Against Marcion 4.15–4.18

“In the same way,” he says, “their fathers did to the prophets.” O turncoat Christ, now destroyer, now champion of the prophets! He destroyed them as a rival, turning their disciples to himself; he championed them as a friend, rebuking their persecutors. Now, in so far as championing the prophets would not have suited Marcion's Christ, who had come to destroy them, to that extent rebuking the persecutors of the prophets suits the Creator's Christ, who was fulfilling them in everything; or because it belongs rather to the Creator to reproach sons with the sins of their fathers than to that god who does not even punish each person's own sins. “But,” you say, “he was not therefore protecting the prophets, if he wished to affirm the iniquity of the Jews, in that they had not acted dutifully even toward their own prophets.” On the contrary, there was no iniquity to reproach the Jews with here; they should rather have been praised and approved, if they had ill-treated those for whose destruction the supremely good god was moved after so long an age. But now, I suppose, he is no longer supremely good; he has now spent some time with the Creator, and is not wholly the god of Epicurus. For see, he turns to cursing, and shows himself to be one who knows how to be offended and to be angry. For he says “woe.” But we are faced with a question about the character of this word, as though it were not so much a curse as a warning. And what difference does it make to the case, since a warning too is not without the sting of a threat, especially when made more bitter by “woe”? And both warning and threat will belong to one who knows how to be angry. For no one will warn and no one will threaten, so that someone may not do something, except one who will punish it when done; and no one would punish except one who knows how to be angry. Others do acknowledge it as a word of cursing, but will have it that Christ pronounced “woe” not as properly his own sentence, but because “woe” comes from the Creator, and he wished to set the Creator's harshness against them, so as to commend his own forbearance above in the blessings. As if it did not suit the Creator, as showing both, to be both a good God and a judge; so that, having first shown kindness in the blessings, he should also add severity in the curses, furnishing the fullness of both disciplines, both for pursuing the blessing and for guarding against the curse. For so he had also said beforehand: “Behold, I have set before you blessing and curse”; which even foreshadowed this arrangement of the gospel. Otherwise, what sort of being is he who, to insinuate his own goodness, set against it the Creator's harshness? Weak is the commendation propped up by the destruction of another. And in fact, by setting forth the Creator's harshness he confirmed that he is to be feared. If to be feared, then certainly to be obeyed rather than disregarded; and Marcion's Christ now begins to teach in the Creator's favor. Then, if the “woe” aimed at the rich is the Creator's, then it is not Christ who is offended at the rich but the Creator, and Christ ratifies the counts against the rich (I mean pride, vainglory, worldly pursuits, and neglect of God), by which they deserve woe from the Creator. But how would it not belong to the same one to reject the rich who above approved the beggars? No one fails to reject the opposite of what he has approved. So if the curse on the rich is to be assigned to the Creator, the blessing on the beggars will be maintained as his too, and the whole work of Christ now belongs to the Creator. If the blessing on the beggars is to be ascribed to Marcion's god, the curse on the rich will also be laid on him, and he will now be the Creator's equal, as much good as judge; and there will be no room left for the distinction by which there come to be two gods; and with the distinction removed, it will remain to proclaim one God, the Creator. So, if “woe” is a word of cursing or of some severer outcry, and is directed by Christ against the rich, I must prove that the Creator too despises the rich, as I proved that he is the advocate of beggars, so as to show Christ as the Creator's in this saying too. He did enrich Solomon, it is true; but because, given his choice, Solomon preferred to ask for what he knew was pleasing to God, wisdom and understanding, he also earned the riches, which he had not preferred. And yet it is not unfitting for God to grant riches, by which the rich