Against Celsus 4.73
Summary: Celsus mocks the idea of an angry God sending his Son to suffer; Origen answers that the Jews' ruin came from the wrath they stored up for themselves, and that the Son suffered willingly for our salvation.
Greek text · Koetschau 1:342–343
Ἀκολούθως δὲ τῷ μὴ νενοηκέναι τὰ περὶ ὀργῆς ἀναγεγραμμένα θεοῦ φησιν· ἢ γὰρ οὐ καταγέλαστον· εἰ ἄνθρωπος μὲν ὀργισθεὶς Ἰουδαίοις πάντας αὐτοὺς ἡβηδὸν ἀπώλεσεν καὶ ἐπυρπόλησεν, οὕτως οὐδὲν ἦσαν· θεὸς δʼ ὁ μέγιστος. ὥς φασιν, ὀργιζόμενος καὶ θυμούμενος καὶ ἀπειλῶν πέμπει τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τοιαῦτα πάσχει; εἴπερ οὖν Ἰουδαῖοι μετὰ τὸ διαθεῖναι τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἅπερ ἐτόλμησαν κατʼ αὐτοῦ ἡβηδὸν ἀπώλοντο καὶ ἐπυρπολήθησαν, οὐκ ἀπʼ ἄλλης ὀργῆς ἢ ἧς ἑαυτοῖς ἐθησαύρισαν ταῦτα πεπόνθασι. τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ κατʼ αὐτῶν κρίσεως θεοῦ καταστήματι γεγενημένης. ὀνομαζομένης ὀργῆς πατρίῳ τινὶ Ἑβραίων ἔθει. καὶ πάσχει γε ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ μεγίστου θεοῦ βουληθεὶς ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν ἀνθρώπων σωτηρίας, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἀνωτέρω κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἡμῖν λέλεκται. μετὰ ταῦτά φησιν· ἀλλʼ ὅπως μὴ περὶ μόνων Ἰουδαίων (οὐ γὰρ τοῦτο λέγω) ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς ὅλης φύσεως, ὅπερ ἐπηγγειλάμην. ὁ λόγος ᾖ. σαφέστερον ἐμφανιῶ τὰ προειρημένα. τίς δʼ οὐκ ἂν τούτοις ἐντυγχάνων μέτριος καὶ αἰσθανόμενος τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἀσθενείας οὐκ ἂν περισταίη τὸ ἐπαχθὲς τοῦ περὶ ὅλης τῆς φύσεως ἐπαγγειλαμένου ἀποδοῦναι λόγον καὶ ἀλαζονευσαμένου ὁμοίως ᾗ ἐτόλμησεν ἐπιγράψαι ἐπιγραφῇ τοῦ βιβλίου; ἴδωμεν δὴ τίνα ἐστὶν ἃ περὶ ὅλης τῆς φύσεως ἐπαγγέλλεται λέξειν καὶ τίνα ἐμφανίσειν.
English · Claude translation
In keeping with his failure to understand what is written about God's wrath, he says: "Is it not ridiculous that a man, angered at the Jews, destroyed them all, young and old, and burned their city, so that they were nothing; while God the greatest, as they say, being angry and wrathful and threatening, sends his Son, and he suffers such things?" If, then, the Jews, after doing to Jesus what they dared against him, perished young and old and were burned, they suffered these things from no other wrath than that which they stored up for themselves, God's judgment against them having come about by God's decree, which is named wrath by a certain ancestral custom of the Hebrews. And the Son of the greatest God does suffer, by his own will, for the salvation of human beings, as has been said above as well as we could. After this he says: "But so that the argument may not be about the Jews alone (for that is not what I am saying) but about the whole of nature, as I promised, I will make plainer what I said before." Who, reading this, if he were modest and aware of human weakness, would not shrink from the offensiveness of one who promised to give an account of the whole of nature and boasted in the same way as in the title he dared to give his book? Let us see, then, what it is he promises to say about the whole of nature and what he will make plain.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- "A man" is presumably Titus, who destroyed Jerusalem in AD 70. The phrase θεοῦ καταστήματι ("by God's decree") is unusual; the sense is uncertain. Celsus's book was titled The True Word (Ἀληθὴς λόγος).
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (stray quotation mark in the digital text): Ἑβραίων ἔθει„ → Ἑβραίων ἔθει..
Cite this passage
Origen, Cels. 4.73 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-celsum/4/73/).
Plain text
Origen, Cels. 4.73 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/origen-celsum/4/73/).
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