Against Celsus 7.37

If such is the virtue in writing speeches in character, and such the fault, how could anyone not reasonably laugh at Celsus, who puts upon Christians what is not said by Christians? For if he was inventing speeches of simple people, how could such people distinguish sense from mind, and sensible things from intelligible things, and hold doctrines like those of the Stoics, who abolish intelligible beings, that whatever is apprehended is apprehended by the senses and that all apprehension depends on the senses? And if he is inventing speeches of those who philosophize and examine the teaching of Christ carefully and as far as they are able, he has not made them consistent with these either. For no one who has learned that God is invisible, and that there are some invisible created things, that is, intelligible things, would say, as though in defence of the resurrection: “How will they know God if they do not apprehend him by the senses?” or “What is it possible to learn without sense?” And it is written, not in secluded writings read only by a few scholars, but in those that are more widely read, that “the invisible things of God from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” From this one may know that, even if people in this life must begin from the senses and sensible things when they are about to ascend to the nature of intelligible things, yet they must by no means remain among sensible things. Nor will they say that it is impossible to learn intelligible things without sense; rather, using the question “Who is able to learn without sense?”, they will show that Celsus has no good reason to attach to it the remark, “This is the voice not of a man, nor of a soul, but of the flesh.”