Against Marcion

Contents

1. 1.1Tertullian explains that this is the third edition of his work, paints Marcion's homeland Pontus as a land of savagery, and declares Marcion a heretic because his teaching is newer than the faith he once held.
2. 1.2Marcion, troubled by the problem of evil and misreading Jesus' saying about good and bad trees and Isaiah's “I create evil,” split God into an evil Creator and a new good god revealed in Christ.
3. 1.3Tertullian argues that God by definition is the supreme great being, which can have no equal, so there can only be one God: “God, if he is not one, is not.”
4. 1.4The analogy of many kings, each supreme in his own realm, fails: nothing can be compared with God, and even among kings supremacy finally belongs to only one.
5. 1.5If two gods are admitted, there is no reason not to admit many; two equal gods would be pointless and would make worship itself impossible to get right.
6. 1.6Marcion's two gods are in fact unequal (a harsh judge and a merely good god), but if both are truly God, neither can be less than the other, so inequality between them is impossible too.
7. 1.7That Scripture calls others “gods” proves nothing: supreme greatness belongs to God's eternal substance, not to the name, and so two gods can be neither equal nor unequal.
8. 1.8The Marcionites boast of a “new” god, but a new god can only be a false one, since the true God is eternal and has neither beginning nor end.
9. 1.9Marcion's god, unknown until Christ, is at best uncertain; and since both gods are claimed to share the same divine nature, the uncertain one must be tested by the pattern of the known Creator, who was never unknown.
10. 1.10The Creator has been known since creation, not only since Moses: every human soul naturally speaks of God, so he was never unknown, even in Pontus.
11. 1.11A god who created nothing, owns nothing, and has left no works by which to be known cannot be proved God; if Marcion's god wished to be known, he should have made himself known through works greater than the Creator's.
12. 1.12A god without works would exist without purpose, which is unworthy of God; and by demanding faith while giving no works to ground it, he would be both impudent and malicious.
13. 1.13The Marcionites scorn the world as unworthy of God, yet even pagan philosophers found it so splendid that they made its elements into gods, and the smallest flower or shell refutes them.
14. 1.14Even tiny creatures show the Creator's skill; Marcion's own Christ loved the Creator's man and uses the Creator's water, oil, milk, honey, and bread in his sacraments, and the Marcionites themselves live on the Creator's world.
15. 1.15Marcion's god has no visible world of his own; and if he made one, the place and matter it required would themselves be gods, so that Marcion's system actually implies nine gods, not two.
16. 1.16Creation is full of contrasting pairs, so the invisible world belongs to the same Creator as the visible one, not to a god who has made nothing that can be seen.
17. 1.17Saying that Marcion's god saved mankind proves nothing until his existence is shown from works; and a good god who waited so long to reveal himself would be either ignorant, hesitant, powerless, or unwilling.
18. 1.18Marcion's god has no works by which to be known and no prophets to proclaim him; if Marcion simply devised him, he is no more a god than the deities invented by Roman kings and emperors.
19. 1.19Marcion's god appeared only in the reign of Antoninus Pius, over a century after Christ, and was born of Marcion's own Antitheses, which set the gospel against the law; so Christ did not reveal him.
20. 1.20Paul's rebuke of Peter concerned conduct, not doctrine; the apostles agreed on one gospel, and Paul's attack on Jewish ceremonies in Galatians only carries out what the Creator himself had foretold through the prophets.
21. 1.21The apostolic churches argued about conduct, never about which God to worship; their unbroken tradition confesses only the Creator, so Marcion's god is his own invention.
22. 1.22Real goodness in God must be natural and eternal, acting as soon as there is need; a god who let the human race suffer and perish for ages before helping would be malicious, like a doctor who lets a disease worsen to earn a bigger fee.
23. 1.23True goodness is rational and just: it serves its own first and never wrongs another; Marcion's god, stealing the Creator's man like a kidnapper stealing another's slave, shows a goodness that is irrational and unjust.
