Against Celsus 5.32–5.44

And from this let those who are able to see such great things learn that the one to whom fell those who formerly had not sinned is far more powerful than the others; since he has been able, taking chosen ones from the portion of all, to withdraw them from those who received them for punishment, and to bring them to laws and a life that contributes to the forgetting of their former sins. But, as we said before, let these things be said by us in a hidden way. They show what was misheard by those who said that "the parts of the earth were from the beginning allotted to different overseers and divided into certain dominions, and are administered in this way"; from whom Celsus too took the words set out above. But since those who moved "from the east" were, because of their sins, handed over "to a base mind" and "to dishonourable passions" and "in the desires of their hearts to impurity," so that, glutted with sin, they might hate it, we will not submit to Celsus's opinion when he says that because of the overseers allotted to the parts of the earth the things done among each people are rightly done; rather, we wish not to do what is done among them in the way that pleases those overseers. For we see that it is holy to abolish what has been customary in each place from the beginning by better and more divine laws, which Jesus, as the most powerful, laid down, rescuing "us from the present evil age" and from "the rulers of this age who are being brought to nothing"; and that it is unholy not to throw oneself upon the one who has appeared and been shown to be purer and more powerful than all rulers, to whom God said, as the prophets foretold many generations before: "Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession." For "he himself" has become the "expectation" of us who are from "the nations" and have believed in him and in the God over all, his Father.

These things have been said by us not only in reply to what was set out about the overseers, but they also go some way toward anticipating what Celsus says against us, where he says: "Let the second group come forward; I will ask them where they have come from, or what founder of ancestral laws they have. They will say none, since they themselves started from there, and they bring their teacher and chorus-leader from nowhere else; yet they have broken away from the Jews." We have come, then, each of us, "in the last days," when our Jesus came to live among us, to "the manifest mountain of the Lord," the Word that is "above" every word, and to the house "of God," which "is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth." And we see in what way this house is built "on the tops of the mountains," all the prophetic words, which are its foundation. And this "house" is lifted up "above the hills," those who seem among human beings to profess something exceptional in wisdom and truth. And we, "all the nations," come to it, and we, the many nations, go and say to one another, urging each other on to the worship of God that shone forth "in the last days" through Jesus Christ: "Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will tell us his way, and we will walk in it." For the "law" went out from those in "Zion" and passed over to us, spiritual. And "the word of the Lord" also went out from that "Jerusalem," so that it might spread everywhere and judge "between the nations," choosing those it sees are obedient and rebuking "many people," the disobedient. And to those who ask us where we have come from or what founder we have, we say that we have come, according to the counsels of Jesus, to beat our rational "swords," warlike and insolent, "into ploughshares," and we refashion the "spears" of our former fighting "into pruning hooks." For we no longer take up "sword against nation," nor do we learn "war any more," having become sons of peace through Jesus, who is our founder, instead of the ancestral customs in which we were "strangers to the covenants"; receiving a law for which, giving thanks to the one who rescued us from error, we say: "How false are the idols our fathers acquired, and there is none among them who gives rain." Our chorus-leader and teacher, then, having come out from the Jews, holds the whole world as his own by the word of his teaching. And having anticipated these things, we have overturned as best we could a passage of Celsus that comes many pages later, joining it to the passages of his set out here.

So as not to pass over what Celsus says in between, come, let us set that out too: "One might also use Herodotus as a witness on this point, who says: 'For the people of the city of Marea and of Apis, who live in the parts of Egypt bordering on Libya, thinking themselves Libyans and not Egyptians, and vexed at the religious rules about sacrifices, and wishing not to be barred from cows, sent to Ammon saying that they had nothing in common with the Egyptians; for they lived outside the Delta and did not agree with them, and they wished to be allowed to eat everything. But the god would not let them do this, saying that Egypt was the land that the Nile reaches and waters, and that those were Egyptians who live below the city of Elephantine and drink from this river.' This is what Herodotus reports. And Ammon is no worse at conveying the will of the divine powers than the angels of the Jews; so it is not at all unjust for each people to practise its own customs. Indeed, we will find the greatest difference among them from nation to nation, and yet each people thinks itself to be best at holding customs: of the Ethiopians, those who live in Meroe revere 'Zeus and Dionysus alone,' the Arabians Urania and Dionysus, these alone; all the Egyptians revere Osiris and Isis, the people of Sais Athena, and the people of Naucratis, not long ago, began to name Sarapis, and the rest according to their nomes, each in their own way. And some abstain from sheep, revering them as sacred, others from goats, others from crocodiles, others from cows, while they abstain from pigs, loathing them. For the Scythians, indeed, it is a fine thing even to feast on human beings; and there are Indians who think they act piously in eating even their fathers. And somewhere the same Herodotus says (I will again use his own words for the sake of trustworthiness), he reports thus: 'For if someone were to set it before all mankind, bidding them choose the finest customs of all customs, after examining them each would choose their own; so much does each think its own customs the finest by far. It is not likely, then, that anyone but a madman would make a mockery of such things. That all human beings think thus about customs one can judge by many other proofs, and in particular by this. Darius, during his reign, summoned the Greeks who were present and asked them for what price they would be willing to eat their fathers when they died; and they said they would not do it for anything. After this Darius summoned those Indians called Callatiae, who eat their parents, and asked them, in the presence of the Greeks, who understood what was said through an interpreter, for what price they would agree to burn their fathers with fire when they died; and they cried out loudly and bade him speak no evil. So these things are customary now, and Pindar seems to me to have been right when he wrote that custom is king of all.'"

