Against Celsus 8.50–8.63

And since he reproaches us as longing for the body, let him know that if longing is something bad, we long for nothing; but if it is indifferent, we long for everything that God promises to the righteous. So too we long for and hope for the resurrection of the righteous. Celsus thinks that we are also inconsistent with ourselves, when on the one hand we hope for the resurrection of the body, as worthy of honour from God, and on the other hand cast it into punishments as dishonourable. But nothing is dishonourable that suffers for piety and chooses hardships for virtue; while everything is dishonourable that is spent in pleasures with wickedness. The divine Word at any rate says, “What seed is honoured? The seed of man. What seed is dishonoured? The seed of man.” Then Celsus thinks one must not discuss with those who hope for things concerning the body, as being unreasonably glued to a thing that cannot obtain what they hope for, calling them rustic and impure and without reason sharing in the sedition; whereas he ought, as a lover of mankind, to help even the more rustic. For fellowship is not cut off from the more rustic among men as it is from the irrational animals, but he who made us made us equally for fellowship with all men. It is worth while, then, to discuss even with rustics and to bring them, as far as possible, to a more cultivated state, and with the impure, to make them purer as far as possible, and with those who think whatever they think without reason and are sick in soul, so that they may no longer do anything without reason nor be sick in soul.

After this he accepts those who hope that the soul or the mind, or what they call the spiritual or rational spirit, intelligent, holy, and blessed, or the living soul, will have eternal life and be with God; and he admits as rightly held the doctrine that those who have lived well will be happy, and that the unjust will be held altogether in eternal evils. And I have been amazed at Celsus, beyond everything he says, for what he adds to the words above, where he says: “And from this doctrine let neither they nor any other man ever depart.” He ought to have seen, since he was writing against Christians, for whom the whole foundation of faith is God, and the promises through Christ concerning the righteous, and the teachings about punishment concerning the unjust, that a Christian overturned by accepting Celsus's arguments against Christians would probably, in throwing away the teaching, throw away also the doctrine from which, he says, neither Christians nor any other man should depart. But I think Chrysippus acted more humanely than Celsus in his Therapeutics of the Passions, wishing to heal the passions as pressing on and troubling the human soul, first with arguments that seemed sound to him, but secondly and thirdly even with doctrines he did not approve: “For even if there are three kinds of goods,” he says, “one must heal the passions on that basis too, not busying oneself, at the time the passions are inflamed, with the doctrine that has already taken hold of the one troubled by passion, lest by untimely attention to overturning the doctrines that have taken hold of the soul, the possible cure be lost.” And he says: “Even if pleasure is the good, and the one mastered by passion thinks this, none the less one must help him and show that every passion is inconsistent even for those who make pleasure the good and the end.” Celsus too, then, having once accepted the doctrines about those who lived well being happy and the unjust being held altogether in eternal evils, ought to have acted consistently with himself and, if possible, after the argument that seemed to him primary, to have established by further argument and proved at greater length that the unjust will truly be held altogether in eternal evils and those who have lived well will be happy.

For we too, primarily because of the many and countless things that have persuaded us to live according to Christianity, wish as far as we can to win all men to the whole teaching of Christians; but where we find people prejudiced by the slander against Christians, so that they do not even lend their ears to those who profess to teach the things of the divine Word, imagining that Christians are not even pious, there, out of love for mankind, we take our stand as far as we can, so that at least by establishing the doctrines about eternal punishment for the impious we may make even those unwilling to be Christians accept that teaching. So too about those who have lived well we wish to produce conviction, seeing that even those alien to the faith say much the same as we do about many things belonging to a sound life; for one would not find anyone who has entirely lost the common notions of what is noble and shameful, just and unjust. Let all men, then, seeing the world and the ordered motion in it of the heaven and of the stars in the fixed sphere, and the order of those called planets that move contrary to the motion of the world; seeing also the tempering of the air for the benefit of animals and especially of men, and the abundance of what has been created for the sake of men, beware of doing anything displeasing to the Creator of the universe and of their souls and of the mind in them; and let them be persuaded that they will be punished for their sins, and brought, in proportion to their good deeds or duties duly performed, by him who administers each according to desert, to rewards proportionate to their good deeds or duties duly performed; and let all men be persuaded that the good will fare well for their better deeds, while the wicked will be handed over to pains and torments for their injustices, their licentiousness, and their intemperance, and further for their cowardice and faint-heartedness, and for all their folly.

