Against Marcion 4.23–4.26

I take upon myself the part of Israel. Let Marcion's Christ stand there and cry out: “O unbelieving generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you?” At once he will have to hear from me: “Whoever you are, O steward, first declare who you are, and from whom you come, and what right you have over us. Up to now everything about you is the Creator's. Plainly, if you come from him and act for him, we accept the rebuke. But if you come from another, I would like you to tell us: what have you ever entrusted to us of your own, which we ought to have believed, that you reproach us with unbelief, you who have never even revealed yourself to us? How long ago did you begin to deal with us, that you complain of the time? In what have you borne with us, that you charge us with your patience? You come just now, like Aesop's ass out of the well, and already you are braying.” Who would not have thrown back the injustice of the rebuke in this way, if he believed that it came from one who had as yet no right to complain? Except that he would not have sprung upon them either, had he not long before lodged among them in the law, in the prophets, in mighty works and benefits, and always found them unbelieving.

But look, Christ loves little children, teaching that those who always want to be greater ought to be like them, whereas the Creator set bears on boys, avenging the prophet Elisha for the insults he had suffered from them. A shameless enough antithesis, which pits such different things against each other, little children and boys, an age still innocent and an age already capable of judgment, which could insult, not to say blaspheme. As a just God, then, he did not spare even impious boys, requiring honor for greater age, and surely all the more from those younger; but as a good God he loves little children so much that in Egypt he did good to the midwives who protected the Hebrew births endangered by Pharaoh's edict. So this affection of Christ's too he shares with the Creator. Now then, how can Marcion's god, who opposes marriage, seem to be a lover of little children, whose whole cause is marriage? One who hates the seed must necessarily loathe the fruit as well. Indeed, he must be held more cruel than the king of Egypt. For Pharaoh did not allow infants to be reared; this god does not allow them even to be born, taking from them even their ten months of life in the womb. How much more credible that affection for little children should be credited to him who, by blessing marriage for the propagation of the human race, promised that the very fruit of marriage too would be blessed, a fruit which begins with infancy!

The Creator, at Elijah's request, brings down the plague of fire in the case of that false prophet. I recognize the judge's severity; on the other hand I recognize (the gentleness of Christ rebuking) the disciples who intended the same punishment for that little village of the Samaritans. Let the heretic too recognize that this gentleness of Christ was promised by the same most severe judge: “He will not strive,” he says, “nor (cry out, nor) will his voice be heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench.” Such a one would surely be much less likely to burn men up. For even then it was said to Elijah: “The Lord is not in the fire, but in the gentle breeze.”

But why does the most kindly Lord refuse the man who offers himself to him as so inseparable a companion? If it was because he had said proudly or hypocritically, “I will follow you wherever you go,” then by judging that either pride or hypocrisy must be refused he acted as a judge. And surely he condemned the man whom he refused, as one who would not attain salvation. For just as he calls to salvation the one he does not refuse, or even the one he calls of his own accord, so he condemns to perdition the one he refuses. And when he answers the one who pleaded his father's burial, “Let the dead bury their dead; but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God,” he plainly confirmed both laws of the Creator: that on the priesthood in Leviticus, which forbids priests to attend even the funerals of their parents — “The priest,” it says, “shall not go in to any dead soul, and he shall not be defiled for his father (or for his mother)” — and that on the vow in Numbers; for there too he commands the one who has vowed himself to God, among other things, not to go in to any dead soul, not even that of father or mother or brother. And I suppose he was destining for the vow and for the priesthood the man whom he had charged with preaching the kingdom of God. Or if this is not so, he must be pronounced impious indeed, commanding sons to disregard their parents' burial with no reason of the law coming between. And when he forbids that third man, who was preparing first to say farewell to his family, to look back, he follows the Creator's course: this too the Creator had not wanted done by those whom he had delivered from Sodom.

