Against Celsus 2.68

Let us see in what way the Jew in Celsus says: “If he really had to do so much to display his divinity, he ought at least to have vanished at once from the stake.” This seems to me like the argument of those who oppose providence and sketch for themselves things other than what exists, saying: “It would have been better if the world were as we have sketched it.” Where they sketch what is possible, they are shown, as far as it lies with them and their sketch, to make the world worse; where they seem not to paint something worse than what exists, they are shown to want what is impossible by nature; so that either way they are ridiculous. Here too, then, that it was not impossible for him, as one of a more divine nature, to vanish when he wished is clear in itself, and also plain from what is written about him, to those who do not accept some of what is written in order to accuse the teaching, and think the rest fictions. For it is written in the Gospel according to Luke that after the resurrection Jesus “took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it” to Simon and Cleopas; and when they had taken the bread, “their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.”