Having said so much on this point too, let us see another statement of Celsus, which runs thus: “Since men have been born bound to a body, whether for the sake of the administration of the universe, or paying penalties for sin, or because the soul has been weighed down by certain passions until it is cleansed in the appointed cycles (for according to Empedocles it must ‘wander thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed, becoming through time all kinds of forms of mortals’), we must believe, then, that they have been handed over to certain overseers of this prison.” See, then, how in these words, doubting like a man about so many things and setting out the doctrines of many about the cause of our birth, he shows a certain caution, not daring to declare any of them false. Would it not, then, have befitted such a man, who had once decided neither to assent at random nor boldly to reject the views of the ancients, at least to doubt, if he did not wish to believe, the teaching of the Jews declared by their prophets and that about Jesus; and to consider that it was likely that those who served the God of the universe, and who many times faced countless dangers and deaths for the sake of honour to him and to what they believed he had legislated, were not overlooked by God, but that some manifestation came to them too, since they despised human craftsmanship in images and tried to ascend by reason to the God over all himself? He ought to have considered that the common Father and Creator of all, who sees all and hears all, judging according to its desert the choice of each that seeks him and wishes to be pious, gives to these too some fruit of his protection, so that they may increase the notion of him which they have once received. If Celsus and those who hate Moses, the prophets among the Jews, Jesus, and his genuine disciples who laboured for his word had reasoned thus, they would not have so reviled Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and his apostles; nor would they have rejected the Jews alone among all the nations on earth, saying that they were worse even than the Egyptians, who brought down, as far as lay in them, the honour due to the divine to irrational animals, whether from superstition or from whatever cause or error. We have said this not to urge anyone to doubt the teaching of Christianity, but to show that for those who utterly revile the teaching of Christians it is preferable at least to doubt about them, and not to speak so boldly about Jesus or his disciples things they do not know and declare, not with what the Stoics call “apprehensive impression,” nor from any other criterion concerning which each school of philosophy has established what seemed good to it.

Then, since Celsus says, “We must believe, then, that they are handed over to certain overseers of this prison,” we must say to him that a good soul is set free from the bonds of wickedness even in the life of those whom Jeremiah called prisoners “of the earth,” because of Jesus, who said what the prophet Isaiah foretold long before his coming. And what did he foretell but “To say to the prisoners, Come out, and to those in darkness, Be revealed”? And this Jesus, as the same Isaiah foretold of him, is the one who “rose as a light on those who sit in the land and shadow of death,” so that for this reason we say, “Let us burst their bonds asunder and cast away their yoke from us.” If Celsus and those disposed against us like him could have heard the depth of the Gospels, he would not have advised us to obey those he called overseers of the prison. It is written in the Gospel that there was a “woman” who “was bent over and could not straighten herself fully.” Jesus, seeing her and seeing for what cause she was bent over, not being allowed to straighten herself “fully,” said: “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan bound, behold, eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the Sabbath day?” And how many others now, bound by Satan, are bent over, unable because of him “to straighten themselves fully,” since he wants us to look down? And no one straightens them up except the Word who came to dwell in Jesus, and who inspired men before him too. And Jesus came to set free “all who were oppressed by the devil,” and said of him, with a depth befitting him, “Now the ruler of this world is judged.” We do not, then, revile the demons here, but expose their workings for the destruction of the human race, since on the pretext of oracles and bodily healings and other things they wish to separate from God the soul that has fallen into “the body of humiliation”; which those who have understood cry out, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from the body of this death?” Nor do we offer our bodies at random to be racked and beaten to death; for one who is plotted against by the earthly demons and those who worship them, because he will not proclaim them gods, does not offer his body to these things at random. And we have rightly believed it pleasing to God to be beaten to death for virtue, to be racked for piety, and to die for holiness. For “precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his holy ones”; and we say it is good also not to cling to life. But Celsus, likening us to criminals who justly suffer what they suffer for robbery, and not ashamed of so great a purpose, declares it similar to the disposition of robbers, making himself in this a brother of those who counted Jesus “with the lawless”; in whom the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “He was counted with the lawless.”

