Against Celsus 5.5–5.17

For it is not reasonable to invoke angels without having acquired a knowledge about them that is beyond human capacity. And even if, by hypothesis, the knowledge about them, being something wonderful and secret, were grasped, this very knowledge, having shown their nature and the tasks to which each is assigned, will not allow one to dare to pray to anyone other than the God over all, who is sufficient for all things, through our Saviour, the Son of God, who is the "Word," and Wisdom, and Truth, and whatever else the writings of God's prophets and of Jesus's apostles say of him. To make the holy angels of God gracious to us and to have them do everything on our behalf, it is enough that our disposition toward God, as far as human nature can, imitate their choice, since they imitate God; and that our understanding of his Son, the Word, as far as we can attain it, not be opposed to the holy angels' clearer understanding of him, but press on toward it day by day in clarity and distinctness. But Celsus, as though he had not read our holy Scriptures, answers himself as if on our behalf, that we call the angels who come down to benefit human beings a race other than God, and says that they would probably be called demons by us. He does not see that the name demons is not neutral, like the name human beings, among whom some are good and some bad; nor is it good, like the name gods, which is applied, not to the wicked, nor to demons, nor to statues, nor to animals, but by those who know the things of God to beings that are truly more divine and blessed. The name demons is always applied to wicked powers outside the grosser body, which lead human beings astray and distract them and drag them down from God and the super-heavenly things to the affairs of this world.

After this he sets out a passage about the Jews such as this: "First, then, one may wonder at the Jews, that they revere heaven and the angels in it, but pass over its most venerable and powerful parts, the sun and moon and the other stars, fixed and wandering, as though it were possible for the whole to be God but its parts not divine; or that they worship very devoutly those who are said to approach people who are blinded in darkness somewhere by crooked sorcery or who dream through dim phantoms, while those who prophesy so clearly and brightly to all, through whom rains and heat, clouds and thunders (which they worship), lightnings, crops, and all generation are dispensed, through whom God is revealed to them, the most manifest heralds of the things above, the truly heavenly angels, these they count as nothing." In this Celsus seems to me to be confused, and to have written, from things he misheard, what he did not know. For it is clear to those who examine the practices of the Jews and compare those of the Christians with them that the Jews, following the law, which says in the person of God: "You shall have no other gods besides me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or a likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth. You shall not worship them nor serve them," revere nothing other than the God over all, who made heaven and all the rest. And it is clear that those who live according to the law, revering the one who made heaven, do not revere heaven together with God; and none of those who serve the law of Moses worships the angels in heaven either. In the same way that they do not worship the sun and moon and the stars, "the ornament of heaven," they refrain from worshipping heaven and the angels in it, obeying the law that says: "And lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the ornament of heaven, you be led astray and worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations."

But taking it for granted that the Jews regard heaven as God, he adds, as though it were absurd, a charge against those who worship heaven but not also the sun and the moon and the stars, that the Jews do this "as though it were possible for the whole to be God but its parts not divine"; and he seems to call heaven the whole, and the sun and moon and stars its parts. Neither Jews nor Christians plainly say that heaven is God. But let it be granted, on his view, that the Jews say heaven is God, and let the sun and moon and stars be parts of heaven (which is not at all true; for neither are the animals and plants on earth parts of the earth): how is it true, even according to the Greeks, that if some whole is God, its parts too are thereby divine? The Greeks plainly say that the whole world is God: the Stoics, the first God; the Platonists, the second; and some of them, the third. Is it, then, according to such people, since the world as a whole is God, that its parts too are thereby divine, so that not only human beings but also all the irrational animals are divine, being parts of the world, and besides these the plants too? And if mountains and rivers and seas are parts of the world, then since the whole world is God, are rivers and seas also gods? But not even the Greeks will say this; rather they might call gods those who preside, as demons (or gods, as they name them), over rivers and seas. And Celsus's universal claim proves false even according to the Greeks who introduce providence: that if some whole is God, its parts are in every case divine. It follows from Celsus's argument that, if the world is God, everything in it is divine, being parts of the world; and on this reasoning flies, gnats, worms, every kind of snake, and indeed every kind of bird and fish will be divine animals; which not even those who say the world is God will say. But the Jews who live according to the law of Moses, even if they do not know how to interpret the intent of the law spoken in a hidden way and showing something secret, will say neither that heaven nor that the angels are God.

