Five Books Against Marcion - Book III - 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.
Christ's Millennial and Heavenly Glory in Company with His Saints.
Wherein Christ is shown to be the son of God, who created the world; to have
been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own, by a
real incarnation.
Chapter I. Introductory; A Brief Statement of the Preceding Argument in
Connection with the Subject of This Book.
Following the track of my original treatise, the loss of which we are
steadily proceeding [3076] to restore, we come now, in the order of our
subject, to treat of Christ, although this be a work of supererogation,
[3077] after the proof which we have gone through that there is but one only
God. For no doubt it has been already ruled with sufficient clearness, that
Christ must be regarded as pertaining to [3078] no other God than the
Creator, when it has been determined that no other God but the Creator
should be the object of our faith. Him did Christ so expressly preach,
whilst the apostles one after the other also so clearly affirmed that Christ
belonged to [3079] no other God than Him whom He Himself preached'that is,
the Creator'that no mention of a second God (nor, accordingly, of a second
Christ) was ever agitated previous to Marcion's scandal. This is most easily
proved by an examination [3080] of both the apostolic and the heretical
churches, [3081] from which we are forced to declare that there is
undoubtedly a subversion of the rule (of faith), where any opinion is found
of later date, [3082] 'a point which I have inserted in my first book.
[3083] A discussion of it would unquestionably be of value even now, when we
are about to make a separate examination into (the subject of) Christ;
because, whilst proving Christ to be the Creator's Son, we are effectually
shutting out the God of Marcion. Truth should employ all her available
resources, and in no limping way. [3084] In our compendious rules of faith,
however, she has it all her own way. [3085] But I have resolved, like an
earnest man, [3086] to meet my adversary every way and everywhere in the
madness of his heresy, which is so great, that he has found it easier to
assume that that Christ has come who was never heard of, than He who has
always been predicted.
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Chapter II. Why Christ's Coming Should Be Previously Announced.
Coming then at once to the point, [3087] I have to encounter the question,
Whether Christ ought to have come so suddenly? [3088] (I answer, No.)
First, because He was the Son of God His Father. For this was a point of
order, that the Father should announce [3089] the Son before the Son
should the Father, and that the Father should testify of the Son before the
Son should testify of the Father. Secondly, because, in addition to the
title of Son, He was the Sent. The authority, [3090] therefore, of the
Sender must needs have first appeared in a testimony of the Sent; because
none who comes in the authority of another does himself set it forth
[3091] for himself on his own assertion, but rather looks out for protection
from it, for first comes the support [3092] of him who gives him his
authority. Now (Christ) will neither be acknowledged as Son if the Father
never named Him, nor be believed in as the Sent One if no Sender [3093]
gave Him a commission: the Father, if any, purposely naming Him; and the
Sender, if any, purposely commissioning Him. Everything will be open to
suspicion which transgresses a rule. Now the primary order of all things
will not allow that the Father should come after the Son in recognition, or
the Sender after the Sent, or God after Christ. Nothing can take precedence
of its own original in being acknowledged, nor in like manner can it in its
ordering. [3094] Suddenly a Son, suddenly Sent, and suddenly Christ! On
the contrary, I should suppose that from God nothing comes suddenly, because
there is nothing which is not ordered and arranged by God. And if ordered,
why not also foretold, that it may be proved to have been ordered by the
prediction, and by the ordering to be divine? And indeed so great a work,
which (we may be sure) required preparation, [3095] as being for the
salvation of man, could not have been on that very account a sudden thing,
because it was through faith that it was to be of avail. [3096] Inasmuch,
then, as it had to be believed in order to be of use, so far did it require,
for the securing of this faith, a preparation built upon the foundations of
pro-arrangement and fore-announcement. Faith, when informed by such a
process, might justly be required [3097] of man by God, and by man be
reposed in God; it being a duty, after that knowledge [3098] has made it a
possibility, to believe those things which a man had learned indeed to
believe from the fore-announcement. [3099]
Chapter III. Miracles Alone, Without Prophecy, an Insufficient Evidence of
Christ's Mission.
A procedure [3100] of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He
was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of
God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works. [3101]
On my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was
sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its
authority, [3102] because when He declared that many would come and "show
great signs and wonders," [3103] so as to turn aside the very elect, and
yet for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in
signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false
christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and
understood, and received on a certain evidence'I mean that of miracles'that
He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort of
proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and unannounced by
any authority? [3104] If, because He came before them, and was beforehand
with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He therefore seized
the first right to men's faith,'just as the firstcomers do the first place
in the baths,'and so forestalled all who came after Him in that right, take
care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of the later comers, if He
be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had already been made known,
and had already worked miracles like Him, [3105] and like Him had
forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should come after Him.
If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter this warning, is to
bar and limit faith, [3106] He will Himself have to be condemned, because
He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to prescribe such a rule
about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who could have been
posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove that the Creator
sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other cases reserved for
His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you claim as solely due
to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this maintain that there was
so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should not be believed in simply
on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these would have shown Him to belong
to none other (God) than the Creator, because answering to the mighty deeds
of the Creator, both as performed by His servants and reserved for [3107]
His Christ; although, even if some other proofs should be found in your
Christ'new ones, to wit'we should more readily believe that they, too,
belong to the same God as do the old ones, rather than to him who has no
other than new [3108] proofs, such as are wanting in the evidences of that
antiquity which wins the assent of faith, [3109] so that even on this
ground he ought to have come announced as much by prophecies of his own
building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially in opposition to the
Creator's Christ who was to come fortified by signs and prophets of His own,
in order that he might shine forth as the rival of Christ by help of
evidence of different kinds. But how was his Christ to be foretold by a god
who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the unavoidable
inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object of faith,
because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to have been
made known through God. [3110]
Chapter IV. Marcion's Christ Not the Subject of Prophecy. The Absurd
Consequences of This Theory of the Heretic.
He [3111] disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one
who was displeasing to him, and was by all means to be vanquished. He wished
to come, as a new being in a new way'a son previous to his father's
announcement, a sent one before the authority of the sender; so that he
might in person [3112] propagate a most monstrous faith, whereby it should
come to be believed that Christ was come before it should be known that He
had an existence. It is here convenient to me to treat that other point: Why
he came not after Christ? For when I observe that, during so long a period,
his lord [3113] bore with the greatest patience the very ruthless Creator
who was all the while announcing His Christ to men, I say, that whatever
reason impelled him to do so, postponing thereby his own revelation and
interposition, the self-same reason imposed on him the duty of bearing with
the Creator (who had also in His Christ dispensations of His own to carry
out); so that, after the completion and accomplishment of the entire plan of
the rival God and the rival Christ, [3114] he might then superinduce his
own proper dispensation. But he grew weary of so long an endurance, and so
failed to wait till the end of the Creator's course. It was of no use, his
enduring that his Christ should be predicted, when he refused to permit him
to be manifested. [3115] Either it was without just cause that he
interrupted the full course of his rival's time, or without just cause did
he so long refrain from interrupting it. What held him back at first? Or
what disturbed him at last? As the case now stands, however, [3116] he has
committed himself in respect of both, having revealed himself so tardily
after the Creator, so hurriedly before His Christ; whereas he ought long ago
to have encountered the one with a confutation, the other to have forborne
encountering as yet'not to have borne with the one so long in His ruthless
hostility, nor to have disquieted the other, who was as yet quiescent! In
the case of both, while depriving them of their title to be considered the
most good God, he showed himself at least capricious and uncertain; lukewarm
(in his resentment) towards the Creator, but fervid against His Christ, and
powerless [3117] in respect of them both! For he no more restrained the
Creator than he resisted His Christ. The Creator still remains such as He
really is. His Christ also will come, [3118] just as it is written of Him.
Why did he [3119] come after the Creator, since he was unable to correct
Him by punishment? [3120] Why did he reveal himself before Christ, whom he
could not hinder from appearing? [3121] If, on the contrary, [3122] he
did chastise the Creator, he revealed himself, (I suppose, ) after Him in
order that things which require correction might come first. On which
account also, (of course, ) he ought to have waited for Christ to appear
first, whom he was going to chastise in like manner; then he would be His
punisher coming after Him, [3123] just as he had been in the case of the
Creator. There is another consideration: since he will at his second advent
come after Him, that as he at His first coming took hostile proceed-rags
against the Creator, destroying the law and the prophets, which were His, so
he may, to be sure, [3124] at his second coming proceed in opposition to
Christ, upsetting [3125] His kingdom. Then, no doubt, he would terminate
his course, and then (if ever) [3126] be worthy of belief; for else, if
his work has been already perfected, it would be in vain for him to come,
for there would indeed be nothing that he could further accomplish.
Chapter V. Sundry Features of the Prophetic Style: Principles of Its
Interpretation.
These preliminary remarks I have ventured to make [3127] at this first
step of the discussion and while the conflict is, as it were, from a
distance. But inasmuch as I shall now from this point have to grapple with
my opponent on a distinct issue and in close combat, I perceive that I must
advance even here some lines, at which the battle will have to be delivered;
they are the Scriptures of the Creator. For as I shall have to prove that
Christ was from the Creator, according to these (Scriptures), which were
afterwards accomplished in the Creator's Christ, I find it necessary to set
forth the form and, so to speak, the nature of the Scriptures themselves,
that they may not distract the reader's attention by being called into
controversy at the moment of their application to subjects of discussion,
and by their proof being confounded with the proof of the subjects
themselves. Now there are two conditions of prophetic announcement which I
adduce, as requiring the assent of our adversaries in the future stages of
the discussion. One, that future events are sometimes announced as if they
were already passed. For it is [3128] consistent with Deity to regard as
accomplished facts whatever It has determined on, because there is no
difference of time with that Being in whom eternity itself directs a uniform
condition of seasons. It is indeed more natural [3129] to the prophetic
divination to represent as seen and already brought to pass, [3130] even
while forseeing it, that which it foresees; in other words, that which is by
all means future. As for instance, in Isaiah: "I gave my back to the
smiters, and my cheeks (I exposed) to their hands. I hid not my face from
shame and spitting." [3131] For whether it was Christ even then, as we
hold, or the prophet, as the Jews say, who pronounced these words concerning
himself, in either case, that which as yet had not happened sounded as if it
had been already accomplished. Another characteristic will be, that very
many events are figuratively predicted by means of enigmas and allegories
and parables, and that they must be understood in a sense different from the
literal description. For we both read Of "the mountains dropping down new
wine," [3132] but not as if one might expect "must" from the stones, or
its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of "a land flowing with milk and
honey," [3133] but not as if you were to suppose that you would ever
gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His
services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, "I will open rivers in
a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree." [3134]
In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He says,
"The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls," He
surely never meant to derive [3135] His fortunate omens from the young of
birds and foxes, and from the songsters of marvel and fable. But why enlarge
on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics adopt, [3136]
interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen that tread
out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves; [3137] and also alleges
that the rock which followed (the Isrealites) and supplied them with drink
was Christ; [3138] teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two
narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their
course; [3139] and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was
declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and
become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the church.
[3140]
Chapter VI. Community in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error.
Prophecies of Christ's Rejection Examined.
Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two characteristics in the
Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader remember, [3141] whenever we
adduce any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent, [3142] the point
of discussion is not the form of the scripture, but the subject it is called
in to prove. When, therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say
that that Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed
that, on their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who had always
been predicted; and thus they are obliged to make common cause with [3143]
Jewish error, and construct their arguments with its assistance, on the
pretence that the Jews were themselves quite certain that it was some other
who came: so they not only rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an
enemy, although they would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with all
religious devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves: Our
shipmaster [3144] of course got his craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian
law, [3145] but from the Pontic, [3146] which cautioned him against
believing that the Jews had no right to sin against their Christ; whereas
(even if nothing like their conduct had been predicted against them) human
nature alone, liable to error as it is, might well have induced him to
suppose that it was quite possible for the Jews to have committed such a
sin, considered as men, without assuming any unfair prejudice regarding
their feelings, whose sin was antecedently so credible. Since, however, it
was actually foretold that they would not acknowledge Christ, and therefore
would even put Him to death, it will therefore follow that He was both
ignored [3147] and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being
about to commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this,
instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they declare
Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm the
possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected, He could
not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the subject of
His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment with adducing
those which simply show that there was a probability of Christ's rejection.
This is quickly done, since the passages indicate that the entire power of
understanding was by the Creator taken from the people. "I will take
away," says He, "the wisdom of their wise men; and the understanding of
their prudent men will I hide; " [3148] and again: "With your ear ye shall
hear, and not understand; and with your eyes ye shall see, but not perceive:
for the heart of this people hath growth fat, and with their ears they hear
heavily, and their eyes have they shut; lest they hear with their ears, and
see with their eyes, and understand with the heart, and be converted, and I
heal them." [3149] Now this blunting of their sound senses they had
brought on themselves, loving God with their lips, but keeping far away from
Him in their heart. Since, then, Christ was announced by the Creator, "who
formeth the lightning, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man His
Christ," as the prophet Joel says, [3150] since the entire hope of the
Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the manifestation of
Christ,'it was demonstrated that they, by their being deprived of those
powers of knowledge and understanding'wisdom and prudence, would fail to
know and understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief of
their wise men should be in error respecting Him'that is to say, their
scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like them,
should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while teaching them,
and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ, although giving them signs.
