Against Celsus 7.17

Celsus, then, speaks truly in this passage only in saying: But the prophets would not foretell this; for it is evil and unholy. And what is this but that the great God will be a slave or die? But what was prophesied by the prophets is worthy of God: that a certain “radiance” and “imprint” of the divine nature would come into life together with the holy soul of Jesus as it became man, to sow a word that would make the one who received it into his own soul, cultivated it, and brought it all to completion, akin to the God of the universe. This word has in itself the power of God the Word who would be in a human body and soul. And it will be so that his rays are not shut up in that one alone, nor is it said that the light which gives these rays, being God the Word, is nowhere else. The things concerning Jesus, then, in so far as they are understood as done by the divinity in him, are holy and do not conflict with the conception of the divine; and in so far as he was a man, adorned beyond every man by the highest participation in the Word himself and Wisdom itself, he endured as wise and perfect what the one who does everything for the whole human race, or even for all rational beings, had to endure. And there is nothing absurd in the man having died, and in his death not only being set forth as an example of dying for the sake of piety, but also having brought about the beginning and progress of the destruction of the evil one, the devil, who had taken possession of the whole earth. The signs of his overthrow are those who, because of the coming of Jesus, have everywhere escaped from the demons that held them, and, set free from slavery to them, dedicate themselves to God and to a piety toward him that grows purer day by day, as far as they can.