The Case Against the Christians

“So then, since the agreement of every nation that the immortal gods exist stands firm — even though their nature and their origin remain uncertain — I will not put up with anyone so swollen with boldness, and with some irreligious cleverness I cannot name, that he sets out to undermine this religion or weaken it: a religion so old, so useful, so healthy. Not even if he is Theodorus of Cyrene, or the man before him, Diagoras of Melos, whom antiquity nicknamed the Atheist. By insisting that there were no gods, both of them took away the fear that governs the human race, and every trace of reverence along with it. But they will never win with this training in irreverence, however much they put it out under the name and authority of a so-called philosophy. [a]

“The Athenians drove Protagoras of Abdera out and burned his writings in public assembly, because he argued about the divine deliberately rather than profanely. So why is this not something to grieve over — that men (and you will let me use the force of the case I have taken up rather freely), that men, I say, of a condemned, outlawed, desperate faction should rage against the gods? They scrape together the more ignorant sort from the lowest dregs, and women, who are credulous and give way easily, as their sex does; and out of them they set up a herd of profane conspirators, sworn together by meetings at night, by ritual fasts and inhuman meals — bound not by any sacred rite, but by one that has to be expiated. They are a people who skulk and shun the light, silent in public and chattering in corners.

“They look on the temples as houses of the dead. They reject the gods. They laugh at holy things. Wretched themselves, they pity our priests, if they are allowed to. Half naked themselves, they look down on public office and the purple. What astonishing folly, what unbelievable nerve! They think nothing of tortures that are happening now, and are afraid of tortures that are uncertain and still to come. They are afraid to die after they are dead, and not afraid to die today. That is how a lying hope soothes their fear with the comfort of coming back to life.

“And now, since wicked things spread all the more freely and depraved habits creep on day after day, those disgusting shrines of an unholy society are ripening across the whole world. This conspiracy really ought to be rooted out and cursed. They know one another by secret marks and signs, and they love one another almost before they have met. A kind of religion of lust runs all through them: they call one another brother and sister without distinction, so that even ordinary indecency turns into incest through the use of that holy word. That is how their empty, senseless superstition glories in crimes. [d]

“Sensible report would not repeat charges so serious and so varied — charges that need an apology before they can even be spoken — unless the truth lay underneath them. I hear that they worship the head of a donkey, the lowest of animals, consecrated by some silly notion or other: a religion that matches their morals nicely. Some say they worship the private parts of their presiding priest, and adore, as it were, the organs of their common father. Whether these things are false I do not know; but suspicion certainly fits secret rites held at night. And the man who explains their ceremonies by pointing to someone executed for his crimes under the worst penalty there is, and to the deadly wood of the cross, gives depraved and wicked men exactly the altars they deserve, so that they may worship what suits them.

“Then there is the story about the initiation of new members, as notorious as it is disgusting. An infant covered over with flour, so as to fool anyone who does not know, is set in front of the person about to be stained with their rites. The novice is urged on as though the blows were harmless, only on the surface of the flour; and he kills the infant with wounds he cannot see. Then — the horror of it — they thirstily lick up the blood and eagerly divide the limbs. By this victim they are pledged to one another; by this shared guilt they are covenanted to keep silence. Rites like these are fouler than any sacrilege.

“And everyone everywhere talks about their banquets; even the speech of our own man from Cirta bears witness to it. On an appointed day they gather for the meal with all their children, sisters and mothers, people of every sex and every age. There, after a long dinner, when the company has grown warm and drunkenness has heated the fever of incestuous desire, a dog that has been tied to the lampstand is teased into lunging by a scrap of meat thrown just beyond the length of its leash. The light that would have exposed them is knocked over and put out, and in the shameless dark they fall into couplings that chance decides. Not all of them do it in fact, but in intention they are all equally incestuous, since what any one of them does is what all of them wanted.

“I pass over a great deal on purpose; what I have said already is more than enough. That all of it, or most of it, is true, the sheer obscurity of their vile religion proves. Why do they take such trouble to hide and cover up whatever it is they worship, when honorable things are always glad of an audience and only crimes are kept quiet? Why do they have no altars, no temples, no images anyone can point to? Why do they never speak openly, never meet freely — unless what they adore and keep hidden either deserves punishment or is something to be ashamed of? [g]

“And besides, who is this God of theirs, and where does he come from? Where is this one God, solitary and forlorn, whom no free people, no kingdom, not even Roman religion has ever heard of? The Jews — a lonely and miserable nation — worshipped one God, their own and nobody else’s; but at least they worshipped him out in the open, with temples, altars, victims and ceremonies. And he has so little strength or power that he and his own private nation are slaves to the gods of Rome.

