Against Marcion 4.28

Rightly, then, he dislikes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, who love God with their lips, that is, and not with their heart. “Beware,” he says to his disciples, “of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” not the preaching of the Creator. The Son hates those who are stubborn toward the Father; he does not want his own to be such toward him — not toward another — toward whom hypocrisy had also been committed, the example of which the disciples were to beware of. So (when) he forbids the Pharisees' example, he was forbidding it to be committed against the one against whom the Pharisees were committing it. So, since he had censured their hypocrisy, which surely concealed the secrets of the heart and overshadowed the hidden things of unbelief with superficial observances, and which, having the key of knowledge, neither entered itself nor let others enter, he therefore adds: “But nothing is covered that will not be laid open, and nothing hidden that will not be made known,” so that no one should think he was aiming at a revelation and recognition of a god formerly unknown and hidden; for he adds also that what they muttered within themselves or discussed among themselves — saying of him, that is, “This man casts out demons only by Beelzebul” — would come out into the open and be on men's lips through the proclamation of the gospel.

Then, turning to the disciples, he says: “But I say to you, my friends: do not be terrified by those who can only kill you and after this have no further power over you” — but Isaiah will be on the side of these, foretelling: “See how the righteous man is taken away, and no one takes notice” — “but I will show you whom you should fear: fear him who, after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna” — meaning the Creator, surely —; “so I tell you: fear him.” And in this passage it would be enough for me to say: he whom Christ commands to be feared he forbids to be offended, and he whom he forbids to be offended he commands to be won over; and the one who gives these commands belongs to him on whose behalf he secures fear, freedom from offense, and favor. But I have more to take from what follows: “For I say to you: everyone who confesses me before men, I will confess him before God.” Now those who confess Christ before men will have to be killed, surely suffering nothing further from men after being killed. These, then, will be the ones whom he forewarned above not to fear being merely killed; he put first that death was not to be feared, so that he might add that confession must be endured. “And everyone who has denied me before men will be denied before God,” surely by the one who would have confessed him had he confessed. For if he will confess the confessor, he is the one who will also deny the denier. Moreover, if the confessor is the one who has nothing to fear after being killed, the denier will be the one who has something to fear even after death. So since what is to be feared after death, namely the punishment of Gehenna, belongs to the Creator, the denier too belongs to the Creator. And if the denier, then the confessor too, who after being killed will suffer nothing from man, but would clearly suffer from God if he denied. And so Christ is the Creator's, since he shows that those who deny him must fear the Creator's Gehenna.

So after deterring them from denial there follows a warning that blasphemy must be dreaded: “Whoever speaks against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.” If forgiving and retaining sin already savor of God as judge, then the Holy Spirit that must not be blasphemed will (also) be his who will not forgive the blasphemy, just as above the one who must not be denied was his who will kill even into Gehenna. And if Christ turns blasphemy away from the Creator, I do not know how he came as his adversary. Or if by these words too he blackens the Creator's severity, as one who will not forgive blasphemy and will kill even into Gehenna, it remains that the Spirit of that other god may be blasphemed and Christ denied with impunity, and that it makes no difference whether he is worshiped or despised; and that, as there is no punishment for contempt, so no reward is to be hoped for worship.

He forbids those brought before the authorities to think out their answer for the interrogation. “For the Holy Spirit,” he says, “will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” If there is a proof of this kind from the Creator, the precept will belong to him whose example went before it. The prophet Balaam in Numbers, summoned by King Balak to curse Israel, with whom Balak was going to battle, was at once filled with the Spirit, and pronounced not the curse for which he had come but the blessing which the Spirit suggested to him in that very hour, having declared beforehand to the king's messengers, and soon to the king himself, that he would pronounce what God had put into his mouth. These are the new teachings of the new Christ, which the servants of the Creator initiated long ago.

Here, to be sure, is a contrasting example of Moses and of Christ. Moses, when brothers were quarreling, intervenes of his own accord and rebukes the wrongdoer: “Why do you strike your neighbor?”, and is rejected by him: “Who appointed you master or judge over us?” Christ, on the other hand, when asked by someone to settle (the) division of an inheritance between him and his brother, refused his help, and that in so honest a cause. So then my Moses is better than your Christ, striving for peace between brothers and confronting injury. But of course he is the Christ of the most good god, who is no judge: “Who,” he says, “appointed me judge over you?” Could he find no other form of excuse, so as not to use the words with which a wicked man and an impious brother had thrown off the champion of honesty and piety? In short, he approved a bad saying by using it, and a bad deed by declining to make peace between brothers. Or was he indignant that Moses had been driven off with this saying, and therefore, in a like case of brothers disputing, wanted to shame them by recalling the same saying? Clearly, let it be so. For he himself had then been in Moses, the one who had heard such words, namely the Spirit of the Creator.

I think we have already sufficiently established elsewhere that the glory of riches is condemned by our God, who pulls the mighty down from their throne and lifts the poor from the dunghill. From him, then, will come the parable of the rich man who flattered himself on the yield of his fields, to whom God says: “Fool, this night they will demand your soul back; and whose will be what you have prepared?” So, in the end, King (Hezekiah), having boasted before the Persians of his treasures and the storehouses of his delights, heard hard words through Isaiah