Against Marcion 4.36–4.40

For, when he commands perseverance and urgency in prayer, he sets forth the parable of the judge who was compelled to hear the widow by the urgency and perseverance of her appeals. So he shows that it is God the judge who must be prayed to, not himself, if he himself is not the judge. But he (also) added that God would avenge his elect. If, then, the one who is judge will also be the avenger, he has proved the Creator to be the better god, since he showed him to be the avenger of his elect who cry to him day and night. And yet, when he brings in the Creator's temple and describes two men praying with different minds, the Pharisee in pride, the publican in humility, and says that the one went down rejected and the other justified, surely, by teaching with what discipline one must pray, he established here too that the one to be prayed to is he from whom they would receive this discipline of prayer, whether it rejects pride or justifies humility. I find with Christ no temple, no worshipers, no judgment of another god, but only of the Creator: him he commands us to worship in humility, as the one who lifts up the humble, not in pride, as the one who destroys the proud. What other does he show me to be worshiped? With what discipline? With what hope? None, I think. For the prayer he taught, too, we have proved fits the Creator. It is another matter if, being the most good god and good unasked, he does not even want to be worshiped.

“But who is good but one, God?” he says. Not as though he had shown one of two gods to be the good one, but that (one) God alone is good, who is thus alone good because he alone is God. And surely he is good who rains on the just and the unjust and makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, sustaining and feeding and helping even the Marcionites. In short, when he was asked by a certain man, “Good teacher, by doing what shall I possess eternal life?”, he asked whether he knew, that is, did, the Creator's commandments, so as to testify that eternal life is gained by the Creator's commandments; and when the man affirmed that he had kept all the chief ones from his youth, he said: “One thing you lack: sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Come now, Marcion, and all you heretics, his fellow wretches and fellow haters, what will you dare to say? Did Christ cancel the earlier commandments — not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother — or did he both keep them and add what was lacking — although this commandment too, of generosity to the needy, is spread everywhere through the law and the prophets — so that that most glorious keeper of the commandments might be exposed as one who would hold his money much dearer? Let this saying of the gospel, then, stand safe here too: “I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them.” At the same time he freed the other points from doubt, by making it plain that the name of God and of (the good one), and eternal life, and treasure in heaven, and he himself, all belong to one God, whose commandments he both kept and increased by supplementing them. He is to be recognized in this place also according to Micah, who says: “Has a man told you what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you but to do judgment, to love mercy, and to be ready to follow the Lord your God?” For Christ is the man telling what is good: the knowledge of the law — “You know the commandments,” he says; to do judgment — “Sell what you have,” he says; to love mercy — “And give to the needy,” he says; to be ready to go with the Lord — “And come,” he says, “follow me.”

