The Apocriticus (Answers to the Pagan Critic) 3.2–3.9

[The philosopher's objection.] 2. How it is said, “If it is possible, let the cup pass.” Moreover, another saying too is full of obscurity, full of ignorance: “Do not fear those who kill the body” — when he himself was in anguish, keeping awake in expectation of the terrors, and begging in prayer that the suffering might pass him by, saying to his companions, “Watch and pray, that the temptation may pass you by.” These words are not worthy of a son of God, nor even of a wise man who despises death.

[The philosopher's objection.] 3. How it is said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me.” Further, the saying seems to me full of great stupidity: “If you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote about me,” he said. Yet nothing of Moses is preserved. For all his writings are said to have been burned together with the temple; and all that was written under the name of Moses afterwards was composed one thousand one hundred and eighty years after the death of Moses, by Ezra and those around him. And even if one were to grant that the writing is Moses', it cannot be shown that Christ is anywhere called God, or God the Word, or Creator. And who at all has said that Christ would be crucified?

[The philosopher's objection.] 4. What is the account of the swine and the demons? If we want to tell that story too, what is said will truly appear the nonsense of a huckster: for Matthew says that two demons met Christ from the tombs, and then, afraid of Christ, went into swine and killed many. And Mark did not shrink from inventing an excessive number of swine. He says this: “He said to him, ‘Come out, unclean spirit, from the man.’ And he asked him, ‘What is your name?’ And he answered, ‘Many.’ And he begged him not to send him out of the country. There was a herd of swine feeding there, and the demons begged him to allow them to go into the swine. And going into the swine they rushed down the steep into the sea, about two thousand, and were drowned; and those who fed them fled.” What a myth! What drivel! What broad laughter, truly! A multitude of two thousand swine ran into the sea and perished, drowned together! And who, hearing that the demons beg not to be sent into the abyss, and that Christ, being begged, did not send them there but dispatched them onto the swine, will not say: “Alas for the ignorance! Alas for the … error, to grant the request of murderous spirits who work much harm in the world, and to allow them what they wanted!” What the demons wanted was to dance through life and make the world their insatiable plaything; they wanted to mix earth and sea and turn the whole into a theatre of mourning; they wanted to throw the elements into confusion and crush the whole creation with harm. Surely, then, he ought not to have refused to cast the authors of evil, who had used man so ill, into the region of the abyss from which they prayed to be spared, but instead, softened by their entreaty, have allowed them to work another disaster. For if this is really true and not a fiction, as we are making clear, the account charges Christ with great wickedness: to drive the demons out of one man and send them onto irrational swine, to terrify the herdsmen with fear and make them flee breathless in panic, and to stir up a city with the uproar over what happened. For was it not right to heal the harm not only of one, or of two or three or thirteen, but of every man — especially since he is attested to have come into the world for this? But simply to release one man from invisible bonds and invisibly send the bonds onto others, to free some happily from terrors and wrap others in terrors without reason — this would rightly be called not an achievement but a crime. Moreover, to grant enemies their request to dwell and roam in another country is to act like a king who ruins his subjects: unable to drive the barbarian out of the whole land, he sends him from place to place to settle, rescuing one district from the evil and making a present of another to the evil. If, then, Christ likewise, unable at the time to drive out the lawlessness of the demon, sent him into the herd of swine, this is indeed prodigious and able to shock the ear, but it makes the matter full of base suspicion. For at once, at once, a sensible man hearing this judged it on the spot, examining the narrative, and passed a verdict to match the matter, saying: “If he does not free all that is under the sun from harm, but banishes harmful things into different lands, and cares for some but does not trouble about others, it is not safe to flee to him and be saved. For the one who is saved grieves the condition of the one who is not, and the one not saved becomes the accuser of the one saved.” Hence, as I judge, the narrative of this story is a fiction. And if it is not a fiction but akin to the truth, it is truly ample cause of laughter for those who like to gape. For come, let us examine this clearly: how was so great a herd of swine being pastured then in the land of Judaea, swine being the filthiest animals and hated by the Jews from of old? And how were all those swine drowned together, when it was a lake, not a deep sea? Let us leave these things for infants to judge.

