Christ’s Teaching and the Resurrection

We warn you to be on your guard, so that the demons we have been accusing do not trick you and turn you away from reading and taking in what we say. They are fighting to keep you as their slaves and their servants, and sometimes by appearing to people in dreams, and sometimes by twists of magic, they get the better of everyone who makes no serious effort for his own salvation. That is exactly how it was with us. Once we were persuaded by the Word, we broke away from them, and now we follow the one unbegotten God through his Son. We who once took our pleasure in sexual immorality now welcome self-restraint and nothing else. We who once used magic arts have dedicated ourselves to the good and unbegotten God. We who valued getting money and property above everything now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone in need. We who hated one another and killed one another, and would not share a hearth with people of another tribe because their customs were different, now live at the same table with them since Christ appeared, and we pray for our enemies, and try to persuade those who hate us without cause to live by the good counsel of Christ, so that they may have the same good hope we have of receiving the same reward from God, the Master of all. [a]

But we do not want to look as though we are arguing by clever tricks. So before we give you the proof we promised, we think it right to set down a few of the teachings that came from Christ himself. Then it is for you, as powerful rulers, to examine whether we have really been taught these things and really teach them. What came from him was short and to the point, for he was no professional speech-maker; his word was the power of God.

On self-restraint, this is what he said: “Anyone who looks at a woman to crave her has already committed adultery with her in his heart, before God.” And: “If your right eye trips you up, cut it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of heaven with one eye than to be sent into the eternal fire with both.” And: “Whoever marries a woman who has been divorced from another man commits adultery.” And: “There are some who were made eunuchs by men, and some who were born eunuchs, and some who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven; but not everyone can take this in.” [e]

So people who make a second marriage under human law are sinners in the eyes of our Teacher, and so are those who look at a woman to crave her. He rejects not only the man who commits adultery in what he does, but also the man who wants to commit it, since not only our deeds but our thoughts are open to God. And there are many men and women, now sixty and seventy years old, who became Christ’s students from childhood and have stayed unspoiled; and I can point to people like this in every race of humanity. Why should I even mention the countless crowd who turned away from a life of no restraint and learned these things? For Christ did not call the righteous or the self-restrained to repentance, but the ungodly and the unrestrained and the unjust. His words were: “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” For the heavenly Father wants the sinner’s repentance rather than his punishment.

And this is what he taught about loving everyone: “If you love those who love you, what new thing are you doing? Even the sexually immoral do that. But I tell you: pray for your enemies, love those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who treat you spitefully.” And on sharing with the needy and doing nothing for show, he said this: “Give to everyone who asks you, and do not turn away the man who wants to borrow. If you lend to people you expect to be repaid by, what new thing are you doing? Even the tax collectors do that. Do not store up treasure for yourselves on earth, where moth and decay destroy it and thieves break in; store up treasure for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys. What good is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? Or what will he give in exchange for it? So store up treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys.” And: “Be kind and compassionate, as your Father also is kind and compassionate, who makes his sun rise on sinners and the righteous and the wicked. Do not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear. Are you not worth more than the birds and the animals? And God feeds them. So do not worry about what you will eat or what you will wear; your heavenly Father knows you need these things. Seek the kingdom of heaven, and all these things will be added to you. For where a man’s treasure is, there his mind is too.” And: “Do not do these things to be seen by people; otherwise you have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

On putting up with wrongs, being of service to everyone, and being free from anger, this is what he said: “To the man who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other one as well; and do not stop the man who takes your tunic or your cloak. Whoever loses his temper is liable to the fire. If anyone forces you to go a mile, go two with him. Let your good works shine out in front of people, so that when they see them they may marvel at your Father in heaven.” For we must not fight back. He did not want us to imitate wicked men. He urged us instead to lead everyone away from disgrace and the craving for what is evil, by endurance and gentleness. And we can prove this from many people among you who turned from being violent and tyrannical: some because they had watched the steadiness of a neighbor’s life, some because they had noticed the extraordinary endurance of fellow travelers who were being cheated, and some because they had tested such men in business dealings. [k]

On never swearing an oath, and always telling the truth, this is the instruction he gave: “Do not swear at all. Let your yes be yes and your no, no; anything beyond these comes from the evil one.” And that God alone must be worshiped he showed us by saying: “The greatest command is this: You shall worship the Lord your God and serve him only, with all your heart and with all your strength” — that is, the Lord God who made you. And when a man came up to him and said, “Good Teacher,” he answered, “No one is good except God alone, who made all things.”

