Against Celsus 6.42

Next, starting from another point, Celsus says such things against us: They also err most impiously in this, the greatest ignorance, which has likewise strayed from divine riddles, in making someone opposed to God, calling the same one devil and, in the Hebrew tongue, Satan. Otherwise, these things are utterly mortal notions and not holy to say, that the greatest God, wishing to benefit men in some way, has one who works against him and is powerless. The Son of God, then, is defeated by the devil, and, being punished by him, teaches us too to despise the punishments inflicted by him, announcing beforehand that Satan too will likewise appear and display great and marvellous works, appropriating the glory of God; that those who wish to be led astray by these must not be turned toward him, but must believe in him alone. These are plainly the words of a sorcerer, who is out for gain and guards himself beforehand against those who hold opposing views and gather rival crowds. Then next, wishing to set out the riddles which he thinks we misunderstood when we introduce the teaching about Satan, he says that the ancients hinted at a divine war: Heraclitus, saying this: “One must know that war is common, and justice strife, and that all things come about by strife and necessity”; and Pherecydes, who was much older than Heraclitus, telling a myth of one army ranged against another, giving Kronos as leader of one and Ophioneus of the other, and relating their challenges and contests; and that they made an agreement that whichever of them fell into Ogenos should be the vanquished, and those who drove them out and conquered should hold heaven. He says that the mysteries about the Titans and Giants, who are declared to fight against the gods, have this meaning too, as do the Egyptian stories about Typhon, Horus, and Osiris. Then, having set out such things without explaining how those contain a better meaning while ours are misunderstandings of them, he reviles us, saying that those stories are not like what is said about a devil-demon or (as they say more truly) a sorcerer holding opposing views. He understands Homer in the same way, as hinting at things similar to Heraclitus and Pherecydes and those who introduce the mysteries about Titans and Giants, in these words of Hephaestus to Hera, where he says: “For once before, when I was eager to defend you, he seized me by the foot and hurled me from the divine threshold”; and in these words of Zeus to Hera: “Do you not remember when you hung on high, and from your feet I let down two anvils, and around your hands threw an unbreakable golden chain? And you hung in the air and the clouds; and the gods throughout high Olympus were indignant, but could not come near and free you; whomever I caught I would seize and hurl from the threshold, until he reached the earth, faint.” And interpreting the Homeric verses, he says that the words of Zeus to Hera are words of God to matter, and that the words to matter hint that from the beginning it was in a disordered state, and God took it in hand, bound it together by certain proportions and ordered it; and that the demons around it who were insolent he hurls down, punishing them with the road hither. He says that Pherecydes, understanding these verses of Homer in this way, said: “Below that portion is the portion of Tartarus; the daughters of Boreas, the Harpies and Thyella, guard it; there Zeus casts out any of the gods when he behaves insolently.” He says that the robe of Athena, seen by all in the procession of the Panathenaea, has the same meaning. For, he says, it shows that a motherless and undefiled divinity masters the presumptuous earth-born. Having accepted the fictions of the Greeks, he adds, accusing our teachings, such things as this: that the Son of God is punished by the devil and teaches us too that when we are punished by the same one we should endure it. And these things are wholly ridiculous; for it was necessary, I suppose, to punish the devil, not to threaten the men who have been slandered by him.