Against Celsus 0.1–1.12

Our Savior and Lord Jesus Christ, when false witness was borne against him, "kept silent," and when he was accused, "answered nothing," being persuaded that his whole life and his deeds among the Jews were stronger than a voice refuting the false witness or than words of defense against the accusations. But you, God-loving Ambrose, wished—I do not know why—that I should make a defense against the false witness that Celsus bore against Christians in his writings, and against his accusation of the faith of the churches in his book. As though there were not a plain refutation in the facts themselves, and a reasoning stronger than all writings, which both makes the false witness vanish and does not allow the accusations even the plausibility of having any force! That Jesus "kept silent" when false witness was borne against him, it is enough for the present to set out what Matthew says, for Mark wrote words of equal force. Matthew's text runs thus: "The high priest and the council sought false witness against Jesus, that they might put him to death, and they found none, though many false witnesses came forward. At last two came forward and said: This man said, I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days. And the high priest stood up and said to him: Do you answer nothing? What is it that these men testify against you? But Jesus kept silent." And that he did not answer when he was accused is written as follows: "Now Jesus stood before the governor, and the governor asked him, saying: Are you the King of the Jews? And Jesus said to him: You say so. And when he was accused by the chief priests and elders he answered nothing. Then Pilate said to him: Do you not hear how many things they testify against you? And he did not answer him to a single word, so that the governor wondered greatly."

And indeed it was worthy of wonder, among those capable of even moderate understanding, that a man accused and falsely witnessed against, who was able to defend himself and to show himself guilty of no charge, and to recount the praises of his own life and of his mighty works as done by God, so as to give the judge a way to pronounce more favorably on him, did not do this, but despised his accusers and nobly disregarded them. That the judge would have released Jesus without hesitation if he had made a defense is clear from what is recorded of him, where he said: "Which of the two do you want me to release to you, Barabbas or Jesus who is called Christ?" and from what the Scripture adds, saying: "For he knew that it was out of envy that they had handed him over." Jesus, then, is always falsely witnessed against, and so long as there is wickedness among human beings there is no time when he is not accused. And he himself even now keeps silent before these things and makes no answer with his voice; but he makes his defense in the life of his genuine disciples, which cries out what really matters and is stronger than all false witness, refuting and overturning the false witnesses and accusations.

I venture, then, to say that the defense you ask me to make weakens the defense that lies in the facts and the power of Jesus that is evident to all who are not without perception. Nevertheless, so that I may not seem reluctant about the task you set me, I have tried, as far as my present ability allows, to dictate against each thing Celsus wrote what seemed to me to overturn his arguments, which cannot shake any believer. And may no one be found who has received such love of God "in Christ Jesus" that his resolve could be shaken by the words of Celsus or of anyone like him. Paul, listing countless things that usually separate people "from the love of Christ" and from "the love of God in Christ Jesus," all of which the love in him surpassed, did not rank argument among the things that separate. Notice that first he says: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written: For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are counted as sheep for the slaughter. But in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." And second, setting out another class of things that by nature separate those who are unsteady in godliness, he says: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And truly it would be fitting for us to take pride in a tribulation that does not separate us, or in the things listed after it; but not so Paul and the apostles, and anyone who has become like them, because they are far above such things, saying: "In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us," which is greater than conquering. And if apostles too must take pride in not being separated "from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," they would take pride that "neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities," nor any of the things that follow, can "separate" them "from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." So I do not rejoice with a believer in Christ whose faith can be shaken by Celsus—who no longer even lives the common life among men but has long been dead—or by any plausibility of argument. I do not know in what class to reckon one who needs arguments against the charges Celsus writes in his books against Christians to restore him from wavering in faith to standing firm in it. Nevertheless, since among the mass of those reckoned believers some might be found who are shaken and overturned by Celsus's writings, but are healed by a defense against them, if what is said has a character that pulls down Celsus's views and establishes the truth, I decided to obey your command and to dictate an answer to the treatise you sent me. I do not think anyone who has made even a little progress in philosophy would agree that it is a "true word," as Celsus entitled it.

