Against Marcion 3.16–3.23

Now, if he snatched up the name of Christ as a petty thief snatches a gift-basket, why did he also wish to be called Jesus, a name not so much looked for among the Jews? For if we, having by God's grace attained an understanding of his mysteries, recognize that this name too was destined for Christ, it does not follow that the matter will be known to the Jews as well, from whom wisdom has been taken away. Indeed, to this day they hope for a Christ, not a Jesus, and they interpret Elijah as the Christ rather than Jesus. Why then did he also come in that name in which the Christ was not presumed to come? He could have come in that name alone which alone was presumed. But when he mixed the two, the expected and the unexpected, both his plans are defeated. For if he was called Christ in order to creep in for the time being as though he were the Creator's, the name Jesus is against it, because Jesus was not expected in the Creator's Christ; or if he was called Jesus to be taken for another's, the name Christ does not allow it, because a Christ belonging to anyone but the Creator was not expected. Which of these can stand, I do not know. But both will stand in the Creator's Christ, in whom the name Jesus is also found. “How?” you say. Learn this too with your partners in error, the Jews. When Hoshea son of Nun was appointed successor to Moses, he is certainly changed from his former name and begins to be called Jesus. “Certainly,” you say. This we say was first a figure of what was to come. For since Jesus Christ was to lead the second people (which we are, born in the deserts of the world) into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, that is, into the possession of eternal life, than which nothing is sweeter; and since this was to come about not through Moses, that is, not through the discipline of the law, but through Jesus, that is, through the grace of the gospel, when we had been circumcised with a knife of stone, that is, with the precepts of Christ (for the rock is Christ): therefore that man who was being prepared as an image of this mystery was also consecrated with the figure of the Lord's name, being named Jesus. Christ himself testified even then that this name was his own when he was speaking to Moses. For who was speaking, if not the Spirit of the Creator, who is Christ? When, then, he said to the people in his command: “Behold, I send my angel before your face, to guard you on the way and bring you into the land which I have prepared for you; attend to him and hear him, and do not disobey him; for he will not hide from you, since my name is upon him,” he called him an angel because of the greatness of the mighty works he was to perform, and because of the office of a prophet, announcing the divine will; but he called him Jesus because of the mystery of his own future name. For he confirmed as his own the name which he himself had given him, since he had commanded that from then on he be called not Angel nor Hoshea but Jesus. So if both names fit the Creator's Christ, then both are unfitting for a Christ not the Creator's, as is the rest of his course. In short, from here on a sure and just prescription must be set between us, necessary to both sides, by which it is determined that the Christ of another god ought to have nothing at all in common with the Creator's Christ. For you must maintain the difference just as we must oppose it, since neither will you be able to prove that another god's Christ has come unless you show him to be far different from the Creator's Christ, nor will we be able to claim him for the Creator unless we show him to be such as the Creator appointed. As for the names, we have now closed the matter: I claim Christ for myself, I defend Jesus as mine.

