Five Books Against Marcion - Book I - Tertullian
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Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall, Late Scholar of Christ's
College, Cantab.
Text edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson and
first published by T&T Clark in Edinburgh in 1867. Additional
introductionary material and notes provided for the American
edition by A. Cleveland Coxe, 1886.
Wherein is described the god of Marcion. He is shown to be utterly wanting
in all the attributes of the true God.
Chapter I. Preface. Reason for a New Work Pontus Lends Its Rough Character
to the Heretic Marcion, a Native. His Heresy Characterized in a Brief
Invective.
Whatever in times past [2305] we have wrought in opposition to Marcion, is
from the present moment no longer to be accounted of. [2306] It is a new
work which we are undertaking in lieu of the old one. [2307] My original
tract, as too hurriedly composed, I had subsequently superseded by a fuller
treatise. This latter I lost, before it was completely published, by the
fraud of a person who was then a brother, [2308] but became afterwards an
apostate. He, as it happened, had transcribed a portion of it, full of
mistakes, and then published it. The necessity thus arose for an amended
work; and the occasion of the new edition induced me to make a considerable
addition to the treatise. This present text, [2309] therefore, of my
work'which is the third as superseding [2310] the second, but henceforward
to be considered the first instead of the third'renders a preface necessary
to this issue of the tract itself that no reader may be perplexed, if he
should by chance fall in with the various forms of it which are scattered
about.
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The Euxine Sea, as it is called, is self-contradictory in its nature, and
deceptive in its name. [2311] As you would not account it hospitable from
its situation, so is it severed from our more civilised waters by a certain
stigma which attaches to its barbarous character. The fiercest nations
inhabit it, if indeed it can be called habitation, when life is passed in
waggons. They have no fixed abode; their life has [2312] no germ of
civilization; they indulge their libidinous desires without restraint, and
for the most part naked. Moreover, when they gratify secret lust, they hang
up their quivers on their car-yokes, [2313] to warn off the curious and
rash observer. Thus without a blush do they prostitute their weapons of war.
The dead bodies of their parents they cut up with their sheep, and devour at
their feasts. They who have not died so as to become food for others, are
thought to have died an accursed death. Their women are not by their sex
softened to modesty. They uncover the breast, from which they suspend their
battle-axes, and prefer warfare to marriage. In their climate, too, there is
the same rude nature. [2314] The day-time is never clear, the sun never
cheerful; [2315] the sky is uniformly cloudy; the whole year is wintry;
the only wind that blows is the angry North. Waters melt only by fires;
their rivers flow not by reason of the ice; their mountains are covered
[2316] with heaps of snow. All things are torpid, all stiff with cold.
Nothing there has the glow [2317] of life, but that ferocity which has
given to scenic plays their stories of the sacrifices [2318] of the
Taurians, and the loves [2319] of the Colchians, and the torments [2320]
of the Caucasus. Nothing, however, in Pontus is so barbarous and sad as the
fact that Marcion was born there, fouler than any Scythian, more roving than
the waggon-life [2321] of the Sarmatian, more inhuman than the Massagete,
more audacious than an Amazon, darker than the cloud, [2322] (of Pontus)
colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more deceitful than the
Ister, more craggy than Caucasus. Nay [2323] more, the true Prometheus,
Almighty God, is mangled [2324] by Marcion's blasphemies. Marcion is more
savage than even the beasts of that barbarous region. For what beaver was
ever a greater emasculator [2325] than he who has abolished the nuptial
bond? What Pontic mouse ever had such gnawing powers as he who has gnawed
the Gospels to pieces? Verily, O Euxine, thou hast produced a monster more
credible to philosophers than to Christians. For the cynic Diogenes used to
go about, lantern in hand, at mid-day to find a man; whereas Marcion has
quenched the light of his faith, and so lost the God whom he had found. His
disciples will not deny that his first faith he held along with ourselves; a
letter of his own [2326] proves this; so that for the future [2327] a
heretic may from his case [2328] be designated as one who, forsaking that
which was prior, afterwards chose out for himself that which was not in
times past. [2329] For in as far as what was delivered in times past and
from the beginning will be held as truth, in so far will that be accounted
heresy which is brought in later. But another brief treatise [2330] will
maintain this position against heretics, who ought to be refuted even
without a consideration of their doctrines, on the ground that they are
heretical by reason of the novelty of their opinions. Now, so far as any
controversy is to be admitted, I will for the time [2331] (lest our
compendious principle of novelty, being called in on all occasions to our
aid, should be imputed to want of confidence) begin with setting forth our
adversary's rule of belief, that it may escape no one what our main
contention is to be.
Chapter II. Marcion, Aided by Cerdon, Teaches a Duality of Gods; How He
Constructed This Heresy of an Evil and a Good God.
The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his
own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one
whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy man
gained [2332] the first idea [2333] of his conceit from the simple
passage of our Lord's saying, which has reference to human beings and not
divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a
corrupt one; [2334] how that "the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt
fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit." Which means, that an honest
mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil
disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days,
especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly
brooding [2335] over the question of the origin of evil, his perception
became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found
the Creator declaring, "I am He that createth evil," [2336] inasmuch as he
had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every
perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the
Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is,
moral evil, [2337] and then presumed that there ought to be another god,
after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly,
finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were'one of a simple and
pure benevolence [2338] 'differing from the Creator, he readily argued
that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange [2339] divinity;
and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith,
flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.
He had, moreover, in one [2340] Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,'a
circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most
clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not
seen the one God with soundness of faith. [2341] To men of diseased vision
even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was
obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the
matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he
constructed, laying his foundation [2342] in the principle of good. In
what articles [2343] he arranged these natures, we show by our own
refutations of them.
Chapter III. The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot Be
a Second Supreme.
The principal, and indeed [2344] the whole, contention lies in the point
of number: whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must
be), [2345] or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now
add, [2346] of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly
declared this principle, "God is not, if He is not one; "because we more
properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be.
In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and
you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can
form a definition of God, I adduce one which the conscience of all men will
also acknowledge,'that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity,
unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end. For such a condition as
this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great
Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute [2347]
in God; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great
Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power. [2348] Now,
since all are agreed on. this point (because nobody will deny that God is in
some sense [2349] the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to
pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in
order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must
be the condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that
nothing is equal to Him, i.e. that there is no other great supreme; because,
if there were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be
no longer the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law,
which permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That
Being, then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique, [2350] by
having no equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He
will not otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being;
that is, by His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme,
our Christian verity has rightly declared, [2351] "God is not, if He is
not one." Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying, He is not, if He is
not one; but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe, to
be that without which He is not God; that is to say, the great Supreme. But
then [2352] ` the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being,
therefore, will be God'not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not
otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise
having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may
introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any
other guise, [2353] than by ascribing to him too the property of
Godhead'both eternity and supremacy over all. How, therefore, can two great
Supremes co-exist, when this is the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have
no equal,'an attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist
in two?
Chapter IV. Defence of the Divine Unity Against Objection. No Analogy
Between Human Powers and God's Sovereignty. The Objection Otherwise
Untenable, for Why Stop at Two Gods?
But some one may contend that two great Supremes may exist, distinct and
separate in their own departments; and may even adduce, as an example, the
kingdoms of the world, which, though they are so many in number, are yet
supreme in their several regions. Such a man will suppose that human
circumstances are always comparable with divine ones. Now, if this mode of
reasoning be at all tolerable, what is to prevent our introducing, I will
not say a third god or a fourth, but as many as there are kings of the
earth? Now it is God that is in question, whose main property it is to admit
of no comparison with Himself. Nature itself, therefore, if not an Isaiah,
or rather God speaking by Isaiah, will deprecatingly ask, "To whom will ye
liken me? " [2354] Human circumstances may perhaps be compared with divine
ones, but they may not be with God. God is one thing, and what belongs to
God is another thing. Once more: [2355] you who apply the example of a
king, as a great supreme, take care that you can use it properly. For
although a king is supreme on his throne next to God, he is still inferior
to God; and when he is compared with God, he will be dislodged [2356] from
that great supremacy which is transferred to God. Now, this being the case,
how will you employ in a comparison with God an object as your example,
which fails [2357] in all the purposes which belong to a comparison? Why,
when supreme power among kings cannot evidently be multifarious, but only
unique and singular, is an exception made in the case of Him (of all
others) [2358] who is King of kings, and (from the exceeding greatness of
His power, and the subjection of all other ranks [2359] to Him) the very
summit, [2360] as it were, of dominion? But even in the case of rulers of
that other form of government, where they one by one preside in a union of
authority, if with their petty [2361] prerogatives of royalty, so to say,
they be brought on all points [2362] into such a comparison with one
another as shall make it clear which of them is superior in the essential
features [2363] and powers of royalty, it must needs follow that the
supreme majesty will redound [2364] to one alone,'all the others being
gradually, by the issue of the comparison, removed and excluded from the
supreme authority. Thus, although, when spread out in several hands, supreme
authority seems to be multifarious, yet in its own powers, nature, and
condition, it is unique. It follows, then, that if two gods are compared, as
two kings and two supreme authorities, the concentration of authority must
necessarily, according to the meaning of the comparison, be conceded to one
of the two; because it is clear from his own superiority that he is the
supreme, his rival being now vanquished, and proved to be not the greater,
however great. Now, from this failure of his rival, the other is unique in
power, possessing a certain solitude, as it were, in his singular
pre-eminence. The inevitable conclusion at which we arrive, then, on this
point is this: either we must deny that God is the great Supreme, which no
wise man will allow himself to do; or say that God has no one else with whom
to share His power.
Chapter V. The Dual Principle Falls to the Ground; Plurality of Gods, of
Whatever Number, More Consistent. Absurdity and Injury to Piety Resulting
from Marcion's Duality.
But on what principle did Marcion confine his supreme powers to two? I would
first ask, If there be two, why not more? Because if number be compatible
with the substance of Deity, the richer you make it in number the better.
Valentinus was more consistent and more liberal; for he, having once
imagined two deities, Bythos and Sige, [2365] poured forth a swarm of
divine essences, a brood of no less than thirty Æons, like the sow of
Æneas. [2366] Now, whatever principle refuses to admit several supreme
begins, the same must reject even two, for there is plurality in the very
lowest number after one. After unity, number commences. So, again, the same
principle which could admit two could admit more. After two, multitude
begins, now that one is exceeded. In short, we feel that reason herself
expressly [2367] forbids the belief in more gods than one, because the
self-same rule lays down one God and not two, which declares that God must
be a Being to which, as the great Supreme, nothing is equal; and that Being
to which nothing is equal must, moreover, be unique. But further, what can
be the use or advantage in supposing two supreme beings, two co-ordinate
[2368] powers? What numerical difference could there be when two equals
differ not from one? For that thing which is the same in two is one. Even if
there were several equals, all would be just as much one, because, as
equals, they would not differ one from another. So, if of two beings neither
differs from the other, since both of them are on the supposition [2369]
supreme, both being gods, neither of them is more excellent than the other;
and so, having no pre-eminence, their numerical distinction [2370] has no
reason in it. Number, moreover, in the Deity ought to be consistent with the
highest reason, or else His worship would be brought into doubt. For
consider [2371] now, if, when I saw two Gods before me (who, being both
Supreme Beings, were equal to each other), I were to worship them both, what
should I be doing? I should be much afraid that the abundance of my homage
would be deemed superstition rather than piety. Because, as both of them are
so equal and are both included in either of the two, I might serve them both
acceptably in only one; and by this very means I should attest their
equality and unity, provided that I worshipped them mutually the one in the
other, because in the one both are present to me. If I were to worship one
of the two, I should be equally conscious of seeming to pour contempt on the
uselessness of a numerical distinction, which was superfluous, because it
indicated no difference; in other words, I should think it the safer course
to worship neither of these two Gods than one of them with some scruple of
conscience, or both of them to none effect.
Chapter VI. Marcion Untrue to His Theory. He Pretends that His Gods are
Equal, But He Really Makes Them Diverse. Then, Allowing Their Divinity,
Denies This Diversity.
