Against Marcion 3.24–4.6

“Rather,” you say, “what I hope for from him is something that itself serves as evidence of the difference: the kingdom of God, an eternal and heavenly possession. But your Christ promises the Jews their former state through the restoration of their land, and after life has run its course, refreshment in Abraham's bosom among the dead below.” O most good God, if when appeased he gives back what he had taken away when angry! O your god, who both strikes and heals, creates evils and makes peace! O a god merciful even as far as the underworld! But of Abraham's bosom in its own time. As for the restoration of Judea, which the Jews themselves hope for just as it is described, led on by the names of places and regions, how an allegorical interpretation applies spiritually to Christ and the church, its condition and its fruit, would take long to pursue, and has been set out in another work, which we entitle On the Hope of the Faithful; and at present it is idle for this reason too, that the question is not about an earthly but about a heavenly promise. For we do confess that a kingdom is promised to us on earth, but before heaven, and in another state: namely after the resurrection, for a thousand years, in the city of divine workmanship, Jerusalem, brought down from heaven, which the apostle too designates as “our mother above”; and when he declares that our politeuma, that is, our citizenship, is in heaven, he certainly assigns it to some heavenly city. This city Ezekiel knew, the apostle John saw, and the word of the New Prophecy, which belongs to our faith, bears witness to it, so that it even foretold that an image of the city would be seen as a sign before its manifestation. This was in fact fulfilled very recently during the eastern expedition. For it is established, even by heathen witnesses, that in Judea for forty days a city hung from the sky in the early morning hours, the whole appearance of its walls fading as the day advanced, and at other times, close at hand, there was none. This city, we say, has been provided by God for receiving the saints at their resurrection and refreshing them with an abundance of all goods, spiritual ones of course, in compensation for those which we have either despised or lost in the world; since it is both just and worthy of God that his servants should rejoice there too, where they were also afflicted for his name. This is the plan of the kingdom beneath heaven. After its thousand years, within which period the resurrection of the saints is completed, as they rise sooner or later according to their merits, then, when the destruction of the world and the conflagration of judgment have taken place, we shall be changed in an instant into angelic substance, namely by that putting on of incorruption over us, and be transferred into the heavenly kingdom. This kingdom is now being discussed as though it were not foretold by the Creator, and so proved a Christ of another god, by whom it was first and alone revealed. Learn now, then, both that it was foretold by the Creator and that, even without foretelling, it is to be believed of the Creator. What do you think? When the seed of Abraham, after the first promise in which it is promised to be like the multitude of the sand, is also destined to be like the stars, are these not tokens of both an earthly and a heavenly arrangement? When Isaac, blessing his son Jacob, says, “May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth,” are these not examples of both kinds of bounty? Indeed, the very structure of that blessing must be noted here too. For with Jacob, who is a figure of the later and preferred people, that is, of us, the first promise is of heavenly dew, the second of earthly fatness. For we are first invited to heavenly things when we are torn away from the world, and so are found afterwards to obtain earthly things as well. And your gospel too has: “Seek first the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you.” But to Esau he puts the earthly blessing first and adds the heavenly, saying, “Your dwelling will be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven.” For the arrangement of the Jews, in Esau, the elder by birth but later in affection of the sons, first steeped in earthly goods through the law, is afterwards led to heavenly things by believing through the gospel. And when Jacob dreams of a ladder fixed on the earth up to heaven, and angels, some ascending and some descending, and the Lord leaning upon it from above, shall we be rash, perhaps, to interpret this ladder as showing the way to heaven, by which some arrive and from which others fall … that the judgment of the Lord is set? And why, when he woke up and was first struck with awe at the place, does he turn to interpreting the dream? For when he had said, “How terrible is this place!” he says, “This is nothing else but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” For he had seen Christ the Lord, who is the temple of God and also the gate through whom heaven is entered. And certainly he would not have named a gate of heaven if heaven is not entered with the Creator. But there is a gate that receives and leads on, and a way already paved by Christ, of whom Amos says, “who builds his ascent into heaven,” certainly not for himself alone, but also for his own, who will be with him. “For you will surround yourself with them,” he says, “like the