24. 1.24Marcion's god saves only a few, and saves only their souls, abandoning the flesh that bears baptism, celibacy, and martyrdom; and he leaves his followers suffering under the Creator's hand, so his goodness is not perfect.
25. 1.25A god of goodness alone, free of all feeling, is the idle god of Epicurus; yet by willing to save mankind Marcion's god already shows desire, care, and rivalry, and so must have the other emotions Marcion denies him.
26. 1.26A god who forbids sin but never judges or punishes it in effect permits it; true goodness must hate and punish evil in order to protect the good.
27. 1.27A god who forbids sin but never punishes it invites every vice; the Marcionites themselves still fear sin, and their teaching that sinners are “cast away” implies a judgment after all.
28. 1.28Marcion's god hands sinners over to the Creator's fire, and his baptism makes no sense: he forgives sins he never charged, frees from a death he never imposed, and washes flesh he will not save.
29. 1.29Marcion baptized only the celibate and those who divorced, condemning marriage; Tertullian answers that marriage is good, blessed by the Creator, and that celibacy is better only as a free choice, while abolishing marriage would destroy both holiness and the human race.
30. 2.1Book 2 turns from Marcion's false god to the defence of the true God, the Creator, who ought to be worshipped rather than put on trial.
31. 2.2Heretics put the Creator on trial because they cannot grasp him, like blind men wishing for a gentler sun; but Scripture teaches that God's ways are beyond human judgment, and even Adam, the first to choose his own opinion over God's, never blamed his Maker.
32. 2.3The Creator's goodness is eternal: before anything existed he willed to make a world through which he could be known, so his goodness is older than time itself, unlike the late-arriving goodness of Marcion's god.
33. 2.4The Creator's goodness shows in the whole creation, made through his Word and pronounced good, and above all in man, formed in God's image, given dominion, a helper, and a law with a kind warning attached.
34. 2.5To the Marcionite charge that a good, all-knowing, all-powerful God would have prevented the fall, Tertullian answers that God's works prove all three attributes, and that the fall came from the free will God gave man as the very mark of his image.
35. 2.6God rightly made man free: only a free being could truly be God's image, possess goodness as its own, resist evil, and deserve reward or punishment; so the fall is man's fault, not God's.
36. 2.7Having given man free will, God rightly did not snatch it back to prevent the fall; had he done so, Marcion would have called him fickle and faithless.
37. 2.8God made man for life, not death; man fell not because he was too weak, since God's image was stronger than the tempting angel, and the same free will today lets believers defeat the devil.
38. 2.9The soul is God's “breath,” not his Spirit: an image of God, free and rational, but not incapable of sin as God is; so its sin comes from its free choice, not from God, who forbade sin and warned of death.
39. 2.10The devil was created a good angel and became evil by his own free choice, as Ezekiel's lament over the prince of Tyre shows; God delays his destruction so that man, by the same free will, may defeat him and return to paradise.
40. 2.11God's severity after the fall (pain in childbirth, the cursed ground, death) followed his original goodness as a response to sin; justice is not evil but the safeguard of goodness.
41. 2.12Goodness and justice cannot be split between two gods: from the first days of creation the Creator's justice was at work, separating light from darkness and ordering every part of the world.
42. 2.13Once evil entered the world, God's justice became the guardian of goodness: the fear of judgment keeps people from evil, and a God who can both reward and punish is to be loved as Father and feared as Lord.
43. 2.14When God says “I create evil,” he means the evils of punishment, which are just, not the evils of sin, which come from the devil; the flood, the plagues of Egypt, and other judgments were deserved.
44. 2.15Punishing children for their fathers' sins was a remedy for a hard-hearted people, later replaced by individual responsibility; and the Jews who cried “His blood be on us and on our children” brought that sentence on themselves.
