Wool-Workers and Cobblers

Now let us look at what he says next, which runs like this: “But of course we also see the men who put on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces and pass the hat. They would never go into a gathering of sensible men, and would never have the nerve to show off their own performances there. But wherever they see youths, and a mob of house-slaves, and a crowd of unthinking people, in they shove and there they preen.” [a]

See how in these words too he brings a false charge against us, likening us to the men who put on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces and pass the hat. What disreputable acts do we put on, then? What is there in what we do that is anything like theirs? By readings, and by the explanations given on what is read, we urge people toward reverence for the God of the universe and toward the virtues that share its throne, and we turn them away from despising the divine and from everything done against right reason.

Philosophers, in fact, would pray to gather as many hearers as we do for words that call people toward what is good. Some of the Cynics above all have done exactly that, arguing in public with whoever happens by. Will they say, then, that these men too are like the ones putting on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces and passing the hat — men who do not assemble the people reckoned to be educated, but call their hearers in from the street corner and gather them there? Neither Celsus nor anyone who thinks as he does brings a charge against men who set arguments going even before untrained crowds, out of what they take to be love for their fellow human beings.

And if those men are not to be blamed for doing it, let us see whether Christians do not call crowds toward goodness of character more, and better, than they do. Philosophers who talk in public do not sift their hearers; anyone who wants to stands and listens. Christians, however, first test the souls of those who want to hear them, so far as they are able, and work on them privately beforehand; and only when the hearers seem to have made progress enough toward wanting to live well — before they come into the common assembly — do they bring them in, and not before. [d]

They make one order, kept separate, of those who are just beginning and being brought in and have not yet received the token of having been washed clean; and another of those who have shown, as far as they can, that their settled purpose is to want nothing but what Christians hold. Among them there are certain men appointed to inquire closely into the lives and the conduct of those who come forward, so as to keep people who do disgraceful things from coming to their common gathering, while they welcome with their whole soul those who are not like that, and make them better day by day.

And this is how they deal with those who sin, and above all with those who live loosely — men whom they drive out of the common assembly, these people who, according to Celsus, are like the ones putting on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces. The Pythagoreans’ dignified school used to build empty tombs for those who fell away from their philosophy, reckoning that they had become dead men. These people mourn as dead those who have been beaten by loose living or by anything else out of place, since they are lost and dead to God; and if they show a change worth speaking of, at some later time they take them back as men risen from the dead, after a longer wait than the ones admitted at the start. But they never enroll into any office or position of leadership in what is called the church of God anyone who fell after he had come to the word.

Now look at what Celsus says next — “We see the men who put on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces and pass the hat” — and see whether it is not an outright falsehood, and a comparison drawn between things that are not alike. These men, to whom Celsus likens us, the ones putting on the most disreputable acts in the marketplaces and passing the hat, would never (he says) go into a gathering of sensible men, and would never have the nerve to show off their own performances there; but wherever they see youths, and a mob of house-slaves, and a crowd of unthinking people, in they shove and there they preen. In saying this he is doing nothing but abusing us, like the women at the street corner whose whole aim is to speak ill of one another. [h]

For we do everything in our power to make our gathering one of sensible men. The finest and most divine things we have, we dare to bring out into the open in our talks to the whole body when we are well supplied with intelligent hearers; but we hide the deeper matters and pass them over in silence when we see that the people coming together are simpler, and need what is figuratively called “milk.”

For it is written by our own Paul, writing to the Corinthians, who were Greeks and whose habits were not yet cleaned up: “I gave you milk to drink, not food, for you were not yet able. And you are not able even now, for you are still fleshly. For where there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly, and living the way any ordinary man lives?” And this same writer, knowing that some things are food for a soul further along, while what is given to those being brought in is compared to the milk of infants, says: “And you have come to need milk, not solid food. For everyone who has a share in milk is untried in the word of righteousness, since he is an infant. Solid food is for the mature, whose organs of perception have been trained by long habit to tell good from bad.” [i]

Would people who believe these things are well said suppose, then, that the fine things of our teaching would never be spoken in a gathering of sensible men, and that wherever our teachers see youths, and a mob of house-slaves, and a crowd of unthinking people, that is where they bring out into the open what is divine and worthy of respect, and preen themselves over it in front of such an audience? It is plain to anyone who examines the whole intent of our writings that Celsus, who hates the Christian people exactly as the untrained crowds do, says such things without examining them, and says them falsely.

