Against Celsus, Book IV · §73 · Origen of Alexandria

The wrath the Jews stored up, and Celsus’s boast about all nature

In keeping with his failure to understand what is written about the wrath of God, he says: “Is it not laughable that a man, angered at the Jews, destroyed them all, young and old, and burned them out, so that they came to nothing, while God the greatest, as they say, being angry and wrathful and threatening, sends his Son, and he suffers such things?”

Well then, if the Jews, after doing to Jesus what they dared to do against Him, perished young and old and were burned out, they suffered these things from no other wrath than the one they stored up for themselves (Romans 2:5). The judgment of God against them, which came about by God’s appointment, is called “wrath” by a certain ancestral usage of the Hebrews. And the Son of the greatest God does indeed suffer, by His own will, for the salvation of human beings, as we have said above as far as we were able.

After this he says: “But so that the argument may not be about the Jews only (for that is not what I am saying), but about the whole of nature, as I promised, I shall make what I said before clearer.” Who, being modest and aware of human weakness, could read these words and not shrink from the offensiveness of a man who promised to give an account of the whole of nature, and who boasted just as he did in the title he dared to set on his book? Let us see, then, what it is that he promises to say about the whole of nature, and what he promises to make clear.

Greek

Ἀκολούθως δὲ τῷ μὴ νενοηκέναι τὰ περὶ ὀργῆς ἀναγεγραμμένα θεοῦ φησιν· ἢ γὰρ οὐ καταγέλαστον· εἰ ἄνθρωπος μὲν ὀργισθεὶς Ἰουδαίοις πάντας αὐτοὺς ἡβηδὸν ἀπώλεσεν καὶ ἐπυρπόλησεν, οὕτως οὐδὲν ἦσαν· θεὸς δ᾿ ὁ μέγιστος. ὥς φασιν, ὀργιζόμενος καὶ θυμούμενος καὶ ἀπειλῶν πέμπει τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, καὶ τοιαῦτα πάσχει; εἴπερ οὖν Ἰουδαῖοι μετὰ τὸ διαθεῖναι τὸν Ἰησοῦν ἅπερ ἐτόλμησαν κατ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἡβηδὸν ἀπώλοντο καὶ ἐπυρπολήθησαν, οὐκ ἀπ᾿ ἄλλης ὀργῆς ἢ ἧς ἑαυτοῖς ἐθησαύρισαν ταῦτα πεπόνθασι. τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ κατ᾿ αὐτῶν κρίσεως θεοῦ καταστήματι γεγενημένης. ὀνομαζομένης ὀργῆς πατρίῳ τινὶ Ἑβραίων ἔθει„ καὶ πάσχει γε ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ μεγίστου θεοῦ βουληθεὶς ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν ἀνθρώπων σωτηρίας, ὡς ἐν τοῖς ἀνωτέρω κατὰ τὸ δυνατὸν ἡμῖν λέλεκται. μετὰ ταῦτά φησιν· ἀλλ᾿ ὅπως μὴ περὶ μόνων Ἰουδαίων (οὐ γὰρ τοῦτο λέγω) ἀλλὰ περὶ τῆς ὅλης φύσεως, ὅπερ ἐπηγγειλάμην. ὁ λόγος ᾖ. σαφέστερον ἐμφανιῶ τὰ προειρημένα. τίς δ᾿ οὐκ ἂν τούτοις ἐντυγχάνων μέτριος καὶ αἰσθανόμενος τῆς ἀνθρωπίνης ἀσθενείας οὐκ ἂν περισταίη τὸ ἐπαχθὲς τοῦ περὶ ὅλης τῆς φύσεως ἐπαγγειλαμένου ἀποδοῦναι λόγον καὶ ἀλαζονευσαμένου ὁμοίως ᾗ ἐτόλμησεν ἐπιγράψαι ἐπιγραφῇ τοῦ βιβλίου; ἴδωμεν δὴ τίνα ἐστὶν ἃ περὶ ὅλης τῆς φύσεως ἐπαγγέλλεται λέξειν καὶ τίνα ἐμφανίσειν.

Report a mistake in this passage

About this text

Origen answers Celsus’s scorn for the belief that God or his Son comes down to the world, showing that the Word comes down without change and that God’s threats and punishments are a cure, not a fit of temper. He then defends the stories of Genesis and the patriarchs, read in their deeper sense, against the charge that they are silly tales, and rejects Celsus’s claim that the world was made no more for man than for the animals, which Celsus thought nearer to God than men.

Translated from the Greek of Koetschau, GCS 2–3 (1899), via the Perseus digital text, which serves as the base text. Each chapter was translated from the Greek and then checked clause by clause against it in a separate review. No earlier English translation was consulted.

Printed text used

Translated from Koetschau GCS 2 – 3 (1899) — Greek (Greek · Book IV, chapters 1 – 99)

We have not yet re-checked this work against its source. We made this study translation with AI help. No scholar has yet certified it as faithful and complete. Open Greek on any section to see the source text. It is not a critical edition.

Report a mistake