Next after this Celsus says: “Reason chooses one of two courses. If they refuse to serve those who reasonably preside over these things, they should not come to manhood, nor marry a wife, nor raise children, nor do anything else in life, but depart from here with all speed, leaving no seed behind, so that such a race may be utterly wiped out from the earth. But if they will marry wives and beget children and taste fruits and share in the things of life and endure the evils appointed (for it is nature that all men should experience evils; evils must exist, and they have no other place), then they must render the honours due to those entrusted with these things, and perform the fitting services for life until they are set free from their bonds, lest they seem ungrateful to them. For it is unjust to share in what they possess and contribute nothing to them.” We say to this too that no departure from life seems reasonable to us except that alone which is for piety and virtue, when those thought to be judges, or who seem to have power over our lives, set before us the choice: either to live while doing what is contrary to the commands of Jesus, or to die while obeying his words. God has also permitted us to marry a wife, since not all can receive what is superior, that is, what is wholly pure; and, when we have married, by all means to rear those who are born and not to destroy the children given by providence. And these things do not conflict with our not obeying the demons who control the earth; for armed with the whole armour of God we stand as athletes of piety against the race of demons that plot against us.

Even if, then, Celsus by his own argument sends us out of life with all speed, so that, as he thinks, such a race as ours may be utterly wiped out from the earth, we shall live in the world of our Creator according to the laws of God, in no way willing to serve the laws of sin. And we shall marry wives, if we wish, and receive the children given to us in our marriages. And if need be we shall share in the things of life, enduring the evils appointed as trials of the soul. For so the divine words are accustomed to name what befalls men; in these, like gold in the fire, the soul of man is tested and either exposed or shown to be admirable. And we are so prepared for what Celsus calls evils that we even say, “Examine me, O Lord, and try me; test my kidneys and my heart by fire.” For no one “is crowned unless he competes lawfully” here on earth with the body “of humiliation.” Besides this, we do not render the honours thought due to those to whom Celsus says the things here have been entrusted. For we worship “the Lord” our “God” “and serve him only,” praying to become imitators of Christ, who, when the devil said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me,” said, “You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only.” That is why we do not render the honours thought due to those to whom Celsus says the things here have been entrusted, since “no one can serve two masters,” and we cannot at once “serve God and mammon,” whether mammon is called one thing or many. And if one dishonours the lawgiver “by breaking the law,” it seems clear to us that, when two laws are opposed to each other, the law of God and the law of mammon, it is preferable for us to dishonour mammon “by breaking the law” of mammon, so that we may honour God by keeping the law of God, rather than to dishonour God “by breaking the law” of God, so that we may honour mammon by keeping the law of mammon.

Celsus, then, thinks that one performs the fitting services for life, until men are set free from their bonds, when one renders sacrifices according to the customs of the many to each of the gods recognized in the city, not understanding what is truly fitting as it is understood by exact piety. But we say that he performs the services of life with what is fitting who remembers who the Creator is and what is pleasing to him, and who does everything with a view to what is pleasing to God. Again, Celsus does not want us to be ungrateful to the demons here, thinking that we owe them thank-offerings; and we, clarifying the teaching about thanksgiving, say that we do nothing ungrateful toward those who do us no good but even stand against us, when we do not sacrifice to them nor even serve them. But we take care not to be ungrateful to God, whose benefits fill us, since we are his creatures, cared for by him, judged in whatever way we are, and awaiting from him hopes even beyond this life. And we have a symbol of our thanksgiving to God, the bread called “Eucharist” (thanksgiving). Nor, as we said above too, do the demons have the management of what has been created for our needs; so we do nothing unjust in partaking of created things and not sacrificing to those to whom they do not belong. And if we see that it is not certain demons but angels who are appointed over the fruits of the earth and the birth of animals, we speak well of them and call them blessed, as entrusted by God with what is useful to our race; yet we do not give them the honour owed to God, for neither does God wish this, nor do they themselves who have been entrusted with such things. And they approve of us when we guard against sacrificing to them rather than when we sacrifice; for they have no need of the fumes rising from the earth.