ornament of a bride.” So the Spirit marvels at those who by that ascent are making for the heavenly kingdoms, saying, “They fly like kites, they fly like clouds, and like young doves to me,” that is, simply, as doves. “For we shall be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord,” according to the apostle (the Son of Man, namely, coming in the clouds, according to Daniel), “and so we shall always be with the Lord,” both on earth and in heaven, the Lord who, because of those ungrateful for both promises, calls even the elements themselves to witness: “Hear, O heaven, and give ear, O earth.” And for my part, even if Scripture had not so often stretched out to me the hand of heavenly hope, I would have a sufficient prejudgment in favor of this promise too, in that I already hold earthly grace; I would expect something from heaven as well from the God of heaven as of earth. So I would believe that the Christ who promises higher things belongs to him who had promised lower ones; who had made proofs of the greater from the lesser; who had reserved for Christ alone the proclamation of this perhaps unheard-of kingdom, so that earthly glory was announced through his servants, but the heavenly through the Lord himself. But you argue from this too for another Christ, because he announces a new kingdom. First you must bring forward some example of his bounty, so that I may not rightly doubt the trustworthiness of so great a promise, which I hope for (for I have learned it); or rather, before all else, you must prove that he whom you proclaim as promising heavenly things has some heaven. As it is, you invite me to dinner and do not show me the house; you allege a kingdom and do not point out the palace. Does your Christ promise a heavenly kingdom without having a heaven, just as he presented himself as a man without having flesh? O phantom through and through! O great conjuring trick, even of the promise!

Every opinion and every contrivance of the impious and sacrilegious Marcion we now challenge before his gospel itself, which he made his own by tampering with it. And to establish credit for it, he devised a sort of dowry for it: a work called Antitheses from its oppositions of contrary statements, forced into separating the law and the gospel, by which, dividing two gods, as different as one belonging to one instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament) and the other to the other, he might then champion the gospel too as one to be believed according to the Antitheses. But I would have cut these down in a separate engagement at close quarters, that is, objection by objection of the man from Pontus, were it not much more convenient to beat them back within and together with the gospel whose case they plead. And yet it is so easy to meet them by prescription that I actually accept them, count them valid, and say they are on our side, so that they may blush all the more at their author's blindness: they are now our Antitheses against Marcion. And so I confess that one order ran its course in the old arrangement under the Creator, and another in the new under Christ. I do not deny a difference in the records of speech, the precepts of virtue, and the disciplines of the law, provided that the whole difference applies to one and the same God, namely him by whom it is established that it was arranged, as it was also foretold. Long ago Isaiah proclaims that the law would go forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem: certainly another law and another word. “In short,” he says, “he will judge among the nations and will convict a very great people,” not of the one nation of the Jews, namely, but of the nations, who by the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles are judged and convicted in their own hearts of their former error as soon as they believe; and from then on they beat their swords into ploughs and their hunting spears (for zibinae are a kind of hunting spear) into sickles, that is, they turn minds once fierce and savage into upright dispositions that work to produce good fruit. And again: “Hear me, hear me, my people, and you kings, give ear to me; for a law will go forth from me, and my judgment for a light of the nations,” by which he had judged and decreed that the nations too were to be enlightened by the law and word of the gospel. This too will be the law in David, blameless because perfect, “converting the soul,” from idols to God, of course. This too will be the word of which the same Isaiah says: “For the Lord will make a cut-short word on the earth.” For the new testament is abridged, and freed from the ragged burdens of the law. But why say more, when renewal is foretold by the Creator through the same prophet more plainly and more clearly than light itself? “Do not remember the former things, and do not consider the things of old” (the old have passed away, new things are arising); “behold, I make new things, which will now arise.” Likewise through Jeremiah: “Break up for yourselves new fallow ground, and do not sow among thorns; and be circumcised in the foreskin of your heart”; and elsewhere: “Behold, the day will come, says the Lord, and I will accomplish for the house of Jacob and the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I arranged for their fathers in the day when I took hold of their arrangement to lead them out of the land of Egypt.” Thus he shows that the former