Against Celsus 6.17

Next, wishing to belittle what is written among us about the kingdom of God, Celsus quotes none of it, as though it were not worth recording in his book (perhaps because he did not even know it), but sets out passages of Plato from the letters and the Phaedrus, as though these were spoken under divine inspiration while our writings contain nothing of the kind. Let us, then, set a few things beside them for comparison with what Plato said, not unpersuasively indeed, yet without disposing the philosopher himself to conduct himself worthily of them in piety toward the Maker of the universe, a piety that he ought not to have adulterated or defiled with what we call idolatry, or, as the many might say, using their own word, with superstition. In a Hebrew manner of speech it is said of God in the seventeenth Psalm that “God made darkness his hiding place,” to show that the thoughts about God that would be worthy of him are hidden and unknown, since he has hidden himself as it were in darkness from those who cannot bear the radiance of the knowledge of him and are unable to see him, partly because of the defilement of the mind bound to a human body “of humiliation,” and partly because of its too limited capacity to comprehend God. And to show that knowledge of God rarely reaches men and is found in very few, Moses is recorded to have entered “into the thick darkness where God was”; and again of Moses: “Moses alone shall come near to God, but the rest shall not come near.” And again, to set forth the depth of the doctrines about God, which is incomprehensible to those who do not have “the Spirit” that searches all things, and searches “even the depths of God,” the prophet said: “The abyss like a garment is his covering.” And our Saviour and Lord, the Word of God, showing the greatness of the knowledge of the Father, which is received and known worthily first of all by himself alone, and secondarily by those whose governing faculty is illumined by the Word and God himself, says: “No one has known the Son except the Father, nor the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son reveals him.” For no one can know worthily the uncreated one, the firstborn of all created nature, as the Father who begot him does; nor can anyone know the Father as his living Word and Wisdom and Truth does. By participation in him, who removes from the Father what is called the “darkness” which “he made his hiding place,” and what is called his “covering,” the abyss, and so reveals the Father, whoever is able to know him knows him.