Against Marcion 4.15

“In the same way,” he says, “their fathers did to the prophets.” O turncoat Christ, now destroyer, now champion of the prophets! He destroyed them as a rival, turning their disciples to himself; he championed them as a friend, rebuking their persecutors. Now, in so far as championing the prophets would not have suited Marcion's Christ, who had come to destroy them, to that extent rebuking the persecutors of the prophets suits the Creator's Christ, who was fulfilling them in everything; or because it belongs rather to the Creator to reproach sons with the sins of their fathers than to that god who does not even punish each person's own sins. “But,” you say, “he was not therefore protecting the prophets, if he wished to affirm the iniquity of the Jews, in that they had not acted dutifully even toward their own prophets.” On the contrary, there was no iniquity to reproach the Jews with here; they should rather have been praised and approved, if they had ill-treated those for whose destruction the supremely good god was moved after so long an age. But now, I suppose, he is no longer supremely good; he has now spent some time with the Creator, and is not wholly the god of Epicurus. For see, he turns to cursing, and shows himself to be one who knows how to be offended and to be angry. For he says “woe.” But we are faced with a question about the character of this word, as though it were not so much a curse as a warning. And what difference does it make to the case, since a warning too is not without the sting of a threat, especially when made more bitter by “woe”? And both warning and threat will belong to one who knows how to be angry. For no one will warn and no one will threaten, so that someone may not do something, except one who will punish it when done; and no one would punish except one who knows how to be angry. Others do acknowledge it as a word of cursing, but will have it that Christ pronounced “woe” not as properly his own sentence, but because “woe” comes from the Creator, and he wished to set the Creator's harshness against them, so as to commend his own forbearance above in the blessings. As if it did not suit the Creator, as showing both, to be both a good God and a judge; so that, having first shown kindness in the blessings, he should also add severity in the curses, furnishing the fullness of both disciplines, both for pursuing the blessing and for guarding against the curse. For so he had also said beforehand: “Behold, I have set before you blessing and curse”; which even foreshadowed this arrangement of the gospel. Otherwise, what sort of being is he who, to insinuate his own goodness, set against it the Creator's harshness? Weak is the commendation propped up by the destruction of another. And in fact, by setting forth the Creator's harshness he confirmed that he is to be feared. If to be feared, then certainly to be obeyed rather than disregarded; and Marcion's Christ now begins to teach in the Creator's favor. Then, if the “woe” aimed at the rich is the Creator's, then it is not Christ who is offended at the rich but the Creator, and Christ ratifies the counts against the rich (I mean pride, vainglory, worldly pursuits, and neglect of God), by which they deserve woe from the Creator. But how would it not belong to the same one to reject the rich who above approved the beggars? No one fails to reject the opposite of what he has approved. So if the curse on the rich is to be assigned to the Creator, the blessing on the beggars will be maintained as his too, and the whole work of Christ now belongs to the Creator. If the blessing on the beggars is to be ascribed to Marcion's god, the curse on the rich will also be laid on him, and he will now be the Creator's equal, as much good as judge; and there will be no room left for the distinction by which there come to be two gods; and with the distinction removed, it will remain to proclaim one God, the Creator. So, if “woe” is a word of cursing or of some severer outcry, and is directed by Christ against the rich, I must prove that the Creator too despises the rich, as I proved that he is the advocate of beggars, so as to show Christ as the Creator's in this saying too. He did enrich Solomon, it is true; but because, given his choice, Solomon preferred to ask for what he knew was pleasing to God, wisdom and understanding, he also earned the riches, which he had not preferred. And yet it is not unfitting for God to grant riches, by which the rich too are helped with comfort (“for,” he says, “you have received your consolation,” from riches, that is, from their glory and worldly fruits), and by which many works of justice and love are carried out. But those vices that attend riches assign the “woe” to the rich in the gospel too, as in Moses' Deuteronomy: “Lest,” he says, “when you have eaten and are full and have built great houses, and your flocks and herds have multiplied, and silver and gold, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God.” So too he assails King Hezekiah through Isaiah, puffed up with his treasures and boasting of them rather than of God before those who had come from Persia: “Behold, days are coming, and all that is in your house will be taken away, and what your fathers have stored up will be carried to Babylon.” So too through Jeremiah he declares: “Let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories,” that is, “glory in God.” So too through Isaiah he inveighs against the daughters of Zion, puffed up by their abundance of riches; and elsewhere, threatening the noble and proud: “The underworld has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth, and the renowned and great and rich will go down” (this will be Christ's “woe” on the rich); “and man will be humbled,” he who was exalted by riches, of course; “and the man will be dishonored,” he who was honored because of his wealth, of course. Of whom he says again: “Behold, the Lord of powers will throw the glorious into confusion with might, and the lofty will be broken, and the high will fall by the sword.” Who more than the rich? Because they have received their consolation, namely glory and the loftiness of honors, from riches. Turning us from them, he says also in the forty-eighth psalm: “Do not fear when a man becomes rich, and when his glory abounds, for when he dies he will not take everything, nor will his glory go down with him”; likewise in the sixty-first: “Do not desire riches, even if they shine; do not set your heart on them.” Finally, that very word “woe” was long ago aimed through Amos at the rich who overflow with luxuries: “Woe,” he says, “to those who sleep on beds of ivory and are dissolute on their couches, who eat kids from the flocks of goats and suckling calves from the herds of cattle, clapping to the sound of instruments; they reckoned these things as lasting and not as fleeting; who drink strained wine and anoint themselves with the finest ointments.” So even if I showed only that the Creator turns people away from riches, and not also that he condemns the rich beforehand, and that with the very word Christ uses, no one would doubt that the threat against the rich through Christ's “woe” was added by the same one by whom the turning away from those very things, riches, had gone before. For a threat is an addition to a dissuasion. He also pronounces woe on the full, because they will hunger, and on those who laugh now, because they will mourn. To these correspond the things set against the blessings above in the Creator: “Behold, those who serve me will be filled, but you will hunger,” you who are full, of course; and, “Behold, those who serve me will be delighted, but you will be put to shame,” you who laugh now and will weep, of course. For as in the psalm those who sow in tears will reap in gladness, so in the gospel those who sow in laughter, from gladness, will reap in tears. The Creator set these side by side long ago; Christ only renewed them, by separating, not by changing them. “Woe to you, when men speak well of you! In the same way their fathers did to the false prophets.” The Creator equally blames those who seek human blessing and praise, through Isaiah: “My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray and disturb the paths of your feet.” Elsewhere he forbids trust in man at all, as in the praise of man, as through Jeremiah: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” For in the hundred and seventeenth psalm too he says: “It is better to trust in God than to trust in man, and better to hope in God than to hope in princes.” So the Creator renounced everything that is sought from man, let alone blessing. And to reproach the false prophets for being praised or blessed by their fathers belongs to him as much as to reproach the harassing and rejecting of the prophets. As the wrongs done to the prophets would have concerned only their own God, so the favors shown to the false prophets would have displeased only the God of the prophets.