Similarly it is said elsewhere: "Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but
he who ruleth over them? " [3151] Also when He upbraids them by the same
Isaiah: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but
Isreal doth not know; my people doth not consider." [3152] We indeed, who
know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets, as the Spirit of
the Creator (for so says the prophet: "The person of our Spirit, Christ the
Lord," [3153] who from the beginning was both heard and seen as the
Father's vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that His words, when
actually upbraiding Isreal, were the same as those which it was foretold
that He should denounce against him: "Ye have forsaken the Lord, and have
provoked the Holy One of Isreal to anger." [3154] If, however, you would
rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole imputation of
Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness to allow that even
anciently [3155] the Creator's word and Spirit'that is to say, His
Christ'was despised and not acknowledged by them, you will even in this
subterfuge be defeated. For when you do not deny that the Creator's Son and
Spirit and Substance is also His Christ, you must needs allow that those who
have not acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to acknowledge the Son
through the identity of their natural substance; [3156] for if in Its
fulness It has baffled man's understanding, much more has a portion of It,
especially when partaking of the fulness [3157] Now, when these things are
carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both rejected Christ
and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a strange Christ, but because
they did not acknowledge Him, although their own. For how could they have
understood the strange One, concerning whom nothing had ever been announced,
when they failed to understand Him about whom there had been a perpetual
course of prophecy? That admits of being understood or being not understood,
which, by possessing a substantial basis for prophecy, [3158] will also
have a subject-matter [3159] for either knowledge or error; whilst that
which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom. So that it was not
as if He belonged to another [3160] god that they conceived an aversion
for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a man whom they regarded as a
wonder-working juggler, [3161] and an enemy [3162] in His doctrines.
They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and one of themselves
too'that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a destroyer of Judaism)'and punished
Him according to their law. If He had been a stranger, indeed, they would
not have sat in judgment over Him. So far are they from appearing to have
understood Him to be a strange Christ, that they did not even judge Him to
be a stranger to their own human nature. [3163]
Chapter VII. Prophecy Sets Forth Two Different Conditions of Christ, One
Lowly, the Other Majestic. This Fact Points to Two Advents of Christ.
Our heretic will now have the fullest opportunity of learning the clue
[3164] of his errors along with the Jew himself, from whom he has borrowed
his guidance in this discussion. Since, however, the blind leads the blind,
they fall into the ditch together. We affirm that, as there are two
conditions demonstrated by the prophets to belong to Christ, so these
presignified the same number of advents; one, and that the first, was to be
in lowliness, [3165] when He had to be led as a sheep to be slain as a
victim, and to be as a lamb dumb before the shearer, not opening His mouth,
and not fair to look upon. [3166] For, says (the prophet), we have
announced concerning Him: "He is like a tender plant, [3167] like a root
out of a thirsty ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; and we beheld Him,
and He was without beauty: His form was disfigured; " [3168] "marred more
than the sons of men; a man stricken with sorrows, and knowing how to bear
our infirmity; " [3169] "placed by the Father as a stone of stumbling and
a rock of offence; " [3170] "made by Him a little lower than the angels;
" [3171] declaring Himself to be "a worm and not a man, a reproach of men,
and despised of the people." [3172] Now these signs of degradation quite
suit His first coming, just as the tokens of His majesty do His second
advent, when He shall no longer remain "a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence," but after His rejection become "the chief corner-stone," accepted
and elevated to the top place [3173] of the temple, even His church, being
that very stone in Daniel, cut out of the mountain, which was to smite and
crush the image of the secular kingdom. [3174] Of this advent the same
prophet says: "Behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of
heaven, and came to the Ancient of days; and they brought Him before Him,
and there was given Him dominion and glory, and a kingdom, that all people,
nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting
dominion, which shall not pass away; and His kingdom that which shall not be
destroyed." [3175] Then indeed He shall have both a glorious form, and an
unsullied beauty above the sons of men. "Thou art fairer," says (the
Psalmist), "than the children of men; grace is poured into Thy lips;
therefore God hath blessed Thee for ever. Gird Thy sword upon Thy thigh, O
most mighty, with Thy glory and Thy majesty." [3176] For the Father,
after making Him a little lower than the angels, "will crown Him with glory
and honour, and put all things under His feet." [3177] "Then shall they
look on Him whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for Him, tribe
after tribe; " [3178] because, no doubt, they once refused to acknowledge
Him in the lowliness of His human condition. He is even a man says Jeremiah,
and who shall recognise Him Therefore, asks Isaiah, "who shall declare His
generation? " [3179] So also in Zechariah, Christ Jesus, the true High
Priest of the Father, in the person of Joshua, nay, in the very mystery of
His name, [3180] is portrayed in a twofold dress with reference to both
His advents. At first He is clad in sordid garments, that is to say, in the
lowliness of suffering and mortal flesh: then the devil resisted Him, as the
instigator of the traitor Judas, not to mention his tempting Him after His
baptism: afterwards He was stripped of His first filthy raiment, and adorned
with the priestly robe [3181] and mitre, and a pure diadem; [3182] in
other words, with the glory and honour of His second advent. [3183] If I
may offer, moreover, an interpretation of the two goats which were presented
on "the great day of atonement," [3184] do they not also figure the two
natures of Christ? They were of like size, and very similar in appearance,
owing to the Lord's identity of aspect; because He is not to come in any
other form, having to be recognised by those by whom He was also wounded and
pierced. One of these goats was bound [3185] with scarlet, [3186] and
driven by the people out of the camp [3187] into the wilderness,
[3188] amid cursing, and spitting, and pulling, and piercing, [3189]
being thus marked with all the signs of the Lord's own passion; while the
other, by being offered up for sins, and given to the priests of the temple
for meat, afforded proofs of His second appearance, when (after all sins
have been expiated) the priests of the spiritual temple, that is, the
church, are to enjoy the flesh, as it were, [3190] of the Lord's own
grace, whilst the residue go away from salvation without tasting it.
[3191] Since, therefore, the first advent was prophetically declared both as
most obscure in its types, and as deformed with every kind of indignity, but
the second as glorious and altogether worthy of God, they would on this very
account, while confining their regards to that which they were easily able
both to understand and to believe, even the second advent, be not
undeservedly deceived respecting the more obscure, and, at any rate, the
more lowly first coming. Accordingly, to this day they deny that their
Christ has come, because He has not appeared in majesty, while they ignore
the fact that He was to come also in lowliness.
Chapter VIII. Absurdity of Marcion's Docetic Opinions; Reality of Christ's
Incarnation.
Our heretic must now cease to borrow poison from the Jew'"the asp," as the
adage runs, "from the viper" [3192] 'and henceforth vomit forth the
virulence of his own disposition, as when he alleges Christ to be a phantom.
Except, indeed, that this opinion of his will be sure to have others to
maintain it in his precocious and somewhat abortive Marcionites, whom the
Apostle John designated as antichrists, when they denied that Christ was
come in the flesh; not that they did this with the view of establishing the
right of the other god (for on this point also they had been branded by the
same apostle), but because they had started with assuming the incredibility
of an incarnate God. Now, the more firmly the antichrist Marcion had seized
this assumption, the more prepared was he, of course, to reject the bodily
substance of Christ, since he had introduced his very god to our notice as
neither the author nor the restorer of the flesh; and for this very reason,
to be sure, as pre-eminently good, and most remote from the deceits and
fallacies of the Creator. His Christ, therefore, in order to avoid all such
deceits and fallacies, and the imputation, if possible, of belonging to the
Creator, was not what he appeared to be, and reigned himself to be what he
was not'incarnate without being flesh, human without being man, and likewise
a divine Christ without being God! But why should he not have propagated
also the phantom of God? Can I believe him on the subject of the internal
nature, who was all wrong touching the external substance? How will it be
possible to believe him true on a mystery, when he has been found so false
on a plain fact? How, moreover, when he confounds the truth of the spirit
with the error of the flesh, [3193] could he combine within himself that
communion of light and darkness, or truth and error, which the apostle says
cannot co-exist? [3194] Since however, Christ's being flesh is now
discovered to be a lie, it follows that all things which were done by the
flesh of Christ were done untruly, [3195] 'every act of intercourse,
[3196] of contact, of eating or drinking, [3197] yea, His very miracles.
If with a touch, or by being touched, He freed any one of a disease,
whatever was done by any corporeal act cannot be believed to have been truly
done in the absence of all reality in His body itself. Nothing substantial
can be allowed to have been effected by an unsubstantial thing; nothing full
by a vacuity. If the habit were putative, the action was putative; if the
worker were imaginary the works were imaginary. On this principle, too, the
sufferings of Christ will be found not to warrant faith in Him. For He
suffered nothing who did not truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly
suffer. God's entire work, therefore, is subverted. Christ's death, wherein
lies the whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, is denied although
the apostle asserts [3198] it so expressly [3199] as undoubtedly real,
making it the very foundation of the gospel, of our salvation and of his own
preaching. [3200] "I have delivered unto you before all things," says he,
"how that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that He rose
again the third day." Besides, if His flesh is denied, how is His death to
be asserted; for death is the proper suffering of the flesh, which returns
through death back to the earth out of which it was taken, according to the
law of its Maker? Now, if His death be denied, because of the denial of His
flesh, there will be no certainty of His resurrection. For He rose not, for
the very same reason that He died not, even because He possessed not the
reality of the flesh, to which as death accrues, so does resurrection
likewise. Similarly, if Christ's resurrection be nullified, ours also is
destroyed. If Christ's resurrection be not realized, [3201] neither shall
that be for which Christ came. For just as they, who said that there is no
resurrection of the dead, are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection
of Christ, so, if the resurrection of Christ falls to the ground, the
resurrection of the dead is also swept away. [3202] And so our faith is
vain, and vain also is the preaching of the apostles. Moreover, they even
show themselves to be false witnesses of God, because they testified that He
raised up Christ, whom He did not raise. And we remain in our sins still.
[3203] And those who have slept in Christ have perished; destined,
forsooth, [3204] to rise again, but peradventure in a phantom state,
[3205] just like Christ.
Chapter IX. Refutation of Marcion's Objections Derived from the Cases of the
Angels, and the Pre-Incarnate Manifestations of the Son of God.
Now, in this discussion of yours, [3206] when you suppose that we are to
be met with the case of the Creator's angels, as if they held intercourse
with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative flesh,
[3207] and yet did truly converse, and eat, and work, as they had been
commissioned to do, you will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as
examples the acts of that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you
make your god a better and more perfect being, by just so much will all
examples be unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and
without which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But
then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you, that in
the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of a true and solid
human substance. For if (on your terms) it was no difficulty to him to
manifest true sensations and actions in a putative flesh, it was much more
easy for him still to have assigned the true substance of flesh to these
true sensations and actions, as the proper maker and former thereof. But
your god, perhaps on the ground of his having produced no flesh at all, was
quite right in introducing the mere phantom of that of which he had been
unable to produce the reality. My God, however, who formed that which He had
taken out of the dust of the ground in the true quality of flesh, although
not issuing as yet from conjugal seed, was equally able to apply to angels
too a flesh of any material whatsoever, who built even the world out of
nothing, into so many and so various bodies, and that at a word! And,
really, if your god promises to men some time or other the true nature of
angels [3208] (for he says, "They shall be like the angels"), why should
not my God also have fitted on to angels the true substance of men, from
whatever source derived? For not even you will tell me, in reply, whence is
obtained that angelic nature on your side; so that it is enough for me to
define this as being fit and proper to God, even the verity of that thing
which was objective to three senses'sight, touch, and hearing. It is more
difficult for God to practise deception [3209] than to produce real flesh
from any material whatever, even without the means of birth. But for other
heretics, also, who maintain that the flesh in the angels ought to have been
born of flesh, if it had been really human, we have an answer on a sure
principle, to the effect that it was truly human flesh, and yet not born. It
was truly human, because of the truthfulness of God, who can neither lie nor
deceive, and because (angelic beings) cannot be dealt with by men in a human
way except in human substance: it was withal unborn, because none [3210]
but Christ could become incarnate by being born of the flesh in order that
by His own nativity He might regenerate [3211] our birth, and might
further by His death also dissolve our death, by rising again in that flesh
in which, that He might even die, He was born. Therefore on that occasion He
did Himself appear with the angels to Abraham in the verity of the flesh,
which had not as yet undergone birth, because it was not yet going to die,
although it was even now learning to hold intercourse amongst men. Still
greater was the propriety in angels, who never received a dispensation to
die for us, not having assumed even a brief experience [3212] of flesh by
being born, because they were not destined to lay it down again by dying;
but, from whatever quarter they obtained it, and by what means soever they
afterwards entirely divested themselves of it, they yet never pretended it
to be unreal flesh. Since the Creator "maketh His angels spirits, and His
ministers a flame of fire"'as truly spirits as also fire'so has He truly
made them flesh likewise; wherefore we can now recall to our own minds, and
remind the heretics also, that He has promised that He will one day form men
into angels, who once formed angels into men.