Paul, perceiving that there are in Greek philosophy things not to be despised, plausible to the many, which present falsehood as truth, says about them: "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elements of the world and not according to Christ." And seeing some greatness displayed in the words of the wisdom of the world, he said that the words of the philosophers were "according to the elements of the world." But no one with sense would say that Celsus's writings are "according to the elements of the world." Those, since they had something deceptive, he called "empty deceit," perhaps to distinguish them from a deceit that is not empty, which Jeremiah perceived when he dared to say to God: "You deceived me, Lord, and I was deceived; you prevailed and were strong." But Celsus's writings seem to me to have no deceit at all, and so not even empty deceit, such as the writings of those who founded schools in philosophy, and who took up no ordinary intelligence for that purpose, possess. And just as one would not call just any false statement in geometrical theorems a false diagram, or write it up for the sake of the exercise it gives, so the things that are to be called, like those, "empty deceit" and "human tradition, according to the elements of the world" must resemble the thoughts of those who founded schools in philosophy.

I decided to place this preface at the beginning after I had dictated everything up to the speech Celsus puts in the mouth of the Jew against Jesus, so that whoever reads what I have dictated against Celsus may meet it first and see that this book has not been written at all for those firm in faith, but either for those wholly without taste of faith in Christ, or for those whom the apostle called weak "in the faith." He said: "Welcome the one who is weak in faith." Let the preface also offer this excuse: that I dictated the beginning of my answer to Celsus with one plan and what follows the beginning with another. At first I intended to note down the headings and briefly what could be said against them, and after that to give the argument a full body; but later the subject itself suggested to me, to save time, that I should be content with what had been dictated in that way at the beginning, and in what followed contend, as far as I could, in the manner of a treatise against Celsus's charges against us. So I ask pardon for the beginning of what follows the preface. And if you are not effectively moved by what was dictated afterward either, I ask the same pardon for it too, and refer you—if you still want the answers to Celsus's arguments to come to you by dictation—to those wiser than I and able to overturn Celsus's charges against us in words and books. Better, however, is the one who, even on reading Celsus's treatise, does not need any defense against it at all, but despises everything in his book as something that even an ordinary believer in Christ rightly despises because of the Spirit that is in him.

Celsus's first heading, in his wish to slander Christianity, is that Christians make secret agreements with one another contrary to the laws: of agreements, he says, some are public, those made according to the laws, and others secret, those concluded contrary to what is lawful. And he wants to slander the so-called love of Christians for one another, which arises, he says, from their common danger and is stronger than oaths. Since, then, he harps on the common law, saying that the agreements of Christians are contrary to it, we must answer this: suppose someone living among the Scythians, who have lawless laws, had no opportunity to leave and were forced to live among them. He would reasonably, for the sake of the law of truth—which to the Scythians is lawlessness—make agreements with those who think as he does, contrary to what the Scythians hold lawful. So, before the tribunal of truth, the laws of the nations about images and godless polytheism are laws of Scythians, or anything more impious than Scythians. It is not unreasonable, then, to make agreements contrary to the laws when they are made for the sake of truth. For just as, if some people secretly made agreements to kill a tyrant who had seized the city, they would do well, so also Christians, since the one they call the devil, and falsehood, rule as tyrant, make agreements against the devil that are contrary to the devil's laws, and for the salvation of others whom they can persuade to revolt from the law that is, as it were, Scythian and tyrannical.

Next he says that the doctrine—evidently Judaism, on which Christianity depends—was barbarian in origin. And fairly enough he does not reproach the teaching for its barbarian origin, but praises the barbarians as capable of discovering doctrines; he adds, however, that the Greeks are better at judging, establishing, and putting into practice for virtue what the barbarians discovered. From what he says, then, we have this for the defense of what is contained in Christianity, since it is true: someone who comes to the teaching from Greek doctrines and training would not only judge it true, but by practicing it would also establish it and supply what seems lacking from the standpoint of Greek demonstration, establishing the truth of Christianity. We must say further that the teaching has a demonstration of its own, more divine than Greek demonstration from dialectic. This more divine one the apostle calls the demonstration "of the Spirit and of power": "of the Spirit" because of the prophecies, which are able to convince the reader, above all in what concerns Christ; and "of power" because of the wonderful mighty works, which can be shown to have happened from many other proofs and also because traces of them are still preserved among those who live according to the will of the Word.