45. 2.16Anger and jealousy in God are the just instruments of a good judge, like a surgeon's tools; God's feelings share names with ours but, like his “hands” and “eyes,” exist in him in a divine, incorruptible way.
46. 2.17The Creator's judgments serve his goodness: he sends rain on good and evil, spares the repentant (Nineveh, Hezekiah, David), and gave laws of justice and kindness long before any pagan lawgiver.
47. 2.18The law of “eye for eye” was meant to restrain violence by the fear of immediate requital; the food laws taught self-control and prepared for fasting; and the sacrifices kept an idolatry-prone people bound to the true God.
48. 2.19The law kept Israel mindful of God in every part of life, and the prophets taught justice, mercy, and care for the poor, while the Psalms promise blessing to the righteous: proof of a supremely good God.
49. 2.20Marcionites accuse the Creator of theft for telling the Hebrews to take the Egyptians' gold and silver, but it was modest back pay for generations of unpaid slave labour and murdered children.
50. 2.21Carrying the ark around Jericho on the sabbath did not contradict the sabbath law, which forbids ordinary human work, not sacred work commanded by God.
51. 2.22The ban on images targets idolatry, so the bronze serpent and the cherubim on the ark do not break it; and when God rejects sacrifices he is rejecting worship offered without faith, not contradicting his own law.
52. 2.23God's choosing and later rejecting Saul or Solomon is not fickleness but justice, judging each person by his conduct at the time.
53. 2.24When Scripture says God “repented” of making Saul king or of destroying Nineveh, it does not mean God erred; it means a just change of sentence in response to changing human conduct, since God “is not a man, that he should repent.”
54. 2.25God's questions to Adam and Cain were not ignorance but invitations to confess, and his “going down” to Sodom was a threat, not uncertainty; Marcion's own god also “came down.”
55. 2.26God swears by himself because there is no other god to swear by; and when he told Moses “let me alone” to destroy Israel, he was inviting Moses to intercede, prefiguring Christ.
56. 2.27God's human-like actions in the Old Testament belong to the Son, the Word who from the beginning dealt with patriarchs and prophets and was preparing to become man; the invisible Father is never seen, and God's humility is the means of human salvation.
57. 2.28Tertullian turns Marcion's method back on him: every charge made against the Creator — ignorance, change of mind, repentance, fraud, cruelty — can be made against Marcion's own god.
58. 2.29Marcion's Antitheses, which set Christ's mercy against the Creator's severity, actually show one God who is both good and just, gentler once his people had been trained; the world itself is built of harmonized opposites made by one Creator.
59. 3.1Tertullian begins his rewritten third book: having shown there is no god but the Creator, he will now prove that Christ belongs to the Creator, which also excludes Marcion's god.
60. 3.2A son should be acknowledged by his father and a messenger by his sender beforehand; nothing from God is sudden, so Marcion's unannounced Christ is suspect.
61. 3.3Miracles alone cannot prove Marcion's Christ, since Christ himself warned that false Christs would work signs, and the Creator's works came first.
62. 3.4Marcion's god came at an absurd time, too late to correct the Creator and too early to forestall the Creator's Christ, and so shows himself inconsistent.
63. 3.5Before arguing from the Old Testament, Tertullian sets two rules: prophecy often speaks of the future as past, and often speaks figuratively, as Paul himself shows.
64. 3.6The Jews' rejection of Jesus does not prove he was a stranger to their God, for the Creator's prophets foretold that they would fail to recognize their own Christ.
65. 3.7The prophets foretold two comings of Christ, one in humility and one in glory; the Jews looked only for the glorious one and so missed the first.
66. 3.8If Christ's flesh was a phantom, as Marcion holds, then his works, sufferings, death, and resurrection were unreal, and our faith and resurrection are empty.
67. 3.9The angels who ate with Abraham had real, though unborn, flesh; only Christ needed to be born, since only he was to die; so they give Marcion no precedent for a phantom Christ.
