Against Marcion 5.18–5.21

Given the heretic's mania for cutting, I do not wonder if he takes away syllables, when he often removes whole pages. The apostle says that grace was given to him, the least of all, to enlighten all, as to what is the arrangement of the mystery hidden from the ages in God, who created all things. The heretic snatched away the preposition “in” and has it read thus: “hidden from the ages from the God who created all things.” But the forgery flashes out. For the apostle goes on: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the church.” Whose principalities and powers does he mean? If the Creator's, how can it be that that god wanted his wisdom to be shown to the Creator's principalities and powers, but not to the Creator himself? When not even the powers could have learned anything without their own prince? Or if he did not name God here because the prince himself is also counted among them, then he would likewise have declared that the mystery was hidden from the principalities and powers of him who created all things, counting him among them in the same way. And if he says it was hidden from him, he ought to have said that it was made manifest to him. So it was not hidden from God, but hidden in God, the Creator of all, and hidden from his principalities and powers. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” Caught here, the heretic will perhaps change his ground and say that his god wanted to make known to his own powers and principalities the arrangement of his mystery, of which God, the Creator of all, had been ignorant. And what was the point of pleading the ignorance of the Creator, a stranger separated from him by a long distance, when even the household of the higher god had not known it? Yet the future event was known to the Creator too. Or was it not surely known to him, since it was to be revealed under his heaven and on his earth? So from this too what we built up above is confirmed. For if the Creator was one day to know that hidden mystery of the higher god, and the text ran, “hidden from the God who created all things,” he ought to have gone on thus: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to him,” and then, “and to the powers and principalities of whatever god,” with whom the Creator would come to know it. So it is clear that something was removed, which in this way is kept safe for its truth. I too now want to join issue with you over the apostle's allegories, whose forms you will not allow to have been in the prophets. “He led captivity captive,” he says. With what arms? In what battles? By laying waste what nation? By overthrowing what city? What women, what children, what petty kings did the victor put in chains? For when in David Christ is sung as girded with a sword upon his thigh, or in Isaiah as taking the spoils of Samaria and the strength of Damascus, you hammer him out into a real and visible warrior. Recognize, then, now both his armour and his warfare as spiritual, if you have now learned that the captivity is spiritual, so that you may recognize this too as his; or because the apostle took the mention of this captivity from the prophets, from whom he also took the commands: “Putting away lying, speak the truth, each to his neighbour,” and, “Be angry, and do not sin” (to set out the psalm's sense in the psalm's own words); “Do not let the sun go down on your anger”; “Do not take part in the works of darkness” (for “with the righteous you will be righteous, and with the perverse you will be perverted,” and, “Remove the evil from your midst,” and, “Go out from among them and touch nothing unclean; be separate, you who carry the vessels of the Lord”). So too, to be drunk with wine, a disgrace, comes from where those who make the saints drunk are rebuked: “And you gave my holy ones wine to drink,” which Aaron and his sons were forbidden to drink when they went into the holy place. And to teach that they should sing to God in psalms and hymns belongs to him who knew that those who drink wine to the sound of timbrels and harps were rather accused by God. So the one whose precepts I find, and the seeds or the growth of those precepts, is the one whose apostle I recognize. Further, from where does he confirm that wives ought to be subject to their husbands? “Because the husband,” he says, “is the head of the wife.” Tell me, Marcion, does your god build up the authority of his law from the Creator's work? That is plainly a smaller matter, since he takes from there the standing of his Christ himself and of his church: “as Christ too is the head of the church.” Likewise when he says, “He who loves his wife loves his own flesh, as Christ too loves the church,” you see your Christ and your church compared to the Creator's work. What honour is given to the flesh under the name of the church! “No one,” he says, “hates his own flesh” (except, plainly, Marcion alone), “but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” But you, who alone hate it, taking away its resurrection, will have to hate the church too, since it is loved by Christ in the same way. Indeed Christ loved the flesh as he did the church. No one will fail to love even the image