After this, having said that Christians do and teach what they like in secret, and that they do not do this without reason, since they are warding off the death penalty that hangs over them, he compares their danger with the dangers that befell philosophy, as in the case of Socrates; he could have added Pythagoras and other philosophers too. We must answer this: in the case of Socrates the Athenians at once repented, and no bitterness about him remained among them, nor in the case of Pythagoras; at any rate the Pythagoreans kept up their schools for a long time in Italy, in what was called Magna Graecia. But against the Christians the Roman Senate, the emperors of each period, the army, the peoples, and the relatives of believers made war on the teaching, and they would have stopped it, overcome by the plotting of so many, if by divine power it had not risen above it and climbed over it, so as to conquer the whole world plotting against it.

Let us see also how he thinks he can slander our moral teaching on the ground that it is shared with the other philosophers and is not a venerable or new doctrine. To this we must say that, for those who teach a just judgment of God, punishment for sins would have been ruled out if all did not have, according to the common notions, a sound preconception about moral matters. So it is no wonder that the same God has sown in the souls of all human beings what he taught through the prophets and the Savior, so that every human being may be without excuse at the divine judgment, having the purpose "of the law written" in his own heart. This the Scripture hinted at in what the Greeks think a myth, when it portrayed God writing the commandments with his own "finger" and giving them to Moses, which the wickedness of those who made the calf "broke"—as if it were saying that the flood of sin washed them away. The second time God wrote them again and gave them after Moses had hewn stones, as though the prophetic word were preparing the soul, after the first sin, for a second writing of God.

Setting out the teaching about idolatry as peculiar to those who follow the Word, he even adds support for it, saying that for this reason they do not regard gods made with hands as gods, since it is not reasonable that things made by the most worthless craftsmen, of wicked character, often fashioned by unjust men, should be gods. In what follows, then, wanting to make it common property, as though it were not first discovered by this teaching, he quotes a saying of Heraclitus: "Those who approach lifeless things as gods act as if one were to hold conversation with houses." About this too we must say that, as with the rest of moral teaching, notions were sown in human beings from which Heraclitus, and any other Greek or barbarian, thought of establishing this. For he mentions the Persians too as thinking so, citing Herodotus who records it. We will add ourselves that Zeno of Citium too says in his Republic: "There will be no need to build temples; for no temple ought to be thought of great worth or holy, since it is the work of builders and mechanics." It is clear, then, that on this doctrine too what must be done has been written "in the hearts" of human beings by the letters of God.

After this, moved by I know not what, Celsus says that Christians seem to get their power from the names of certain demons and from incantations, hinting, I suppose, at those who charm and drive out demons. But he seems plainly to be slandering the teaching. For they do not seem to get their power from incantations but from the name of Jesus, together with the recital of the stories about him. For these, when spoken, have often made demons leave human beings, especially when those who speak them speak from a sound disposition and genuine faith. Indeed the name of Jesus has such power against the demons that sometimes it is effective even when named by wicked men. Jesus taught this when he said: "Many will say to me on that day: In your name we cast out demons and did mighty works." I do not know whether Celsus passed this over deliberately and maliciously or through ignorance. In what follows he accuses the Savior too, as having been able by sorcery to do the seemingly wonderful things he did, and as foreseeing that others, having learned the same lessons, would do the same, boasting that they do it by the power of God—people whom Jesus drives out of his own commonwealth. And he accuses him thus: if he rightly drives them out while guilty of the same things himself, he is wicked; but if he is not wicked for doing these things, neither are those who act as he did. On the contrary, even if it seems impossible to prove how Jesus did these things, it is clear that Christians use no practice of incantations but succeed by the name of Jesus and other words believed according to divine Scripture.

