Against Celsus 4.30

Celsus seems to me also to have misheard the words, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” and for this reason to have made the worms say that “having been made by God we are wholly like him.” If, however, he had known the difference between man's having been made “according to the image” of God and “according to the likeness,” and that God is recorded to have said, “Let us make man according to our image and likeness,” but that God made man “according to the image” of God and not yet also “according to the likeness,” he would not have made us say that we are wholly like God. Nor do we say that even the stars have been put under us; since the resurrection of the righteous, as it is called and as the wise understand it, is compared to the sun, moon, and stars by the one who says, “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead,” and since Daniel prophesied about these things long ago. He says that we claim that “all things have been appointed to serve us,” perhaps not having heard the intelligent among us say such things, and perhaps not knowing in what sense it has been said that the greatest among us is the servant of all. And if the Greeks say, “Then sun and night serve mortals,” they praise the saying and explain it; but when such a thing is either not said or said in another sense, Celsus slanders us for this too. In Celsus's account we, whom he calls worms, said that “since some among us do wrong, God will come to us or will send his Son to burn up the unjust, and the rest of us frogs will have eternal life with him.” And see how, like a buffoon, the dignified philosopher has turned into mockery, laughter, and ridicule the divine announcement of judgment, of punishment “upon the unjust,” and of reward for the righteous. And he adds to all this that these things would be more tolerable said by worms and frogs than announced by Jews and Christians disputing with one another. But we shall not imitate him or say similar things about philosophers who profess to know the nature of the universe and debate with one another how the universe was put together, and how heaven and earth and all that is in them came to be, and how souls, being unbegotten and not created by God, are ordered by him and change bodies, or, sown together with bodies, survive or do not survive. For instead of speaking respectfully and approving the purpose of those who have devoted themselves to examining the truth, one could mock and revile these too, saying that they are worms in a corner of the mud of human life, not measuring themselves, and therefore pronouncing on such great matters as if they had grasped them, and insisting that they have contemplated things that cannot be contemplated without the inspiration of a higher and more divine power. “For no one among men knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man that is in him; so also no one has known the things of God except the Spirit of God.” But we are not mad, nor do we compare such great understanding of men (I use “understanding” in a general sense), occupied not with the affairs of the many but with the examination of the truth, to the movements of worms or of any other such creatures. With love of truth we bear witness to certain Greek philosophers that they knew God, since “God made it plain to them,” even if “they did not glorify him as God or give thanks, but became futile in their thinking,” and “claiming to be wise they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of an image of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.”