of his bride; rather he will keep it and honour it and crown it. The likeness shares the honour with the reality. Shall I labour now to prove that the same God is God of the man and of Christ, of the woman and of the church, of the flesh and of the spirit, when the apostle himself brings in the Creator's sentence, and even expounds it: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will be in one flesh. This mystery is great”? It is enough for now that, if these mysteries of the Creator are great with the apostle, they are very small with the heretics. “But I,” he says, “speak of Christ and the church.” You have an interpretation of the mystery, not a separation from it. He shows that a figure of the mystery was provided beforehand by the one to whom the mystery surely belonged. What does Marcion think? The Creator could not provide figures beforehand for an unknown god, and not for a known one either, being his adversary; and the higher god ought not to borrow anything from the lower, still less from one he was to destroy. “Children, obey your parents”: for (although Marcion took away “for this is the first commandment with a promise”) the law says, “Honour your father and mother.” “And parents, bring up your children in the discipline and correction of the Lord”: for you have heard that it was said to those of old too, “You shall tell these things in the ears of your children, and your children likewise in the ears of their children.” Why do I now need two gods, if the rule of life is one? And if there are two, I will follow the one who taught first. “But our struggle is against the rulers of the world”: oh, how many creator gods there are now! For why should not a single ruler of the world have been named, if he meant the Creator, to whom the powers he mentioned before would belong? Moreover, since above he bids us put on the armour in which to stand against the schemes of the devil, he now shows that what he joins to the devil belongs to the devil: the powers and the rulers of this darkness, which we too ascribe to the devil. Or if the devil is the Creator, who will be the devil with the Creator? Or are there, as two gods, so also two devils, and powers and world rulers in the plural? But how are the Creator and the devil and God the same, when the devil is not at the same time both God and devil? For either both are gods, if both are devils; or he who is God is not also the devil, just as the devil is not God. I ask about the very word “devil”: from what slander does it fit the Creator? Perhaps he slandered some purpose of the higher god, as he himself suffered at the hands of the archangel, and a lying one at that. For he had not forbidden the tasting of that little tree so that they should not become gods, but so that they should not die of the transgression. Nor will “the spiritual forces of wickedness” mean the Creator because he added “in the heavenly places.” For the apostle knew that spiritual forces of wickedness had worked in the heavenly places, the angels who were made to stumble over the daughters of men. And what sort of thing would it be for him to censure the Creator through ambiguities and riddles of some kind, he who, already placed in chains [for the freedom of his preaching], was surely showing the church the boldness to make known the mystery in the opening of his mouth, which he bade them ask of God for him?

In my prescription against all heresies I usually fix a short way from the testimony of times, claiming that our rule is earlier than every later heresy. The apostle will now prove this too, when he says: “because of the hope laid up in heaven, which you heard in the word of the truth of the gospel, which has come to you as it has into the whole world.” For if already then the gospel tradition had spread everywhere, how much more now? Further, if it is ours that has spread everywhere, more than any heretical one, let alone that of Marcion of the Antonine age, ours will be the apostolic one. And even when Marcion's has filled the whole world, not even then will it be able to defend itself as apostolic. For even so the apostolic one will be established to be that which first filled the world, the gospel, namely, of that God who also sang of its preachings: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world.” He calls Christ the image of the invisible God. But we too say that the Father of Christ is invisible, knowing that it was always the Son who was seen in former times, if he was seen by any, in the name of God, as his image; so let him not tear from this too some distinction between a visible and an invisible god, when it has long been the definition of our God: “No one will see the Lord and live.” If Christ is not the firstborn of creation, as the Word of the Creator, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made; if all things were not created in him, in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; if all things were not created through him and in him (for these things ought to have displeased Marcion), the apostle would surely not have put so baldly: “And he is before all.” For how is he before all, if not before all things? How before all things, if