Thus far our discussion seems to imply that Marcion makes his two gods
equal. For while we have been maintaining that God ought to be believed as
the one only great Supreme Being, excluding from Him every possibility
[2372] of equality, we have treated of these topics on the assumption of two
equal Gods; but nevertheless, by teaching that no equals can exist according
to the law [2373] of the Supreme Being, we have sufficiently affirmed the
impossibility that two equals should exist. For the rest, however, [2374]
we know full well [2375] that Marcion makes his gods unequal: one
judicial, harsh, mighty in war; the other mild, placid, and simply [2376]
good and excellent. Let us with similar care consider also this aspect of
the question, whether diversity (in the Godhead) can at any rate contain
two, since equality therein failed to do so. Here again the same rule about
the great Supreme will protect us, inasmuch as it settles [2377] the
entire condition of the Godhead. Now, challenging, and in a certain sense
arresting [2378] the meaning of our adversary, who does not deny that the
Creator is God, I most fairly object [2379] against him that he has no
room for any diversity in his gods, because, having once confessed that they
are on a par, [2380] he cannot now pronounce them different; not indeed
that human beings may not be very different under the same designation, be
because the Divine Being can be neither said nor believed to be God, except
as the great Supreme. Since, therefore, he is obliged to acknowledge that
the God whom he does not deny is the great Supreme, it is inadmissible that
he should predicate of the Supreme Being such a diminution as should subject
Him to another Supreme Being. For He ceases (to be Supreme), if He becomes
subject to any. Besides, it is not the characteristic of God to cease from
any attribute [2381] of His divinity'say, from His supremacy. For at this
rate the supremacy would be endangered even in Marcion's more powerful god,
if it were capable of depreciation in the Creator. When, therefore, two gods
are pronounced to be two great Supremes, it must needs follow that neither
of them is greater or less than the other, neither of them loftier or
lowlier than the other. If you deny [2382] him to be God whom you call
inferior, you deny [2383] the supremacy of this inferior being. But when
you confessed both gods to be divine, you confessed then both to be supreme.
Nothing will you be able to take away from either of them; nothing will you
be able to add. By allowing their divinity, you have denied their diversity.
Chapter VII. Other Beings Besides God are in Scripture Called God. This
Objection Frivolous, for It is Not a Question of Names. The Divine Essence
is the Thing at Issue. Heresy, in Its General Terms, Thus Far Treated.
But this argument you will try to shake with an objection from the name of
God, by alleging that that name is a vague [2384] one, and applied to
other beings also; as it is written, "God standeth in the congregation of
the mighty; [2385] He judgeth among the gods." And again, "I have said, Ye
are gods." [2386] As therefore the attribute of supremacy would be
inappropriate to these, although they are called gods, so is it to the
Creator. This is a foolish objection; and my answer to it is, that its
author fails to consider that quite as strong an objection might be urged
against the (superior) god of Marcion: he too is called god, but is not on
that account proved to be divine, as neither are angels nor men, the
Creator's handwork. If an identity of names affords a presumption in support
of equality of condition, how often do worthless menials strut insolently in
the names of kings'your Alexanders, Cæsars, and Pompeys! [2387] This fact,
however, does not detract from the real attributes of the royal persons, Nay
more, the very idols of the Gentiles are called gods. Yet not one of them is
divine because he is called a god. It is not, therefore, for the name of
god, for its sound or its written form, that I am claiming the supremacy in
the Creator, but for the essence [2388] to which the name belongs; and
when I find that essence alone is unbegotten and unmade'alone eternal, and
the maker of all things'it is not to its name, but its state, not to its
designation, but its condition, that I ascribe and appropriate the attribute
of the supremacy. And so, because the essence to which I ascribe it has
come [2389] to be called god, you suppose that I ascribe it to the name,
because I must needs use a name to express the essence, of which indeed that
Being consists who is called God, and who is accounted the great Supreme
because of His essence, not from His name. In short, Marcion himself, when
he imputes this character to his god, imputes it to the nature, [2390] not
to the word. That supremacy, then, which we ascribe to God in consideration
of His essence, and not because of His name, ought, as we maintain, to be
equal [2391] in both the beings who consist of that substance for which
the name of God is given; because, in as far as they are called gods (i.e.
supreme beings, on the strength, of course, of their unbegotten and eternal,
and therefore great and supreme essence), in so far the attribute of being
the great Supreme cannot be regarded as less or worse in one than in another
great Supreme. If the happiness, and sublimity, and perfection [2392] of
the Supreme Being shall hold good of Marcion's god, it will equally so of
ours; and if not of ours, it will equally not hold of Marcion's. Therefore
two supreme beings will be neither equal nor unequal: not equal, because the
principle which we have just expounded, that the Surpeme Being admits of no
comparison with Himself, forbids it; not unequal, because another principle
meets us respecting the Supreme Being, that He is capable of no diminution.
So, Marcion, you are caught [2393] in the midst of your own Pontic tide.
The waves of truth overwhelm you on every side. You can neither set up equal
gods nor unequal ones. For there are not two; so far as the question of
number is properly concerned. Although the whole matter of the two gods is
at issue, we have yet confined our discussion to certain bounds, within
which we shall now have to contend about separate peculiarities.
Chapter VIII. Specific Points. The Novelty of Marcion's God Fatal to His
Pretensions. God is from Everlasting, He Cannot Be in Any Wise New.
In the first place, how arrogantly do the Marcionites build up their stupid
system, [2394] bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the
old one! So schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master
beats their strutting vanity out of them. Now when I hear of a new god,
[2395] who, in the old world and in the old time and under the old god was
unknown and unheard of; whom, (accounted as no one through such long
centuries back, and ancient in men's very ignorance of him), [2396] a
certain "Jesus Christ," and none else revealed; whom Christ revealed, they
say'Christ himself new, according to them, even, in ancient names'I feel
grateful for this conceit [2397] of theirs. For by its help I shall at
once be able to prove the heresy of their tenet of a new deity. It will turn
out to be such a novelty [2398] as has made gods even for the heathen by
some new and yet again and ever new title [2399] for each several
deification. What new god is there, except a false one? Not even Saturn will
be proved to be a god by all his ancient fame, because it was a novel
pretence which some time or other produced even him, when it first gave him
godship. [2400] On the contrary, living and perfect [2401] Deity has its
origin [2402] neither in novelty nor in antiquity, but in its own true
nature. Eternity has no time. It is itself all time. It acts; it cannot then
suffer. It cannot be born, therefore it lacks age. God, if old, forfeits the
eternity that is to come; if new, the eternity which is past. [2403] The
newness bears witness to a beginning; the oldness threatens an end. God,
moreover, is as independent of beginning and end as He is of time, which is
only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning and an end.
Chapter IX. Marcion's Gnostic Pretensions Vain, for the True God is Neither
Unknown Nor Uncertain. The Creator, Whom He Owns to Be God, Alone Supplies
an Induction, by Which to Judge of the True God.
Now I know full well by what perceptive faculty they boast of their new god;
even their knowledge. [2404] It is, however, this very discovery of a
novel thing'so striking to common minds'as well as the natural gratification
which is inherent in novelty, that I wanted to refute, and thence further to
challenge a proof of this unknown god. For him whom by their knowledge
[2405] they present to us as new, they prove to have been unknown previous
to that knowledge. Let us keep, within the strict limits and measure of our
argument. Convince me there could have been an unknown god. I find, no
doubt, [2406] that altars have been lavished on unknown gods; that,
however, is the idolatry of Athens. And on uncertain gods; but that, too, is
only Roman superstition. Furthermore, uncertain gods are not well known,
because no certainty about them exists; and because of this uncertainty they
are therefore unknown. Now, which of these two titles shall we carve for
Marcion's god? Both, I suppose, as for a being who is still uncertain, and
was formerly unknown. For inasmuch as the Creator, being a known God, caused
him to be unknown; so, as being a certain God, he made him to be uncertain.
But I will not go so far out of my way, as to say: [2407] If God was
unknown and concealed, He was overshadowed in such a region of darkness, as
must have been itself new and unknown, and be even now likewise
uncertain'some immense region indeed, one undoubtedly greater than the God
whom it concealed. But I will briefly state my subject, and afterwards most
fully pursue it, promising that God neither could have been, nor ought to
have been, unknown. Could not have been, because of His greatness; ought not
to have been, because of His goodness, especially as He is (supposed, by
Marcion) more excellent in both these attributes than our Creator. Since,
however, I observe that in some points the proof of every new and heretofore
unknown god ought, for its test, [2408] to be compared to the form of the
Creator, it will be my duty [2409] first of all to show that this very
course is adopted by me in a settled plan, [2410] such as I might with
greater confidence [2411] use in support of my argument. Before every
other consideration, (let me ask) how it happens that you, [2412] who
acknowledge [2413] the Creator to be God, and from your knowledge confess
Him to be prior in existence, do not know that the other god should be
examined by you in exactly the same course of investigation which has taught
you how to find out a god in the first case? Every prior thing has furnished
the rule for the latter. In the present question two gods are propounded,
the unknown and the known. Concerning the known there is no [2414]
question. It is plain that He exists, else He would not be known. The
dispute is concerning the unknown god. Possibly he has no existence;
because, if he had, he would have been known. Now that which, so long as it
is unknown, is an object to be questioned, is an uncertainty so long as it
remains thus questionable; and all the while it is in this state of
uncertainty, it possibly has no existence at all. You have a god who is so
far certain, as he is known; and uncertain, as unknown. This being the case,
does it appear to you to be justly defensible, that uncertain-ties should be
submitted for proof to the rule, and form, and standard of certainties? Now,
if to the subject before us, which is in itself full of uncertainty thus
far, there be applied also arguments [2415] derived from uncertainties,
we shall be involved in such a series of questions arising out of our
treatment of these same uncertain arguments, as shall by reason of their
uncertainty be dangerous to the faith, and we shall drift into those
insoluble questions which the apostle has no affection for. If, again,
[2416] in things wherein there is found a diversity of condition, they shall
prejudge, as no doubt they will, [2417] uncertain, doubtful, and
intricate points, by the certain, undoubted, and clear sides [2418] of
their rule, it will probably happen that [2419] (those points) will not
be submitted to the standard of certainties for determination, as being
freed by the diversity of their essential condition [2420] from the
application of such a standard in all other respects. As, therefore, it is
two gods which are the subject of our proposition, their essential condition
must be the same in both. For, as concerns their divinity, they are both
unbegotten, unmade, eternal. This will be their essential condition. All
other points Marcion himself seems to have made, light of, [2421] for he
has placed them in a different [2422] category. They are subsequent in
the order of treatment; indeed, they will not have to be brought into the
discussion, [2423] since on the essential condition there is no dispute.
Now there is this absence of our dispute, because they are both of them
gods. Those things, therefore, whose community of condition is evident,
will, when brought to a test on the ground of that common condition,
[2424] have to be submitted, although they are uncertain, to the standard
[2425] of those certainties with which they are classed in the community of
their essential condition, so as on this account to share also in their
manner of proof. I shall therefore contend [2426] with the greatest
confidence that he is not God who is to-day uncertain, because he has been
hitherto unknown; for of whomsoever it is evident that he is God, from this
very fact it is (equally) evident, that he never has been unknown, and
therefore never uncertain.
Chapter X. The Creator Was Known as the True God from the First by His
Creation. Acknowledged by the Soul and Conscience of Man Before He Was
Revealed by Moses.
For indeed, as the Creator of all things, He was from the beginning
discovered equally with them, they having been themselves manifested that He
might become known as God. For although Moses, some long while afterwards,
seems to have been the first to introduce the knowledge of [2427] the God
of the universe in the temple of his writings, yet the birthday of that
knowledge must not on that account be reckoned from the Pentateuch. For the
volume of Moses does not at all initiate [2428] the knowledge of the
Creator, but from the first gives out that it is to be traced from Paradise
and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. The greater part, therefore, [2429]
of the human race, although they knew not even the name of Moses, much less
his writings, yet knew the God of Moses; and even when idolatry overshadowed
the world with its extreme prevalence, men still spoke of Him separately by
His own name as God, and the God of gods, and said, "If God grant," and, "As
God pleases," and, "I commend you to God." [2430] Reflect, then, whether
they knew Him, of whom they testify that He can do all things. To none of
the writings of Moses do they owe this. The soul was before prophecy.
[2431] From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul, one
and the same amongst the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the tribes of
Pontus. For their souls call the God of the Jews their God. Do not, O
barbarian heretic, put Abraham before the world. Even if the Creator had
been the God of one family, He was yet not later than your god; even in
Pontus was He known before him. Take then your standard from Him who came
first: from the Certain (must be judged) the uncertain; from the Known the
unknown. Never shall God be hidden, never shall God be wanting. Always shall
He be understood, always be heard, nay even seen, in whatsoever way He shall
wish. God has for His witnesses this whole being of ours, and this universe
wherein we dwell. He is thus, because not unknown, proved to be both God and
the only One, although another still tries hard to make out his claim.
Chapter XI. The Evidence for God External to Him; But the External Creation
Which Yields This Evidence is Really Not Extraneous, for All Things are
God's. Marcion's God, Having Nothing to Show for Himself, No God at All.
Marcion's Scheme Absurdly Defective, Not Furnishing Evidence for His New
God's Existence, Which Should at Least Be Able to Compete with the Full
Evidence of the Creator.
