466 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [Boox 1.
CuAPTER LXII.
And after such statements, showing his ignorance even of the number of the apostles, he proceeds thus: “ Jesus having gathered around him ten or eleven persons of notorious character, the very wickedest of tax-gatherers and sailors, fled in company with them from place to place, and obtained his living in a shameful and importunate manner.” Let us to the best of our power sce what truth there is in such a statement. It is magifest to us all who possess the Gospel narratives, which Celsus does not appear even to have read, that Jesus selected twelve apostles, and that of these Matthew alone was a tax-gatherer; that when he calls them indiscri- minately sailors, he probably means James and John, because they left their ship and their father Zebedee, and followed Jesus; for Peter and his brother Andrew, who employed a net to gain their necessary subsistence, must be classed not as sailors, but as the Scripture describes them, as fisher- men. The Lebes' also, who was a follower of Jesus, may have been a tax-gatherer; but he was not of the number of the apostles, except according to a statement in one of the copies of Mark’s Gospel.? And we have not ascertained the employments of the remaining disciples, by which they earned their livelihood before becoming disciples of Jesus. I assert, therefore, in answer to such statements as the above, that it is clear to all who are able to institute an intelligent and candid examination into the history of the apostles of Jesus, that it was by help of a divine power that these men taught Christianity, and succeeded in leading others to embrace the word of God. For it was not any power of speaking, or any orderly arrangement of their mes- sage, according to the arts of Grecian dialectics or rhetoric, which was in them the effective cause of converting their hearers. Nay, I am of opinion that if Jesus had selected some individuals who were wise according to the apprehension of the multitude, and who were fitted both to think and speak so as to please them, and had used such as the ministers of [Tis 1 AsBns. 2 Cf. Mark iii. 18 with Matt. x. 5.
Book 1.] | ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 467 doctrine, He would most justly have been suspected of em- ploying artifices, like those philosophers who are the leaders of certain sects, and consequently the promise respecting the divinity of His doctrine would not have manifested itself; for had the doctrine and the preaching consisted in the persua- sive utterance and arrangement of words, then faith also, like that of the philosophers of the world in their opinions, would have been through the wisdom of men, and not through the power of God. Now, who is there, on seeing fishermen and tax-gatherers, who had not acquired even the merest elements of learning (as the Gospel relates of them, and in respect to which Celsus believes that they speak the truth, inasmuch as it is their own ignorance which they record), discoursing boldly not only among the Jews of faith in Jesus, but also preaching Him with success among other nations, would not inquire whence they derived this power of persuasion, as theirs was certainly not the common method followed by the multitude? And who would not say that the promise, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,’? had been accomplished by Jesus in the history of His apostles by a sort of divine power? And to this also, Paul, referring in terms of commendation, as we have stated a little above, says: “And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power; that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”? For, according to the predictions in the prophets, foretelling the preaching of the gospel, “the Lord gave the word in great power to them who preached it, even the King of the powers of the Beloved,” * in order that the prophecy might be fulfilled which said, “ His word shall run very swiftly.” * And we see that “the voice of the apostles of Jesus has gone forth into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”’ On this account are they who hear the word powerfully proclaimed filled with power, which they manifest both by their dispositions and their lives, and by struggling even to death on behalf of the 8 Cf. Ps. Ixviii. 11 (Septuag.). # Ps. cxlvii. 15. 6 Ps, xix, 4.