too are helped with comfort (“for,” he says, “you have received your consolation,” from riches, that is, from their glory and worldly fruits), and by which many works of justice and love are carried out. But those vices that attend riches assign the “woe” to the rich in the gospel too, as in Moses' Deuteronomy: “Lest,” he says, “when you have eaten and are full and have built great houses, and your flocks and herds have multiplied, and silver and gold, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God.” So too he assails King Hezekiah through Isaiah, puffed up with his treasures and boasting of them rather than of God before those who had come from Persia: “Behold, days are coming, and all that is in your house will be taken away, and what your fathers have stored up will be carried to Babylon.” So too through Jeremiah he declares: “Let not the rich man glory in his riches; but let him who glories,” that is, “glory in God.” So too through Isaiah he inveighs against the daughters of Zion, puffed up by their abundance of riches; and elsewhere, threatening the noble and proud: “The underworld has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth, and the renowned and great and rich will go down” (this will be Christ's “woe” on the rich); “and man will be humbled,” he who was exalted by riches, of course; “and the man will be dishonored,” he who was honored because of his wealth, of course. Of whom he says again: “Behold, the Lord of powers will throw the glorious into confusion with might, and the lofty will be broken, and the high will fall by the sword.” Who more than the rich? Because they have received their consolation, namely glory and the loftiness of honors, from riches. Turning us from them, he says also in the forty-eighth psalm: “Do not fear when a man becomes rich, and when his glory abounds, for when he dies he will not take everything, nor will his glory go down with him”; likewise in the sixty-first: “Do not desire riches, even if they shine; do not set your heart on them.” Finally, that very word “woe” was long ago aimed through Amos at the rich who overflow with luxuries: “Woe,” he says, “to those who sleep on beds of ivory and are dissolute on their couches, who eat kids from the flocks of goats and suckling calves from the herds of cattle, clapping to the sound of instruments; they reckoned these things as lasting and not as fleeting; who drink strained wine and anoint themselves with the finest ointments.” So even if I showed only that the Creator turns people away from riches, and not also that he condemns the rich beforehand, and that with the very word Christ uses, no one would doubt that the threat against the rich through Christ's “woe” was added by the same one by whom the turning away from those very things, riches, had gone before. For a threat is an addition to a dissuasion. He also pronounces woe on the full, because they will hunger, and on those who laugh now, because they will mourn. To these correspond the things set against the blessings above in the Creator: “Behold, those who serve me will be filled, but you will hunger,” you who are full, of course; and, “Behold, those who serve me will be delighted, but you will be put to shame,” you who laugh now and will weep, of course. For as in the psalm those who sow in tears will reap in gladness, so in the gospel those who sow in laughter, from gladness, will reap in tears. The Creator set these side by side long ago; Christ only renewed them, by separating, not by changing them. “Woe to you, when men speak well of you! In the same way their fathers did to the false prophets.” The Creator equally blames those who seek human blessing and praise, through Isaiah: “My people, those who call you blessed lead you astray and disturb the paths of your feet.” Elsewhere he forbids trust in man at all, as in the praise of man, as through Jeremiah: “Cursed is the man who has his hope in man.” For in the hundred and seventeenth psalm too he says: “It is better to trust in God than to trust in man, and better to hope in God than to hope in princes.” So the Creator renounced everything that is sought from man, let alone blessing. And to reproach the false prophets for being praised or blessed by their fathers belongs to him as much as to reproach the harassing and rejecting of the prophets. As the wrongs done to the prophets would have concerned only their own God, so the favors shown to the false prophets would have displeased only the God of the prophets.