Let us compare the rest of his course with the Scriptures. Isaiah is at hand again: “We announced,” he says, “before him: like a little child, like a root in a thirsty land; and he has no form or glory; and we saw him, and he had no form or beauty, but his form was without honor, falling short of all men”; just as, above, the Father's voice to the Son: “As many will be astonished at you, so your form will be without glory from men.” Whatever that little body was, what bearing and appearance did it have? If without glory, if lowly, if without honor, he will be my Christ; for such was he announced to be in bearing and appearance. For even if in David he is in the bloom of beauty beyond the sons of men, it is in that allegorical state of spiritual grace, when he is girded with the sword of the Word, which is truly his form and beauty and glory. But in his bodily bearing, in the same prophet he is even a worm and not a man, a reproach of men and the scorn of the people. Nor were such things announced of his inner quality. For if the fullness of the Spirit rested in him, I recognize the rod from the root of Jesse: its flower will be my Christ, on whom, according to Isaiah, rested the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, the spirit of knowledge and piety, the spirit of the fear of God. For the totality of spiritual endowments fitted no man except Christ, who is likened to a flower because of the grace of the Spirit, and reckoned of the stock of Jesse through Mary, and so to be counted from it. But I press the point at issue: if you grant him a bent toward all humility, patience, and calm, then by these too he will be Isaiah's Christ: “a man under the stroke, and knowing how to bear weakness,” who “was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearer did not open his mouth,” who “neither strove nor cried out, nor was his voice heard outside,” who “did not break the bruised reed,” that is, the shaken faith of the Jews, who “did not quench the burning flax,” that is, the momentary ardor of the nations; he cannot be other than the one who was foretold. His action too must be recognized by the rule of the Scriptures, distinguished, if I am not mistaken, by a twofold work: preaching and power. But I shall arrange both headings so that, since I have decided to sift Marcion's own gospel as well, the particular kinds of teachings and signs are put off to that point, as if to the matter in hand; here, however, let us complete in general the course we began, showing for the present that Christ is announced as a preacher through Isaiah: “For who among you,” he says, “fears God, let him hear the voice of his Son”; and likewise as a healer: “For he himself took away our weaknesses and carried our sicknesses.”

It is over his death, I suppose, that you plainly try to introduce a difference, denying that the suffering of the cross was foretold of the Creator's Christ, and arguing besides that it is not to be believed that the Creator exposed his Son to that kind of death which he himself had cursed: “Cursed,” he says, “is everyone who hangs on a tree.” But I rightly put off the meaning of this curse and treat only the foretelling of the cross, which is now the main question, since in other cases too the proof of the facts comes before the explanation. I shall first teach from the figures. And indeed this mystery, above all, had to be figured in prophecy: the more incredible it was, the more it would be a stumbling-block if it were foretold nakedly; and the more magnificent it was, the more it needed to be veiled, so that the difficulty of understanding might seek the grace of God. So first of all Isaac, when he was given up by his father as a sacrifice and himself carried the wood, was even then signifying Christ's death, who was surrendered by the Father as a victim and bore the wood of his own passion. Joseph too was to figure Christ, if only in this (not to delay my course), that he suffered persecution from his brothers because of God's favor, as Christ did from the Jews, his brothers according to the flesh. When he is blessed by his father in these words too: “His beauty is that of a bull; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them he will toss the nations all together to the very end of the earth,” it was certainly not a one-horned rhinoceros or a two-horned minotaur that was meant, but Christ was signified in him: a bull because of his twofold dealing, fierce to some as judge, gentle to others as savior; whose horns would be the extremities of the cross. For in a ship's yard too, which is part of a cross, the ends are called horns, and the upright post in the middle is the unicorn. By this power of the cross, in short, and horned in this way, he both now tosses all nations through faith, lifting them from earth to heaven, and will then toss them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also be the bull elsewhere in the same Scripture, when Jacob spiritually invokes a curse on Simeon and Levi, that is, on the scribes and Pharisees (for their lineage is derived from them): “Simeon and Levi have accomplished iniquity out of their own choice,” that is, the choice by which they persecuted Christ; “let my soul not come into their council, and let my heart not rest in their assembly, because in their anger they killed men,” that is, the prophets, “and in their desire they hamstrung a bull,” that is, Christ, whom, after the murder of the prophets, they fastened to the cross and raged against his sinews with nails. Otherwise it would be pointless, after murders, to reproach them with the butchery of some ox. Next, Moses: why did he pray sitting down with hands outstretched only at the time when Joshua was fighting against Amalek, when in so alarming a situation he should rather have commended his prayer with bent knees, hands beating his breast, and face rolling on the ground? Unless it was that there, where the name of the Lord was fighting (the Lord who was one day to fight against the devil), the form of the cross too was necessary, by which Jesus would bring back the victory. Why again did the same Moses, after forbidding the likeness of anything whatever, set up a bronze serpent placed on a pole, in the posture of one hanging, as a saving sight? Was he not here too aiming at the power of the Lord's cross, by which the serpent, the devil, was exposed, and for everyone bitten by the spiritual snakes who yet looked upon it and believed in it, healing from the bites of sins, and thereafter salvation, was proclaimed?

