you can learn from the Acts drawn up under Pontius Pilate. And hear what was said through Isaiah, how it was foretold by the prophetic Spirit that he would be put to death together with those who hope in him. These are the words: “Behold how the righteous one has perished, and no one lays it to heart; and righteous men are taken away, and no one considers. The righteous one has been taken away from the presence of injustice, and he will be in peace; his burial has been taken away from the midst.”

And again how it was said through the same Isaiah that the peoples of the Gentiles, who did not expect him, would worship him, but the Jews, who always expected him, would not recognize him when he came; and the words were spoken as from the person of Christ himself. They are these: “I was made manifest to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me; I said, Behold, here I am, to a nation that did not call on my name. I spread out my hands to a disobedient and contradicting people, to those who walk in a way that is not good, but after their sins; the people that provokes me to my face.” For the Jews, having the prophecies and always expecting Christ, did not recognize him when he came, and not only so, but also mistreated him; while those from the Gentiles, who had never heard anything about Christ until his apostles, going out from Jerusalem, made known the things about him and handed over the prophecies, filled with joy and faith, renounced the idols and dedicated themselves to the unbegotten God through Christ. And hear the brief words spoken through Isaiah, that it was foreknown that these slanders would be spoken against those who confess Christ, and how wretched are those who slander him and say that it is good to keep the old customs. They are these: “Woe to those who call sweet bitter, and bitter sweet.”

And hear the prophecies spoken about this: that having become man for us he endured to suffer and be dishonored, and will come again with glory. These are the words: “Because they handed over his soul to death, and he was counted among the lawless, he has borne the sins of many and will make atonement for the lawless. For behold, my Servant will understand, and will be exalted and greatly glorified. As many will be astonished at you, so will your form be without glory before men, and your glory before men; so many nations will marvel, and kings will shut their mouths; for those to whom it was not announced about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand. Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? We announced before him like a child, like a root in a thirsty land. He has no form nor glory; and we saw him, and he had no form nor beauty, but his form was without honor and failing beyond men. A man in affliction, and knowing how to bear sickness, because his face was turned away, he was dishonored and not esteemed. He bears our sins and suffers pain for us, and we reckoned him to be in toil and in affliction and in mistreatment. But he was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our sins; the chastisement of our peace was upon him; by his stripes we were healed. All we like sheep went astray; each man went astray in his own way; and he handed him over for our sins, and he, because he was mistreated, does not open his mouth. Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. In his humiliation his judgment was taken away.” After he was crucified, then, even all his acquaintances fell away, having denied him; but afterward, when he had risen from the dead and appeared to them, and taught them to read the prophecies, in which all these things were foretold as going to happen, and they had seen him going up into heaven, and had believed, and received power sent to them from there by him, and gone to every race of people, they taught these things and were called apostles.

And so that the prophetic Spirit might indicate to us that the one who suffers these things has an ancestry that cannot be told and reigns over his enemies, it spoke thus: “Who will tell his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth; because of their lawless deeds he came to death. And I will give the wicked for his burial and the rich for his death; for he did no lawlessness, nor was deceit found in his mouth; and the Lord wills to cleanse him from his wound. If you give an offering for sin, your soul will see a long-lived seed. And the Lord wills to take away his soul from toil, to show him light and to form him with understanding, to justify the righteous one who serves many well; and he himself will bear our sins. Therefore he will inherit many and divide the spoils of the strong, because his soul was handed over to death, and he was counted among the lawless, and he bore the sins of many and was handed over for their lawless deeds.” And hear how he was also to go up into heaven, as was prophesied. It was said thus: “Lift up the gates of heaven; be opened, that the King of glory may enter. Who is this King of glory? The Lord strong and the Lord mighty.” And hear also what was said about this through Jeremiah the prophet, how he is to come from heaven with glory. These are the words: “Behold, as a son of man he comes upon the clouds of heaven, and his angels with him.”

Since, then, we have shown that all the things that have already happened were proclaimed through the prophets before they happened, it is necessary also to believe that the things likewise prophesied, but still to happen, will certainly happen. For just as the things already done, though proclaimed beforehand and not understood, came to pass, so the rest, even if they are not understood and are disbelieved, will come to pass. For the prophets proclaimed two comings of his: one, which has already happened, as a man dishonored and suffering; and the second, when it has been proclaimed that he will come from heaven with glory, with his angelic host, when he will also raise the bodies of all people who have lived, and will clothe the worthy with incorruption, but will send the unjust, in eternal sensation, into the eternal fire with the evil demons. And we will show that these things too were foretold as going to happen. It was said through Ezekiel the prophet thus: “Joint shall be joined to joint and bone to bone, and flesh shall grow again. And every knee shall bow to the Lord, and every tongue shall confess him.” And hear what was likewise said about what sensation and punishment the unjust will be in. These are the words: “Their worm shall not cease, and their fire shall not be quenched.” And then they will repent, when it will profit them nothing. And what the peoples of the Jews will say and do when they see him coming in glory was prophesied through Zechariah the prophet and spoken thus: “I will command the four winds to gather the scattered children; I will command the north wind to bring them, and the south wind not to hinder. And then in Jerusalem there will be great mourning, not a mourning of mouths or lips, but a mourning of the heart; and they shall not tear their garments, but their minds. Tribe shall mourn to tribe, and then they shall look on him whom they pierced, and they shall say, Why, Lord, did you make us wander from your way? The glory which our fathers blessed has become a reproach to us.”