He appointed also seventy other apostles besides the twelve. For why twelve, after the number of the springs at Elim, if not also seventy, after the number of the palm trees there? The Antitheses were produced mostly by a difference of circumstances, not of powers. But one who paid no attention to the difference of circumstances easily supposed it to be a difference of powers. The Creator led the departure of the sons of Israel out of Egypt loaded even with that plunder of gold and silver vessels and garments, besides the burdens of dough, whereas Christ directed his disciples not to carry even a staff on the journey. For the former were being sent forward into a wilderness, the latter were being sent into cities. Consider the difference of circumstances, and you will understand that it is one and the same power which arranged the expedition of its people according to want and plenty: cutting down the supplies of those who would have abundance through the cities, just as it had equipped those who would be in want through the wilderness. He forbade them even to carry shoes. For he was the very one under whom the people, even in the wilderness for so many years, had not worn out their shoes. “Salute no one,” he says, “on the way.” O Christ, destroyer of the prophets, from whom he received even this! Elisha, when he sent his servant Gehazi on the way to raise the Shunammite woman's son from death, gave him, I think, this command: “Gird up your loins and take my staff in your hand and go: whomever you meet on the way, do not bless him,” that is, do not greet him, “and whoever blesses you, do not answer him,” that is, do not return his greeting. For what is a blessing on the roads but the mutual greeting of those who meet? So too the Lord's command, that in whatever house they entered they should say “peace” to it, comes from the same example. For Elisha commanded this too: when he came to the Shunammite woman, he should say to her: “Peace to your husband, peace to your son.” These rather will be our antitheses, which compare Christ with the Creator, not separate him. And who would more fittingly declare “The worker is worthy of his wage” than God the judge? For this very thing is judging: deeming a worker worthy of his wage. No repayment has ever been settled except by a judgment. Now here too the Creator's law is sealed, since he judges even working oxen to be workers worthy of their wage: “You shall not bind the mouth,” he says, “of the ox that treads out the grain.” Who is so generous toward men as one who is so even toward cattle? And if Christ too declares workers worthy of their wage, he has vindicated that command of the Creator to carry off the gold and silver vessels of the Egyptians. For those who had worked on estates and cities for the Egyptians, surely workers worthy of their wage, were not incited to fraud but to the settling of their wage, which they could not otherwise exact from their masters.

He confirmed in this way too that the kingdom of God was neither new nor unheard of, when he commanded that it be announced as having drawn near. For what was once far off can be said to have drawn near. But if it had never existed before it drew near, it could not have been said to have drawn near, since it had never been far off. Everything new and unknown is sudden. Everything sudden, when it is announced, only then first takes on an appearance and only then first receives a time. Moreover, it could neither have been delayed in the past, so long as it was not announced, nor have drawn near from the time it began to be announced. He adds also that they should say to those who had not received them: “Know nevertheless that the kingdom of God has drawn near.” If he does not command this by way of threat as well, he commands it quite pointlessly. For what was it to them if the kingdom drew near, unless it draws near with judgment? — for the salvation, that is, of those who had received its announcement, … So, since a threat is impossible without execution, you have in the one who threatens a God who executes, and a judge in both. So too he orders the dust to be shaken off against them, as a testimony that even their soil was renounced, much more any other fellowship. For if inhumanity and inhospitality were to receive no vengeance from him, for what purpose does he send a testimony ahead, which surely portends threats? Moreover, since the Creator too in Deuteronomy forbids the Ammonites and Moabites to be received into the assembly because they had inhumanly and inhospitably cheated the people setting out from Egypt of provisions, it will be clear that the ban on fellowship flowed into Christ from there, where it has its pattern. “Whoever despises you despises me.” This the Creator said to Moses too: “They have not despised you but me.” For Moses was as much an apostle as the apostles were prophets. The authority of both offices had to be made equal by one and the same Lord of apostles and prophets.

Now who will give power to tread upon snakes and scorpions? The Lord of all animals, or the god of not even one lizard? But it is well that the Creator promised this power even to little children through Isaiah: to put their hand into the hole of asps and into the den of young asps and not be harmed at all. And surely we know — without prejudice to the plain sense of Scripture, for even the beasts themselves will not be able to harm where there is faith — that scorpions and snakes figuratively signify the spiritual forces of wickedness, whose prince himself is reckoned by the Creator under the name of the serpent and the dragon and every most prominent beast; and that the Creator granted this power first to his own Christ, as the ninetieth psalm says to him: “You will walk upon the asp and the basilisk, and you will trample the lion and the dragon”; and as Isaiah too says: “In that day the Lord God will bring his holy sword, great and strong” — his Christ, that is — “upon that dragon, the great and twisting serpent, and will kill it in that day.” And when the same prophet says, “It will be called a clean way and a holy way, and nothing unclean will pass over it, nor will there be an unclean way there; but those who have been scattered will walk in it and will not go astray; and there will no longer be a lion there, nor will any of the evil beasts go up on it, nor will one be found there,” since he shows the way to be faith, by which we shall reach God, he is already then promising to that same way, that is, to faith, this disabling and subjection of the beasts. In fact you will find that the times of the promise also agree, if you read what precedes: “Be strong, hands that hang down and knees that are loosened: then the eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf will hear; then the lame man will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will be clear.” So when he had brought out the benefits of healing, then too he subjected scorpions and serpents to his saints: he, namely, who had first received this power from the Father, so that he might grant it to others also, and who displayed it in the order in which it had been foretold.