Come now, if you have read in David, “The Lord has reigned from the tree,” I wait to see what you understand by it; unless perhaps you think some carpenter king of the Jews is meant, and not Christ, who, having overcome death by his passion on the tree, has reigned from then on. For if death reigned from Adam until Christ, why should Christ not be said to have reigned from the tree, since by dying on the tree of the cross he shut out the reign of death? So too Isaiah: “For a child is born to us” (what is new in that, if he does not speak of the Son of God?) “and is given to us, whose government is upon his shoulder.” What king at all displays the emblem of his power on his shoulder, and not either a diadem on his head, or a scepter in his hand, or some mark of his own dress? But Christ Jesus alone, the new King of the new ages, of a new glory, has lifted up his power and his majesty on his shoulder, namely the cross, so that, according to the earlier prophecy, the Lord might reign from then on from the tree. This tree Jeremiah too suggests to you, foretelling what the Jews would say: “Come, let us cast wood into his bread,” that is, into his body. For so the Lord revealed in your gospel too, calling the bread his body, so that from this you may understand that he gave the figure of his body to the bread, whose body the prophet long before figured as bread, the Lord himself being later to interpret this mystery. If you still ask for the foretelling of the Lord's cross, the twenty-first psalm can now satisfy you, containing the whole passion of Christ, who even then sang of his glory: “They dug my hands and my feet,” which are the particular atrocities of the cross. And again, when he implores the Father's help: “Save me,” he says, “from the mouth of the lion,” namely of death, “and my lowliness from the horns of the unicorn,” that is, from the ends of the cross, as we showed above. Neither David himself suffered this cross, nor any king of the Jews; so do not think the passion of any other is prophesied but his who alone was so notably crucified by the people. Now even if heretical hardness rejects and laughs at all these interpretations, I will concede to it that no cross of Christ is signified by the Creator, since not even from this will it prove that the one who was crucified is another; unless perhaps it shows that this death of his was foretold by its own god, so that a difference of passions, and through that of persons too, may be established from a difference of foretellings. Besides, since not even its Christ was foretold, let alone his cross, the prophecy of his death alone is enough to point to my Christ. For since the manner of death was not stated, it could have come about through a cross too, and would then have to be assigned to another only if it had been foretold of another. Unless he will not have even the death of my Christ prophesied; all the more should he blush, if he announces that his own Christ died, whom he denies was born, but denies that mine is mortal, whom he confesses capable of birth. But I want to show the death and burial and resurrection of my Christ with one saying of Isaiah: “His burial has been taken away from the midst.” For neither would he have been buried unless he had died, nor would his burial have been taken away from the midst except through resurrection. Finally he added: “Therefore he will himself inherit many and will divide the spoils of many, because his soul was handed over to death.” For with the reason for this favor shown, namely for the wrong of the death that was to be healed, it is likewise shown that he would obtain these things after death, namely through resurrection.

