Against Marcion 3.2
Summary: A 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.
Latin text · CSEL 47:378
Hinc denique gradum consero, an debuerit tam subito uenisse, primo qua et ipse dei sui filius, — hoc enim ordinis fuerat, ut ante pater filium profiteretur quam patrem filius et ante pater de filio testaretur quam filius de patre — dehinc et qua missus, praeter filii nomen. proinde enim praecessisse debuerat mittentis patrocinium in testimonium missi, quia nemo ueniens ex alterius auctoritate ipse eam sibi ex sua adfirmatione defendit, sed ab ipsa defendi se potius expectat praeeunte suggestu eius, qui auctoritatem praestat. ceterum nec filius agnoscetur quem numquam pater nuncupauit nec missus credetur quem numquam mandator designauit. nuncupaturus pater et designaturus mandator, si fuisset. suspectum habebitur omne quod exorbitarit a regula rerum, quae principales gradus non sinit posterius agnosci: patrem post filium et mandatorem post mandatum et deum post Christum. nihil origine sua prius est in agnitione, quia nec in dispositione. subito filius et subito missus et subito Christus. atquin nihil putem a deo subitum. quia nihil a deo non dispositum. si autem dispositum, cur non et praedicatum, ut probari posset et dispositum ex praedicatione et diuinum ex dispositione? et utique tantum opus, quod scilicet humanae saluti parabatur, uel eatenus subitum non fuisset, qua per fidem profuturum. in quantum enim credi habebat, ut prodesset, in tantum paraturam desiderabat, ut credi posset, substructum fundamentis dispositionis et praedicationis, quo ordine fides informata merito et homini indiceretur a deo et deo exhiberetur ab homine, ex agnitione debens credere.: quia posset, quae scilicet credere didicisset ex praedicatione.
English · Claude translation
From here, then, I take my first step: whether he ought to have come so suddenly. First, as being himself the Son of his God; for the proper order was that the Father should acknowledge the Son before the Son the Father, and that the Father should bear witness about the Son before the Son about the Father. Next, as one sent, apart from the name of Son. For the backing of the sender ought likewise to have gone before, as testimony for the one sent, since no one who comes on another's authority vindicates that authority for himself by his own assertion; rather he waits to be vindicated by it, the recommendation of the one who grants the authority going before him. Otherwise neither will he be recognized as a son whom a father has never named, nor believed to be sent whom a commissioner has never designated. The father would have named him, and the commissioner designated him, if there had been such. Everything that departs from the rule of things will be held suspect, a rule which does not allow the principal degrees to be recognized afterwards: the father after the son, the commissioner after the commissioned, God after Christ. Nothing that is prior in its origin comes later in recognition, because it does not come later in arrangement either. A sudden son, a suddenly sent one, a sudden Christ! But I would think nothing from God is sudden, because nothing from God is not arranged. And if arranged, why not also foretold, so that it could be proved both to be arranged, from the foretelling, and to be divine, from the arrangement? And surely so great a work, one being prepared for human salvation, should not have been sudden, at least in so far as it was to profit by means of faith. For in so far as it had to be believed in order to profit, to that extent it required preparation so that it could be believed, built up on the foundations of arrangement and foretelling, so that faith, shaped by this order, might rightly be both laid upon man by God and rendered to God by man, owing belief out of recognition: because it could believe, having learned from the foretelling what to believe.
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Tertullian, Marc. 3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/3/2/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 3.2 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/3/2/).
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