Against Marcion 4.31

What sort of people does he command to be invited to lunch or dinner? The sort he had pointed out through Isaiah: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the beggars and those who have no roof into your house,” those, that is, who cannot repay this kindness. If Christ forbids seeking such repayment, promising it at the resurrection, the pattern is the Creator's, who is displeased with those who love gifts and chase rewards.

Weigh also which side the parable of the host fits better. “A certain man made a dinner and invited many.” Surely the preparing of the dinner figures the fullness of eternal life. I say first that strangers, bound by no tie of kinship, are not usually invited to dinner; certainly members of the household and relatives are invited more readily. So it is the Creator who invited, to whom the invited belonged, both through Adam, as men, and (through) the fathers, as Jews; not the one to whom they belonged neither by nature nor by privilege. Next, if the one who sends to the guests is the one who prepared the dinner, in this way too the dinner is the Creator's, who sent to remind the guests, already invited beforehand through the fathers, and to be reminded through the prophets; not one who sent no one to remind them and did nothing beforehand to invite them, but came down himself suddenly, inviting as soon as he became known, pressing people into the banquet as soon as he invited them, making the hour of dining and the invitation to dinner one and the same. The invited make excuses. If invited by another god, they did so rightly, because they were invited suddenly; if not rightly, then neither were they invited suddenly; but if they were not invited suddenly, then it was by the Creator, by whom they had been invited long ago, and whose invitation they had in fact declined back then, first saying to Aaron, “Make us gods to go before us,” and thereafter hearing with the ear and not hearing, namely the invitation of God, who says most pertinently to this parable through Jeremiah: “Hear my voice, and I will be your God and you will be my people, and you will walk in all my ways, whatever I command you” — see, the invitation of God — “and they did not hear,” he says, “and did not incline their ear” — see, the refusal of the people — “but they went off in the things that they desired in their evil heart”: “I have bought a field and I have purchased oxen and I have married a wife.” And he adds further: “And I sent to you all my servants the prophets” — this will be the Holy Spirit, who reminds the guests — “by day and before dawn, and my people did not hear and did not attend with their ears, and they hardened their neck.” When this was reported to the master of the house, he was then moved — good that he was moved, for Marcion denies that his god is moved; so in this too he is mine — and he orders a replacement to be gathered from the streets and lanes of the city. Let us see whether it is in the sense in which he says again through Jeremiah: “Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left untilled?” — that is: have I no one to choose, or nowhere to choose from? — “because my people said: We will not come to you.” So he sent to invite others still from the same city. Then, since there was room to spare, he commanded people to be gathered even from the roads and hedges, that is, us now, from the foreign nations, with that jealousy, namely, of which he speaks in Deuteronomy: “I will turn my face away from them and show what will be theirs at the last” — that is, that others will possess their place — “because it is a perverse generation, sons in whom there is no faith. They have made me jealous with what is no god and provoked me to anger with their idols; and I will make them jealous with what is no nation, with a foolish (nation) I will provoke them to anger” — with us, namely, whose hope the Jews groan over, which the Lord says they will not taste, Zion being left like a watchtower in a vineyard and a hut in a cucumber field, after it had refused even the last invitation, the one in Christ. What of this order, reviewed according to the Creator's arrangements and predictions, can apply to one who has neither an order nor an arrangement to fit the parable, who did his whole work at once? Or what will be his first invitation, and what the reminder in the second act? First some must make excuses, and afterward others must come together. But now he comes inviting both groups at the same time, from the city and from the hedges, against the mirror of the parable. Nor can he judge as disdainful those whom he never invited before, whom he is only now approaching. Or if he judges them as those who will despise the invitation in the future, then he also foretells as future their replacement by the gentiles. Clearly he is yet to come a second time; he is to come, however, I suppose, not to invite guests still, but by then to seat them at table. Meanwhile, you who interpret the invitation to this dinner as a heavenly banquet of spiritual fullness and delight, remember that the Creator's earthly promises of wine and oil and grain, and of the city itself, are likewise figures of spiritual things.