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| Chapter XVII
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Chapter
XVII.
Since Celsus, moreover, from a desire to
depreciate the accounts which our Scriptures give of the kingdom of
God, has quoted none of them, as if they were unworthy of being
recorded by him (or perhaps because he was unacquainted with them),
while, on the other hand, he quotes the sayings of Plato, both from his
Epistles and the Phædrus, as if these were divinely
inspired, but our Scriptures were not, let us set forth a few points,
for the sake of comparison with these plausible declarations of Plato,
which did not however, dispose the philosopher to worship in a manner
worthy of him the Maker of all things. For he ought not to have
adulterated or polluted this worship with what we call
“idolatry,” but what the many would describe by the term
“superstition.” Now, according to a Hebrew figure of
speech, it is said of God in the eighteenth Psalm, that “He made darkness His
secret place,”4371
to signify that
those notions which should be worthily entertained of God are invisible
and unknowable, because God conceals Himself in darkness, as it were,
from those who cannot endure the splendours of His knowledge, or are
incapable of looking at them, partly owing to the pollution of their
understanding, which is clothed with the body of mortal lowliness, and
partly owing to its feebler power of comprehending God. And in
order that it may appear that the knowledge of God has rarely been
vouchsafed to men, and has been found in very few individuals, Moses is
related to have entered into the darkness where God was.4372
And again, with regard to Moses it is
said: “Moses alone shall come near the Lord, but the rest shall not come nigh.”4373
And again, that the prophet may show
the depth of the doctrines which relate to God, and which is
unattainable by those who do not possess the “Spirit which
searcheth all things, even the deep things of God,” he
added: “The abyss like a garment is His
covering.”4374
Nay, our Lord
and Saviour, the Logos of God, manifesting that the greatness of the
knowledge of the Father is appropriately comprehended and known
pre-eminently by Him alone, and in the second place by those whose
minds are enlightened by the Logos Himself and God, declares:
“No man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man
the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal
Him.”4375
For no one
can worthily know the “uncreated”4376
| 4376 ἀγένητον. Locus
diligenter notandus, ubi Filius e creaturarum numero diserte eximitur,
dum ἀγένητος dicitur.
At non dissimulandum in unico Cod. Anglicano secundo legi:
τὸν
γεννητόν: cf.
Origenianorum, lib. ii. quæstio 2, num.
23.—Ruæus. |
and first-born of all created nature like the Father who begat Him, nor
any one the Father like the living Logos, and His Wisdom and
Truth.4377
| 4377 [Bishop Bull, in the
Defensio Fidei Nicenæ, book ii. cap. ix. 9, says, “In
these words, which are clearer than any light, Origen proves the
absolutely divine and uncreated nature of the Son.” S.] | By sharing in
Him who takes away from the Father what is called
“darkness,” which He “made His secret place,”
and “the abyss,” which is called His
“covering,” and in this way unveiling the Father, every one
knows the Father who4378
| 4378 ὅ τι
ποτ᾽ ἂν χωρῇ
γιγνώσκειν.
Boherellus proposes ὅστις ποτ᾽ ἂν
χωρῇ, etc. | is capable of
knowing Him.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