“But I say to you who hear,” he says (showing that this was commanded long ago by the Creator: “Speak in the ears of those who hear”), “love your enemies, and bless those who hate you, and pray for those who slander you.” These things the Creator enclosed in a single declaration through Isaiah: “Say, You are our brothers, to those who hate you.” For if those who are enemies, and hate, and curse, and slander are to be called brothers, then surely he who commanded that they be counted brothers also commanded that those who hate be blessed and that prayer be made for slanderers. Christ plainly teaches a new patience, restraining even the retaliation for injury that the Creator permitted when he demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; he, on the contrary, commands that the other cheek be offered as well, and that the cloak be given up besides the tunic. Plainly, unless Christ added these things as supplements in keeping with the Creator's discipline. And so this must be answered at once: is the discipline of patience preached in the Creator? If through Zechariah he commanded, “Let no one remember his brother's malice,” nor his neighbor's either, for again he says, “Let no one think over his neighbor's malice,” then much more did he enjoin patience under injury who enjoined forgetting it. And when he says, “Vengeance is mine, and I will avenge,” he likewise teaches patience that waits for vengeance. In so far, then, as it is incredible that the same one should seem to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in retaliation for injury who forbids not only retaliation but even revenge, and even the remembering and thinking over of an injury, to that extent it becomes clear to us how he meant “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”: not to permit a second injury by way of retaliation, which he had forbidden by prohibiting revenge, but to restrain the first by setting retaliation against it, so that each person, considering the license given to a second injury, would restrain himself from the first. For he knew that violence is more easily checked by the immediate prospect of retaliation than by the promise of vengeance. Both, however, had to be established, according to the nature and faith of men, so that one who believed God would wait for vengeance from God, and one who trusted less would fear the retaliations of the law. This intention of the law, which was hard to understand, Christ, the Lord of the sabbath and of the law and of all the Father's arrangements, both revealed and made effective, commanding the offering of the other cheek too, in order all the more to extinguish retaliation for injury, which the law too had wished to prevent through the retaliation clause, and which prophecy had plainly restrained, both forbidding the memory of injury and referring vengeance to God. So if Christ brought in anything, it was by a precept that assists and does not oppose; he did not destroy the Creator's disciplines. Indeed, if we consider the very reason for commanding patience, and one so full and perfect, it will not stand unless it belongs to the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents himself as judge. Otherwise, if one who is not going to defend me lays on me so great a weight of patience, not only not to strike back but to offer the other cheek as well, not only not to curse back but even to bless, not only not to keep my tunic but to give up my cloak besides, he commands patience in vain, not showing me the reward of the precept, I mean the fruit of patience, which is vengeance; which he ought to have permitted me if he does not provide it himself, or, if he did not permit it to me, to provide himself, since it concerns discipline too that injury be avenged. For every iniquity is curbed by fear of vengeance; otherwise, let loose at will, it will rule, ready to gouge out both eyes and knock out every tooth in the security of impunity. But this is what belongs to the supremely and merely good god: to wrong patience, to throw open the door to violence, not to defend the upright, not to restrain the wicked. “Give to everyone who asks you”: to the needy, of course, or all the more to the needy, if also to one who has plenty. That no one, then, may need a giver, you have the Creator's pattern commanded in Deuteronomy: “There shall be no one in need among you, so that the Lord your God may bless you with blessing,” you as the giver, that is, who have caused there to be no one in need. And there is more here: for he does not command giving to one who asks, but, “Let there be no one in need among you,” that is, take care of your own accord that there be none. All the more does he prejudge that one who asks is to be given to, in what follows too: “But if there is one in need among your brothers, you shall not turn away your heart nor close your hand against your needy brother; you shall surely open your hand to him; you shall lend to him as much as he desires.” For a loan is usually not given except to one who asks. But of lending later. Now, if anyone wishes to argue that the Creator commanded giving to brothers, but Christ to all who ask, so that this is new and different: on the contrary, it will be one of the things through which the Creator's law will be … in Christ. For Christ commanded nothing else toward all than the Creator toward brothers. For even if kindness that works toward strangers is greater, it does not come before that which is owed first to neighbors. For who will be able to love strangers …? But if the second step of kindness is toward strangers, the first toward neighbors, the second step will belong to the one to whom the first belongs, more readily than the second will belong to one to whom the first did not belong. So the Creator, according to the order of nature, taught kindness first toward neighbors, intending afterwards to extend it to strangers too; and according to the plan of his arrangement, first toward the Jews, afterwards to the whole human race as well. And so, as long as the sacrament was within Israel, he rightly commanded mercy toward brothers alone; but when he gave Christ the nations as his inheritance and the ends of the earth as his possession, and what was said through Hosea began to be fulfilled, “Not my people, my people; and she who had not obtained mercy, has obtained mercy,” the nation, namely, from then on Christ extended the law of the Father's kindness to all, excepting no one from compassion, as no one from the calling. So even if he taught something more, this too he received as the inheritance of the nations. “And as you wish men to do to you, so do you also to them.” In this precept its other half is surely understood: “And as you do not wish men to do to you, so do not you do to them.” If a new god, unknown before and not yet clearly made known, commanded this, one who had formed me by no previous instruction by which I might first know what I ought to wish or not wish for myself, and so do to others what I would wish for myself and not do what I would not wish for myself, then he left the meaning of the saying open and did not bind me to agreement between will and deed, to do to others what I wish for myself and not to do to others what I do not wish for myself. For he did not define what I ought to wish or not wish for myself and others, so that I might make my deed match the law of my will. And I can refuse to give another what I would wish another to give me: love, service, comfort, protection, and goods of that kind; and likewise do to another what I would not wish another to do to me: violence, injury, insult, fraud, and evils of that kind. In fact, the heathen, not yet instructed by God, act with this disagreement between will and deed. For even if good and evil are known by nature, they are not known by God's discipline, through the knowledge of which, and only then, the agreement of will and deed is practiced out of faith, as under the fear of God. So Marcion's god, just then revealed, if indeed revealed, could not put out so tight, obscure, and still blind a summary of this precept, one more easily interpreted by my own choice, when he had laid down no distinction for it beforehand. But my Creator long ago and everywhere commanded that the needy, the poor, orphans, and widows be protected, helped, and refreshed, as through Isaiah: “Break your bread for the beggars, and bring those without shelter into your house, and if you see the naked, cover him”; likewise through Ezekiel, of the righteous man: “He will give his bread to the hungry and cover the naked.” So he already then taught me well enough to do to others what I would wish done to me. Likewise, declaring, “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness,” he taught me not to do to others what I would not wish done to me. And so the precept in the gospel will be his who in the past both laid it down beforehand, distinguished it, and arranged it according to the judgment of his discipline, and now rightly bound it up in a summary; since the Lord, that is Christ, was foretold as one who would make a cut-short word on the earth.