The Jewish nation was from the beginning so distinctly arranged by tribes and peoples and families and houses that no one could easily be unknown as to his descent, not least because of the recent censuses of Augustus, which were then perhaps still on record. But Marcion's Jesus — even (if) there was no doubt of the birth of one who appeared to be a man — surely, not having been born, could have had no public record of his family, but was to be counted as one of those who were regarded, in whatever way, as unknown. When, then, the blind man heard that he was passing by, why did he cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” if not because he was not without reason reckoned the son of David, (that) is, of David's family, through his mother and brothers, who had once been announced to him, surely by people who knew them? (But those who went ahead rebuked the blind man, to make him be quiet. Rightly, since he was shouting, not because he was lying about the son of David. Or show that those who rebuked him knew that Jesus was not the son of David, so that they may be believed to have imposed silence on the blind man for that reason. But even if you showed it, you would more easily presume that they were ignorant than that the Lord could have allowed a false proclamation about himself. But the Lord is patient. Yet he does not confirm error. Nay more, as the one who exposes the Creator, would he not first have cleared away this blindness of that man, so that he would no longer think Jesus the son of David? But in fact, so that you should not defame his patience nor fasten on him any motive for dissembling, he most plainly confirmed the blind man's proclamation, both by the very reward of healing and by the testimony to his faith: “Your faith,” he says, “has saved you.” What do you want the blind man to have believed? That Jesus had come down from another god to expose the Creator, to destroy the law and the prophets? That he was not the one who was destined to come from the root of Jesse and from the fruit of David's loins, the one who would reward the blind as well? But the blind were not yet, I think, of Marcion's kind, so that this was the faith of that blind man, by which he believed in the words, “Jesus, son of David.” He who both knew himself to be this and wished to be known as this by all, granted to the man's faith, which already had better eyes and possessed the true light, outward sight as well, so that we too might learn the rule of faith and at the same time its reward: whoever wishes to see, let him believe that Jesus is the son of David through the virgin's descent; whoever does not so believe will not hear from him, “Your faith has saved you,” and so will remain blind, falling into the antithesis, which itself falls (into) an antithesis. For so the blind is accustomed to lead the blind. For if, (because) the blind had once offended David at the recovery of Zion by resisting his entry — as a figure of the people who were likewise blind and would one day refuse to admit Christ the son of David — therefore Christ, on the contrary, came to the aid of a blind man, to show by this that he was not the son of David, being by a difference of disposition good to the blind whom David had ordered to be struck down, then why did he say he had granted it to faith, and to a wrong faith at that? But in fact this too (the son of David) (gives) an antithesis to be beaten back with his own weapon. For because the blind had offended David, and now a man of the same flesh had presented himself as a suppliant to the son of David, therefore the son of David, as though appeased by his making amends, restored his sight with a testimony to his faith, by which he had believed this very thing, that the son of David must be entreated by him. And yet it was, I think, the audacity of those men, not their infirmity, that had offended David.

The house of Zacchaeus too obtains salvation. By what merit? Had he too believed that Christ had come from Marcion's (god)? But the voice of that blind man was still in everyone's ears — “Have mercy on me, Jesus, son of David” — and “All the people gave praise to God,” not Marcion's God, but David's. Indeed, Zacchaeus, even though a foreigner, yet perhaps breathed upon by some knowledge of the Scriptures from his dealings with the Jews — though it is more if he did so without even knowing Isaiah — had fulfilled his commands: “Break your bread,” he says, “for the hungry, and bring those who have no roof into your house” — this he was doing at that very moment, feeding the Lord whom he had received into his house — “and if you see the naked, cover him”; this he was promising at that very moment, offering half his substance for all works of mercy, loosing the bonds of oppressive contracts, letting the harassed go free, and tearing up every unjust bond, by saying: “And if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I restore it fourfold.” So the Lord says: “Today salvation has come to this house.” He testified that what the Creator's prophet had commanded brings salvation. And when he says, “For the Son of Man has come to save what was lost,” I no longer argue that he came to save what was lost of the one to whom it had belonged and from whom what he came to save had been lost, but I move on to the next step of another question. There is no doubt that it concerns man. Since man consists of two substances, body and soul, we must ask in which kind of substance he seems to have been lost. If in the body, then the body had been lost, not the soul. What had been lost the Son of Man saves: so the flesh too has salvation. If he had been lost in the soul, the soul's perdition is destined for salvation, and the flesh, which was not lost, is safe. If the whole man had been lost in both substances, the whole man must necessarily be saved, and the opinion of the heretics who deny the salvation of the flesh is struck down. And now the Creator's Christ is confirmed too, who, in keeping with the Creator, promised the salvation of the whole man.

The parable too of the servants who are judged according to their account of their lord's money put out at interest shows (your) god to be a judge even on the side of severity, not only loading with more but also taking away what someone seems to have had. Or if this too depicts the Creator, (austere, taking what he did not lay down and reaping what he did not sow,) here too it is he who instructs me, whose money he teaches me to put out at interest.