We do admit, though Celsus would rather we did not, that we want to educate everyone with the word of God — to give youths the encouragement that fits them, and to show house-slaves how they might take up the mind of a free man and be made noble by the word. Those among us who serve as ambassadors for Christianity say plainly enough that they are debtors “to Greeks and to barbarians, to the wise and to the unthinking.” They do not deny that the souls of unthinking people also need treatment, so that they may put off their ignorance as far as they can and press on toward better sense. They listen to Solomon too, when he says, “You who are senseless, get yourselves a heart,” and, “Whoever among you has the least sense, let him turn aside to me.” And Wisdom gives her orders to those who lack sense, saying, “Come, eat my bread and drink the wine I have mixed for you. Leave foolishness behind, so that you may live, and set your understanding straight in knowledge.” [l]

And since it bears on the matter in hand, I would say this too in answer to what Celsus says. Do philosophers not invite youths to their lectures? Do they not urge young men out of a thoroughly bad life toward better things? Do they not want house-slaves to take up philosophy? Are we now going to bring charges against philosophers for urging house-slaves toward virtue — against Pythagoras over Zamolxis, against Zeno over Persaeus, and, only yesterday and the day before, against the men who urged Epictetus into philosophy? Or is it allowed to you, Greeks, to call youths and house-slaves and unthinking people to philosophy, while we, doing the very same thing, are not doing it out of love for our fellow human beings — we who want to treat every rational nature with the medicine that comes from the word, and to bring it into the household of the God who made all things? So much, then, was enough to answer what on Celsus’ part is abuse rather than accusation.

But since he took such pleasure in his run of abuse against us and added still more of it, let us set that out too and see whether it is Christians or Celsus who should be ashamed of what is said. He writes: “We see, in private houses too, wool-workers and cobblers and fullers, the most uneducated and boorish of men, who would not dare to utter a word in front of their older and more sensible masters. But once they get hold of the children on their own, and some womenfolk as senseless as themselves, they come out with astonishing things: that the children must not pay attention to their father and their teachers, but must listen to them instead; that the father and the teachers talk drivel and are addled, that they neither know nor can do anything really good, being taken up beforehand with empty nonsense; that they alone know how a person ought to live, and that if the children listen to them they will be blessed themselves and will make the household a happy one. And while they are saying this, if they see one of the schoolteachers coming by, or one of the more sensible sort, or the father himself, the more cautious of them take fright, while the more brazen egg the children on to slip the reins, whispering that in front of their father and their teachers they neither will nor can explain anything good to them — for they shrink, they say, from those men’s silliness and coarseness, corrupt through and through as they are, far gone in wickedness, and ready to punish the children. So if they want anything, they must leave their father and their teachers behind and go with the womenfolk and their little playmates into the women’s quarters, or the cobbler’s shop, or the fuller’s shop, so as to get what is complete. And by talking like that, they win them over.” [q]

Now look here too at the way he tears into those among us who teach the word — men who try in every way to lead the soul up to the Maker of all things, and who show that one must think little of everything that is perceived by the senses, temporary and visible, and must do everything to reach fellowship with God, and the contemplation of what is grasped by the mind and unseen, and a blessed life with God and with those of God’s household. He compares them to wool-workers in private houses, and to cobblers, and to fullers, and to the most boorish of men, calling small children and womenfolk to base things so that they will leave their father and their teachers and follow them instead. [t]

Let Celsus point out which self-restrained father, or which teachers with more dignified lessons, we take children and womenfolk away from; and let him compare, taking the children and womenfolk who come to our teaching, whether anything they used to hear is better than what we say, and in what way we take children and womenfolk away from fine and dignified studies and call them to worse things. He will not be able to make any such case against us. The opposite is true. We take the womenfolk away from a life without restraint, and from the corruption that comes from the people they keep company with, and from every madness for the theater and for the dancers, and from superstition. And boys just come to puberty, swelling with the desire for sex, we bring to self-restraint. We set before them not only the disgrace in the sins themselves, but also the state the soul of a bad man will be in because of such things, what penalties it will pay, and how it will be punished.