Here now he speaks of lending at interest, when he interjects: “And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what thanks is there to you?” Run through what follows in Ezekiel about the same righteous man: “He has not given his money,” he says, “at interest, and will not take what has overflowed,” that is, the surplus of the loan, which is usury. First, then, it was fitting to root out the fruit of lending, so that he might the more easily accustom man to the loss even of the loan itself, should it be lost, once he had learned to give up its fruit. For this, we say, was the work of the law, preparing the way for the gospel: it was gradually shaping the faith of some people at that time toward the full brilliance of Christian discipline by first precepts of a kindness still stammering. For above too he says: “And he will return the pledge to the debtor” — surely if he is unable to pay, for would any man write that a pledge must be returned to one who pays? — and much more plainly in Deuteronomy: “You shall not sleep upon his pledge; you shall surely return his cloak to him about sunset, and he shall sleep in his cloak”; and more clearly still above: “You shall remit every debt that your neighbor owes you, and you shall not demand it back from your brother, because the release of the Lord your God has been proclaimed.” Now when he commands a debt to be remitted, surely to one who will not pay — for it would be more if it were to one who would pay — when he forbids it to be demanded back, what else does he teach than this: that we should lend to one who will not repay, he who has imposed so great a loss on lending?

“And you will be sons of God.” Nothing could be more shameless, if he will make us sons to himself who has not allowed us to make sons for ourselves, by taking away marriage. How will he enroll his own under a name which he has already erased? I cannot be the son of a eunuch, especially since I have the same Father as all things have. For he is as truly the Father of all who is the Maker of the universe as he is a eunuch who is the maker of no substance. And even if the Creator had not joined male and female, and had not granted offspring to all living creatures as well, I was this to him before paradise, before the offense, before the exile, before the two were made one again: I was a son as soon as he brought me forth by his hands, as soon as he set me moving with his breath. He now calls me son again, giving birth no longer into soul but into spirit. “Because he,” it says, “is kind toward the ungrateful and the wicked.” Well done, Marcion! Quite cleverly you have taken the rains and the suns away from him, so that he would not seem to be the Creator. But who is this kind one, who until now was not even known? How is he kind, from whom no benefits of this kind of kindness had come beforehand, such as suns and rains; who had (not) lent to the human race without hope of return, as the Creator has, who, in return for so great a generosity of the elements, still bears with men who pay the debt of thanks to idols more readily than to him; who is truly kind in spiritual benefits too, for “the words of the Lord are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb”? He, then, reproached the ungrateful who deserved to find them grateful, he whose suns and rains you too, Marcion, have enjoyed ungratefully. But your god could not yet complain of the ungrateful, since he had not yet made anyone grateful.