And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by his own
(inherent) qualities than by strange [2432] ones? No one. Well, I keep to
this statement. How could anything be strange. [2433] to God, to whom, if
He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the
attribute of God, that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or
else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do
with things strange to Him?'a point which will be more fully noticed in its
proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to
exist to whom nothing is proved to belong. For as the Creator is shown to be
God, God without any doubt, from the fact that all things are His, and
nothing is strange to Him; so the rival [2434] god is seen to be no god,
from the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore
strange to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no
room for any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by
Him. If in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of
Deity, the void will be of a false deity clearly. [2435] By falsehood the
truth is made clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find
room for Marcion's god? This, therefore, I insist upon, from the
character [2436] of the Creator, that God must have been known from the
works of some world peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and
the rest of its organic life; [2437] when even the error of the world has
presumed to call gods those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the
ground that in every such case something is. seen which provides for the
uses and advantages of life. [2438] Accordingly, this also was believed
from the character of God to be a divine function; namely, to teach or
pointout what is convenient and needful in human concerns. So completely has
the authority which has given influence to a false divinity been borrowed
from that source, whence it had previously flowed forth to the true one. One
stray vegetable [2439] at least Marcion's god ought to have produced as
his own; so might he be preached up as a new Triptolemus. [2440] Or else
state some reason which shall be worthy of a God, why he, supposing him to
exist, created nothing; because he must, on supposition of his existence,
have been a creator, on that very principle on which it is clear to us thai
our God is no otherwise existent, than as having been the Creator of this
universe of ours. For, once for all, the rule [2441] will hold good, that
they cannot both acknowledge the Creator to be God, and also prove him
divine whom they wish to be equally believed in as God, except they adjust
him to the standard of Him whom they and all men hold to be God; which is
this, that whereas no one doubts the Creator to be God on the express ground
of His having made the universe, so, on the selfsame ground, no one ought to
believe that he also is God who has made nothing'except, indeed, some good
reason be forthcoming. And this must needs be limited to one of two: he was
either unwilling to create, or else unable. There is no third reason.
[2442] Now, that he was unable, is a reason unworthy of God. Whether to have
been unwilling to be a worthy one, I want to inquire. Tell me, Marcion, did
your god wish himself to be recognised at any time or not? With what other
purpose did he come down from heaven, and preach, and having suffered rise
again from the dead, if it were not that he might be acknowledged? And,
doubtless, since he was acknowledged, he willed it. For no circumstance
could have happened to him, if he had been unwilling. What indeed tended so
greatly to the knowledge of himself, as his appearing in the humiliation of
the flesh,'a degradation all the lower indeed if the flesh were only
illusory? [2443] For it was all the more shameful if he, who brought on
himself the Creator's curse by hanging on a tree, only pretended the
assumption of a bodily substance. A far nobler foundation might he have laid
for the knowledge of himself in some evidences of a creation of his own,
especially when he had to become known in opposition to Him in whose
territory [2444] he had remained unknown by any works from the beginning.
For how happens it that the Creator, although unaware, as the Marcionites
aver, of any god being above Himself, and who used to declare even with an
oath that He existed alone, should have guarded by such mighty works the
knowledge of Himself, about which, on the assumption of His being alone
without a rival, He might have spared Himself all care; while the Superior
God, knowing all the while how well furnished in power His inferior rival
was, should have made no provision at all towards getting Himself
acknowledged? Whereas He ought to have produced works more illustrious and
exalted still, in order that He might, after the Creator's standard, both be
acknowledged as God from His works, and even by nobler deeds show Himself to
be more potent and more gracious than the Creator.
Chapter XII. Impossibility of Acknowledging God Without This External
Evidence [2445] Of His Existence. Marcion's Rejection of Such Evidence
for His God Savours of Impudence and Malignity.
But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be bound to
argue that he is without a cause. [2446] For he who had nothing (to show
for himself as proof of his existence), would be without a cause, since
(such) proof [2447] is the whole cause that there exists some person to
whom the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a
cause, that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all
one as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a
thing), in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist,
than that He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a
cause by reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without
a cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He
exists without a cause, although (I allow [2448] that) He exists, I do
really determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed,
He could not have existed altogether without a cause. [2449] So, too,
even in regard to faith itself, I say that he [2450] seeks to obtain
it [2451] with out cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe
in God from the idea he gets of Him from the testimony of His works:
[2452] (without cause, I repeat, ) because he has provided no such proof as
that whereby man has acquired the knowledge of God. For although most
persons believe in Him, they do not believe at once by unaided reason,
[2453] without having some token of Deity in works worthy of God. And so
upon this ground of inactivity and lack of works he [2454] is guilty both
of impudence and malignity: of impudence, in aspiring after a belief which
is not due to him, and for which he has provided no foundation; [2455] of
malignity, in having brought many persons under the charge of unbelief by
furnishing to them no groundwork for their faith.
Chapter XIII. The Marcionites Depreciate the Creation, Which, However, is a
Worthy Witness of God. This Worthiness Illustrated by References to the
Heathen Philosophers, Who Were Apt to Invest the Several Parts of Creation
with Divine Attributes.
While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no evidence
to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the testimony of
the Creator, Marcion's most shameless followers with haughty impertinence
fall upon the Creator's works to destroy them. To be sure, say they, the
world is a grand work, worthy of a God. [2456] Then is the Creator not at
all a God? By all means He is God. [2457] Therefore [2458] the world
is not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself;
although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and)
although every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the
author of our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more
unworthy of Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!'not even a
production which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of
some better attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged [2459]
unworthiness of this world's fabric, to which among the Greeks also is
assigned a name of ornament and grace, [2460] not of sordidness, those
very professors of wisdom, [2461] from whose genius every heresy derives
its spirit, [2462] called the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales
did water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly
bodies, Strato the sky and earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the
stars, which he calls a fiery kind of gods; whilst concerning the world,
when they considered indeed its magnitude, and strength, and power, and
honour, and glory,'the abundance, too, the regularity, and law of those
individual elements which contribute to the production, the nourishment, the
ripening, and the reproduction of all things,'the majority of the
philosophers hesitated [2463] to assign a beginning and an end to the
said world, lest its constituent elements, [2464] great as they
undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine, [2465] which are
objects of worship with the Persian magi, the Egyptian hierophants, and the
Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the crowd, inspired by the
common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and fables of their ancient dead
borne by their idols, has recourse to the interpretation of natural objects,
and so with much ingenuity cloaks its own disgrace, figuratively reducing
Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno to an aërial one (according to the
literal sense of the Greek words); [2466] Vesta, in like manner, to fire,
and the Muses to waters, and the Great Mother [2467] to the earth, mowed
as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty arms, and watered with baths.
[2468] Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried, and looked for to come to
life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem of the regularity wherewith
the fruits of the ground return, and the elements recover life, and the year
comes round; as also the lions of Mithras [2469] are philosophical
sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is, indeed, enough for me that
natural elements, foremost in site and state, should have been more readily
regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I will, however, come down to
[2470] humbler objects. A single floweret from the hedgerow, I say not from
the meadows; a single little shellfish from any sea, I say not from the Red
Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say nothing of the peacock,'will,
I presume, prove to you that the Creator was but a sorry [2471]
artificer!
Chapter XIV. All Portions of Creation Attest the Excellence of the Creator,
Whom Marcion Vilifies. His Inconsistency Herein Exposed. Marcion's Own God
Did Not Hesitate to Use the Creator's Works in Instituting His Own Religion.
Now, when you make merry with those minuter animals, which their glorious
Maker has purposely endued with a profusion. of instincts and resources,
[2472] 'thereby teaching us that greatness has its proofs in lowliness, just
as (according to the apostle)there is power even in infirmity [2473]
'imitate, if you can, the cells of the bee, the hills of the ant, the webs
of the spider, and the threads of the silkworm; endure, too, if you know
how, those very creatures [2474] which infest your couch and house, the
poisonous ejections of the blister-beetle, [2475] the spikes of the fly,
and the gnat's Sheath and sting. What of the greater animals, when the small
ones so affect you with pleasure or pain, that you cannot even in their case
despise their Creator? Finally, take a circuit round your own self; survey
man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be pleasing to
you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so well, [2476]
and for your sake was at the pains [2477] of descending from the third
heaven to these poverty-stricken [2478] elements, and for the same reason
was actually crucified in this sorry [2479] apartment of the Creator.
Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the
Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he
anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the
nourishment [2480] of children; nor the bread by which he represents his
own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the "beggarly
[2481] elements" of the Creator. You, however, are a disciple above his
master, and a servant above his lord; you have a higher reach of discernment
than his; you destroy what he requires. I wish to examine whether you are at
least honest in this, so as to have no longing for those things which you
destroy. You are an enemy to the sky, and yet you are glad to catch its
freshness in your houses. You disparage the earth, although the elemental
parent [2482] of your own flesh, as if it were your undoubted enemy, and
yet you extract from it all its fatness [2483] for your food. The sea,
too, you reprobate, but are continually using its produce, which you account
the more sacred diet. [2484] If I should offer you a rose, you will not
disdain its Maker. You hypocrite, however much of abstinence you use to show
yourself a Marcionite, that is, a repudiator of your Maker (for if the world
displeased you, such abstinence ought to have been affected by you as a
martyrdom), you will have to associate yourself with [2485] the
Creator's material production, into what element soever you shall be
dissolved. How hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in
which you both live and die.
Chapter XV. The Lateness of the Revelation of Marcion's God. The Question of
the Place Occupied by the Rival Deities. Instead of Two Gods, Marcion Really
(Although, as It Would Seem, Unconsciously) Had Nine Gods in His System.
After all, or, if you like, [2486] before all, since you have said that
he has a creation [2487] of his own, and his own world, and his own sky;
we shall see, [2488] indeed, about that third heaven, when we come to
discuss even your own apostle. [2489] Meanwhile, whatever is the
(created) substance, it ought at any rate to have made its appearance in
company with its own god. But now, how happens it that the Lord has been
revealed since the twelfth year of Tiberius Cæsar, while no creation of His
at all has been discovered up to the fifteenth of the Emperor Severus;
[2490] although, as being more excellent than the paltry works [2491] of
the Creator, it should certainly have ceased to conceal itself, when its
lord and author no longer lies hid? I ask, therefore, [2492] if it was
unable to manifest itself in this world, how did its Lord appear in this
world? If this world received its Lord, why was it not able to receive the
created substance, unless perchance it was greater than its Lord? But now
there arises a question about place, having reference both to the world
above and to the God thereof. For, behold, if he [2493] has his own world
beneath him, above the Creator, he has certainly fixed it in a position, the
space of which was empty between his own feet and the Creator's head.
Therefore God both Himself occupied local space, and caused the world to
occupy local space; and this local space, too, will be greater than God and
the world together. For in no case is that which contains not greater than
that which is contained. And indeed we must look well to it that no small
patches [2494] be left here and there vacant, in which some third god
also may be able with a world of his own to foist himself in. [2495] Now,
begin to reckon up your gods. There will be local space for a god, not only
as being greater than God, but as being also unbegotten and unmade, and
therefore eternal, and equal to God, in which God has ever been. Then,
inasmuch as He too has fabricated [2496] a world out of some underlying
material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous with God, just
as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to the dignity of
that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and matter. For
matter also is a god according to the rule of Deity, being (to be sure)
unbegotten, and unmade, and eternal. If, however, it was out of nothing that
he made his world, this also (our heretic) will be obliged to predicate
[2497] of the Creator, to whom he subordinates [2498] matter in the
substance of the world. But it will be only right that he [2499] too
should have made his world out of matter, because the same process occurred
to him as God which lay before the Creator as equally God. And thus you may,
if you please, reckon up so far, [2500] three gods as Marcion's,'the
Maker, local space, and matter. Furthermore, [2501] he in like manner
makes the Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a
precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he subordinates
matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and by reason
hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an unbegotten
principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade, and an
eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. Accordingly you have
three substances of Deity in the higher instances, and in the lower ones
four. When to these are added their Christs'the one which appeared in the
time of Tiberius, the other which is promised by the Creator'Marcion suffers
a manifest wrong from those persons who assume that he holds two gods,
whereas he implies [2502] no less than nine. [2503] though he knows it
not.
Chapter XVI. Marcion Assumes the Existence of Two Gods from the Antithesis
Between Things Visible and Things Invisible. This Antithetical Principle in
Fact Characteristic of the Works of the Creator, the One God'Maker of All
Things Visible and Invisible.
Since, then, that other world does not appear, nor its god either, the only
resource left [2504] to them is to divide things into the two classes of
visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim
[2505] the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God. But who, except an
heretical spirit, could ever bring his mind to believe that the invisible
part of creation belongs to him who had previously displayed no visible
thing, rather than to Him who, by His operation on the visible world,
produced a belief in the invisible also, since it is far more reasonable to
give one's assent after some samples (of a work) than after none? We shall
see to what author even (your favourite) apostle attributes [2506] the
invisible creation, when we come to examine him. At present (we withhold his
testimony), for [2507] we are for the most part engaged in preparing the
way, by means of common sense and fair arguments, for a belief in the future
support of the Scriptures also. We affirm, then, that this diversity of
things visible and invisible must on this ground be attributed to the
Creator, even because the whole of His work consists of diversities'of
things corporeal and incorporeal; of animate and inanimate; of vocal and
mute of moveable and stationary; of productive and sterile; of arid and
moist; of hot and cold. Man, too, is himself similarly tempered with
diversity, both in his body and in his sensation. Some of his members are
strong, others weak; some comely, others uncomely; some twofold, others
unique; some like, others unlike. In like manner there is diversity also in
his sensation: now joy, then anxiety; now love, then hatred; now anger, then
calmness. Since this is the case, inasmuch as the whole of this creation of
ours has been fashioned [2508] with a reciprocal rivalry amongst its
several parts, the invisible ones are due to the visible, and not to be
ascribed to any other author than Him to whom their counterparts are
imputed, marking as they do diversity in the Creator Himself, who orders
what He forbade, and forbids what He ordered; who also strikes and heals.