Anyone who is not found living the way he taught should be recognized as no Christian, even if he recites the teachings of Christ with his tongue; for he said that the ones who will be saved are not those who only say them but those who also do the works. These were his words: “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. For whoever hears me and does what I say hears the one who sent me. Many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not eat and drink in your name and perform mighty works?’ And then I will say to them, ‘Get away from me, you workers of lawlessness.’ Then there will be weeping and grinding of teeth, when the righteous shine like the sun and the unjust are sent into the eternal fire. For many will come in my name, dressed on the outside in sheepskins, but inside they are ravenous wolves. By their works you will recognize them. And every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” And as for those who do not live in line with his teachings and are Christians in name only — we ask that you punish them too.

More readily than anyone, and everywhere, we try to pay the tribute and the special levies to the men you appoint, because he taught us to. At the time, some people came to him and asked whether one ought to pay tribute to Caesar. He answered, “Tell me, whose image is on the coin?” They said, “Caesar’s.” And he answered them back, “So give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.” So we worship God alone; but in everything else we serve you gladly, acknowledging you as kings and rulers of men, and praying that along with your royal power you may be found to have sound judgment as well. And if you pay no attention to our prayers and to everything we are setting out in the open, we will suffer no loss, since we believe — or rather, we are convinced — that every person will pay the penalty in eternal fire according to what his actions deserve, and will be required to give an account in proportion to the powers he received from God. Christ made this clear when he said, “To the one God has given more, more will be required of him.” [o]

Look at how each of the kings before you ended: they died the death that comes to everyone. If that death led to feeling nothing at all, it would be a windfall for every unjust man. But feeling remains for everyone who has ever lived, and eternal punishment is stored up, so see that you do not fail to be convinced, and to hold it as your own belief, that these things are true. [q]

Let the calling up of the dead persuade you, and the visions got through undefiled children, and the summoning of human souls, and the ones the magi call dream-senders and attendant spirits, and everything done by people who know these arts — let all of that persuade you that souls still have feeling after death. So should the people who are seized and thrown about by the souls of the dead, whom everyone calls demon-possessed or mad; and the oracles you have, of Amphilochus and Dodona and Pytho, and all the others of that kind; and the teachings of your own writers, Empedocles and Pythagoras, Plato and Socrates; and the pit in Homer, and Odysseus going down to look into these things, and everything else that has been said along the same lines. Give us at least the same welcome you give them, since we believe in God no less than they did — more, in fact. We expect to receive back our own bodies, dead and thrown into the earth as they will be, because we say that nothing is impossible for God.

Think it through. What would strike anyone as more unbelievable than this: suppose we were not in a body, and someone said that from one small drop of human seed it was possible for bones and sinews and flesh to be shaped into what we see? Let it be put as a supposition. Suppose you were not what you now are and had not come from what you came from, and someone showed you human seed and a painted picture of a man, and said confidently that the one could come from the other. Would you have believed it before you saw it happen? No one would dare say he would. It is the same now: you refuse to believe because you have never seen a dead man rise. But just as at the start you would not have believed that such beings could come from that small drop, and yet now you see them being produced, work it out the same way here — that it is not impossible for human bodies, once they have dissolved and been scattered into the earth like seed, to rise at the time God appoints and to “put on incorruption.” [t]

What power worthy of God are they describing, the people who say that each thing goes back into whatever it came from, and that beyond this not even God can do anything? We cannot say. But this much we do see: they would never have believed it possible for beings like themselves to come to be, or the whole world either, out of the materials they can now see they came from. And we have learned that it is better to believe even what is impossible for our own nature and for men than to be unbelieving like everyone else. We know that our Teacher Jesus Christ said, “What is impossible for men is possible for God,” and, “Do not be afraid of those who kill you and after that can do nothing more; be afraid of the one who after death can throw both soul and body into Gehenna.” Gehenna is a place where those are to be punished who have lived unjustly and who do not believe that the things God taught us through Christ will come to pass.

