Celsus--Ancient Anti-Christian Writer

"Celsus, making fun of the strange doctrine [of the Christians], asks Origen: '"Don't you people actually tell about him, that when he had failed to convert the people on this earth he went down to the underworld to try to convert the people down there?"
Origen's response:
"We assert that Jesus not only converted no small number of persons while he was in the body . . . but also, that when he became a spirit, without the covering of the body, he dwelt among those spirits which were without bodily covering, converting such of them as were willing to Himself."

(Origen, Against Celsus II'' 43, in PG 11:864-65)


Celsus (Greek: Κέλσος) was a 2nd century Greek philosopher and opponent of Christianity. He is known to us mainly through the reputation of his literary work, The True Word (Account, Doctrine or Discourse) (Λόγος 'AληΘής), almost entirely reproduced in excerpts by Origen in his counter-polemic Contra Celsum of 248, 70 or 80 years after Celsus wrote.