And in addition to the above, this Jew of Celsus afterwards addresses
Jesus: “What need, moreover, was there that you, while still an infant,
should be conveyed into Egypt? Was it to escape being murdered? But then
it was not likely that a God should be afraid of death; and yet an angel
came down from heaven, commanding you and your friends to flee, lest ye
should be captured and put to death! And was not the great God, who had
already sent two angels on your account, able to keep you, His only Son,
there in safety?” From these words Celsus seems to think that there was
no element of divinity in the human body and soul of Jesus, but that His
body was not even such as is described in the fables of Homer; and with
a taunt also at the blood of Jesus which was shed upon the cross, he
adds that it was not
“Ichor, such as flows in the veins of the blessed gods.”[1244]
We now, believing Jesus Himself, when He says respecting His divinity,
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life,”[1245] and employs other
terms of similar import; and when He says respecting His being clothed
with a human body, “And now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you
the truth,”[1246] conclude that He was a kind of compound being. And so
it became Him who was making provision for His sojourning in the world
as a human being, not to expose Himself unseasonably to the danger of
death. And in like manner it was necessary that He should be taken away
by His parents, acting under the instructions of an angel from heaven,
who communicated to them the divine will, saying on the first occasion,
“Joseph, thou son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife;
for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost;”[1247] and on
the second, “Arise, and take the young child, and His mother, and flee
into Egypt; and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will
seek the young child to destroy Him.”[1248] Now, what is recorded in
these words appears to me to be not at all marvellous. For in either
passage of Scripture it is stated that it was in a dream that the angel
spoke these words; and that in a dream certain persons may have certain
things pointed out to them to do, is an event of frequent occurrence to
many individuals,—the impression on the mind being produced either by an
angel or by some other thing. Where, then, is the absurdity in believing
that He who had once become incarnate, should be led also by human
guidance to keep out of the way of dangers? Not indeed from any
impossibility that it should be otherwise, but from the moral fitness
that ways and means should be made use of to ensure the safety of Jesus.
And it was certainly better that the child Jesus should escape the snare
of Herod, and should reside with His parents in Egypt until the death of
the conspirator, than that Divine Providence should hinder the free will
of Herod in his wish to put the child to death, or that the fabled
poetic helmet of Hades should have been employed, or anything of a
similar kind done with respect to Jesus, or that they who came to
destroy Him should have been smitten with blindness like the people of
Sodom. For the sending of help to Him in a very miraculous and
unnecessarily public manner, would not have been of any service to Him
who wished to show that as a man, to whom witness was borne by God, He
possessed within that form which was seen by the eyes of men some higher
element of divinity,—that which was properly the Son of God—God the
Word—the power of God, and the wisdom of God—He who is called the
Christ. But this is not a suitable occasion for discussing the composite
nature of the incarnate Jesus; the investigation into such a subject
being for believers, so to speak, a sort of private question.
Footnote 1244:
Cf. _Iliad_, v. 340.
Footnote 1245:
John xiv. 6.
Footnote 1246:
Cf. John viii. 40.
Footnote 1247:
Cf. Matt. i. 20.
Footnote 1248:
Cf. Matt. ii. 13.