Against Marcion 5.19

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.