Frogs Around a Marsh

Let others, then, grant Celsus that God does not change but only makes those who see him think that he has changed. We are convinced that in the coming of Jesus among people there was no seeming, but truth and a thing plainly there to be seen; so this charge of Celsus does not touch us. Still, we will answer it. Do you not say yourself, Celsus, that deceiving and lying may sometimes be used the way a doctor uses a drug? Then what is out of place, if something of that kind was going to save, in something of that kind having happened? For with characters like these, certain words turn a man around better when they are spoken falsely — as a doctor’s words to his patients sometimes are — than when they are spoken truly. [a]

But let that stand as a defense we make on behalf of others. For there is nothing out of place in the one who healed sick friends healing the human race, which he loves, by the kind of remedy no one would use as his first choice, but only as the circumstances require. The human race had gone out of its mind, and it had to be treated by methods that the Word saw would be useful to people out of their minds, so that they might come back to their senses.

He says as well: “One does this sort of thing to enemies, taking precautions to escape danger. But God fears no one, that he should escape danger by leading those who plot against him into error.”

It is altogether unnecessary and unreasonable to answer a charge that no one brings against our Savior. And in the defense we made on behalf of others we have already replied to this: “And no one who is sick or out of his mind is a friend of God.” For the man who made that defense says that an arrangement of this kind was not made for the sake of those who were already friends and afterward fell sick or went out of their minds, but for the sake of those who were still enemies through a sickness of the soul and a displacement of their natural reasoning — so that they might become friends of God. For it is said plainly that Jesus took everything upon himself on behalf of sinners, to free them from sin and make them righteous.

Next he puts speeches into the mouths of the Jews on their own account, giving their reasons for holding that Christ’s coming to them is still ahead, and into the mouths of the Christians on theirs, speaking of the coming of the Son of God into the life of human beings as something that has already happened. Come, then, let us look at this too, as briefly as we can. In his book the Jews say that life is filled with every kind of wickedness and needs someone sent down from God, so that the unrighteous may be punished and everything cleansed, in the same way as the first flood that came. And since the Christians are said to add other things to this, plainly he means that they say all of it too. [g]

So what is out of place in the coming of one who, when wickedness has flooded in, will cleanse the world and deal with each person according to what he deserves? It does not suit God to leave the spread of wickedness unchecked and not make things new. The Greeks too know of the earth being cleansed at set periods by a flood or by fire, as Plato says somewhere: “And when the gods flood the earth, cleansing it with water, some are left on the mountains” — and so on.

So this has to be said. If those men assert such things, are their claims dignified and worth taking seriously; but if we too maintain some of the very things the Greeks are praised for, are the teachings no longer any good? And in fact those who care how everything written among us fits together and how exact it is will try to show not only that the men who wrote it are ancient, but the dignity of what is said in it and how it hangs together with itself.

But I do not see how he can suppose that the throwing down of the tower happened for a purpose like the flood’s, which cleansed the earth, as the account held by Jews and Christians has it. Grant that the story of the tower set down in Genesis hints at nothing, but is exactly what it appears to be, as Celsus supposes: even so it does not look as though it happened in order to cleanse the earth — unless he takes what is called the confusion of tongues to be a cleansing of the earth. Anyone who is able will explain that at a better time, when what is set before him is to lay out both what sense the account of that passage has and what higher meaning may be drawn up out of it. [i]

He thinks that Moses, who wrote the account of the tower and the confusion of languages, spoiled the story told about the sons of Aloeus and wrote up his account of the tower out of it. So this has to be said: I do not think anyone before Homer told the story of the sons of Aloeus, while I am convinced that what Moses wrote about the tower is much older than Homer, and older than the invention of Greek letters as well. Who, then, is spoiling whose story? Do the men who tell of the sons of Aloeus spoil the account of the tower, or does the man who wrote about the tower and the confusion of languages spoil the story of the Aloadae? To hearers who cannot be bought, Moses plainly is older than Homer.

And the account Moses gives in Genesis of Sodom and Gomorrah, wiped out by fire for their sin, Celsus sets beside the story of Phaethon. He has made the whole of it consistent, but out of a single mistake: he has not kept in view how old Moses is. For those who tell the story of Phaethon look to be later even than Homer, and Homer is much later than Moses.

So we do not deny the fire that cleanses, nor the destruction of the world for the pulling down of wickedness and the making new of everything; we say we learned these things from the prophets, out of the sacred books. And since, as we have said in earlier pages, the prophets say many things about what is to come and are shown to have told the truth about many things now past, giving proof that a divine Spirit came to be in them, it is clear that they are to be trusted about what is still to come as well — or rather, that the divine Spirit in them is.