[The philosopher's objection.] 5. What is the saying that it is easier for a camel to go through a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God? Let us examine another saying more obscure than these, where he says: “It is easier for a camel to enter through a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.” If, then, a rich man who has kept himself from the sins of life — murder, theft, adultery, sorcery, unholy oaths, grave-robbing, the wickedness of sacrilege — is not brought into the so-called kingdom of heaven, what profit is there for the righteous in doing right, if they happen to be rich? And what harm is there for the poor in committing every unholy deed among evils? For it is not virtue that leads a man up to heaven, but poverty and lack of possessions. For if wealth shuts the rich man out of heaven, then by the opposite rule poverty brings the poor man in; and one who has learned this lesson may lawfully make no account at all of virtue, but cling without hindrance to poverty alone and to the most shameful deeds, since poverty is able to save the poor man while wealth shuts the rich man out of the undefiled abode. So it seems to me that these are not the words of Christ, if indeed he handed down the rule of truth, but of some poor men who wished by such empty talk to take away the property of the rich. Why, only yesterday, not long ago, by reading out to women of good standing, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven,” they persuaded them to distribute to the poor all the property and substance they had, and themselves, reduced to want, to go begging — coming from freedom to unseemly asking, from prosperity to a pitiable state, and at last compelled to go to the houses of those who have; which is the first, or rather the last, of insults and disasters: to lose one's own goods on a pretext of piety, and through the compulsion of want to covet what belongs to others. From this it seems to me that these are the words of some woman in distress.

[The philosopher's objection.] 6. How it is said, “About the fourth watch of the night he came on the sea.” Come, let us also unfold for you that saying from the Gospel which is written here absurdly and implausibly, and whose narrative is more absurd still: when Jesus, having sent the disciples ahead after supper to cross the sea, came to them himself at the tenth watch of the night, when they were terribly worn by the surge of the storm, since they had been toiling all night against the force of the waves. For the fourth watch of the night is the tenth hour of the night, after which three further hours remain. Now those who give a true account of those places say that there is no sea there, but a small lake formed by a river under the mountain in the country of Galilee, beside the city of Tiberias, which is easy to cross even in small dugout boats in not more than two hours, and which can admit neither wave nor storm. So Mark, going far outside the truth, very absurdly writes this fable: that after nine hours had passed Jesus came on the tenth, that is, in the fourth watch of the night, and found the disciples sailing on the pond. Then he calls it a sea — and not simply a sea, but a stormy one, terribly raging and frighteningly convulsed by the tumult of the waves — so that from this he might bring in Christ as having worked some great sign, stopping a great and extraordinary storm and saving the disciples, who were nearly in danger, from the deep and the open sea. From such childish stories we have learned that the Gospel is a cleverly contrived stage-set; therefore we examine each point more carefully.

[The philosopher's objection, followed by Macarius's narrative.] 7. What is the saying, “You always have the poor, but you do not always have me”? Then, having found another little phrase spoken by Christ to the disciples that is inconsistent, we decided not to pass over that one in silence either, where he says, “You always have the poor, but me you do not always have.” The occasion of the subject is this. A woman brought an alabaster jar of ointment and poured it on his head; and when they saw it and complained of the untimeliness of what was done, Jesus said, “Why do you trouble the woman? She has done a good work for me. For you always have the poor with you, but me you do not always have.” For they had grumbled not a little that the ointment had not rather been sold for a great price and given to the hungry poor to spend. Because of this, as it were, untimely remark, he uttered this nonsensical saying, declaring that he would not always be with them — he who elsewhere assures them and says, “I will be with you until the end of the age.” But being vexed, as it seems, about the ointment, he denied that he would always be with them.