Through these words Celsus's argument seems to be heading toward the claim that all human beings should live according to their ancestral customs and would not be blamed for this; but that Christians, having abandoned their ancestral customs, and not being a single nation as the Jews are, are culpable in attaching themselves to the teaching of Jesus. Let him tell us, then, whether those who study philosophy and are taught not to be superstitious will rightly abandon their ancestral customs, so as even to eat what is forbidden in their native lands, or whether they will do this contrary to what is right. For if, because of philosophy and the teachings against superstition, they do not keep their ancestral customs and would eat what their fathers forbade them, why should not Christians too, since reason chooses not to fuss about statues and shrines, or even about the created works of God, but to rise above them and present the soul to the Creator, do the same as the philosophers and do it without blame? But if, to preserve the thesis he has set himself, Celsus or those who approve his views say that even one who has studied philosophy will keep his ancestral customs, it is time for philosophers, among the Egyptians for example, to become utterly ridiculous, guarding against eating an onion so as to keep their ancestral customs, or certain parts of the body, such as the head and the shoulder, so as not to transgress what their fathers handed down to them. And I do not yet speak of those Egyptians who shudder at the body's trifling noises of wind, that if one of them becomes a philosopher and keeps his ancestral customs, he would be a ridiculous philosopher acting unphilosophically. So too, then, the one who has been brought by reason to worship the God of the universe, but because of ancestral customs remains down below among statues and human-made shrines, and is unwilling to rise up in his choice to the Creator, would be like those who have learned philosophy but fear what is not to be feared and think it impiety to eat such and such things.

And what sort of god is Herodotus's Ammon, whose words Celsus has adopted as proof that each should keep his ancestral customs? For their Ammon does not allow the people of the city of Marea and of Apis, who live in the parts bordering on Libya, to be indifferent about eating cows; a thing that is not only indifferent by its own nature, but also does not prevent anyone from being noble and good. And if their Ammon had forbidden the eating of cows because the animal is useful for farming, and moreover because their kind increases chiefly through the females, perhaps the argument would have had some plausibility; but as it is, he simply wants them, because they drink from the Nile, to keep the laws of the Egyptians about cows. And in this Celsus, mocking the angels among the Jews who convey the will of God, said that "Ammon is no worse at conveying the will of the divine powers than the angels of the Jews"; but he did not examine their words and appearances, and what they mean. For he would have seen that "it is not for oxen that God cares," even where he seems to legislate about oxen or irrational animals, but that what was written for the sake of human beings contains, under the guise of laws about irrational animals, a certain teaching about nature. Celsus, then, says that no one does anything unjust in wishing to practise his own customs; and it follows on his view that the Scythians do nothing unjust when they feast on human beings according to their ancestral customs. And those Indians who eat their fathers think they act piously, and according to Celsus they at least do nothing unjust. At any rate, he sets out a passage of Herodotus arguing that each rightly uses his ancestral customs, and he seems to approve the Indians called Callatiae in the time of Darius, who ate their parents, since, when Darius asked for what price they would be willing to give up this custom, they cried out loudly and bade him speak no evil.