Who will be invoked as Lord of heaven, who has not first been shown to be its maker? For he says: “I thank you and confess you, Lord of heaven, because you have revealed to little ones the things that were hidden from the wise and prudent.” What things? And whose? Hidden by whom? Revealed by whom? By Marcion's god, hidden and revealed, when he had put forth nothing at all beforehand in which anything could have been hidden: no prophecies, no parables, no visions, no proofs of things or words or names overshadowed by allegories and figures or by the clouds of riddles? But he had hidden, they say, his very greatness, which he was just then revealing through Christ. That is unjust enough. For what wrong had the wise and prudent done, that God should be hidden from them, when their wisdom and prudence had not been enough to know him, since he himself had given them no way, through any proclamation of his works or any traces, by which the wise and prudent might be led to him? And even if they had offended in some way against a god unknown — suppose it — and now known, still they ought not to have found him jealous, since he is presented as unlike the Creator. So if he had neither put forth materials in which he could have concealed something, nor had guilty persons from whom to conceal it, nor ought to have concealed it even if he had had them, then neither will the revealer be he who was not the concealer — and so neither Lord of heaven nor Father of Christ — but rather that other one, to whom all these things apply. For he both concealed, having first put forth the instrument of prophetic obscurity, the understanding of which faith would earn — for “unless you believe, you will not understand” — and he had guilty persons, the wise and prudent, who did not seek God, though he could be understood from so many and such great works, or philosophized wrongly about him and supplied the heretics with their ideas; and lastly he is jealous. In fact long ago he proclaimed through Isaiah what Christ gives thanks for: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and I will hide the prudence of the prudent,” just as elsewhere too he indicates both that he has hidden (himself) and that he will reveal: “And I will give them hidden treasures; I will open to them invisible things,” and again: “Who else will scatter the signs of ventriloquists and divinations from the heart, turning the wise backward and making their thoughts foolish?” And if he also designated his Christ as the enlightener of the nations — “I have set you for a light of the nations” — whom we interpret under the name of little ones, since formerly they were little ones in understanding and infants in imprudence, and now are small also in the humility of faith, we shall surely more easily believe that the same one who formerly hid, and who promised a revelation through Christ, has also revealed to little ones through Christ. Or if Marcion's god laid open the things that had formerly been hidden by the Creator, then he was already doing the Creator's business, expounding his affairs. But (it was for their destruction, you say,) to expose them. Then he ought to have exposed them to those from whom the Creator hid them, the wise and prudent. For if he was acting out of kindness, knowledge ought to have been granted to those to whom it had been denied, not to the little ones, from whom the Creator had withheld nothing. And yet up to now, I think, we are proving that what is found in Christ is the building up of the law and the prophets rather than their destruction.

He says that all things have been delivered to him by the Father. You may believe it if Christ is the Creator's, to whom all things belong, and because the Creator delivered to no lesser son all the things he founded through him, through his Word, that is. But if he is that other steward, what are the (all things) that were delivered to him by the Father? Are they the Creator's? Then what the Father delivered to the Son are good things, and the Creator is now good, since all his things are good; and that other is now not good, since he invaded another's goods to deliver them to his son, he who teaches us to keep our hands off what is another's. Surely he is the most beggarly of all, who had nothing with which to enrich even his son except from another's property. Or if nothing of the Creator's was delivered to him by the Father, how does he claim for himself the Creator's man? Or if only man was delivered to him, man is not all things. But Scripture declares that a delivering of (all things) was made to the Son. And even if you interpret (all things) of the races of men, that is, of all the nations, to deliver these too to the Son is the Creator's act: “I will give you the nations as your inheritance, and the ends of the earth as your possession.” Or if he too had some (all things) of his own to deliver to his son together with the Creator's man, show me some single one of those (all things) as a pledge, as a sample, so that I may not refuse to believe, with as much reason, that all things belong to him of whom I see nothing, as I believe, with reason, that even the things I do not see belong to him to whom belong all the things I do see.

But “no one knows who the Father is except the Son, and who the Son is except the Father” “and anyone to whom the Son reveals him”; and so Christ preached an unknown god. For other heretics too prop themselves up on this, objecting that the Creator is known to all, to Israel by familiarity and to the nations by nature. And how is it that he himself testifies that he was known neither to Israel — “But Israel has not known me, and the people has not understood me” — nor to the nations? “For behold,” he says, “of the nations there is no one.” That is why he counted them as a drop from a bucket, and Zion as a watchtower left in a vineyard. See then whether this is not a confirmation of the prophetic voice reproaching mankind's ignorance of God, which lasted right up to the Son. For this is why he added that the Father is known by the one to whom the Son reveals him: because he was the very one who was announced as set by the Father for a light of the nations, which were to be enlightened about God, surely, and a light of Israel too, surely through a fuller knowledge of God. So arguments that can apply to the Creator will not serve faith in another god, since only those that do not apply to the Creator could serve faith in another god.

