Let the Educated Come

But since he has charged us — I have lost count of how many times by now — with taking this Jesus, who came from a mortal body, to be God, and with supposing that in doing so we are doing what is holy, there is no need to say more about it; a good deal has been said in the earlier pages. Still, let the people who bring the charge understand this much. The one we take to be, and are convinced is, God from the beginning and the Son of God is the Word itself and Wisdom itself and Truth itself. As for his mortal body and the human soul in it, we say that not by their sharing in him only, but by union and intermingling with him, they took on the greatest things, and, having come to share in his divine nature, were changed into God. [a]

And if anyone stumbles at our saying this about his body as well, let him give his attention to what the Greeks say about matter: that in its own right it has no qualities, and takes on whatever qualities the Maker wants to clothe it with, and often lays aside the ones it had before and takes up others, better and of a different kind. If that account is sound, what is surprising in this — that the mortal quality in the body of Jesus should have been changed, since God's providence willed it, into a quality that is ethereal and divine?

So Celsus does not speak like a man trained in argument when he compares the human flesh of Jesus with gold and silver and stone and says that it is more liable to decay than they are. To speak precisely, one incorruptible thing is not more incorruptible than another, and one corruptible thing is not more corruptible than another. But suppose it is more corruptible. Even so we shall say this in answer: if the matter that underlies all qualities can exchange its qualities, why can the flesh of Jesus not also exchange qualities and become what a body has to be that lives in the ether and the regions above it — a body no longer having what belongs to the weakness of the flesh, the things Celsus called filthier? He is not talking like a philosopher when he calls them that. What is filthy in the strict sense is filthy because of vice. The nature of a body is not filthy: as body, it does not have vice, which is what gives birth to filth. [d]

Then, because he suspected the answer we would give, he says about the change of his body: “Well then, once he has laid these qualities aside he will be a god. Why not Asclepius, in that case, and Dionysus and Heracles?” We shall answer: what did Asclepius or Dionysus or Heracles ever do on that scale? Whom can they point to whose characters were made better, who became finer people because of their words and their lives, so that these three might become gods? Let us read the many stories told about them and see whether they were clean of licentiousness, or injustice, or folly, or cowardice. If nothing of that kind is found in them, then Celsus's argument would be strong, the argument that puts the men just named on a level with Jesus. But if it is plain — even granting that some rather creditable things are reported of them — that they are on record as having done any number of things against right reason, how can you still say with any show of reason that they, rather than Jesus, laid aside the mortal body and became gods?

After this he says of us that we laugh at people who worship Zeus, since his tomb is pointed out in Crete, and that we nonetheless worship the one who came from the tomb — and that we do not know how the Cretans do such a thing, or on what ground. Notice, then, that in these words he is defending the Cretans and Zeus and his tomb, hinting at the figurative readings under which the story about Zeus is said to have been invented; while he accuses us, who admit that our Jesus was buried but who also say that he was raised from the tomb — something the Cretans have never yet reported about Zeus. But since he seems to be pleading for the tomb of Zeus in Crete when he says that we do not know how the Cretans do this, or why, we answer that Callimachus of Cyrene too, who had read a vast number of poems and had gone through nearly the whole of Greek history, knew of no figurative meaning in the stories about Zeus and his tomb. That is why he accuses the Cretans in the hymn he wrote to Zeus, saying: [f]

Now the man who said “you did not die, for you are forever,” and who denied that Zeus was buried in Crete, records all the same that a beginning of death did take place in the case of Zeus. And birth on earth is a beginning of death. His words run:

whereas he ought to have seen, having denied that Zeus was born in Crete because of the tomb there, that it followed from his birth in Arcadia that the one who was born should also die. And this is how Callimachus speaks of these matters:

and so on. It is Celsus who has brought us to these topics, by the unfair way he deals with Jesus: he agrees with what is written, that he died and was buried, but he takes it for an invention that he also rose from the dead — and that although any number of prophets had foretold this too, and there are many signs of his appearing after death.