After this Celsus says something like this: “That in these things, even down to the least, there is someone to whom authority has been given, one may learn from what the Egyptians say: that the body of man is divided among thirty-six demons or certain ethereal gods, distributed into as many parts (others say many more), and each is appointed to take care of a different part of it. And they know the names of the demons in their native language, such as Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, Biou, Erou, Erebiou, Ramanor, Reianoor, and all the others they name in their own tongue; and by invoking them they heal the ailments of the parts. What, then, prevents one from greeting these and the others, if one wishes, so as to be healthy rather than sick, and fortunate rather than unfortunate, and to be freed as far as possible from tortures and punishments?” By these words Celsus tries to bring down our soul to the demons, as having been allotted our bodies, and, declaring that each presides over a part of our body, wants us to believe in the demons he speaks of and to serve them, so that we may be healthy rather than sick and fortunate rather than unfortunate, and be freed as far as possible from tortures. He has so far condemned the undivided and undistracted honour paid to the God of the universe as not to believe that God alone, worshipped and magnificently honoured, is sufficient to give to the one who honours him, from his very worship, a power to prevent the demons' plotting against the holy man. For he has not seen how the name of Jesus, called upon by those who truly believe, has healed not a few of diseases and demon-possession and other misfortunes.

It is likely that one who embraces Celsus's views will laugh when we say that “at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue is brought to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father”; but after laughing he will receive more effective proofs that this is so than of the names he reports, Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, and the rest of the Egyptian list, as being invoked and healing the ailments of the parts. And see how, turning us away from believing in the God of the universe through Jesus Christ, he calls us, for the healing of our body, to believe in thirty-six barbarian demons, whom the Egyptian magicians alone invoke and by whom they promise us, I do not know how, better things. It is time for us, according to Celsus, to practise magic and sorcery rather than Christianity, and to believe in some countless number of demons rather than in the God over all, who is manifest in himself, living, and evident, through him who with great power sowed the pure word of worship of God in the whole inhabited world of men; and I shall not lie if I add that he sowed it also among the other rational beings who need correction, healing, and conversion from wickedness.

Celsus, at any rate, suspecting the slide into magic of those who have learned such things, and somehow perceiving that harm would come to his hearers, says: “One must, however, guard against this, lest someone, associating with these beings, be wholly absorbed in their service, and, becoming a lover of the body and turning away from better things, be overcome by forgetfulness. For perhaps one ought not to disbelieve wise men, who say that most of the earthly demons, being absorbed in generation and riveted to blood and the savour of fat and melodies and bound to certain other such things, could do nothing better than heal the body and foretell future fortune to a man or a city, and that all they know and can do concerns mortal affairs.” Since, then, there is so great a danger of slipping in this matter, as even the enemy bears witness to God's truth, how much better, free from all suspicion of being absorbed in such demons, or becoming lovers of the body and turning away from better things and being overcome by forgetfulness of the better, to entrust oneself to the God over all through Jesus Christ, who gave us such teaching, and to ask from him all help and protection from holy angels and righteous ones, so that they may deliver us from the earthly demons, absorbed in generation, riveted to blood and the savour of fat, drawn by outlandish melodies, and bound to other such things, who even by Celsus's admission can do nothing better than heal the body. But I would say that it is not even clear that these demons, served in whatever way, can heal bodies; rather, one must heal the body, if one wishes to live more simply and in the ordinary way, by the method of medicine, and, if more excellently than the many, by piety toward the God over all and by prayers to him.

