Against Marcion 5.2

We too acknowledge that the letter that teaches the Galatians is the principal one against Judaism. For we embrace that entire removal of the old law, as itself coming from the Creator's arrangement, as we have often discussed already in this series with regard to the renewal foretold by the prophets of our God. Now if the Creator promised that the old things would cease, since new things were to arise, and Christ marked the time of that departure (“the law and the prophets until John”), setting in John the boundary between the two orders, of the old things ending from then on and of the new beginning, then necessarily the apostle too, in Christ revealed after John, weakens the old and confirms the new, and so is concerned for faith in no other god than the Creator, with whom it was foretold that the old things would pass away. So both the dismantling of the law and the building up of the gospel make for my case in this letter too, bearing as they do on that presumption of the Galatians by which they presumed that Christ, as being the Creator's, was to be believed with the Creator's law kept intact, since it still seemed incredible that the law should be laid aside by its own author. Further, if they had heard of an entirely other god from the apostle, they would certainly have known of themselves that they must withdraw from the law of that god whom they had left to follow another. For who would wait any longer to learn that one who had received a new god ought to follow a new rule of life? No: because the same Deity was preached in the gospel that had always been known in the law, but not the same rule of life, this was the whole point at issue: whether the Creator's law ought to be excluded by the gospel in the Creator's Christ. Take away this issue, and there is no question. And if there were no question, since everyone would recognize of his own accord that he must depart from the Creator's order through faith in the other god, the apostle would have had no occasion to teach so insistently what faith itself would have dictated unasked. So the whole aim of this letter teaches nothing else than the departure of the law as coming from the Creator's arrangement, as we shall show further. If, likewise, he makes no mention of any new god (and he would have done so nowhere more than on this subject, so as to set out the reason for dismissing the law by this single and most sufficient definition, a new deity), it is plain in what sense he writes: “I am amazed that you are so quickly being transferred from him who called you into grace to another gospel”: another in conduct, not in religion; in rule of life, not in deity; since the gospel of Christ was to call them away from the law to grace, not from the Creator to another god. For no one had moved them away from the Creator, so that they might seem to be transferred to another gospel in that sense, as though in being transferred to the Creator. For when he adds that there is no other gospel at all, he confirms that the one he defends is the Creator's. For the Creator too promises a gospel, saying through Isaiah, “Go up onto a high mountain, you who bring good news to Zion; lift up your voice in your strength, you who bring good news to Jerusalem”; and again, in the person of the apostles, “How timely are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things”: to the nations too, of course, since he also says, “In his name the nations will hope,” that is, in Christ's, to whom he says, “I have set you as a light of the nations.” Now if there is also a gospel of the new god, which you hold the apostle was then defending, then there are two gospels belonging to two gods, and the apostle will have lied in saying that there is no other at all, since there is another; when he could have defended his own gospel by demonstrating it rather than by declaring it the only one. But perhaps, to escape from this, you will say: “And that is why he added, ‘Even if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel otherwise, let him be anathema,’ because he knew that the Creator too would preach a gospel.” Again you entangle yourself. For this is what binds you: to confirm two gospels is not the part of one who has already denied that there is another. Yet his meaning is clear, since he put his own person first: “But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel otherwise.” It is said by way of example. Besides, if he himself would not preach otherwise, neither would an angel. So he named an angel for this reason, that men should be believed all the less when not even an angel, or even an apostle, was to be believed; not in order to refer the angel to the Creator's gospel. Then, running through the course of his conversion from persecutor to apostle, he confirms the scripture of the Acts, in which the very subject of this letter is also recognized: that certain people intervened who said that one must be circumcised and that the law of Moses must be kept; and that the apostles, then consulted on this question, announced by the authority of the Spirit that burdens were not to be laid on men which the fathers themselves had not been able to bear. And if in this too the Acts of the Apostles agree with Paul, it is now plain why you reject them: because they preach no other god than the Creator and no Christ other than the Creator's; since the fulfilment of the promise of the Holy Spirit too is proved from no other document than the Acts. It is surely not likely that they should agree with the apostle in part, when they show his career in accordance with his own testimony, and disagree in part, when they proclaim the deity of the Creator in Christ, as though Paul had not followed the preaching of the apostles, when it was from them that he received the pattern for unteaching the law.