68. 3.10If Marcion's god despised flesh, he should also have scorned its likeness; by feigning flesh he honors it, and the Creator could appear without flesh when he chose.
69. 3.11Marcion denied Christ's real flesh to avoid his birth, but a real birth is no more unworthy of God than a real death; if Christ had flesh he was born, as the prophets foretold.
70. 3.12Christ fulfills the name Emmanuel in its meaning, “God with us,” which is what Christians, even Marcionites, confess him to be.
71. 3.13Isaiah's warlike words about the infant Christ are figurative: the magi's gold was the power of Damascus, the converted magi the spoils of idolatrous Samaria, and Herod the king of Assyria.
72. 3.14The sword of Psalm 45 is the Word of God, as John and Paul show; Christ's weapons and spoils are figurative, so the prophecies do not describe a literal warrior.
73. 3.15The title “Christ” belongs to the Creator's plan and means “anointed,” which requires a body; Marcion's god borrowing it would be both inconsistent and deceitful.
74. 3.16The name Jesus, given to Joshua who led Israel into the promised land, was a figure of the Creator's Christ; both names therefore belong to the Creator's Christ.
75. 3.17Christ's lowly appearance, his fullness of the Spirit, his meekness, and his work of preaching and healing all match Isaiah's prophecies of the Creator's Christ.
76. 3.18The cross was foretold in figures: Isaac carrying the wood, the horns of Joseph's bull, the hamstrung bull of Genesis 49, Moses' outstretched arms, and the bronze serpent.
77. 3.19Further prophecies of the cross: the Lord reigning from the tree, government on his shoulder, wood cast into his bread, pierced hands and feet, and Isaiah's words on his death, burial, and resurrection.
78. 3.20The conversion of the nations, foretold in the Psalms, Isaiah, and Nathan's oracle, is fulfilled in Christ, the son of David through Mary, not in David or Solomon.
79. 3.21The calling of all nations, not merely of proselytes, was foretold for the last days, when the law would go out from Zion and swords be beaten into ploughshares; this is fulfilled in Christ.
80. 3.22The apostles' mission, their break with the synagogue, their persecution, the sign of the cross on believers' foreheads, and the church's pure sacrifice of praise were all foretold by the Creator's prophets.
81. 3.23The ruin of Judea, the scattering of the Jews, and the end of prophecy among them were foretold as punishment for rejecting the Creator's Christ, so he must be the one who came.
82. 3.24Tertullian describes the thousand-year kingdom in a heavenly Jerusalem after the resurrection, then the heavenly kingdom, and shows that the Creator promised both earthly and heavenly blessings.
83. 4.1Opening his examination of Marcion's gospel, Tertullian turns Marcion's Antitheses against him: the Creator himself foretold a new law and covenant, and contrasts in his works point to one God, not two.
84. 4.2The gospels rest on apostles (Matthew, John) and apostolic men (Mark, Luke); Marcion's gospel, a cut-down Luke with no author's name, lacks the apostolic authority even Paul sought.
85. 4.3Paul's rebuke of Peter concerned conduct, not doctrine; if the apostolic gospel was wholly corrupted, Marcion has no true gospel either, and if his agrees with ours, ours is apostolic too.
86. 4.4Truth comes before its corruption; Marcion once held the church's gospel and wrote the Antitheses against it, which proves the church's Luke is older than his altered version.
87. 4.5The apostolic churches have held Luke's gospel, with Matthew, Mark, and John, from the beginning; Marcion's version is known only in his own late churches, so it is the altered one.
88. 4.6Tertullian sets his test: whatever in Marcion's own gospel shows Christ fulfilling the Creator's law, prophecies, and character proves Christ is the Creator's.
89. 4.7Marcion's Christ begins at Capernaum, in the Galilee Isaiah foretold; he teaches in the synagogue without opposing the law, and the demon who names him Holy One recognizes the Creator's Christ.
