Against Marcion 1.8
Summary: The Marcionites boast of a “new” god, but a new god can only be a false one, since the true God is eternal and has neither beginning nor end.
Latin text · CSEL 47:300
Primo, supercilio stuporem suum aedificant Marcionitae, quod nouum deum proferant, quasi nos ueteris dei pudeat. inflantur et pueri nouis calceis, sed a uetere paedagogo calceati mox uanam gloriam uapulabunt. nouum igitur audiens deum, in uetere mundo et in uetere aeuo et sub uetere deo ignotum inauditum, quem, tantis retro saeculis neminem et ipsa ignorantia antiquum, quidam Iesus Christus, et ille in ueteribus nominibus nouus, reuelauerit, nec alius antehac. gratias ago huic gloriae eorum, maximo adiutorio eius hinc iam haeresim probaturus, nouae scilicet diuinitatis professionem. haec erit nouitas, quae etiam ethnicis deos peperit nouo, semper ac nouo titulo consecrationis cuiusque. quis deus nouus nisi falsus? ne Saturnum quidem tanta hodie antiquitas deum probabit, quia et illum nouitas aliquando produxerit.. cum primum consecrauit. atenim uiua et germana diuinitas nec de nouitate nec de uetustate, sed de sua ueritate censetur. non habet tempus aeternitas. omne enim tempus ipsa, est. quod facit, pati non potest. caret aetate quod non licet nasci. deus si est uetus, non erit, si est nouus, non fuit. nouitas initium testificatur, uetustas finem comminatur. deus autem tam alienus ab initio et fine est quam a tempore, arbitro et metatore initii et finis.
English · Claude translation
First, the Marcionites build their stupor on a lofty brow, because they bring forward a new god, as though we were ashamed of the old one. Children too are puffed up by new shoes; but, shod by the old tutor, they will soon be beaten for their vain glory. So I hear of a new god — in the old world, in the old age, and under the old God unknown and unheard of — a god whom, through so many ages past known to no one and ancient only in his very obscurity, a certain Jesus Christ (himself new under old names) has revealed, and no one else before him. I thank them for this boast, since with its great help I shall now prove the heresy — that is, the profession of a new divinity. This is the novelty that has produced gods for the heathen too, by a new and ever new title of consecration for each. What new god is there except a false one? Not even Saturn will his great antiquity prove a god today, since novelty too brought him forth once, when it first consecrated him. But living and genuine divinity is reckoned neither by novelty nor by antiquity but by its own truth. Eternity has no time, for it is itself all time. What it makes, it cannot undergo. That which may not be born is without age. God, if he is old, will not be; if he is new, was not. Novelty testifies to a beginning; age threatens an end. But God is as foreign to beginning and end as he is to time, the arbiter and measurer of beginning and end.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The clause “quem, tantis retro saeculis neminem et ipsa ignorantia antiquum” is difficult as printed; the rendering “known to no one” supplies the sense.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (Line-break hyphen and stray marks in the digital text.; Stray comma in the digital text.; Stray letter (line marker) in the digital text.): cense-!i tur → censetur; non fuit., nouitas → non fuit. nouitas; initii et finis.I → initii et finis..
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 1.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/1/8/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 1.8 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/1/8/).
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