Origen: Contra Celsum
Henry Chadwick
Number of quotes: 33
Book ID: 164 Page: 9
Section: 2D3B,4B
5. In giving an account of the attitude to idolatry as characteristic of Christians he even supports that view, saying: Because of this they would not regard as gods those that are made with hands, since it is irrational that things should be gods which are made by craftsmen of the lowest kind who are morally wicked. For often they have been made by bad men. Later, when he wants to make out that the idea is commonplace and that it was not discovered first by Christianity, he quotes the saying of Heraclitus which says: ‘Those who approach lifeless things as gods act like a man who holds conversation with houses.’ I would reply in this instance also, as in that of the other ethical principles, that moral ideas have been implanted in men, and that it was from these that Heraclitus and any other Greek or barbarian conceived the notion of maintaining this doctrine. He also quotes the Persians as holding this view, adducing Herodotus as authority for this. We will also add that Zeno of Citium says in his Republic: ‘There will be no need to build temples; for nothing ought to be thought sacred, or of great value, and holy, which is the work of builders and artisans.’ Obviously therefore, in respect of this doctrine also, the knowledge of what is right conduct was written by God in the hearts of men.
Quote ID: 3433
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 9
Section: 2D3B,4B
6. After this, impelled by some unknown power, Celsus says: Christians get the power which they seem to possess by pronouncing the names of certain daemons and incantations, hinting I suppose at those who subdue daemons by enchantments and drive them out. But he seems blatantly to misrepresent the gospel. For they do not get the power which they seem to possess by any incantations but by the name of Jesus with the recital of the histories about him. For when these are pronounced they have often made daemons to be driven out of men, and especially when those who utter them speak with real sincerity and genuine belief.
Quote ID: 3434
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 23
Section: 2B2
24. After this he says: The goatherds and shepherds thought that there was one God called the Most High, or Adonai, or the Heavenly One, or Sabaoth, or however they like to call this world; and they acknowledged nothing more. Later he says that it makes no difference whether one calls the supreme God by the name used among the Greeks, or by that, for example, used among the Indians, or by that among the Egyptians.
Quote ID: 3436
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 164 Page: 25
Section: 5D
If anyone is capable of understanding philosophically the mysterious significance of names, he would find much also about the titles of the angels of God. One of these is called Michael, another Gabriel, and another Raphael, and they are named after their activities which they execute in the whole world in accordance with the will of the God of the universe.
Quote ID: 3437
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 66
Section: 5D
Notice, then, what he says to Jewish believers. He says that deluded by Jesus, they have left the law of their fathers, and have been quite ludicrously deceived, and have deserted to another name and another life. He failed to notice that Jewish believers in Jesus have not left the law of their fathers. For they live according to it, and are named from the poverty of their interpretation of the law. The Jews call a poor man Ebion, and those Jews who have accepted Jesus as the Christ are called Ebionites.
Quote ID: 3438
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: ix
Section: 4A
The contra Celsum stands out as the culmination of the whole apologetic movement of the second and third centuries. ....The Apologists have in view two closely related objects. They hope to assure the Roman authorities that Christians are not a pernicious and unpatriotic minority group with seditious tendencies and immoral rites; and they want to present Christianity to the educated classes as something intellectually respectable.
Quote ID: 3431
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 195
Section: 4B
But no sick or mad man is God’s friend,
Quote ID: 3439
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 198
Section: 4B
He thinks, however, that Moses who wrote about the tower and the confusion of languages corrupted the story about the sons of Aloeus when he composed the narrative about the tower. I reply that no one before Homer, I think, tells the story of the sons of Aloeus; whereas I am convinced that the story about the tower recorded by Moses is much earlier than Homer, and even than the invention of the Greek alphabet.
Quote ID: 3440
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 164 Page: 199
Section: 5D
For it was, I believe, forty-two years from the time when they crucified Jesus to the destruction of Jerusalem.{1}[Footnote 1] Elsewhere Origen says that forty-two years were allowed for repentance (Hom. In Jerem. XIV, 13). The same period is named by Clem. Al. Strom. 1, 145, 5 (forty-two years, three months). Possibly the source of this figure was Phlegon of Tralles (see note on II, 14 above).