Commanding mercy too, he says: “Be merciful, as your Father has had mercy on you.” This will mean: “Break your bread for the hungry, and bring into your house (the one) without a roof, and if you see the naked, cover him,” and: “Judge for the orphan and justify the widow.” I recognize the old teaching of him who prefers mercy to sacrifice. Or if another has now commanded mercy because he too is merciful, why was he not merciful to me through so long an age?

“Do not judge, that you may not be judged; do not condemn, that you may not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you: good measure, pressed down and running over, they will give into your lap. With the same measure with which you have measured, it will be measured back to you.” As I think, these words speak of a repayment called forth according to deserts. From whom, then, is the repayment? If from men only, then he teaches a human discipline and a human reward, and we shall obey men in everything; if from the Creator, as judge and assessor of deserts, then he is driving our obedience toward the one with whom he has placed the repayment to be sought or feared, according as each has judged or condemned or forgiven or measured; if from himself, then he too already judges, which Marcion denies. Let the Marcionites choose, then, whether falling away from their master's rule is not worth as much to them as having a Christ who teaches on behalf of either men or the Creator. But “the blind leads the blind into the pit.” Some correct Marcion. But “the disciple is not above his master.” Apelles, Marcion's corrector who had been his disciple, ought to have remembered this. Let the heretic take the beam out of his own eye too; then let him convict the straw, if he thinks there is one, in the Christian's eye. Just as a good tree does not bear bad fruit, because truth does not bear heresy, nor a bad tree good fruit, because heresy does not bear truth, so neither did Marcion bring out anything good from the bad treasure of Cerdo, nor Apelles from Marcion's. For we shall apply these things, which Christ spoke allegorically of men, far more fittingly to these very people, not to two gods, as Marcion's stumbling would have it.

I think I am not rash in keeping to this line all this while, by which I determine that no other god at all has been revealed by Christ — at this point alone I marvel that Marcion's adulterating hands grew numb, unless it is that even robbers are afraid; no evil deed is (without) fear, because none is without its own guilty awareness —: so long, then, the Jews too knew no other god than the one besides whom they had until then known none, nor called any other Lord than the one whom alone they knew. If this is so, who will seem to have said: “Why do you call (me) ‘Lord, Lord’?” Was it he who had never been called this, since he had never yet been made known, or he who was always regarded as Lord, being known from the beginning, namely the God of the Jews? Likewise, who could have added: “And you do not do what I say”? Was it he who was only then trying to teach them, or he who from the beginning had sent them the words of the law and the prophets? He who could reproach them with disobedience even if he had never reproached them elsewhere? Moreover, he who before Christ had declared, “This people loves me with their lips, but their heart stands far from me,” was surely charging them with their old stubbornness. Otherwise, how absurd that a new god, a new Christ, the enlightener of a religion new only just now, should pronounce stubborn and disobedient those whom he could not have tested!

So then, in praising the centurion's faith, it is incredible that he should have declared that he had not found such faith even in Israel, if the faith of Israel was no concern of his. Nor could it have concerned him from then on: still raw as it was, how could it be tested or compared, not to say that it did not yet exist? (But why should he not have been allowed to use the example of another's faith? Because, if that were so, (he would have said) that such faith had never been in Israel. But in saying that he ought to have found such faith in Israel, … and one who had come for this very purpose, to find it, namely the God and Christ of Israel. He would not have reproached it unless he were one who demanded and pursued it; a rival would rather have preferred it to be found as it was, since he had come rather to weaken and destroy it, not to approve it.