It is enough so far to have run through the course of Christ for the present on these points. Proved to be such as he was announced, he ought not to be held to be other than the one who was announced as such; so that now, from this agreement between his history and the Creator's Scriptures, belief ought also to be restored to those things, on the prejudgment of the greater part, which are either brought into doubt or denied by the opposing view. We now build further on this the equally matching things from the Creator's Scriptures which were foretold as to come after Christ. For this arrangement too would not be found fulfilled if he had not come, after whom it was to take place. Look at all the nations emerging from then on out of the whirlpool of human error to God the Creator, to God the Christ; and deny, if you dare, that it was prophesied. But at once the Father's promise in the psalms will meet you: “You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.” You cannot claim that David is his son rather than Christ, or that the ends of the earth were promised to David, who reigned within the one nation of the Jews, rather than to Christ, who has now taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel. So too through Isaiah: “Behold, I have given you as a covenant of the race, as a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind,” namely of those who wander, “to release the bound from their chains,” that is, to free them from their sins, “and from the prison cell,” that is, of death, “those who sit in darkness,” namely of ignorance. If these things come about through Christ, they will have been prophesied of none other than the one through whom they come about. Likewise elsewhere: “Behold, I have set him as a witness to the nations, a ruler and commander to the nations; nations which do not know you will call upon you, and peoples will flee to you.” Nor will you interpret this of David, because he said first: “And I will make with you an everlasting covenant, the holy and sure things of David.” On the contrary, from this you should rather understand Christ, reckoned from David by descent according to the flesh, because of the lineage of the virgin Mary. For it is about this promise that an oath is sworn to David in the psalm: “Of the fruit of your womb I will set upon your throne.” What womb is this? David's own? Certainly not, for David was not going to give birth. Nor his wife's either; for he would not have said, “of the fruit of your womb,” but rather “of the fruit of your wife's womb.” But by speaking of his own womb, it remains that he pointed to someone of his line, of whose womb the fruit would be the flesh of Christ, which blossomed from Mary's womb. And that is why he named only the fruit of the womb, as properly of the womb, as though of the womb alone and not also of a husband; and he referred the womb itself to David, the head of the line and father of the family. For since he could not assign the virgin's womb to a husband, he assigned it to the forefather. So the new covenant which is found today in Christ will be the one which the Creator was then promising, calling “the holy and sure things of David” what belonged to Christ, since Christ is from David. For the prophet Nathan too, in the second book of Kingdoms, makes a promise to David for his seed, “which will be,” he says, “from his own womb.” If you explain this simply of Solomon, you will make me laugh: David will seem to have given birth to Solomon! Is not Christ signified here too, the seed of David from that womb which would be from David, that is, Mary's? For Christ was the one who would rather build the house of God, namely a holy humanity, a better temple, in which the Spirit of God would dwell; and Christ rather than Solomon, the son of David, was to be the Son of God. Finally, the throne for ever and the kingdom for ever fit Christ rather than Solomon, a king for a time. And from Christ the mercy of God did not depart, while upon Solomon even the wrath of God came, after his luxury and idolatry, for Satan raised up against him an Edomite enemy. Since, then, none of these things fits Solomon but Christ, the rationale of our interpretations will be sure, the very outcome of events proving that they were foretold of Christ. And so in him will be the holy and sure things of David; him God set as a witness to the nations, not David; as ruler and commander of the nations, not David, who ruled over Israel alone. It is Christ whom the nations that did not know him call upon today, and to Christ the peoples flee today, whom they formerly did not know. What you see happening cannot be called future.