468 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [Boor 1.
truth; while some are altogether empty, although they profess to believe in God through Jesus, inasmuch as, not possessing any divine power, they have the appearance only of being converted to the word of God. And although I have pre- viously mentioned a Gospel declaration uttered by the Saviour, I shall nevertheless quote it again, as appropriate to the pre- sent occasion, as it confirms both the divine manifestation of our Saviour’s foreknowledge regarding the preaching of His gospel, and the power of His word, which without the aid of teachers gains the mastery over those who yield their assent to persuasion accompanied with divine power; and the words of Jesus referred to are, “ The harvest is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the har- vest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest.” } CHAPTER LXIII, CHAPTER LXIII, And since Celsus has termed the apostles of Jesus men of infamous notoriety, saying that they were tax-gatherers and sailors of the vilest character, we have to remark, with respect to this charge, that he seems, in order to bring an accusation against Christianity, to believe the Gospel accounts only where he pleases, and to express his disbelief of them, in order that he may not be forced to admit the manifestations of Divinity related in these same books; whereas one who sees the spirit of truth by which the writers are influenced, ought, from their narration of things of inferior importance, to believe also the account of divine things. Now in the general Epistle of Barnabas, from which perhaps Celsus took the statement that the apostles were notoriously wicked men, it is recorded that “ Jesus selected His own apostles, as persons who were more guilty of sin than all other evil-doers.”? And in the Gospel according to Luke, Peter says to Jesus, “ Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man.” ® Moreover, Paul, who himself also at a later time became an apostle of Jesus, says in his 2 Epistle of Barnabas, chap. v. (Cf. Ante-Nicene Library, vol. Apos- tolic Fathers, p. 108.) 3 Luke v. 8.
Book 1. ] ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 469 Epistle to Timothy, “This is a faithful saying, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the chief.”* And I do not know how Celsus should have forgot-' ten or not have thought of saying something about Paul, the founder, after Jesus, of the churches that are in Christ. He saw, probably, that anything he might say about that apostle would require to be explained, in consistency with the fact that, after being a persecutor of the church of God, and a bitter opponent of believers, who went so far even as to deliver over the disciples of Jesus to death, so great a change after- wards passed over him, that he preached the gospel of Jesus from Jerusalem round about to Illyricum, aud was ambitious. to carry the glad tidings where he needed not to build upon another man’s foundation, but to places where the gospel of God in Christ had not been proclaimed at all. What absurdity, therefore, is there, if Jesus, desiring to manifest to the human race the power which He possesses to heal souls, should have selected notorious and wicked men, and should have raised them to such a degree of moral excellence, that they became a pattern of the purest virtue to all who were converted by their instrumentality to the gospel of Christ?
CHAPTER LXIV.
CHAPTER LXIV.
But if we were to reproach those who have been converted with their former lives, then we would have occasion to ac- cuse Phzedo also, even after he became a philosopher; since, as the history relates, he was drawn away by Socrates from a house of bad fame? to the pursuits of philosophy. Nay, even the licentious life of Polemo, the successor of Xeno- crates, will be a subject of reproach to philosophy; whereas even in these instances we ought to regard it as a ground of praise, that reasoning was enabled, by the persuasive power of these men, to convert from the practice of such vices those 2 aro olxyuartos. Such is the reading in the text of Lommatzsch. Heeschel and Spencer read azo ofxyparos érefov, and Ruseus proposes ir atpiov.
470 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [Book t.
who had been formerly entangled by them. Now among the Greeks there was only one Phexdo, I know not if there were a second, and one Polemo, who betook themselves to philosophy, after a licentious and most wicked life; while with Jesus there were not only at the time we speak of, the twelve disciples, but many more at all times, who, becoming a band of temperate men, speak in the following terms of their former lives: “ For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and plea- sures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But after that the kindness and love of God our Saviour towards man appeared, by the washing of regenera- tion, and renewing of the Holy Ghost, which He shed upon us richly,”? we became such as we are. For “God sent forth His Word and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions,”? as the prophct taught in the book of Psalms. And in addition to what has been already said, I would add the following: that Chrysippus, in his treatise on the Cure of the Passions, in his endeavours to restrain the passions of the human soul, not pretending to determine what opinions are the true ones, says that according to the principles of the different sects are those to be cured who have been brought under the dominion of the passions, and continues: “ And if pleasure be an end, then by it must the passions be healed; and if there be three kinds of chief blessings, still, according to this doctrine, it is in the same way that those are to be freed from their passions who are under their dominion;” whereas the assailants of Chris- tianity do not see in how many persons the passions have been brought under restraint, and the flood of wickedness checked, and savage manners softened by means of the gospel. So that it well became those who are ever boasting of their zeal for the public good, to make a public acknow- ledement of their thanks to that doctrine which by a new method led men to abandon many vices, and to bear their testimony at least to it, that even though not the truth, it has at all events been productive of benefit to the human race. 1Cf. Tit. iti. 3-6, 2 Cf. Ps. evii. 20.
