Against Marcion 4.40
Summary: Christ chose the Passover, was betrayed and sold as the prophets foretold, and at the Last Supper called the bread his body and the cup his blood, which shows that he had a real body of flesh and blood.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:559–561
Proinde sciit, et quando pati oporteret eum, cuius passionem lex figura(ra)t. nam ex tot festis Iudaeorum paschae diem elegit in hoc enim sacramentum pronuntiarat Moyses: pascha est domini. ideo et adfectum suum ostendit: concupiscentia concupii pascha edere uobiscum, antequam patiar. o legis destructorem, qui concupierat etiam pascha seruare! nimirum uerbecina illum [in] Iudaica delectarat. an ipse erat, qui, tamquam ouis ad uictimam adduci habens et tamquam ouis coram tondente sic os non aperturus, figuram sanguinis sui salutaris implere concupiscebat? poterat et ab extraneo quolibet tradi, ne dicerem et in hoc psalmum expunctum: qui mecum panem edit leuauit in me plantam. poterat et sine praemio tradi. quanta enim opera traditoris circa eum, qui populum coram offendens nec tradi magis potuisset quam inuadi? sed hoc alii competisset Christo, non qui prophetias adimplebat. scriptum est enim: pro eo quod uenumdederunt iustum. nam et quantitatem et exitum pretii postea Iuda paenitente reuocati et in emptionem dati agri figuli, sicut in euangelio Mathei continetur, Hieremias praecanit: et acceperunt triginta argentea pretium adpretiati — uel honorati - et dederunt ea in agrum figuli. professus itaque se concupiscentia concupisse edere pascha ut suum, — indignum enim, ut quid alienum concupisceret deus — acceptum panem et distributum discipulis corpus suum illum fecit hoc est corpus meum dicendo, id est (figura corporis mei. figura autem non fuisset nisi ueritatis esset corpus. ceterum uacua res, quod est phantasma, figuram capere non posset. aut si propterea panem corpus sibi finxit, quia corporis carebat uanitatem, ergo panem debuit tradere pro nobis. faciebat ad uanitatem Marcionis, ut panis crucifigeretur. cur autem panem corpus suum appellat et non magis peponem, quem Marcion cordis loco habuit, non intellegens ueterem fuisse istam figuram corporis Christi dicentis per Hieremiam: aduersus me cogitauerunt cogitatum dicentes: uenite. coiciamus lignum in panem eius, scilicet crucem in corpus eius? itaque inluminator antiquitatum, quid tunc uoluerit significasse panem, satis declarauit corpus suum uocans panem. sic et in calicis mentione testamentum constituens sanguine suo obsignatum substantiam corporis confirmauit. nullius enim corporis sanguis potest esse nisi carnis. nam et si qua corporis qualitas non carnea opponetur nobis, certe sanguinem nisi carnea non habebit. ita consistet probatio corporis de testimonio carnis, probatio carnis de testimonio sanguinis. ut autem et sanguinis ueterem figuram in uino recognoscas, aderit Esaias: quis, inquit, qui aduenit ex Edom, rubor uestimentorum eius ex Bosor? sic decorus in stola uiolentia cum fortitudine? quare rubra uestimenta tua, et indumenta sicut de foro torcularis, pleno conculcato? spiritus enim propheticus, uelut iam contemplabundus dominum ad passionem uenientem, carne scilicet uestitum ut in ea passum, cruentum habitum carnis in uestimentorum rubore designat, conculcatae et expressae ui passionis tamquam in foro torcularis, quia et inde quasi cruentati homines de uini rubore descendunt. multo manifestius Genesis in benedictione Iudae, ex cuius tribu carnis census Christi processurus, iam tunc Christum in Iuda deliniabat: lauabit, inquit, in uino stolam suam et in sanguine uuae amictum suum, stolam et amictum carnem demonstrans et uinum sanguinem. ita et nunc sanguinem suum in uino consecrauit qui tunc uinum in sanguinem figurauit.
