{"id":39322,"date":"2017-07-31T16:56:41","date_gmt":"2017-07-31T20:56:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=39322"},"modified":"2017-07-31T16:58:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-31T20:58:19","slug":"origen-paul-and-peter-christians-worship-the-jews-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/origen-paul-and-peter-christians-worship-the-jews-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Origen, Paul, and Peter: Christians worship the Jews&#8217; god"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[The pagan critic Celsus writes:] Let no one imagine I do not know that<strong> some of them will agree that they have the same God as the Jews<\/strong>, while some [i.e. Marcionites] think there is <strong>another God<\/strong> and to whom the former is opposed and that the Son came from the latter.<\/p>\n<p>[Origen answers:]<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;If he thinks it is <strong>a charge against Christianity there are several sects<\/strong> among Christians, on this analogy would it not be considered<strong> a charge against philosophy<\/strong> that among the sects of philosophers there is disagreement not just about small and trivial matters but about the most important subjects?<\/li>\n<li>We could also criticize <strong>medicine<\/strong> because of the sects within it.<\/li>\n<li>But let us grant that<strong> there are some<\/strong> among us who do not say that God is the same God as that of the Jews.<\/li>\n<li>Yet that is no reason why they are to be criticized who <strong>prove from the same Scriptures<\/strong> that there is one and the same God for Jews and Gentiles.<\/li>\n<li>So also <strong>Paul<\/strong>, who came to Christianity from the Jews, says clearly: \u201cI think my God whom I serve from my forefathers in a pure conscience.\u201d [2 Timothy 1:3 \u2013 NRSV: \u201cI am grateful to God\u2014whom I worship with a clear conscience, <strong>as my ancestors did<\/strong>\u2026\u201d]&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8211; <em>Contra Celsum [Against Celsus]<\/em> Book V, section 61 (p. 311), reformatted, bold added<\/p>\n<p>Of course, Origen might also have cited Peter, according Luke&#8217;s account in Acts 3:<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-39323\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher-450x450.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"450\" srcset=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher-450x450.jpg 450w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/kosher.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, <strong>the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus<\/strong>&#8230; (Acts 3:13, NRSV)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>or Paul&#8217;s testimony to Felix:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But this I admit to you, that according to the Way, which they call a sect,<strong> I worship the God of our ancestors<\/strong>, believing everything laid down according to the law or written in the prophets. (Acts 24:14)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That the early Christians worshiped the same god as the Jews, the identity of God with Yahweh, is something that presupposed everywhere in the New Testament, and generally doesn&#8217;t need stating.\u00a0 It rarely is stated explicitly &#8211; just as with the assumed numerical identity of this one God with the Father.<\/p>\n<p>Early Christianity differed from bulk of the Jews on whether Jesus was the Messiah, and on the necessity of full Torah observance. But as to core theology, people like Paul and Peter and Luke were about as &#8220;kosher&#8221; as they come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An interesting little exchange between Origen and the pagan critic Celsus about the god of Christians.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39323,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,87,7,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-judaism","category-quotes","category-religious-diversity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39322"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39336,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39322\/revisions\/39336"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}