fi. ae aah Book 1. | ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 471 CHAPTER LXV.
And since Jesus, in teaching His disciples not to be guilty of rashness, gave them the precept, “If they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another; and if they persecute you in the other, flee again into a third,”’ to which teaching He added the example of a consistent life, acting so as not to expose Himself to danger rashly, or unseasonably, or without good grounds; from this Celsus takes occasion to bring a ma- licious and slanderous accusation,—the Jew whom he brings forward saying to Jesus, “In company with your disciples you go and hide yourself in different places.” Now similar to what has thus been made the ground of a slanderous charge against Jesus and His disciples, do we say was the conduct recorded of Aristotle. This philosopher, secing that a court was about to be summoned to try him, on the ground of his being guilty of impiety on account of certain of his philoso- phical tenets which the Athenians regarded as impious, with- drew from Athens, and fixed his school in Chalcis, defending his course of procedure to his friends by saying, “Let us depart from Athens, that we may not give the Athenians a handle for incurring guilt a second time, as formerly in the case of Socrates, and so prevent them from committing a second act of impiety against philosophy.” Ie further says, “that Jesus went about with his disciples, and obtained his livelihood in a disgraceful and importunate manner.” Let him show wherein lay the disgraceful and importunate element in their manner of subsistence. For it is related in the Gospels, that there were certain women who had been healed of their diseases, among whom also was Susanna, who from their own possessions afforded the disciples the means of support. And - who is there among philosophers, that, when devoting himself to the service of his acquaintances, is not in the habit of re- ceiving from them what is needful for his wants? Or is it only in them that such acts are proper and becoming; but when the disciples of Jesus do the same, they are accused by Celsus of obtaining their livelihood by disgraceful importunity?
472 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [Boox © CHAPTER LXVI.
And in addition to the above, this Jew of Celsus after- wards addresses Jesus: “ What need, moreover, was there that you, while still an infant, should be conveyed into Ecypt? Was it to escape being murdered? But then it was not likely that a God should be afraid of death; and yet an angel came down from heaven, commanding you and your friends to flee, lest ye should be captured and put to death! And was not the great God, who had already sent two angels on your account, able to keep you, His only Son, there in safety?” From these words Celsus seems to think that there was no element of divinity in the human body and soul of Jesus, but that His body was not even such as is described in the fables of Homer; and with a taunt also at the blood of Jesus which was shed upon the cross, he adds that it was not ‘“Ichor, such as flows in the veins of the blessed gods.””?
We now, believing Jesus Himself, when He says respecting His divinity, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,”? and employs other terms of similar import; and when He says respecting His being clothed with a human body, “ And now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth,”*® con- clude that He was a kind of compound being. And so it became Him who was making provision for His sojourning in the world as a human being, not to expose Himself unsea- sonably to the danger of death. And in like manner it was necessary that He should be taken away by His parents, acting under the instructions of an angel from heaven, who communicated to them the divine will, saying on the first occasion, “ Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife; for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost;”* and on the second, “ Arise, and take the young child, and His mother, and flee into Egypt; and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy Him.”*® Now, what is recorded in 1 Cf. Iliad, v. 340. 2 John xiv. 6. 8 Cf. John viii. 40.
