Against Celsus 8.15

After this Celsus says: “That I do not form this opinion wide of the mark, I will use their own words. For somewhere in the heavenly dialogue they say something like this, in these words: ‘If the Son is mightier than God, and the Son of Man is his lord (and who else will be lord over the God who rules?), how is it that many are around the well and no one goes into the well? Why, having travelled so long a road, are you without courage? You are mistaken; for I have courage and a sword.’ So it is not their aim to worship the supercelestial God, but the one they have supposed to be the father of this man, around whom they have gathered, so that, under the pretext of the great God, they may worship only this man whom they set at their head, the Son of Man, whom they declare mightier than and lord of ‘the God who rules.’ From this comes that precept of theirs, not to ‘serve’ two ‘masters,’ so that the faction around this one man may be preserved.” And here again, having taken these things from I know not what most obscure heresy, he charges all Christians on the strength of them; I say most obscure, since the opinion from which Celsus took them is not known even to us, who have often exercised ourselves against those of the heresies; if indeed he took it and did not invent it or add a consequence of his own. For we, who say that the sensible world too belongs to the Creator of all things, say plainly that the Son is not mightier than the Father but inferior to him. And we say this because we believe him when he says, “The Father who sent me is greater than I.” And none of us is so thunderstruck as to say, “The Son of Man is lord” of God. We say that the Saviour rules, especially when we understand him as God, Word, Wisdom, Righteousness, and Truth, over all things subject to him in so far as he is these things, but not over the Father and God who rules him. Then, since the Word does not rule the unwilling, and there are still some wicked beings, not only men but also angels and all demons, we say that he does not yet rule these, since they do not yield to him willingly; but in another sense of “rule” he rules them too (as we say that man rules the irrational animals, not by subjecting their ruling faculty, as he rules certain lions and beasts of burden that he has tamed), yet he does everything so that by persuading those who do not now obey him he may rule them too. On our view, then, what Celsus reports as said by us is false: “Who else will be lord over the God who rules?”