Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XIX
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIX.
Celsus in the next place alleges, that
“certain Christians, having misunderstood the words of Plato,
loudly boast of a ‘super-celestial’ God, thus ascending
beyond the heaven of the Jews.” By these words, indeed, he
does not make it clear whether they also ascend beyond the God
of the Jews, or only beyond the heaven by which they swear. It is
not our purpose at present, however, to speak of those who acknowledge
another god than the one worshipped by the Jews, but to defend
ourselves, and to show that it was impossible for the prophets of the
Jews, whose writings are reckoned among ours, to have borrowed anything
from Plato, because they were older than he. They did not then
borrow from him the declaration, that “all things are around the
King of all, and that all exist on account of him;” for we have
learned that nobler thoughts than these have been uttered by the
prophets, by Jesus Himself and His disciples, who have clearly
indicated the meaning of the spirit that was in them, which was none
other than the spirit of Christ. Nor was the philosopher the
first to present to view the “super-celestial” place; for
David long ago brought to view the profundity and multitude of the
thoughts concerning God entertained by those who have ascended above
visible things, when he said in the book of Psalms: “Praise
God, ye heaven of heavens and ye waters that be above the heavens, let
them praise the name of the Lord.”4382
I do not,
indeed, deny that Plato learned from certain Hebrews the words quoted
from the Phædrus, or even, as some have recorded, that he
quoted them from a perusal of our prophetic writings, when he
said: “No poet here below has ever sung of the
super-celestial place, or ever will sing in a becoming manner,”
and so on. And in the same passage is the following:
“For the essence, which is both colourless and formless, and
which cannot be touched, which really exists, is the pilot of the soul,
and is beheld by the understanding alone; and around it the genus of
true knowledge holds this place.”4383
| 4383 Cf. Plato in
Phædro, p. 247. | Our Paul, moreover, educated by these
words, and longing after things “supra-mundane” and
“super-celestial,” and doing his utmost for their sake to
attain them, says in the second Epistle to the Corinthians:
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for
us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not
at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not
seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things
which are unseen are eternal.”4384
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
