Origen of Alexandria, Against Celsus 1.25

Perhaps the danger is no less for someone who drags the name of God — or the name of the Good — down onto things where it does not belong, than for someone who swaps around names that belong to unspeakable mysteries, attaching some to lesser realities and others to greater ones. I am not claiming that the moment you say "Zeus" you immediately conjure the son of Cronus and Rhea, the husband of Hera, the brother of Poseidon, the father of Athena and Artemis, and the one who coupled with his own daughter Persephone; or that "Apollo" instantly summons the son of Leto and Zeus, the brother of Artemis, and the half-brother of Hermes, along with whatever other genealogies the wise men of Celsus's school and the ancient Greek theologians attach to their gods. After all, what literal sense does it make to say Zeus is not the child of Cronus and Rhea? The same problem dogs every other named deity. Yet this charge does not touch those who assign to God names like Sabaoth, Adonai, or any of the other revered titles. When someone is able to reflect philosophically on names that belong to the unspeakable realm, they will discover much also about the invocation of God's angels — Michael, Gabriel, Raphael — each named in keeping with the specific service they render by the will of the God of all things throughout the universe. Our own Jesus embodies a comparable philosophy of names: his name has already been seen to cast out myriads of demons from souls and bodies, exercising power over the very persons from whom those demons were expelled. Furthermore, on the subject of names we must note that experts in incantations report a striking fact: the same incantation, spoken in its native tongue, can accomplish what it promises, but once translated into any other language it becomes feeble and utterly ineffective. Evidently, then, it is not the meanings conveyed by the words that carry the power, but the particular qualities and properties of the sounds themselves, which possess a certain efficacy toward specific ends. By such reasoning we can also defend Christians who struggle to the death rather than proclaim Zeus as God or name him in any other tongue. For they either confess the bare, common name "God" without qualification, or they add the description "the Creator of all things, the Maker of heaven and earth, the One who sent these certain wise men to the human race" — as if the very name "God" when so applied exerts a distinctive power among people. Many other things could be said on this topic to those who imagine that the use of such names is a matter of indifference. And if Plato wins admiration for saying in the Philebus, "My fear, Protarchus, is no small matter concerning the names of the gods" — spoken because Philebus had identified God with pleasure, the interlocutor of Socrates — how much more should we welcome the reverence of Christians, who refuse to attach any name drawn from mythology to the Creator of the universe? But enough on these matters for now.