covenant was temporary, in showing it changeable and in promising an eternal one for the future. For through Isaiah he says: “Hear me, and you will live, and I will arrange for you an eternal covenant,” adding, “the holy and sure things of David,” to show that this covenant would run its course in Christ, of the line of David by Mary's descent, whom he also foretold figuratively in the rod that would come forth from the root of Jesse. If, then, he said that other laws, other words, and new arrangements of covenants would come from the Creator, so that he appointed other, better offices even of the sacrifices themselves, and those among the nations, as Malachi says: “My will is not in you, says the Lord, and I will not accept your sacrifices from your hands, for from the rising of the sun to its setting my name has been glorified among the nations, and in every place a sacrifice is offered to my name, and a pure sacrifice,” namely simple prayer from a pure conscience; then every change that comes from renewal must enter into difference from the things of which it is made, and from difference into contrariety. For as nothing is changed that is not different, so nothing is different that is not contrary. Therefore the contrariety arising from difference will be assigned to the same one to whom the change arising from renewal belonged. He who arranged the change also instituted the difference; he who foretold the renewal also announced the contrariety beforehand. Why do you interpret a difference in things as a distinction of powers? Why do you twist against the Creator the antitheses of examples, which you can recognize in his own feelings and dispositions too? “I will strike,” he says, “and I will heal; I will kill,” he says, “and I will make alive,” creating evils and making peace; on which ground you are even accustomed to reproach him with the name of fickleness and inconstancy, forbidding what he commands and commanding what he forbids. Why then have you not reckoned up antitheses in the natural works of the Creator, who is always contrary to himself? Could you not at least consider the world, which, unless I am mistaken, even among the people of Pontus is built out of the differences of substances rivaling one another? You ought first, then, to have defined one god of light and another of darkness, so that you could thus have asserted one god of the law and another of the gospel. But the matter has been prejudged from what is plain: he whose works and designs consist of antitheses has his mysteries consist in the same form.

You have this reply to the Antitheses, dispatched by us. I now pass on to the demonstration of the gospel, not the Jewish one, of course, but the Pontic one, adulterated in the meantime, laying down beforehand the order we are taking up. We lay down first that the gospel instrument has apostles as its authors, on whom this task of promulgating the gospel was laid by the Lord himself; and if also apostolic men, then not alone but with the apostles, since the preaching of disciples could be made suspect of seeking glory if the authority of the masters did not stand by it, or rather the authority of Christ, which made the apostles masters. In short, of the apostles, John and Matthew instill faith in us; of apostolic men, Luke and Mark renew it, beginning from the same rules as regards the one God the Creator and his Christ, born of a virgin, the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. Never mind if the arrangement of their narratives varied, provided there is agreement on the essential of the faith, on which there is no agreement with Marcion. Marcion, on the other hand, ascribes no author to his gospel, his own, that is; as if he might not have been allowed to forge a title too, he who thought it no crime to overturn the body of the work itself. And I could plant my foot here at once, contending that a work should not be acknowledged which does not lift up its head, which displays no constancy, which promises no credit through a full title and the due declaration of its author. But we prefer to engage on every point, and we do not conceal what can be understood from our own side. For of those commentators whom we have, Marcion seems to have chosen Luke to cut up. Now Luke was not an apostle but an apostolic man, not a master but a disciple, certainly less than a master, and certainly later by as much as he was the follower of a later apostle, Paul without doubt; so that even if Marcion had brought in his gospel under the name of Paul himself, the single instrument, without the support of those who went before, would not suffice for belief. For that gospel too would be required which Paul found, to which he gave his faith, with which he was soon eager that his own should agree; since it was for this reason that he went up to Jerusalem to know and consult the apostles, lest perhaps he had run in vain, that is, lest he had not believed and was not preaching the gospel in agreement with them. Finally, when he had conferred with the authorities and agreed about the rule of faith, they joined right hands and from then on divided the duties of preaching, they to the Jews, Paul to the Jews and to the nations. If, then, Luke's very enlightener desired the authority of those who went before for his faith and preaching, how much more may I demand for Luke's gospel the authority that was necessary for his master's gospel?