Christ knew where John's baptism came from. Then why did he ask as though he did not know? He knew that the Pharisees would not answer him. Then why did he ask to no purpose? Or was it to judge them out of their own mouth, or heart? Refer these things, then, to the Creator's defense and to the comparison with Christ, and consider now what would have followed if the Pharisees had given any answer to the question. Suppose they had answered that John's baptism was human: they would at once have been crushed with stones. Some Marcion would have risen up against Marcion to say: “O most good god, O god unlike the Creator's examples! Knowing that men would go headlong, he himself set them on the edge of the precipice.” For that is how they argue about the Creator in the law of the tree. But John's baptism was from heaven. “And why,” says Christ, “did you not believe him?” So he who had wanted John to be believed, since he was going to rebuke them for not believing, belonged to him whose sacrament John was administering. Certainly, when they would not report what they thought, and he in turn set against them, “Neither do I tell you by what power I do these things,” he returned evil for evil.

“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” What will be God's, like Caesar's denarius? His image and likeness, of course. So he commands man to be rendered to the Creator, in whose image and likeness and name and material man has been stamped. Let Marcion's god look for coinage of his own; Christ commands man's denarius to be rendered to his own Caesar, not to a stranger; unless it is necessary … who has no denarius of his own.

It is a just and fitting rule in every question that the sense of the answer ought to bear on the point of the question. To answer one thing to one who asks another is the mark of a madman; all the more let what does not befit even a man be far from Christ. The Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, having a question about it, had set before the Lord a case from the law: a woman who, when seven brothers had died one after another, had married them according to the legal precept — whose wife was she to be counted in the resurrection? This was the matter of the question, this the substance of the inquiry; to this Christ must have answered. He feared no one, so as to seem either to have dodged questions or to have used them as an occasion to hint at what he did not otherwise teach openly. He answered, then, that the sons of this age marry — you see how pertinently to the case: because the question was about the age to come, in which he was going to lay down that no one marries, he first established that here there is marrying, where there is also dying — but those whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, because they will no longer die, since they are like the angels of God, having been made sons of the resurrection. Since, then, the sense of the answer must be directed to nothing other than the point of the question, if the point of the question is settled by this sense of the answer, the Lord's answer means nothing other than what settles the question: you have the times of marriage permitted and denied, arising not from a question about marriage itself but from the question of the resurrection; you have also the confirmation of the resurrection itself and all that the Sadducees were asking about, since they were not inquiring about another god nor asking about the proper right of marriage. But if you make Christ answer about things he was not asked, you deny that he could answer what he was asked, as though he were caught, of course, by the wisdom of the Sadducees.

Now, more than is needed and after the rule has been laid down, I will go over the matter against their connected arguments. For having got hold of the text of Scripture, “But those whom God has deemed worthy of that age,” they run through it in reading so as to join “of that age” to “God,” in order to make another god, the god of that age; whereas it should be read, “But those whom God has deemed worthy,” so that, with a pause made here after “God,” “of that age” belongs to what follows, that is: “whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection.” For the question was not about God but about the state of that age, whose wife she would be after the resurrection in that age. So too they twist the answer about marriage itself, so that “the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage” is said of the men of the Creator, who permits marriage, whereas those whom the god of that age — the other one, of course — has deemed worthy of the resurrection do not marry even here, because they are not sons of this age. … since, when he was asked about the marriages of that age and not of this, he denied those about which he was asked. And so those who had taken in the very force of the words and of the delivery and of the pauses understood nothing but what bore on the matter of the question; and so the scribes said: “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For he had confirmed the resurrection by setting forth its form against the opinion of the Sadducees. In short, he did not refuse the testimony of those who had taken him to have answered in this way.

But if the scribes thought Christ was the son of David, while David himself calls him Lord, what has this to do with a Christ who is not David's? Was he beating down the error of the scribes? (No.) Rather he was securing honor for David's Christ, whom he confirmed as Lord rather than as son of David — which would not suit a destroyer of the Creator. But on our side how fitting the interpretation is! For he who had once been invoked by that blind man as (son of David), and had then kept silent on the point, since no scribes were present, now of his own accord deliberately brought it forward in their presence, to show that he, whom the blind man had proclaimed, according to the scribes' teaching, only as David's son, was also his Lord; rewarding the blind man's faith, by which he had believed him to be the son of David, and striking at the tradition of the scribes, by which they did not know him to be David's Lord as well. Whatever tended to the glory of the Creator's Christ, no one but the Creator's Christ would so defend.

