CONTRA FATUM

"[...]we know of the existence in each city of another sort of country, created by the Logos of God. And we call upon those who are competent to take office, who are sound in doctrine and life, to rule over the churches. We do not accept those who love power. But we put pressure on those who on account of their great humility are reluctant hastily to take upon themselves the common responsibility of the church of God. And those who rule us well are those who have had to be forced to take office, being constrained by the great King who, we are convinced, is the Son of God, the divine Logos. And if those who are chosen as rulers in the church rule well over God's country (I mean the church), or if they rule in accordance with the commands of God, they do not on this account defile any of the appointed civic laws. If Christians do avoid these responsibilities, it is not with the motive of shirking the public services of life. But they keep themselves for a more divine and necessa

"If Celsus wishes us to be generals for our country, let him realize that we do this; but we do not do so with a view to being seen by men and to being proud about it. Our prayers are made in secret in the mind itself, and are sent up as from priests on behalf of the people in our country. Christians do more good to their countries than the rest of mankind, since they educate the citizens and teach them to be devoted to God, the guardian of their city; and they take those who have lived good lives in the most insignificant cities up to a divine and heavenly city." (Con. Cel. VIII,74)

"[...]we believe that at some time the Logos will have overcome the entire rational nature, and will have remodelled every soul to his own perfection, when each individual simply by the exercise of his freedom will choose what the Logos wills and will be in that state which he has chosen. [...] it is probably true that such a condition is impossible for those who are still in the body; but it is certainly not impossible after they have been delivered from it." (Con. Cel. VIII,72)

"[...]the men of God are the salt of the world, preserving the permanence of things on earth, and earthly things hold together so long as the salt does not turn bad." (Con. Cel. VIII,70)

"[...]if, as Celsus has it, every one were to do the same as I, obviously the barbarians would also be converted to the word of God and would be most law-abiding and mild. And all other worship would be done away and only that of the Christians would prevail. One day it will be the only one to prevail, since the word is continually gaining possession of more souls." (Con. Cel. VIII,68)

"We ought to despise the kindly disposition of men and of emperors if to propitiate them means not only that we have to commit murders and acts of licentiousness and savagery, but also that we have to blaspheme the God of the universe or make some servile and cringing utterance, alien to men of bravery and nobility who, together with the other virtues, wish to possess courage as the greatest of them. Here we are doing nothing contrary to the law and word of God." (Con. Cel. VIII,64)

"[...]if anyone dishonours the lawgiver 'by the transgression of the law', it appears obvious to us that, if there are two laws opposed to one another, the law of God and the law of mammon, it is preferable for us to dishonour mammon by the transgression of the law of mammon in order to pay honour to God by keeping God's law, rather than to dishonour God by the transgression of the law of God in order to pay honour to mammon by keeping mammon's law." (Con. Cel. VIII,56)

"There is no limit prescribed for helping one's fellow-men so that the more boorish mean are excluded just like the irrational animals. No. Our Maker created us to be equally helpful to all men." (Con. Cel. VIII,50)

"[...]the Lord of every language hears those who pray in every language as though He were hearing one utterance, so to speak, the same meaning being expressed by the various languages. For the supreme God is not one of those that have been allotted a particular language, barbarian or Greek, who no longer understand the rest or are no longer willing to pay heed to those who speak in other languages." (Con. Cel. VIII,37)

"[...]even we do not deny that there are many daemons on earth; but we maintain that they exist and have power among bad men on account of the wickedness of the latter, and that they have no power against those who have put on the whole armour of God and have received strength to withstand the wiles of the devil, and who are always being exercised in struggles with them because they know that 'our wrestling is not with flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of this darkness, against spiritual wickedness in heavenly places'." (Con. Cel. VIII,34)

"According to God's laws no daemon has been allotted control of earthly thing. But through their own wickedness, perhaps, they divided among themselves those regions where there is not to be found any knowledge of God or the life lived after His will, or where there are many alien to God. Perhaps, on the other hand, as worthy to govern and to punish the wicked, they were appointed by the Logos who administers the universe to rule those who have subjected themselves to evil and not to God." (Con. Cel. VIII,33)

"Live we must; and we are to do so in accordance with the word of God, so far as it is possible and as it is granted to us to live in accordance with it[...]" (Con. Cel. VIII,33)

"Of all these things daemons are the direct creators; like public executioners, they have received power by a divine appointment to bring about these catastrophes at certain times, either for the conversion of men when they drift towards the flood of evil, or with the object of training the race of rational beings. The purpose is that those who remain religious even in such great disasters and do not become worse may reveal their true character to the onlookers, visible and invisible[...]" (Con. Cel. VIII,31)

