Against Celsus 4.12

Whether there are cycles, and floods or conflagrations in cycles, or not, and whether the Scripture knows of this too, both in many places and where Solomon says, “What is it that has been? The very thing that will be. And what is it that has been done? The very thing that will be done,” and so on, it is not the present occasion to say. It is enough only to note that Moses and some of the prophets, being most ancient men, did not take what they say about the conflagration of the world from others; but, if one must pay attention to the dates and say so, rather others, having misheard them and not understanding precisely what they said, invented periodic identities, indistinguishable in their individual qualities and their accidents. But we do not attribute either the flood or the conflagration to cycles and the revolutions of the stars; we say that their cause is wickedness poured out in excess and purged by flood or conflagration. And if the prophetic words say that God comes down, he who said, “Do I not fill heaven and earth? says the Lord,” we interpret it figuratively. For God comes down from his own greatness and height when he manages the affairs of men, and especially of the wicked. And as ordinary usage says that teachers come down to the level of children, and the wise or those advanced come down to young men just turned to philosophy, not by descending bodily, so, if anywhere in the divine Scriptures God is said to come down, it is understood analogously to the usage that employs the word in this way; and so too with going up.