Since we claim he has been confused by certain things he misheard, come, let us make these matters clear as best we can, and show that, while Celsus thinks it Jewish to worship heaven and the angels in it, such a thing is not Jewish but a transgression of Judaism, just like worshipping the sun and moon and stars, and indeed statues. At any rate, you will find especially in Jeremiah the word of God, through the prophet, reproaching the Jewish people for worshipping such things and sacrificing "to the queen of heaven" and "to all the host of heaven." And the writings of the Christians too, accusing the sins committed among the Jews, show that these sins were committed by them when God had forsaken that people for certain sins. For in the Acts of the Apostles it is written about the Jews: "But God turned and gave them over to worship the host of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets: Did you offer me slain beasts and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness, house of Israel? And you took up the tent of Moloch and the star of the god Rompha, the images which you made to worship them." And in Paul, who was exactly trained in Jewish ways and later became a Christian through a wondrous appearance of Jesus, the following is said in the letter to the Colossians: "Let no one disqualify you, insisting on humility and the worship of angels, taking his stand on what he has seen, puffed up without reason by the mind of his flesh, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, supplied and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with the growth that is from God." Celsus, having neither read nor learned these things, has somehow represented the Jews as not breaking the law by worshipping heaven and the angels in it.

Still somewhat confused, and not having looked carefully into the subject, he supposed that the Jews, urged on by the incantations used in magic and sorcery, worship the angels in heaven because of certain phantoms that appear to those who chant the incantations. He did not see that this too, for those who did such things, was contrary to the law, which says: "You shall not follow ventriloquists, nor cling to enchanters so as to be defiled by them; I am the Lord your God." He ought, then, either not to have attributed these things to the Jews at all, since he observes that the Jews keep the law and says they are those who live according to the law, or, if he attributed them, to have shown that it was Jews who broke the law who did such things. But again, just as those break the law who, blinded in darkness somewhere and by sorcery, and dreaming through dim phantoms, worship "those said to approach" such people, so too those who sacrifice to the sun and moon and stars break the law very much. And it was not consistent for the same man to say that the Jews guard against worshipping the sun and moon and stars, and do not guard against such worship of heaven and angels.

And if we must defend ourselves, since we equally do not worship angels, or sun, moon, and stars, for not worshipping even those whom the Greeks call the manifest and perceptible gods, we will say that the law of Moses too knows that these have been allotted by God "to all the nations under heaven," but not to those who have been taken as God's special portion in preference to all the nations on earth. At any rate, it is written in Deuteronomy: "And lest, looking up to heaven and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars, all the ornament of heaven, you be led astray and worship them and serve them, which the Lord your God has allotted to all the nations under the whole heaven. But the Lord God took us and brought us out of the iron furnace, out of Egypt, to be a people of his inheritance, as on this day." The people of the Hebrews, then, called by God "a chosen race" and "a royal priesthood" and "a holy nation" and "a people for his own possession," of whom it was said beforehand to Abraham by the voice of the Lord to him: "Look up to heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. And he said to him: So shall your offspring be," were not, while having the hope of becoming like the stars in heaven, going to worship those whom, by understanding and keeping the law of God, they would come to resemble. For it has been said to them: "The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are today like the stars of heaven in multitude." And in Daniel too such things are prophesied about the resurrection: "And at that time your people shall be saved, everyone who is written in the book; and many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproach and everlasting shame; and those who understand shall shine like the brightness of the firmament, and some of the many righteous like the stars, for ever and ever." Hence Paul too, taking this up, says in his discussion of the resurrection: "There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead." It was not reasonable, then, that those who had been taught to rise nobly above all created things and to hope for the best things from God for a most beautiful life, and who had heard "You are the light of the world" and "Let your light shine before men, so that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven," who train themselves to have the bright and unfading wisdom, or have already received it, which is "the radiance of eternal light," should be so struck with amazement at the perceptible light of the sun, moon, and stars as to think themselves somewhere beneath them because of their perceptible light, when they have so great an intelligible light of knowledge, and "the true light," and "the light of the world," and "the light of human beings," and should worship them. If they ought to be worshipped at all, they ought to be worshipped not for the perceptible light admired by the many, but for the intelligible and true light, if indeed the stars in heaven are rational and good living beings, and have been enlightened with the light of knowledge by Wisdom, which is "the radiance of eternal light." For their perceptible light is the work of the Creator of the universe; but their intelligible light has perhaps come from themselves as well, from the free will in them.