[Macarius:] When the leader of Greek cleverness had uttered these things against the divine teachings of Christ, he fell silent for a little, as though no one opposed him. But we felt the same as one who attacks a many-headed hydra with blows, which, when one serpent's head is cut off, suddenly sends up many heads in place of one: feeling the same, we were nearly worn out. For in the same moment that we persuasively resolved three or four or five of his propositions, he, imitating the hydra of myth, when one was resolved, put forward countless questions, holding out endless speculation in the matters in dispute. So at once, in the present session, having put forward questions on so many headings, he told us to answer each one. And recalling everything that had been said, we spoke, beginning from his first question.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on how Jesus endured to be crucified with insult (3.1).] Why did Christ, when brought before the high priest and Pilate the governor, perform no prodigious sign, display no striking form, utter no lofty word akin to wisdom, but appear in a humble form, with closed and restrained speech and a heavy look? So that he might not empty the prophecies about him of their meaning, nor prove the sacred tablets false, nor make void the labour of the holy men, which they piously endured in proclaiming the account of the economy, writing the mystery of his coming, and making known the manner of his Passion long before. So the great-voiced and mighty Isaiah says in one place, “We saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honour”; in another, “a man in affliction, and knowing how to bear weakness”; in another, “As a sheep he was led to slaughter, and as a lamb without voice”; and in another, speaking in the person of Christ: “I gave my back to the scourges, my cheeks to blows, and I did not turn my face away from the shame of spitting.” And one may find countless other things spoken about him by the holy prophets. If, then, as you yourself say, he had stood before the high priest or the governor and brought out extraordinary words to them, struck them with divine signs, terrified them by a strange appearance, and by some extraordinary prodigy suddenly made them fall flat on the ground, he would have rejected every prophetic verdict, disregarded the foreknowledge of the inspired men of old, made void the words of those famous pillars, set aside the divine messages of the Holy Spirit, and simply thrust away all the glory concerning him — completing the economy of death by an apparition in the air, enslaving all things by the compulsion of fear, and holding those present in check with a dreadful frown. For if, as God, he had shaken a rock with a word, rocked a building with a word, brought forth thick darkness with a word, sent the fury of wild beasts against them with a word, he would have done wrong in subduing the governor and the high priests by force; and by forcing them to accept even what is good he would have offended against justice. In this too he would have been suspected of working his wonders by sorcery, and been judged one of the so-called Gorgons — if he had terrified Pilate with extraordinary prodigies, frightened the priests with stranger signs, brought the Jewish nation into subjection with sights of apparitions. Thereupon falsehood would have made war on truth; thereupon even the marvels he had done would have introduced a base suspicion among men, as though the works had been done not in truth but in shadow and false appearance; thereupon everything done well and long before, whether on land or sea, in city or country, would all have been slandered, thought and judged a dream and not a waking reality; thereupon the foreknowledge of the ancients would have been unfulfilled. Thereupon Jeremiah, calling him an innocent lamb led as a sacrifice, would have erred; and again, in writing of God the Word as living among men, he would have lied greatly — for one who does things foreign to men does not live among men, but has a separate watchtower of his own. Thereupon another, speaking in the person of the Only-begotten, “They gave gall for my food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink,” would have lied completely. For who, struck by the lightning of his visitation, would have dared to prepare vinegar and bring gall? Who would not have trembled, seeing him stern and fearsome, with a dreadful look as he spoke, now hidden while he spoke and was present, now suddenly seen and again invisible? Tell me, who, seeing a face full of prodigies, would not have shrunk back? Who would have forged a cross, or wood, or goad, or sharp nails? Who would have dared to seize the one who cannot be held? Who would seize as a man one who spoke and did what is above man? And if no wood had been fixed in the earth, no headed nail sharpened, the suffering that came through wood not cleansed, nor the one pierced through by wickedness made whole, then neither would Habakkuk, saying that he has horns in his hands — that is, the nails of the cross or its arms — have foretold anything clearly, nor would Moses, recounting long before his life hanging, have been trustworthy. Everything would be false, true only in word, the works of piety lying dead long ago; and it would be right to seek and expect another Jesus, for the one proclaimed beforehand in the books