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Chapter
LXXI.
Celsus accordingly, as not understanding the
doctrine relating to the Spirit of God (“for the natural man
receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness
unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually
discerned”4651 ), weaves together
(such a web) as pleases himself,4652 imagining that
we, in calling God a Spirit, differ in no respect in this particular
from the Stoics among the Greeks, who maintain that “God is a
Spirit, diffused through all things, and containing all things within
Himself.” Now the superintendence and providence of God
does extend through all things, but not in the way that spirit does,
according to the Stoics. Providence indeed contains all things
that are its objects, and comprehends them all, but not as a containing
body includes its contents, because they also are
“body,”4653
4653 οὐχ ὡς σῶμα
δὲ περιέχον
περιέχει, ὅτι
καὶ σῶμά
ἐστι τὸ
περιεχόμενον. | but as a
divine power does it comprehend what it contains.
According to the philosophers of the Porch, indeed, who assert that
principles are “corporeal,” and who on that account make
all things perishable, and who venture even to make the God of all
things capable of perishing, the very Word of God, who descends even to
the lowest of mankind, would be—did it not appear to them to be
too gross an incongruity4654 —nothing else
than a “corporeal” spirit; whereas, in our
opinion,—who endeavour to demonstrate that the rational soul is
superior to all “corporeal” nature, and that it is an
invisible substance, and incorporeal,—God the Word, by whom all
things were made, who came, in order that all things might be made by
the Word, not to men only, but to what are deemed the very lowest of
things, under the dominion of nature alone, would be no body. The
Stoics, then, may consign all things to destruction by fire; we,
however, know of no incorporeal substance that is destructible by fire,
nor (do we believe) that the soul of man, or the substance of
“angels,” or of “thrones,” or dominions,”
or “principalities,” or “powers,” can be
dissolved by fire.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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