Chapter X. The Truly Incarnate State More Worthy of God Than Marcion's
Fantastic Flesh.
Therefore, since you are not permitted to resort to any instances of the
Creator, as alien from the subject, and possessing special causes of their
own, I should like you to state yourself the design of your god, in
exhibiting his Christ not in the reality of flesh. If he despised it as
earthly, and (as you express it) full of dung, [3213] why did he not on
that account include the likeness of it also in his contempt? For no honour
is to be attributed to the image of anything which is itself unworthy of
honour. As the natural state is, so will the likeness be. But how could he
hold converse with men except in the image of human substance? [3214]
Why, then, not rather in the reality thereof, that his intercourse might be
real, since he was under the necessity of holding it? And to how much better
account would this necessity have been turned by ministering to faith rather
than to a fraud! [3215] The god whom you make is miserable enough, for
this very reason that he was unable to display his Christ except in the
effigy of an unworthy, and indeed an alien, thing. In some instances, it
will be convenient to use even unworthy things, if they be only our own, as
it will also be quite improper to use things, be they ever so worthy, if
they be not our own. [3216] Why, then, did he not come in some other
worthier substance, and especially his own, that he might not seem as if he
could not have done without an unworthy and an alien one? Now, since my
Creator held intercourse with man by means of even a bush and fire, and
again afterwards by means of a cloud and column, [3217] and in
representations of Himself used bodies composed of the elements, these
examples of divine power afford sufficient proof that God did not require
the instrumentality of false or even of real flesh. But yet, if we look
steadily into the subject, there is really no substance which is worthy of
becoming a vestment for God. Whatsoever He is pleased to clothe Himself
withal, He makes worthy of Himself'only without untruth. [3218] Therefore
how comes it to pass that he should have thought the verity of the flesh,
rather than its unreality, a disgrace? Well, but he honoured it by his
fiction of it. How great, then, is that flesh, the very phantasy of which
was a necessity to the superior God!
Chapter XI. Christ Was Truly Born; Marcion's Absurd Cavil in Defence of a
Putative Nativity.
All these illusions of an imaginary corporeity [3219] in (his) Christ,
Marcion adopted with this view, that his nativity also might not be
furnished with any evidence from his human substance, and that thus the
Christ of the Creator might be free to have assigned to Him all predictions
which treated of Him as one capable of human birth, and therefore fleshly.
But most foolishly did our Pontic heresiarch act in this too. As if it would
not be more readily believed that flesh in the Divine Being should rather be
unborn than untrue, this belief having in fact had the way mainly prepared
for it by the Creator's angels when they conversed in flesh which was real,
although unborn. For indeed the notorious Philumena [3220] persuaded
Apelles and the other seceders from Marcion rather to believe that Christ
did really carry about a body of flesh; not derived to Him, however, from
birth, but one which He borrowed from the elements. Now, as Marcion was
apprehensive that a belief of the fleshly body would also involve a belief
of birth, undoubtedly He who seemed to be man was believed to be verily and
indeed born. For a certain woman had exclaimed, "Blessed is the womb that
bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked!" [3221] And how else
could they have said that His mother and His brethren were standing
without? [3222] But we shall see more of this in the proper place.
[3223] Surely, when He also proclaimed Himself as the Son of man, He,
without doubt, confessed that He had been born. Now I would rather refer all
these points to an examination of the gospel; but still, as I have already
stated, if he, who seemed to be man, had by all means to pass as having been
born, it was vain for him to suppose that faith in his nativity was to be
perfected [3224] by the device of an imaginary flesh. For what advantage
was there in that being not true which was held to be true, whether it were
his flesh or his birth? Or if you should say, let human opinion go for
nothing; [3225] you are then honouring your god under the shelter of a
deception, since he knew himself to be something different from what he had
made men to think of him. In that case you might possibly have assigned to
him a putative nativity even, and so not have hung the question on this
point. For silly women fancy themselves pregnant sometimes, when they are
corpulent [3226] either from their natural flux [3227] or from some
other malady. And, no doubt, it had become his duty, since he had put on the
mere mask of his substance, to act out from its earliest scene the play of
his phantasy, lest he should have failed in his part at the beginning of the
flesh. You have, of course, [3228] rejected the sham of a nativity, and
have produced true flesh itself. And, no doubt, even the real nativity of a
God is a most mean thing. [3229] Come then, wind up your cavils [3230]
against the most sacred and reverend works of nature; inveigh against all
that you are; destroy the origin of flesh and life; call the womb a sewer of
the illustrious animal'in other words, the manufactory for the production of
man; dilate on the impure and shameful tortures of parturition, and then on
the filthy, troublesome, contemptible issues of the puerperal labour itself!
But yet, after you have pulled all these things down to infamy, that you may
affirm them to be unworthy of God, birth will not be worse for Him than
death, infancy than the cross, punishment than nature, condemnation than the
flesh. If Christ truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for
Him. If Christ suffered evasively, [3231] as a phantom; evasively, too,
might He have been born. Such are Marcion's chief arguments by which he
makes out another Christ; and I think that we show plainly enough that they
are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how much more truly consistent with
God is the reality rather than the falsehood of that condition [3232] in
which He manifested His Christ. Since He was "the truth," He was flesh;
since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this heresy assaults
are confirmed, when the means of the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He
is to be considered in the flesh, [3233] because He was born; and born,
because He is in the flesh, and because He is no phantom,'it follows that He
must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was by
the Creator's prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the
process of human birth. [3234]
Chapter XII. Isaiah's Prophecy of Emmanuel. Christ Entitled to that Name.
And challenge us first, as is your wont, to consider Isaiah's description of
Christ, while you contend that in no point does it suit. For, to begin with,
you say that Isaiah's Christ will have to be called Emmanuel; [3235]
then, that He takes the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against
the king of Assyria. [3236] But yet He who is come was neither born under
such a name, nor ever engaged in any warlike enterprise. I must, however,
remind you that you ought to look into the contexts [3237] of the two
passages. For there is immediately added the interpretation of Emmanuel,
"God with us; "so that you have to consider not merely the name as it is
uttered, but also its meaning. The utterance is Hebrew, Emmanuel, of the
prophet's own nation; but the meaning of the word, God with us, is by the
interpretation made common property. Inquire, then, whether this name,
God-with-us, which is Emmanuel, be not often used for the name of Christ,
[3238] from the fact that Christ has enlightened the world. And I suppose
you will not deny it, inasmuch as you do yourself admit that He is called
God-with-us, that is, Emmanuel. Else if you are so foolish, that, because
with you He gets the designation God-with-us, not Emmanuel, you therefore
are unwilling to grant that He is come whose property it is to be called
Emmanuel, as if this were not the same name as God-with-us, you will find
among the Hebrew Christians, and amongst Marcionites too, that they name Him
Emmanuel when they mean Him to be called God-with-us; just indeed as every
nation, by whatever word they would express God-with-us, has called Him
Emmanuel, completing the sound in its sense. Now since Emmanuel is
God-with-us, and God-with-us is Christ, who is in us (for "as many of you as
are baptized into Christ, have put on Christ" [3239] ), Christ is as
properly implied in the meaning of the name, which is God-with-us, as He is
in the pronunciation of the name, which is Emmanuel. And thus it is evident
that He is now come who was foretold as Emmanuel, because what Emmanuel
signifies is come, that is to say, God-with-us.
Chapter XIII. Isaiah's Prophecies Considered. The Virginity of Christ's
Mother a Sign. Other Prophecies Also Signs. Metaphorical Sense of Proper
Names in Sundry Passages of the Prophets.
You are equally led away by the sound of names, [3240] when you so
understand the riches of Damascus, and the spoils of Samaria, and the king
of Assyria, as if they portended that the Creator's Christ was a warrior,
not attending to the promise contained in the passage, "For before the Child
shall have knowledge to cry, My father and My mother, He shall take away the
riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before the king of Assyria."
[3241] You should first examine the point of age, whether it can be taken to
represent Christ as even yet a man, [3242] much less a warrior. Although,
to be sure, He might be about to call to arms by His cry as an infant; might
be about to sound the alarm of war not with a trumpet, but with a little
rattle; might he about to seek His foe, not on horseback, or in chariot, or
from parapet, but from nurse's neck or nursemaid's back, and so be destined
to subjugate Damascus and Samaria from His mother's breasts! It is a
different matter, of course, when the babes of your barbarian Pontus spring
forth to the fight. They are, I ween, taught to lance before they
lacerate; [3243] swathed at first in sunshine and ointment, [3244]
afterwards armed with the satchel, [3245] and rationed on bread and
butter! [3246] Now, since nature, certainly, nowhere grants to man to
learn warfare before life, to pillage the wealth of a Damascus before he
knows his father and mother's name, it follows that the passage in question
must be deemed to be a figurative one. Well, but nature, says he, does not
permit "a virgin to conceive," and still the prophet is believed. And indeed
very properly; for he has paved the way for the incredible thing being
believed, by giving a reason for its occurrence, in that it was to be for a
sign. "Therefore," says he, "the Lord himself shall give you a sign; behold,
a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son." [3247] Now a sign from God
would not have been a sign, [3248] unless it had been some novel and
prodigious thing. Then, again, Jewish cavillers, in order to disconcert us,
boldly pretend that Scripture does not hold [3249] that a virgin, but
only a young woman, [3250] is to conceive and bring forth. They are,
however, refuted by this consideration, that nothing of the nature of a sign
can possibly come out of what is a daily occurrence, the pregnancy and
child-bearing of a young woman. A virgin mother is justly deemed to be
proposed [3251] by God as a sign, but a warlike infant has no like claim
to the distinction; for even in such a case [3252] there does not occur
the character of a sign. But after the sign of the strange and novel birth
has been asserted, there is immediately afterwards declared as a sign the
subsequent course of the Infant, [3253] who was to eat butter and honey.
Not that this indeed is of the nature of a sign, nor is His "refusing the
evil; "for this, too, is only a characteristic of infancy. [3254] But His
destined capture of the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria before
the king of Assyria is no doubt a wonderful sign. [3255] Keep to the
measure of His age, and seek the purport of the prophecy, and give back also
to the truth of the gospel what you have taken away from it in the lateness
of your heresy, [3256] and the prophecy at once becomes intelligible and
declares its own accomplishment. Let those eastern magi wait on the new-born
Christ, presenting to Him, (although) in His infancy, their gifts of gold
and frankincense; and surely an Infant will have received the riches of
Damascus without a battle, and unarmed.
For besides the generally known fact, that the riches of the East, that is
to say, its strength and resources, usually consist of gold and spices, it
is certainly true of the Creator, that He makes gold the riches of the
other [3257] nations also. Thus He says by Zechariah: "And Judah shall
also fight at Jerusalem and shall gather together all the wealth of the
nations round about, gold and silver." [3258] Moreover, respecting that
gift of gold, David also says: "And there shall be given to Him of the gold
of Arabia; " [3259] and again: "The kings of Arabia and Saba shall offer
to Him gifts." [3260] For the East generally regarded the magi as kings;
and Damascus was anciently deemed to belong to Arabia, before it was
transferred to Syrophoenicia on the division of the Syrias (by Rome).
[3261] Its riches Christ then received, when He received the tokens thereof
in the gold and spices; while the spoils of Samaria were the magi
themselves. These having discovered Him and honoured Him with their gifts,
and on beaded knee adored Him as their God and King, through the witness of
the star which led their way and guided them, became the spoils of Samaria,
that is to say, of idolatry, because, as it is easy enough to see, [3262]
they believed in Christ. He designated idolatry under the name of Samaria,
as that city was shameful for its idolatry, through which it had then
revolted from God from the days of king Jeroboam. Nor is this an unusual
manner for the Creator, (in His Scriptures [3263] ) figuratively to
employ names of places as a metaphor derived from the analogy of their sins.
Thus He calls the Chief men of the Jews "rulers of Sodom," and the nation
itself "people of Gomorrah." [3264] And in another passage He also says:
"Thy father was an Amorite, and thy mother an Hittite," [3265] by reason
of their kindred iniquity; [3266] although He had actually called them
His sons: "I have nourished and brought up children." [3267] So likewise
by Egypt is sometimes understood, in His sense, [3268] the whole world as
being marked out by superstition and a curse [3269] By a similar usage
Babylon also in our (St.) John is a figure of the city of Rome, as being
like (Babylon) great and proud in royal power, and warring down the saints
of God. Now it was in accordance with this style that He called the magi by
the name of Samaritans, because (as we have said) they had practised
idolatry as did the Samaritans. Moreover, by the phrase "before or against
the king of Assyria," understand "against Herod; "against whom the magi then
opposed themselves, when they refrained from carrying him back word
concerning Christ, whom he was seeking to destroy.
Chapter XIV. Figurative Style of Certain Messianic Prophecies in the Psalms.
Military Metaphors Applied to Christ.
