Apologetics -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Celsus (Platonic philosopher), active 180; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
he says, “The ocean is impassable to men, and those worlds which are
behind it,” speaking in the plural number of the worlds which are behind
it, which he intimates are administered and governed by the same
providence of the Most High God, he appears to throw out to us some
germs of that view by which the whole universe of existing things,
celestial and super-celestial, earthly and infernal, is generally called
one perfect world, within which, or by which, other worlds, if any there
are, must be supposed to be contained. For which reason he wished the
globe of the sun or moon, and of the other bodies called planets, to be
each termed worlds. Nay, even that pre-eminent globe itself which they
call the non-wandering (ἀπλανῆ), they nevertheless desire to have
properly called world. Finally, they summon the book of Baruch the
prophet to bear witness to this assertion, because in it the seven
worlds or heavens are more clearly pointed out. Nevertheless, above that
sphere which they call non-wandering (ἀπλανῆ), they will have another
sphere to exist, which they say, exactly as our heaven contains all
things which are under it, comprehends by its immense size and
indescribable extent the spaces of all the spheres together within its
more magnificent circumference; so that all things are within it, as
this earth of ours is under heaven. And this also is believed to be
called in the holy Scriptures the good land, and the land of the living,
having its own heaven, which is higher, and in which the names of the
saints are said to be written, or to have been written, by the Saviour;
by which heaven that earth is confined and shut in, which the Saviour in
the Gospel promises to the meek and merciful. For they would have this
earth of ours, which formerly was named “Dry,” to have derived its
appellation from the name of that earth, as this heaven also was named
firmament from the title of that heaven. But we have treated at greater
length of such opinions in the place where we had to inquire into the
meaning of the declaration, that in the beginning “God made the heavens
and the earth.” For another heaven and another earth are shown to exist
besides that “firmament” which is said to have been made after the
second day, or that “dry land” which was afterwards called “earth.”
Certainly, what some say of this world, that it is corruptible because
it was made, and yet is not corrupted, because the will of God, who made
it and holds it together lest corruption should rule over it, is
stronger and more powerful than corruption, may more correctly be
supposed of that world which we have called above a “non-wandering”
sphere, since by the will of God it is not at all subject to corruption,
for the reason that it has not admitted any causes of corruption, seeing
it is the world of the saints and of the thoroughly purified, and not of
the wicked, like that world of ours. We must see, moreover, lest perhaps
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