If you look at what follows as well, “Blessed are the eyes which see what you see; for I tell you that the prophets did not see what you see,” this too comes down from the preceding sense: that no one had known God as he ought, since not even the prophets had seen what was being seen under Christ. For if Christ were not mine, he would not have made mention of the prophets in this passage. For what wonder is it if they had not seen the things of a god unknown and revealed after so long an age, if they had not attained the display of things they had never foretold? But what would the happiness of those who then saw have been, except that those who could have seen the things of their own God, which they had even foretold, nevertheless had not seen them? For this will be the happiness of the former, that they saw what others had only foretold. In short, we shall show, and have already shown, that what was seen in Christ had been foretold, yet hidden even from the prophets themselves, so that it might be hidden also from the wise and prudent of the world.

In the gospel of truth a lawyer approached the Lord and said: “By doing what shall I obtain eternal life?” In the heretic's gospel only “life” is set down, without mention of “eternal,” so that the lawyer may seem to have asked about the life promised in the law by the Creator, a long life, and the Lord therefore to have answered him according to the law, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” since he was asking about the life of the law. But the lawyer surely knew how the life of the law could be obtained, so that he would not have asked about it, since he himself taught its rules. But because the dead were already being raised by Christ, and, roused to the hope of eternal life by examples of a return to life, … lest the loftier hope should demand some further observance, therefore he asked how eternal life is to be attained. So the Lord, as one who was himself no other and was bringing in no other new commandment than the one that above all makes for all salvation and for both lives, sets before him the very head of the law, to love the Lord his God in every way. In fact, if the lawyer asked, and Christ answered, about the long life which is in the Creator's gift, not about the eternal life which is in the gift of Marcion's god, how will he obtain eternal life? Surely not in the same way as long life. For with the difference of rewards, a difference of works too must be believed. Then the Marcionites will not obtain eternal life by loving their god, as the lover of the Creator obtains long life. But how can it be that the one who promises eternal life is not to be loved all the more, if the one who promises long life is to be loved? So both lives will belong to the same God, since the discipline for gaining both lives is the same — what the Creator teaches, Christ too needs: that he be loved, in order to grant them. Here too that prescription intervenes, by which greater things ought more easily to be believed of the one with whom lesser things come first than of one for whom no lesser things have prepared any faith in the greater. Let it be their concern now whether our people added “eternal”: this is enough for me, that Christ, the one who invites to eternal and not to long life, when asked about long life, which he was abolishing, did not rather urge the man toward eternal life, which he was bringing in. What, I ask you, would the Creator's Christ have done, if one who was not the Creator's had built man up to love the Creator? I suppose he would have denied that the Creator is to be loved.

When in a certain place he had prayed to that higher Father — lifting quite shameless and reckless eyes to the Creator's heaven, from which he could have been crushed by such harsh and cruel hail and lightning, just as he could be nailed up by him (at) Jerusalem — one of his disciples approached him and said: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” (because, of course, he thought that another god had to be prayed to in another way. Whoever presumes this must first prove that another god was made known by Christ. For no one would have wanted to know how to pray before he had learned to whom he should pray. So if he had learned, prove it. If up to now you nowhere prove it, know that he asked for a form of prayer to the Creator, to whom John's disciples too were praying. But because John too had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple not unreasonably presumed that the same should be asked of Christ, so that they too, by an institution of their own master, might pray not to another god but to God in another way. Accordingly, Christ would not have given the disciple a knowledge of prayer before a knowledge of God himself. So he too taught a prayer to the one whom the disciple had known up to then. In short, recognize which God the meaning of the prayer savors of. To whom shall I say “Father”? To one who did not make me at all, from whom I do not draw my origin, or to him who begot me by making and fashioning me? From whom shall I ask for the Holy Spirit? From one by whom not even the spirit of this world is granted, or from him by whom even angels are made spirits, and whose Spirit also in the beginning was borne upon the waters? Shall I wish for the coming of the kingdom of one whom I have never heard called the king of glory, or of him in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who will give me daily bread? One who does not even grow millet for me, or he who even from heaven supplied his people daily with the bread of angels? Who will forgive me my sins? One who does not retain them because he does not judge, or he who, if he does not forgive, will retain them in order to judge? Who will not allow us to be led into temptation? One whom the tempter might have no reason to fear, or he who from the beginning condemned the tempter angel in advance? Whoever makes supplication in this order to another god and not to the Creator does not pray to him but defames him. Likewise, from whom shall I ask, that I may receive? With whom shall I seek, that I may find? At whose door shall I knock, that it may be opened to me? Who has the means to give to one who asks, except him to whom all things belong, to whom I myself, who ask, belong? And what have I lost with that god, that I should seek it with him and find it? If wisdom and prudence, the Creator hid these; so it is with him that I shall seek. If salvation and life, these too are with the Creator. Nothing will be sought, in order to be found, anywhere but where it lay hidden, in order to appear. So too I shall knock nowhere else than where I was driven out from. In short, if receiving and finding and being admitted is the fruit of labor and perseverance for the one who has asked and sought and knocked, understand that these things are commanded and promised by the Creator. For that most good god, coming of his own accord to show kindness to a man not his own, would have imposed on him no labor and no perseverance. For he would no longer be most good if he did not give of his own accord to one who did (not) ask, and grant finding to one who did not seek, and open to one who did not knock. But the Creator could impose these things through Christ, so that, since man had offended his God by sinning, he might receive by the labor and perseverance of asking, find by that of seeking, and enter by that of knocking.