Why do they take Him to be uniform in one class of things alone, as the
Creator of visible things, and only them; whereas He ought to be believed to
have created both the visible and the invisible, in just the same way as
life and death, or as evil things and peace? [2509] And verily, if the
invisible creatures are greater than the visible, which are in their own
sphere great, so also is it fitting that the greater should be His to whom
the great belong; because neither the great, nor indeed the greater, can be
suitable property for one who seems to possess not even the smallest things.
Chapter XVII. Not Enough, as the Marcionites Pretend, that the Supreme God
Should Rescue Man; He Must Also Have Created Him. The Existence of God
Proved by His Creation, a Prior Consideration to His Character.
Pressed by these arguments, they exclaim: One work is sufficient for our
god; he has delivered man by his supreme and most excellent goodness, which
is preferable to (the creation of) all the locusts. [2510] What superior
god is this, of whom it has not been possible to find any work so great as
the man of the lesser god! Now without doubt the first thing you have to do
is to prove that he exists, after the same manner that the existence of God
must ordinarily be proved'by his works; and only after that by his good
deeds. For the first question is, Whether he exists? and then, What is his
character? The former is to be tested [2511] by his works, the other by
the beneficence of them. It does not simply follow that he exists, because
he is said to have wrought deliverance for man; but only after it shall have
been settled that he exists, will there be room for saying that he has
affected this liberation. And even this point also must have its own
evidence, because it may be quite possible both that he has existence, and
yet has not wrought the alleged deliverance. Now in that section of our work
which concerned the question of the unknown god, two points were made clear
enough'both that he had created nothing: and that he ought to have been a
creator, in order to be known by his works; because, if he had existed, he
ought to have been known, and that too from the beginning of things; for it
was not fit that God should have lain hid. It will be necessary that I
should revert to the very trunk of that question of the unknown god, that I
may strike off into some of its other branches also. For it will be first of
all proper to inquire, Why he, who afterwards brought himself into notice,
did so'so late, and not at the very first? From creatures, with which as God
he was indeed so closely connected (and the closer this connection was,
[2512] the greater was his goodness), he ought never to have been hidden.
For it cannot be pretended that there was not either any means of arriving
at the knowledge of God, or a good reason for it, when from the beginning
man was in the world, for whom the deliverance is now come; as was also that
malevolence of the Creator, in opposition to which the good God has wrought
the deliverance. He was therefore either ignorant of the good reason for and
means of his own necessary manifestation, or doubted them; or else was
either unable or unwilling to encounter them. All these alternatives are
unworthy of God, especially the supreme and best. This topic, [2513]
however, we shall afterwards [2514] more fully treat, with a condemnation
of the tardy manifestation; we at present simply point it out.
Chapter XVIII. Notwithstanding Their Conceits, the God of the Marcionites
Fails in the Vouchers Both of Created Evidence and of Adequate Revelation.
Well, then, [2515] he has now advanced into notice, just when he willed,
when he could, when the destined hour arrived. For perhaps he was hindered
hitherto by his leading star, [2516] or some weird malignants, or Saturn
in quadrature, [2517] or Mars at the trine. [2518] The Marcionites are
very strongly addicted to astrology; nor do they blush to get their
livelihood by help of the very stars which were made by the Creator (whom
they depreciate). We must here also treat of the quality [2519] of the
(new) revelation; whether Marcion's supreme god has become known in a way
worthy of him, so as to secure the proof of his existence: and in the way of
truth, so that he may be believed to be the very being who had been already
proved to have been revealed in a manner worthy of his character. For things
which are worthy of God will prove the existence of God. We maintain
[2520] that God must first be known [2521] from nature, and afterwards
authenticated [2522] by instruction: from nature by His works; by
instruction, [2523] through His revealed announcements. [2524] Now, in
a case where nature is excluded, no natural means (of knowledge) are
furnished. He ought, therefore, to have carefully supplied [2525] a
revelation of himself, even by announcements, especially as he had to be
revealed in opposition to One who, after so many and so great works, both of
creation and revealed announcement, had with difficulty succeeded in
satisfying [2526] men's faith. In what manner, therefore, has the
revelation been made? If by man's conjectural guesses, do not say that God
can possibly become known in any other way than by Himself, and appeal not
only to the standard of the Creator, but to the conditions both of God's
greatness and man's littleness; so that man seem not by any possibility to
be greater than God, by having somehow drawn Him out into public
recognition, when He was Himself unwilling to become known by His own
energies, although man's littleness has been able, according to experiments
all over the world, more easily to fashion for itself gods, than to follow
the true God whom men now understand by nature. As for the rest, [2527]
if man shall be thus able to devise a god,'as Romulus did Consus, and Tatius
Cloacina, and Hostilius Fear, and Metellus Alburnus, and a certain
authority [2528] some time since Antinous,'the same accomplishment may be
allowed to others. As for us, we have found our pilot in Marcion, although
not a king nor an emperor.
Chapter XIX. Jesus Christ, the Revealer of the Creator, Could Not Be the
Same as Marcion's God, Who Was Only Made Known by the Heretic Some CXV.
Years After Christ, and That, Too, on a Principle Utterly Unsuited to the
Teaching of Jesus Christ, I.e., the Opposition Between the Law and the
Gospels.
Well, but our god, say the Marcionites, although he did not manifest himself
from the beginning and by means of the creation, has yet revealed himself in
Christ Jesus. A book will be devoted [2529] to Christ, treating of His
entire state; for it is desirable that these subject-matters should be
distinguished one from another, in order that they may receive a fuller and
more methodical treatment. Meanwhile it will be sufficient if, at this stage
of the question, I show'and that but briefly'that Christ Jesus is the
revealer [2530] of none other god but the Creator. In the fifteenth year
of Tiberius, [2531] Christ Jesus vouchsafed to come down from heaven, as
the spirit of saving health. [2532] I cared not to inquire, indeed, in
what particular year of the elder Antoninus. He who had so gracious a
purpose did rather, like a pestilential sirocco, [2533] exhale this
health or salvation, which Marcion teaches from his Pontus. Of this teacher
there is no doubt that he is a heretic of the Antonine period, impious under
the pious. Now, from Tiberius to Antoninus Pius, there are about 115 years
and 6 1/2 months. Just such an interval do they place between Christ and
Marcion. Inasmuch, then, as Marcion, as we have shown, first introduced this
god to notice in the time of Antoninus, the matter becomes at once clear, if
you are a shrewd observer. The dates already decide the case, that he who
came to light for the first time [2534] in the reign of Antoninus, did
not appear in that of Tiberius; in other words, that the God of the Antonine
period was not the God of the Tiberian; and consequently, that he whom
Marcion has plainly preached for the first time, was not revealed by Christ
(who announced His revelation as early as the reign of Tiberius). Now, to
prove clearly what remains of the argument, I shall draw materials from my
very adversaries. Marcion's special and principal work is the separation of
the law and the gospel; and his disciples will not deny that in this point
they have their very best pretext for initiating and confirming themselves
in his heresy. These are Marcion's Antitheses, or contradictory
propositions, which aim at committing the gospel to a variance with the law,
in order that from the diversity of the two documents which contain them,
[2535] they may contend for a diversity of gods also. Since, therefore, it
is this very opposition between the law and the gospel which has suggested
that the God of the gospel is different from the God of the law, it is clear
that, before the said separation, that god could not have been known who
became known [2536] from the argument of the separation itself. He
therefore could not have been revealed by Christ, who came before the
separation, but must have been devised by Marcion, the author of the breach
of peace between the gospel and the law. Now this peace, which had remained
unhurt and unshaken from Christ's appearance to the time of Marcion's
audacious doctrine, was no doubt maintained by that way of thinking, which
firmly held that the God of both law and gospel was none other than the
Creator, against whom after so long a time a separation has been introduced
by the heretic of Pontus.
Chapter XX. Marcion, Justifying His Antithesis Between the Law and the
Gospel by the Contention of St. Paul with St. Peter, Shown to Have Mistaken
St. Paul's Position and Argument. Marcion's Doctrine Confuted Out of St.
Paul's Teaching, Which Agrees Wholly with the Creator's Decrees.
This most patent conclusion requires to be defended by us against the
clamours of the opposite side. For they allege that Marcion did not so much
innovate on the rule (of faith) by his separation of the law and the gospel,
as restore it after it had been previously adulterated. O Christ, [2537]
most enduring Lord, who didst bear so many years with this interference with
Thy revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Thy rescue! Now they adduce
the case of Peter himself, and the others, who were pillars of the
apostolate, as having been blamed by Paul for not walking uprightly,
according to the truth of the gospel'that very Paul indeed, who, being yet
in the mere rudiments of grace, and trembling, in short, lest he should have
run or were still running in vain, then for the first time held intercourse
with those who were apostles before himself. Therefore because, in the
eagerness of his zeal against Judaism as a neophyte, he thought that there
was something to be blamed in their conduct'even the promiscuousness of
their conversation [2538] 'but afterwards was himself to become in his
practice all things to all men, that he might gain all,'to the Jews, as a
Jew, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,'you would have
his censure, which was merely directed against conduct destined to become
acceptable even to their accuser, suspected of prevarication against God on
a point of public doctrine. [2539] Touching their public doctrine,
however, they had, as we have already said, joined hands in perfect concord,
and had agreed also in the division of their labour in their fellowship of
the gospel, as they had indeed in all other respects: [2540] "Whether it
were I or they, so we preach." [2541] When, again, he mentioned "certain
false brethren as having crept in unawares," who wished to remove the
Galatians into another gospel, [2542] he himself shows that that
adulteration of the gospel was not meant to transfer them to the faith of
another god and christ, but rather to perpetuate the teaching of the law;
because he blames them for maintaining circumcision, and observing times,
and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish ceremonies which
they ought to have known were now abrogated, according to the new
dispensation purposed by the Creator Himself, who of old foretold this very
thing by His prophets. Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have passed away.
"Behold, I will do a new thing." [2543] And in another passage: "I will
make a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their
fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt." [2544] In like
manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant, "circumcise
yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart."
[2545] It is this circumcision, therefore, and this renewal, which the
apostle insisted on, when he forbade those ancient ceremonies concerning
which their very founder announced that they were one day to cease; thus by
Hosea: "I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new
moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts." [2546] So likewise
by Isaiah: "The new moons, and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot
away with; your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul hateth."
[2547] Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded all these
things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of
renunciation, the very agreement of the apostle's meaning with the decrees
of the Creator proves that none other God was preached by the apostle than
He whose purposes he now wished to have recognised, branding as false both
apostles and brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back
the gospel of Christ the Creator from the new condition which the Creator
had foretold, to the old one which He had discarded.
Chapter XXI. St. Paul Preached No New God, When He Announced the Repeal of
Some of God's Ancient Ordinances. Never Any Hesitation About Belief in the
Creator, as the God Whom Christ Revealed, Until Marcion's Heresy.
Now if it was with the view of preaching a new god that he was eager to
abrogate the law of the old God, how is it that he prescribes no rule
about [2548] the new god, but solely about the old law, if it be not
because faith in the Creator [2549] was still to continue, and His law
alone was to come to an end? [2550] 'just as the Psalmist had declared:
"Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. Why do
the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the
earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord, and
against His Anointed." [2551] And, indeed, if another god were preached
by Paul, there could be no doubt about the law, whether it were to be kept
or not, because of course it would not belong to the new lord, the enemy
[2552] of the law. The very newness and difference of the god would take
away not only all question about the old and alien law, but even all mention
of it. But the whole question, as it then stood, was this, that although the
God of the law was the same as was preached in Christ, yet there was a
disparagement [2553] of His law. Permanent still, therefore, stood faith
in the Creator and in His Christ; manner of life and discipline alone
fluctuated. [2554] Some disputed about eating idol sacrifices, others
about the veiled dress of women, others again about marriage and divorce,
and some even about the hope of the resurrection; but about God no one
disputed. Now, if this question also had entered into dispute, surely it
would be found in the apostle, and that too as a great and vital point. No
doubt, after the time of the apostles, the truth respecting the belief of
God suffered corruption, but it is equally certain that during the life of
the apostles their teaching on this great article did not suffer at all; so
that no other teaching will have the fight of being received as apostolic
than that which is at the present day proclaimed in the churches of
apostolic foundation. You will, however, find no church of apostolic
origin [2555] but such as reposes its Christian faith in the Creator.
