Against Celsus 2.65

And why do I say to all? He was not always with even the apostles and disciples themselves, or always visible to them, since they could not bear to behold him continuously. For his divinity was more brilliant after he had completed the dispensation; Cephas, that is Peter, as it were the “firstfruits” of the apostles, was able to see it, and after him the Twelve, Matthias having been appointed in place of Judas, and after them “five hundred brothers at once.” “Then he appeared to James, then to all the” other “apostles” besides the Twelve, perhaps the Seventy; “and last of all” to Paul, as to one “untimely born,” who knew how he said: “To me, the very least of all the saints, this grace was given”; and perhaps “very least” is equivalent to “untimely born.” Just as no one could easily blame Jesus for not taking all the apostles onto the high mountain, but only the three already mentioned, when he was about to be transfigured and to show the brightness of his garments and the glory of Moses and Elijah talking with him, so no one could reasonably find fault with the apostolic writings for relating that after the resurrection Jesus was seen not by all, but by those whom he saw had received eyes able to see his resurrection. I think this too, said of him, is useful for the defense of our subject: “For to this end Christ died and rose, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.” See in these words that Jesus “died, that he might be Lord of the dead,” “and rose, that he might be Lord” not only “of the dead” but also “of the living.” And the apostle knows as the dead of whom Christ is Lord those listed thus in the first letter to the Corinthians: “For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible”; and as the living, those who will be changed, who are other than the dead who will be raised. About them the text reads: “And we shall be changed,” said after “the dead will be raised first.” And in the first letter to the Thessalonians, presenting the same distinction in other words, he says that those who sleep are one group and the living another: “We do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, about those who are asleep, so that you may not grieve like the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose, so too God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep through Jesus. For we say this to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.” The interpretation of these passages that seemed right to us we set out in the commentaries we dictated on the first letter to the Thessalonians.