would not have come, since, as I said, he did not keep to that manner, but became man as a strange spectacle. For if, like Apollonius, he had made sport of the world by the sorcery of his art, and while speaking solemnly to an emperor in the very midst of the palace had at the same moment been hoeing the garden-beds with the gardeners, the world would truly have been led astray with justice, and the whole creation would have been wrapped in the gloom of deceit, blindly serving a philosopher-sorcerer able to snatch away his body by wickedness and to cover the name of godliness with apparitions. Doing such things, he would no longer have been judged God or Son of God, but one of the dabblers in magic and the sophists of this life. So that no such stumbling block might burst in upon the saving Passion, and no law of sorcery, taken up as a suspicion, might stain the mystery of the economy, he endured as man to undergo the insults, feeling no shame; for he had an impassible indweller, and did not admit the meaning of shame. For as a vessel filled with fire within does not admit the cold applied from outside, but repels it, being warmed within, so Jesus, having God dwelling in him, a divine fire that cannot be overcome or spent, counted the coldness of the insults as nothing and was not put out of countenance when he saw the reproaches. For as a boy who sees much laughter poured on him by boys of his own age is not ashamed, so Christ turned away the jeers of the Jews, as coming at him not from men but from infants. And as a rock that receives the trails of countless reptiles takes no track, no rub, no impression, bearing the creeping things by its natural hardness and receiving no scratch from them, so Jesus, when the Jewish band rushed at him like reptiles, remained firmly unharmed in the manner of a rock, receiving no shame as an impression. Besides, he had to hold back his divine powers before the Passion, so that after the Passion, or in the Passion itself, having burst Hades, cleft the earth, raised a company of bodies restored to life, and shown the procession of the departed, he might show who the sufferer was and who dwelt within. For if at one stroke creation was shaken by the one who seemed to have suffered, then without doubt it was God and Creator in him who shook the world and quenched the orgies of the senseless. For a soldier is made known to the enemy for what he is not before the engagement but after it. For what is greater than to come back from Hades within three days? It is therefore truly a law, and a fitting order, that Christ, when brought before Pilate, did nothing marvellous: so that he might not, as in a theatre, hold back the wickedness of the beasts against him with some strange and grim mask, but rather provoke them by his humility to the contest of battle, and, as one who loves the good, overcome their cruelty with intelligence and strength. Hence the one who appeared humble in the engagement was seen most fearsome after it: the earth could not bear him, nor heaven endure to look on the contest; the one ran away here and there and fled far off in earthquakes, the other shut, so to speak, the eye of its light and could no longer bear to see what was happening. And let this suffice for you as the answer about the Passion.

[The Christian (Macarius) answers the objection on “If it is possible, let the cup pass” (3.2).] As to how he was in anguish over the Passion and trembled at those who came against him, I now set out the heading for you more clearly, even if the wording seems contradictory and unclear. For to say, “Do not fear those who kill the body,” and himself to fear the approach of death, and to melt so far as to beg off death in prayer, saying, “Father, if it is possible, let the cup pass,” seems to fight against his own commands and to annul his own legislation of encouragement. For if he teaches others not to fear death, but himself prays it away with great intensity, the matter is very obscure as far as the wording goes. But one must not look only superficially at the wording; one must track down the sense of the economy hidden in it. As wise physicians do not judge only the evident unpleasantness of a herb, but with understanding reckon the benefit hidden in the plant and set great store by it, in the same way we who apply ourselves to the divine teachings must not attend only to the unpleasantness of the wording, but also seek the hidden economy and search out the concealed profit. So we must now examine what he means when he says, “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.” Having taught the disciples to despise death and having armed them with the steadfast weapons of endurance, he himself shrinks from death, shudders, and trembles — through, as I said, a surpassing achievement of the economy. Hear what this truly is. The enemy was in doubt, afraid that Christ might truly be God and Son of God, and he delayed sending the multitude of the Jews into battle, putting it off, and did not bring the appointed time of the Passion into effect. For fear had seized him that, thinking to engage a man, he would collide with God and be destroyed, struck as if in blindness. For he saw the dead called by him from their tombs to life, and the blind led up from a dark prison to bright and shining enjoyment; he saw sufferings driven from men all at once and diseases fleeing at a