Against Celsus 7.20

Celsus also brings forward that it was foretold to them that if they did not obey the law they would suffer the same things they did to their enemies. Before Celsus, setting beside these what he thinks are contradictions of the law from the teaching of Christ, makes use of them, something must be said about what has been stated. We say, then, that the law is twofold, one according to the letter and the other according to the meaning, as some before us have also taught. And the law according to the letter is said, not so much by us as by God speaking in one of the prophets, to be “statutes that are not good” and “ordinances that are not good”; while the law according to the meaning is said, according to the same prophet, in the person of God, to be “good statutes” and “good ordinances.” For the prophet does not plainly contradict himself in the same passage. Consistently with this, Paul too said that “the letter” kills, which is equivalent to the literal sense, but “the Spirit” gives life, which has the same force as the sense according to the meaning. One can find in Paul something corresponding to what might be thought contradictions in the prophet. For as Ezekiel says in one place, “I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances that were not good, by which they shall not live,” and in another, “I gave them good statutes and good ordinances, by which they shall live,” or words to that effect, so Paul too, where he wishes to disparage the letter of the law, says: “If the ministry of death, carved in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not gaze at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face, which was passing away, how will the ministry of the Spirit not be even more glorious?” But where he admires and approves the law, he calls it spiritual, saying, “We know that the law is spiritual,” and approves it in the words, “So the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good.”