English · Claude translation
Likewise he knew also when he ought to suffer, since the law had prefigured his suffering. For out of so many feasts of the Jews he chose the day of the Passover. For with this in view Moses had declared the sacred sign: “It is the Lord's Passover.” Therefore he also showed his desire: “With desire I have desired to eat the Passover with you before I suffer.” O destroyer of the law, who had desired even to keep the Passover! No doubt the Jewish mutton had delighted him. Or was he the one who, being about to be led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a sheep before its shearer so not to open his mouth, desired to fulfill the figure of his saving blood? He could have been betrayed by any stranger too, were it not that, as I would have to say, even in this the psalm was fulfilled: “He who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me.” He could also have been betrayed without a price. For what need of a betrayer was there for one who, offending the people openly, could no more have been betrayed than seized by force? But this would have suited another Christ, not one who was fulfilling prophecies. For it is written: “Because they sold the righteous.” For both the amount of the price and its outcome — when Judas repented and it was called back and given for the purchase of the potter's field, as is contained in Matthew's gospel — Jeremiah foretold: “And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him who was valued” — or honored — “and gave them for the potter's field.” So, having declared that with desire he had desired to eat the Passover as his own — for it would be unworthy of God to desire anything belonging to another — he made the bread which he had taken and distributed to the disciples his body, by saying, “This is my body,” that is, the figure of my body. But there would not have been a figure unless there were a body of truth. An empty thing, which is what a phantom is, could not take on a figure. Or if he made up the bread into a body for himself because he lacked the reality of a body, then he ought to have handed over bread for us. It would have suited Marcion's emptiness for bread to be crucified. But why does he call bread his body, and not rather a melon, which Marcion had in place of a heart, not understanding that this was an ancient figure of the body of Christ, who says through Jeremiah: “They devised a plan against me, saying: Come, let us put wood into his bread,” that is, the cross into his body? So the one who sheds light on ancient things declared plainly enough what he had then meant the bread to signify, by calling his body bread. So too, in mentioning the cup, establishing the testament sealed with his blood, he confirmed the substance of his body. For there can be blood of no body but one of flesh. For even if some quality of body that is not fleshly is set against us, it will surely not have blood unless it is fleshly. So the proof of the body will stand on the testimony of the flesh, and the proof of the flesh on the testimony of the blood. And that you may recognize the ancient figure of blood too in wine, Isaiah will be at hand: “Who is this,” he says, “who comes from Edom, the redness of his garments from Bozrah, so comely in his robe, with violence and strength? Why are your garments red, and your clothing as from the floor of the winepress, full and trodden?” For the prophetic Spirit, as if already contemplating the Lord coming to his passion, clothed, that is, in flesh so as to suffer in it, depicts the bloody condition of the flesh in the redness of the garments, trodden and pressed out by the force of the passion as in the floor of the winepress, since from there too men come down as though bloodied by the redness of the wine. Much more plainly Genesis, in the blessing of Judah, from whose tribe Christ's descent according to the flesh was to come, already then sketched Christ in Judah: “He will wash,” it says, “his robe in wine, and his garment in the blood of the grape,” showing the flesh by the robe and garment, and the blood by the wine. So now too he consecrated his blood in wine, who then figured wine as blood.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations and allusions are Exod 12:11; Luke 22:15, 19–20; Isa 53:7; Ps 41:9 (40:10 Vulg.); Amos 2:6; Matt 27:3–10; Jer 32:6–9 with Zech 11:12–13 (the words Matthew ascribes to Jeremiah); Jer 11:19 (in the Greek form “let us put wood into his bread”); Isa 63:1–2; Gen 49:11. “Sacred sign” renders sacramentum. Tertullian's phrase “the figure of my body” (figura corporis mei) serves his argument against Marcion that a figure presupposes a real body; how it bears on eucharistic doctrine is debated. The jibe about the melon (pepo, a byword for a dull head) mocks Marcion's intelligence. In “because he lacked the reality of a body” the digital text reads uanitatem (“emptiness”), apparently repeated from the next sentence; the translation follows the sense required (ueritate, “reality”). The editor deletes as spurious in before Iudaica.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (letter misread and point misread for comma in the digital text; stray point in the digital text; words run together in the digital text): id est (figura. corporis → id est (figura corporis; panemsic → panem. sic; recognoseas. aderit → recognoscas, aderit.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 4.40 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/40/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 4.40 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/40/).
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