Against Marcion 4.9

Out of so many kinds of work, why did he look to fishing in particular, to take from it Simon and the sons of Zebedee as apostles (for it cannot be seen as a simple deed from which an argument was to proceed), saying to Peter, who was frightened by the huge catch of fish, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men”? For by this saying he suggested to them the understanding of a fulfilled prophecy: that he was the one who had declared through Jeremiah, “Behold, I will send many fishermen, and they will fish them,” namely men. Finally, leaving their boats, they followed him, understanding him to be the one who had begun to do what he had foretold. It is another matter if he chose to pick from the guild of boatmen because he was one day to have the shipmaster Marcion as an apostle. We laid down against the Antitheses that what he considers the difference between the law and the gospel does nothing for Marcion's purpose, since that difference too was arranged by the Creator, indeed foretold in the promise of a new law, a new word, and a new covenant. But since, in the case of the cleansing of the leper, he argues more pointedly before some “fellow-sufferer” and “fellow-object of hatred” of his, whoever he is, I have not been reluctant to meet him, and first of all to show the force of the figurative law, which, in the example of the leper who was not to be touched but rather removed from all dealings, forbade fellowship with a man stained with sins; with such people the apostle too forbids even taking food, for the stigma of sins is shared as if by contagion if anyone mixes with a sinner. And so the Lord, wishing the law to be understood more deeply, as signifying spiritual things through carnal ones, and on this account not destroying but rather building up the law which he wished to be recognized as more closely his own, touched the leper. Even if a man could have been defiled by him, God certainly would not be defiled, being incapable of pollution. So it will not be laid down against him that he ought to have kept the law and not touched the unclean, since the touch of the unclean would not defile him. I show that this fits my Christ better, by demonstrating that it does not fit yours. For if he touched the leper as a rival of the law, making nothing of the law's precept through contempt of defilement, how could he be defiled who had no body to be defiled? For a phantom could not be defiled. So one who could not be defiled, being a phantom, will be incapable of pollution not by divine power but by the emptiness of a phantom; nor can he be seen to have despised a defilement for which he had no material. So neither did he destroy the law, since he escaped defilement by the accident of being a phantom, not by a display of power. And if Elisha, the Creator's prophet, cleansed only one leper, Naaman the Syrian, out of so many Israelite lepers, this does not make for a difference in Christ either, as if he were in this way better because, a stranger, he cleanses an Israelite leper whom his own Lord had not been able to cleanse. The easier cleansing of the Syrian signifies the cleansing, through Christ their light, of the nations, which bristled with the seven stains of the capital sins: idolatry, blasphemy, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, false witness, fraud. That is why he washed seven times in the Jordan, as though once for each heading; at the same time to proclaim the expiation of the whole week, and because the force and fullness of a single washing was reserved for Christ alone, who was to make on earth a shortened washing, as he made a shortened word. For Marcion objects this too: that Elisha needed material, applied water, and that seven times, while Christ, using a word only, and that once, brought about the cure at once. As if I would not dare to claim the word itself too for the substance of the Creator: of everything he is the more powerful author who is the earlier. It is plainly incredible that the power of the Creator should have worked the cure of one disease by a word, when by a word it brought forth once for all the whole mass of the world! By what is the Creator's Christ better distinguished than by the power of the word? “But he is another Christ, because he acted otherwise than Elisha, because the master is more powerful than his servant.” What are you laying down, Marcion? That things are done by servants in the same way as by their masters themselves? Are you not afraid that it will turn to your disgrace, if you deny that Christ is the Creator's because he was more powerful than the Creator's servant, because he is recognized as greater than Elisha's smallness, if indeed he is greater? For the cure is equal, though the method differs. What more did your Christ accomplish than my Elisha? Indeed, what great thing did your Christ's word accomplish, when it accomplished what the Creator's river did? The rest agrees with this. As regards avoiding human glory, he forbade him to publish it; as regards safeguarding the law, he ordered the procedure to be carried out: “Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift which Moses commanded.” For he was still safeguarding in their images the figurative proofs of the law, as being prophetic, which signified that a man once a sinner, cleansed soon after by the word of God, ought to offer a gift to God at the temple, namely prayer and thanksgiving in the church through Christ Jesus, the universal priest of the Father. So he added, “that it may be for a testimony to you,” no doubt one by which he testified that he was not dissolving the law but fulfilling it, by which he testified that he himself was the one who was announced as going to take up their diseases and illnesses. This interpretation of the testimony, so fitting and so due, Marcion, the flatterer of his own Christ, seeks to exclude under the pretext of gentleness and mildness. “For as good,” he says, “and moreover as knowing that everyone who was freed from leprosy would carry out the rites of the law, he therefore gave this command.” Then he came down in vain, as though to destroy the law, if he gives way to those who comply with the law. On the contrary, as one who knew their habit, he ought rather to have forestalled it to turn them away from it, if that was what he had come for. What then? Did he persevere in his goodness, that is, in permitting the law, or not? If he persevered as good, he will nowhere be a destroyer of the law, nor will he be held to belong to another god, since the destruction of the law ceases by which he is claimed for another god. If he did not persevere as good, destroying the law afterwards, then he gave them false testimony in the cure of the leper, for he abandoned goodness while destroying the law. He is bad, then, when he overturns the law, if he is good when he indulges it. But also, by indulging compliance with the law, he confirmed that the law was good, for no one allows compliance with what is evil. So he is bad on this count, if he indulged compliance with a bad law, and worse on that, if he came as destroyer of a good law. Likewise, if he commanded the gift to be offered because he knew that everyone freed from leprosy would do so, he could also have not commanded what he knew would happen of itself. Why did he not keep silent, so that the man might obey the law by his own choice alone? Then he could to some extent have seemed to show his forbearance. But he adds his authority too, enlarged by the weight of a testimony. A testimony to what, if not to the law asserted? Certainly it makes no difference how he confirmed the law, whether as good or as superfluous, whether as forbearing or as inconsistent, so long as I drive you from your position, Marcion. See, he commanded the law to be fulfilled. In whatever way he commanded it, in the same way he could also have pronounced beforehand that saying, “I have not come to dissolve the law but to fulfill it.” What business had you, then, to erase from the gospel what is sound? For you have confessed that out of goodness he did what you deny he said. It is established, then, that he said it, since he also did it, and that you rather have rooted the Lord's saying out of the gospel than that our people put it in.