Against Marcion 3.1
Summary: Tertullian 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.
Latin text · CSEL 47:377–378
Secundum uestigia pristini operis, quod amissum reformare perseueramus, iam hinc ordo de Christo, licet ex abundanti post decursam defensionem unicae diuinitatis. satis etenim praeiudicatum est Christum non alterius dei intellegendum quam creatoris, cum determinatum est alium deum non credendum praeter creatorem, quem adeo Christus praedicauerit et deinceps apostoli non alterius Christum adnuntiauerint quam eius dei, quem Christus praedicauit, id est creatoris, ut nulla mentio alterius dei atque ita nec alterius Christi agitata sit ante scandalum Marcionis. facillime hoc probatur apostolicarum et haereticarum ecclesiarum recensu, illic scilicet pronuntiandam regulae interuersionem, ubi posteritas inuenitur. quod etiam primo libello intexui. sed et nunc congressio ista seorsus in Christum examinatura eo utique proficiet, ut, dum Christum probamus creatoris, sic quoque deus excludatur Marcionis. decet ueritatem totis uiribus uti suis, non ut laborantem, — ceterum in praescriptionum compendiis uincit — sed [decretum est] ut gestientem ubique aduersario occurrere, in tantum furenti, ut facilius praesumpserit eum uenisse Christum, qui numquam sit adnuntiatus, quam eum, qui semper sit prae dicatus.
English · Claude translation
Following the footprints of my earlier work, which I am persevering in restoring after it was lost, the order of argument now turns to Christ, though this is more than is needed after the defense of the one Godhead has been completed. For it has been sufficiently settled in advance that Christ is to be understood as belonging to no other god than the Creator, once it has been determined that no god other than the Creator is to be believed; whom Christ so preached, and after him the apostles proclaimed a Christ belonging to no other than the God whom Christ preached, that is, the Creator, that no mention of another god, and so of another Christ, was ever raised before the scandal of Marcion. This is most easily proved by a review of the apostolic and the heretical churches: the perversion of the rule must be declared to lie there, clearly, where it is found to come later. I wove this into my first book as well. But now too this engagement, which will examine Christ separately, will certainly be of use to this end: that while we prove Christ to be the Creator's, Marcion's god is in this way also shut out. It befits the truth to use all its strength, not as though it were struggling (for it wins in any case by the short ways of prescription) but as eager to meet its adversary everywhere, an adversary so frenzied that he has more readily presumed that a Christ has come who was never announced than that one has come who was always foretold.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- Tertullian refers to the loss of an earlier draft of this work (see Marc. 1.1). “Prescription” (praescriptio) is his legal short-cut argument that heresy is refuted by being later than the apostolic churches (compare his Prescription against Heretics). The bracketed “decretum est” of the edition is left untranslated as spurious.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 3.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/3/1/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 3.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/3/1/).
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