Next after this Celsus brings forward things said against the teaching of Jesus by a very few people who are counted as Christians — not the more sensible ones, as he supposes, but the most ignorant — and he says that these are the orders they give: “Let no educated man come near, no wise man, no sensible man; for these things count as evils among us. But if anyone is unlearned, if anyone is stupid, if anyone is uneducated, if anyone is a child, let him come with confidence. By admitting outright that such people are worthy of their own god, they make it plain that they want, and are able, to win over only the silly and the low-born and the senseless, and slaves and womenfolk and little children.” To this we say the following. Suppose that, while Jesus was teaching about self-restraint and saying, “Anyone who looks at a woman so as to crave her has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” someone saw a few out of all these people who are counted as Christians living without restraint. He would have every reason to accuse them of living contrary to the teaching of Jesus; but he would be acting most unreasonably if he fastened the charge against them onto the message itself. In the same way, if the message of the Christians is found to summon people to wisdom as much as anything does, then the blame will fall on those who plead for their own ignorance — men who say, not what Celsus has written down (for even if some of them are unschooled and unlearned, they do not talk that shamelessly), but other things, far less serious, which nevertheless turn people away from the practice of wisdom. [i]

That the message wants us to be wise can be shown from the ancient Jewish writings, which we use as well, and no less from the writings composed after Jesus, which are believed in the churches to be divine. In the fiftieth psalm David is on record as saying, in his prayer to God, “You have shown me the unseen and hidden things of your wisdom.” And if anyone reads through the Psalms, he will find the book full of many wise teachings. Solomon too, since he asked for wisdom, was granted it, and the traces of his wisdom can be seen in his writings, which hold great thought in few words; in them you will find many praises of wisdom, and much urging that wisdom must be taken up. [k]

So wise was Solomon that the queen of Sheba, having heard his name and the name of the Lord, came to test him with riddles. “And she spoke to him everything that was in her heart, and Solomon told her all her words; there was no word overlooked by the king that he did not tell her. And the queen of Sheba saw all the understanding of Solomon” — and all that was his — “and she was beside herself. And she said to the king: The report I heard in my own land about you and about your understanding is true. I did not believe those who told me, until I came and my own eyes saw; and look, the half of it was not told me. You have added wisdom and good things to them, beyond the whole report that I heard.” It is written of him as well that “the Lord gave Solomon understanding and very great wisdom, and breadth of heart like the sand beside the sea. And wisdom was multiplied in Solomon exceedingly, beyond the understanding of all the ancients and beyond all the wise men of Egypt. And he was wiser than all men: wiser than Gethan the Ezarite, and Emad, and Chalcadi, and Arada, the sons of Mad. And he was famous among all the nations round about. And Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were five thousand. And he spoke about trees, from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that grows out of the wall; and he spoke about fish and about animals. And all the peoples came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom.”

And the message wants there to be wise men among believers so much that, in order to exercise the understanding of those who hear, it has spoken some things in riddles, others in what are called dark sayings, others through parables, and others through set problems. One of the prophets, Hosea, says at the end of his words: “Who is wise, and will understand these things? Or intelligent, and will know them?” Daniel too, and those taken captive with him, made such progress in the studies that the wise men around the king practiced in Babylon that they were shown to surpass all of them tenfold. And in Ezekiel it is said to the ruler of Tyre, who thought highly of himself for his wisdom: “Are you wiser than Daniel? Was every secret not revealed to you?”

And if you come to the books written after Jesus, you will find that the crowds of believers who hear the parables are as people standing outside, worthy only of the teaching meant for outsiders, while the disciples learn the explanations of the parables in private. For “privately he explained everything to his own disciples” — Jesus preferred, above the crowds, those who laid claim to his wisdom. And he promises to send wise men and scribes to those who believe in him, saying, “Look, I am sending you wise men and scribes, and some of them they will kill and crucify.” Paul too, in his list of the gifts God gives, put first the word of wisdom, and second, as standing lower than that, the word of knowledge, and third, somewhere further down, faith. And since he valued the word above the working of wonders, he puts “workings of miracles” and “gifts of healing” in a lower place than the gifts that belong to the word. [o]

Stephen, in the Acts of the Apostles, bears witness to Moses' wide learning, which he had certainly taken from ancient writings that had not reached many people; for he says, “And Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians.” And that is why, in the matter of the wonders as well, there was a suspicion that he might be doing them not by the claim that he had come from God but by Egyptian learning, in which he was expert. It was because the king suspected such things about him that he called in the enchanters of the Egyptians and the sages and the potion-makers, and they were shown to be nothing at all against the wisdom in Moses, which went beyond all the wisdom of the Egyptians.