It is another matter if, according to Marcion, the mystery of the Christian religion began with Luke's discipleship. But if it runs back earlier, it certainly had an authentic apparatus through which it reached Luke, with whose testimony standing by, Luke too could be admitted. But Marcion, having come upon Paul's letter to the Galatians, in which he rebukes even the apostles themselves for not walking with a straight foot according to the truth of the gospel, and at the same time accuses certain false apostles of perverting the gospel of Christ, strives to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as their own and under the name of apostles, or of apostolic men too, in order, that is, to confer on his own the credit which he takes from them. Now even if Peter and John and James, who were reputed to be pillars, were rebuked, the reason is plain: they seemed to vary their company out of regard for persons. And yet, since Paul himself became all things to all men in order to win all, Peter too could have had this in view in acting somewhat otherwise than he taught. Likewise, if false apostles had also crept in, their character too is stated: they insisted on circumcision and Jewish pride. So they were censured by Paul not for their preaching but for their conduct, and he would equally have censured them if they had erred at all about God the Creator or his Christ. Each point, then, must be distinguished. If Marcion complains that the apostles are held suspect of collusion and pretense to the point of corrupting the gospel, he is now accusing Christ, by accusing those whom Christ chose. But if the apostles did hand on the gospel whole, and were rebuked only for inconsistency in their company, while the false apostles tampered with their truth, and our gospels were compiled from that source, what will that genuine instrument of the apostles be that did not suffer adulterers? What was it that enlightened Paul, and through him Luke? But if it was so utterly destroyed as to be blotted out by a sort of deluge, a flood of forgers, then Marcion does not have the true one either. Or if what Marcion alone has will be the true one, that is, the apostles', how does it agree with ours, which is ascribed not to the apostles but to Luke? Or if what Marcion uses is not to be assigned straightaway to Luke because it agrees with ours (ours being adulterated, as he says, in its title as well), but is the apostles', then ours too, which agrees with it, is equally the apostles', though adulterated in its title too.

The rope of contention, then, must be pulled, swaying with equal effort on either side. I say mine is true; Marcion says his. I affirm that Marcion's is adulterated; Marcion says mine is. Who will decide between us, except the reckoning of time, which assigns authority to what is found to be older and prejudges corruption against what is shown to be later? For in so far as falsehood is a corruption of the truth, to that extent the truth must precede the falsehood. The thing will come before what is done to it, and the material before its imitation. Otherwise, how absurd that, if we prove ours older and Marcion's later, ours should seem false before it had the truth as its material, and Marcion's be believed to have suffered imitation from ours before it was even published; and finally, that what is later should be thought the truer, after so many and such great works and records of the Christian religion had been published to the world, which certainly could not have been published without the truth of the gospel, that is, before the truth of the gospel. As regards, then, the gospel of Luke for the present, in so far as our common possession of it is disputed between us and Marcion as to its truth, what agrees with our text is so much older than Marcion's that Marcion himself once believed it, when in the first warmth of his faith he gave money to the catholic church, which was soon thrown back along with himself, after he had fallen away from our truth into his heresy. What now if the Marcionites deny that his first faith was with us, in the face of his own letter too? What if they do not acknowledge the letter either? Certainly they not only admit that the Antitheses are Marcion's, but hold them up. From these the proof is enough for me. For if the gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke (we shall see whether among Marcion too) is the very one that Marcion attacks through his Antitheses as interpolated by the protectors of Judaism, to merge it with the law and the prophets so that they might fashion Christ from them as well, he certainly could not have attacked anything but what he had found. No one censures beforehand things to come that he does not know will come. Correction does not come before the fault. A corrector indeed of the gospel, which had been overturned from the times of Tiberius to those of the Antonines, Marcion appeared, alone and first, awaited so long by Christ, who by now regretted having hastened to send out the apostles ahead without Marcion's protection! Except that heresy is the business of human rashness, not divine authority; it always corrects the gospels in this way, by corrupting them. For even if Marcion is a disciple, he is not above his master; if Marcion is an apostle, “whether it was I,” says Paul, “or they, so we preach”; if Marcion is a prophet, “the spirits of the prophets will be subject to the prophets, for they are not of confusion but of peace”; even if Marcion is an angel, he is to be called anathema sooner than an evangelist, since he preached a different gospel. So while he corrects, he confirms both: that ours is earlier, since he corrects what he found; and that that one is later which, by setting it up out of the correction of ours, he made his own and new.