Quote ID: 3441
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 206
Section: 4B
After this, from a desire to argue that Jews and Christians are no better than the animals which he mentioned above, he says: The Jews were runaway slaves who escaped from Egypt; they never did anything important, nor have they ever been of any significance or prominence whatever.....
nothing about their history is to be found among the Greeks
Quote ID: 3442
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 212
Section: 4A
In these remarks the well-read and learned Celsus, who accuses both Jews and Christians of ignorance and want of education, clearly shows how accurate was his knowledge of the dates of each writer, Greek and barbarian. He really imagines that Hesiod and thousands of others whom he calls inspired were earlier than Moses and his writings, Moses, who is proved to have lived long before the Trojan war. It was not, therefore, the Jews who composed a most improbable and crude story about the man born of earth, but the men who according to Celsus were inspired, Hesiod and his thousands of others,
Quote ID: 3443
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 213
Section: 4B
Then, as it was his purpose to attack the Bible, he also ridicules the words’ God brought a trance upon Adam and he slept; and He took one of his ribs and closed up the flesh in its place; and He made the rib which He took from Adam into a woman, and so on. But he does not quote the passage which one has only to hear to understand that it is to be interpreted allegorically. In fact, he wanted to pretend that such stories are not allegories, although in what follows he says that the more reasonable Jews and Christians are ashamed of these things and try somehow to allegorize them.
Quote ID: 3444
Time Periods: 023
Book ID: 164 Page: 217
Section: 4B
He next speaks as follows: Then they tell of a flood and a prodigious ark holding everything inside it, and that a dove and a crow were messengers. This a debased and unscrupulous version of the story of Deucalion, I suppose they did not expect that this would come to light, but simply recounted the myth to small children. Here also see the unphilosophical hatred of the man towards the very ancient scripture of the Jews.
Quote ID: 3445
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 291
Section: 2A
These customs have in fact existed, and Pindar seems to me to have been right when he said that custom is king of all.
Quote ID: 3446
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 164 Page: 311
Section: 5D
Let us admit that some also accept Jesus and on that account boast that they are Christians although they still want to live according to the law of the Jews like the multitude of the Jews. These are the two sects of Ebionites, the one confessing as we do that Jesus was born of a virgin, the other holding that he was not born in this way but like other men.
Quote ID: 3447
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 314
Section: 5D
For there are some sects who do not accept the epistles of the apostle Paul, such as the two kinds of Ebionites and those who are called Encratites.
Quote ID: 3448
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 341
Section: 5D
They (Christians) informed him that this was Gehenna, also called Tartarus.
Quote ID: 3449
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 354
Section: 2B2
Their names have one form among the Greeks and another form among the Scythians. He then takes from Herodotus his affirmation that the Scythians call Apollo Gongosyrus, Poseidon Thagimasada, Aphrodite Argimpasa, and Hestia Tabita.
Quote ID: 3450
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 378
Section: 2B1
Not one of us holds this view. But if the words ‘in the image of God’ apply to both together, God must be composite and, as it were, must consist of soul and body Himself, so that the superior part has its image in the soul, and the inferior and corporeal part in the body. And none of us says that.Not one of us says that God participates in shape or colour. Nor does He partake of movement; because it is His nature to be established and firm,
Moreover, God does not even participate in being. For He is participated in, rather than participates; and He is participated in by those who possess the Spirit of God. Our Saviour also does not participate in righteousness; but being righteous, he is participated in by the righteous.
Quote ID: 3452
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 164 Page: 383
Section: 2B1
Nevertheless, Celsus says that we reply as follows, and affirms that he makes a probable conjecture at our answer in these words: Since God is great and hard to perceive, he thrust his own Spirit into a body like ours, and sent him down here, that we might be able to hear and learn from him. But in our opinion the God and Father of the universe is not the only being who is great; for He gave a share of Himself and His greatness to the only-begotten and firstborn of all creation, that being himself an image of the invisible God he might preserve the image of the Father also in respect of His greatness. For it was impossible that, so to speak, a rightly proportioned and beautiful image of the invisible God should not also show the image of His greatness.
Quote ID: 3453
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 164 Page: 385
Section: 2A6,2D3B
The Saviour said to the Samaritan woman: ‘The hour is coming when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain shall you worship the Father; God is Spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. By these words he taught that God must not be worshipped in the flesh and carnal sacrifices, but in spirit. Moreover, Jesus himself would be understood to be spirit in proportion to the degree in which a man worships him in spirit and with the mind. Furthermore, the Father must not be worshipped by external signs but in truth, the truth which came by Jesus Christ.
Quote ID: 3454
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 164 Page: 392
Section: 2C
If anyone should want to see many bodies filled with a divine spirit, ministering to the salvation of men everywhere after the pattern of the one Christ, let him realize that those who in many places teach the doctrine of Jesus rightly and live an upright life are themselves also called Christs by the divine scriptures in the words: ‘Touch not my Christs and do my prophets no harm.’Moreover, just as we have heard that ‘antichrist is coming’, and have learnt no less that there are ‘many antichrists’ in the world, in the same way knowing that Christ has come we see that because of him there have been many Christs in the world, who like him have ‘loved righteousness and hated iniquity’; and on this account God, the God of Christ, has even anointed them with the oil of gladness.
