A Voice Only Some Could Hear

Jesus also taught us who it was that sent him. He did it in these words: “No one has known the Father except the Son.” And in these: “No one has ever seen God; the only Son, who is God, who is at the Father’s side — he has made him known.” It was he who spoke about God and reported what belongs to God to his own genuine disciples; and we, finding the traces of that teaching in the writings, have from them our starting points for speaking about God ourselves. In one place we hear, “God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all”; in another, “God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” [a]

But the purposes for which the Father sent him are countless. Anyone who wants to can learn them — partly from the prophets who proclaimed him beforehand, partly from the evangelists; and he will learn not a few of them from the apostles as well, and most of all from Paul. Moreover, Jesus leads into the light those who live in reverence toward God, and he will punish those who sin. Celsus did not see this, and so he made him out to be “one who will lead into the light those who live in reverence toward God, and will have mercy on those who sin, or repent.”

After this he says: “If he wanted to stay hidden, why was a voice heard from heaven proclaiming him Son of God? And if he did not want to stay hidden, why was he punished? Why did he die?” He thinks that with questions like these he is convicting the accounts written about Jesus of disagreeing with one another. He does not see that Jesus neither wanted everything about himself known to everyone he happened to meet, nor wanted everything about himself hidden. At any rate, the voice from heaven that proclaimed him Son of God — “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” — is not recorded as having come within the crowds’ hearing, as this Jew of Celsus supposed. And the voice from the cloud on the very high mountain was heard only by the men who had gone up with him. For the divine voice is of such a kind that it is heard only by those the speaker wants to hear it. [f]

I am not even saying yet that the voice of God, as it stands on record, is not struck air at all, or a blow upon air, or anything else the treatises on the voice describe. That is exactly why it is heard by a hearing better than the hearing of the senses, and more divine. When the speaker does not want his voice audible to everyone, the man who “has” the better “ears” hears God, while the man whose soul’s hearing has been deafened does not perceive that it is God speaking. I have said all this because of his question, “Why was a voice heard from heaven proclaiming him Son of God?” As for the other one — “If he did not want to stay hidden, why was he punished? Why did he die?” — what we said at greater length about his suffering in the earlier pages is enough.

After this the Jew in Celsus sets out as a consequence what does not follow. From his premise — “He wanted, through the punishments he suffered, to teach us to despise death as well” — it does not follow that “after rising from the dead he should openly call everyone into the light and teach them why he had come down.” For he had already called everyone into the light when he said, “Come, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” And why he had come down is on record in the discourses he set going at length: in the beatitudes and the announcements that follow them, in the parables, and in his conversations with the scribes and Pharisees. The Gospel according to John lays out how much he taught, and shows that the greatness of Jesus’ speech lay not in his wording but in what he did. And it is plain from the Gospels that “his word was with authority,” which is why they were amazed at him. [i]

And to all this the Jew in Celsus adds: “So there you have it, out of your own writings; and for these we need no other witness, since you fall foul of yourselves.” But we have proved that in this Jew’s words — whether against Jesus or against us — a great deal of nonsense has been talked that runs against our own writings, the Gospels. And I do not think he has shown how we fall foul of ourselves. He only supposes it. [k]

And since his Jew adds this to the rest, in a general way — “O most high and heavenly one! What god, when he comes among men, is disbelieved?” — we must say to him that even by the law of Moses God is recorded as having come among the Hebrews in the plainest way possible: not only in the signs and wonders in Egypt, and further in the crossing of the Red Sea and the pillar of fire and the cloud of light, but also when the Ten Commandments were announced to the whole people. And he was disbelieved by the very people who had seen it. For if they had believed what they had seen and heard, they would not have made a calf, nor would they have “exchanged their glory for the likeness of a calf that eats grass,” nor would they have said to one another about the calf, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” And see whether it does not belong to one and the same people both to have disbelieved marvels so great and appearances of God so many, all through the wilderness, as is written in the law of the Jews, and, when Jesus came among them so astonishingly, not to be taken captive by the words he spoke with authority or by the astonishing things he did in the sight of the whole people.

