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| Chapter XLV
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Chapter XLV.
And whereas Celsus ought to have recognised the
love of truth displayed by the writers of sacred Scripture, who have
not concealed even what is to their discredit,3899
and thus been led to accept the other and more marvellous accounts as
true, he has done the reverse, and has characterized the story of Lot
and his daughters (without examining either its literal or its
figurative meaning) as “worse than the crimes of
Thyestes.” The figurative signification of that passage of
history it is not necessary at present to explain, nor what is meant by
Sodom, and by the words of the angels to him who was escaping thence,
when they said: “Look not behind thee, neither stay thou in
all the surrounding district; escape to the mountain, lest thou be
consumed;”3900
nor what is
intended by Lot and his wife, who became a pillar of salt because she
turned back; nor by his daughters intoxicating their father, that they
might become mothers by him. But let us in a few words soften
down the repulsive features of the history. The nature of
actions—good, bad, and indifferent—has been investigated by
the Greeks; and the more successful of such investigators3901
| 3901 οἱ
ἐπιτυγχάνοντές
γε αὐτῶν. | lay down the principle that intention alone
gives to actions the character of good or bad, and that all things
which are done without a purpose are, strictly speaking, indifferent;
that when the intention is directed to a becoming end, it is
praiseworthy; when the reverse, it is censurable. They have said,
accordingly, in the section relating to “things
indifferent,” that, strictly speaking, for a man to have sexual
intercourse with his daughters is a thing indifferent, although such a
thing ought not to take place in established communities. And for
the sake of hypothesis, in order to show that such an act belongs to
the class of things indifferent, they have assumed the case of a wise
man being left with an only daughter, the entire human race besides
having perished; and they put the question whether the father can fitly
have intercourse with his daughter, in order, agreeably to the
supposition, to prevent the extermination of mankind. Is this to
be accounted sound reasoning among the Greeks, and to be commended by
the influential3902
| 3902 οὐκ
εὐκαταφρόνητος
αὐτοῖς. | sect of the Stoics;
but when young maidens, who had heard of the burning of the world,
though without comprehending (its full meaning), saw fire devastating
their city and country, and supposing that the only means left of
rekindling the flame3903
of human life lay
in their father and themselves, should, on such a supposition, conceive
the desire that the world should continue, shall their conduct be
deemed worse than that of the wise man who, according to the hypothesis
of the Stoics, acts becomingly in having intercourse with his daughter
in the case already supposed, of all men having been destroyed? I
am not unaware, however, that some have taken offence at the
desire3904
of Lot’s
daughters, and have regarded their conduct as very wicked; and have
said that two accursed nations—Moab and Ammon—have sprung
from that unhallowed intercourse. And yet truly sacred Scripture
is nowhere found distinctly approving of their conduct as good, nor yet
passing sentence upon it as blameworthy. Nevertheless, whatever
be the real state of the case, it admits not only of a figurative
meaning, but also of being defended on its own merits.3905
| 3905 ἔχει
δέ τινα καὶ
καθ᾽ αὑτὸ
άπολογίαν.
[Our Edinburgh translator gives a misleading rendering here.
Origen throughout this part of his argument is reasoning ad
hominem, and has shown that Greek philosophy sustains this
idea.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
