Apologetics -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Celsus (Platonic philosopher), active 180; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
Whatever, therefore, we have predicated of the wisdom of God, will be
appropriately applied and understood of the Son of God, in virtue of His
being the Life, and the Word, and the Truth, and the Resurrection: for
all these titles are derived from His power and operations, and in none
of them is there the slightest ground for understanding anything of a
corporeal nature which might seem to denote either size, or form, or
colour; for those children of men which appear among us, or those
descendants of other living beings, correspond to the seed of those by
whom they were begotten, or derive from those mothers, in whose wombs
they are formed and nourished, whatever that is, which they bring into
this life, and carry with them when they are born.[50] But it is
monstrous and unlawful to compare God the Father, in the generation of
His only-begotten Son, and in the substance[51] of the same, to any man
or other living thing engaged in such an act; for we must of necessity
hold that there is something exceptional and worthy of God which does
not admit of any comparison at all, not merely in things, but which
cannot even be conceived by thought or discovered by perception, so that
a human mind should be able to apprehend how the unbegotten God is made
the Father of the only-begotten Son. Because His generation is as
eternal and everlasting as the brilliancy which is produced from the
sun. For it is not by receiving the[52] breath of life that He is made a
Son, by _any outward act_, but by His own nature.
5. Let us now ascertain how those statements which we have advanced are
supported by the authority of holy Scripture. The Apostle Paul says,
that the only-begotten Son is the “image of the invisible God,” and “the
first-born of every creature.”[53] And when writing to the Hebrews, he
says of Him that He is “the brightness of His glory, and the express
image of His person.”[54] Now, we find in the treatise called the Wisdom
of Solomon the following description of the wisdom of God: “For she is
the breath of the power of God, and the purest efflux[55] of the glory
of the Almighty.”[56] Nothing that is polluted can therefore come upon
her. For she is the splendour of the eternal light, and the stainless
mirror of God’s working, and the image of His goodness. Now we say, as
before, that Wisdom has her existence nowhere else save in Him who is
the beginning of all things: from whom also is derived everything that
is wise, because He Himself is the only one who is by nature a Son, and
is therefore termed the Only-begotten.
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