But which teachers are we calling drivelers and addled — the ones Celsus stands up for as teaching better things? Unless, that is, he considers men good teachers of womenfolk, and no drivelers, when they call them to superstition and to unrestrained shows; and considers men not addled when they drive the young off and carry them away into all those things we know they do, all over the place, with no order or restraint. As for us, we call even the men who come from the philosophers’ schools of thought, so far as we can, to our own worship of God, setting out what is exceptional and unmixed in it. [w]

But since Celsus, in what he said, made out that we do not do this, and that we call only the unthinking, I would say this to him: if you were charging us with drawing away from philosophy people already taken up with it, you would not have been telling the truth, but your argument would at least have had some plausibility. As it is, you say we draw those who come to us away from good teachers. So point out those teachers — teachers other than the teachers of philosophy, or than the men trained in some useful subject.

He will have nothing of the sort to show. And we promise openly, not in secret, that they will be blessed who live according to the word of God, who look toward him in everything, and who carry out whatever they do as under the eye of God, who is watching. Are these, then, the lessons of wool-workers and cobblers and fullers and the most uneducated country people? He will not be able to show it.

Celsus says that these men of his — the ones like the wool-workers in private houses, and like the cobblers and fullers and the most uneducated country people — will neither want to say anything in front of the father and the teachers, nor be able to explain anything good to the children. To this we will say: what sort of father do you mean, my good man, and what sort of teacher? If you mean the kind who welcomes virtue, turns away from vice, and is glad of what is better, then hear this: we will tell the children what we hold with all the confidence of men who stand well with such a judge. But if we keep silent in front of a father who is at odds with virtue and goodness of character, and in front of teachers who teach the opposite of sound reasoning, do not blame us for that either, since the blame would be unreasonable. [y]

You yourself, at any rate, when you hand on the secret rites of philosophy to young men and to sons whose fathers count philosophy an idle and useless business, will not speak of them in front of those worthless fathers. Wanting instead to separate from their bad fathers the sons who have been turned toward philosophy, you will watch for the right moments, so that philosophy’s arguments may take hold of the young men. And we will say the same about the teachers.

If we turn people away from teachers who teach the indecencies of comedy and the unrestrained iambics and everything else of that kind — things that neither turn the speaker around nor do the hearers any good — teachers who do not know how to listen to poetry the way a philosopher does, or how to add to each piece what tends to a young man’s benefit, then in doing that we are not ashamed to admit what we are doing. But if you will show me teachers who prepare young men for philosophy and train them in it, I will not turn the young away from them. Once they have been exercised beforehand in the general course of studies and in philosophy’s own subjects, I will try to lead them up to the dignified and lofty grandeur of the Christians’ speech, which most people have never noticed — Christians who deal with the greatest and most necessary questions, prove their case, and show that these matters were treated philosophically by God’s prophets and by the apostles of Jesus.

Then, realizing that he had abused us rather bitterly, Celsus says the following, as though in his own defense: “That I bring no charge more bitter than the truth forces, anyone may judge from this as well. Those who invite people to the other initiations make this proclamation: ‘Whoever is clean of hands and understandable in speech.’ And others again: ‘Whoever is pure of every defilement, whose soul is aware of no evil in itself, and whose life has been good and just.’ That is the proclamation made by the men who promise cleansings from sins. But let us hear whom these people call. ‘Whoever is a sinner,’ they say, ‘whoever is without understanding, whoever is a child — in a word, whoever is ill-starred: him the kingdom of God will receive.’ By the sinner, then, do you not mean this man — the unjust man, the thief, the burglar, the poisoner, the temple-robber, the grave-robber? Whom else would a bandit have called, if he were making a proclamation?” [ab]

In answer to this we say that calling those who are sick in soul to be treated is not the same thing as calling the healthy to the knowledge and understanding of things more divine. We know both, and we keep both in view. At the start, calling people to be healed, we urge sinners to come to the words that teach them not to sin, and those without understanding to the words that produce understanding, and infants to climb up in their thinking to a grown man, and those who are simply ill-starred to good fortune — or, to use the more exact word, to blessedness. And when those who have been turned around make progress and show that they have been cleansed by the word and have lived better as far as they could, then and only then do we call them to the rites we have among us. For “we speak wisdom among the mature.”