90. 4.8Christ bears the Creator's name Nazarene, has a real body that was seized at Nazareth and heals by touch, and is confessed by demons who fear the Creator's Son, as Isaiah foretold.
91. 4.9The call of fishermen fulfills Jeremiah; Christ's cleansing of the leper and his command to show himself to the priest confirm the law, as Elisha's cure of Naaman prefigured.
92. 4.10Healing the paralytic and forgiving sins fulfills Isaiah; the title Son of Man, from Daniel, means Christ was born of a human mother, a virgin, and so had a real body.
93. 4.11The call of Levi, the question of fasting, Christ as bridegroom, and the sayings on new wine and patches all show Christ fulfilling the Creator's law and prophets, not separating from a foreign god.
94. 4.12In the sabbath controversies Christ did not destroy the Creator's sabbath but fulfilled it, allowing the relief of hunger as David did and doing God's work of saving life, as Elisha had done.
95. 4.13Christ's preaching on the mountain, his night of prayer, the choice of twelve apostles, the renaming of Peter, and the crowds from Tyre all correspond to the Creator's prophecies and figures.
96. 4.14The Beatitudes on the poor, the hungry, the weeping, and the persecuted echo the Creator's constant care for the lowly in the Psalms and Isaiah, and fulfill Isaiah 61, so they belong to the Creator's Christ.
97. 4.15The woes on the rich, the full, the laughing, and the praised are the Creator's own warnings from the law and prophets; the same God who blesses the poor rebukes the rich, so there is one God, not two.
98. 4.16Love of enemies, turning the other cheek, giving to all who ask, and the Golden Rule are the Creator's own law brought to fulfillment by Christ; a god who does not avenge would command patience in vain.
99. 4.17Tertullian argues that Christ's teaching on lending, mercy, judging, and being called “Lord” in Luke 6 continues the Creator's law and prophets, and mocks Marcion's god as a eunuch who forbids marriage yet claims sons.
100. 4.18The centurion's faith, the raising of the widow's son, John the Baptist's question, and the sinful woman who anointed Jesus all show that Christ belonged to the Creator and had a real body.
101. 4.19The women who served Jesus, his warnings about hearing, and his saying “Who is my mother?” all fit the Creator's prophecies, and the last shows that Jesus really had a mother and brothers.
102. 4.20Christ's stilling of the storm, his victory over the legion of demons, and his healing of the bleeding woman all show him to be the Creator's Christ, with a real body, fulfilling rather than opposing the law.
103. 4.21The sending of the Twelve, the feeding of the five thousand, Peter's confession, and Christ's sayings on losing one's life and being ashamed of him all belong to the Creator's Christ, who truly took flesh and suffered.
104. 4.22The Transfiguration, where Christ appears in glory with Moses and Elijah and the Father's voice commands “hear him,” shows that Christ is the one foretold by the Creator's law and prophets, not their destroyer.
105. 4.23Christ's rebuke of unbelief, his love for children, his gentleness toward the Samaritans, and his hard sayings to would-be followers all fit the Creator, who had long dealt with Israel, blessed marriage and children, and gave the laws of priesthood and vows.
106. 4.24The mission of the seventy, with its instructions on travel, greetings, wages, the nearness of the kingdom, and power over snakes and scorpions, follows patterns set by the Creator in the Exodus, in Elisha, and in Isaiah.
107. 4.25Christ's thanksgiving that things hidden from the wise are revealed to little ones, his claim that all things were delivered to him, and his answer to the lawyer about eternal life all point to the Creator, who hid and promised to reveal through his Christ.
108. 4.26The Lord's Prayer, the teaching on asking and knocking, the casting out of demons “by the finger of God,” and the blessing of those who hear God's word all point to the Creator as the Father to whom Christ taught his disciples to pray.
109. 4.27Christ's own apparent inconsistencies and his rebukes of the Pharisees and lawyers over washing, tithes, honors, burdens, the prophets' tombs, and the key of knowledge show that he upheld the Creator's law rather than attacking it.