It was established long ago, concerning the ownership of the names, that they belong to him … who first both announced his Christ to men and renamed Hoshea “Jesus” (Joshua). So the shamelessness will be established of the one who says that many will come in his name — a name that is not his, if he is not the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, to whom the ownership of the names belongs. Further, he forbids them to be received, when he himself is their equal, as one who likewise came in another's name. If not, it was for him to forewarn his disciples against the lie about the name, since through the ownership of the name he possessed its truth. In short, those men will come saying, “I am the Christ”: you will receive them, you who received one just like them; for this one too did not come in his own name. What then? When the lord of the names himself comes, the Christ and Jesus of the Creator, will you reject him? And how unfair, how unjust, how unworthy of the most good god, that you should not receive the one who comes in his own name, when you have received another in his name!

Let us see also what signs he assigns to the times: wars, I think, and kingdom against kingdom and nation against nation, and pestilence and famines and earthquakes and terrors and portents from heaven, all of which befit a severe and dreadful god. When he adds too that these things must happen, what does he show himself to be, the destroyer or the approver of the Creator? He confirms that the Creator's arrangements must be fulfilled, which, as the most good, he would rather have abolished than established, grim and dreadful as they are, if they had not been his own. But before these things he foretells to them persecutions and sufferings to come, for martyrdom, surely, and for salvation. Hear it foretold in Zechariah: “The Lord almighty,” he says, “will protect them, and they will devour them, and will stone them with sling stones, and will drink their blood like wine, and will fill the bowls as of the altar; and the Lord will save them in that day like sheep, his people, because holy stones are rolled.” And lest you think these things are foretold of the sufferings which awaited them at the hands of foreigners in so many wars, look at their kinds. No one, in foretelling wars to be fought with regular arms, lists stoning, which belongs rather to popular gatherings and unarmed riots; no one measures such rivers of blood in war by the capacity of bowls, or makes them equal to the bloodying of one altar; no one calls sheep those who fall in war armed and themselves fighting with the same ferocity, but those who are slaughtered in their own proper character and patience, surrendering themselves rather than defending themselves. In fact he says, “Because holy stones are rolled,” not because soldiers fight. For stones are also foundations, on which we are built, having been built up, according to Paul, on the foundations of the apostles, who, as holy stones, are rolled, set in the way for all to stumble against. So here too he forbids them to think out beforehand what they should answer before tribunals, he who suggested to Balaam what he had not thought of, indeed the opposite of what he had thought of, and promised a mouth to Moses when he pleaded slowness of tongue. And the very wisdom which no one will resist he showed through Isaiah: “This one will say, I am God's; and (this one) will cry, In the name of Jacob; and another will be inscribed in the name of Israel.” For what is wiser and more unanswerable than a simple and open confession in the name of a martyr, prevailing with God, which is the meaning of “Israel”? No wonder that he forbade thinking things out beforehand, who himself received from the Father the supply of timely speech: “The Lord gives me the tongue of discipline … when I ought to utter a word,” unless Marcion brings in a Christ not subject to the Father.

That persecutions from one's nearest, and blasphemy of the name out of hatred, were foretold, I need not show again. “But by endurance,” he says, “you will save yourselves”; of which, of course, the psalm speaks: “The endurance of the righteous will not perish forever,” since elsewhere too: “Precious is the death of the righteous,” through endurance, no doubt; and Zechariah too: “But there will be a crown for those who have endured.” But do not dare to argue that the apostles were harassed by the Jews as heralds of another god; remember that the prophets too, who suffered the same things from the Jews, were nevertheless apostles of no other god than the Creator.

