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

Chapter LXXII.

It is therefore in vain that Celsus asserts, as one who knows not the nature of the Spirit of God, that &#8220;as the Son of God, who existed in a human body, is a Spirit, this very Son of God would not be immortal.&#8221;&#160; He next becomes confused in his statements, as if there were some of us who did not admit that God is a Spirit, but maintain that only with regard to His Son, and he thinks that he can answer us by saying that there &#8220;is no kind of spirit which lasts for ever.&#8221;&#160; This is much the same as if, when we term God a &#8220;consuming fire,&#8221; he were to say that there &#8220;is no kind of fire which lasts for ever;&#8221; not observing the sense in which we say that our God is a fire, and what the things are which He consumes, viz., sins, and wickedness.&#160; For it becomes a God of goodness, after each individual has shown, by his efforts, what kind of combatant he has been, to consume vice by the fire of His chastisements.&#160; He proceeds, in the next place, to assume what we do not maintain, that &#8220;God must necessarily have given up the ghost;&#8221; from which also it follows that Jesus could not have risen again with His body.&#160; For God would not have received back the spirit which He had surrendered after it had been stained by contact with the body.&#160; It is foolish, however, for us to answer statements as ours which were never made by us.