Book 1. ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 473 these words appears to me to be not at all marvellous. For in either passage of Scripture it is stated that it was in a dream that the angel spoke these words; and that in a dream certain persons may have certain things pointed out to them to do, is an event of frequent occurrence to many individuals, —the impression on the mind being produced either by an angel or by some other thing. Where, then, is the absurdity in believing that He who had once become incarnate, should be led also by human guidance to keep out of the way of dangers? Not indeed from any impossibility that it should be otherwise, but from the moral fitness that ways and means should be made use of to ensure the safety of Jesus. And it was certainly better that the child Jesus should escape the snare of Herod, and should reside with His parents in Egypt until the: death of the conspirator, than that Divine Pro- vidence should hinder the free will of Herod in his wish to put the child to death, or that the fabled poetic helmet of Hades should have been employed, or anything of a similar kind done with respect to Jesus, or that they who came to destroy Him should have been smitten with blindness like the people of Sodom. For the sending of help to Him in a very miraculous and unnecessarily public manner, would not have been of any service to Him who wished to show that as a man, to whom witness was borne by God, He possessed within that form which was seen by the eyes of men some higher element of divinity,—that which was properly the Son of God—God the Word—the power of God, and the wisdom of God—He who is called the Christ. But this is not a suitable occasion for discussing the composite nature of the incarnate Jesus; the investigation into such a subject being for believers, so to speak, a sort of private question.
CHAPTER LXVII.
After the above, this Jew of Celsus, as if he were a Greek who loved learning, and were well instructed in Greek litera- ture, continues: “The old mythological fables, which attri- buted a divine origin to Perseus, and Amphion, and /Hacus, 474 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [ Book 1.
and Minos, were not believed by us. Nevertheless, that they might not appear unworthy of credit, they represented the deeds of these personages as great and wonderful, and truly beyond the power of man; but what hast thou done that is noble or wonderful either in deed or in word? Thou hast made no manifestation to us, although they challenged you in the temple to exhibit some unmistakeable sign that you were the Son of God.” In reply to which we have to say: Let the Greeks show to us, among those who have been enumerated, any one whose deeds have been marked by a utility and splendour extending to after generations, and which have been so great as to produce a belief in the fables which represented them as of divine descent. But these Grecks can show us nothing regarding those men of whom they speak, which is even inferior by a great degree to what Jesus did; unless they take us back to their fables and _his- tories, wishing us to believe them without any reasonable grounds, and to discredit the Gospel accounts even after the clearest evidence. For we assert that the whole habitable world contains evidence of the works of Jesus, in the exist- ence of those churches of God which have been founded through Him by those who have been converted from the practice of innumerable sins. And the name of Jesus can still remove distractions from the minds of men, and expel demons, and also take away diseases; and produce a marvellous meckness of spirit and complete change of character, and a humanity, and goodness, and gentleness in those in- dividuals who do not feign themselves to be Christians for the sake of subsistence or the supply of any mortal wants, but who have honestly accepted the doctrine concerning God and Christ, and the judgment to come.
CHAPTER LXVIII.
But after this, Celsus, having a suspicion that the great works performed by Jesus, of which we have named a few out of a great number, would be brought forward to view, affects to grant that those statements may be true which are Book 1. | ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 475 made regarding His cures, or His resurrection, or the feeding of a multitude with a few loaves, from which many fragments remained over, or those other stories which Celsus thinks the disciples have recorded as of a marvellous nature; and he adds: ‘ Well, let us believe that these were actually wrought by you.” But then he immediately compares them to the tricks of jugglers, who profess to do more wonderful things, and to the feats performed by those who have been taught by Egyptians, who in the middle of the market-place, in return for a few obols, will impart the knowledge of their most venerated arts, and will expel demons from men, and dispel diseases, and invoke the souls of heroes, and exhibit expensive banquets, and tables, and dishes, and dainties having no real existence, and who will put in motion, as if alive, what are not really living animals, but which have only the appearance of life. And he asks, “Since, then, these persons can perform such feats, shall we of necessity conclude that they are ‘sons of God,’ or must we admit that they are the proceedings of wicked men under the influence of an evil spirit?” You see that by these expressions he allows, as it were, the existence of magic. I do not know, however, if he is the same who wrote several books against it. But, as it helped his purpose, he compares the [miracles] related of Jesus to the results produced by magic. There would indeed be a resemblance between them, if Jesus, like the dealers in magical arts, had performed His works only for show; but now there is not a single juggler who, by means of his pro- ceedings, invites his spectators to reform their manners, or trains those to the fear of God who are amazed at what they see, nor who tries to persuade them so to live as men who are to be justified’ by God. And jugglers do none of these things, because they have neither the power nor the will, nor any desire to busy themselves about the reformation of men, inasmuch as their own lives are full of the grossest and most notorious sins. But how should not He who, by the miracles which He did, induced those who beheld the excellent results to undertake the reformation of their characters, manifest 1 Gs duxcesmdnooueévous.