Since, then, there are in general two laws before us, one being the law of nature, which God would lay down, and the other the written law in cities, it is good, where the written law does not oppose the law of God, not to trouble the citizens on the pretext of foreign laws; but where the law of nature, that is, of God, commands things contrary to the written law, see whether reason does not choose to bid a long farewell to what is written and to the intent of the lawgivers, and to give oneself to God the lawgiver and choose to live according to his word, even if one must do this with dangers and countless toils and deaths and disgrace. For it is absurd, when what pleases God is different from what pleases some of the laws in cities, and it is impossible to please both God and those who uphold such laws, to despise the actions by which one will please the Creator of the universe and choose those by which one will be displeasing to God, but pleasing to laws that are no laws and to their friends. And if in other matters it is reasonable to prefer the law of nature, which is the law of God, to the law written and enacted by human beings contrary to God's law, how much more must this be done in the laws about God? And we will not, like the Ethiopians who live around Meroe, worship Zeus and Dionysus alone, as pleases them; nor will we honour Ethiopian gods at all in the Ethiopian way. Nor, like the Arabians, will we consider Urania and Dionysus alone gods, nor gods at all, in whom female and male have been glorified (for the Arabians worship Urania as female and Dionysus as male). Nor, like all the Egyptians, will we consider Osiris and Isis gods; nor will we rank Athena with them according to the opinion of the people of Sais. And if the older people of Naucratis chose to worship other gods, and those who began only yesterday or the day before to worship Sarapis, a god who never existed, we will not for that reason say that there is a new god who did not exist before and was not known to human beings. For the Son of God, "the firstborn of all creation," even if he appeared to have become man recently, is not for that reason new. For the divine words know him to be the oldest of all created things, and that it was to him that God said concerning the creation of man: "Let us make man in our image and likeness."

I wish to show how unreasonably Celsus says that each should revere his own and ancestral gods. For he says that the Ethiopians who live in Meroe know only two gods, Zeus and Dionysus, and revere them alone; and the Arabians also only two, Dionysus, as the Ethiopians do, and Urania, their own. According to his account, neither do the Ethiopians revere Urania nor the Arabians Zeus. If, then, an Ethiopian, finding himself among the Arabians by some circumstance, were thought impious for not revering Urania, and were in danger of death for this, would it be right for the Ethiopian to die, or to act contrary to his ancestral customs and worship Urania? If it is right for him to act contrary to his ancestral customs, he will act unholily, as far as Celsus's words go; but if he were led off to death, let him show the reasonableness of choosing death, when I do not know whether the Ethiopian doctrine teaches them to philosophize about the immortality of the soul and the honour for piety, if they revere the gods held such according to their ancestral laws. The same can be said about Arabians who by some circumstance stay among the Ethiopians around Meroe. For they too, taught to revere Urania and Dionysus alone, will not worship Zeus with the Ethiopians; and if, thought to be impious, they were led off to death, let Celsus say what they would reasonably do. As for the myths about Osiris and Isis, it is superfluous and untimely for us to list them now. Even if the myths are interpreted figuratively, they will teach us to revere lifeless water and the earth that lies beneath human beings and all animals; for so, I think, they take Osiris as water and Isis as earth. About Sarapis there is a long and conflicting story: he came onto the scene only yesterday or the day before, through certain magical practices of Ptolemy, who wished to show the people of Alexandria a god, as it were, made manifest. We have read in Numenius the Pythagorean about his construction, that he shares in the substance of all the animals and plants administered by nature; so that he might seem to be made a god, with impious rites and magic that invokes demons, not by sculptors alone but also by magicians and sorcerers and by the demons charmed by their incantations.

One must therefore inquire what is edible and what is not in a way fitting for a rational and civilized animal that does everything by reasoning, and not revere sheep, or goats, or cows arbitrarily. To abstain from these is moderate, for much benefit comes to human beings from these animals; but to spare even crocodiles, and to hold them sacred to some mythological god or other, how is this not the most foolish thing of all? For it is the mark of people quite thunderstruck to spare animals that do not spare us, and to cherish animals that feast on human beings. But Celsus approves of those who revere and cherish crocodiles according to some ancestral custom, and he has written no word against them; while Christians appear to him blameworthy, who are taught to loathe vice and turn away from the works of vice, and to revere and honour virtue as begotten by God and as being the Son of God. For we must not think that Wisdom and Righteousness, which in our view are the Son of God, are female in substance because their names are feminine, as his genuine disciple showed when he said of him: "who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption." So even if we speak of a second God, let them know that by the second God we mean nothing other than the virtue that comprises all virtues, and the Reason (Logos) that comprises every reason of the things that have come into being according to nature and principally, and for the benefit of the universe; which Reason, we say, was joined and united to the soul of Jesus above every other soul, since he alone was able to receive perfectly the highest share in Reason itself, Wisdom itself, and Righteousness itself.

And since, having said such things about the different laws, Celsus adds: "Pindar seems to me to have been right when he wrote that custom is king of all," come, let us discuss this too. What law do you say, sir, is king of all? If you mean the laws of each city, this is false; for not all are ruled by the same law. It should rather have been said, "laws are kings of all," since some law is king of each nation among all. But if you understand law in the proper sense, this is by nature king of all things; even if some, like robbers who have revolted from the law, deny it and live lawlessly and unjustly. We Christians, then, having recognized the law that is by nature king of all, which is the same as the law of God, try to live by it, bidding a long farewell to laws that are no laws.

