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| Chapter LXIX
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Chapter
LXIX.
Celsus, however, asserts that the answer which we
give is based upon a probable conjecture,4635
admitting that he describes our answer in the following terms:
“Since God is great and difficult to see,4636
He
put His own Spirit into a body that resembled ours, and sent it down to
us, that we might be enabled to hear Him and become acquainted with
Him.” But the God and Father of all things is not the only
being that is great in our judgment; for He has imparted (a share) of
Himself and His greatness to His Only-begotten and First-born of every
creature, in order that He, being the image of the invisible God, might
preserve, even in His greatness, the image of the Father. For it
was not possible that there could exist a well-proportioned,4637
so to speak, and beautiful image of the
invisible God, which did not at the same time preserve the image of His
greatness. God, moreover, is in our judgment invisible, because
He is not a body, while He can be seen by those who see with the
heart, that is, the understanding; not indeed with any kind of heart,
but with one which is pure. For it is inconsistent with the
fitness of things that a polluted heart should look upon God; for that
must be itself pure which would worthily behold that which is
pure. Let it be granted, indeed, that God is “difficult to
see,” yet He is not the only being who is so; for His
Only-begotten also is “difficult to see.” For God the
Word is “difficult to see,” and so also is His4638
| 4638 For οὑτωσί we have
adopted the conjecture of Guietus, τούτου. | wisdom, by which God created all
things. For who is capable of seeing the wisdom which is
displayed in each individual part of the whole system of things, and by
which God created every individual thing? It was not, then,
because God was “difficult to see” that He sent God His Son
to be an object “easy to be seen.”4639
And because Celsus does not understand
this, he has represented us as saying, “Because God was
‘difficult to see,’ He put His own Spirit in a body
resembling ours, and sent it down to us, that we might be enabled to
hear Him and become acquainted with Him.” Now, as we have
stated, the Son also is “difficult to see,” because He is
God the Word, through whom all things were made, and who
“tabernacled amongst us.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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