Consider for yourself, then, what kind of character the God over all will accept rather, he who is able, as no one else is, to do everything, including benefiting men in soul, body, or external things: the one devoted to him in everything, or the one who busies himself with the names of demons, their powers and actions, incantations, herbs proper to demons, and stones with engravings on them corresponding to the forms of demons handed down, whether symbolic or of whatever kind. It is clear to anyone who can follow even a little that the unaffected character, free from such meddling and for that reason devoted to God over all, will be acceptable to God and to all who are akin to him; while the character that, for the sake of bodily health and love of the body and good fortune in indifferent things, busies itself with the names of demons and seeks how to charm the demons with certain incantations, God will leave, as wicked, impious, and more demonic than human, to those whom the one who says such things to demons has chosen, to be torn apart by the thoughts each of them suggests, or by other evils too. For it is likely that, being wicked and, as Celsus admitted, riveted to blood and the savour of fat and melodies and other such things, they do not keep faith and, as it were, pledges even toward those who gratify them with these things. For if others call on them against those who have served them, and buy their service with more blood and savour of fat and the service they need, they might plot against the one who served them yesterday and gave them a share of the feast they love.

Celsus, having said much before this, even referring us to oracles and their divinations as those of gods, has now done better in admitting that those who foretell future fortune to a man or a city, and all that concern mortal affairs, are earthly demons, absorbed in generation, riveted to blood and the savour of fat and melodies and bound to other such things, able to do nothing better than these. And it is likely that, when we opposed Celsus, who spoke of the oracles and of the worship paid to those considered gods as divine, someone supposed us impious for saying that these are works of demons drawing down the souls of men to the things of generation; but now let whoever supposed this of us be persuaded by what Christians proclaim well, seeing that even the one writing these things against Christians has now at the end written them as though overcome by the spirit of truth. Even if Celsus says, then, “One must perform these rites as far as it is expedient, for reason does not choose to do this altogether,” we must not perform rites to demons absorbed in the savour of fat and blood, nor must we defile the divine, as far as lies in us, by bringing it down to wicked demons. If Celsus had examined exactly the notion of what is expedient, and had seen that what is properly expedient is virtue and action according to virtue, he would not have set “as far as it is expedient” in connection with such beings, and demons at that, as he himself admitted. We, then, choose, if health and prosperity in the affairs of life are to come to us through the service of such demons, rather to be sick and unfortunate in the affairs of life with a conscience purely pious toward the God of the universe, than to be healthy in body and fare more prosperously in the affairs of life while being divided and falling away from God and being utterly sick in soul and wretched. And we must draw near to him who lacks nothing whatever except the salvation of men and of every rational being, rather than to those who need the savour of fat and blood.

Celsus, then, I think, after all the arguments he gave about demons needing the savour of fat and blood, makes, as it were, a recantation for the worse, and says that “one should rather think that the demons need nothing and lack nothing, but rejoice in those who act piously toward them.” If he thought this was true, he should not have set down the former things, or should have erased them. But human nature is not altogether abandoned by God and the Truth that is his Only-begotten. That is why Celsus spoke the truth about the savour of fat and blood that demons need, but then by his own wickedness slid back into falsehoods and likens the demons to men who do what is just with perfect justice, even if no one is grateful to them, while doing good to those who repay them with gratitude. He seems to me to be confused here, at times having his ruling faculty disturbed by the demons, and at other times, recovering from the irrationality under them, to see a little of the truth. For again he adds: “God must not be abandoned anywhere at all, neither by day nor by night, neither in public nor in private, in every word and deed continually; but both with these and without them let the soul always be directed toward God.” I take “with these” to mean with public life, and with every deed, and with every word. Then again, as though wrestling in his reasoning against the frenzies caused by the demons and being mostly defeated, he adds: “If this is so, what harm is there in winning the favour of the rulers here, both the others and the potentates and kings among men, since not even these have been deemed worthy of their position here without demonic power?” In what went before he tried, as far as lay in him, to bring our soul down to the demons; now he wants us to win the favour also of potentates and kings among men; and since life and history are full of examples of these, I have not thought it necessary to set them out now.