[2556] But if the churches shall prove to have been corrupt from the
beginning, where shall the pure ones be found? Will it be amongst the
adversaries of the Creator? Show us, then, one of your churches, tracing its
descent from an apostle, and you will have gained the day. [2557]
Forasmuch then as it is on all accounts evident that there was from Christ
down to Marcion's time no other God in the rule of sacred truth [2558]
than the Creator, the proof of our argument is sufficiently established, in
which we have shown that the god of our heretic first became known by his
separation of the gospel and the law. Our previous position [2559] is
accordingly made good, that no god is to be believed whom any man has
devised out of his own conceits; except indeed the man be a prophet,
[2560] and then his own conceits would not be concerned in the matter. If
Marcion, however, shall be able to lay claim to this inspired character, it
will be necessary for it to be shown. There must be no doubt or
paltering. [2561] For all heresy is thrust out by this wedge of the
truth, that Christ is proved to be the revealer of no God else but the
Creator. [2562]
Chapter XXII. God's Attribute of Goodness Considered as Natural; The God of
Marcion Found Wanting Herein. It Came Not to Man's Rescue When First Wanted.
But how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we relax our
defence by mere prescription, [2563] and give ourselves scope for
rebutting all his other attacks? Let us therefore next take the very person
of God Himself, or rather His shadow or phantom, [2564] as we have it in
Christ, and let Him be examined by that condition which makes Him superior
to the Creator. And undoubtedly there will come to hand unmistakeable rules
for examining God's goodness. My first point, however, iS to discover and
apprehend the attribute, and then to draw it out into rules. Now, when I
survey the subject in its aspects of time, I nowhere descry it [2565]
from the beginning of material existences, or at the commencement of those
causes, with which it ought to have been found, proceeding thence to do
[2566] whatever had to be done. For there was death already, and Sin the
sting of death, and that malignity too of the Creator, against which the
goodness of the other god should have been ready to bring relief; falling in
with this as the primary rule of the divine goodness (if it were to prove
itself a natural agency), at once coming as a succour when the cause for it
began. For in God all things should be natural and inbred, just like His own
condition indeed, in order that they may be eternal, and so not be accounted
casual [2567] and extraneous, and thereby temporary and wanting in
eternity. In God, therefore, goodness is required to be both perpetual and
unbroken, [2568] such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures
of His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material
developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie [2569] every first
material cause, instead of looking at it from a distance, [2570] and
standing aloof from it. [2571] In short, here too I must inquire, Why
his [2572] goodness did not operate from the beginning? no less pointedly
than when we inquired concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the
very first? Why, then, did it not? since he had to be revealed by his
goodness if he had any existence. That God should at all fail in power must
not be thought, much less that He should not discharge all His natural
functions; for if these were restrained from running their course, they
would cease to be natural. Moreover, the nature of God Him self knows
nothing of inactivity. Hence (His goodness) is reckoned as having a
beginning, [2573] if it acts. It will thus be evident that He had no
unwillingness to exercise His goodness at any time on account of His nature.
Indeed, it is impossible that He should be unwilling because of His nature,
since that so directs itself that it would no longer exist if it ceased to
act. In Marcion's god, however, goodness ceased from operation at some time
or other. A goodness, therefore, which could thus at any time have ceased
its action was not natural, because with natural properties such cessation
is incompatible. And if it shall not prove to be natural, it must no longer
be believed to be eternal nor competent to Deity; because it cannot be
eternal so long as, failing to be natural, it neither provides from the past
nor guarantees for the future any means of perpetuating itself. Now as a
fact it existed not from the beginning, and, doubtless, will not endure to
the end. For it is possible for it to fail in existence some future
[2574] time or other, as it has failed in some past [2575] period.
Forasmuch, then, as the goodness of Marcion's god failed in the beginning
(for he did not from the first deliver man), this failure must have been the
effect of will rather than of infirmity. Now a wilful suppression of
goodness will be found to have a malignant end in view. For what malignity
is so great as to be unwilling to do good when one can, or to thwart
[2576] what is useful, or to permit injury? The whole description,
therefore, of Marcion's Creator will have to be transferred [2577] to his
new god, who helped on the ruthless [2578] proceedings of the former by
the retardation of his own goodness. For whosoever has it in his power to
prevent the happening of a thing, is accounted responsible for it if it
should occur. Man is condemned to death for tasting the fruit of one poor
tree, [2579] and thence proceed sins with their penalties; and now all
are perishing who yet never saw a single sod of Paradise. And all this your
better god either is ignorant of, or else brooks. Is it that [2580] he
might on this account be deemed the better, and the Creator be regarded as
all that the worse? Even if this were his purpose he would be malicious
enough, for both wishing to aggravate his rival's obloquy by permitting His
(evil) works to be done, and by keeping the world harrassed by the wrong.
What would you think of a physician who should encourage a disease by
withholding the remedy, and prolong the danger by delaying his prescription,
in order that his cure might be more costly and more renowned? Such must be
the sentence to be pronounced against Marcion's god: tolerant of evil,
encouraging wrong, wheedling about his grace, prevaricating in his goodness,
which he did not exhibit simply on its own account, but which he must mean
to exhibit purely, if he is good by nature and not by acquisition, [2581]
if he is supremely good in attribute [2582] and not by discipline, if he
is God from eternity and not from Tiberius, nay (to speak more truly), from
Cerdon only and Marcion. As the case now stands, [2583] however, such a
god as we are considering would have been more fit for Tiberius, that the
goodness of the Divine Being might be inaugurated in the world under his
imperial sway!
Chapter XXIII. God's Attribute of Goodness Considered as Rational.
Marcion's God Defective Here Also; His Goodness Irrational and Misapplied.
Here is another rule for him. All the properties of God ought to be as
rational as they are natural. I require reason in His goodness, because
nothing else can properly be accounted good than that which is rationally
good; much less can goodness itself be detected in any irrationality. More
easily will an evil thing which has something rational belonging to it be
accounted good, than that a good thing bereft of all reasonable quality
should escape being regarded as evil. Now I deny that the goodness of
Marcion's god is rational, on this account first, because it proceeded to
the salvation of a human creature which was alien to him. I am aware of the
plea which they will adduce, that that is rather [2584] a primary and
perfect goodness which is shed voluntarily and freely upon strangers without
any obligation of friendship, [2585] on the principle that we are bidden
to love even our enemies, such as are also on that very account strangers to
us. Now, inasmuch as from the first he had no regard for man, a stranger to
him from the first, he settled beforehand, by this neglect of his, that he
had nothing to do with an alien creature. Besides, the rule of loving a
stranger or enemy is preceded by the precept of your loving your neighbour
as yourself; and this precept, although coming from the Creator's law, even
you ought to receive, because, so far from being abrogated by Christ, it has
rather been confirmed by Him. For you are bidden to love your enemy and the
stranger, in order that you may love your neighbour the better. The
requirement of the undue is an augmentation of the due benevolence. But the
due precedes the undue, as the principal quality, and more worthy of the
other, for its attendant and companion. [2586] Since, therefore, the
first step in the reasonableness of the divine goodness is that it displays
itself on its proper object [2587] in righteousness, and only at its
second stage on an alien object by a redundant righteousness over and above
that of scribes and Pharisees, how comes it to pass that the second is
attributed to him who fails in the first, not having man for his proper
object, and who makes his goodness on this very account defective? Moreover,
how could a defective benevolence, which had no proper object whereon to
expend itself, overflow [2588] on an alien one? Clear up the first step,
and then vindicate the next. Nothing can be claimed as rational without
order, much less can reason itself [2589] dispense with order in any one.
Suppose now the divine goodness begin at the second stage of its rational
operation, that is to say, on the stranger, this second stage will not be
consistent in rationality if it be impaired in any way else. [2590] For
only then will even the second stage of goodness, that which is displayed
towards the stranger, be accounted rational, when it operates without wrong
to him who has the first claim. [2591] It is righteousness [2592]
which before everything else makes all goodness rational. It will thus be
rational in its principal stage, when manifested on its proper object, if it
be righteous. And thus, in like manner, it will be able to appear rational,
when displayed towards the stranger, if it be not unrighteous. But what sort
of goodness is that which is manifested in wrong, and that in behalf of an
alien creature? For peradventure a benevolence, even when operating
injuriously, might be deemed to some extent rational, if exerted for one of
our own house and home. [2593] By what rule, however, can an unjust
benevolence, displayed on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest
one is legitimately due, be defended as a rational one? For what is more
unrighteous, more unjust, more dishonest, than so to benefit an alien slave
as to take him away from his master, claim him as the property of another,
and suborn him against his master's life; and all this, to make the matter
more iniquitous still whilst he is yet living in his master's house and on
his master's garner, and still trembling beneath his stripes? Such a
deliverer, [2594] I had almost said [2595] kidnapper, [2596] would
even meet with condemnation in the world. Now, no other than this is the
character of Marcion's god, swooping upon an alien world, snatching away man
from his God, [2597] the son from his father, the pupil from his tutor,
the servant from his master'to make him impious to his God, undutiful to his
father, ungrateful to his tutor, worthless to his master. If, now, the
rational benevolence makes man such, what sort of being prithee [2598]
would the irrational make of him? None I should think more shameless than
him who is baptized to his [2599] god in water which belongs to another,
who stretches out his hands [2600] to his god towards a heaven which is
another's, who kneels to his god on ground which is another's, offers his
thanksgivings to his god over bread which belongs to another, [2601] and
distributes [2602] by way of alms and charity, for the sake of his god,
gifts which belong to another God. Who, then, is that so good a god of
theirs, that man through him becomes evil; so propitious, too, as to incense
against man that other God who is, indeed, his own proper Lord?
Chapter XXIV. The Goodness of Marcion's God Only Imperfectly Manifested; It
Saves But Few, and the Souls Merely of These. Marcion's Contempt of the Body
Absurd.
But as God is eternal and rational, so, I think, He is perfect in all
things. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect." [2603] Prove, then, that the goodness of your god also is a
perfect one. That it is indeed imperfect has been already sufficiently
shown, since it is found to be neither natural nor rational. The same
conclusion, however, shall now be made clear [2604] by another method; it
is not simply [2605] imperfect, but actually [2606] feeble, weak, and
exhausted, failing to embrace the full number [2607] of its material
objects, and not manifesting itself in them all. For all are not put into a
state of salvation [2608] by it; but the Creator's subjects, both Jew and
Christian, are all excepted. [2609] Now, when the greater part thus
perish, how can that goodness be defended as a perfect one which is
inoperative in most cases, is somewhat only in few, naught in many, succumbs
to perdition, and is a partner with destruction? [2610] And if so many
shall miss salvation, it will not be with goodness, but with malignity, that
the greater perfection will lie. For as it is the operation of goodness
which brings salvation, so is it malevolence which thwarts it. [2611]
Since, however, this goodness) saves but few, and so rather leans to the
alternative of not saving, it will show itself to greater perfection by not
interposing help than by helping. Now, you will not be able to attribute
goodness (to your god) in reference to the Creator, (if accompanied with)
failure towards all. For whomsoever you call in to judge the question, it is
as a dispenser of goodness, if so be such a title can be made out, [2612]
and not as a squanderer thereof, as you claim your god to be, that you must
submit the divine character for determination. So long, then, as you prefer
your god to the Creator on the simple ground of his goodness, and since he
professes to have this attribute as solely and wholly his own, he ought not
to have been wanting in it to any one. However, I do not now wish to prove
that Marcion's god is imperfect in goodness because of the perdition of the
greater number. I am content to illustrate this imperfection by the fact
that even those whom he saves are found to possess but an imperfect
salvation'that is, they are saved only so far as the soul is concerned,
[2613] but lost in their body, which, according to him, does not rise again.
Now, whence comes this halving of salvation, if not from a failure of
goodness? What could have been a better proof of a perfect goodness, than
the recovery of the whole man to salvation? Totally damned by the Creator,
he should have been totally restored by the most merciful god. I rather
think that by Marcion's rule the body is baptized, is deprived of
marriage, [2614] is cruelly tortured in confession. But although sins are
attributed to the body, yet they are preceded by the guilty concupiscence of
the soul; nay, the first motion of sin must be ascribed to the soul, to
which the flesh acts in the capacity of a servant. By and by, when freed
from the soul, the flesh sins no more. [2615] So that in this matter
goodness is unjust, and likewise imperfect, in that it leaves to destruction
the more harmless substance, which sins rather by compliance than in will.
Now, although Christ put not on the verity of the flesh, as your heresy is
pleased to assume, He still vouchsafed to take upon Him the semblance
thereof. Surely, therefore, some regard was due to it from Him, because of
this His reigned assumption of it. Besides, what else is man than flesh,
since no doubt it was the corporeal rather than the spiritual [2616]
element from which the Author of man's nature gave him his designation?
[2617] "And the Lord God made man of the dust of the ground," not of
spiritual essence; this afterwards came from the divine afflatus: "and man
became a living soul." What, then, is man? Made, no doubt of it, of the
dust; and God placed him in paradise, because He moulded him, not breathed
him, into being'a fabric of flesh, not of spirit. Now, this being the case,
with what face will you contend for the perfect character of that goodness
which did not fail in some one particular only of man's deliverance, but in
its general capacity? If that is a plenary grace and a substantial mercy
which brings salvation to the soul alone, this were the better life which we
now enjoy whole and entire; whereas to rise again but in part will be a
chastisement, not a liberation. The proof of the perfect goodness is, that
man, after his rescue, should be delivered from the domicile and power of
the malignant deity unto the protection of the most good and merciful God.