Nor should even this light be worshipped by one who sees and understands the true light, by sharing in which these lights too have been enlightened, nor by one who sees God, the Father of the true light, of whom it has been well said: "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." And just as those who worship sun and moon and stars because their light is perceptible and heavenly would not worship a spark of fire or a lamp on earth, seeing the incomparable superiority of what they consider worthy of worship over the light of sparks and lamps, so those who have understood how "God is light," and grasped how the Son of God is "the true light, which enlightens every man coming into the world," and understood also how he says "I am the light of the world," could not reasonably worship what is, as it were, a small spark in sun and moon and stars compared with God, the light of the true light. And it is not in dishonour of such great works of God, nor saying with Anaxagoras that sun and moon and stars are "a red-hot mass," that we speak thus of sun and moon and stars; but, perceiving the divinity of God, which surpasses them with unspeakable superiority, and also that of his Only-begotten, which surpasses all the rest, and being persuaded that sun and moon and stars themselves pray to the God over all through his Only-begotten, we judge that we ought not to pray to those who themselves pray; since they themselves wish rather to send us up to the God to whom they pray, than to bring us down to themselves or divide our power of prayer between God and themselves. And on this subject I will use this example concerning them: our Saviour and Lord, once hearing "Good teacher," sent the one who said this up to his own Father, saying: "Why do you call me good? No one is good but one, God the Father." If the Son of the Father's "love," being the "image" of God's goodness, said this reasonably, how much more reasonably would the sun say to those who worship it: "Why do you worship me? For 'you shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve,' whom I too and all who are with me worship and serve." And even if someone is not so great, let such a person nonetheless pray to the Word of God, who is able to heal him, and much more to his Father, who also for the righteous of former times "sent his word and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction."

God, then, in his goodness comes down to human beings not in place but in providence. And the child of God is not only then but always with his own disciples, fulfilling "Behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age." And if "a branch cannot bear fruit unless it abides in the vine," it is clear that the disciples of the Word too, the intelligible "branches" of the true vine, the Word, cannot bear the fruits of virtue unless they abide in the true vine, the Christ of God, who is with us who are locally down here on earth, who, being with those everywhere who have grown into him, is also already everywhere with those who do not know him. This John, who wrote the Gospel, shows in the person of John the Baptist, who says: "Among you stands one whom you do not know, who comes after me." It is absurd, when the one who has filled heaven and earth and said, "Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord," is with us and near us (for I believe him when he says: "I am a God near at hand, and not a God far off, says the Lord"), to seek to pray to the sun, or moon, or any of the stars, which do not reach to all things. But let it be granted, to use Celsus's very words, that the sun and moon and stars prophesy rains and heat and clouds and thunders: if these prophesy such great things, should not the God whom they serve in prophesying be worshipped and revered rather than his prophets? Let them prophesy lightnings too, and crops, and all generation, and dispense all such things; but we will not for that reason worship those who themselves worship, just as we do not worship Moses and those after him who by God's gift prophesied better things than rains and heat and clouds and thunders and lightnings and crops and all perceptible generation. Even if sun and moon and stars could utter prophecies better than those about rain, not even so will we worship them, but the Father of the prophecies in them, and his minister, the Word of God. But let them even be his heralds and truly heavenly angels: even so, how should not the God proclaimed and announced by them be worshipped rather than his heralds and his angels?

Celsus takes it for granted that we regard the sun and moon and stars as nothing. About them we acknowledge that they too await "the revelation of the sons of God," being subjected for the present "to the futility" of material bodies, "because of the one who subjected them in hope." If Celsus had read the countless other things we say about the sun and moon and stars, and "Praise him, all you stars and light," and "Praise him, you heavens of heavens," he would not have declared that we say such great beings, which greatly praise God, are nothing. Nor does Celsus know this: "For the eager longing of the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of the one who subjected it, in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God." With this let our defence for not revering the sun and moon and stars come to an end. Let us set out the next passage too, so that after this we may say in reply to it, God granting, what will be given us from the light of truth.