So too the parable set before this makes the one who asks for bread by night a friend, not a stranger, and has him knock at a friend's door, not an unknown man's. And a friend, even if he gives offense, is a man of the Creator's rather than of Marcion's god. So he knocks at the door of one on whom he had a claim, whose door he knew, whom he knew to have loaves, who was already lying in bed with the children whom he had willed to be born. Even the knocking late belongs to the Creator: the late hour is his whose is the world and the world's setting; but no one would have knocked late at the door of a new god, whose day was only just dawning. The door too is the Creator's, who formerly had shut it to the nations, the door that formerly was (not) knocked at. O what a God! He rises and gives, even if no longer as to a friend, yet not as to a stranger. (But as to a nuisance, he says. But a newly arrived god could not so soon have found anyone a nuisance.

Recognize, then, as Father the one whom you even call so, the Creator. He is the one who knows what his children ask. For to those who asked for bread he gave manna from heaven, and to those who longed for meat he sent quails, not a serpent for a fish nor a scorpion for an egg. And it will belong to him who has both to refrain from giving evil instead of good. Marcion's god, on the other hand, having no scorpion, could not say that he would not give what he did not have; it is the one who has a scorpion too, and does not give it, who can say this. So too the Holy Spirit will be given by him with whom there is also a spirit that is not holy.

When he had cast out a mute demon, so as to fulfill Isaiah in that kind of healing too, and was said to cast out demons by Beelzebul, he said: “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?” By these words what does he indicate, if not that he casts them out by the same power as their sons, namely by the power of the Creator? For if you think it should be taken thus: “If I by Beelzebul, your sons by whom?”, as though he were reproaching them for casting out by Beelzebul, the earlier sense will stand against you, that Satan cannot be divided against himself. So neither were they casting out by Beelzebul, but, as we have said, by the power of the Creator; and to make this understood he adds: “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, has not the kingdom of God come near to you?” For in Pharaoh's presence those sorcerers who were brought in against Moses called the Creator's power the finger of God — “This is the finger of God” — because a finger signifies something small yet very strong. Showing this too, Christ, who recalls rather than obliterates ancient things, his own, of course, called the power of God the finger of God, to be understood as belonging to none other than him by whom it had been so named. So it was his kingdom too that had drawn near, whose power was called a finger.

Rightly, then, he attached to this the parable of that strong armed man whom another stronger than he overpowered, meaning the prince of demons, whom he had called Beelzebul and Satan above, overpowered by the finger of God, not the Creator subdued by another god. Besides, how would the Creator's kingdom still stand within its own bounds and laws and offices — the Creator whom, even with the world left intact, that stronger god of Marcion could in this way have seemed to overcome — if the Marcionites too did not die according to his law, crumbling into earth, and were not often taught even by a scorpion that the Creator has not been overcome?

A woman from the crowd cries out that blessed is the womb that carried him, and the breasts that nursed him; and the Lord says: “No, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Why not? Earlier too he had rejected his mother in the same way, as well as his brothers, while preferring those who hear and obey God: for his mother was not standing by him here either. So neither earlier had he denied that he was born, since, taking the point up again here, he likewise transferred the blessedness from the womb and breasts of his mother to the disciples; and he would not have transferred it from her if he had not had her.