“But the Christians — what marvels, what monstrosities they invent! This God of theirs, whom they can neither show nor see, makes a careful inquiry into everyone’s character, everyone’s actions, and, in the end, into their words and their private thoughts. He runs about everywhere and is present everywhere. They make him out to be a nuisance, restless, shamelessly nosy, since he is there at everything that is done and wanders in and out of every place — although, being busy with the whole, he cannot attend to the parts, and taken up with the parts, he is not enough for the whole. And what about this? They threaten the whole world with fire, and the universe itself along with all its stars: are they plotting its destruction? As if the eternal order set up by the divine laws of nature could be disturbed, or the alliance of all the elements broken apart, or the fabric of heaven dissolved, or the frame that holds it all together and binds it fast pulled down.

“And not satisfied with this wild notion, they pile old women’s tales on top of it. They say that they will rise again after death, after ashes and dust; and with some confidence I cannot account for, they believe one another’s lies by turns. You would think they had already lived a second time. It is a double evil and a twofold madness — to pronounce destruction on the sky and the stars, which we leave exactly as we found them, and to promise eternity to ourselves, who die and are snuffed out, who perish just as we were born. [i]

“That must be why they curse our funeral pyres and condemn burning the dead — as though a body kept back from the flames were not dissolved into the earth anyway in the course of years and ages; as though it made any difference whether wild animals tear a body apart, or the sea swallows it, or the ground covers it, or fire carries it off. For a corpse, every kind of burial is a punishment if it can feel; and if it cannot feel, then the speed of its destruction is a mercy.

“Taken in by this mistake, they promise themselves, as being good, a blessed and unending life after they are dead, and everyone else, as being wicked, everlasting punishment. Many more things come to me to add, if the limits of my speech were not hurrying me along. That they are the wicked ones I have already shown, and I will take no more trouble to prove it. Even if I granted that they were good, your own agreement lines up with what many hold, that guilt and innocence are handed out by fate. Whatever we do, some put it down to fate, and you put it down to God; so it belongs to your school to believe that people do not choose anything of their own accord, but are chosen to choose it. And so you invent an unjust judge, who punishes in a man not his will but his destiny.

“Still, I would like to be told whether or not you rise again with bodies; and if you do, with what bodies — the same ones, or new ones? Without a body? Then, so far as I know, there is no mind, no soul, no life. With the same body? But it was destroyed long before. With a different body? Then it is a new person being born, not the old one restored. And yet so much time has gone by, countless ages have flowed past — what one single individual has come back from the dead, either as Protesilaus did, with leave to visit for a few hours, or in any way that would let us believe it as an example? All these fictions of a sick belief, these worthless comforts that poets have played with in the sweetness of their verse, you have shamefully worked over again, believing them without a doubt on the strength of your God.

“Nor do you learn even from what is right in front of you how the fruitless expectations of an empty promise are deceiving you. Poor creatures, consider from your lot while you are still alive what is waiting for you after death. Look: a portion of you — and by your own account the larger and better portion — go without, go cold, wear themselves out with hard work and hunger. And God allows it; he pretends not to see. Either he is unwilling to help his own people or he is unable; so he is either weak or unjust. [l]

“You there, dreaming of an immortality after the grave — when danger shakes you, when fever burns you up, when pain tears at you, do you not feel then what you really are? Do you not admit then how frail you are? Poor wretch, are you convinced of your own weakness against your will, and still refuse to say it out loud? But I will leave aside what we all have in common.

“Look at what is laid up for you: threats, punishments, tortures, crosses — and these no longer as objects of adoration, but as tortures for you to undergo; fires too, which you both predict and dread. Where is that God of yours who can help you when you come back to life, since he cannot help you while you are living it? Do the Romans not rule, reign, enjoy the whole world and lord it over you, with no help from your God at all?