"We would not wish that men who want us to live lives as wicked as theirs should be kindly disposed to no one who chooses the opposite to them. The reason for this is that their goodwill makes us enemies of God, who probably does not become kindly disposed towards those who want to have the goodwill of men of that sort." (Con. Cel. VIII,27)

"We affirm that the Saviour, especially when we think of him as divine Logos, Wisdom, Righteousness, and Truth, is Lord of all that has been subjected to him, in so far as he is these things, but not that he is also lord of the God and Father who is mightier than he. And since the Logos is not master of those who are unwilling, and as there are still some bad beings, not only men but also angels and all daemons, we maintain that he is not yet made master of these, since they do not yield to him of their own free will." (Con. Cel. VIII,15)

"[...]our faith about God is through His Son, who confirms that faith in us. And Celsus cannot show that there is any discord in our belief about the Son of God. Indeed, we worship the Father by admiring His Son who is Logos, Wisdom, Truth, Righteousness, and all that we have learnt the Son of God to be - him, in fact, who was born of a Father of this nature." (Con. Cel. VIII,13)

"[...]we will not worship God as though He needed it, or as if He will be grieved if we do not worship Him, but because we ourselves receive benefit from worshipping God, and become men who have no feelings of grief or emotion as a result of serving the supreme God through His only-begotten Logos and Wisdom." (Con. Cel. VIII,8)

"[...]the disciples of Jesus look at the things that are becoming, so that they use them as steps to the contemplation of the nature of intelligible things." (Con. Cel. VII,46)

"Celsus thinks that God is known either by synthesis with other things, similar to the method called synthesis by geometricians, or by analytical distinction from other things, or also by analogy , like the method of analogy used by the same students, as if one were able to come in this way, if at all, 'to the threshold of the Good' (Pl. Phil. 64c, Clem. Strom. VII,45,3). But when the Logos of God says that 'No man has known the Father except the Son, and the man to whom the Son may reveal him', he indicates that God is known by a certain divine grace, which does not about in the soul without God's action, but with a sort of inspiration." (Con. Cel. VII,44)

"[...]human nature is not sufficient in any way to seek for God and to find Him in His pure nature, unless it is helped by the God who is object of the search. And He is found by those who, after doing what they can, admit that they need Him, and shows Himself to those to whom He judges it right to appear, so far is it is possible for God to be known to man and for the human soul which is still in the body to know God." (Con. Cel. VII,42)

"[...]because of his exceeding love towards man he was able to give the educated a conception of God which could raise their soul from earthly things, and nevertheless came down to the level even of the more defective capacities of ordinary men and simple women and slaves, and, in general, of people who have been helped by none but by Jesus alone to live a better life, so far as they can, and to accept doctrines about God such as they had the capacity to receive." (Con. Cel. VII,41)

"'For judgment came I into the world, that those who do not see may see and that those who see may become blind.' By those who do not see he is obscurely referring to the eyes of the soul, to which the Logos gives the power of sight, and by those who see he means the eyes of the senses. For the Logos blinds the latter, that the soul may see without any distraction that which it ought to see." (Con. Cel. VII,39)

"Since we affirm that the God of the universe is mind, or that He transcends mind and being, and is simple and invisible and incorporeal, we would maintain that God is not comrehended by any being other than that made in the image of that mind." (Con. Cel. VII,37)

"[...]since our will is not sufficiently strong for us to be entirely pure in heart, and because we need God to create it entirely pure, the man who prays with understanding says 'Create in me a clean heart, O God.'" (Con. Cel. VII,33)

"The knowledge of God is not derived from the eye of the body, but from the mind which sees that which is in the image of the Creator and by divine providence has received the power to know God." (Con. Cel. VII,33)

"It was impossible for Christians to follow the Mosaic law in killing their enemies or those who acted illegaly and were judged to be deserving of death [...] if you took away from the Jews of that time, who had their own political life and country, the power to go out against their enemies and to fight for their traditional customs, and to take life [...] the inevitable consequence would have been their complete and utter destruction [...] But the providence which long ago gave the law, but now has given the gospel of Jesus Christ, did not wish that the practices of the Jews should continue, and so destroyed their city and temple[...]" (Con. Cel. VII,26)

"[...]it is written in the Lamentations of Jeremiah: 'It is good for a man when he bears a yoke in his youth, he will sit alone and in silence when he has taken it on himself. He will give a cheek to the man who smites him and shall be filled with reproaches.' The gospel, then, does not lay down laws in contradiction to the God of the law, not even if we interpret literally the saying about a blot on the jaw. And neither Moses nor Jesus is wrong. Nor did the Father forget when sent Jesus the commands which he had given to Moses. Nor did He condemn His own laws, and change His mind, and send His messenger for the opposite purpose. " (Con. Cel. VII,25)