So too you cannot sustain that objection of yours to distinguish two Christs, as though the Jewish Christ were appointed by the Creator only to gather back the people from the dispersion, while yours was bestowed by the supremely good god to set free the whole human race; since, after all, the Christians of the Creator are found to be earlier than Marcion's, all peoples having been called into his kingdom from the time when God reigned from the tree, when there was as yet no Cerdo, let alone Marcion. But refuted about the calling of the nations, you now seek to turn it into proselytes who pass over from the nations to the Creator; whereas the proselytes, being of a different and distinct status, are named separately by the prophet (“Behold,” says Isaiah, “proselytes will come to you through me,” showing that the proselytes too would come to God through Christ), and the nations, which is what we are, likewise have their own designation, as hoping in Christ: “And in his name,” he says, “the nations will hope.” But the proselytes, whom you substitute in the prophecy of the nations, do not usually hope in the name of Christ but in the ordinance of Moses, from whom their instruction comes. The choosing of the nations, on the other hand, arose from the last days. Isaiah says in these very words: “And it will be in the last days that the mountain of the Lord will be manifest,” namely the majesty of God, “and the house of God on the tops of the mountains,” namely Christ, the universal temple of God in which God is worshiped, established over all the heights of virtues and powers; “and all nations will come to it, and many will go and say: Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord and to the house of the God of Jacob, and he will announce to us his way and we will walk in it; for from Zion will go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.” This will be the way of the new law, the gospel, and of the new word, in Christ, no longer in Moses. “And he will judge among the nations,” namely concerning their error, “and will refute a great people,” first of all the Jews themselves and the proselytes, “and they will beat their swords into ploughs and their spears into sickles,” that is, they will turn the dispositions of harmful minds and hostile tongues, and of all malice and blasphemy, into pursuits of moderation and peace; “and nation will not take up sword against nation,” the sword of discord, that is, “and they will no longer learn to make war,” that is, to carry out enmities; so that here too you may learn that Christ was promised not as mighty in war but as bringing peace. Either deny that these things were prophesied, when they are seen before your eyes, or that they are fulfilled, when they are read; or if you deny neither, they will have been fulfilled in him of whom they were prophesied. For look further at the very entry and course of the calling into the nations, from the last days, as they approach God the Creator; not into proselytes, whose choosing belongs rather to the first days. For it was the apostles who brought in this faith.

You have the work of the apostles foretold too: “How timely are the feet of those who bring good news of peace, who bring good news of good things,” not of war or of evil. The psalm answers: “Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the earth,” as they carried about the law that went forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem, so that what is written might come to pass: “And those who were far from my righteousness have drawn near to my righteousness and truth.” When the apostles girded themselves for this business, did they renounce the elders, the rulers, and the priests of the Jews, or not? “Yes indeed,” he says, “as preachers of another god.” On the contrary, of that very same God whose Scripture they were at that time fulfilling: “Depart, depart,” cries Isaiah, “go out from there and touch nothing unclean” (namely, blasphemy against Christ); “go out from the midst of her” (the synagogue, of course); “be separated, you who carry the vessels of the Lord.” For already, according to what is written above, the Lord had revealed his holy arm, that is, Christ, by his power, before the nations, so that all nations and the ends of the earth might see the salvation that was from God. So too, departing from Judaism itself, when they exchanged the bonds and burdens of the law for the freedom of the gospel, they were carrying out the psalm: “Let us burst their bonds and cast their yoke from us”; certainly after “the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things; the kings of the earth stood up and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” What then did the apostles suffer? “Every iniquity of persecution,” you say, “at the hands of the Creator's men, of course, as adversaries of the one they preached.” And why does the Creator, if he was the adversary of Christ, not only foretell that his apostles would suffer this, but also reproach it? For he would neither foretell the course of another god, of whom, as you people will have it, he was ignorant, nor reproach what he had himself brought about: “See how the righteous man perishes, and no one takes it to heart, and righteous men are taken away, and no one notices; for the righteous man has been taken away from the face of injustice.” Who, if not Christ? “Come,” they say, “let us take away the righteous man, because he is useless to us.” So, stating beforehand and adding afterwards that Christ likewise suffered, he prophesied that his righteous ones would suffer the same, the apostles as well as all the faithful after them; sealed, namely, with that mark of which Ezekiel speaks: “The Lord says to me: Pass through the midst of the gate, in the midst of Jerusalem, and put the sign Tau on the foreheads of the men.” For this very letter, the Greek Tau, our T, is the form of the cross, which he foretold would be on our foreheads in the true and catholic Jerusalem, in which the twenty-first psalm, speaking in the person of Christ himself to the Father, sings that Christ's brothers, the sons of God, would give glory to God: “I will declare your name to my brothers; in the midst of the church I will sing a hymn to you” (for what was to be done today in his name and Spirit he rightly foretold as to be done by himself); and a little further on: “From you is my praise in the great church”; and in the sixty-seventh: “In the churches bless the Lord God”; so that the prophecy of Micah might likewise agree: “My will is not in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices; for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name is glorified among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, a pure sacrifice,” namely the rendering of glory, blessing, praise, and hymns. Since all these things are found in your church too, the sealing of foreheads, the sacraments of the churches, and the purity of the sacrifices, you ought now to burst out and say that the Spirit of the Creator prophesied of your Christ.