This interpretation of ours will derive confirmation, when, on your
supposing that Christ is in any passage called a warrior, from the mention
of certain arms and expressions of that sort, you weigh well the analogy of
their other meanings, and draw your conclusions accordingly. "Gird on Thy
sword," says David, "upon Thy thigh." [3270] But what do you read about
Christ just before? "Thou art fairer than the children of men; grace is
poured forth upon Thy lips." [3271] It amuses me to imagine that
blandishments of fair beauty and graceful lips are ascribed to one who had
to gird on His sword for war! So likewise, when it is added, "Ride on
prosperously in Thy majesty," [3272] the reason is subjoined: "Because of
truth, and meekness, and righteousness." [3273] But who shall produce
these results with the sword, and not their opposites rather'deceit, and
harshness, and injury'which, it must be confessed, are the proper business
of battles? Let us see, therefore, whether that is not some other sword,
which has so different an action. Now the Apostle John, in the Apocalypse,
describes a sword which proceeded from the mouth of God as "a doubly sharp,
two-edged one." [3274] This may be understood to be the Divine Word, who
is doubly edged with the two testaments of the law and the gospel'sharpened
with wisdom, hostile to the devil, arming us against the spiritual enemies
of all wickedness and concupiscence, and cutting us off from the dearest
objects for the sake of God's holy name. If, however, you will not
acknowledge John, you have our common master Paul, who "girds our loins
about with truth, and puts on us the breastplate of righteousness, and shoes
us with the preparation of the gospel of peace, not of war; who bids us take
the shield of faith, wherewith we may be able to quench all the fiery darts
of the devil, and the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit,
which (he says) is the word of God." [3275] This sword the Lord Himself
came to send on earth, and not peace. [3276] If he is your Christ, then
even he is a warrior. If he is not a warrior, and the sword he brandishes is
an allegorical one, then the Creator's Christ in the psalm too may have been
girded with the figurative sword of the Word, without any martial gear. The
above-mentioned "fairness" of His beauty and "grace of His lips" would quite
suit such a sword, girt as it even then was upon His thigh in the passage of
David, and sent as it would one day be by Him on earth. For this is what He
says: "Ride on prosperously in Thy majesty [3277] "'advancing His word
into every land, so as to call all nations: destined to prosper in the
success of that faith which received Him, and reigning, from the fact
that [3278] He conquered death by His resurrection. "Thy right hand,"
says He, "shall wonderfully lead Thee forth," [3279] even the might of
Thy spiritual grace, whereby the knowledge of Christ is spread. "Thine
arrows are sharp; " [3280] everywhere Thy precepts fly about, Thy
threatenings also, and convictions [3281] of heart, pricking and piercing
each conscience. "The people shall fall under Thee," [3282] that is, in
adoration. Thus is the Creator's Christ mighty in war, and a bearer of arms;
thus also does He now take the spoils, not of Samaria alone, but of all
nations. Acknowledge, then, that His spoils are figurative, since you have
learned that His arms are allegorical. Since, therefore, both the Lord
speaks and His apostle writes such things [3283] in a figurative style,
we are not rash in using His interpretations, the records [3284] of which
even our adversaries admit; and thus in so far will it be Isaiah's Christ
who has come, in as far as He was not a warrior, because it is not of such a
character that He is described by Isaiah.
Chapter XV. The Title Christ Suitable as a Name of the Creator's Son, But
Unsuited to Marcion's Christ.
Touching then the discussion of His flesh, and (through that) of His
nativity, and incidentally [3285] of His name Emmanuel, let this suffice.
Concerning His other names, however, and especially that of Christ, what has
the other side to say in reply? If the name of Christ is as common with you
as is the name of God'so that as the Son of both Gods may be fitly called
Christ, so each of the Fathers may be called Lord'reason will certainly be
opposed to this argument. For the name of God, as being the natural
designation of Deity, may be ascribed to all those beings for whom a divine
nature is claimed,'as, for instance, even to idols. The apostle says: "For
there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth." [3286] The
name of Christ, however, does not arise from nature, but from
dispensation; [3287] and so becomes the proper name of Him to whom it
accrues in consequence of the dispensation. Nor is it subject to be shared
in by any other God, especially a rival, and one that has a dispensation of
His own, to whom it will be also necessary that He should possess names
apart from all others. For how happens it that, after they have devised
different dispensations for two Gods they admit into this diversity of
dispensation a community of names; whereas no proof could be more useful of
two Gods being rival ones, than if there should be found coincident with
their (diverse) dispensations a diversity also of names? For that is not a
state of diverse qualities, which is not distinctly indicated [3288] in
the specific meanings [3289] of their designations. Whenever these are
wanting, there occurs what the Greeks call the katachresis [3290] of a
term, by its improper application to what does not belong to it. [3291]
In God, however, there ought, I suppose, to be no defect, no setting up of
His dispensations by katachrestic abuse of words. Who is this god, that
claims for his son names from the Creator? I say not names which do not
belong to him, but ancient and well-known names, which even in this view of
them would be unsuitable for a novel and unknown god. How is it, again, that
he tells us that "a piece of new cloth is not sewed on to an old garment,"
or that "new wine is not trusted to old bottles," [3292] when he is
himself patched and clad in an old suit [3293] of names? How is it he has
rent off the gospel from the law, when he is wholly invested with the
law,'in the name, forsooth, of Christ? What hindered his calling himself by
some other name, seeing that he preached another (gospel), came from another
source, and refused to take on him a real body, for the very purpose that he
might not be supposed to be the Creator's Christ? Vain, however, was his
unwillingness to seem to be He whose name he was willing to assume; since,
even if he had been truly corporeal, he would more certainly escape being
taken for the Christ of the Creator, if he had not taken on him His name.
But, as it is, he rejects the substantial verity of Him whose name he has
assumed, even though he should give a proof of that verity by his name. For
Christ means anointed, and to be anointed is certainly an affair [3294]
of the body. He who had not a body, could not by any possibility have been
anointed; he who could not by any possibility have been anointed, could not
in any wise have been called Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he
only assumed the phantom of a name too. But how, he asks, was he to
insinuate himself into being believed by the Jews, except through a name
which was usual and familiar amongst them? Then 'tis a fickle and tricksty
God whom you describe! To promote any plan bydeception, is the resource of
either distrust or of maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the
conduct of the false prophets against the Creator, when they came in His
name as their own God. [3295] But I do not find that any good came of
this proceeding, [3296] since they were more apt to suppose either that
Christ was their own, or rather was some deceiver, than that He was the
Christ of the other god; and this the gospel will show.
Chapter XVI. The Sacred Name Jesus Most Suited to the Christ of the Creator.
Joshua a Type of Him.
Now if he caught at the name Christ, just as the pickpocket clutches the
dole-basket, why did he wish to be called Jesus too, by a name which was not
so much looked for by the Jews? For although we, who have by God's grace
attained to the understanding of His mysteries, acknowledge that this name
also was destined for Christ, yet, for all that, the fact was not known to
the Jews, from whom wisdom was taken away. To this day, in short, it is
Christ that they are looking for, not Jesus; and they interpret Elias to be
Christ rather than Jesus. He, therefore, who came also in a name in which
Christ was not expected, might have come only in that name which was solely
anticipated for Him. [3297] But since he has mixed up the two, [3298]
the expected one and the unexpected, his twofold project is defeated. For if
he be Christ for the very purpose of insinuating himself as the Creator's,
then Jesus opposes him, because Jesus was not looked for in the Christ of
the Creator; or if he be Jesus, in order that he might pass as belonging to
the other (God), then Christ hinders him, because Christ was not expected to
belong to any other than the Creator. I know not which one of these names
may be able to hold its ground. [3299] In the Christ of the Creator,
however, both will keep their place, for in Him a Jesus too is found. Do you
ask, how? Learn it then here, with the Jews also who are partakers of your
heresy. When Oshea the son of Nun was destined to be the successor of Moses,
is not his old name then changed, and for the first time he is called
[3300] Joshua? It is true, you say. This, then, we first observe, was a
figure of Him who was to come. For inasmuch as Jesus Christ was to introduce
a new generation [3301] (because we are born in the wilderness of this
world) into the promised land which flows with milk and honey, that is, into
the possession of eternal life, than which nothing can be sweeter; inasmuch,
too, as this was to be brought about not by Moses, that is to say, not by
the discipline of the law, but by Joshua, by the grace of the gospel, our
circumcision being effected by a knife of stone, that is, (by the
circumcision) of Christ, for Christ is a rock (or stone), therefore that
great man, [3302] who was ordained as a type of this mystery, was
actually consecrated with the figure of the Lord's own name, being called
Joshua. This name Christ Himself even then testified to be His own, when He
talked with Moses. For who was it that talked with him, but the Spirit of
the Creator, which is Christ? When He therefore spake this commandment to
the people, "Behold, I send my angel before thy face, to keep thee in the
way, and to bring thee into the land which I have prepared for thee; attend
to him, and obey his voice and do not provoke him; for he has not shunned
you, [3303] since my name is upon him," [3304] He called him an angel
indeed, because of the greatness of the powers which he was to exercise, and
because of his prophetic office, [3305] while announcing the will of God;
but Joshua also (Jesus), because it was a type [3306] of His own future
name. Often [3307] did He confirm that name of His which He had thus
conferred upon (His servant); because it was not the name of angel, nor
Oshea, but Joshua (Jesus), which He had commanded him to bear as his usual
appellation for the time to come. Since, therefore, both these names are
suitable to the Christ of the Creator, they are proportionately unsuitable
to the non-Creator's Christ; and so indeed is all the rest of (our Christ's)
destined course. [3308] In short, there must now for the future be made
between us that certain and equitable rule, necessary to both sides, which
shall determine that there ought to be absolutely nothing at all in common
between the Christ of the other god and the Creator's Christ. For you will
have as great a necessity to maintain their diversity as we have to resist
it, inasmuch as you will be as unable to show that the Christ of the other
god has come, until you have proved him to be a far different being from the
Creator's Christ, as we, to claim Him (who has come) as the Creator's, until
we have shown Him to be such a one as the Creator has appointed. Now
respecting their names, such is our conclusion against (Marcion). [3309]
I claim for myself Christ; I maintain for myself Jesus.
Chapter XVII. Prophecies in Isaiah and the Psalms Respecting Christ's
Humiliation.
Let us compare with Scripture the rest of His dispensation. Whatever that
poor despised body [3310] may be, because it was an object of touch
[3311] and sight, [3312] it shall be my Christ, be He inglorious, be He
ignoble, be He dishonoured; for such was it announced that He should be,
both in bodily condition and aspect. Isaiah comes to our help again: "We
have announced (His way) before Him," says he; "He is like a servant,
[3313] like a root in a dry ground; He hath no form nor comeliness; we saw
Him, and He had neither form nor beauty; but His form was despised, marred
above all men." [3314] Similarly the Father addressed the Son just
before: "Inasmuch as many will be astonished at Thee, so also will Thy
beauty be without glory from men," [3315] For although, in David's words,
He is fairer than the children of men," [3316] yet it is in that
figurative state of spiritual grace, when He is girded with the sword of the
Spirit, which is verily His form, and beauty, and glory. According to the
same prophet, however, He is in bodily condition "a very worm, and no man; a
reproach of men, and an outcast of the people." [3317] But no internal
quality of such a kind does He announce as belonging to Him. In Him dwelt
the fulness of the Spirit; therefore I acknowledge Him to be "the rod of the
stem of Jesse." His blooming flower shall be my Christ, upon whom hath
rested, according to Isaiah, "the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the
spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of piety, and of
the fear of the Lord." [3318] Now to no man, except Christ, would the
diversity of spiritual proofs suitably apply. He is indeed like a flower for
the Spirit's grace, reckoned indeed of the stem of Jesse, but thence to
derive His descent through Mary. Now I purposely demand of you, whether you
grant to Him the destination [3319] of all this humiliation, and
suffering, and tranquillity, from which He will be the Christ of Isaiah,'a
man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, who was led as a sheep to the
slaughter, and who, like a lamb before the shearer, opened not His mouth;
[3320] who did not struggle nor cry, nor was His voice heard in the street
who broke not the bruised reed'that is, the shattered faith of the Jews'nor
quenched the smoking flax'that is, the freshly-kindled [3321] ardour of
the Gentiles. He can be none other than the Man who was foretold. It is
right that His conduct [3322] be investigated according to the rule of
Scripture, distinguishable as it is unless I am mistaken, by the twofold
operation of preaching [3323] and of miracle. But the treatment of both
these topics I shall so arrange as to postpone, to the Chapter wherein I
have determined to discuss the actual gospel of Marcion, the consideration
of His wonderful doctrines and miracles'with a view, however, to our present
purpose. Let us here, then, in general terms complete the subject which we
had entered upon, by indicating, as we pass on, [3324] how Christ was
fore-announced by Isaiah as a preacher: "For who is there among you," says
he, "that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His Son? " [3325]
And likewise as a healer: "For," says he, "He hath taken away our
infirmities, and carried our sorrows." [3326]
Chapter XVIII. [3327] 'Types of the Death of Christ. Isaac; Joseph; Jacob
Against Simeon and Levi; Moses Praying Against Amalek; The Brazen Serpent.
