Against Celsus 4.40

And when he says that the account of Moses most impiously introduced God as “weak from the very beginning and unable to persuade even one man whom he himself had formed,” to this too we shall say that the statement is like accusing God because of the existence of wickedness, which he has not been able to prevent even from one man, so that at least one man might be found who from the beginning had never tasted wickedness. For as those who care to defend providence make a defense on this point with arguments neither few nor contemptible, so too those will philosophize about Adam and his sin who know that in Greek “Adam” means “man,” and that in what seems to be about Adam Moses is treating the nature of man. For “in Adam,” as the Scripture says, “all die,” and they were condemned “in the likeness of Adam's transgression,” the divine word saying these things not so much about one individual as about the whole race. For in the sequence of what is said as if about one person, the curse of Adam is common to all; and there is no woman against whom what is said against the woman is not said. And the man cast out of paradise with the woman, clothed in the “garments of skins,” which God made for those who had sinned because of the transgression of men, has a secret and mystical meaning, beyond Plato's descent of the soul, which sheds its wings and is borne here “until it lays hold of something solid.”