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Translated from the Greek original by Frederick Crombie.
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This Part: 128 Pages
Page 39
Chapter LXXIII.
He proceeds to repeat himself, and after saying a great deal which he had said before, and ridiculing the birth of God from a virgin,--to which we have already replied as we best could,--he adds the following: "If God had wished to send down His Spirit from Himself, what need was there to breathe it into the womb of a woman? For as one who knew already how to form men, He could also have fashioned a body for this person, without casting His own Spirit into so much pollution; [4655] and in this way He would not have been received with incredulity, if He had derived His existence immediately from above." He had made these remarks, because he knows not the pure and virgin birth, unaccompanied by any corruption, of that body which was to minister to the salvation of men. For, quoting the sayings of the Stoics, [4656] and affecting not to know the doctrine about "things indifferent," he thinks that the divine nature was cast amid pollution, and was stained either by being in the body of a woman, until a body was formed around it, or by assuming a body. And in this he acts like those who imagine that the sun's rays are polluted by dung and by foul-smelling bodies, and do not remain pure amid such things. If, however, according to the view of Celsus, the body of Jesus had been fashioned without generation, those who beheld the body would at once have believed that it had not been formed by generation; and yet an object, when seen, does not at the same time indicate the nature of that from which it has derived its origin.
[4655] eis tosouton miasma.
[4656] Cf. book iv. capp. xiv. and lxviii.
Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greek-texts/fathers/origen/contra-celsum-4.asp?pg=39
