Against Marcion 4.17

Here now he speaks of lending at interest, when he interjects: “And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what thanks is there to you?” Run through what follows in Ezekiel about the same righteous man: “He has not given his money,” he says, “at interest, and will not take what has overflowed,” that is, the surplus of the loan, which is usury. First, then, it was fitting to root out the fruit of lending, so that he might the more easily accustom man to the loss even of the loan itself, should it be lost, once he had learned to give up its fruit. For this, we say, was the work of the law, preparing the way for the gospel: it was gradually shaping the faith of some people at that time toward the full brilliance of Christian discipline by first precepts of a kindness still stammering. For above too he says: “And he will return the pledge to the debtor” — surely if he is unable to pay, for would any man write that a pledge must be returned to one who pays? — and much more plainly in Deuteronomy: “You shall not sleep upon his pledge; you shall surely return his cloak to him about sunset, and he shall sleep in his cloak”; and more clearly still above: “You shall remit every debt that your neighbor owes you, and you shall not demand it back from your brother, because the release of the Lord your God has been proclaimed.” Now when he commands a debt to be remitted, surely to one who will not pay — for it would be more if it were to one who would pay — when he forbids it to be demanded back, what else does he teach than this: that we should lend to one who will not repay, he who has imposed so great a loss on lending?

“And you will be sons of God.” Nothing could be more shameless, if he will make us sons to himself who has not allowed us to make sons for ourselves, by taking away marriage. How will he enroll his own under a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch, especially since I have the same Father as all things have. For he is as truly the Father of all who is the Maker of the universe as he is a eunuch who is the maker of no substance. And even if the Creator had not joined male and female, and had not granted offspring to all living creatures as well, I was this to him before paradise, before the offense, before the exile, before the two were made one again: I was a son as soon as he brought me forth by his hands, as soon as he set me moving with his breath. He now calls me son again, giving birth no longer into soul but into spirit. “Because he,” it says, “is kind toward the ungrateful and the wicked.” Well done, Marcion! Quite cleverly you have taken the rains and the suns away from him, so that he would not seem to be the Creator. But who is this kind one, who until now was not even known? How is he kind, from whom no benefits of this kind of kindness had come beforehand, such as suns and rains; who had (not) lent to the human race without hope of return, as the Creator has, who, in return for so great a generosity of the elements, still bears with men who pay the debt of thanks to idols more readily than to him; who is truly kind in spiritual benefits too, for “the words of the Lord are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb”? He, then, reproached the ungrateful who deserved to find them grateful, he whose suns and rains you too, Marcion, have enjoyed ungratefully. But your god could not yet complain of the ungrateful, since he had not yet made anyone grateful.

Commanding mercy too, he says: “Be merciful, as your Father has had mercy on you.” This will mean: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring into your house (the one) without a roof, and if you see the naked, cover him,” and: “Judge for the orphan and justify the widow.” I recognize the old teaching of him who prefers mercy to sacrifice. Or if another has now commanded mercy because he too is merciful, why was he not merciful to me through so long an age?

“Do not judge, that you may not be judged; do not condemn, that you may not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down and running over, they will give into your lap. With the same measure with which you have measured, it will be measured back to you.” As I think, these words speak of a repayment called forth according to deserts. From whom, then, is the repayment? If from men only, then he teaches a human discipline and a human reward, and we shall obey men in everything; if from the Creator, as judge and assessor of deserts, then he is driving our obedience toward the one with whom he has placed the repayment to be sought or feared, according as each has judged or condemned or forgiven or measured; if from himself, then he too already judges, which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites choose, then, whether falling away from their master's rule is not worth as much to them as having a Christ who teaches on behalf of either men or the Creator. But “the blind leads the blind into the pit.” Some correct Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.” Apelles, Marcion's corrector who had been his disciple, ought to have remembered this. Let the heretic take the beam out of his own eye too; then let him convict the straw, if he thinks there is one, in the Christian's eye. Just as a good tree does not bear bad fruit, because truth does not bear heresy, nor a bad tree good fruit, because heresy does not bear truth, so neither did Marcion bring out anything good from the bad treasure of Cerdo, nor Apelles from Marcion's. For we shall apply these things, which Christ spoke allegorically of men, far more fittingly to these very people, not to two gods, as Marcion's stumbling would have it.

I think I am not rash in keeping to this line all this while, by which I determine that no other god at all has been revealed by Christ — at this point alone I marvel that Marcion's adulterating hands grew numb, unless it is that even robbers are afraid; no evil deed is (without) fear, because none is without its own guilty awareness —: so long, then, the Jews too knew no other god than the one besides whom they had until then known none, nor called any other Lord than the one whom alone they knew. If this is so, who will seem to have said: “Why do you call (me) ‘Lord, Lord’?” Was it he who had never been called this, since he had never yet been made known, or he who was always regarded as Lord, being known from the beginning, namely the God of the Jews? Likewise, who could have added: “And you do not do what I say”? Was it he who was only then trying to teach them, or he who from the beginning had sent them the words of the law and the prophets? He who could reproach them with disobedience even if he had never reproached them elsewhere? Moreover, he who before Christ had declared, “This people loves me with their lips, but their heart stands far from me,” was surely charging them with their old stubbornness. Otherwise, how absurd that a new god, a new Christ, the enlightener of a religion new only just now, should pronounce stubborn and disobedient those whom he could not have tested!