Poor dupe of Marcion, fever [2618] is hard upon you; and your painful
flesh produces a crop of all sorts of briers and thorns. Nor is it only to
the Creator's thunderbolts that you lie exposed, or to wars, and
pestilences, and His other heavier strokes, but even to His creeping
insects. In what respect do you suppose yourself liberated from His kingdom
when His flies are still creeping upon your face? If your deliverance lies
in the future, why not also in the present, that it may be perfectly
wrought? Far different is our condition in the sight of Him who is the
Author, the Judge, the injured [2619] Head of our race! You display Him
as a merely good God; but you are unable to prove that He is perfectly good,
because you are not by Him perfectly delivered.
Chapter XXV. God is Not a Being of Simple Goodness; Other Attributes Belong
to Him. Marcion Shows Inconsistency in the Portraiture of His Simply Good
and Emotionless God.
As touching this question of goodness, we have in these outlines of our
argument shown it to be in no way compatible with Deity,'as being neither
natural, [2620] nor rational, nor perfect, but wrong, [2621] and
unjust, and unworthy of the very name of goodness,'because, as far as the
congruity of the divine character is concerned, it cannot indeed be fitting
that that Being should be regarded as God who is alleged to have such a
goodness, and that not in a modified way, but simply and solely. For it is,
furthermore, at this point quite open to discussion, whether God ought to be
regarded as a Being of simple goodness, to the exclusion of all those other
attributes, [2622] sensations, and affections, which the Marcionites
indeed transfer from their god to the Creator, and which we acknowledge to
be worthy characteristics of the Creator too, but only because we consider
Him to be God. Well, then, on this ground we shall deny him to be God in
whom all things are not to be found which befit the Divine Being. If
(Marcion) chose [2623] to take any one of the school of Epicurus, and
entitle him God in the name of Christ, on the ground that what is happy and
incorruptible can bring no trouble either on itself or anything else (for
Marcion, while poring over [2624] this opinion of the divine
indifference, has removed from him all the severity and energy of the
judicial [2625] character), it was his duty to have developed his
conceptions into some imperturbable and listless god (and then what could he
have had in common with Christ, who occasioned trouble both to the Jews by
what He taught, and to Himself by what He felt? ), or else to have admitted
that he was possessed of the same emotions as others [2626] (and in such
case what would he have had to do with Epicurus, who was no friend [2627]
to either him or Christians? ). For that a being who in ages past [2628]
was in a quiescent state, not caring to communicate any knowledge of himself
by any work all the while, should come after so long a time to entertain a
concern for man's salvation, of course by his own will,'did he not by this
very fact become susceptible of the impulse [2629] of a new volition, so
as palpably to be open to all other emotions? But what volition is
unaccompanied with the spur of desire? [2630] Who wishes for what he
desires not? Moreover, care will be another companion of the will. For who
will wish for any object and desire to have it, without also caring to
obtain it? When, therefore, (Marcion's god) felt both a will and a desire
for man's salvation, he certainly occasioned some concern and trouble both
to himself and others. This Marcion's theory suggests, though Epicurus
demurs. For he [2631] raised up an adversary against himself in that very
thing against which his will and desire, and care were directed,'whether it
were sin or death,'and more especially in their Tyrant and Lord, the Creator
of man. Again, [2632] nothing will ever run its course without hostile
rivalry, [2633] which shall not (itself) be without a hostile aspect. In
fact, [2634] when willing, desiring, and caring to deliver man,
(Marcion's god) already in the very act encounters a rival, both in Him from
whom He effects the deliverance (for of course [2635] he means the
liberation to be an opposition to Him), and also in those things from which
the deliverance is wrought (the intended liberation being to the advantage
of some other things). For it must needs be, that upon rivalry its own
ancillary passions [2636] will be in attendance, against whatever objects
its emulation is directed: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation,
spleen, loathing, displeasure. Now, since all these emotions are present to
rivalry; since, moreover, the rivalry which arises in liberating man excites
them; and since, again, this deliverance of man is an operation of goodness,
it follows that this goodness avails nothing without its endowments,
[2637] that is to say, without those sensations and affections whereby it
carries out its purpose [2638] against the Creator; so that it cannot
even in this be ruled [2639] to be irrational, as if it were wanting in
proper sensations and affections. These points we shall have to insist on
[2640] much more fully, when we come to plead the cause of the Creator,
where they will also incur our condemnation.
Chapter XXVI. In the Attribute of Justice, Marcion's God is Hopelessly Weak
and Ungodlike. He Dislikes Evil, But Does Not Punish Its Perpetration.
But it is here sufficient that the extreme perversity of their god is proved
from the mere exposition of his lonely goodness, in which they refuse to
ascribe to him such emotions of mind as they censure in the Creator. Now, if
he is susceptible of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or injury,
as one who refrains from exercising judicial power, I cannot tell how any
system of discipline'and that, too, a plenary one'can be consistent in him.
For how is it possible that he should issue commands, if he does not mean to
execute them; or forbid sins, if he intends not to punish them, but rather
to decline the functions of the judge, as being a stranger to all notions of
severity and judicial chastisement? For why does he forbid the commission of
that which he punishes not when perpetrated? It would have been far more
right, if he had not forbidden what he meant not to punish, than that he
should punish what he had not forbidden. Nay, it was his duty even to have
permitted what he was about to prohibit in so unreasonable a way, as to
annex no penalty to the offence. [2641] For even now that is tacitly
permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of vengeance. Besides,
he only forbids the commission of that which he does not like to have done.
Most listless, therefore, is he, since he takes no offence at the doing of
what he dislikes to be done, although displeasure ought to be the companion
of his violated will. Now, if he is offended, he ought to be angry; if
angry, he ought to inflict punishment. For such infliction is the just fruit
of anger, and anger is the debt of displeasure, and displeasure (as I have
said) is the companion of a violated will. However, he inflicts no
punishment; therefore he takes no offence.
He takes no offence, therefore his will is not wronged, although that is
done which he was unwilling to have done; and the transgression is now
committed with the acquiescence of [2642] his will, because whatever
offends not the will is not committed against the will. Now, if this is to
be the principle of the divine virtue or goodness, to be unwilling indeed
that a thing be done and to prohibit it, and yet not be moved by its
commission, we then allege that he has been moved already when he declared
his unwillingness; and that it is vain for him not to be moved by the
accomplishment of a thing after being moved at the possibility thereof, when
he willed it not to be done. For he prohibited it by his not willing it. Did
he not therefore do a judicial act, when he declared his unwillingness, and
consequent prohibition of it? For he judged that it ought not to be done,
and he deliberately declared [2643] that it should be forbidden.
Consequently by this time even he performs the part of a judge. If it is
unbecoming for God to discharge a judicial function, or at least only so far
becoming that He may merely declare His unwillingness, and pronounce His
prohibition, then He may not even punish for an offence when it is
committed. Now, nothing is so unworthy of the Divine Being as not to execute
retribution on what He has disliked and forbidden. First, He owes the
infliction of chastisement to whatever sentence or law He promulges, for the
vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission to it;
secondly, because hostile opposition is inevitable to what He has disliked
to be done, and by that dislike forbidden. Moreover, it would be a more
unworthy course for God to spare the evil-doer than to punish him,
especially in the most good and holy God, who is not otherwise fully good
than as the enemy of evil, and that to such a degree as to display His love
of good by the hatred of evil, and to fulfil His defence of the former by
the extirpation of the latter.
Chapter XXVII. Dangerous Effects to Religion and Morality of the Doctrine of
So Weak a God.
Again, he plainly judges evil by not willing it, and condemns it by
prohibiting it; while, on the other hand, he acquits it by not avenging it,
and lets it go free by not punishing it. What a prevaricator of truth is
such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what
he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that to
be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes
rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a
phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, ye
sinners; and ye who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to
such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offence, is
never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no
gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness! He is purely and simply good. He
indeed forbids all delinquency, but only in word. He is in you, if you are
willing to pay him homage, [2644] for the sake of appearances, that you
may seem to honour God; for your fear he does not want. And so satisfied are
the Marcionites with such pretences, that they have no fear of their god at
all. They say it is only a bad man who will be feared, a good man will be
loved. Foolish man, do you say that he whom you call Lord ought not to be
feared, whilst the very title you give him indicates a power which must
itself be feared? But how are you going to love, without some fear that you
do not love? Surely (such a god) is neither your Father, towards whom your
love for duty's sake should be consistent with fear because of His power;
nor your proper [2645] Lord, whom you should love for His humanity and
fear as your teacher. [2646] Kidnappers [2647] indeed are loved after
this fashion, but they are not feared. For power will not be feared, except
it be just and regular, although it may possibly be loved even when corrupt:
for it is by allurement that it stands, not by authority; by flattery, not
by proper influence. And what can be more direct flattery than not to punish
sins? Come, then, if you do not fear God as being good, why do you not boil
over into every kind of lust, and so realize that which is, I believe, the
main enjoyment of life to all who fear not God? Why do you not frequent the
customary pleasures of the maddening circus, the bloodthirsty arena, and the
lascivious theatre? [2648] Why in persecutions also do you not, when the
censer is presented, at once redeem your life by the denial of your faith?
God forbid, you say with redoubted [2649] emphasis. So you do fear sin,
and by your fear prove that He is an object of fear Who forbids the sin.
This is quite a different matter from that obsequious homage you pay to the
god whom you do not fear, which is identical in perversity indeed to is own
conduct, in prohibiting a thing without annexing the sanction of punishment.
Still more vainly do they act, who when asked, What is to become of every
sinner in that great day? reply, that he is to be cast away out of sight. Is
not even this a question of judicial determination? He is adjudged to
deserve rejection, and that by a sentence of condemnation; unless the sinner
is cast away forsooth for his salvation, that even a leniency like this may
fall in consistently with the character of your most good and excellent god!
And what will it be to be cast away, but to lose that which a man was in the
way of obtaining, were it not for his rejection'that is, his salvation?
Therefore his being cast away will involve the forfeiture of salvation; and
this sentence cannot possibly be passed upon him, except by an angry and
offended authority, who is also the punisher of sin'that is, by a judge.
Chapter XXVIII. This Perverse Doctrine Deprives Baptism of All Its Grace. If
Marcion Be Right, the Sacrament Would Confer No Remission of Sins, No
Regeneration, No Gift of the Spirit.
And what will happen to him after he is cast away? He will, they say, be
thrown into the Creator's fire. Then has no remedial provision been made (by
their god) for the purpose of banishing those that sin against him, without
resorting to the cruel measure of delivering them over to the Creator? And
what will the Creator then do? I suppose He will prepare for them a hell
doubly charged with brimstone, [2650] as for blasphemers against Himself;
except indeed their god in his zeal, as perhaps might happen, should show
clemency to his rival's revolted subjects. Oh, what a god is this!
everywhere perverse; nowhere rational; in all cases vain; and therefore a
nonentity! [2651] 'in whose state, and condition, and nature, and every
appointment, I see no coherence and consistency; no, not even in the very
sacrament of his faith! For what end does baptism serve, according to him?
If the remission of sins, how will he make it evident that he remits sins,
when he affords no evidence that he retains them? Because he would retain
them, if he performed the functions of a judge. If deliverance from death,
how could he deliver from death, who has not delivered to death? For he must
have delivered the sinner to death, if he had from the beginning condemned
sin. If the regeneration of man, how can he regenerate, who has never
generated? For the repetition of an act is impossible to him, by whom
nothing any time has been ever done. If the bestowal of the Holy Ghost, how
will he bestow the Spirit, who did not at first impart the life? For the
life is in a sense the supplement [2652] of the Spirit. He therefore
seals man, who had never been unsealed [2653] in respect of him;
[2654] washes man, who had never been defiled so far as he was concerned;
[2655] and into this sacrament of salvation wholly plunges that flesh which
is beyond the pale of salvation! [2656] No farmer will irrigate ground
that will yield him no fruit in return, except he be as stupid as Marcion's
god. Why then impose sanctity upon our most infirm and most unworthy flesh,
either as a burden or as a glory? What shall I say, too, of the uselessness
of a discipline which sanctifies what is already sanctified? Why burden the
infirm, or glorify the unworthy? Why not remunerate with salvation what it
burdens or else glorifies? Why keep back from a work its due reward, by not
recompensing the flesh with salvation? Why even permit the honour of
sanctity in it to die?
Chapter XXIX. Marcion Forbids Marriage. Tertullian Eloquently Defends It as
Holy, and Carefully Discriminates Between Marcion's Doctrine and His Own
Montanism.
The flesh is not, according to Marcion, immersed in the water of the
sacrament, unless it be [2657] in virginity, widowhood, or celibacy, or
has purchased by divorce a title to baptism, as if even generative
impotents [2658] did not all receive their flesh from nuptial union. Now,
such a scheme as this must no doubt involve the proscription of marriage.
