Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Origen/Origen Against Celsus/Book VI/Chapter LXIX

Chapter LXIX.

Celsus, however, asserts that the answer which we give is based upon a probable conjecture, admitting that he describes our answer in the following terms:&#160; &#8220;Since God is great and difficult to see, He put His own Spirit into a body that resembled ours, and sent it down to us, that we might be enabled to hear Him and become acquainted with Him.&#8221;&#160; But the God and Father of all things is not the only being that is great in our judgment; for He has imparted (a share) of Himself and His greatness to His Only-begotten and First-born of every creature, in order that He, being the image of the invisible God, might preserve, even in His greatness, the image of the Father.&#160; For it was not possible that there could exist a well-proportioned, so to speak, and beautiful image of the invisible God, which did not at the same time preserve the image of His greatness.&#160; God, moreover, is in our judgment invisible, because He is not a body, while He can be seen by those who see with the heart, that is, the understanding; not indeed with any kind of heart, but with one which is pure.&#160; For it is inconsistent with the fitness of things that a polluted heart should look upon God; for that must be itself pure which would worthily behold that which is pure.&#160; Let it be granted, indeed, that God is &#8220;difficult to see,&#8221; yet He is not the only being who is so; for His Only-begotten also is &#8220;difficult to see.&#8221;&#160; For God the Word is &#8220;difficult to see,&#8221; and so also is His wisdom, by which God created all things.&#160; For who is capable of seeing the wisdom which is displayed in each individual part of the whole system of things, and by which God created every individual thing?&#160; It was not, then, because God was &#8220;difficult to see&#8221; that He sent God His Son to be an object &#8220;easy to be seen.&#8221; &#160; And because Celsus does not understand this, he has represented us as saying, &#8220;Because God was &#8216;difficult to see,&#8217; He put His own Spirit in a body resembling ours, and sent it down to us, that we might be enabled to hear Him and become acquainted with Him.&#8221;&#160; Now, as we have stated, the Son also is &#8220;difficult to see,&#8221; because He is God the Word, through whom all things were made, and who &#8220;tabernacled amongst us.&#8221;