Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 46

The Law and the Prophets have been fulfilled through paradoxes like those written about Jesus at his baptism — the dove and the voice from heaven. I take that appearance of the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove as a sign of the paradoxical deeds Jesus performed, deeds which Celsus accuses him of learning from the Egyptians. I will not rely on those alone, however, but also on what is likely and on what the apostles of Jesus have done. For they could not have moved people who heard new words and new teachings to abandon their ancestral customs and accept theirs with dangers up to death unless they did so with powers and paradoxes. Even now, traces of that Holy Spirit who appeared in the form of a dove are preserved among Christians. They cast out demons, perform many healings, and see certain things according to the will of the Word concerning future events. Even if Celsus mocks what will be said, or the Jew he introduces, it will still be said that many have come to Christianity as if unwillingly, some spirit having suddenly turned their ruling faculty from hating the Word to dying for it, and having imagined them to be either awake or in a dream. For we have recorded many such things, things we ourselves have encountered and seen; if we write them down, we will earn wide ridicule from unbelievers who think we are just like those they suppose have fabricated these things and deceive themselves. But God is witness to our conscience: we intend not to establish Jesus' divine teaching through false reports but through some clear, varied manifestation. Since the Jew is the one doubting the written account of the Holy Spirit descending in the form of a dove upon Jesus, one should say to him: "Tell me, who is the one speaking in Isaiah: 'And now the Lord has sent me and his Spirit'?" (Isaiah 48:16). In that passage the wording is ambiguous — whether the Father and the Holy Spirit sent Jesus, or the Father sent both Christ and the Holy Spirit — and the latter is true. Since the Savior was sent first, then the Holy Spirit, so that what the prophet said might be fulfilled, it was necessary that the fulfillment of the prophecy be known to those who came after; therefore the disciples of Jesus wrote down what happened.