Quote ID: 3455
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 164 Page: 397
Section: 2D3B
Its character must be like that of the race of daemons which many Christians drive out of people who suffer from them, without any curious magical art or sorcerer’s device, but with prayer alone and very simple adjurations and formulas such as the simplest person could use. For generally speaking it is uneducated people who do this kind of work.PJ: Words of Celsus?
Quote ID: 3435
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 164 Page: 397
Section: 2D3B,4B
Its character must be like that of the race of daemons which many Christians drive out of people who suffer from them, without any curious magical art or sorcerer’s device, but with prayer alone and very simple adjurations and formulas such as the simplest person could use. For generally speaking it is uneducated people who do this kind of work.
Quote ID: 3456
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 398
Section: 2E6,4B
5. Moreover, not only Christians and Jews, but also many other Greeks and barbarians have believed that the human soul lives and exists after separation from the body, and show this by the doctrine that the pure soul, which is not weighed down by the leaden weights of evil, is carried on high to the regions of the purer and ethereal bodies, forsaking the gross bodies on earth and the pollutions attaching to them; whereas the bad soul, that is dragged down to earth by its sins and has not even the power to make a recovery, is carried here and roams about, in some cases at tombs where also apparitions of shadowy souls have been seen, in other cases simply round about the earth. What sort of spirits must we think them to be which for whole ages, so to speak, are bound to buildings and places, whether by some magical incantations or even because of their own wickedness? Reason demands that we should think such spirits to be wicked, for they use their power to know the future, which is morally neither good nor bad, to deceive men and to distract them from God and pure piety towards Him. That this is the character of the daemons is also made clear by the fact that their bodies, nourished by the smoke from sacrifices and by the portions taken from the blood and burnt-offerings in which they delight, find in this, as it were, their heart’s desire, like vicious men who do not welcome the prospect of living a pure life without their bodies, but only enjoy life in the earthly body because of its physical pleasures.
Quote ID: 3457
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 401
Section: 2D3B
But signs of the Holy Spirit were manifested at the beginning when Jesus was teaching, and after his ascension there were many more, though later they became less numerous. Nevertheless, even to this day there are traces1 of him in a few people whose souls have been purified by the Logos and by the actions which follow his teaching. ‘For a Holy Spirit of discipline will flee from deceit, and will start away from thoughts that are without understanding.’1 Cf. 1, 2; 11, 8, 33, for the occasional survival of miracles in the Church in Origen’s time. For the development of Christian thought here, cf. K. Holl, Gesammelte Aufsatze II, p. 89 n. 2: Irenaeus (adv. Haer. II, 31, 2, Harvey, 1, 370) treats miracles as a matter still of some frequency in the Church, and says that very often (saepissime) at the prayer of the brotherhood the spirit of a dead man has returned. ‘What the real state of things was at that time one may conclude from the fact that the Montanist prophets never made any attempt to prove the truth of their proclamation by means of miracles’ (Holl). Origen (Hom. in Jerem. IV, 3) treats miracles as a thing of the past. Eusebius (H.E. v, 7) only quotes Irenaeus as evidence for miracles after the N.T. period. For the Vita Antonii cf. Augustine, Conf. VIII, 6, 14. Chrysostom, Hom. in Matt. XXXII, 7 (P.G. LVII, 386-7) is significant.
. . . .
and there are some who wander about begging and roaming around cities and military camps; and they pretend to be moved as if giving some oracular utterance. It is an ordinary and common custom for each one to say: ‘I am God (or a son of God, or a divine Spirit). And I have come. Already the world is being destroyed. And you, O men, are to perish because of your iniquities. But I wish to save you. And you shall see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has worshipped me now! But I will cast everlasting fire upon all the rest, both on cities and on country places. And men who fail to realize the penalties in store for them will in vain repent and groan. But I will preserve for ever those who have been convinced by me. Then after that he says: Having brandished these threats they then go on to add incomprehensible, incoherent, and utterly obscure utterances, the meaning of which no intelligent person could discover; for they are meaningless and nonsensical, and give a chance for any fool or sorcerer to take the words in whatever sense he likes.