On the subject of His death, [3328] I suppose, you endeavour to introduce
a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the
cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend,
moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His
Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse.
"Cursed," says He, "is every one who hangeth on a tree." [3329] But what
is meant by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the
cross, of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in
another passage [3330] we have given the reason [3331] of the thing
preceded by proof. First, I shall offer a full explanation [3332] of the
types. And no doubt it was proper that this mystery should be prophetically
set forth by types, and indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to
its incredibility would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in
bare prophecy; and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of
obscuring it in shadow, [3333] that the difficulty of understanding it
might lead to prayer for the grace of God. First, then, Isaac, when he was
given up by his father as an offering, himself carried the wood for his own
death. By this act he even then was setting forth the death of Christ, who
was destined by His Father as a sacrifice, and carried the cross whereon He
suffered. Joseph likewise was a type of Christ, not indeed on this ground
(that I may not delay my course [3334] ), that he suffered persecution
for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren
after the flesh, the Jews; but when he is blessed by his father in these
words: "His glory is that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a
unicorn; with them shall he push the nations to the very ends of the
earth," [3335] 'he was not, of course, designated as a mere unicorn with
its one horn, or a minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him'a
bullock in respect of both His characteristics: to some as severe as a
Judge, to others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of
His cross. For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends are
called horns; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the unicorn. By
this virtue, then, of His cross, and in this manner "horned," He is both now
pushing all nations through faith, bearing them away from earth to heaven;
and will then push them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to
earth. He will also, according to another passage in the same scripture, be
a bullock, when He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and
Levi, which means against the scribes and the Pharisees; for it was from
them that these last derived their origin. [3336] Like Simeon and Levi,
they consummated their wickedness by their heresy, with which they
persecuted Christ. "Into their counsel let not my soul enter; to their
assembly let not my heart be united: for in their anger they slew men," that
is, the prophets; "and in their self-will they hacked the sinews of a
bullock," [3337] that is, of Christ. For against Him did they wreak their
fury after they had slain His prophets, even by affixing Him with nails to
the cross. Otherwise, it is an idle thing [3338] when, after slaying men,
he inveighs against them for the torture of a bullock! Again, in the case of
Moses, wherefore did he at that moment particularly, when Joshua was
fighting Amalek, pray in a sitting posture with outstretched hands, when in
such a conflict it would surely have been more seemly to have bent the knee,
and smitten the breast, and to have fallen on the face to the ground, and in
such prostration to have offered prayer? Wherefore, but because in a battle
fought in the name of that Lord who was one day to fight against the devil,
the shape was necessary of that very cross through which Jesus was to win
the victory? Why, once more, did the same Moses, after prohibiting the
likeness of everything, set up the golden serpent on the pole; and as it
hung there, propose it as an object to be looked at for a cure? [3339]
Did he not here also intend to show the power of our Lord's cross, whereby
that old serpent the devil was vanquished,'whereby also to every man who was
bitten by spiritual serpents, but who yet turned with an eye of faith to it,
was proclaimed a cure from the bite of sin, and health for evermore?
Chapter XIX. Prophecies of the Death of Christ.
Come now, when you read in the words of David, how that "the Lord reigneth
from the tree," [3340] I want to know what you understand by it. Perhaps
you think some wooden [3341] king of the Jews is meant!'and not Christ,
who overcame death by His suffering on the cross, and thence reigned! Now,
although death reigned from Adam even to Christ, why may not Christ be said
to have reigned from the tree, from His having shut up the kingdom of death
by dying upon the tree of His cross? Likewise Isaiah also says: "For unto us
a child is born." [3342] But what is there unusual in this, unless he
speaks of the Son of God? "To us is given He whose government is upon His
shoulder." [3343] Now, what king is there who bears the ensign of his
dominion upon his shoulder, and not rather upon his head as a diadem, or in
his hand as a sceptre, or else as a mark in some royal apparel? But the one
new King of the new ages, Jesus Christ, carried on His shoulder both the
power and the excellence of His new glory, even His cross; so that,
according to our former prophecy, He might thenceforth reign from the tree
as Lord. This tree it is which Jeremiah likewise gives you intimation of,
when he prophesies to the Jews, who should say, "Come, let us destroy the
tree with the fruit, (the bread) thereof," [3344] that is, His body. For
so did God in your own gospel even reveal the sense, when He called His body
bread; so that, for the time to come, you may understand that He has given
to His body the figure of bread, whose body the prophet of old figuratively
turned into bread, the Lord Himself designing to give by and by an
interpretation of the mystery. If you require still further prediction of
the Lord's cross, the twenty-first Psalm [3345] is sufficiently able to
afford it to you, containing as it does the entire passion of Christ, who
was even then prophetically declaring [3346] His glory. "They pierced,"
says He, "my hands and my feet," [3347] which is the special cruelty of
the cross. And again, when He implores His Father's help, He says, "Save me
from the lion's mouth," that is, the jaws of death, "and my humiliation from
the horns of the unicorns; "in other words, from the extremities of the
cross, as we have shown above. Now, David himself did not suffer this cross,
nor did any other king of the Jews; so that you cannot suppose that this is
the prophecy of any other's passion than His who alone was so notably
crucified by the nation. Now should the heretics, in their obstinacy,
[3348] reject and despise all these interpretations, I will grant to them
that the Creator has given us no signs of the cross of His Christ; but they
will not prove from this concession that He who was crucified was another
(Christ), unless they could somehow show that this death was predicted as
His by their own god, so that from the diversity of predictions there might
be maintained to be a diversity of sufferers, [3349] and thereby also a
diversity of persons. But since there is no prophecy of even Marcion's
Christ, much less of his cross, it is enough for my Christ that there is a
prophecy merely of death. For, from the fact that the kind of death is not
declared, it was possible for the death of the cross to have been still
intended, which would then have to be assigned to another (Christ), if the
prophecy had had reference to another. Besides, [3350] if he should be
unwilling to allow that the death of my Christ was predicted, his confusion
must be the greater [3351] if he announces that his own Christ indeed
died, whom he denies to have had a nativity, whilst denying that my Christ
is mortal, though he allows Him to be capable of birth. However, I will show
him the death, and burial, and resurrection of my Christ all [3352]
indicated in a single sentence of Isaiah, who says, "His sepulture was
removed from the midst of them." Now there could have been no sepulture
without death, and no removal of sepulture except by resurrection. Then,
finally, he added: "Therefore He shall have many for his inheritance, and He
shall divide the spoil of the many, because He poured out His soul unto
death." [3353] For there is here set forth the cause of this favour to
Him, even that it was to recompense Him for His suffering of death. It was
equally shown that He was to obtain this recompense for His death, was
certainly to obtain it after His death by means of the resurrection.
[3354]
Chapter XX. [3355] 'The Subsequent Influence of Christ's Death in the
World Predicted. The Sure Mercies of David. What These are.
It is sufficient for my purpose to have traced thus far the course of
Christ's dispensation in these particulars. This has proved Him to be such a
one as prophecy announced He should be, so that He ought not to be regarded
in any other character than that which prediction assigned to Him; and the
result of this agreement between the facts of His course and the Scriptures
of the Creator should be the restoration of belief in them from that
prejudice which has, by contributing to diversity of opinion, either thrown
doubt upon, or led to a denial of, a considerable part of them And now we go
further and build up the superstructure of those kindred events [3356]
out of the Scriptures of the Creator which were predicted and destined to
happen after Christ. For the dispensation would not be found complete, if He
had not come after whom it had to run on its course. [3357] Look at all
nations from the vortex of human error emerging out of it up to the Divine
Creator, the Divine Christ, and deny Him to be the object of prophecy, if
you dare. At once there will occur to you the Father's promise in the
Psalms: "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten Thee. Ask of me, and I
shall give Thee the heathen for Thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts
of the earth for Thy possession." [3358] You will not be able to put in a
claim for some son of David being here meant, rather than Christ; or for the
ends of the earth being promised to David, whose kingdom was confined to the
Jewish nation simply, rather than to Christ, who now embraces the whole
world in the faith of His gospel. So again He says by Isaiah: "I have given
Thee for a dispensation of the people, for a light of the Gentiles, to open
the eyes of the blind," that is, those that be in error, "to bring out the
prisoners from the prison," that is, to free them from sin, "and from the
prison-house," that is, of death, "those that sit in darkness"'even that of
ignorance. [3359] If these things are accomplished through Christ, they
would not have been designed in prophecy for any other than Him through whom
they have their accomplishment. In another passage He also says: "Behold, I
have set Him as a testimony to the nations, a prince and commander to the
nations; nations which know Thee not shall invoke Thee, and peoples shall
run together unto Thee." [3360] You will not interpret these words of
David, because He previously said, "I will make an everlasting covenant with
you, even the sure mercies of David." [3361] Indeed, you will be obliged
from these words all the more to understand that Christ is reckoned to
spring from David by carnal descent, by reason of His birth [3362] of the
Virgin Mary. Touching this promise of Him, there is the oath to David in the
psalm, "Of the fruit of thy body [3363] will I set upon thy throne."
[3364] What body is meant? David's own? Certainly not. For David was not to
give birth to a son. [3365] Nor his wife's either. For instead of saying,
"Of the fruit of thy body," he would then have rather said, "Of the fruit of
thy wife's body." But by mentioning his [3366] body, it follows that He
pointed to some one of his race of whose body the flesh of Christ was to be
the fruit, which bloomed forth from [3367] Mary's womb. He named the
fruit of the body (womb) alone, because it was peculiarly fruit of the womb,
of the womb only in fact, and not of the husband also; and he refers the
womb (body) to David, as to the chief of the race and father of the family.
Because it could not consist with a virgin's condition to consort her with a
husband, [3368] He therefore attributed the body (womb) to the father.
That new dispensation, then, which is found in Christ now, will prove to be
what the Creator then promised under the appellation of "the sure mercies of
David," which were Christ's, inasmuch as Christ sprang from David, or rather
His very flesh itself was David's "sure mercies," consecrated by religion,
and "sure" after its resurrection. Accordingly the prophet Nathan, in the
first of Kings, [3369] makes a promise to David for his seed, "which
shall proceed," says he, "out of thy bowels." [3370] Now, if you explain
this simply of Solomon, you will send me into a fit of laughter. For David
will evidently have brought forth Solomon! But is not Christ here designated
the seed of David, as of that womb which was derived from David, that is,
Mary's? Now, because Christ rather than any other [3371] was to build the
temple of God, that is to say, a holy manhood, wherein God's Spirit might
dwell as in a better temple, Christ rather than David's son Solomon was to
be looked for as [3372] the Son of God. Then, again, the throne for ever
with the kingdom for ever is more suited to Christ than to Solomon, a mere
temporal king. From Christ, too, God's mercy did not depart, whereas on
Solomon even God's anger alighted, after his luxury and idolatry. For
Satan [3373] stirred up an Edomite as an enemy against him. Since,
therefore, nothing of these things is compatible with Solomon, but only with
Christ, the method of our interpretations will certainly be true; and the
very issue of the facts shows that they were clearly predicted of Christ.
And so in Him we shall have "the sure mercies of David." Him, not David, has
God appointed for a testimony to the nations; Him, for a prince and
commander to the nations, not David, who ruled over Isreal alone. It is
Christ whom all nations now invoke, which knew Him not; Christ to whom all
races now betake themselves, whom they were ignorant of before. It is
impossible that that should be said to be future, which you see (daily)
coming to pass.
Chapter XXI. The Call of the Gentiles Under the Influence of the Gospel
Foretold.
So you cannot get out of this notion of yours a basis for your difference
between the two Christs, as if the Jewish Christ were ordained by the
Creator for the restoration of the people alone [3374] from its
dispersion, whilst yours was appointed by the supremely good God for the
liberation of the whole human race. Because, after all, the earliest
Christians are found on the side of the Creator, not of Marcion, [3375]
all nations being called to His kingdom, from the fact that God set up that
kingdom from the tree (of the cross), when no Cerdon was yet born, much less
a Marcion. However, when you are refuted on the call of the nations, you
betake yourself to proselytes. You ask, who among the nations can turn to
the Creator, when those whom the prophet names are proselytes of
individually different and private condition? [3376] "Behold," says
Isaiah, "the proselytes shall come unto me through'Thee," showing that they
were even proselytes who were to find their way to God through Christ. But
nations (Gentiles) also, like ourselves, had likewise their mention (by the
prophet) as trusting in Christ. "And in His name," says he, "shall the
Gentiles trust." Besides, the proselytes whom you substitute for the nations
in prophecy, are not in the habit of trusting in Christ's name, but in the
dispensation of Moses, from whom comes their instruction. But it was in the
last days that the choice [3377] of the nations had its commencement.