not the firstborn of creation, if not the Word of the Creator? And how will he be proved to have been before all who appeared after all? Who knows that he was earlier, whom he did not know to exist? Again, how did it please him that all the fullness should dwell in himself? For first, what is this fullness, unless it consists of those things which Marcion has cut away, created in Christ in the heavens and on earth, angels and men; unless of those things invisible and visible; unless of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? Or if our false apostles and Jewish preachers of the gospel brought these in of their own, let Marcion produce the fullness of his god, who created nothing. Besides, how can it be that the rival and destroyer of the Creator wanted the Creator's fullness to dwell in his own Christ? To whom, finally, does he reconcile all things in himself, making peace through the blood of his cross, if not to him whom all things had offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, to whom they had lately belonged? For they could be conciliated to a stranger; but they could be reconciled to none but their own. So too us, once alienated and enemies in mind in evil works, he brings back into favour with the Creator, whom we had offended by worshipping the creation against the Creator. And wherever he calls the church the body of Christ (as here he says that he fills up what is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in the flesh for his body, which is the church), he does not therefore transfer the mention of the body entirely away from the substance of the flesh. For above too he says that we are reconciled in his body through death: surely in that body in which he could die, dying through the flesh and not through the church; plainly for the church's sake, exchanging body for body, the fleshly for the spiritual. And when he warns us to beware of subtle speech and philosophy, as an empty seduction which is according to the elements of the world (meaning not according to heaven or earth, but according to worldly letters, and according to tradition, that is, of men of subtle speech and philosophers), it is a long task, and belongs to another work, to show that by this sentence all heresies are condemned, since they all consist of the powers of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But let Marcion recognize that the chief boundary of his faith is from the school of Epicurus, bringing in a god who is dull so that he may say he is not to be feared; and that he places matter alongside God the Creator from the porch of the Stoics; denying the resurrection of the flesh, on which likewise no philosophy agrees. Our truth is so far from their cleverness that it dreads to rouse the wrath of God, and trusts that he brought forth all things out of nothing, and promises that he will restore the same flesh, and does not blush that Christ was born from a virgin's womb, while philosophers, heretics, and heathen themselves laugh. “For God chose the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” without doubt the God who, in view of this arrangement of his, threatened beforehand that he would destroy the wisdom of the wise. By this simplicity of truth, the opposite of subtle speech and philosophy, we can think nothing perverse. Then, if God gives us life together with Christ, forgiving us our sins, we cannot believe that sins are forgiven by one against whom they were not committed, since he was formerly unknown. Come now, when he says, “Let no one judge you in food and drink, or in respect of a festival or a new moon or a sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ's,” what do you think, Marcion? We are no longer discussing the law, except that here too he teaches how it was excluded: by passing from the shadow to the body, that is, from figures to the reality, which is Christ. So the shadow belongs to him to whom the body belongs too; that is, the law belongs to him to whom Christ belongs too. Separate the law to one god and Christ to another, if you can separate any shadow from the body whose shadow it is. Plainly Christ belongs to the law, if he is the body of the shadow. And if he also censures some who said, on the strength of angelic visions, that one must abstain from foods (“do not touch, do not taste”), wanting to walk in humility of mind, not holding fast to the head, he is not therefore attacking the law and Moses, as though Moses had laid down the prohibition of certain foods from angelic superstition. For it is agreed that Moses received the law from God. Finally, this rule of life (“according to the commandments,” he says, “and doctrine of men”) he charged against those who did not hold fast to the head, that is, to him in whom all things are summed up, called back to the beginning, even the distinction of foods. As for the rest of the precepts, being the same, let it be enough to have shown elsewhere how they flowed from the Creator, who, when he foretold that the old things would pass away and that he would make all things new, and commanded, “Break up for yourselves new ground,” was already then teaching us to put off the old man and put on the new.

