CHAPTER XXI.

We worship the same God as the Jews, but, unlike them, we acknowledge Christ the Son of God to be God. He is the true Word, Who, begotten eternally by His Father, and being co-essential with Him, was made Flesh. The Jews misunderstood His Advent, His work, and His doctrine. They put Him to death, but He rose from the dead, as was predicted, and after forty days ascended into Heaven. Meanwhile His Gospel is spread throughout the world by His disciples.

BUT since we have proclaimed that this our sect is supported by the very ancient documents of the Jews, although most people know, and we ourselves declare, that it is a somewhat recent one, being of the Tiberian age, perhaps a further point may be raised concerning its nature on this ground,—as if it hid something of its own presumption under the shelter of a very distinguished, or at any rate a legalized, religion; or because, besides the difference in antiquity, we observe neither the distinctions of meats, nor the solemnities of days, nor the seal itself of the body ⁶⁰, nor any association in name with the Jews, as we surely ought to do if we were worshippers of the same God. But even the common people now know something about Christ, regarding Him indeed as a man, such as the Jews judged Him to be; so [67] that from this we might more naturally be regarded as the worshippers of a man. But neither are we ashamed of Christ ⁶¹, since we rejoice to be convicted and condemned under His Name, nor yet is our conception of God different from that of the Jews ⁶².

We must therefore say a few words concerning Christ as God. So highly were the Jews favoured by God because of the conspicuous righteousness and faith of their early progenitors, from which cause also their numerous race and their glorious kingdom flourished, and so great was their blessedness, that they were forewarned by oracles of God which taught them how to obtain His favour and how to avoid offending Him. How greatly, notwithstanding they transgressed, puffed up even to madness by reliance on the privileges of their forefathers, turning aside from their special ordinances to a profane mode of life, their latter end at this day proves, even if they themselves confess it not. Scattered abroad, wanderers, exiles from their own sky and soil, they roam over the world without either man or God for their king, nor is it permitted to them so much as to set foot upon their native land, not even in the character [68] of strangers ⁶³. And the same holy oracles, which used to threaten them beforehand with these disasters, were all ever urging the fact that in the last courses of the world God would, out of every nation and people and clime, choose for Himself other more faithful worshippers, to whom He would transfer His favour, and that, indeed, in richer abundance on account of the capacity of a more enlarged oeconomy. [He came therefore, the very Christ, the Son of God, Who it was foretold should come from God to establish and illuminate it.] The Son of God, therefore, was announced as the Ruler and Master of this grace and dispensation, the Illuminator and Guide of the human race; not born in any wise so as to be ashamed of the name of 'Son,' or of His descent from His Father; not born, for example, from a sister's incest or a daughter's violation, or from adultery with another's wife; nor had He, for His Father, a god in the form of a scaled or horned or feathered lover, or one transformed into gold :—for such are the divine appearances of your Jupiter. But the Son of God has no mother from any impure connexion; nay, even she whom He seems to have, had not married.

But first I will declare His essence, and in this way the nature of His nativity will be understood. We have already said that God constructed this universe of the world by His Word, Reason, and Power. Amongst your wise men also it is agreed that lo&goj, [69] that is, Word and Reason, should be regarded as the artificer of the universe. For Zeno decides that he is the maker who formed everything in its regular order, and that he be called Fate and God and Mind of Jupiter and Universal Necessity. These titles Cleanthes accumulates on the Spirit which, he affirms, pervades the universe. And we, too, ascribe Spirit as the proper essence of the Word and Reason and Power by Which we have said God constructed all things; in which Divine Nature, when authoritatively speaking, the Word is contained; with which, when ordering, the Reason is present; and in virtue of which, when perfecting, the Power presides. We have learnt that He came forth from God and was generated by that procession, and therefore is called Son of God, and GOD, from unity of essence with Him. For God also is Spirit ⁶⁴. Thus when a ray is put forth from the sun, it is a portion from the whole; yet the sun will be in the ray, because the ray is a part of the sun, and the substance is not divided but extended. So Spirit comes forth from Spirit, and God from God, as light is kindled from light. The original parent matter remains whole and unimpaired, although you derive from it many off-shoots transmitting its qualities: so also That Which has come forth from God is God, and Son of God, and Both are One. So also Spirit from Spirit and God from God makes another, not in number but in mode, not in condition but in order, and has not separated from the Original but come forth of it. That Ray of [70] God, therefore, as was ever foretold in times past ⁶⁵, descending into a certain Virgin, and becoming Flesh in her womb, is born Man united with God. His Flesh informed with the Divine Nature is nourished, groweth up, speaketh, teacheth, worketh, and is CHRIST.