“And you, meanwhile, anxious and hanging in suspense, hold back from respectable pleasures. You do not go to the shows. You take no part in the processions. You refuse the public banquets and shrink from the sacred games, from meat that has been tasted at the altar first and drink that has been poured out on it. So you are afraid of the very gods you deny. You do not wreathe your heads with flowers. You do not scent your bodies. You keep your perfumes for funerals; you will not even put garlands on your graves — pale, trembling people, fit to be pitied even by our gods. So there you are, wretched as you are: you neither rise again nor live in the meantime.

“Therefore, if you have any sense or any modesty left, stop poking about in the regions of the sky and the destinies and secrets of the universe. It is enough to look in front of your own feet — especially for people who are untaught, uncultivated, rough and rustic. Those who have no capacity for understanding civil affairs are far less able to discuss divine ones.

“All the same, if you have a desire to philosophize, let whichever of you is great enough imitate Socrates, the prince of wisdom — if he can. Everyone knows the answer that man gave whenever he was asked about matters in the heavens: ‘What is above us is nothing to us.’ He deserved, then, the oracle’s testimony to his singular wisdom, which he had a presentiment of himself; and he was preferred to all other men, not because he had found out everything, but because he had learned that he knew nothing. And so the admission of ignorance is the height of wisdom. [m]

“That is the spring from which the safe doubting of Arcesilaus flowed, and long afterwards of Carneades and a great many of the Academics, on questions of the highest importance. In that kind of philosophy the unlearned can do a great deal if they are careful, and the learned can do splendidly. And is the hesitation of Simonides the lyric poet not something everyone should admire and copy? When Hiero the tyrant asked him what he thought the gods were and what they were like, Simonides first asked for a day to think it over; then he put the answer off for two days; then, when pressed, he added just one more. Finally, when the tyrant asked the reason for such a long delay, he answered that the longer his search went on, the darker the truth became to him.

“In my opinion too, things that are uncertain ought to be left as they are. While so many great men are still deliberating, we should not rashly and boldly give a verdict in one direction or the other — or we will either bring in a childish superstition or overthrow all religion.”

So much for Caecilius. Then, smiling cheerfully — the length of his speech had worked the heat out of his indignation — he added: “And what does Octavius venture to say to this — a man of the stock of Plautus, who was chief among the millers and last among the philosophers?” “Hold back your self-congratulation against him,” I said. “It is not worthy of you to gloat over the harmony of your own speech before the case has been argued more fully on both sides — especially since what your reasoning is after is truth, not applause. And however much your speech has delighted me by its subtle variety, I am deeply troubled — not about the present discussion, but about the whole business of argument: that as a rule the standing of the truth gets altered by the power of the arguing, and even by the gift of clear speech. [o]

“This is well known to happen because listeners are so easily led. Distracted by the charm of words from paying attention to the facts, they agree with everything that is said, drawing no distinctions, and they do not separate falsehood from truth. They do not realize that what sounds incredible is often true, and that what sounds likely is often false. So the more often they believe bold claims, the more often they are put right by cleverer men; and so they are constantly deceived by their own rashness. Then they shift the blame from the judge to the complaint that nothing can be known, and would rather leave everything hanging, condemning it all, than come to a decision about doubtful things.

“We must take care, then, that we do not fall in the same way into a hatred of all arguments — as a great many of the simpler sort are led into loathing and hating people in general. For those who trust carelessly are deceived by men they thought worthy of trust; and then, by a related mistake, they begin to suspect everyone of being wicked, and are afraid even of those they should have thought excellent.

“So now we are anxious about this. There can be argument on both sides of anything; on one side the truth is usually obscure, and on the other there is a marvelous subtlety which sometimes, by its flood of words, imitates the confidence of proved fact. We must therefore weigh every point as carefully as we can, so that, while we are ready to applaud sharpness, we still choose, approve and adopt the things that are right.”

“You are stepping down,” says Caecilius, “from the office of a judge in religion. It is thoroughly unfair of you to weaken the force of my pleading by slipping in an argument of your own that carries so much weight, when Octavius has everything I said standing in front of him, sound and unbroken, if he can refute it.” “What you are criticizing,” I said, “unless I am mistaken, I brought forward for the common good — so that by a scrupulous examination we might weigh our verdict, not by the showiness of the speaking, but by the solid substance of the case itself. But our attention must not be called away any longer, as you complain. Let us listen in complete silence to the reply of our friend Januarius, who is beckoning to us now.” [p]