Against Praxeas 23
Summary: At Lazarus' tomb and in the voice from heaven, Son and Father speak to each other, the Son on earth and the Father in heaven; they are two persons, not one God changing roles, and it was the Son, not the Father, who was betrayed and glorified.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:271–273
Post haec autem Martha filium dei eum confessa non magis errauit quam Petrus et Nathanahel; quamquam et si errasset, statim didicisset. ecce enim ad suscitandum fratrem eius a mortuis ad caelum et ad patrem dominus suspiciens: pater, inquit, — utique filius — gratias ago tibi, quod me semper exaudias: propter istas turbas circumstantes dixi, ut credant, quod tu me miseris. sed et in conturbatione animae: et quid dicam? pater, inquit, saluum me fac de ista hora: atquin propter hoc ueni in istam horam; uerum, pater, glorifica nomen tuum, in quo erat filius: ego. inquit, ueni in patris nomine. inde, — scilicet suffecerat filii ad patrem uox — ecce ex abundantia respondet de caelo pater: [filio contestatur: hic est filius meus dilectus. in quo bene sensi, audite illum. ita et isto] glorificaui et glorificabo rursus. quot personae tibi uidentur, peruersissime Praxea, nisi quot et uoces? habes filium in terris, habes patrem in caelis. non est separatio ista, sed dispositio diuina. ceterum scimus deum etiam intra abyssos esse et ubique consistere, sed ui et potestate, filiumque, ut indiuiduum, cum ipso ubique. tamen in ipsa oikonomia pater uoluit filium in terris haberi, se uero in caelis, quo et ipse filius suspiciens et orabat et postulabat a patre, quo et nos erectos docebat orare: pater noster, qui es in caelis. cum sit et ubique, hanc sedem suam uoluit pater: ** mihi thronus. * minorauit filium modico citra angelos, ad terram demittendo, gloria tamen et honore coronaturus illum, in caelos resumendo. haec iam praestabat illi dicens: et glorificaui et glorificabo. postulat filius de terris, pater promittit a caelis. quid mendacem facis et patrem et filium? si aut pater de caelis loquebatur ad filium, cum ipse esset filius apud terras, aut filius ad patrem precabatur, cum ipse esset pater apud caelos, quale est, ut filius item postularet a semetipso postulando a patre, (si) filius erat pater, aut iterum pater sibi ipse promitteret promittendo filio, si pater erat (filius?) ut sic duos diuisos diceremus, quomodo iactitatis, tolerabilius erat duos diuisos quam unum deum uersipellem praedicare. itaque ad istos tunc dominus pronuntiauit: non propter me ista uox uenit, sed propter uos, ut credant et hi et patrem et filium in suis quemque nominibus et personis et locis. sed adhuc exclamat Iesus et dicit: qui credit in me, non in me credit, sed in eum credit, qui me misit, — quia per filium in patrem creditur et auctoritas credendi filio pater est — et qui me conspicit. conspicit eum qui me misit. quomodo? quoniam scilicet a memetipso non sum locutus, sed qui me misit pater ipse mihi mandatum dedit, quid dicam et quid loquar; — dominus enim dat mihi linguam disciplinae ad cognoscendum, quando oporteat dicere sermonem-quae ego loquor, sicut mihi pater dixit, ita et loquor. haec quomodo dicta sint, euangelizator et utique tam carus discipulus Iohannes magis quam Praxeas nouerat, ideoque ipse de suo sensu: ante autem sollemnitatem paschae, inquit, sciens Iesus omnia sibi tradita a patre esse et se ex deo exisse et ad deum uadere. sed Praxeas ipsum uult patrem de semetipso exisse et ad semetipsum abisse, ut diabolus in cor Iudae non filii traditionem, sed patris ipsius inmiserit. nec diabolo bene nec haeretico, quia nec in filio bono suo diabolus operatus est traditionem. filius enim traditus est dei, qui erat in filio hominis, sicut scriptura subiungit: nunc glorificatus est filius hominis, et deus glorificatus est in illo. quis deus? utique non pater, sed sermo patris, qui erat in filio hominis, id est in carne. in qua et(si) glorificatus iam — uirtute uero et sermone — et ante Iesus, et deus, inquit, glorificabit illum in semetipso, id est pater filium, quem in semetipso habens, etsi porrectum ad terram, mox (glorificaturus erat) per resurrectionem morte deuicta.