[3378] In these very words Isaiah says: "And it shall come to pass in the
last days, that the mountain of the Lord," that is, God's eminence, "and the
house of God," that is, Christ, the Catholic temple of God, in which God is
worshipped, "shall be established upon the mountains," over all the
eminences of virtues and powers; "and all nations shall come unto it; and
many people shall go and say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of
the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us His
way, and we will walk in it: for out of Sion shall go forth the law, and the
word of the Lord from Jerusalem." [3379] The gospel will be this "way,"
of the new law and the new word in Christ, no longer in Moses. "And He shall
judge among the nations," even concerning their error. "And these shall
rebuke a large nation," that of the Jews themselves and their proselytes.
"And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears
[3380] into pruning-hooks; " in other words, they shall change into pursuits
of moderation and peace the dispositions of injurious minds, and hostile
tongues, and all kinds of evil, and blasphemy. "Nation shall not lift up
sword against nation,"shall not stir up discord. "Neither shall they learn
war any more," [3381] that is, the provocation of hostilities; so that
you here learn that Christ is promised not as powerful in war, but pursuing
peace. Now you must deny either that these things were predicted, although
they are plainly seen, or that they have been accomplished, although you
read of them; else, if you cannot deny either one fact or the other, they
must have been accomplished in Him of whom they were predicted. For look at
the entire course of His call up to the present time from its beginning, how
it is addressed to the nations (Gentiles) who are in these last days
approaching to God the Creator, and not to proselytes, whose election
[3382] was rather an event of the earliest days. Verily the apostles have
annulled [3383] that belief of yours.
Chapter XXII. The Success of the Apostles, and Their Sufferings in the Cause
of the Gospel, Foretold.
You have the work of the apostles also predicted: "How beautiful are the
feet of them which preach the gospel of peace, which bring good tidings of
good," [3384] not of war nor evil tidings. In response to which is the
psalm, "Their sound is gone through all the earth, and their words to the
ends of the world; " [3385] that is, the words of them who carry round
about the law that proceeded from Sion and the Lord's word from Jerusalem,
in order that that might come to pass which was written: "They who were far
from my righteousness, have come near to my righteousness and truth."
[3386] When the apostles girded their loins for this business, they
renounced the elders and rulers and priests of the Jews. Well, says he, but
was it not above all things that they might preach the other god? Rather
[3387] (that they might preach) that very self-same God, whose scripture
they were with all their might fulfilling! "Depart ye, depart ye," exclaims
Isaiah; "go ye out from thence, and touch not the unclean thing," that is
blasphemy against Christ; "Go ye out of the midst of her," even of the
synagogue" Be ye separate who bear the vessels of the Lord." [3388] For
already had the Lord, according to the preceding words (of the prophet),
revealed His Holy One with His arm, that is to say, Christ by His mighty
power, in the eyes of the nations, so that all the [3389] nations and the
utmost parts of the earth have seen the salvation, which was from God. By
thus departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the obligations and
burdens of the law for the liberty of the gospel, they were fulfilling the
psalm, "Let us burst their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us;
"and this indeed (they did) after that "the heathen raged, and the people
imagined vain devices; "after that "the kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers took their counsel together against the Lord, and against His
Christ." [3390] What did the apostles thereupon suffer? You answer: Every
sort of iniquitous persecutions, from men that belonged indeed to that
Creator who was the adversary of Him whom they were preaching. Then why does
the Creator, if an adversary of Christ, not only predict that the apostles
should incur this suffering, but even express His displeasure [3391]
thereat? For He ought neither to predict the course of the other god, whom,
as you contend, He knew not, nor to have expressed displeasure at that which
He had taken care to bring about. "See how the righteous perisheth, and no
man layeth it to heart; and how merciful men are taken away, and no man
considereth. For the righteous man has been removed from the evil
person." [3392] Who is this but Christ? "Come, say they, let us take away
the righteous, because He is not for our turn, (and He is clean contrary to
our doings)." [3393] Premising, therefore, and likewise subjoining the
fact that Christ suffered, He foretold that His just ones should suffer
equally with Him'both the apostles and all the faithful in succession; and
He signed them with that very seal of which Ezekiel spake: "The Lord said
unto me, Go through the gate, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set the
mark <i>tau upon the foreheads of the men." [3394] Now the Greek
letter <i>tau and our own letter T is the very form of the cross,
which He predicted would be the sign on our foreheads in the true Catholic
Jerusalem, [3395] in which, according to the twenty-first Psalm, the
brethren of Christ or children of God would ascribe glory to God the Father,
in the person of Christ Himself addressing His Father; "I will declare Thy
name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I sing praise
unto Thee." For that which had to come to pass in our day in His name, and
by His Spirit, He rightly foretold would be of Him. And a little afterwards
He says: "My praise shall be of Thee in the great congregation." [3396]
In the sixty-seventh Psalm He says again: "In the congregations bless ye the
Lord God." [3397] So that with this agrees also the prophecy of Malachi:
"I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord; neither will I accept your
offerings: for from the rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the
same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place
sacrifice shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering" [3398]
'such as the ascription of glory, and blessing, and praise, and hymns. Now,
inasmuch as all these things are also found amongst you, and the sign upon
the forehead, [3399] and the sacraments of the church, and the offerings
of the pure sacrifice, you ought now to burst forth, and declare that the
Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.
Chapter XXIII. The Dispersion of the Jews, and Their Desolate Condition for
Rejecting Christ, Foretold.
Now, since you join the Jews in denying that their Christ has come,
recollect also what is that end which they were predicted as about to bring
on themselves after the time of Christ, for the impiety wherewith they both
rejected and slew Him. For it began to come to pass from that day, when,
according to Isaiah, "a man threw away his idols of gold and of silver,
which they made into useless and hurtful objects of worship; " [3400] in
other words, from the time when he threw away his idols after the truth had
been made clear by Christ. Consider whether what follows in the prophet has
not received its fulfilment: "The Lord of hosts hath taken away from Judah
and from Jerusalem, amongst other things, both the prophet and the wise
artificer; " [3401] that is, His Holy Spirit, who builds the church,
which is indeed the temple, and household and city of God. For thenceforth
God's grace failed amongst them; and "the clouds were commanded to rain no
rain upon the vineyard" of Sorech; to withhold, that is, the graces of
heaven, that they shed no blessing upon "the house of Isreal," which had but
produced "the thorns" wherewith it had crowned the Lord, and "instead of
righteousness, the cry" wherewith it had hurried Him away to the cross.
[3402] And so in this manner the law and the prophets were until John, but
the clews of divine grace were withdrawn from the nation. After his time
their madness still continued, and the name of the Lord was blasphemed by
them, as saith the Scripture: "Because of you my name is continually
blasphemed amongst the nations" [3403] (for from them did the blasphemy
originate); neither in the interval from Tiberius to Vespasian did they
learn repentance. [3404] Therefore "has their land become desolate, their
cities are burnt with fire, their country strangers are devouring before
their own eyes; the daughter of Sion has been deserted like a cottage in a
vineyard, or a lodge in a garden of cucumbers," [3405] ever since the
time when "Isreal acknowledged not the Lord, and the people understood Him
not, but forsook Him, and provoked the Holy One of Isreal unto anger."
[3406] So likewise that conditional threat of the sword, "If ye refuse and
hear me not, the sword shall devour you," [3407] has proved that it was
Christ, for rebellion against whom they have perished. In the fifty-eighth
Psalm He demands of the Father their dispersion: "Scatter them in Thy
power." [3408] By Isaiah He also says, as He finishes a prophecy of their
consumption by fire: [3409] "Because of me has this happened to you; ye
shall lie down in sorrow." [3410] But all this would be unmeaning enough,
if they suffered this retribution not on account of Him, who had in prophecy
assigned their suffering to His own cause, but for the sake of the Christ of
the other god. Well, then, although you affirm that it is the Christ of the
other god who was driven to the cross by the powers and authorities of the
Creator, as it were by hostile beings, still I have to say, See how
manifestly He was defended [3411] by the Creator: there were given to Him
both "the wicked for His burial," even those who had strenuously maintained
that His corpse had been stolen, "and the rich for His death," [3412]
even those who had redeemed Him from the treachery of Judas, as well as from
the lying report of the soldiers that His body had been taken away.
Therefore these things either did not happen to the Jews on His account, in
which case you will be refuted by the sense of the Scriptures tallying with
the issue of the facts and the order of the times, or else they did happen
on His account, and then the Creator could not have inflicted the vengeance
except for His own Christ; nay, He must have rather had a reward for Judas,
if it had been his master's enemy whom they put to death. At all events,
[3413] if the Creator's Christ has not come yet, on whose account the
prophecy dooms them to such sufferings, they will have to endure the
sufferings when He shall have come. Then where will there be a daughter of
Sion to be reduced to desolation, for there is none now to be found? Where
will there be cities to be burnt with fire, for they are now in heaps?
[3414] Where a nation to be dispersed, which is already in banishment?
Restore to Judæa its former state, that the Creator's Christ may find it,
and then you may contend that another Christ has come. But then, again,
[3415] how is it that He can have permitted to range through [3416] His
own heaven one whom He was some day to put to death on His own earth, after
the more noble and glorious region of His kingdom had been violated, and His
own very palace and sublimest height had been trodden by him? Or was it only
in appearance rather that he did this? [3417] God is no doubt [3418] a
jealous God! Yet he gained the victory. You should blush with shame, who put
your faith in a vanquished god! What have you to hope for from him, who was
not strong enough to protect himself? For it was either through his
infirmity that he was crushed by the powers and human agents of the Creator,
or else through maliciousness, in order that he might fasten so great a
stigma on them by his endurance of their wickedness.
Chapter XXV. Christ's Millennial and Heavenly Glory in Company with His
Saints.
Yes, certainly, [3419] you say, I do hope from Him that which amounts in
itself to a proof of the diversity (of Christs), God's kingdom in an
everlasting and heavenly possession. Besides, your Christ promises to the
Jews their primitive condition, with the recovery of their country; and
after this life's course is over, repose in Hades [3420] in Abraham's
bosom. Oh, most excellent God, when He restores in amnesty [3421] what He
took away in wrath! Oh, what a God is yours, who both wounds and heals,
creates evil and makes peace! Oh, what a God, that is merciful even down to
Hades! I shall have something to say about Abraham's bosom in the proper
place. [3422] As for the restoration of Judæa, however, which even the
Jews themselves, induced by the names of places and countries, hope for just
as it is described, [3423] it would be tedious to state at length
[3424] how the figurative [3425] interpretation is spiritually applicable
to Christ and His church, and to the character and fruits thereof; besides,
the subject has been regularly treated [3426] in another work, which we
entitle De Spe Fidelium. [3427] At present, too, it would be
superfluous [3428] for this reason, that our inquiry relates to what is
promised in heaven, not on earth. But we do confess that a kingdom is
promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state
of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand
years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem, [3429] "let down from
heaven," [3430] which the apostle also calls "our mother from above; "
[3431] and, while declaring that our citizenship, is in
heaven, [3432] he predicates of it [3433] that it is really a city in
heaven. This both Ezekiel had knowledge of [3434] and the Apostle John
beheld. [3435] And the word of the new prophecy which is a part of our
belief, [3436] attests how it foretold that there would be for a sign a
picture of this very city exhibited. to view previous to its manifestation.
This prophecy, indeed, has been very lately fulfilled in an expedition to
the East. [3437] For it is evident from the testimony of even heathen
witnesses, that in Judæa there was suspended in the sky a city early every
morning for forty days. As the day advanced, the entire figure of its walls
would wane gradually, [3438] and sometimes it would vanish instantly.
