Against Marcion 3.5

Let these be my opening skirmishes, as it were from the first line and still at a distance. But from here on, since I am going to fight at close quarters and with certainty, I see that certain lines must still be drawn in advance along which the fight will be fought, namely the Scriptures of the Creator. For since I am going to prove from them that Christ was the Creator's, as having been later fulfilled in his Christ, I must also set out the form, and so to speak the nature, of these Scriptures themselves, so that they are not drawn into controversy just when they are brought to bear on the issues, and dull the reader's attention by mixing their own defense with the defense of the issues. I therefore put forward two features of prophetic speech which our adversaries must from now on acknowledge. The first is that future things are sometimes stated as already past. For it befits the Godhead to regard whatever it has decreed as accomplished, because with it there is no distinction of time, since eternity itself directs a uniform state of time in it; and it is more natural to prophetic divination to show what it foresees, while it foresees it, as already seen and so already completed, that is, as in every way certain to come, as through Isaiah: “I gave my back to the scourges, and my cheeks to the palms of the hand, and I did not turn my face away from spitting.” For whether Christ was already then speaking of himself, as we hold, or the prophet of himself, as the Jews hold, what had not yet been done was nonetheless voiced as already past. The other feature will be that many things are foretold figuratively, through riddles, allegories, and parables, to be understood otherwise than as written. For we read that the mountains will drip sweetness, yet not so that you should expect grape syrup from the rocks or boiled-down wine from the cliffs; and we hear of a land flowing with milk and honey, yet not so that you should believe you will ever make cakes and Samian delicacies out of clods of earth. For God did not straightaway promise to be a water-finder and a farmer when he said, “I will put rivers in a thirsty region, and box and cedar in the wilderness”; just as, foretelling the conversion of the nations, “The beasts of the field will bless me, the sirens and the daughters of the sparrows,” he certainly does not mean to bring back happy omens from swallows' chicks and little foxes and those monstrous, fabled songstresses. And why should I say more of this kind? Since even the heretics' apostle interprets the law itself, which allows the ox that treads the grain a free mouth, as said not of oxen but of us; and asserts that the rock which accompanied them to supply drink was Christ; teaching the Galatians likewise that the two accounts of Abraham's sons ran as allegory, and suggesting to the Ephesians that what was declared at the beginning of man, who would leave father and mother and the two would become one flesh, he recognizes as referring to Christ and the church.