According to Celsus, then, “the Christians add certain statements to what the Jews say, and assert that the Son of God has already been sent because of the sins of the Jews; and that the Jews, having punished Jesus and given him gall to drink, drew down God’s gall on themselves.” [l]

Let anyone who wants to prove that statement false — if the whole nation of the Jews was not left uprooted within one full generation of Jesus suffering these things at their hands. For I think it was forty-two years from when they crucified Jesus to the tearing down of Jerusalem. And it has never been recorded, in all the time there have been Jews, that they were shut out for so long from their solemn holy rites and their service, held down by stronger nations. Even if at times they seemed to be abandoned for their sins, they were still watched over, and they came back and got their own again, and carried out what their law prescribed with nothing to hinder them.

So one of the things that shows Jesus to have been something divine and sacred is this: that so much of this kind, and of such a weight, has now come upon the Jews on his account, over so long a time. And we will say confidently that they will not be restored either. For they did the most unholy deed of all: they plotted against the Savior of the human race in the very city where they carried out for God the prescribed symbols of great mysteries.

So that city, where Jesus suffered these things, had to be destroyed root and branch, and the nation of the Jews had to be uprooted, and God’s call to blessedness had to pass over to others — I mean the Christians, to whom the teaching about a sincere and pure reverence for God has come, who have received new laws that fit the settled order of life everywhere; since the laws given before to a single nation, ruled by kings of its own people and its own manners, could not all be carried out now.

After this, laughing at the race of Jews and Christians in his usual way, he has compared them all to a string of bats, or to ants that have come out of the nest, or to frogs holding council around a marsh, or to worms holding an assembly in a corner of a dung-heap and quarrelling with one another over which of them are the greater sinners — and saying: “God discloses and announces everything to us beforehand; and leaving the whole world and the wheeling of the heavens, and taking no notice of this great earth, he lives as a citizen among us alone, and sends his heralds to us alone, and never stops sending and searching for a way that we may be with him always.” [p]

And in this fiction of his he makes us just like worms, saying: “There is God; then, next after him, we who were made by him are in every way like God; and everything has been put under us — earth and water and air and stars — and everything exists for our sake and has been appointed to serve us.”

And in his book the worms — meaning us, of course — say something more: “Now, since some among us are doing wrong, God will come, or will send his Son, to burn up the unrighteous, so that the rest of us may have eternal life with him.” And he adds to all of it: “Wranglings like these would be more bearable coming from worms and frogs than from Jews and Christians quarrelling with one another.”

To all this we put a question to those who accept what has been said against us in this way. Do you take all human beings to be a string of bats, or ants, or frogs, or worms, because God is so far above them? Or do you leave the rest of humanity out of the picture you have drawn — treating them as human beings, since they have reason and since the laws are in place — while you hold Christians and Jews cheap for teachings that do not please you, and compare them to those animals? Whichever of the two you say in answer to our question, we will reply, and try to show that such things are not fittingly said, either about all human beings or about us. [s]

Suppose, then, that you say the first: that all human beings, set against God, are compared to these cheap animals, since their smallness cannot be compared at all with how far God is above them. What smallness do you mean? Answer me, gentlemen. If you mean smallness of body, then hear this: when truth sits as judge, what stands above and what falls short are not decided by the body. On that reckoning griffins and elephants will be better than we human beings, since they are bigger, stronger, and longer-lived than we are. But no one in his right mind would say that these creatures without reason are better than reasoning creatures because of their bodies; for reason lifts the reasoning creature far above everything without reason.

Nor are the excellent and blessed beings better because of bodies — whether they are, as you say, good demons, or, as we are accustomed to call them, angels of God, or whatever natures stand higher than human beings. They are better because the reason in them has been brought to completion and has been given its shape by every virtue.

But if it is not on account of the body that you hold man’s smallness cheap, but on account of the soul — as being lower than the other reasoning beings, and especially than the excellent ones, and lower for this reason, that wickedness is in it — then why are the worthless among Christians, and those among the Jews who live badly, a string of bats or ants or worms or frogs any more than the vicious among the other nations? On that reckoning anyone at all, and above all a man who deals in wickedness let loose, is a bat and a worm and a frog and an ant compared with the rest of humanity. [w]

So even if a man is a Demosthenes, the orator, but with the same wickedness Demosthenes had and with the deeds that wickedness led him to do; and even if another is an Antiphon, also reckoned an orator, who did away with providence in the books he entitled On Truth — a title much like the one Celsus put on his own book — these men are worms all the same, rolling in a corner of the dung-heap of stupidity and ignorance.