[3439] We say that this city has been provided by God for receiving the
saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all
really spiritual blessings, as a recompense for those which in the world we
have either despised or lost; since it is both just and God-worthy that His
servants should have their joy in the place where they have also suffered
affliction for His name's sake. Of the heavenly kingdom this is the
process. [3440] After its thousand years are over, within which period is
completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according
to their deserts there will ensue the destruction of the world and the
conflagration of all things at the judgment: we shall then be changed in a
moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture of an
incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in heaven of which
we have now been treating, just as if it had not been predicted by the
Creator, and as if it were proving Christ to belong to the other god and as
if he were the first and sole revealer of it. But now learn that it has
been, in fact, predicted by the Creator, and that even without prediction it
has a claim upon our faith in respect of [3441] the Creator. What appears
to be probable to you, when Abraham's seed, after the primal promise of
being like the sand of the sea for multitude, is destined likewise. to an
equality with the stars of heaven'are not these the indications both of an
earthly and a heavenly dispensation? [3442] When Isaac, in blessing his
son Jacob, says, "God give thee of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the
earth," [3443] are there not in his words examples of both kinds of
blessing? Indeed, the very form of the blessing is in this instance worthy
of notice. For in relation to Jacob, who is the type of the later and more
excellent people, that is to say ourselves, [3444] first comes the
promise of the heavenly dew, and afterwards that about the fatness of the
earth. So are we first invited to heavenly blessings when we are separated
from the world, and afterwards we thus find ourselves in the way of
obtaining also earthly blessings. And your own gospel likewise has it in
this wise: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and these things shall be
added unto you." [3445] But to Esau the blessing promised is an earthly
one, which he supplements with a heavenly, after the fatness of the earth,
saying, "Thy dwelling shall be also of the dew of heaven." [3446] For the
dispensation of the Jews (who were in Esau, the prior of the sons in birth,
but the later in affection [3447] ) at first was imbued with earthly
blessings through the law, and afterwards brought round to heavenly ones
through the gospel by faith. When Jacob sees in his dream the steps of a
ladder set upon the earth, and reaching to heaven, with angels ascending and
descending thereon, and the Lord standing above, we shall without hesitation
venture to suppose, [3448] that by this ladder the Lord has in judgment
appointed that the way to heaven is shown to men, whereby some may attain to
it, and others fall therefrom. For why, as soon as he awoke out of his
sleep, and shook through a dread of the spot, does he fall to an
interpretation of his dream? He exclaims, "How terrible is this place!" And
then adds, "This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of
heaven!" [3449] For he had seen Christ the Lord, the temple of God, and
also the gate by whom heaven is entered. Now surely he would not have
mentioned the gate of heaven, if heaven is not entered in the dispensation
of the [3450] Creator. But there is now a gate provided by Christ, which
admits and conducts to glory. Of this Amos says: "He buildeth His ascensions
into heaven; " [3451] certainly not for Himself alone, but for His people
also, who will be with Him. "And Thou shall bind them about Thee," says he,
"like the adornment of a bride." [3452] Accordingly the Spirit, admiring
such as soar up to the celestial realms by these ascensions, says, "They
fly, as if they were kites; they fly as clouds, and as young doves, unto
me" [3453] 'that is, simply like a dove. [3454] For we shall,
according to the apostle, be caught up into the clouds to meet the Lord
(even the Son of man, who shall come in the clouds, according to Daniel
[3455] ) and so shall we ever be with the Lord, [3456] so long as He
remains both on the earth and in heaven, who, against such as are thankless
for both one promise and the other, calls the elements themselves to
witness: "Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth." [3457] Now, for my own
part indeed, even though Scripture held out no hand of heavenly hope to me
(as, in fact, it so often does), I should still possess a sufficient
presumption [3458] of even this promise, in my present enjoyment of the
earthly gift; and I should look out for something also of the heavenly, from
Him who is the God of heaven as well as of earth. I should thus believe that
the Christ who promises the higher blessings is (the Son) of Him who had
also promised the lower ones; who had, moreover, afforded proofs of greater
gifts by smaller ones; who had reserved for His Christ alone this
revelation [3459] of a (perhaps [3460] ) unheard of kingdom, so that,
while the earthly glory was announced by His servants, the heavenly might
have God Himself for its messenger. You, however, argue for another Christ,
from the very circumstance that He proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first
to bring forward some example of His beneficence, [3461] that I may have
no good reason for doubting the credibility of the great promise, which you
say ought to be hoped for; nay, it is before all things necessary that you
should prove that a heaven belongs to Him, whom you declare to be a promiser
of heavenly things. As it is, you invite us to dinner, but do not point out
your house; you assert a kingdom, but show us no royal state. [3462] Can
it be that your Christ promises a kingdom of heaven, without having a
heaven; as He displayed Himself man, without having flesh? O what a phantom
from first to last! [3463] O hollow pretence of a mighty promise!
Footnotes
[3076] Perseveramus.
[3077] Ex abundanti.
[3078] i.e., "as the Son of, or sent by, no other God."
[3079] i.e., "was the Son of, or sent by, no other God."
[3080] Recensu.
[3081] [Surely Tertullian, when he wrote this, imagined himself not
seperated formally from the Apostolic churches. Of which see De
Proescriptione, (p. 258) supra.]
[3082] Ubi posteritas invenitur. Compare De Proescript. Hoeret. 34, where
Tertullian refers to "that definite rule, before laid down, touching 'the
later date_0' (illo fine supra dicto posteritatis), whereby they (i.e.,
certain novel opinions) would at once be condemned on the ground of their
age alone." In 31 of the same work he contrasts "posteritatem
mendacitatis" with "principalitatem veritatis"'"the latter date of
falsehood" with "the primary date of truth." [pp. 258, 260, supra.]
[3083] See book i. chap. i.
[3084] Non ut laborantem. "Qui enim laborant non totis sed fractis utuntur
viribus." Anglice, "with all her might."
[3085] In praescript. compendiis vincit.
[3086] Ut gestientem.
[3087] Hinc denique.
[3088] As Marcion makes Him.
[3089] Profiteretur.
[3090] Patrocinium.
[3091] Defendit, "insist on it."
[3092] Suggestu.
[3093] Mandator.
[3094] Dispositione, "its being ordered or arranged."
[3095] Parabatur.
[3096] Per fidem profuturum.
[3097] Indiceretur.
[3098] Agnitione.
[3099] Praedicatione, "prophecy."
[3100] Ordo.
[3101] Virtutum, "miracles."
[3102] Exauctoravit.
[3103] Matt. xxiv. 24. [See Kaye, p. 125.]
[3104] Auctore.
[3105] Proinde.
[3106] Cludet, quasi claudet.
[3107] Repromissis in.
[3108] Tantummmodo nova.
[3109] Egenta experimentis fidei victricis vetusatis.
[3110] i.e., through God's announcement by prophecy.
[3111] Your God.
[3112] Ipse.
[3113] Ejus (i.e. Marcionis) Dominum, meaning Marcion's God, who had not
yet been revealed.
[3114] The Creator and His Christ, as rivals of Marcion's.
[3115] He twits Marcion with introducing his Christ on the scene too
soon. n He ought to have waited until the Creator's Christ (prophesised of
through the Old Testament) had come. Why allow him to be predicted, and them
forbid His actual coming, by his own arrival on the scene first? Of course,
M. must be understood to deny that Christ of the New Testament is the
subject of the Old Testament prophecies at all. Hence T.'s anxiety to adduce
prophecy as the main evidence of our Lord as being really the Creator's
Christ.
[3116] Atquin.
[3117] Vanus.
[3118] The reader will remember that Tertullian is here arguing on
Marcion's ground, according to whom the Creator's Christ, the Christ
predicted through the O.T., was yet to come. Marcion's Christ, however, had
proved himself so weak to stem the Creator's course, that he had no means
really of checking the Creator's Christ from coming. It had been better,
adds Tertullian, if Marcion's Christ had waited for the Creator's Christ to
have forst appeared.
[3119] Marcion's Christ.
[3120] Emendare.
[3121] Revocare.
[3122] Aut si.
[3123] Posterior emendator futurus: an instance of Tertullian's style in
paradox.
[3124] Vero.
[3125] Redarguens.
[3126] Si forte.
[3127] Proluserim.
[3128] [An important principle, See Kaye, p. 325.]
[3129] Familiare.
[3130] Expunctum.
[3131] Ch. 1. 6, slightly altered.
[3132] Joel iii. 18.
[3133] Ex. iii. 8, 17; Deut. xxvi. 9, 15.
[3134] Isa. xli. 18, 19, inexactly quoted.
[3135] Relturus.
[3136] Hoereticorum apostolus. We have already referred to Marcion's
acceptance of St. Paul's epistles. It has been suggested that Tertullian in
the text uses Hoereticorum apostolus as synonymous with ethnicorum apostolus
= "apostle of the Gentiles," in which case allusion to St. Paul would of
course be equally clear. But this interpretation is unnecessary.
[3137] 1 Cor. ix. 9.
[3138] 1 Cor. x. 4; compare below, book v., chap. vii.
[3139] Gal. iv. 22, 24.
[3140] Eph. v. 31, 32.
[3141] "Remember, O reader."
[3142] Constitisse.
[3143] Socaiari cum.
[3144] Marcion.
[3145] The model of wise naval legislation, much of which found its way
into the Roman pandects.
[3146] Symbol of barbarism and ignorance'a heavy joke against the once
seafaring heretic.
[3147] Ignoratus, "rejected of men."
[3148] Isa. xxix. 14.
[3149] Isa. vi. 9, 10. Quoted with some verbal differences.
[3150] A supposed quotation of Amos iv. 13. See Oehler's marginal
reference. If so, the reference to Joel is either a slip of Tertullian or a
corruption of his text; more likely the former, for the best mss. insert
Joel's name. Amos iv. 13, according to the LXX., runs,, which exactly suits Tertullian's
quotation. Junius supports the reference to Joel, supposing that Tertullian
has his ch. ii. 31 in view, as compared with Acts ii. 16-33. This is too
harsh an interpretation. It is simpler and better to suppose that Tertullian
really meant to quote the LXX. of the passage in Amos, but in mistake named
Joel as his prophet.
[3151] Isa. xlii. 19, altered.
[3152] Isa. i. 2, 3.
[3153] This seems to be a translation with a slight alteration of the
LXX. version of Lam. iv. 20,
[3154] Isa. i. 4.
[3155] Retro.
[3156] Per ejusdem substantiae conditionem.
[3157] He seems here to allude such statements of God's being as Col. ii.
9.
[3158] Substantiam praedictationis.
[3159] Materiam.
[3160] Alterius, "the other," i.e., Marcion's rival God.
[3161] Planum in signis, cf. the Magnum in potestate of Apolog. 21.
[3162] Aemulum, "a rival," i.e., to Moses.
[3163] Nec hominem ejus ut alienum judicaverint, "His manhood they judged
not to be diffrent."
[3164] Rationem.
[3165] Humilitate.
[3166] A reference to, rather than quotation from, Isa. liii. 7.
[3167] Sicut puerulus, "like a little boy," or, "a sorry slave."
[3168] Isa. liii. 2, 3, according to the Septuagint.
[3169] See Isa. lii. 14, liii. 3, 4.
[3170] Isa. viii. 14
[3171] Ps. viii. 6.
[3172] Ps. xxii. 7.
[3173] Consummationem: an allusion to Zech. iv. 7.
[3174] See Dan. ii. 34.
[3175] Dan. vii. 13, 14.
[3176] Ps. xlv. 2, 3.
[3177] Ps. viii. 5, 6.
[3178] Zech. xii. 10, 12.
[3179] Isa. liii. 8.
[3180] Joshua, i.e., Jesus.
[3181] Podere.
[3182] Cidari munda.
[3183] See Zech. iii.
[3184] Jejunio, see Lev. xvi. 5, 7, etc.
[3185] Circumdatus.
[3186] Perhaps in reference to Heb. ix. 19.
[3187] Civitatem, "city."
[3188] In perditionem.
[3189] This treatment of the scape-goat was partly ceremonial, partly
disorderly. The Mischna (Yoma vi. 4-6) mentions the scarlet ribbon which was
bound round the animal's head between the horns, and the "pulling" (rather
plucking out of its hair); but this latter was an indignity practised by
scoffers and guarded against by Jews. Tertullian repeats the whole of this
passage, Adv. Jud. xiv. Similar use is made of the type of the scape-goat by
other fathers, as Justin Martyr (Dial. cum Tryph.) and Cyril of Alex.
(Epist. ad Acacium). In this book ix. Against Julian, he expressly says:
"Christ was described by the two goats,'as dying for us in the flesh, and
then (as shown by the scape-goat) overcoming death in His divine nature."
See Tertullian's passages illustrated fully in Rabbi Chiga, Addit. ad Cod.
de die Expiat. (in Ugolini, Thes. i. 88).
[3190] Quasi visceratione. [See Kaye's important comment, p. 426.]
[3191] Jejunantibus.
[3192] So Epiphanius, adv. Hoeres. i. 23. 7, quotes the same proverb,
[Tom. II. p. 144. Ed. Oehler.]
[3193] As in his Docetic views of the body of Christ.
[3194] 2 Cor. vi. 14.
[3195] Mendacio.
[3196] Congressus.
[3197] Convictus.
[3198] Demandat.
[3199] Tam impresse, "so strongly."
[3200] 1Cor. xv. 3, 4, 14, 17, 18.
[3201] Valebit.
[3202] Aufertur.
[3203] 1 Cor. xv. 13-18.
[3204] Sane.
[3205] Phantasmate forsitan.
[3206] Ista. [See Kaye, p. 205.]
[3207] [Pamelius attributes this doctorine to Appelles a disciple of
Marcion, of whom See Kaye, pp. 479, 480.]
[3208] Luke xx. 36.
[3209] Mentiri.
[3210] i.e., among the angels.
[3211] Reformaret.
[3212] Commeatum.
[3213] Stercoribus infersam.
[3214] A Marcionite arguement.
[3215] Stropham, a player's trick; so in Spectac. 29.
[3216] Ailenis.
[3217] Globum.
[3218] Mendacio.
[3219] Corpulentiae.
[3220] This woman is called in De Praescr. Hoeret. 6, "an angel of
deceit," and (in 30) "a virgin, but afterwards a monstrous prostitute." Our
author adds: "Induced by her tricks and miracles, Apelles introduced a new
heresy." See also Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. v. 13; Augstin, De Hoeres. 42;
Hieronymus, Epist. adv. Ctesiph. p. 477, tom. iv. ed. Benedictin.
[3221] Luke xi. 27.
[3222] Luke viii. 20.
[3223] Below, iv. 26; also in De carne Christi, cap. vii.
