Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XX
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XX.
Let us see how he continues after this:
“These events,” he says, “he predicted as being a
God, and the prediction must by all means come to pass. God,
therefore, who above all others ought to do good to men, and especially
to those of his own household, led on his own disciples and prophets,
with whom he was in the habit of eating and drinking, to such a degree
of wickedness, that they became impious and unholy men. Now, of a
truth, he who shared a man’s table would not be guilty of
conspiring against him; but after banqueting with God, he became a
conspirator. And, what is still more absurd, God himself plotted
against the members of his own table, by converting them into traitors
and villains!” Now, since you wish me to answer even those charges of Celsus
which seem to me frivolous,3272
the following is
our reply to such statements. Celsus imagines that an event,
predicted through foreknowledge, comes to pass because it was
predicted; but we do not grant this, maintaining that he who foretold
it was not the cause of its happening, because he foretold it would
happen; but the future event itself, which would have taken place
though not predicted, afforded the occasion to him, who was endowed
with foreknowledge, of foretelling its occurrence. Now, certainly
this result is present to the foreknowledge of him who predicts an
event, when it is possible that it may or may not happen, viz., that
one or other of these things will take place. For we do not
assert that he who foreknows an event, by secretly taking away the
possibility of its happening or not, makes any such declaration as
this: “This shall infallibly happen, and it is impossible
that it can be otherwise.” And this remark applies to all
the foreknowledge of events dependent upon ourselves, whether contained
in the sacred Scriptures or in the histories of the Greeks. Now,
what is called by logicians an “idle argument,”3273
which is a sophism, will be no sophism as
far as Celsus can help, but according to sound reasoning it is a
sophism. And that this may be seen, I shall take from the
Scriptures the predictions regarding Judas, or the foreknowledge of our
Saviour regarding him as the traitor; and from the Greek histories the
oracle that was given to Laius, conceding for the present its truth,
since it does not affect the argument. Now, in
Ps. cviii., Judas is spoken of by the mouth of the
Saviour, in words beginning thus: “Hold not Thy peace, O
God of my praise; for the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the
deceitful are opened against me.” Now, if you carefully
observe the contents of the psalm, you will find that, as it was
foreknown that he would betray the Saviour, so also was he considered
to be himself the cause of the betrayal, and deserving, on account of
his wickedness, of the imprecations contained in the prophecy.
For let him suffer these things, “because,” says the
psalmist, “he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the
poor and needy man.” Wherefore it was possible for him to
show mercy, and not to persecute him whom he did persecute. But
although he might have done these things, he did not do them, but
carried out the act of treason, so as to merit the curses pronounced
against him in the prophecy.
And in answer to the Greeks we shall quote the
following oracular response to Laius, as recorded by the tragic poet,
either in the exact words of the oracle or in equivalent terms.
Future events are thus made known to him by the oracle: “Do
not try to beget children against the will of the gods. For if
you beget a son, your son shall murder you; and all your household
shall wade in blood.”3274
| 3274 Euripid.,
Phœnissæ, 18–20. | Now from this
it is clear that it was within the power of Laius not to try to beget
children, for the oracle would not have commanded an impossibility; and
it was also in his power to do the opposite, so that neither of these
courses was compulsory. And the consequence of his not guarding
against the begetting of children was, that he suffered from so doing
the calamities described in the tragedies relating to Œdipus and
Jocasta and their sons. Now that which is called the “idle
argument,” being a quibble, is such as might be applied, say in
the case of a sick man, with the view of sophistically preventing him
from employing a physician to promote his recovery; and it is something
like this: “If it is decreed that you should recover from
your disease, you will recover whether you call in a physician or not;
but if it is decreed that you should not recover, you will not recover
whether you call in a physician or no. But it is certainly
decreed either that you should recover, or that you should not recover;
and therefore it is in vain that you call in a physician.”
Now with this argument the following may be wittily compared:
“If it is decreed that you should beget children, you will beget
them, whether you have intercourse with a woman or not. But if it
is decreed that you should not beget children, you will not do so,
whether you have intercourse with a woman or no. Now, certainly,
it is decreed either that you should beget children or not; therefore
it is in vain that you have intercourse with a woman.” For,
as in the latter instance, intercourse with a woman is not employed in
vain, seeing it is an utter impossibility for him who does not use it
to beget children; so, in the former, if recovery from disease is to be
accomplished by means of the healing art, of necessity the physician is
summoned, and it is therefore false to say that “in vain do you
call in a physician.” We have brought forward all these
illustrations on account of the assertion of this learned Celsus, that
“being a God He predicted these things, and the predictions must
by all means come to pass.” Now, if by “by
all means” he means “necessarily,” we
cannot admit this. For it was quite possible, also, that they
might not come to pass. But if he uses “by all
means” in the sense of “simple
futurity,”3275
which nothing
hinders from being true (although it was possible that they might not
happen), he does not at all touch my argument; nor did it follow, from Jesus
having predicted the acts of the traitor or the perjurer, that it was
the same thing with His being the cause of such impious and unholy
proceedings. For He who was amongst us, and knew what was in man,
seeing his evil disposition, and foreseeing what he would attempt from
his spirit of covetousness, and from his want of stable ideas of duty
towards his Master, along with many other declarations, gave utterance
to this also: “He that dippeth his hand with Me in the
dish, the same shall betray Me.”3276
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