When he lists the variety of the preaching, that some, from confidence in his bonds, spoke the word more boldly, others through envy and strife, some even for the reputation of their speaking, most out of love, some out of rivalry, and certain ones even out of ill will, preached Christ, here if anywhere was the place to censure the preaching itself for a difference of doctrine, which would have produced so great a variety of minds too. But setting out only the motives of their minds, not differing rules of the mysteries, he affirms that there was one Christ and one God of his, preached with whatever intention; and so he says, “It is nothing to me whether Christ is announced in pretence or in truth,” because one Christ was being announced, whether out of pretence or out of truth of faith. For he related the mention of truth to the faith of the preaching, not to the rule itself, because the rule was one, but the faith of the preachers was, in some, true, that is, simple, and in others over-clever. Since this is so, it is plain that the Christ preached was the one who was always announced. For if another, far different, were being brought in by the apostle, the newness of the thing would have produced a difference. For there would not have been lacking those who would nonetheless interpret the gospel preaching of the Creator's Christ, since even today in all places the greater part hold our view rather than the heretics'. So the apostle would not have kept silent here about marking and rebuking the difference. So, since difference is not even censured, newness is not proved. Plainly the Marcionites think that here too, about the substance of Christ, the apostle supports them, that there was a phantom of flesh in Christ, when he says that, being in the form of God, he did not think it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, not the reality, and in the likeness of man, not in a man, and found in fashion as a man, not in substance, that is, not in flesh. As though fashion and likeness and form did not also belong to substance! It is well that elsewhere too he calls Christ the image of the invisible God. Will Christ here too, then, where he places him in the form of God, likewise not be truly God, if he was not truly man either, placed in the form of man? For in both places the reality will have to be excluded, if form and likeness and fashion are claimed for a phantom. But if, in the form and image of God, as Son of the Father, he is truly God, it is already decided that, in the form and image of man, as Son of Man, he was found truly man. For he used “found” with good reason, that is, most certainly a man. For what is found is established to exist. So as he was found God by his power, so was he found man by his flesh, since he would not have declared him subject to death if he had not been placed in a mortal substance. And more is what he added: “even the death of the cross.” For he would not heighten its horror, extolling the courage of the struggle, if he had known it to be imaginary, in a phantom, one who eluded death rather than experienced it, and who did not exercise courage in his passion but put on a show. And what had he formerly counted as gain? What he lists above too: the glory of the flesh in the mark of circumcision, descent as a Hebrew of Hebrews, the title of the tribe of Benjamin, the dignity of a spotless Pharisee. These he now counts as loss for himself: not God, but the stupidity of the Jews. These too he counts as dung, in comparison with the knowledge of Christ, not in rejection of God the Creator, having no longer a righteousness of his own, which is from the law, but that which is through him, that is, through Christ, from God. “So,” you say, “by this distinction the law did not belong to the God of Christ.” Clever enough. Take then something cleverer. When he says, “not that which is from the law, but that which is through him,” he would not have said “through him” of any other than the one whose the law was. “Our citizenship,” he says, “is in heaven.” I recognize the Creator's ancient promise to Abraham: “And I will make your seed like the stars in heaven.” So also “star differs from star in glory.” And if Christ, coming from heaven, will transform the body of our lowliness to be conformed to the body of his glory, then this body of ours will rise, which is humbled in sufferings and cast down to the earth by the very law of death. For how will it be transformed if it will not exist at all? Or if this was said of those who, overtaken in the flesh at the Lord's coming, are to be changed, what will those do who will rise first? Will they have nothing from which to be transformed? And yet, he says, “together with them we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord.” If taken up with them, then surely transformed with them too.

To this letter alone its brevity has been of help, so that it escaped Marcion's forging hands. I wonder, however, that, having accepted a letter written to one man, he rejected the two to Timothy and the one to Titus, composed about the order of the church. He was eager, I suppose, to tamper even with the number of the letters. Remember, reader, that we have proved from the apostle too what was treated before, and that we have dispatched here whatever had been postponed to this work; so that you should neither think the repetition here superfluous, by which we have confirmed the earlier matter, nor hold suspect the postponement there, by which we saved these things for their proper time. If you examine the whole little work, you will judge neither that there is redundancy here nor lack of confidence there.