But having next pointed out the time of the destruction, when Jerusalem would begin to be surrounded by armies, he recounts the signs of the very end: portents of sun and moon and stars, and on earth the distress of nations bewildered as by the roar of the surging sea, in expectation of the evils hanging over the world. That the very powers of the heavens are to be shaken, hear Joel: “And I will give portents in heaven, and on earth blood and fire and vapor of smoke; the sun will be turned into darkness and the moon into blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.” You have Habakkuk too: “The earth will be torn by rivers; the peoples will see you and be in labor; scattering the waters in your course; the abyss gave its voice; the height of its fear was lifted up; the sun and moon stood in their order; your flashes will go into light, your shield like lightning into brightness; in your threat you will diminish the earth, and in your indignation you will bring down the nations.” The Lord's pronouncements and the prophets' agree, I think, about the shakings of the world and of the earth, of the elements and of the nations. After this, what does the Lord say? “And then they will see the Son of Man coming from the heavens with great power. And when these things come to pass, you will stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption will be drawing near,” namely at the time of the kingdom, of which the parable itself will be added: “So you too, when you see all these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God has drawn near.” This will be the great and glorious day of the Lord, of the Son of Man coming from the heavens, according to Daniel: “Behold, one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven,” and so on, “and royal power was given to him” — which in the parable he had gone away to request, leaving his money with his servants to be put out at interest — “and all the nations” — which the Father had promised him in the psalm: “Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance” — “and all glory serving him, and his power everlasting, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom, which will not be corrupted,” because in it they will neither die nor marry, but will be like angels. Of the same coming of the Son of Man and its fruit, in Habakkuk: “You went out for the salvation of your people, to save your anointed ones,” those, namely, who will stand up and lift up their heads, redeemed in the time of the kingdom. So, since the things that belong to the promises agree in the same way as those that belong to the shakings, by the harmony of the prophetic and the Lord's pronouncements, you will be able to insert no distinction here, so as to refer the shakings to the Creator, as a god of cruelty — things which the most good god ought not even to permit, much less look forward to — and to credit the promises to the most good god, which the Creator, not knowing him, would not have prophesied. Or if the Creator prophesied them as his own, not differing from the promises of (your) Christ, he will be equal in generosity to the most good god, and no more will seem to be promised by your Christ than by my Son of Man. You will find the very course of the gospel Scripture, from the disciples' question to the parable of the fig tree, so bound up in its connected sense with the Son of Man on both sides that it joins to him both the sad and the glad, both the shakings and the promises, and you cannot separate either part from him. For since the coming of one Son of Man is set between two outcomes, the shakings and the promises, both the troubles of the nations and the longings of the saints must belong to one Son of Man, because he is placed in the middle so as to (be) common to both outcomes, bringing the one to a close by his coming, namely the troubles of the nations, and beginning the other, namely the longings of the saints; so that, if you grant that the coming of the Son of Man is my Christ's, and so attribute to him the impending evils which precede his coming, you are compelled also to ascribe to him the good things which arise from his coming; … you are compelled also to attribute to him the evils which precede his coming. For the evils are as bound up with the coming of the Son of Man by preceding it as the good things are by following it. Ask yourself, then, which of the two Christs you will set in the person of the one Son of Man, to whom both arrangements are referred; either you have made the Creator most good, or your god harsh, by nature. In sum, consider the example of the parable itself: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees: when they have put forth fruit, men understand that summer has drawn near; so you too, when you see these things come to pass, know that the kingdom of God is near.” For if the fruiting of the trees gives a sign of summer by preceding it, so too the conflicts of the world give advance notice of the kingdom by preceding it. Now every sign belongs to the one to whom the thing it signifies belongs, and on every thing a sign is set by the one to whom the thing belongs. So if the conflicts are signs of the kingdom, as the fruiting is of summer, then the kingdom too is the Creator's, to whom the conflicts that are signs of the kingdom are ascribed. The most good god had said beforehand that these things must happen, so dreadful and so dire, things surely foretold by the prophets and the law: so far was he from destroying the law and the prophets, since he confirms that what they had foretold must be fulfilled.