I think what has been said is enough for anyone who wants to show that the Jews’ unbelief toward Jesus followed from what has been recorded about this people from the beginning. For here is what I would say to the Jew who speaks in Celsus, when he asks, “What god, when he comes among men, is disbelieved — and that when he shows himself to the very people who are hoping for him? Why on earth is he not recognized by those who have been waiting for him so long?” What would you have us answer, friends, to your questions? Which works of power seem to you, on your own reckoning, to be the greater — the ones in Egypt and in the wilderness, or the ones we say Jesus did among you? If in your judgment the former are greater than the latter, is it not shown at once that despising the lesser belongs to the character of men who disbelieved the greater? For that is exactly the view being taken of what we say about Jesus. But if the works reported of Jesus are called equal to those recorded by Moses, what strange thing has happened to a people that disbelieves at both beginnings? [o]

For the giving of a law began in Moses’ time, and in his book the sins of the unbelieving and the sinners among you are written down; while the beginning of a second law-giving and covenant is admitted to have come to us in Jesus’ time. And by disbelieving Jesus you bear witness that you are sons of the men who in the wilderness disbelieved the appearances of God. What our Savior said will be said to you too, who did not believe him: “So you are witnesses, and you consent to the deeds of your fathers.” And the prophecy is being fulfilled in you which says, “Your life will hang before your eyes, and you will not believe your life.” For you did not believe the Life that came to stay among the human race.

In making up his Jew as a character, Celsus could not find anything to put in his mouth that could not be turned back on him out of the writings of the law and the prophets. For he finds fault with Jesus like this: “He makes threats and hurls abuse lightly, whenever he says, ‘Woe to you,’ and, ‘I tell you beforehand.’ For in these words he flatly admits that he cannot persuade — something that would happen to no god, and not even to a sensible man.” But see whether these charges do not turn straight back on the Jew. For in the writings of the law and the prophets God threatens and hurls abuse, when he speaks woes no less severe than the ones in the Gospel. Take these in Isaiah: “Woe to those who join house to house and bring field close to field”; “Woe to those who get up early in the morning and chase after strong drink”; “Woe to those who drag their sins after them with a long rope”; “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil”; “Woe to the strong men among you, the ones who drink the wine” — and you could find countless others. [t]

And how is this not very like the threats he speaks of: “Woe, sinful nation, a people full of sins, evil seed, lawless sons,” and what follows? And on those words he piles threats as great as any the Jew says Jesus made. Or is this not a threat, and a great one: “Your land is desolate, your cities burned with fire; strangers devour your country in front of you, and it is left desolate, overthrown by foreign peoples”? And are there not abusive words against the people in Ezekiel too, where the Lord says to the prophet, “You are living in the middle of scorpions”? So then, Celsus — did you know what you were doing when you had your Jew say of Jesus that he makes threats and hurls abuse lightly, whenever he says, “Woe to you,” and, “I tell you beforehand”? Do you not see that what your Jew says in accusing Jesus could be said straight back to him about God? For the God who speaks in the prophets turns out to be flatly liable to the same charges — as the Jew reckons them — of being unable to persuade.

I would say something further about all this to the people who think the Jew in Celsus brings these charges against Jesus well. A great many curses are written down in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. However the Jew defends those, standing by his Scripture, we shall make the same defense of the abuse and the threats supposed to have been spoken by Jesus — or a better one. And we shall be able to defend the law of Moses itself better than the Jew can, since Jesus has taught us to listen to the writings of the law with more understanding than he has. In fact, if the Jew sees what the prophetic words intend, he will be able to show that God does not threaten and hurl abuse lightly when he says “Woe” and “I tell you beforehand,” and to show how God might say such things in order to turn people around — the very things Celsus thinks not even a sensible man would do. And Christians, who know one God, the God who speaks in the prophets and in the Lord, will show the good sense of what Celsus counts as threats and calls abuse.