Next, since he often calls our doctrine secret, here too he must be refuted, since almost the whole world knows the preaching of Christians better than the opinions of the philosophers. For who does not know of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, and of the crucified one, and of his resurrection, believed by many, and of the judgment that is proclaimed, which punishes sinners as they deserve and counts the righteous worthy of reward? Even the mystery of the resurrection, not being understood, is bandied about and laughed at by unbelievers. To say, then, that in view of all this the doctrine is secret is quite absurd. That there are certain things, as it were beyond the exoteric teachings, which do not reach the many, is not peculiar to the Christian teaching alone but belongs also to that of the philosophers, among whom some teachings were exoteric and others esoteric. Some heard Pythagoras only as "he himself said," while others were taught in secret the things not fit to reach profane ears not yet purified. And all the mysteries everywhere, in Greece and in the barbarian world, though secret, have not been slandered. So he slanders the secret element of Christianity in vain, without even understanding it accurately.

He seems, with some cleverness, to plead in a way on behalf of those who bear witness to Christianity even to death, saying: "And I do not say that one who holds a good doctrine, if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, must abandon the doctrine or pretend to have abandoned it or deny it." He even condemns those who hold Christian views but pretend not to, or deny them, saying that one who holds the doctrine ought not to pretend to have abandoned it or deny it. Celsus must be shown to contradict himself. For from other writings he is found to be an Epicurean; but here, because he seems to accuse the teaching more reasonably if he does not admit Epicurus's views, he pretends that there is in man something better than the earthly, akin to God, and he says that "those in whom this is in good condition"—that is, the soul—"strive in every way for what is akin to them" (he means God), "and long always to hear something about him and to be reminded of him." See, then, the spuriousness of his soul: having said beforehand that one who holds a good doctrine, even if he is going to be in danger among men because of it, must not abandon the doctrine nor pretend to have abandoned it nor deny it, he himself falls into all the opposite faults. For he knew that if he admitted he was an Epicurean he would have no credibility in accusing those who in any way introduce providence and set God over what exists. We have learned that there were two Epicureans named Celsus, the earlier in the time of Nero, and this one in the time of Hadrian and later.

After this he urges us to accept doctrines by following reason and a rational guide, since deception always occurs when someone assents to people without this. And he likens those who believe without reason to the begging priests of Cybele and soothsayers, to devotees of Mithras and Sabazius, and to whatever one may happen upon—apparitions of Hecate or of some other demon or demons. For as among those, he says, wicked men often take advantage of the simplicity of the easily deceived and lead them where they wish, so it happens also among Christians. He says that some, not even wishing to give or receive a reason for what they believe, use the sayings "Do not examine, but believe" and "Your faith will save you." And he says that they say: "The wisdom in the world is an evil, and foolishness a good." To this we must say that if it were possible for all to leave the business of life and devote their time to philosophy, no one should pursue any other way but this alone. For in Christianity there will be found—not to say anything vulgar—no less examination of what is believed, and explanation of the riddles in the prophets, of the parables in the Gospels, and of countless other things done or legislated symbolically. But if this is impossible, partly because of the necessities of life and partly because of human weakness, since very few rush toward reason, what better method could be found for helping the many than the one handed down to the nations by Jesus? And we ask about the multitude of believers who have put away the great flood of wickedness in which they used to wallow: is it better for them, believing without reason, to have had their characters somehow reformed and to have been helped by their belief about those punished for sins and honored for good works, or not to admit their conversion with simple faith until they give themselves to the examination of arguments? For clearly all but a very few would not receive even what they have received from simply believing, but would remain in a most wicked life. If, then, anything else establishes that the love of humanity in the teaching has not come to dwell in human life without God, this too must be counted with it. For a devout person will not think that even a physician of bodies, who has brought many sick people to health, dwells in cities and nations without God; for nothing good happens among human beings without God. And if the one who has healed the bodies of many, or improved them, does not heal without God, how much more the one who has healed and converted and improved the souls of many, attached them to the God over all, and taught them to refer every action to what pleases him and to avoid everything displeasing to God, down to the least of what is said or done or even comes into the mind?