He says, then, this: "It is also foolish of them to think that when God, like a cook, brings on the fire, all the rest of the race will be roasted, while they alone will remain, not only the living but also those who died long ago, rising up from the earth with those very same bodies of flesh: plainly the hope of worms. For what sort of human soul would still long for a body that has rotted? Especially as this doctrine of yours is not shared even by some of the Christians, and they declare it very foul, abominable, and at the same time impossible. For what sort of body, utterly corrupted, could return to its original nature, and to that very first composition from which it was dissolved? Having nothing to answer, they take refuge in a most absurd escape, that everything is possible for God. But God cannot do shameful things, nor does he will what is contrary to nature; nor is it the case that, if you desire something loathsome in your own wickedness, God will be able to do it and one must believe at once that it will be. For God is the author not of faulty appetite nor of wandering disorder, but of right and just nature. He could provide everlasting life for the soul; but 'corpses,' says Heraclitus, 'are more fit to be thrown out than dung.' As for flesh, full of things it is not even decent to name, God will neither wish nor be able to make it everlasting contrary to reason. For he himself is the reason of all things that exist; so he cannot do anything contrary to reason or contrary to himself."

See, then, from the very beginning how, slandering with mockery the conflagration of the world that is also introduced by some of the Greeks who have philosophized in no contemptible way, he wishes us to be introducing the doctrine of the conflagration as though we made God a cook. He does not see that, as some of the Greeks thought (perhaps having taken it from the most ancient nation of the Hebrews), fire is brought upon the world as a purifier, and probably also upon each of those who need both punishment and healing through fire: a fire that burns but does not consume those who have no material that needs to be destroyed by that fire, but burns and consumes those who, in the building spoken of figuratively, made of actions and words and thoughts, have built with "wood, hay, or straw." The divine words say that the Lord will come to each of those who need it "like a refiner's fire and like fullers' soap," because there has been mixed in with them, as it were, a base molten material from vice; those needing fire, I mean, as it were melting down those mixed with "bronze and tin and lead." Whoever wishes can learn this from the prophet Ezekiel. And that we do not say God brings fire like a cook, but as God the benefactor of those who need toil and fire, the prophet Isaiah too will testify, in whom it is written that it was said to a sinful nation: "Because you have coals of fire, sit upon them; these will be a help to you." But the Word, arranging things suitably for the multitudes who will read Scripture, speaks the grim things with wisdom in a hidden way, to frighten those who cannot otherwise turn from the flood of their sins; yet even so the attentive reader will find indicated the end brought about for those who suffer through grim and painful things. It is enough for the present to cite from Isaiah: "For my name's sake I will show you my anger, and I will bring my glorious things upon you, so that I may not utterly destroy you." We have been compelled to hint at things not suited to those who believe more simply and who need a simpler handling in words, so that we might not seem to leave unrefuted Celsus's accusation when he says: "when God, like a cook, brings on the fire."

From what has been said it is clear to those who listen more intelligently how one must answer this too: "All the rest of the race will be roasted, while they alone will remain." It is no wonder if those among us whom the Word calls "the foolish things of the world," and "low-born," and "despised," and "things that are not," whom "God was pleased to save, those who believe in him, through the foolishness of the preaching, since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom," being unable to articulate the meaning of these passages, and unwilling to devote time to searching the Scripture, though Jesus says, "Search the Scriptures," have understood such things, and have supposed such things about the fire brought by God and about what will happen to sinners. And perhaps, just as it is fitting to say certain things to children suited to their infancy, to turn them to what is better as very small children, so to those whom the Word called the foolish of the world, and low-born, and despised, the obvious interpretation of the punishments is fitting, since they are not capable of any other turning, and abstinence from many evils, than that which comes through fear and the imagination of punishments. The Word, then, says that only those will remain untouched by the fire and the punishments who are utterly purified in doctrines, in character, and in their ruling faculty; while those who are not such, who according to their deserts need the dispensation of punishment through fire, it says will be in these things for a certain end, which it befits God to bring upon those made "in his image" who have lived contrary to the will of the nature made "in his image." This, too, is in reply to: "All the rest of the race will be roasted, while they alone will remain."

Next, having misheard either the holy writings or those who have not understood the holy writings, he says that we say that, at the time when the purifying fire is brought upon the world, not only those then living will remain, but also those who died long ago. He did not grasp that it was with a certain secret wisdom that the apostle of Jesus said: "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed." He ought to have considered what the one who said this meant when, separating himself and those like him from them, as though he were in no way dead, he said after "and the dead will be raised incorruptible": "and we shall be changed." And to confirm that the apostle wrote what I cited from the First Letter to the Corinthians with some such meaning, I will cite also the passage from the First Letter to the Thessalonians, in which Paul, as one living and awake and different from those who have fallen asleep, says: "For this we declare to you by a word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep; for the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God." Then again, next, knowing that the dead in Christ are others besides himself and those like him, he adds: "The dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air."