Receive this story for the time being (it resembles your own), whilst we shew how Christ is approved. Those who supplied you beforehand with rival stories resembling the truth in order to destroy it, were aware of what was to come to pass. The Jews also knew that Christ was to come, because the prophets used to speak of it to them. And even now they look for His Advent; nor is there any other contention between them and us greater than this, because they do not believe that He has already come. For while two Advents of Him are indicated,—the first, which has already been accomplished, in the humility of a human lot; the second, which impends at the close of this age, in the exaltation of manifested glory, —they, by misunderstanding the first, have regarded the second, which has been more clearly predicted, and for which they hope, as the only one. For it was the desert of their transgression that they should not understand the first coming, inasmuch as they would have believed had they understood, and would have attained salvation had they believed. They themselves read that it has been thus written,— that they have been deprived of their wisdom and understanding and the use of their eyes and ears ⁶⁶. [71] 

And when they had hastily decided from His humility that therefore He was merely man, it followed that they regarded Him from His power as a magician; when He by a word cast out daemons from men, restored their sight to blind men, cleansed lepers, reinvigorated paralytics, and even at a word restored the dead to life, made the very elements His servants, restraining the winds and walking upon the sea, shewing that He was the lo&goj of God, that is, the Primordial Word, First-begotten, attended by Power and Reason and sustained by Spirit, the Selfsame Who both was making and had made all things at a word.

But at His doctrine, by which the masters and leaders of the Jews were convicted, they were so exasperated, especially when a vast multitude turned away after Him, that at last they brought Him up before Pontius Pilate, at that time the procurator of Syria under the Roman government, and by the violence of their votes extorted from him the sentence that He should be surrendered to them for crucifixion. He Himself had predicted that they would so act. This would not, perhaps, be of great weight had not the prophets of old also foretold the same. And yet when He was crucified He spontaneously yielded up His Spirit with a word, and anticipated the duty of the executioner. At the same moment, while the sun was pointing to midday, the daylight was withdrawn. Those who were ignorant that this also was predicted of Christ thought that it was merely an eclipse [but no reason being found for it, they then [72] denied the fact]; and yet you have this event that befel the world registered in your archives ⁶⁷. After that the Jews took Him down from the cross and placed Him in a sepulchre, which they in their great care even surrounded with a military guard, lest, as He had predicted His resurrection from the dead on the third day, His disciples should stealthily remove the body and deceive the suspicious rulers. But lo, on the third day there was suddenly an earthquake, and the stone was rolled away which closed the sepulchre, and the guard was scattered through fear; yet no disciples appeared, nor was anything found in the sepulchre but the grave-clothes. Yet none the less the rulers, to whose interest it was both to circulate a lie, and to recal the enthralled and servile people to themselves from the faith, bruited it abroad that He was stolen by His disciples.

For He did not shew Himself forth to the people, lest they should be delivered from their wicked error, and in order that faith, destined to receive no mean reward, should not stand firm without difficulty. But He passed forty days with certain of His disciples in Galilee, a region of Judaea, teaching them what they were to teach. Afterwards having commissioned them to the duty of preaching throughout the world, He was taken up into Heaven enveloped in a cloud, much more truly than your Proculi are wont to assert [73] of Romulus. All these things concerning Christ, Pilate, himself also already a Christian in his own conscience, announced to Tiberius the Caesar at that time. Moreover the Caesars, too, would have believed on Christ, if either Caesars had not been necessary for the age or if Caesars could have been Christians too. His disciples also scattered throughout the world obeyed the command of God their Master, and they themselves, too, endured many things at the hands of the persecuting Jews, suffering willingly indeed from their reliance on the truth; and lastly by the cruelty of Nero they sowed the seed of their Christian blood in Rome. But we will shew you that those very beings that you adore are efficient witnesses to Christ. It is a great point if, to make you believe the Christians, I can employ those on whose account you now disbelieve them. Meantime this is the plan of our system; we have declared the origin of our sect and name, and Who was its Author.

Let no one henceforth cast infamy upon us, let no one think any otherwise about us than this, since it is of course impossible to lie about one's religion. For when one dissimulates the real object of his worship, he denies his God and transfers his worship and honour to another, and by so doing ceases to worship what he has denied. We affirm and affirm openly, and cry out, torn and bleeding under your tortures, 'We worship God through Christ.' Regard Him as a man: through Him and in Him God wishes to be known and worshipped. For, to answer [74] the Jews,—they themselves also learnt to worship God through Moses; to meet the Greeks,—Orpheus in Pieria, Musseus in Athens, Melampus in Argos, Trophonius in Boeotia, bound men down under their rites; and to look to yourselves, the masters of the world,—Numa Pompilius was a man, who burdened the Romans with the most elaborate superstitions. And so it was allowable for Christ, too, to set forth in a scheme His own Divinity, not as a means whereby He might, like Numa, win to humane feelings men rude and hitherto barbarous, astonished by the great number of gods to be propitiated, but so as to open to the recognition of the truth the eyes of men already cultured, and deluded by their very refinement. Seek, then, and see if that Divinity of Christ be true. If it be such that by knowledge of it one may be reclaimed to good, it follows that any other which is found contrary to it must be pronounced a false divinity—and especially on every ground that counterfeit which, skulking under the names and images of the dead, by certain signs and miracles and oracles gains a credence for its own divinity.