Against Celsus 4.57

See, then, whether one must side with a man who accuses Christians with such doctrines, and abandon the teaching which grants a difference to bodies because of the qualities that lie upon and about them. For we too know that there are “heavenly bodies and earthly bodies,” and that the “glory” of the “heavenly” bodies is one and that of the “earthly” another; and not even that of the “heavenly” ones is the same, for “there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the stars,” and among the stars themselves “star differs from star in glory.” That is why, accepting the resurrection “of the dead,” we say that changes take place in the qualities in bodies; since some of them, sown “in corruption, are raised in incorruption,” and sown “in dishonor, are raised in glory,” and sown “in weakness, are raised in power,” and bodies sown natural are raised spiritual. That the underlying matter is receptive of whatever qualities the Creator wills, all of us who accept providence establish; and, God willing, there is now such and such a quality in this matter, and afterward such and such another, better, say, and different. And since there are set courses for the changes in bodies, from the time the world has existed and as long as it exists, and I do not know whether a new and different course will not follow after the destruction of the world, which our Scriptures call the consummation, it is not surprising if at present, as most people say, a serpent is formed from a dead man, coming from the spinal marrow, and a bee from an ox, a wasp from a horse, a beetle from a donkey, and, in a word, worms from most things. But Celsus thinks this establishes that none of these is the work of God, but that the qualities, ordered I know not from where, so that these come from those, are not the work of some divine Word who changes the qualities in matter.