Let us see, then, whether it be a just one: not as if we aimed at destroying
the happiness of sanctity, as do certain Nicolaitans in their maintenance of
lust and luxury, but as those who have come to the knowledge of sanctity,
and pursue it and prefer it, without detriment, however, to marriage; not as
if we superseded a bad thing by a good, but only a good thing by a better.
For we do not reject marriage, but simply refrain from it. [2659] Nor do
we prescribe sanctity [2660] as the rule, but only recommend it,
observing it as a good, yea, even the better state, if each man uses it
carefully [2661] according to his ability; but at the same time earnestly
vindicating marriage, whenever hostile attacks are made against it is a
polluted thing, to the disparagement of the Creator. For He bestowed His
blessing on matrimony also, as on an honourable estate, for the increase of
the human race; as He did indeed on the whole of His creation, [2662] for
wholesome and good uses. Meats and drinks are not on this account to be
condemned, because, when served up with too exquisite a daintiness, they
conduce to gluttony; nor is raiment to be blamed, because, when too costlily
adorned, it becomes inflated with vanity and pride. So, on the same
principle, the estate of matrimony is not to be refused, because, when
enjoyed without moderation, it is fanned into a voluptuous flame. There is a
great difference between a cause and a fault, [2663] between a state and
its excess. Consequently it is not an institution of this nature that is to
be blamed, but the extravagant use of it; according to the judgment of its
founder Himself, who not only said, "Be fruitful, and multiply," [2664]
but also, "Thou shalt not commit adultery," and, "Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's wife; " [2665] and who threatened with death the unchaste,
sacrilegious, and monstrous abomination both of adultery and unnatural sin
with man and beast. [2666] Now, if any limitation is set to marrying'such
as the spiritual rule, [2667] which prescribes but one marriage under the
Christian obedience, [2668] maintained by the authority of the
Paraclete, [2669] 'it will be His prerogative to fix the limit Who had
once been diffuse in His permission; His to gather, Who once scattered; His
to cut down the tree, Who planted it; His to reap the harvest, Who sowed the
seed; His to declare, "It remaineth that they who have wives be as though
they had none," [2670] Who once said, "Be fruitful, and multiply; "His
the end to Whom belonged the beginning. Nevertheless, the tree is not cut
down as if it deserved blame; nor is the corn reaped, as if it were to be
condemned,'but simply because their time is come. So likewise the state of
matrimony does not require the hook and scythe of sanctity, as if it were
evil; but as being ripe for its discharge, and in readiness for that
sanctity which will in the long run bring it a plenteous crop by its
reaping. For this leads me to remark of Marcion's god, that in reproaching
marriage as an evil and unchaste thing, he is really prejudicing the cause
of that very sanctity which he seems to serve. For he destroys the material
on which it subsists; if there is to be no marriage, there is no sanctity.
All proof of abstinence is lost when excess is impossible; for sundry things
have thus their evidence in their contraries. Just as "strength is made
perfect in weakness," [2671] so likewise is continence made manifest by
the permission to marry. Who indeed will be called continent, if that be
taken away which gives him the opportunity of pursuing a life of continence?
What room for temperance in appetite does famine give? What repudiation of
ambitious projects does poverty afford? What bridling of lust can the eunuch
merit? To put a complete stop, however, to the sowing of the human race,
may, for aught I know, be quite consistent for Marcion's most good and
excellent god. For how could he desire the salvation of man, whom he forbids
to be born, when he takes away that institution from which his birth arises?
How will he find any one on whom to set the mark of his goodness, when he
suffers him not to come into existence? How is it possible to love him whose
origin he hates? Perhaps he is afraid of a redundant population, lest he
should be weary in liberating so many; lest he should have to make many
heretics; lest Marcionite parents should produce too many noble disciples of
Marcion. The cruelty of Pharaoh, which slew its victims at their birth, will
not prove to be more inhuman in comparison. [2672] For while he destroyed
lives, our heretic's god refuses to give them: the one removes from life,
the other admits none to it. There is no difference in either as to their
homicide'man is slain by both of them; by the former just after birth, by
the latter as yet unborn. Thanks should we owe thee, thou god of our
heretic, hadst thou only checked [2673] the dispensation of the Creator
in uniting male and female; for from such a union indeed has thy Marcion
been born! Enough; however, of Marcion's god, who is shown to have
absolutely no existence at all, both by our definitions [2674] of the one
only Godhead, and the condition of his attributes. [2675] The whole
course, however, of this little work aims directly at this conclusion. If,
therefore, we seem to anybody to have achieved but little result as yet, let
him reserve his expectations, until we examine the very Scripture which
Marcion quotes.
Footnotes
[2304] [Written A.D. 207. See Chapter xv.infra. In cap. xxix. is the token
of Montanism which denotes his impending lapse.]
[2305] Retro.
[2306] Jam hinc. viderit.
[2307] Ex. vetere.
[2308] Fratris.
[2309] Stilus.
[2310] De.
[2311] [Euxine=hospitable. One recalls Shakespeare: '"Like to the Pontick
Sea Whose icy current and compulsive force Ne'er feels retiring
ebb."'Othel.]
[2312] Cruda.
[2313] De jugo. See Strabo (Bohn's trans.), vol . ii. p. 247.
[2314] Duritia.
[2315] Libens.
[2316] Exaggerantur.
[2317] Calet.
[2318] [Iphigenia of Euripides.]
[2319] [See the Medea of Euripides.]
[2320] [Prometheus of Aeschylus.]
[2321] Hamaxobio. This Sarmatian clan received its name from
its gypsy kind of life.
[2322] I fancy there is a point in this singular, the sky of Pontus being
always overcast. Cowper says: "There is but one cloud in the sky, But that
doth the welkin invest," etc.
[2323] Quidni.
[2324] Lancinatur.
[2325] Castrator carnis. See Pliny, N.H. viii. 47 (Bohn's trans. vol. ii.
p. 297)
[2326] Ipsius litteris.
[2327] Jam.
[2328] Hinc.
[2329] Retro.
[2330] He alludes to his book De Proescriptione Hoereticorum. [Was this
work already written? Dr. Allix thinks not. But see Kaye, p. 47.]
[2331] Interdum. [Can it be that when all this was written (speaking of
ourselves) our author had fully lapsed from Communion with the Catholic
Church?]
[2332] Passus.
[2333] Instinctum.
[2334] St. Luke, vi. 43 sq.
[2335] Languens.
[2336] Isa. xlv. 7.
[2337] Mala.
[2338] [This purely good or goodish divinity is an idea of the Stoics. De
Proescript. chap. 7.]
[2339] Hospitam.
[2340] Quendam. [See Irenaeus, Vol. 1. p. 352, this series.]
[2341] Integre.
[2342] Praestruendo.
[2343] Or sections.
[2344] Et exinde.
[2345] Si Forte.
[2346] Jam.
[2347] Of eternity.
[2348] We subjoin the original of this difficult passage: Hunc enim
statum aeternitati censendum, quae summum magnum deum efficiat, dum hoc est
in deo ipsa, atque ita et cetera. ut sit deus summum magnum et forma et
ratione et vi et potestate.
[2349] Quid.
[2350] Unicus. [Alone of his kind.]
[2351] As its first principle.
[2352] Porro.
[2353] Forma.
[2354] Isa xl. 18, 25.
[2355] Denique.
[2356] Excidet.
[2357] Amittitur. "Tertullian" (who thinks lightly of the analogy of
earthly monarchs) "ought rather to have contended that the illustration
strengthened his argument. In each kingdom there is only one supreme power;
but the universe is God's kingdom: there is therefore only one supreme power
in the universe."' Bp. Kaye, On the Writings of Tertuillian, Third edition,
p. 453, note 2.
[2358] Scilicet.
[2359] Graduum.
[2360] Culmen.
[2361] Minutalibus regnis.
[2362] Undique.
[2363] Substantiis.
[2364] Eliquetur.
[2365] Depth and silence.
[2366] See Virgil, Aeneid, viii. 43, etc.
[2367] Ipso termino.
[2368] Paria.
[2369] Jam.
[2370] Numeri sui.
[2371] Ecce.
[2372] Parilitatem.
[2373] Formam.
[2374] Alioquin.
[2375] Certi (sumus).
[2376] Tantummodo.
[2377] Vindicet.
[2378] Injecta manu detinens.
[2379] Praescribo.
[2380] Ex aequo deos confessus.
[2381] De seatu suo.
[2382] Nega.
[2383] Nega.
[2384] Passivo.
[2385] Tertullian's version is : In ecclesia deorum. The
Vulgate: In synagoga deorum.
[2386] Ps. lxxxii. 1, 6.
[2387] The now less obvious nicknames of "Alex. Darius and Olofernes,"
are in the text.
[2388] Substantiae.
[2389] Vocari obtinuit.
[2390] Statum.
[2391] Ex pari.
[2392] Integras.
[2393] Haesisti.
[2394] Stuporem suum.
[2395] [Cap. xix. infra.]
[2396] The original of this obscure passage is: "Novum igitur audiens
deum, in vetere mundo et in vetere aevo et sub vetere deo inauditum quem
tantis retro seculis neminem, et ipsa ignorantia antiquum, quidam Jesus
Christus, et ille in veteribus nominibus novus, revelaverit, nec alius
antehac." The harsh expression, "quidam Jesus Christus," bears, of course, a
sarcastic reference to the capricious and inconsistent novelty which Marcion
broached in his heresy about Christ. [By some slight chance in punctuation
and arrangement, I have endeavouted to make it a little clearer.]
[2397] Gloriae. [Qu. boast?]
[2398] Haec erit novitas quae.
[2399] Novo semper ac novo titulo.
[2400] Consecravit.
[2401] Germana.
[2402] Censetur. A frequent meaning in Tertullian. See Apol. 7 and 12.
[2403] We cannot preserve the terseness of the Latin Deus, si est vetus,
non erit; si est novus, non fuit.
[2404] Agnitione. The distinctive term of the Gnostic pretension was the
Greek equivalent .
[2405] Agnitione.
[2406] Plane.
[2407] Non evagabor, ut dicam.
[2408] Provocari.
[2409] Debebo.
[2410] Ratione.
[2411] Constantius.
[2412] Quale est. ut.
[2413] Agnoscis.
[2414] Vacat.
[2415] Argumenta = "proofs."
[2416] Sin.
[2417] Plane.
[2418] Regulae partibus.
[2419] Fortasse an.
[2420] Status principalis.
[2421] Viderit.
[2422] In diversitate.
[2423] Nec admittentur.
[2424] Sub eo.
[2425] Forman.
[2426] Dirigam.
[2427] Dedicasse.
[2428] Instituat.
[2429] Denique.
[2430] See also De test, anim. 2, and De anima, 41. [Bp. Kaye refers (p.
166) to Profr. Andrews Norton of Harvard, with great respect; specially to a
Note on this usage of the Heathen, in his Evidences, etc. Vol. 3]
[2431] Prophetia, inspired Scripture.
[2432] Extraneous.
[2433] Extraneum.
[2434] Alius.
[2435] Plane falsae vacabit.
[2436] Forma.
[2437] Proprii sui mundi, et hominis et saesuli.
[2438] [Kaye, p. 206.]
[2439] Cicerculam.
[2440] ['"uncique puer monstrator aratri," Virg. Georg. i. 19, and see
Heyne's note.]
[2441] Proescriptio.
[2442] Tertium cessat.
[2443] Falsae. An allusion to the Docetism of Marcion.
[2444] Apud quem.
[2445] The word cause throughout this Chapter is used in the popular,
inaccurate sense, which almost confounds th with effect, the "causa
cognoscendi,", as distinguished fron the "causa essendi,", the strict cause.
[2446] The word cause throughout this Chapter is used in the popular,
inaccurate sense, which almost confounds th with effect, the "causa
cognoscendi,", as distinguished fron the "causa essendi,", the strict cause.
[2447] The work "res" is throughout this argument used strictly by
Tertullian; it rerers to "the thing" made by God'that product of His
creative energy which affords to us evidence of His existence. We have
translated if "proof" for want of a better word.
[2448] The "tanquam sit," in its subjunctive form, seems to refer to the
concession indicated at the outset of the Chapter.
[2449] Omnino sine causa.
[2450] Illum, i.e., Marcion's god.
[2451] Captare.
[2452] Deum ex operum auctoritate formatum.
[2453] Non statim ratione, on a priori grounds.
[2454] i.e., Marcion's god.
[2455] Compare Rom. i. 20, a passage which is quite subversive of
Marcion's theory.
[2456] This is an ironical concession from the Marcionite side.
[2457] Another concession.
[2458] Tertullian's rejoinder.
[2459] De isto.
[2460] They called it .
[2461] By sapientiae profoessores he means the heathen philosophers; see
De Proescript. Hoeret. c. 7.
[2462] In his book adv. Hermogenem, c. 8, Tertullian calls the
philosophers "haereticorum patriarchae."
[2463] Formidaverint.
[2464] Substantiae.
[2465] Dei.
[2466] The Greek name of Jupiter, is here derived from
ferveo, I glow. Juno's name, Tertullian connects with , the air;
. These names of the two great
deities suggest a connection with fire and air.