Let us look also at what Celsus says next, in which there is very little about Christians and a great deal about Jews. He says: "If, then, the Jews maintain their own law on these grounds, they are not to be blamed, but rather those who have abandoned their own customs and adopted those of the Jews. But if they pride themselves as knowing something wiser, and turn away from fellowship with others as not equally pure, they have already heard that not even their doctrine about heaven is their own, but, to pass over everything else, was held long ago by the Persians too, as Herodotus shows somewhere. 'For they are accustomed,' he says, 'to go up to the highest mountains and offer sacrifices to Zeus, calling the whole circle of the heaven Zeus.' I think, then, that it makes no difference whether one calls the Most High Zeus, or Zen, or Adonai, or Sabaoth, or Amoun, as the Egyptians do, or Papaeus, as the Scythians do. Nor would they be holier than others on this account, that they are circumcised; for the Egyptians and Colchians did this before them; nor because they abstain from pigs; for the Egyptians do this too, and besides from goats and sheep and oxen and fish, and Pythagoras and his disciples from beans and from all living things. Nor is it likely that they are in favour with God and loved in any way differently from others, and that angels are sent from there to them alone, as though they had been allotted some land of the blessed; for we see what sort of fortune both they and their land have been thought worthy of. Let this chorus, then, depart, having paid the penalty for its boasting, not knowing the great God, but led on and deceived by the sorcery of Moses, and having become his disciples for no good end."

It is clear that here he accuses the Jews of falsely supposing themselves to be the chosen portion of the God over all in preference to all the nations. He accuses them of boasting, as though they boast of the great God, yet do not know him, but were led on by the sorcery of Moses and deceived by him, and were made his disciples for no good end. We have already spoken in part, in what went before, about the venerable and exceptional commonwealth of the Jews, when the symbol of the city of God, and of his temple, and of the priestly worship at it and at the altar, still stood among them. And if anyone, fixing his mind on the intent of the lawgiver and the commonwealth he established, were to examine their way of life and compare it with the present conduct of the other nations, he would admire none more, as far as human beings go, for having removed everything not useful to the human race and accepted only what is beneficial. That is why there were among them no athletic, theatrical, or horse-racing contests, nor women selling their bloom to anyone who wished to sow in vain and outrage the nature of human seed. And how great a thing it was among them to be taught from their tender years to rise above all perceptible nature, and never to think that God is set up anywhere in it, but to seek him above and beyond bodies! And how great to be taught, almost as soon as they were born and their reason was complete, the immortality of the soul, the courts of judgment beneath the earth, and the honours of those who have lived well! These things were proclaimed in a more mythical form to those who were still children and thought as children; but to those already seeking the meaning and wishing to advance in it, what had till then been myths, if I may call them that, were transformed into the truth hidden in them. And I think that, in a manner worthy of their being called God's portion, they despised all divination, as bewitching human beings in vain and coming from wicked demons rather than from some higher nature, and sought the knowledge of the future in souls that, through their utmost purity, had received the Spirit of the God over all.

And what need is there to say how reasonable it is, and unjust neither to master nor to slave, that one who starts from the same doctrines may not be kept a slave for more than six years? The Jews, then, would not maintain their own law on the same grounds as the other nations. For it is blameworthy of them, and brings a charge of insensibility to the superiority of their laws, if they were to think them written in the same way as the others among the nations. And even if Celsus does not wish it, the Jews know something wiser, not only than the many, but also than those who seem to philosophize; because the philosophers, after their venerable words in philosophy, fall down before idols and demons, while even the least of the Jews looks to the God over all alone. And in this respect they rightly pride themselves and turn away from fellowship with others as defiled and impious. And would that they had not sinned by breaking the law, and first killed "the prophets" and later plotted against Jesus too, so that we might have an example of the heavenly city, which Plato too sought to describe, though I do not know whether he was as able as Moses and those after him proved to be, who nurtured "a chosen race" and "a holy nation," dedicated to God, with words pure of all superstition.

Since Celsus wishes to make the venerable things of the Jews common with the laws of certain nations, come, let us consider these too. He thinks that the doctrine about heaven differs in no way from that about God, and says that the Persians, like the Jews, perform sacrifices to Zeus, going up to the highest mountains. He does not see that, as the Jews knew one God, so they had one holy house of prayer, one altar of whole burnt offerings, one altar of incense, and one high priest of God. The Jews, then, had nothing in common with the Persians, who go up to the highest mountains, which are many, and perform sacrifices that have nothing like those under the law of Moses, according to which the priests of the Jews served "a copy and shadow of the heavenly things," explaining in secret the intent of the law concerning the sacrifices and what they were symbols of. Let the Persians, then, call the whole circle of heaven Zeus; but we say that heaven is neither Zeus nor God, since we know that even some beings lower than God have risen above the heavens and all perceptible nature. And so we understand: "Praise God, you heavens of heavens, and the water above the heavens; let them praise the name of the Lord."