And a few words on this point should be addressed to Celsus himself, who claims both to be a philosopher and to know our affairs. Tell me, friend: when Homer’s Hermes says to Odysseus, “Why now, poor wretch, do you come alone over the ridges?” you put up with the explanation that Homer’s Hermes talks to Odysseus that way in order to turn him around — since flattery and pleasant talk belong to the Sirens, who have “a heap of bones” lying about them as they say, “Come here, come, Odysseus of many tales, great glory of the Achaeans.” But when my prophets, and Jesus himself, say “Woe,” and what you count as abuse, in order to turn their hearers around — then nothing is being arranged for the hearers by such words, and no such word is being brought to them as a healing drug? Unless, of course, you want God, or someone who shares in a divine nature, when he talks with men, to look only at what belongs to his own nature and to what is worthy of himself, and no longer to see what it is fitting to say to men who are being managed and led by his word, and to talk with each one according to the character that man actually has.

And how is it not ridiculous, this charge of being unable to persuade — said of Jesus, and shared out not only with the Jew, who has many such cases in his prophets, but with the Greeks as well? For among them, every man who carried off a great reputation for wisdom failed to persuade the men plotting against him, or his judges, or his accusers, to stop being wicked and to travel by way of philosophy to virtue.

After this his Jew says — clearly following what Jews hold: “We do indeed hope to rise again in the body and to have everlasting life; and the one who is sent to us will be the pattern and the founder of it, showing that it is not impossible for God to raise someone up along with his body.” Now we do not know whether the Jew would say that the Christ they expect shows the pattern of the resurrection in himself; but let it stand — grant that he both thinks so and says so. Then here is our answer to the man who told us he was drawing on our own writings. Friend, did you read the passages you suppose give you grounds to accuse us, and never work your way through the resurrection of Jesus, and the statement that he is “firstborn from the dead”? Or, because you do not want these things to have been said, were they not said at all? [ab]

But since the Jew still says, and admits, that bodies rise, I do not think this the right moment to go through the subject with a man who both believes and says that there is a resurrection of bodies — whether he has the matter jointed out in his own mind and can plead its case well, or whether he has not, and has agreed to it only the way one agrees to a legend.

Let that be our answer to the Jew in Celsus. And since after this he says, “Where is he, then, so that we may see him and believe?” we shall say to him: Where, then, is the one who speaks in the prophets and who did the marvels, so that we may see and believe that he is a portion of God? Is it open to you to explain why God does not always show himself to the Hebrew nation, while the same defense is not granted to us about Jesus — who both rose once and persuaded his disciples of his own resurrection, and persuaded them so thoroughly that by what they suffer they show everyone how they can make light of every hardship in this life, with their eyes on the everlasting life and the resurrection that were shown them in word and in deed?

After this the Jew says: “Or did he come down for this — so that we should not believe him?” To him it will be said: He did not come for this, to produce unbelief among the Jews; but knowing beforehand that it would come, he foretold it, and he used the unbelief of the Jews for the calling of the nations. For by their trespass “salvation came to the nations” — the nations about whom the Christ who speaks in the prophets says, “A people I did not know served me; at the hearing of the ear they obeyed me,” and, “I was found by those who were not looking for me; I became visible to those who did not ask after me.” [af]

It is clear, too, that the Jews were punished with a punishment in this life as well, after treating Jesus as they treated him. And let the Jews say what they will, when we charge them and say: “How wonderful, then, is God’s providence and his love for people toward you — punished as you are, and stripped of Jerusalem, and of what is called the sanctuary, and of your most solemn worship!” For whatever they say in defense of God’s providence, we shall establish it better and say something better still: that God’s providence has been wonderful, in that it used that people’s sin so that people from the nations — strangers “to the covenants” and foreigners to the promises — should be called into the kingdom of God through Jesus.

And the prophets foretold this as well: that because of the sins of the Hebrew people God would choose, not a nation, but picked men from everywhere; and that, having chosen “the foolish things of the world,” he would make a nation without understanding at home in the words of God, the kingdom of God being taken away from the one and given to the other. Out of many passages it is enough for the present to set down the prophecy from the song in Deuteronomy about the calling of the nations, which runs like this, spoken in the person of the Lord: “They made me jealous with what is no god; they provoked me to anger with their idols. And I will make them jealous with what is no nation; with a nation without understanding I will provoke them to anger.”