single word; he saw the sea become firm as a highway for his walking; he saw winds brought to calm after a great roaring; he saw heaven opened on high to bear witness to him; he heard a voice thunder out of an ethereal cataract; he heard from on high a beloved and only-begotten Son brilliantly proclaimed; and chewing these things over each day, he did not dare to arm his own phalanx, astonished at what was said. And had the Lord's Passion not taken place, it would have followed that the whole world remained unrestored; that everything incurred the utmost ridicule; that the offence of disobedience remained indelible; that the bruises of transgression were never cleansed nor the black eyes of the curse undone; that falls worse than those before sprang up; that human nature was utterly destroyed; that the stage became harsher than a tragedy — if he who was present, holding out freedom from suffering through suffering to those present, had not suffered, because of the demon's scheming. So, that this evil might not happen — more grievous than every evil, beyond all dejection and disaster — he lays bare the man: he feigns fear, shrinks from the Passion, is in anguish at death, puts on the mark of weakness, takes on the humble look of men, so that he may provoke the enemy and, like a beast from its lair, shake him out with the din of his voice. For there were two things through which man was defeated and cast down: the tree and the food of the tree. The fall that came by food he had conquered by fasting; and he had conquered by feigning hunger. For while he was not hungry, the tempter kept quiet and hid the villainy of his own wickedness; but when the one who fasted desired to eat, the tempter rushed at Christ as at one who was weak, and engaging him was defeated, and withdrew far off, as it is written, “He departed from him until an opportune time.” Since, then, the devil — who earlier wished to deceive Christ through food, as he had Adam — had parted from the fast defeated, and did not dare to engage again, carrying the marks of his blows, for this reason the Only-begotten, the only champion, always conquering and nowhere conquered, pretends to be afraid, to lure him again into battle, just as at first, by being hungry, he provoked him into the struggle and, conquering, threw down the one who had once conquered through food. Having, then, cleansed away by his athlete's fast, with endurance, the disease that came from the food, he hastened to undo the deceit that came from the tree, correcting through a tree the rash tree — or rather the one who rashly tasted of it — so that, when the cross had been rooted or fixed in the earth, the general might from it shoot and cast down the tyrant who sat upon another tree, slaying from a tree the enemy in a tree. So the Saviour, hastening and speeding the cross more than was needed, cries out piteously, shouts more movingly, and importunes the Father with earnest supplications — not that the cup may pass, but that it may come more quickly. And he did well to call the Passion a cup and not a passion; for what was being done held gladness, not grief, and the Passion was sweet nectar and a most pleasant drink, which the Saviour drank and pledged to believers, breathing forth life. If it were not so, he would not have said “cup.” Hastening for the cup to be mixed more quickly, because of the one who was blind and did not see — to tell the secret of the economy — he says, “Let it pass,” so that the enemy, hearing Christ's pitiable voice, might rush on with his own phalanx sooner than he should, and be routed and carry off the final defeat; so that, lured by the humility of the word, he might perish like a dragon impaled on a hook. An experienced fisherman has often done this: wishing to take a large fish from the deep, he puts a small worm round the hook and catches it unawares, deceived by the greed of its belly. So Christ, wishing to draw up by the throat the dragon who hides in the sea of life, author of evil, villainous and deceitful, wraps the body like a worm round the hook of the Godhead, and speaking through it lures the intelligible and spiritual serpent. Therefore, as man, singing long before, he made this known, saying, “But I am a worm and not a man.” This worm, joined to God the Word and now held in the open sea of mortal life, provoked the dragon's mouth against itself, and held him while seeming to be held. This worm secretly ate through the tree of death. This worm, creeping unseen under the mound of the powerless, raised the voiceless bodies of the dead. This worm, coiling round Hades, strangled the commanders of the garrison sitting there and, seizing the mighty ones there, bound them fast. This worm, going down to the archives of tyranny, cut through the records of sins, destroying all in which the offences of men had been written. This worm made away with the devil's ark, which he had built and made from the tree of disobedience, in which he had laid up and hidden the robe of human glory. This worm came into being without intercourse or partnership; it is mystical, only-begotten, ineffable. Through this worm the mystical hook drew up the primeval dragon, of whom one of the holy chosen ones prophesied, “You will draw the dragon with a hook.” Our answer is sufficient for you, and the account is plain that Christ begged off the Passion for the sake of the common economy.