Against Marcion 4.22

Now you ought to have blushed most of all at this: that you allow him to be seen, on the retreat of the mountain, with Moses and Elijah, whom he had come to destroy. This, no doubt, is what that voice from heaven meant to be understood: “This is my beloved Son; hear him,” that is, no longer Moses and Elijah. Then the voice alone would have been enough, without a display of Moses and Elijah. For by defining whom they should hear, he would have forbidden any others whatever to be heard. Or did he allow Isaiah and Jeremiah and the rest, whom he did not display, to be heard, if he forbade those whom he displayed? Now, even if their presence was necessary, surely they would not have been shown in conversation with him, which is a sign of intimacy, nor sharing his glory, which is a token of esteem and favor, but in some squalor, which is a proof of destruction; or rather in the Creator's darkness, which he had been sent to scatter, set far apart even from the glory of Christ, who was going to separate their very words and writings from his gospel. Is this how he shows them to be strangers, by keeping them with him? Is this how one should abandon those whom he joins to himself? Is this how he destroys those whom he builds up with his own rays? What would their own Christ have done? I suppose, by this perversity, he would have revealed them as Marcion's Christ ought to have done, or would (have shown) any others at all with him rather than his own prophets. But what is so proper to the Creator's Christ as to show his own heralds with him? To be seen with those to whom he had appeared in revelations? To speak with those who had spoken of him? To share his glory with those by whom he had been called the Lord of glory? With his chief servants, one of whom was once the shaper of the people and the other at some time its reshaper, one the initiator of the old testament and the other the finisher of the new? So Peter too, recognizing the fitting company of his Christ, suggests a plan for keeping him (in) their company: “It is good for us to be here” — good indeed, where Moses and Elijah are, of course — “and let us make three tabernacles here, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” (But not knowing what he said. How not knowing? Was it by simple error, or on the principle by which we maintain, in the cause of the new prophecy, that ecstasy, that is, being out of one's mind, belongs to grace? For a man placed in the Spirit, especially when he beholds the glory of God or when God speaks through him, must of necessity lose his senses, being overshadowed, that is, by the divine power. Although there is a dispute on this between us and the psychics, meanwhile it is easy to prove that Peter was out of his mind. For how would he have recognized Moses and Elijah — for the people had no images or statues of them, nor likenesses, since the law forbade them — except because he had seen them in the Spirit? And so what he said, being placed in the Spirit and not in his senses, he could not know. But if he did not know in the sense of erring, because he thought the Christ belonged to them, then it is established that earlier too, when Christ asked whom they thought him to be, Peter said, “You are the Christ,” of the Creator's Christ; because, if he had then recognized him as another god's, he would not have erred here either. But if he erred here because he had erred earlier too, then you are certain that up to that day no new divinity had been revealed by Christ, that Peter had not erred up to then, since Christ up to then had revealed nothing of the kind, and that Christ must be reckoned no other's than the Creator's all that time, whose whole pattern he expressed here too. He takes three of his disciples as witnesses of the vision and voice to come. This too is the Creator's way: “On three witnesses,” he says, “every word shall stand.” He withdraws up a mountain. I recognize the pattern of the place. For the Creator too had initiated the ancient people at a mountain, with a vision and with his voice. It was fitting that the new testament should be sealed on that platform on which the old had been written, and under the same enveloping cloud, which no one will doubt was massed together from the Creator's air — unless he had brought down his own clouds too — since he too had forced his way through the Creator's sky. Or did he likewise use the Creator's cloud on loan? So neither now was the cloud mute, but there was the accustomed voice from heaven, and the Father's new testimony about the Son, to whom he says in the second psalm: “You are my Son; today I have begotten you,” and of whom also through Isaiah: “Who fears God? Let him hear the voice of his Son.” So, presenting him now — “This is my Son” — surely he implies: whom I promised. For if he once promised and afterward says, “This is he,” it belongs to one who once promised to use such words when pointing out the one promised, not to one to whom it could be answered: ‘Who are you yourself, to say, “This is my Son,” of whom you gave no more notice beforehand than you revealed yourself, what you were before?’ “Hear him,” then! Whom? (Who but the one whom) from the beginning he had declared must be heard, under the name of a prophet, since he was also to be thought a prophet by the people: “A prophet,” says Moses, “God will raise up for us from your sons” — according to fleshly descent, that is — “you shall hear him as you hear me. And everyone who will not hear him, his soul shall be cut off from his people.” So too Isaiah: “Who among you fears (God)? Let him hear the voice of his Son,” a voice which the Father himself was going to commend: “establishing,” he says, “the words of his Son,” namely by saying: “This is my beloved Son; hear him.” So even if the hearing was transferred from Moses and Elijah to Christ, it was not as from another god nor to another Christ, but from the Creator to his Christ, in keeping with the departure of the old testament and the succession of the new: “Not an envoy,” says Isaiah, “nor a messenger, but God himself will save them,” now himself preaching and fulfilling the law and the prophets. So the Father handed the new disciples over to the Son, after Moses and Elijah had first been shown with him in the privilege of glory and then dismissed, as though now discharged from both office and honor, so that this very point might be confirmed, for Marcion's sake: that Christ shares even his glory with Moses and Elijah.

The whole shape of this vision we have also in Habakkuk, where the Spirit speaks at times in the person of the apostles: “Lord, I have heard your report and was afraid” — at what, more than at that heavenly voice, “This is my beloved Son; hear him”? — “I considered your work (and) was out of my mind” — when more than when Peter, having seen his glory, did not know what he said? — “In the midst of two living creatures you will be known,” that is, Moses and Elijah, whom Zechariah too saw in the figure of two olive trees and two olive branches. For these are the ones of whom it was said to him: “The two sons of fatness stand by the Lord of the whole earth.” And again the same Habakkuk: “His power covered the heavens,” surely with that cloud, “and his splendor will be like light,” surely the light with which even his clothing shone. And if we recall the promise to Moses, it will be found fulfilled here. For Moses had longed for the sight of the Lord, saying: “If then I have found favor before you, show yourself to me, that I may see you knowingly,” longing for that sight in which the Lord would be acting as a man, as the prophet knew — for the face of God, he had already heard, no man shall see and live —; and the Lord said: “This word too, which you have spoken, I will do for you.” And again Moses: “Show me your glory.” And the Lord likewise, of the future: “I will go before you in my glory,” and the rest. And at the end: “And then you will see my back parts,” not the loins or the calves, but the glory he had longed for, to be revealed in the latter times, in which he had promised that he would be visible to him face to face, saying also to Aaron: “And if there is a prophet among you, I will be known to him in a vision and will speak to him in a vision, not as to Moses; mouth to mouth will I speak to him, in form” — surely the form of the man he was going to bear — “not in a riddle.” For even if Marcion did not want him shown conversing with the Lord, but only standing there, yet even standing he stood mouth to mouth and face to face — “with him,” it says, “not apart from him” — in his very glory, not merely in his sight. From that glory he departed from Christ illumined no differently than he used to depart from the Creator, dazzling the eyes of the sons of Israel then, just as now those of blinded Marcion, who did not see that this argument too tells against him.