Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book II/Chapter LXXI

Chapter LXXI.

Jesus taught us who it was that sent Him, in the words, &#8220;None knoweth the Father but the Son;&#8221; and in these, &#8220;No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.&#8221; &#160; He, treating of Deity, stated to His true disciples the doctrine regarding God; and we, discovering traces of such teaching in the Scripture narratives, take occasion from such to aid our theological conceptions, hearing it declared in one passage, that &#8220;God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all;&#8221; and in another, &#8220;God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.&#8221; &#160; But the purposes for which the Father sent Him are innumerable; and these any one may ascertain who chooses, partly from the prophets who prophesied of Him, and partly from the narratives of the evangelists.&#160; And not a few things also will he learn from the apostles, and especially from Paul.&#160; Moreover, those who are pious He leadeth to the light, and those who sin He will punish,&#8212;a circumstance which Celsus not observing, has represented Him &#8220;as one who will lead the pious to the light, and who will have mercy on others, whether they sin or repent.&#8221;