Against Celsus 2.63

After this Celsus, in a way not to be despised, disparages what is written, saying that, if Jesus really wished to show divine power, he ought to have appeared to those who had insulted him, to the one who condemned him, and in short to everyone. For truly it seems to us too, according to the Gospel, that after the resurrection he was not seen in the way he appeared before, publicly and to all. Rather, it is written in the Acts that, “appearing over forty days” to the disciples, he proclaimed “the things concerning the kingdom of God”; and in the Gospels, not that he was always with them, but that once, after eight days, he appeared among them “when the doors were shut,” and at other times in similar ways. And Paul, at the end of the first letter to the Corinthians, as if he had not been seen publicly as in the time before the passion, writes thus: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,” “and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once, most of whom remain until now, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.” I consider what concerns this passage to be great and wonderful things, beyond the capacity not only of most believers but even of those well advanced; in them the reason could be shown why, having risen from the dead, he did not appear as in the former time. From many things, as is fitting in such a work, written in reply to a treatise against Christians and their faith, see whether by setting out a few we shall be able reasonably to reach those who will hear this defense.