Jump to content

Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book II/Chapter XXXI

From Wikisource
Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. IV, Origen, Origen Against Celsus, Book II
by Origen, translated by Frederick Crombie
Chapter XXXI
156303Ante-Nicene Fathers Vol. IV, Origen, Origen Against Celsus, Book II — Chapter XXXIFrederick CrombieOrigen

Chapter XXXI.

He next charges the Christians with being “guilty of sophistical reasoning, in saying that the Son of God is the Logos Himself.”  And he thinks that he strengthens the accusation, because “when we declare the Logos to be the Son of God, we do not present to view a pure and holy Logos, but a most degraded man, who was punished by scourging and crucifixion.”  Now, on this head we have briefly replied to the charges of Celsus in the preceding pages, where Christ was shown to be the first-born of all creation, who assumed a body and a human soul; and that God gave commandment respecting the creation of such mighty things in the world, and they were created; and that He who received the command was God the Logos.  And seeing it is a Jew who makes these statements in the work of Celsus, it will not be out of place to quote the declaration, “He sent His word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destruction,”[1]—a passage of which we spoke a little ago.  Now, although I have conferred with many Jews who professed to be learned men, I never heard any one expressing his approval of the statement that the Logos is the Son of God, as Celsus declares they do, in putting into the mouth of the Jew such a declaration as this:  “If your Logos is the Son of God, we also give our assent to the same.”

  1. Ps. cvii. 20.