Now, since along with the Jews you deny that their Christ has come, consider also their own end, which they were foretold to suffer after Christ because of the impiety with which they both despised and killed him. For first, from the day when, according to Isaiah, man threw away his abominations of gold and silver, which they made to worship vain and harmful things, that is, from the time when the human race, the truth having been made clear through Christ, threw away its idols, see whether what follows has not been fulfilled. For “the Lord of Hosts took away from Judea and from Jerusalem,” among other things, “both the prophet and the wise master builder,” namely the Holy Spirit, who builds the church, that is, the temple and house and city of God. For from then on the grace of God ceased among them, and “the clouds were commanded not to rain showers on the vineyard of Sorek,” that is, the heavenly benefits were commanded not to come to the house of Israel. For it had produced thorns, with which it had crowned the Lord, and not righteousness but an outcry, by which it had forced him onto the cross. And so, the dews of spiritual gifts being withdrawn, “the law and the prophets were until John.” Then, when through their persistent fury the name of the Lord was blasphemed through them, as it is written, “Because of you my name is blasphemed among the nations” (for the slander began with them), and when they had not understood the intervening time from Tiberius to Vespasian as given for repentance, “their land was made desolate, their cities burned with fire, strangers devour their country before their eyes; the daughter of Zion is left like a watchtower in a vineyard or a hut in a cucumber field,” ever since, that is, “Israel did not know the Lord and the people did not understand him,” but “forsook him and provoked the Holy One of Israel to anger.” So too the conditional threat of the sword, “If you are unwilling and do not hear me, the sword will devour you,” will prove that it was Christ, by not hearing whom they perished; who also in the fifty-eighth psalm asks the Father to scatter them, “Scatter them in your power”; who again, through Isaiah, concluding his speech about their burning, says, “Because of me these things have happened to you; you will lie down in anguish.” Quite pointless, if they suffered these things not because of him who had declared they would suffer because of him, but because of the Christ of another god. And yet, I say, you people claim that the Christ of another god was driven to the cross by the Creator's virtues and powers, as by rivals. But see, he is shown to be avenged by the Creator: “And the worst were given for his burial,” namely those who had asserted that it had been stolen, “and the rich for his death,” namely those who had bought the betrayal from Judas and from the soldiers false testimony that the body had been stolen. So either these things did not befall the Jews because of him (but you are refuted by the agreement of the sense of the Scriptures with the outcome of events and the order of the times), or, if they befell them because of him, the Creator could only avenge his own Christ, since he would rather have rewarded the Jews if they had killed his adversary. Certainly, if the Creator's Christ has not yet come, because of whom they are foretold to suffer these things, then they will suffer them when he comes. And where then will be the daughter of Zion to be left forsaken, when today there is none? Where the cities to be burned, which are already in ruins? Where the scattering of the nation, which is already in exile? Give back to Judea the state in which the Creator's Christ may find it, and then contend that another has come. And again, what sort of thing is it that the Creator let into his heaven one whom he was going to kill on his earth, the more honorable and glorious region of his kingdom having been violated, his very court and citadel trampled? Or was this rather what he aimed at? Plainly a jealous God. Yet he won. Blush, you who believe in a defeated god! What will you hope for from one who could not protect himself? For either he was overwhelmed through weakness by the Creator's powers and men, or through malice, to fasten so great a crime on them by his forbearance.