Origen immediately goes on to say that people often find this persuasive:Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun Apr 14, 2024 11:58 amAnd it is possible to add something else in connection with the statement—as often as it comes up in confronting those who misconstrue Scripture—that I consider appropriate to bring up just as we are dealing with “My people did not hear my voice.” Such- and-such a logos of the Savior has been written in the Gospel according to John: “You have never heard his voice, nor have you seen his form; and you do not have his logos abiding in you, because the one he sent, that one you do not believe.” What is said is unexceptionable and well said. But followers of Valentinus and of Basilides have seized on the wording and say, “Thus he introduces another god besides the god of the law and the prophets. Jesus Christ is speaking against the Jews, to whom the law and the prophets are well known: ‘You have never heard his voice, nor have you seen his form.’ Therefore, the Jews have not heard the genuine God ever at all, the one different from the god of the law, but the Lord Jesus has introduced a new god different from the god of the Jews.”
A naïve and simple soul heard that it was said, “You have never heard his voice, nor have you seen his form,” and it hears them avowing that the Jews did not see the form of the genuine god (although, in fact, God was seen by Abraham or by Moses), and it goes away and leaves the Church, and it abandons this logos as something stupid. It flees to heresy as if to knowledge and wisdom.