all of that, yet you rejected him and believed the very people who lied about God and about him (1)!!

If you say, “We declared him a god only because he foretold happenings that would occur after him,” then remember that most of the prophets—and many (2) other people besides—have predicted specific future events that later came true; fortune-tellers, astrologers, and magicians notoriously do so as well!!

And if you say, “We made him a god because, in several places in the Gospel, he called himself the Son of God, as in the words, ‘I am going to my Father’ (3) and, ‘I will ask my Father’ (4); and the son of God must himself be a god,” it may be answered: In that case you would have to make yourselves gods too, for in more than one passage of the Gospel he speaks of God as ‘his Father and your Father,’ as when he says, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father,” and again: “Call (5) no one on earth your father, for your Father—the One in heaven—is the only One” (6).

Such expressions are frequent in the Gospel, and they show that by “Father” they simply mean “Lord”!!