Quote ID: 3458
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 450
Section: 5D
On this account we may at once leave this, and pass on to consider Celsus’ next remarks where he says:First I would ask, Why should we not worship daemons? Are not all things indeed administered according to God’s will, and is not all providence derived from him? And whatever there may be in the universe, whether the work of God, or of angels, or of other daemons, or heroes, do not all these things keep a law given by the greatest God? And has there not been appointed over each particular thing a being who has been thought worthy to be allotted power? Would not a man, therefore, who worships
God rightly worship the being who has obtained authority from him? But it is impossible, he says, for the same man to serve several masters.
Quote ID: 3460
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 164 Page: 473
Section: 2E
That which is offered to idols is sacrificed to daemons, and a man of God ought not to become a partaker of the table of daemons. The Bible forbids things strangled because the blood has not been removed, which, they say, is the food of daemons who are nourished by the vapours rising from it, in order that we may not be fed on daemons’ food, perhaps because if we were to partake of things strangled some spirits of this nature might be fed together with us.
Quote ID: 3461
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 493
Section: 3A2A,4B
After this Celsus says: Reason demands one of two alternatives. If they refuse to worship in the proper way the lords in charge of the following activities, then they ought neither to come to marriageable age, nor to marry a wife, nor to beget children, nor to do anything else in life. But they should depart from this world leaving no descendants at all behind them, so that such a race would entirely cease to exist on earth. But if they are going to marry wives, and beget children, and taste of the fruits, and partake of the joys of this life, and endure the appointed evils (by nature’s law all men must have experience of evils; evil is necessary and has nowhere else to exist), then they ought to render the due honours to the beings who have been entrusted with these things. And they ought to offer the due rites of worship in this life until they are set free from their bonds, lest they even appear ungrateful to them. It is wrong for people who partake of what is their property to offer them nothing in return.
Quote ID: 3462
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 164 Page: 496
Section: 4B
58. After this Celsus says: That in these matters, even including the very least, there is a being to whom authority has been given, one may learn from the teaching of the Egyptians. They say that the body of man has been put under the charge of thirty-six daemons, or ethereal gods of some sort, who divide it between them, that being the number of parts into which it is divided (though some say far more). Each daemon is in charge of a different part. And they know the names of the daemons in the local dialect, such as Chnoumen, Chnachoumen, Knat, Sikat, Biou, Erou, Erebiou, Rhamanoor, and Rheianoor, and all the other names which they use in their language. And by invoking these they heal the sufferings of the various parts. What is there to prevent anyone from paying honour both to these and to the others if he wishes, so that we can be in good health rather than be ill, and have good rather than bad luck, and be delivered from tortures and punishment?
Quote ID: 3463
Time Periods: 2
Book ID: 164 Page: 502
Section: 2E5
But if anyone tells you to praise Helios or with a noble paean to speak in enthusiastic praise of Athena, in so doing you will appear much more to be worshipping the great God when you are singing a hymn to them. For the worship of God becomes more perfect by going through them all.
Quote ID: 3464
Time Periods: 04
Book ID: 164 Page: 509
Section: 3A4C
Then Celsus next exhorts us to help the emperor with all our power, and cooperate with him in what is right, and fight for him, and be fellow-soldiers if he presses for this, and fellow-generals with him.
Quote ID: 3465
Time Periods: 23
Book ID: 164 Page: 510
Section: 2D3B,3A4B
75. Celsus exhorts us also to accept public office in our country if it is necessary to do this for the sake of the preservation of the laws and of piety. But we know of the existence in each city of another sort of country, created by the Logos of God. And we call upon those who are competent to take office, who are sound in doctrine and life, to rule over the churches. We do not accept those who love power. But we put pressure on those who on account of their great humility are reluctant hastily to take upon themselves the common responsibility of the church of God. And those who rule us well are those who have had to be forced to take office, being constrained by the great King who, we are convinced, is the Son of God, the divine Logos. Even if it is power over God’s country (I mean the Church) which is exercised by those who hold office well in the Church, we say that their rule is in accordance with God’s prior authority, and they do not thereby defile the appointed laws.If Christians do avoid these responsibilities, it is not with the motive of shirking the public services of life. But they keep themselves for a more divine and necessary service in the church of God for the sake of the salvation of men. Here it is both necessary and right for them to be leaders and to be concerned about all men, both those who are within the Church, that they may live better every day, and those who appear to be outside it, that they may become familiar with the sacred words and acts of worship; and that, offering a true worship to God in this way and instructing as many as possible, they may become absorbed in the word of God and the divine law, and so be united to the supreme God through the Son of God, the Logos, Wisdom, Truth, and Righteousness, who unites to Him every one who has been persuaded to live according to God’s will in all things.
Quote ID: 3466
Time Periods: 23
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