[3224] Expungendam, "consummated," a frequent use of the word in our
author.
[3225] Viderit opinio humana.
[3226] Inflatae.
[3227] Sanguinis tributo.
[3228] Plane, ironically said.
[3229] Turpissimum.
[3230] Perora.
[3231] Mendacio.
[3232] Habitus.
[3233] Carneus.
[3234] Ex nativitate.
[3235] Isa. vii. 14.
[3236] Isa.viii. 4. Compare adv. Judaeos, 9.
[3237] Cohaerentia.
[3238] Agitetur in Christo.
[3239] Gal. iii. 27.
[3240] Compare with this chapter, T.'s adv. Judaeos, 9.
[3241] Isa. viii. 4.
[3242] Jam hominem, jam virum in Adv. Judaeos, "at man's estate."
[3243] Lanceare ante quam lancinare. This play on words points to the
very early training of the barbarian boys to war. Lancinare perhaps means,
"to nibble the nipple with the gum."
[3244] He alludes to the suppling of their young joints with oil, and
then drying them in the sun.
[3245] Pannis.
[3246] Butyro.
[3247] Isa. vii. 14.
[3248] The tam dignum of this place is jam signum in adv. Judaeos.
[3249] Contineat.
[3250] This opinion of Jews and Judaizing heretics is mentioned by
Irenaeus, Adv. Hoeret. iii. 21 (Stieren's ed. i. 532); Eusebius, Hist.
Eccles. v. 8; Jerome, Adv. Helvid. (ed. Benedict), p. 132. Nor has the cavil
ceased to be held, as is well known, to the present day. The of
Isa. vii. 4 is supposed to be Isaiah's wife, and he quotes Kimchi's
authority; while the neologian Gesenius interprets the word, a bride, and
rejects the Cathloic notion of an unspotted virgin. To make way, however,
for their view, both Fuerst and Gesenius have to reject the LXX. rendering,
.
[3251] Disposita.
[3252] Et hic.
[3253] Alius ordo jam infantis.
[3254] Infantia est. Better in adv. Judaeos, "est infantiae."
[3255] The italicised words we have added from adv. Judaeos, "hoc est
mirabile signum."
[3256] Posterior. Posteritas is an attribute of heresy in T.'s view.
[3257] Centerarum, other than the Jews, i.e., Gentiles.
[3258] Zech. xiv. 14.
[3259] Ps. lxxii. 15.
[3260] Ps. lxxii. 10.
[3261] See Otto's Justin Martyr, ii. 273, n. 23. [See Vol. 1. p. 238,
supra.]
[3262] Videlicet.
[3263] The Creatori here answers to the Scripturis divinis of the
parallel passage in adv. Judaeos. Of course there is a special force in this
use Creator's name here against Marcion.
[3264] Isa. i. 10.
[3265] Ezek. xvi. 3.
[3266] To the sins of these nations.
[3267] Isa. i. 2.
[3268] Apud illum, i.e., Creatorem.
[3269] Maledictionis.
[3270] Ps. xlv. 3.
[3271] Ps. xlv. 2.
[3272] Literally, "Advance, and prosper, and reign."
[3273] Ps. xlv. 4.
[3274] Rev. i. 16.
[3275] Eph. vi. 14-17.
[3276] Matt. x. 34.
[3277] "Advance, and prosper, and reign."
[3278] Exinde qua.
[3279] Ps. xlv. 4, but changed.
[3280] Ps. xlv. 5.
[3281] Traductiones.
[3282] Ps. xlv. 5.
[3283] Ejusmodi.
[3284] Exempla.
[3285] Interim.
[3286] 1 Cor. viii. 5.
[3287] Ex dispositione. This word seems to mean what is implied in the
phrases, "Christian dispensation," "Mosaic dispensation," etc.
[3288] Consignatur.
[3289] Propietatibus.
[3290] Quintlian, Inst. viii. 6, defines this as a figure "which lends a
name to things which have it not."
[3291] De alieno abutendo.
[3292] Matt. ix. 16, 17.
[3293] Senio.
[3294] Passio.
[3295] Adversus Creatorem, in sui Dei nomine venientes.
[3296] i.e., to the Marcionite position.
[3297] That is, Christ.
[3298] Surely it is Duo, not Deo.
[3299] Constare.
[3300] Incipit vocari.
[3301] Secundum populum.
[3302] Vir.
[3303] Non celavit te, "not concealed Himself from you."
[3304] Ex. xxiii. 20, 21.
[3305] Officum prophetae.
[3306] Sacramentum.
[3307] Identidem.
[3308] Reliquus ordo.
[3309] Obduximus.
[3310] Corpsclum illud.
[3311] Habitum.
[3312] Conspectum.
[3313] Puerulus, "little child," perhaps.
[3314] Sentences out of Isa. lii. 14 and liii. 2, etc.
[3315] Isa. lii. 14.
[3316] Ps. xlv. 2.
[3317] Ps. xxii. 6.
[3318] Isa. xi. 1, 2.
[3319] Intentionem.
[3320] Isa. liii. 3, 7.
[3321] Momentaneum.
[3322] Actum.
[3323] Praedicationis.
[3324] Interim.
[3325] Isa. l. 10.
[3326] Isa. liii. 4.
[3327] Compare adv. Judaeos, chap. 10. [pp. 165, 166, supra.]
[3328] De exitu.
[3329] Compare Deut. xxi. 23 with Gal. iii. 13.
[3330] The words "quia et alias antecedit rerum probatio rationem," seem
to refer to the parallel passage in adv. Judaeos, where he has described the
Jewish law of capital punishment, and argued for the exemption of Christ
from its terms. He begins that paragraph with saying, "Sed hujus
maledictionis sensum antecedit rerum ratio." [See, p. 164, supra.]
[3331] Perhaps rationale or procedure.
[3332] Edocebo.
[3333] Magis obumbrandum.
[3334] But he may mean, by "ne demorer cursum," "that I may not obstruct
the course of the type," by taking off attention from its true force force.
In the parallel place, however, another turn is given to the sense; Joseph
is a type, "even on this ground'that I may but briefly allude to it'that he
suffered," etc.
[3335] Deut. xxxiii. 17.
[3336] Census.
[3337] Gen. xlix. 6. The last clause is, "ceciderunt nervos tauro."
[3338] Vanum.
[3339] Spectaculum salutare.
[3340] Ps. xcvi. 10, with a ligno added.
[3341] Lignarium aliquem regem.
[3342] Isa. ix. 6.
[3343] Isa. ix. 6.
[3344] Jer. xi. 19.
[3345] The twenty-second Psalm. A.V.
[3346] Canentis.
[3347] Ps. xxii. 16.
[3348] Hoeretica duritia.
[3349] Passionum, literally sufferings, which would hardly give the
sense.
[3350] Nisi.
[3351] Quo magis erubescat.
[3352] Et'et'et.
[3353] Isa. liii. 12.
[3354] Both His own and His people's.
[3355] Comp. adv. Judaeos, 11 and 12.
[3356] Ea paria.
[3357] Evenire.
[3358] Ps. ii. 7.
[3359] Isa. xlii. 6,7.
[3360] Isa. lv. 4,5.
[3361] Isa. lv. 3.
[3362] Censum. [Kaye, p. 149.]
[3363] Ventris, "womb."
[3364] Ps. cxxxii. 11.
[3365] He treats "body" as here meaning womb.
[3366] Ipsius.
[3367] Floruit ex.
[3368] Viro deputare.
[3369] The four books of the Kings were sometimes regarded as two, "the
first" of which contained 1 and 2 Samuel, "the second" 1 and 2 Kings. The
reference in this place is to 2 Samuel vii. 12.
[3370] He here again makes bowels synonymous with womb.
[3371] Magis.
[3372] Habendus in.
[3373] In 1 Kings xi. 14. "the Lord" is said to have done this. Comp. 2
Sam. xxiv. 1 with 1 Chron. xxi. i.
[3374] i.e., the Jews.
[3375] Or perhaps, "are found to belong to the Creator's Christ, not to
Marcion's."
[3376] Marcion denied that there was any prophecy of national or Gentile
conversion; it was only the conversion of individual proselytes that he
held.
[3377] Allectio.
[3378] Exorta est.
[3379] Isa. ii. 2,3.
[3380] Sibynas, . Hesychius, "Sibynam
appellant Illyrii telum venabuli simile." Paulus, ex Festo, p. 336, Mull.
(Oehler.)
[3381] Isa. ii. 4.
[3382] Allectio.
[3383] Junius explains the author's induxerunt by deleverunt; i.e.,
"they annulled your opinion about proselytes being the sole called, by their
promulgation of the gospel."
[3384] Isa. lii. 7 and Rom. x. 15.
[3385] Ps. xix. 5.
[3386] Pamelius regards this as a quotation from Isa. xlvi. 12,13, only
put narratively, in order to indicate briefly its realization.
[3387] Atquin.
[3388] Isa. lii. 11.
[3389] Universae
[3390] Comp. Ps. ii. 2,3, with Acts iv. 25-30.
[3391] Exprobrat.
[3392] Isa. lvii. 1.
[3393] Wisd. of Sol. ii. 12.
[3394] Ezek. ix. 4. The ms. which T. used seems to have agreed with the
versions of Theodotion and Aquila mentioned thus by Origen (Selecta in
Ezek.): .. Origen, in his own remarks, refers to the sign of the
cross, as indicated by this letter. Ed. Bened. (by Migne), iii. 802.
[3395] [Ambiguous, according to Kaye, p. 304, may mean a transition from
Paganism to true Christianity.]
[3396] Ps. xxii. 22, 25.
[3397] Ps. lxviii. 26.
[3398] Mal. i. 10, 11.
[3399] [Kaye remarks that traditions of practice, unlike the traditions
of doctrine, may be varied according to times and circumstances. See p.
286.]
[3400] Isa. ii. 20.
[3401] Architectum, Isa. iii. 1-3, abridged.
[3402] Isa. v. 6,7.
[3403] Isa. lii. 5.
[3404] Compare Adv. Judaeos, 13, p. 171, for a like statement.
[3405] Isa. i. 7,8.
[3406] Isa. i. 3,4.
[3407] Isa. i. 20.
[3408] Ps. lix. 11.
[3409] Exustionem.
[3410] Isa. l. 11.
[3411] Defensus, perhaps "claimed."
[3412] See Isa. liii. 9.
[3413] Certe.
[3414] Compare a passage in the Apology, chap. xxi. p. 34, supra.
[3415] Jam vero.
[3416] Admiserit per.
[3417] Hoc affectavit.
[3418] Plane.
[3419] Immo.
[3420] Apud inferos.
[3421] Placatus.
[3422] See below, in book iv. chap. iv.
[3423] Ita ut describitur, i.e., in the literal sense.
[3424] Persequi.
[3425] Allegorica.
[3426] Digestum.
[3427] On the Hope of the Faithful. This work, which is not extant
(although its title appears in one of the oldest mss. of Tertllian, the
Codex Agobardinus), is mentioned by St. Jerome in his Commentary on Ezekiel,
chap. xxxvi.; in the preface to his Comment. on Isaiah, chap. xviii.; and in
his notice of Papias of Hierapolis (Oehler).
[3428] Otisum.
[3429] [See Kaye's important Comment. p. 345.]
[3430] Rev. xxi. 2.
[3431] Gal. iv. 26.
[3432] Phil. iii. 20, "our conversation," A.V.
[3433] Deputat.
[3434] Ezek. xlviii. 30-35.
[3435] Rev. xxi. 10-23.
[3436] That is, the Montanist. [Regarded as conclusive; but not
conclusive evidence of an accomplished lapse from Catholic Communion.]
[3437] He means that of Severus against the Parthians. Tertullian is the
only author who mentions this prodigy.
[3438] Evanescente.
[3439] Et alias de proximo nullam: or "de proximo" may mean, "on a near
approach."
[3440] Ratio.
[3441] That is, "the newness of the gospel."
[3442] Dispositionis.
[3443] Gen. xxvii. 28.
[3444] Nostri, i.e., Christians. [Not Montanist, but Catholic.]
[3445] Luke xii. 31.
[3446] Gen. xxvii. 39.
[3447] Judaeorum enim dispositio in Esau priorum natu et posteriorum
affectu filiorum. This is the original of a difficult passage, in which
Tertullian, who has taken Jacob as a type of the later, the Christian
church, seems to make Esau the symbol of the former, the Jewish church,
which, although prior in time, was later in allegiance to the full truth of
God.
[3448] Temere, si forte, interpretabimur.
[3449] Gen. xxviii. 12-17.
[3450] Apud.
[3451] Amos. ix. 6.
[3452] Isa. xlix. 18.
[3453] Isa. lx. 8.
[3454] In allusion to the dove as the symbol of the Spirit, see Matt.
iii. 16.
[3455] Dan vii. 13.
[3456] 1 Thess. iv. 17.
[3457] Isa. i. 2.
[3458] Praejudicium.
[3459] Praeconium.
[3460] Si forte.
[3461] Indulgentiae
[3462] Regiam: perhaps "capital" or "palace."
[3463] Omne.
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