Against Celsus 8.49

Let us see also what Celsus says to us next, as follows: “Moreover, is it not absurd of you, on the one hand to long for the body and hope that this very body will rise, as though we had nothing better or more precious than it, and on the other hand to cast it into punishments as dishonourable? But with those who believe this and are glued to the body it is not worth discussing this; for these are people who are also rustic and impure in other respects and, without reason, share in the sickness of sedition. But with those who hope that the soul or the mind (whether they wish to call it spiritual, or an intelligent spirit, holy and blessed, or a living soul, or the supercelestial and incorruptible offspring of a divine and incorporeal nature, or whatever they like to name it), with those who hope that this will have eternal life with God, with these I will discuss. They are right in thinking that those who have lived well will be happy, and the unjust will be held altogether in eternal evils; and from this doctrine let neither they nor any other man ever depart ….” As for the resurrection, even if he himself has often reproached us with it, we, having set out as well as we could what seemed reasonable to us on the subject, do not intend to reply many times to one charge made many times. Celsus slanders us as thinking there is nothing better or more precious than the body in our constitution; for we say that the soul, especially the rational soul, is more precious than any body, since the soul, and in no way the body, receives what is “after the image of him who created it.” For on our view God is not a body, lest we fall into the absurdities into which those who follow the philosophy of Zeno and Chrysippus fall.