Apologetics -- History -- Early church, ca. 30-600; Celsus (Platonic philosopher), active 180; Theology -- History -- Early Church, ca. 30-600
Abraham, and that it is the same who says, “I am God, and besides me
there is no God,” acknowledges that very one to be His Father who is
ignorant of the existence of any other God above Himself, as the
heretics suppose, He absurdly declares Him to be His Father who does not
know of a greater God. But if it is not from ignorance, but from deceit,
that He says there is no other God than Himself, then it is a much
greater absurdity to confess that His Father is guilty of falsehood.
From all which this conclusion is arrived at, that He knows of no other
Father than God, the Founder and Creator of all things.
2. It would be tedious to collect out of all the passages in the Gospels
the proofs by which the God of the law and of the Gospels is shown to be
one and the same. Let us touch briefly upon the Acts of the
Apostles,[188] where Stephen and the other apostles address their
prayers to that God who made heaven and earth, and who spoke by the
mouth of His holy prophets, calling Him the “God of Abraham, of Isaac,
and of Jacob;” the God who “brought forth His people out of the land of
Egypt.” Which expressions undoubtedly clearly direct our understandings
to faith in the Creator, and implant an affection for Him in those who
have learned piously and faithfully thus to think of Him; according to
the words of the Saviour Himself, who, when He was asked which was the
greatest commandment in the law, replied, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as
thyself.” And to these He added: “On these two commandments hang all the
law and the prophets.”[189] How is it, then, that He commends to him
whom He was instructing, and was leading to enter on the office of a
disciple, this commandment above all others, by which undoubtedly love
was to be kindled in him towards the God of that law, inasmuch as such
had been declared by the law in these very words? But let it be granted,
notwithstanding all these most evident proofs, that it is of some other
unknown God that the Saviour says, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart,” etc. etc. How, in that case, if the law and the
prophets are, as they say, from the Creator, _i.e._ from another God
than He whom He calls good, shall that appear to be logically said which
He subjoins, viz. that “on these two commandments hang the law and the
prophets?” For how shall that which is strange and foreign to God depend
upon Him? And when Paul says, “I thank my God, whom I serve in my spirit
from my forefathers with pure conscience,”[190] he clearly shows that he
came not to some new God, but to Christ. For what other forefathers of
Paul can be intended, except those of whom he says, “Are they Hebrews?
so am I: are they Israelites? so am I.”[191] Nay, will not the very
preface of his Epistle to the Romans clearly show the same thing to
those who know how to understand the letters of Paul, viz.
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