110. 4.28Christ's warnings against hypocrisy, his call to fear the one who can cast into Gehenna and to confess him before men, and his refusal to divide an inheritance all fit the Creator, who judges and who inspired Balaam and Moses.
111. 4.29Christ's teaching on anxiety, watchfulness, the faithful steward, the fire he came to cast, and just judgment all point to the Creator who provides, judges, and repays.
112. 4.30Christ's defense of healing on the sabbath, the parables of the mustard seed and the leaven, and the shut door of judgment all belong to the Creator, who both rules the kingdom and judges.
113. 4.31Christ's command to invite the poor and his parable of the great dinner follow the Creator's long history of inviting Israel through the fathers and prophets and then calling the gentiles in their place.
114. 4.32The parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin fit only the Creator, to whom man belongs and who long ago said he prefers a sinner's repentance to his death.
115. 4.33Christ's sayings on God and mammon, on the Pharisees' self-justification, and on the law and the prophets lasting until John show one God, the Creator, whose law is fulfilled rather than destroyed.
116. 4.34Tertullian argues that Christ's saying on divorce and remarriage forbids putting away a wife in order to marry another, allows divorce for adultery as Moses did, and was aimed at Herod's unlawful marriage; the parable of the rich man and Lazarus likewise upholds Moses and the prophets.
117. 4.35Christ's warnings about causing stumbling, his teaching on rebuke and forgiveness, the healing of the ten lepers, and his sayings on the kingdom and the days of Noah and Lot all follow the Creator's law and prophets.
118. 4.36The parables of the persistent widow and of the Pharisee and the publican, the rich young ruler, and the blind man who called Jesus “son of David” all show that Christ taught prayer to, and obedience toward, the Creator, and was truly David's descendant.
119. 4.37Zacchaeus fulfilled Isaiah's commands of mercy and was saved, Christ came to save the whole man, flesh as well as soul, and the parable of the entrusted money shows a God who judges.
120. 4.38Christ's questions about John's baptism, his answer about Caesar's coin, his reply to the Sadducees on marriage and the resurrection, and his words on David's son and Lord all belong to the Creator's Christ.
121. 4.39The false Christs, the signs of the end, the persecutions of the disciples, and the coming of the Son of Man in Luke 21 all follow the prophets, so that both the troubles before his coming and the blessings after it belong to the Creator's Christ.
122. 4.40Christ chose the Passover, was betrayed and sold as the prophets foretold, and at the Last Supper called the bread his body and the cup his blood, which shows that he had a real body of flesh and blood.
123. 4.41Christ's woe on his betrayer, his foretelling of Peter's denial, and his answers before the council about the Son of Man and the Son of God show him to be the Creator's Christ, foretold by Daniel and David.
124. 4.42Christ's trial before Pilate and Herod, his silence, his crucifixion between criminals, the darkening of the sun, and his death and burial all fulfill the psalms and prophets and prove that he had a real body.
125. 4.43The burial, the women at the tomb, the road to Emmaus, and the risen Christ's showing of his hands and feet all fulfill the prophets and prove his real body, so that the Christ of Marcion's own gospel is the Creator's Christ.
126. 5.1Tertullian demands that Marcion show where his apostle Paul comes from, argues that Paul was foretold in the Creator's Scriptures and attested by Acts, and promises to prove from Paul's own letters that he preached no other god.
127. 5.2Galatians attacks the old law, not the Creator: the dispute there was only whether the Creator's law still bound believers, and Paul's “no other gospel” and his agreement with Acts show he preached no new god.
128. 5.3Paul's visit to Jerusalem, his yielding for a time to Jewish scruples, and his rebuke of Peter concerned only the law, and his teaching on faith, curse, and blessing belongs to the Creator, Abraham's God.
129. 5.4Working through Galatians 3–6, Tertullian argues that the promise to Abraham, the fullness of time, the end of the old observances, the allegory of the two sons, and the law of love all belong to the Creator, and that Paul's scars show Christ's flesh was real.