But it is likely that what Paul wrote in the first letter to the Corinthians — writing to Greeks who were greatly puffed up over Greek wisdom — has moved some people to think that the message does not want wise men. Let anyone who thinks so listen. When the message finds fault with worthless men, it says that they are wise not about the things of the understanding, the unseen and eternal things, but that, since they have busied themselves with the things of sense alone and have put everything in them, they are wise men of the world. In the same way, of the many opinions there are, those that plead for matter and bodies, and say that everything which primarily exists is body and that there is nothing else besides these, whether it is called invisible or named incorporeal — these, it says, are “the wisdom of the world” that is being brought to nothing and shown to be folly, the wisdom of this age. But the opinions that move the soul away from the things here to the blessedness that is with God and to what is called his kingdom, and that teach people to look down on everything that can be sensed and seen as passing, and to hurry toward the unseen and to fix their eyes on what is not seen — these, it says, are “the wisdom of God.” [q]

Paul, being a lover of truth, says of certain wise men among the Greeks, in the matters where they speak truly, that “although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks.” And he testifies of them that they had known God, and he says as well that this did not come to them apart from God, when he writes, “For God showed it to them.” He is hinting, I think, at those who go up from the visible things to the things of the understanding, when he writes: “For the invisible things of God, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood through the things he made — both his eternal power and his divine nature — so that they are without excuse; because although they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or give thanks.”

And perhaps some have been moved by these words as well — “Look at your calling, brothers: that not many are wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many well-born; but God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the low-born things and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh may boast in his presence” — moved by them to suppose that no educated or wise or sensible person comes to the message. To such a man we shall say that it has not been said “no one wise according to the flesh,” but “not many wise according to the flesh.” [s]

And it is plain that when Paul sets out the marks of the men called overseers, describing what an overseer has to be, he included the teacher, saying that he must be able “to convict those who contradict,” so that by the wisdom in him he may shut the mouths of empty talkers and deceivers. And just as he chooses for the office of oversight a man married once rather than a man married twice, and a man “beyond reproach” rather than one open to reproach, and a “sober” man rather than one who is not, and a “self-restrained” man rather than one who is not self-restrained, and an “orderly” man rather than one who is disorderly even in small things — in the same way he wants the man who is to be appointed to oversight before others to be able to teach and able “to convict those who contradict.” How, then, does Celsus have any reason to charge us with saying, “Let no educated man come near, no wise man, no sensible man”? On the contrary: let the educated and wise and sensible man come, if he wishes; and no less, let anyone come who is unlearned and stupid and uneducated and a child. For the message promises to heal such people too when they come, making them all worthy of God.

This is false as well — that the men who teach the divine message want to win over only the silly and the low-born and the senseless, and slaves and womenfolk and little children. The message does call these, in order to make them better; but it calls others too, very different from these, since Christ “is the Savior of all men, and especially of believers,” whether they are intelligent or simpler people, and he “is the atoning sacrifice before the Father for our sins, and not for ours only but for the whole world's.” [u]

After that it is superfluous for us to want to answer statements of Celsus that run like this: “For what, after all, is evil about having been educated, and having given attention to the best arguments, and being sensible as well as seeming so? What does this prevent, when it comes to knowing God? Why is it not rather an advantage, and something by which a man might reach the truth more easily?” Now to be genuinely educated is not an evil, for education is a road to virtue; but not even the wise men among the Greeks will say that people who hold mistaken opinions are to be counted among the educated. Again, who would not agree that it is good to have given attention to the best arguments? But what shall we call the best arguments, except those that are true and that call people toward virtue? And it is a fine thing to be sensible — but not to seem so, which is what Celsus said. And having been educated, and having given attention to the best arguments, and being sensible do not prevent the knowledge of God; they work along with it. And it is more fitting for us to say this than for Celsus — especially if he is shown to be an Epicurean.