He further insists that heaven and earth will not pass away until all things are accomplished. What things are these? If those (foretold) by the Creator, the elements will rightly bear it that their own Lord's order be carried out; if those of the most good god, I doubt whether heaven and earth would bear the fulfillment of what a rival has decreed. If the Creator puts up with this, he is not a jealous God. Come now, let heaven and earth pass away — for so their Lord has determined — so long as his word abides forever — for so Isaiah too declared —; let the disciples too be warned lest at any time their hearts be weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and worldly cares, and that day come upon them suddenly like a snare, as upon those who, surely, have forgotten God out of fullness and preoccupation with the world — this will be Moses' warning —: so the one who will deliver from the snare of that day is the one who long ago gave this warning.

There were other places too in Jerusalem for teaching, and places outside Jerusalem to withdraw to. But by day he taught in the temple, as one who had foretold through Hosea: “In my temple they found me, and there it was discussed with them”; but at night he withdrew to the Mount of Olives; for so Zechariah had pointed out: “And his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives.” There were also hours suited to hearing: they had to gather at dawn, because when he had said through Isaiah, “The Lord gives me the tongue of discipline,” he added, “He has set my ear in the morning to hear.” If this is dissolving the prophecies, what will fulfilling them be?

Likewise he knew also when he ought to suffer, since the law had prefigured his suffering. For out of so many feasts of the Jews he chose the day of the Passover. For with this in view Moses had declared the sacred sign: “It is the Lord's Passover.” Therefore he also showed his desire: “With desire I have desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer.” O destroyer of the law, who had desired even to keep the Passover! No doubt the Jewish mutton had delighted him. Or was he the one who, being about to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearer so not to open his mouth, desired to fulfill the figure of his saving blood? He could have been betrayed by any stranger too, were it not that, as I would have to say, even in this the psalm was fulfilled: “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” He could also have been betrayed without a price. For what need of a betrayer was there for one who, offending the people openly, could no more have been betrayed than seized by force? But this would have suited another Christ, not one who was fulfilling prophecies. For it is written: “Because they sold the righteous.” For both the amount of the price and its outcome — when Judas repented and it was called back and given for the purchase of the potter's field, as is contained in Matthew's gospel — Jeremiah foretold: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who was valued” — or honored — “and gave them for the potter's field.” So, having declared that with desire he had desired to eat the Passover as his own — for it would be unworthy of God to desire anything belonging to another — he made the bread which he had taken and distributed to the disciples his body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. But there would not have been a figure unless there were a body of truth. An empty thing, which is what a phantom is, could not take on a figure. Or if he made up the bread into a body for himself because he lacked the reality of a body, then he ought to have handed over bread for us. It would have suited Marcion's emptiness for bread to be crucified. But why does he call bread his body, and not rather a melon, which Marcion had in place of a heart, not understanding that this was an ancient figure of the body of Christ, who says through Jeremiah: “They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread,” that is, the cross into his body? So the one who sheds light on ancient things declared plainly enough what he had then meant the bread to signify, by calling his body bread. So too, in mentioning the cup, establishing the testament sealed with his blood, he confirmed the substance of his body. For there can be blood of no body but one of flesh. For even if some quality of body that is not fleshly is set against us, it will surely not have blood unless it is fleshly. So the proof of the body will stand on the testimony of the flesh, and the proof of the flesh on the testimony of the blood. And that you may recognize the ancient figure of blood too in wine, Isaiah will be at hand: “Who is this,” he says, “who comes from Edom, the redness of his garments from Bozrah, so comely in his robe, with violence and strength? Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from the floor of the winepress, full and trodden?” For the prophetic Spirit, as if already contemplating the Lord coming to his passion, clothed, that is, in flesh so as to suffer in it, depicts the bloody condition of the flesh in the redness of the garments, trodden and pressed out by the force of the passion as in the floor of the winepress, since from there too men come down as though bloodied by the redness of the wine. Much more plainly Genesis, in the blessing of Judah, from whose tribe Christ's descent according to the flesh was to come, already then sketched Christ in Judah: “He will wash,” it says, “his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape,” showing the flesh by the robe and garment, and the blood by the wine. So now too he consecrated his blood in wine, who then figured wine as blood.