English · Claude translation
After this, Martha, confessing him to be the Son of God, erred no more than Peter and Nathanael; though even if she had erred, she would at once have learned. For see: when he was about to raise her brother from the dead, the Lord, looking up to heaven and to the Father, said, “Father” (the Son, of course), “I thank you that you always hear me; I said it because of these crowds standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” And in the trouble of his soul: “And what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour; but for this purpose I came to this hour; but, Father, glorify your name,” in which the Son was: “I have come,” he says, “in my Father's name.” Then (though the Son's voice to the Father had been enough), see, the Father answers from heaven, for good measure: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” How many persons do you see, most perverse Praxeas, if not as many as there are voices? You have the Son on earth; you have the Father in heaven. This is not separation but divine arrangement. We know, indeed, that God is even within the abysses and is present everywhere, but by power and authority, and the Son, as inseparable, is with him everywhere. Yet in the economy itself the Father willed that the Son should be held to be on earth and himself in heaven, whither the Son himself too looked up when he prayed and made requests of the Father, whither he taught us too, lifted up, to pray: “Our Father, who are in heaven,” though he is also everywhere. The Father willed this to be his seat: “heaven” … “is my throne.” … He made the Son a little lower than the angels by sending him down to earth, yet intending to crown him with glory and honor by taking him back into heaven. This he was already granting him by saying, “I have glorified, and I will glorify.” The Son makes his request from earth, the Father promises from heaven. Why do you make both Father and Son liars? If either the Father spoke from heaven to the Son when he himself was the Son on earth, or the Son prayed to the Father when he himself was the Father in heaven, how could it be that the Son should make a request of himself by asking the Father, if the Son was the Father; or again that the Father should make a promise to himself by promising the Son, if the Father was the Son? Even if we spoke of two divided, as you keep alleging, it would be more tolerable to preach two divided than one God who turns his coat. So the Lord then declared to these people: “This voice has come not for my sake but for yours,” that these too might believe in both Father and Son, each in his own names and persons and places. But further, Jesus cries out and says: “He who believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me” (since it is through the Son that one believes in the Father, and the Father is the Son's authority for believing); “and he who beholds me beholds him who sent me.” How? Because, of course, “I have not spoken of myself, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a command, what to say and what to speak” (for “the Lord gives me the tongue of instruction, to know when I ought to speak a word”); “what I speak, I speak as the Father told me.” How these things were said, John the evangelist, so dear a disciple, certainly knew better than Praxeas; and so he says of his own understanding: “Now before the feast of the Passover, Jesus, knowing that all things had been given him by the Father, and that he had come forth from God and was going to God.” But Praxeas will have it that the Father himself came forth from himself and went away to himself, so that the devil put into Judas' heart the betrayal not of the Son but of the Father himself. That turns out well neither for the devil nor for the heretic, since the devil did not even work the betrayal in the Son for his own good. For it was the Son of God who was betrayed, who was in the Son of Man, as Scripture adds: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.” Which God? Certainly not the Father, but the Father's Word, who was in the Son of Man, that is, in the flesh; in which, although Jesus had already been glorified before (by power and word), “and God,” he says, “will glorify him in himself”: that is, the Father will glorify the Son, whom he has in himself, even though sent down to earth, and was soon to glorify him through the resurrection, when death had been overcome.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations and allusions are John 11:27, 11:41-42, 12:27-28, 5:43, Matt 6:9, Isa 66:1, Ps 8:5 (Heb 2:7), John 12:30, 12:44-45, 12:49-50, Isa 50:4, John 13:1-3, 13:2, and 13:31-32. The editor deletes the words “he bears witness to the Son: ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him.’ So also in this”; they are omitted. The asterisks in the digital text mark gaps around the quotation of Isa 66:1, shown as “…”. The digital text's “lesus” is corrected to “Iesus.”
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (letter misread in the digital text): exclamat lesus → exclamat Iesus.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Prax. 23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-praxean/23/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Prax. 23 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-praxean/23/).
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