130. 5.5The greeting “grace and peace” and Paul's teaching that God made the world's wisdom foolish through the cross fit only the Creator, who was offended and foretold these things, and they require a Christ with real flesh who truly died.
131. 5.6The hidden wisdom Paul speaks of was the Creator's, veiled in figures and revealed in Christ; the rulers who crucified the Lord of glory, the one foundation, the temple of God, and the folly of worldly wisdom all point to the Creator.
132. 5.7In 1 Corinthians 4–10 Tertullian finds the Creator's judgment, his festivals fulfilled in Christ, the resurrection of the body, the regulation (not abolition) of marriage, the one Father from whom are all things, and the law of the ox and the rock in the wilderness as figures of Christ.
133. 5.8Paul's teaching on headship, the veil, the Lord's Supper, and above all the spiritual gifts matches Isaiah's prophecy of the Spirit resting on Christ and Joel's promise, so the gifts belong to the Creator; Marcion's church cannot produce them.
134. 5.9Those who denied the resurrection denied the resurrection of the body, which the very words “dead” and “rise again” require; and Christ, who reigns until his enemies are subdued, is the Christ of Psalms 110 and 72, not Hezekiah or Solomon.
135. 5.10Paul's arguments against those who denied the resurrection, his analogies of seed and body, the first and last Adam, and the change of the flesh at the end all assume the resurrection of the body, which Marcion denies.
136. 5.11In 2 Corinthians 1–4 the Father of mercies, the new covenant of the Spirit, the veil of Moses, the “god of this age,” and the treasure in earthen vessels all point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
137. 5.12In 2 Corinthians 5–13 Paul's hope of being clothed over, the judgment seat of Christ, the new creation, and his thorn in the flesh and threats of discipline point to the Creator and to the resurrection of the body.
138. 5.13In Romans 1–7 the God whose wrath and judgment are revealed, who judges by the gospel through Christ, whose law is holy and spiritual, and with whom sinners are reconciled, is the Creator, not Marcion's god.
139. 5.14Christ came in the likeness of sinful flesh, not in a phantom body; God will raise mortal bodies as he raised Christ; and Paul's lament over Israel's ignorance, his praise of God's riches, and his moral precepts in Romans 8–14 all come from the Creator's Scriptures.
140. 5.15In 1 Thessalonians the Jews' guilt for killing both the prophets and the Lord, the call to holiness in marriage, the rapture to meet the Lord, the command not to quench the Spirit, and the prayer for spirit, soul, and body all fit only the Creator.
141. 5.16In 2 Thessalonians the Lord who comes in flaming fire to punish, even those who do not know God, and who sends deceit through the man of sin on those who rejected the truth, is the Creator; so the gospel and salvation are his too.
142. 5.17Ephesians, which Marcion called Laodiceans, speaks of summing up all things in Christ, of the Spirit promised by Joel, of the nations brought near to Israel's God, and of Christ's real flesh and the prophets' foundation, all of which belong to the Creator.
143. 5.18Marcion altered Ephesians 3:9 to make the mystery hidden from the Creator, but the context, Paul's spiritual allegories, his moral commands, his teaching on marriage as a great mystery, and the powers of darkness in Ephesians 3–6 all point to the Creator.
144. 5.19In Colossians the gospel's spread through the world, Christ as image and firstborn of creation, the reconciliation of all things, the warning against philosophy, and the law as a shadow of Christ all point to the Creator, and Marcion's doctrines come from the philosophers.
145. 5.20In Philippians the differing motives of preachers show no difference of doctrine; Christ, found in the form of a servant, truly became man and truly died; and the promised transformation of our lowly body means the body will rise.
146. 5.21Philemon survived Marcion's editing because of its brevity, though he rejected the Pastoral Letters; Tertullian closes the work by defending its repetitions and postponements.