The Sibyl and Hystaspes both said that corruptible things would be destroyed by fire. The philosophers called Stoics teach that even God himself is dissolved into fire, and they say that the world comes into being again by the same turn of the cycle; but we understand God, the maker of all things, to be greater than the things that change. [v]

So if on some points we say the same as the poets and philosophers you honor, and on other points say more, and say it in a more divine way, and are the only ones who say it with proof, why are we hated unjustly more than anyone else? When we say that all things were made and set in order by God, we will seem to be stating Plato’s doctrine. When we say there will be a burning up of the world, the doctrine of the Stoics. When we say that the souls of the unjust go on feeling after death and are punished, and that the souls of the good are released from punishment and live well, we will seem to be saying what the poets and philosophers say. And when we say that people must not worship the works of human hands, we are saying exactly what Menander the comic poet and others like him said — for they declared that the craftsman is greater than the thing he makes.

And when we say that the Word, who is God’s first offspring, was born without any sexual union — I mean Jesus Christ, our Teacher — and that he was crucified and died and rose again and went up into heaven, we are bringing in nothing new compared with the men you call sons of Zeus. [x]

You know how many sons the writers you honor claim for Zeus. Hermes, the interpreting word and everyone’s teacher. Asclepius, who was a healer, and who was struck by lightning and went up to heaven. Dionysus, who was torn limb from limb. Heracles, who threw himself into the fire to escape his labors. The Dioscuri, born of Leda. Perseus, born of Danae. And Bellerophon, born of human parents, who rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus. And why should I mention Ariadne, and the others said in the same way to have been set among the stars? Or the emperors who die among you, whom you always think worthy of being made immortal, and for whom you bring forward someone to swear that he saw the burned Caesar going up from the pyre into heaven?

There is no need to tell people who already know what deeds are recorded of each of these so-called sons of Zeus — except to say this: they are written down for the benefit and encouragement of the young men being educated, since everyone thinks it a fine thing to imitate the gods. But may no sound mind ever hold such a thought about gods — that Zeus himself, whom they call the ruler and begetter of all, was a father-killer and the son of a father like that; that he was overcome by his love of base and shameful pleasures and went in to Ganymede and to the many women he committed adultery with; and that he approved of his own sons doing the same. But, as we said before, it was the wicked demons who did all this. We have been taught that the only ones made immortal are those who live near to God in holiness and virtue, and we believe that those who live unjustly and do not change are punished in eternal fire.

The Son of God, called Jesus — even if he were only a man in the ordinary way — would deserve to be called Son of God because of his wisdom, since all writers call God the father of men and of gods. And if we say that he was born from God in a particular way, unlike ordinary birth, as the Word of God — as we said before — let that be something you hold in common with us, since you say that Hermes is the announcing word that comes from God. And if anyone brings the charge that he was crucified, that too he shares with those sons of Zeus of yours already listed, who suffered. Their sufferings in death are recorded as not being alike but different, so that not even in the particular kind of his suffering does he look inferior to them. On the contrary — as we promised — we will show as the argument goes on that he was superior; or rather, we have already shown it, since the superior is revealed by his actions. And if we say that he was born through a virgin, let that too be something you hold in common with your Perseus. And when we say that he made the lame and the paralyzed and those damaged from birth healthy, and that he raised the dead, we will seem to be saying the same things that are said to have been done by Asclepius. [ac]