Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book III/Chapter XXXIV

by Origen

Chapter XXXIV.

I am, however, of opinion that these individuals are the only instances with which Celsus was acquainted.  And yet, that he might appear voluntarily to pass by other similar cases, he says, “And one might name many others of the same kind.”  Let it be granted, then, that many such persons have existed who conferred no benefit upon the human race:  what would each one of their acts be found to amount to in comparison with the work of Jesus, and the miracles related of Him, of which we have already spoken at considerable length?  He next imagines that, “in worshipping him who,” as he says, “was taken prisoner and put to death, we are acting like the Getæ who worship Zamolxis, and the Cilicians who worship Mopsus, and the Acarnanians who pay divine honours to Amphilochus, and like the Thebans who do the same to Amphiaraus, and the Lebadians to Trophonius.”  Now in these instances we shall prove that he has compared us to the foregoing without good grounds.  For these different tribes erected temples and statues to those individuals above enumerated, whereas we have refrained from offering to the Divinity honour by any such means (seeing they are adapted rather to demons, which are somehow fixed in a certain place which they prefer to any other, or which take up their dwelling, as it were, after being removed (from one place to another) by certain rites and incantations), and are lost in reverential wonder at Jesus, who has recalled our minds from all sensible things, as being not only corruptible, but destined to corruption, and elevated them to honour the God who is over all with prayers and a righteous life, which we offer to Him as being intermediate between the nature of the uncreated and that of all created things,^[1] and who bestows upon us the benefits which come from the Father, and who as High Priest conveys our prayers to the supreme God.

1. ἃς προσάγομεν αὐτῷ, ὡς διὰ μεταξὺ ὄντος τῆς τοῦ ἀγενήτου και τῆς τῶν γενητῶν πἄντων φύσεως.  “Hoeschel (itemque Spencerus ad marg.) suspicabatur legendum:  ὡς δὴ μεταξὺ ὄντος.  Male. Nihil mutari necesse est.  Agitur quippe de precibus, quas offerimus Deo ‘per eum qui veluti medius est inter increatam naturam et creatam.’”—Ruæus.