[2467] i.e., Cybele.
[2468] The earth's irrigations, and the washings of the image of Cybele
every year in the river Almo by her priests, are here confusedly alluded to.
For references to rhe pagan custom, see White and Riddle's large Lat. Dict.
s. v. Almo.
[2469] Mithras, the Persian sun-god, was symbolized by the image of a
lion. The sun entering the zodiacal sign Leo amidst summer heat may be
glanced at.
[2470] Deficiam ad.
[2471] Sordidum. [Well and nobly said.]
[2472] De industria ingeniis aut viribus ampliavit.
[2473] 2 Cor. xii. 5.
[2474] Tertullian, it should be remembered, lived in Africa.
[2475] Cantharidis.
[2476] Adamavit.
[2477] Laboravit.
[2478] Paupertina. This and all such passages are, of course, in
imitation of Marcion's contemptuous view of the creator's work.
[2479] Cellula.
[2480] Infantat.
[2481] Mendicitatibus.
[2482] Matricem.
[2483] Medullas.
[2484] [The use of fish for fasting-days has no better warrant than
Marcion's example.]
[2485] Uteris.
[2486] Vel.
[2487] Conditionem.
[2488] Adv. Marcionem, v. 12.
[2489] For Marcion's exclusive use, and consequent abuse, of St. Paul,
see Neander's Antignostikus (Bohn), vol. ii. pp. 491, 505. 506.
[2490] [This date not merely settles the time of our author's work
against Marcion, but supplies us with evidence that his total lapse must
have been very late in life. for the five books, written at intervals and
marked by progressive tokens of his spiritual decline, are as a whole, only
slightly offensive to Orthodoxy. This should be borne in mind.]
[2491] Frivolis. Again in reference to Marcion undervaluing the creation
as the work of the Demiurge.
[2492] Et ideo.
[2493] In this and the following sentences, the reader will observe the
distinction which is drawn between the Supreme and good God of Marcion and
his "Creator," or Demiurge.
[2494] Subsiciva.
[2495] Stipare se.
[2496] Molitus est.
[2497] Sentire.
[2498] Subicit.
[2499] The Supreme and good God. Tertullian here gives it as one of
Marcion's tenets, that the Demiurge created the World out of pre-existent
matter.
[2500] Interim.
[2501] Ptoinde et.
[2502] Assignet.
[2503] Namely, (I) the supreme and good God; (2) His Christ; (3) the
space in which He dwells; (4) the matter of His creation; (5) the Demiurge
(or Marcion's "Creator"); (6) his promised Christ; (7) the space which
contains him; (8) this world, his creation; (9) evil, inherent in it.
[2504] Consequens est ut.
[2505] Defendant.
[2506] Col. i. 16
[2507] Nunc enin. The elliptical of Greek argumentation.
[2508] Modulata.
[2509] "I make peace, and create evil," Isa. xlv. 7.
[2510] To depreciate the Creator's work the more, Marcion (and
Valentinus too) used to attribute to Him the formation of all the lower
creatures'worms, locusts, etc.'reserving the mightier things to the good and
supreme God. See St. Jerome's Proem. in Epist. ad Philem. [See, Stier, Words
of Jesus, Vol. vi. p. 81.]
[2511] Dinoscetur.
[2512] Quo necessarior.
[2513] Locum.
[2514] In chap. xxii.
[2515] Age.
[2516] Anabibazon. The was the most critical point in the
ecliptic, in the old astrology, fot the calculation of stellar influences.
[2517] Quadratus.
[2518] Trigonus. Saturn and Mars were supposed to be malignant planets.
See Smith, Greek and Rom. Ant. p. 144, c. 2.
[2519] Qualitate.
[2520] Definimus.
[2521] Cognoscendum.
[2522] Recognoscendum.
[2523] Doctrina.
[2524] Ex praedicationibus.
[2525] Operari.
[2526] Vix impleverat.
[2527] Alioquin.
[2528] He means the Emperor Hadrian; comp. Apolog. c. 13.
[2529] The third of these books against Marcion.
[2530] Circumlatorem.
[2531] The author says this, not as his own, but as Marcion's opinion;
as is clear from his own words in his fourth book against Marcion, c. 7,
(Pamelius).
[2532] Spiritus salutaris.
[2533] Aura canicularis.
[2534] Primum processit.
[2535] Utriusque instrumenti.
[2536] Innotuit.
[2537] Tertullian's indignant reply.
[2538] Passivum scilicet convictum.
[2539] Praedicationis. [Largely ad hominem, this arguement.].
[2540] Et alibi.
[2541] 1Cor. xv. 11.
[2542] See Gal. i. 6, 7, and ii. 4.
[2543] Isa. xliii. 19.
[2544] This quotation, however, is from Jer. xxxi. 32.
[2545] Jer. iv. 4.
[2546] Hos. ii. 11.
[2547] Slightly altered from Isa. i. 13, 14.
[2548] Nihil praescribit de.
[2549] i.e., "the old God," as he has just called Him.
[2550] Concessare debebat.
[2551] Ps. ii. 1, 2.
[2552] Aemulum.
[2553] Derogaretur.
[2554] Nutabat.
[2555] Census.
[2556] In Creatore christianizet.
[2557] Obduxeris. For this sense of the word, see Apol. 1. sub init.
"sed obducimur," etc.
[2558] Sacramenti.
[2559] Definito.
[2560] That is, "inspired."
[2561] Nihil retractare oportebat.
[2562] [Kaye, p. 274.]
[2563] In his book, De Praescrip. Hoeret., [cap. xv.] Tertullian had
enjoined that heretics ought not to be argued with, but to be met with the
authoritative rule of the faith. He here proposes to forego that course.
[2564] Marcion's Docetic doctrine of Christ as having only appeared in
human shape, without an actual incarnation, is indignantly confuted by
Tertullian in his De Carne Christi, c.v.
[2565] That is, the principle in question'the bonitas Dei.
[2566] Exinde agens.
[2567] Obvenientia.
[2568] Jugis.
[2569] Susciperet.
[2570] Despiceret.
[2571] Desititueret.
[2572] That is, Marcion's god's.
[2573] Censetur.
[2574] Quandoque.
[2575] Aliquando.
[2576] Cruciare.
[2577] Rescribetur.
[2578] Saevitias.
[2579] Arbusculae.
[2580] Si ut?
[2581] Accessione.
[2582] Ingenio.
[2583] Nune. [Comp. Chapter xv. supra, p. 282.]
[2584] Atquin.
[2585] Familiaritatis.
[2586] This is the sense of the passage as read by Oehler: "Antecedit
autem debita indebitam. ut principalis, ut dignior ministra et comite sua,
id est indebita." Fr. Junius, however, added the word "prior" which begins
the next sentence to these words, making the last clause run thus:"ut
dignior ministra, et comite sua, id est indebita, prior"'"as being more
worthy of an attendant, and as being prior to its companion, that is, the
undue benevolence." It is difficult to find any good use of the "prior" in
the next sentence, "Prior igitur cum prima bonitatis ratio sit," etc., as
Oehler and others point it.
[2587] In rem suam.
[2588] Redundavit.
[2589] Ratio ipsa, i.e., rationality, or the character of resonableness,
which he is now vindicating.
[2590] Alio modo destructus.
[2591] Cujus est res.
[2592] Justitia, right as opposed to the wrong (injuria) of the
preceding sentence.
[2593] Pro domestico, opposed to the pro extraneo, the alien or stranger
of the preceding and succeeding context.
[2594] Assertor.
[2595] Nedum.
[2596] Plagiator.
[2597] i.e., the Creator.
[2598] Oro te.
[2599] Alii Deo. The strength of this phrase is remarkable by the side
of the oft-repeated aliena.
[2600] Therefore Christians used to lift their hands and arms towards
heaven in prayer. Compare The Apology, chap. 30. (where the manibus expansis
betokens the open hand, not merely as the heathen tendens ad sidera palmas).
See also De Orat. c. 13, and other passages from different writers referred
to in the "Tertullian" of the Oxford Library of the Fathers, p. 70. [See the
figures in the Catacombs as represented by Parker, Marriott and others.]
[2601] To the same effect Irenaeus had said: "How will it be consistent
in them to hold that the bread on which thanks are given is the body of
their Lord, and that the cup is His blood, if they do not acknowledge that
He is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, the Word of God?"
(Rigalt.) [The consecrated bread is still bread, in Patristic theology.]
[2602] Operatur, a not unfrequent use of the word. Thus Prudentius
(Psychom. 572) opposes operatio to avaritia.
[2603] Matt. v. 48.
[2604] Traducetur.
[2605] Nec jam.
[2606] Immo.
[2607] Minor numero.
[2608] Non fiunt salvi. [Kaye, p. 347.]
[2609] Pauciores.
[2610] Partiaria exitii.
[2611] Non facit salvos.
[2612] Si forte (i.e., di eiper ara, with a touch of irony,' a
frequent phrase in Tertullian.
[2613] Anima tenus. Comp.De Praescr. Hoer. 33, where Marcion, as well as
Apelles, Valentinus, and others, are charged with the Sadducean denial of
the resurrection of the flesh, which is censured by St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 12.
[2614] Compae De Praescr. Hoer. 33, where Marcion and Apelles are
brought under St. Paul's reproach in 1 Tim. iv. 3.
[2615] Hactenus. [Kaye, p. 260.]
[2616] Animalis (from anima, the vital principle. "the breath of life"
is here opposed to corporalis.
[2617] , homo, from , humus, the ground; see the
Hebrew of Gen. ii. 7.
[2618] Febricitas.
[2619] Offensum, probably in respect of the Marcionite treatment of His
attributes.
[2620] Ingenitam. In chap. xxii. this word seems to be synonymous with
naturalem. Comp. book ii. 3, where it has this sense in the phrase "Deo
ingenita."
[2621] Improbam.
[2622] Appendicibus.
[2623] Affectavit.
[2624] Ruminans.
[2625] Judiciarias vires.
[2626] De ceteris motibus.
[2627] Nec necessario.
[2628] Retro.
[2629] Concussibilis.
[2630] Concupiscentiae
[2631] (i.e., Marcion's god.)
[2632] Porro.
[2633] Aemulatione.
[2634] Denique.
[2635] Scilicet.
[2636] Officiales suae
[2637] Suis dotibus.
[2638] Administratur.
[2639] Praescribatur.
[2640] Defendemus.
[2641] Ut non defensurus. Defendo = vindico. See Oehler's note for other
instances.
[2642] Secendum.
[2643] Pronunciavit.
[2644] Obsequium subsignare.
[2645] Legitimus.
[2646] Propter disciplinam.
[2647] Plagiarii. The Plagiarius is the or the
of Alex. Greek. This "man-stealing" profession was often
accompanied with agreeable external accomplishments. k.t.l.'Desid. Herald. Animad. ad Arnobium, p. 101.
[2648] Comp. Apology, 38.
[2649] Absit, inquis, absit. [i.e., the throwing of a grain of incense
into the censer, before the Emperor's image or that of a heathen god.]
[2650] Sulphuratiorem gehennam.
[2651] Ita neminem.
[2652] Suffectura. A something whereon the Spirit may operate; so that
the Spirit has a praefectura over the anima. [Kaye, p. 179.]
[2653] Resignatum. Tertullian here yields to his love of antithesis, and
makes almost nonsense of signo and resigno. The latter verb has the meaning
violate (in opposition to signo, in the phrase virgo signata, a pure
unviolated virgin).
[2654] Apud se.
[2655] Apud se.
[2656] Exsortem salutis.
[2657] Free from all matrimonial impurity.
[2658] Spadonibus. This word is more general in sense than eunuch,
embracing such as are impotent both by nature and by castration, White and
Riddle's Lat. Dict. s.v.
[2659] Tertullian's Montanism appears here.
[2660] i.e., abstinence from marriage.
[2661] Sectando. [This, indeed, seems to be a fair statement of
Patristic doctrine concerning marriage. As to our author's variations see
Kaye, p. 378.]
[2662] Universum conditionis.
[2663] Causa in its proper sense is, "that though which anything takes
place:" its just and normal state, therefore. Culpa is the derangment of the
cause; some flaw in it.
[2664] Gen. i. 28.
[2665] Ex. xx. 14,17.
[2666] Lev. xx. 10,13,15.
[2667] Ratio.
[2668] In fide. Tertullian uses (De Pud. 18) "Ante fidem" as synonymous
with ante baptismum; similarly "post fidem."
[2669] [Bad as this is, does it argue the lapse of our author as at this
time complete?]
[2670] 1 Cor. vii. 29.
[2671] 2 Cor. xii. 9.
[2672] This is the force of the erit instead of the past tense.
[2673] Isses in, i.e., obstitisses, check or resist, for then Marcion
would, of course, not have been born: the common text has esses in.
[2674] Tertullian has discussed these "definitions" in chap. ii. vii.,
and the "conditions" from chap. viii. onward. He will "examine the
Scripture" passages in books iv. and v. Fr. Junius.
[2675] Statuum.
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