The Powers of Nature Overcome One Another

There is yet another way to refute their godlessness by the light of truth. If God is by nature bodiless, invisible and intangible, how do they imagine God to be a body, and worship with divine honor things that we both see with our eyes and touch with our hands? And again, if what is said of God holds true, that he is almighty, and that while nothing has power over him, he has power and rule over all, how can those who make creation a god fail to see that it does not meet this definition of God? For when the sun is below the earth, the earth’s shadow hides his light, while by day the sun hides the moon by the brilliance of his light. Hail often damages the fruits of the earth, while fire is put out if a flood of water comes upon it. Spring makes winter give way, while summer will not let spring stay past its proper limits, and summer in its turn is forbidden by autumn to overstep its own season.

If, then, they were gods, they ought not to be defeated and darkened by one another, but always to exist together and carry out their several functions at the same time. By night and by day alike, the sun and the moon and the rest of the company of stars ought to shine together equally and give their light to all, so that all things might be lit by them. Spring and summer and autumn and winter ought to go on together without change. The sea ought to mix with the springs and supply people with drink in common. Calm and gusts of wind ought to come at the same time. Fire and water together ought to give people the same service. For no one would take any harm from them, if they are gods, as our opponents say, and do nothing for harm but everything for good. But if none of these things is possible, because they cannot exist together, how can it still be possible to give the name of gods to things that cannot exist together, that are at strife and unable to combine, or to worship them with the honors due to God? How could things that are by nature at odds give peace to others in answer to their prayers, and become for them the authors of harmony? It is not likely, then, that the sun or the moon or any other part of creation, still less statues of stone, gold or other material, or the Zeus, Apollo and the rest who are the subject of the poet’s fables, are true gods: this our argument has shown. Some of these are parts of creation, others have no life, and others were mere mortal men. Therefore their worship and the making of them into gods is no part of religion, but the bringing in of godlessness and of all impiety, and a sign of a wide departure from the knowledge of the one true God, the Father of Christ.

Since this, then, has been proved, and the idolatry of the Greeks has been shown to be full of every ungodliness, and to have been brought in not for the good but for the ruin of human life, come now: as our argument promised at the outset, now that we have refuted error, let us travel the way of truth, and look upon the Leader and Craftsman of the universe, the Word of the Father, so that through him we may come to know the Father, and so that the Greeks may know how far they have cut themselves off from the truth.