Though we could cite many other prophecies, we have stopped, reckoning these sufficient for persuasion for those who have ears to hear and understand, and thinking that they can understand that we do not merely speak, like those who made up myths about the so-called sons of Zeus, without being able to prove it. For with what reason would we believe a crucified man, that he is the first-born of the unbegotten God and will himself judge the whole human race, unless we had found testimonies proclaimed about him before he came and became man, and saw them fulfilled in this way: the desolation of the land of the Jews, and people of every nation persuaded by the teaching of his apostles and renouncing the old customs in which they had lived in error, seeing it in ourselves, and knowing that the Christians from the Gentiles are more numerous and more true than those from the Jews and Samaritans? For all the other races of people are called Gentiles by the prophetic Spirit, but the Jewish and Samaritan tribe are called Israel and the house of Jacob. And we will declare the prophecies that it was foretold that believers from the Gentiles would be more numerous than those from the Jews and Samaritans. It was said thus: “Rejoice, barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry out, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has the husband.” For all the Gentiles were desolate of the true God, serving the works of hands; but the Jews and Samaritans, who had the word from God handed down to them through the prophets and always expected Christ, did not recognize him when he came, except a few, whom the holy prophetic Spirit foretold through Isaiah would be saved. It spoke as from their person: “Unless the Lord had left us a seed, we would have become like Sodom and Gomorrah.” For Sodom and Gomorrah are recorded by Moses as cities of ungodly men, which God overthrew, burning them with fire and brimstone, none of those in them being saved except a certain foreigner, a Chaldean by race, named Lot; with whom his daughters also were saved. And those who wish can see their whole country desolate and burned and remaining barren. And we will declare what was said through Isaiah the prophet, that those from the Gentiles were foreknown as more true and more faithful. He said thus: “Israel is uncircumcised in heart, but the Gentiles in the foreskin.” So many things, then, when they are seen, can with reason bring persuasion and faith to those who embrace the truth and are not lovers of glory nor ruled by passions.

Those who hand down the myths invented by the poets offer no proof to the young who learn them, and we show that they were told by the working of the evil demons to deceive and lead astray the human race. For when they heard it proclaimed through the prophets that Christ would come and that the ungodly among men would be punished by fire, they put forward many to be said to have been sons of Zeus, thinking they could bring people to consider the things about Christ a tale of marvels, like the things said by the poets. And these things were said both among the Greeks and among all the nations, where they heard more of the prophets foretelling that Christ would be believed. But that even when they heard what was said through the prophets they did not understand it accurately, but imitated the things about our Christ like people going astray, we will make plain. Moses, then, the prophet, was, as we said before, older than all writers, and through him, as we indicated before, it was prophesied thus: “A ruler shall not fail from Judah, nor a leader from his thighs, until he comes for whom it is laid up; and he will be the expectation of the nations, binding his foal to the vine, washing his robe in the blood of the grape.” When the demons heard these prophetic words, they said that Dionysus had been a son of Zeus, and handed down that he was the discoverer of the vine, and they include an ass in his mysteries, and taught that he was torn to pieces and went up into heaven. And since it was not expressly indicated by the prophecy of Moses whether the one who was to come is the Son of God, and whether, riding on a foal, he would remain on earth or go up into heaven, and since the word “foal” could mean the foal of either an ass or a horse, not knowing whether the one foretold would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of his coming, and whether he is the Son of God, as we said before, or of a man, they said that Bellerophon too, a man born of men, went up to heaven on the horse Pegasus. And when they heard it said through the other prophet, Isaiah, that he would be born through a virgin and by his own power go up into heaven, they put forward what is said of Perseus. And when they knew that it had been said, as was quoted in the prophecies written above, “Strong as a giant to run his course,” they said that Heracles was strong and traveled over the whole earth. And when again they learned that it had been prophesied that he would heal every disease and raise the dead, they brought forward Asclepius.

But nowhere, in the case of any of the so-called sons of Zeus, did they imitate the being crucified; for it was not understood by them, since everything said about it had been spoken symbolically, as was shown before. And this, as the prophet foretold, is the greatest symbol of his power and rule, as is shown also from the things that fall under our sight. For consider everything in the world, whether it can be managed or have any communication without this figure. The sea is not cut unless this trophy, which is called a sail, stays safe on the ship; the earth is not plowed without it; diggers do not do their work, nor do craftsmen likewise, except with tools that have this shape. And the human form differs from the irrational animals in nothing else than that it is upright and has its hands stretched out, and bears on the face, extending from the forehead, what is called the nose, through which the living creature breathes; and this shows nothing other than the figure of the cross. And so it was said through the prophet thus: “A breath before our face is Christ the Lord.” And your own symbols show the power of this figure, I mean those of the standards and the trophies, with which your processions are made everywhere, showing in them the signs of rule and power, even if you do this without understanding it. And you set up the images of your emperors when they die on this figure, and name them gods in inscriptions. Since, then, we have urged you both by argument and by a visible figure, as far as we could, we know that we are free of blame from now on, even if you do not believe; for our part has been done and finished.