Page:Who is Jesus?.pdf/108

. They had heard of such things before; this was the one true concrete example that superseded all previous philosophic concepts or reputed incarnations.

Yet there were those who were not satisfied with the tendency toward polytheism exhibited in such utterances as the prayer of Polycarp just quoted. Celsus, for example, in criticism of the Christian position, said: "The worship of Christ is fatal to the Christian doctrine of the unity of God, while they offer an excessive adoration to this person who has lately appeared in the world. How can they think that they commit no offense against God by giving these Divine honors to his Son?"

Celsus was right in stating that the worship of Christ, if it is a worship of Christ as a being apart from God, and not a worship of the one and indivisible God of heaven and earth, is fatal to the Christian doctrine of the unity of God. If Jesus was anything less than or not identical with the Father, it was wrong to worship him as God; the saving part of their position was that, even though they did not comprehend it, Jesus and the Father, even as he said, were one. It matters little that Origen, the most brilliant