And yet, whatever the reasoning part of a person may be like, it could not sensibly be compared to a worm, since it has starting points toward virtue in it. These first rough sketches of virtue do not allow people who have virtue in them as a power, and who cannot lose its seeds altogether, to be compared to a worm. So it comes to light that human beings in general cannot be worms as against God: reason has its beginning from the reason that is with God, and it will not let a reasoning creature be reckoned wholly foreign to God. Nor can the worthless among Christians and Jews — who in truth are neither Christians nor Jews — be compared, any more than the rest of the worthless, to worms rolling in a corner of a dung-heap. And if the nature of reason will not allow even that, then plainly we will not insult human nature, which has been built for virtue, even when it goes wrong through ignorance, nor make it out to be like animals of that kind.

But suppose it is because of the teachings of Christians and Jews that do not please Celsus — teachings he plainly does not understand in the first place — that these people are worms and ants while the rest are not. Come, then, let us examine the teachings of Christians and Jews that show themselves plainly to everyone, and set them beside the teachings of the rest of humanity, and see whether it will not come to light, for people who have once granted that some human beings are worms and ants, that the worms and ants and frogs are the ones who have fallen away from a sound understanding of God, and who, under an appearance of reverence, worship either animals without reason, or statues, or even the things that have been made — when from the beauty of them they ought to be wondering at the one who made them, and reverencing him. [y]

The human beings — and anything more honorable than human beings, if there is such a thing — are those who have been able to follow reason and climb up past stones and wood, and past what is reckoned the most precious material of all, silver and gold; and who, climbing up also from the beautiful things in the world to the maker of all things, have entrusted themselves to him as the only one who can reach through to everything that exists, and watch over the thoughts of everyone, and hear the prayer of everyone. They send their prayers up to him. They do everything as before one who is watching what is done, and, as before one who is hearing what is said, they keep themselves from saying anything that could not be carried to God with his approval.

Unless, that is, reverence of such a size — reverence not beaten down by hard labor, or by the danger of death, or by plausible arguments — does nothing at all for the people who have taken it up toward their no longer being compared to worms, even supposing they were compared that way before they had reverence of that size.

And do the men who conquer the sharpest appetite for sex — the appetite that has made the hearts of many soft and waxy — and who conquer it for this reason, that they have been persuaded they cannot be made God’s own in any other way unless they climb up to him by self-restraint as well — do these seem to you the brothers of worms, and the relatives of ants, and much the same as frogs? And what of the brilliance of righteousness, which keeps toward a neighbor and toward one’s own kin what belongs to shared life, and what is just and kind to other people and good — is it worth nothing toward keeping a man like that from being a bat?

And the men who roll about in loose living, as most people do, and who go to common prostitutes without a second thought — and even teach that this is not altogether against what is fitting — are they not worms in the mud? Especially set beside people who have been taught not to take “the members of Christ” and the body the Word lives in, and make them “the members of a prostitute”; who have already learned as well that the body of a reasoning being, dedicated to the God of all, “is a temple” of the God they worship, becoming such a thing out of the pure thought they hold about the Creator; and who, guarding against ruining “the temple of God” by unlawful intercourse, practice self-restraint as their reverence toward God.

And I have not yet spoken of the other evils among human beings, from which not even those who pass for philosophers are quickly clean — for in philosophy too there are many counterfeits. Nor do I yet say that there is much of this kind among people who are neither Jews nor Christians. Either it does not exist at all among Christians, if you examine strictly who the Christian is; or, if such a person is found, at least he is not among those who sit together in the assembly and come to the common prayers and are not shut out from them — unless, rarely, someone of that sort is found escaping notice in the crowd. [ac]

So we are not worms holding a church meeting — we who take our stand against the Jews on the strength of the writings they themselves believe to be sacred, and who show that the one the prophets spoke of has come; that they have been abandoned because of the greatest of sins; and that we, who have accepted the Word, have the best hopes with God, both from our trust in him and from his power to make us his own, clean of every wickedness and evil of life.

So it is not just anyone who announces himself a Jew or a Christian who could say that God made the whole world and the wheeling of the heavens for us in particular. But if a man is, as Jesus taught, “pure in heart,” and gentle, and a peacemaker, and endures readily the dangers that come from reverence for God, a man like that would have good reason to be confident toward God; and, understanding the word held in the prophecies, he could also say this: “All these things God has disclosed and announced beforehand to us who believe.”