In sum: if it is established that what is earlier is truer, that what is from the beginning is earlier, and that what is from the apostles is from the beginning, it will likewise be established that what has been held sacred among the churches of the apostles is what was handed down by the apostles. Let us see what milk the Corinthians drank from Paul; to what rule the Galatians were brought back for correction; what the Philippians, Thessalonians, and Ephesians read; what the Romans too, close at hand, give voice to, to whom both Peter and Paul left the gospel sealed with their own blood as well. We also have the churches nurtured by John. For even if Marcion rejects his Apocalypse, the succession of bishops, traced back to its origin, will rest on John as its founder. So too the pedigree of the other churches is recognized. I say, therefore, that among them, and not only among the apostolic churches but among all those that are joined with them in the fellowship of the sacrament, that gospel of Luke which we are at this moment defending has stood from the beginning of its publication; whereas Marcion's is not even known to most of them, and known to none without being condemned for that very reason. That one too, plainly, has churches, but its own, as late as they are adulterous; and if you look for their lineage, you will more easily find it apostate than apostolic, with Marcion as founder or someone from Marcion's swarm. Wasps make combs too; Marcionites make churches too. The same authority of the apostolic churches will also support the other gospels, which likewise we have through them and in agreement with them: I mean John's and Matthew's, though what Mark published may also be affirmed to be Peter's, whose interpreter Mark was. For people usually ascribe Luke's compilation to Paul as well; and it is proper that what disciples published should be regarded as their masters'. So Marcion must be pressed about these too: why, leaving them aside, he fastened on Luke instead, as if these too had not been in the churches from the beginning, just as Luke's was. Indeed, it is more credible that these were there from the beginning, as being earlier, since apostolic, as dedicated together with the churches themselves. Besides, what sort of thing would it be, if the apostles published nothing, that their disciples should rather have published, who could not even have come to be disciples without some teaching from their masters? So, since it is established that these too were in the churches, why did Marcion not touch these too, either to correct them if adulterated, or to acknowledge them if intact? For it would be fitting that those who were perverting the gospel should rather take care to pervert those whose authority they knew to be more widely received. That is why there were false apostles too: because they imitated the apostles by falsehood. So in so far as he would have corrected what needed correcting, had it been corrupted, to that extent he confirmed that what he did not think needed correcting was not corrupted. In short, he corrected what he judged corrupted; but not even this rightly, because it was not corrupted. For if the apostolic gospels have come down intact, and Luke's, as we have it, agrees so well with their rule that it remains with them in the churches, then it is established that Luke's too came down intact until the sacrilege of Marcion. Indeed, where Marcion laid hands on it, then it became different from and a rival to the apostolic gospels. I will therefore give his disciples some advice: either let them convert those gospels too, however late, to the form of their own … so that it may seem to agree with the apostolic ones (for they are reshaping it daily, as they are daily refuted by us); or let them blush for their master, who is exposed either way, since he now passes over the truth of the gospel knowingly and now overturns it shamelessly. These are more or less the short arguments we use when we are engaged on behalf of the faith of the gospel against heretics, maintaining both the order of time, which rules against the lateness of forgers, and the authority of the churches, which supports the tradition of the apostles; because the truth must precede the falsehood, and proceed from those by whom it was handed down.

But from here we take another step, challenging Marcion's gospel itself, as we professed, so as to prove in this way too that it has been adulterated. For certainly the whole of what he labored at, even in setting up the Antitheses in advance, is directed to this end: that, establishing a difference between the Old and the New Testament, he might likewise establish his Christ as separate from the Creator, as belonging to another god, as foreign to the law and the prophets. Certainly it was for this reason that he erased whatever was contrary to his opinion and agreed with the Creator, as having been woven in by the Creator's champions, and kept what suited his opinion. These we shall meet, these we shall embrace, if they turn out to be rather on our side, if they strike down Marcion's presumption; then it will be established that the other passages too were erased by the same fault of heretical blindness by which these were kept. Such will be the aim and plan of our little work, under the condition, of course, that has been agreed on both sides. Marcion lays down that there is one Christ who was revealed in the time of Tiberius by a god formerly unknown, for the salvation of all nations, and another who was appointed by God the Creator for the restoration of the Jewish state, and who is to come at some time. Between these he cuts a great and total difference, as great as between the just and the good, between the law and the gospel, between Judaism and Christianity. From this will come our prescription too, by which we fix it that the Christ of another god ought to have nothing in common with the Creator; and that on the other hand he must be declared the Creator's if he has administered his arrangements, fulfilled his prophecies, supported his laws, made present his promises, restored his mighty works, re-expressed his judgments, and represented his character and attributes. Remember this agreement and this prescription everywhere, I beg you, reader, and begin to discern whether it is Marcion's Christ or the Creator's.