Next, since they make much of what concerns faith, we must say that we, accepting it as useful for the many, admit that we teach those who cannot leave everything and pursue the examination of reason to believe even without reason; but they, while not admitting this, do it in practice. For who, when urged toward philosophy and throwing himself at random into some school of philosophers, or because he has found such-and-such a teacher, comes to it in any other way than by believing that that school is better? For he does not wait to hear the arguments of all the philosophers and of the different schools, and the refutation of these and the establishment of others, and then choose to be a Stoic, a Platonist, a Peripatetic, an Epicurean, or of any school of philosophers whatever. Rather, by some irrational impulse, even if they do not wish to admit it, they come to practice, say, the Stoic teaching, leaving the rest: despising the Platonic as humbler than the others, or the Peripatetic as most human and as admitting, more candidly than the other schools, the goods of human life. And some, disturbed at first encounter with the argument about providence by what happens on earth to the wicked and the good, have too hastily assented to the view that there is no providence at all, and have chosen the teaching of Epicurus and Celsus.

If, then, we must believe, as the argument has shown, some one of those who introduced schools among Greeks or barbarians, how much more must we believe the God over all and the one who teaches that he alone must be worshiped, and that the rest must be disregarded, either as not existing, or as existing and worthy of honor but not of adoration and worship? About these things one who does not merely believe but also contemplates matters with reason will state the demonstrations that occur to him and are found by diligent inquiry. And since all human affairs depend on faith, how is it not more reasonable to believe God rather than them? For who sails, or marries, or begets children, or casts seed on the earth, without believing that the better outcome will come, though the opposite is possible and sometimes happens? Yet the faith that the better outcome, the one prayed for, will come makes everyone venture even on things uncertain that could turn out otherwise. And if hope, and a more hopeful faith about the future, holds life together in every action whose outcome is uncertain, how will this not more reasonably be accepted by one who believes—beyond the sea that is sailed, the earth that is sown, the wife that is married, and the other affairs of human life—in the God who created all these things, and in him who with surpassing greatness of mind and divine magnanimity dared to present this teaching to those in every part of the world, with great dangers and a death thought shameful, which he endured for human beings, and who taught those who were persuaded at the beginning to serve his teaching to dare, with every danger and with deaths always expected, to travel everywhere in the world for the salvation of human beings?

Next, since Celsus says in these very words: "If they are willing to answer me—not as one who is testing them (for I know everything), but as one who cares equally for all—it will be well. But if they are unwilling and say, as they usually do, 'Do not examine,'" and so on, "they must," he says, "teach me what kind of things they are that they say, and from where they have flowed," and so on. To the words "for I know everything," which he has most boastfully ventured, we must say that if he had read the prophets especially, which are admittedly full of riddles and of words obscure to the many, and if he had met the parables of the Gospels, and the rest of the writing of the law and of Jewish history, and the utterances of the apostles, and after reading them had wished in good faith to enter into the meaning of the words, he would not have been so bold, nor said, "for I know everything." Not even we who have spent our time in these writings would say, "for I know everything"—for truth is dear to us. None of us will say, "I know everything of Epicurus," or will be confident that he knows everything of Plato, since there are so many disagreements even among those who expound them. Who is so bold as to say, "I know all the Stoic teaching," or "all the Peripatetic"? Unless perhaps, having heard this "for I know everything" from some stupid ordinary people who do not perceive their own ignorance, he thought that, having used such teachers, he knew everything. He seems to me to have done something like a man who visited Egypt, where the wise men of the Egyptians philosophize much, according to their ancestral writings, about what they hold to be divine, while the ordinary people, hearing certain myths whose meanings they do not understand, pride themselves on them—and who thought he knew everything about the Egyptians, having been the disciple of their ordinary people, without associating with any of the priests or learning the Egyptian secrets from any of them. What I have said about the wise and the ordinary people of the Egyptians can be seen also of the Persians, among whom there are rites honored rationally by the learned among them but performed symbolically by the many and more superficial among them. The same must be said of the Syrians and Indians and all who have both myths and writings.