476 ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. [Boox 1.
Himself not only to His genuine disciples, but also to others as a pattern of most virtuous life, in order that His disciples might devote themselves to the work of instructing men in the will of God, and that the others, after being more fully instructed by His word and character than by His miracles, as to how they were to direct their lives, might in all their conduct have a constant reference to the good pleasure of the universal God? And if such were the life of Jesus, how could any one with reason compare Him with the sect of impostors, and not, on the contrary, believe, according to the promise, that He was God, who appeared in human form to do good to our race?
CHAPTER LXIX.
CHAPTER LXIX.
After this, Celsus, confusing together the Christian doc- trine and the opinions of some heretical sect, and bringing them forward as charges that were applicable to all who believe in the divine word, says: “ Such a body as yours could not have belonged to God.” Now, in answer to this, we have to say that Jesus, on entering into the world, assumed, as one born of a woman, a human body, and one which was capable of suffering a natural death. For which reason, in addition to others, we say that He was also a great wrestler;* having, on account of His human body, been tempted in all respects like other men, but no longer as men, with sin as a consequence, but being altogether without sin. For it is distinctly clear to us that “ He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; and as one who knew no sin,” God delivered Him up as pure for all who had sinned. Then Celsus says: “The body df God would not have been so generated as you, O Jesus, were.” He saw, besides, that if, as it is written, it had been born, His body somehow might be even more divine than that of the multitude, and in a certain sense a body of God. But he disbelieves the accounts of His conception by the Holy Ghost, and believes that He was begotten by one Panthera, who corrupted the Virgin, 1 pivyas dyovorgy.
Book 1.] ORIGEN AGAINST CELSUS. 477 ‘‘ because a God’s body would not have been so generated as you were.” But we have spoken of these matters at greater length in the preceding pages.
CHAPTER LXXx.
He asserts, moreover, that “ the body of a god is not nourished with such food [as was that of Jesus],” since he is able to prove from the Gospel narratives both that He par- took of food, and food of a particular kind. Well, be it so. Let him assert that He ate the passover with His disciples, when He not only used the words, “ With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you,’ but also actually partook of the same. And let him say also, that He ex- perienced the sensation of thirst beside the well of Jacob, and drank of the water of the well. In what respect do these facts militate against what we have said respecting the nature of His body? ‘Moreover, it appears indubitable that after His resurrection He ate a piece of fish; for, according to our view, He assumed a [true] body, as one born of a woman. “ But,” objects Celsus, “the body of a god does not make use of such a voice as that of Jesus, nor employ such a method of persuasion as he.” These are, indeed, trifling and altogether contemptible objections. For our reply to him will be, that he who is believed among the Greeks to be a god, viz. the Pythian and Didymean Apollo, makes use of such a voice for his Pythian priestess at Delphi, and for his prophetess at Miletus; and yet neither the Pythian nor Didymean is charged by the Greeks with not being a god, nor any other Grecian deity whose worship is established in one place. And it was far better, surely, that a god should employ a voice which, on account of its being uttered with power, should produce an indescribable sort of persuasion in the minds of the hearers.