He also raised the widow's dead son. This is no new proof. The Creator's prophets had done this too; how much more his Son? So far, moreover, had Christ up to that moment brought in no other god, that all who were there gave the glory to the Creator, saying: “A great prophet has arisen among us, and God has looked upon his people.” Which God? Surely the one whose people they were and from whom the prophets came. But if they were glorifying the Creator, and Christ, hearing and knowing it, did not correct them, even when, in so great a proof as a dead man raised, they were still praying to the Creator, then without doubt either he was carrying about no other god than the one whom he allowed to be honored in his own benefits and mighty works, or what sort of thing is it that he bore with them in their error so long, when he came precisely to heal their error?

But (John is offended) on hearing of Christ's mighty works, as though they were another's. I will first explain the reason for the offense, so as the more easily to hiss the heretic's offense off the stage. Now that the Lord of powers himself, the Word and Spirit of the Father, was working and preaching on earth, the portion of the Holy Spirit which, after the pattern of the prophetic measure, had worked in John to prepare the Lord's ways had necessarily to withdraw from John, being gathered back into the Lord as into its whole mass. So John, now an ordinary man and one of the crowd, was indeed offended, but as a man, not as one hoping for or perceiving another Christ, since he had no ground for hoping for one, as he was teaching or doing nothing new. No one will be in doubt about someone whom he knows does not exist and neither hopes for nor perceives; but John was certain that there was no God besides the Creator, if only as a Jew, (not to say) also as a prophet. Clearly, one will more easily be in doubt about someone whom he knows to exist, while not knowing whether this is he. With this fear John too said: “Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?”, simply asking whether the one he was expecting had come. For he supposed, as everyone thought, from the likeness of the proofs, that a prophet might meanwhile have been sent, distinct from another, that is, a greater, who was expected to come, namely the Lord himself. And so this was John's offense: that he doubted whether the one they were expecting had come, whom he ought to have recognized from the works foretold. (Or) is it that the Lord announced to John that he was to be recognized through these same works? Since these are established as foretold of the Creator's Christ, as we have shown point by point, it would be quite perverse for him to announce that he was to be understood as a Christ not the Creator's through the very things by which he compelled men rather to recognize the Creator's Christ. Much more perverse, if a Christ who is not John's also bears witness to John, confirming that he is a prophet, and indeed more than that, an angel, even citing what was written about him: “Behold, I send my angel before your face, who will prepare your way,” recalling the prophecy aptly in reference to the preceding question of the offended John, so that, by confirming that the forerunner John had already come, he might remove the scruple of that question: “Are you the one who comes, or do we look for another?” For since the forerunner had already performed his office and the Lord's way was prepared, he was to be understood as the one whom the forerunner had served. John was indeed greater than all born of women, but not therefore subject to him who was least in the kingdom of God, as if the kingdom, in which some lowly one will be greater than John, belonged to one god, and John, who is greater than all born of women, to another. For whether he speaks of any lowly person whatever or of himself in humility, because he was thought less than John, since everyone was running out into the wilderness to John rather than to Christ — “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” — it comes to the same thing: it befits the Creator both that John is his, greater than those born of women, and that Christ, or whatever lowly one will be greater than John in the kingdom (of God), is likewise the Creator's, and is greater than so great a prophet because he was not offended at Christ, which at that time made John less.

We have spoken of the forgiveness of sins. But the case of that sinful woman will serve this point: that when she pressed the Lord's feet with kisses, flooded them with tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment, she was handling the reality of a solid body, not an empty phantom; and that the sinful woman's repentance, in accordance with the Creator, earned pardon, which he is accustomed to put before sacrifice. And if the spur of repentance had come from faith, then she, justified through repentance that came from faith, heard from him: “Your faith has saved you,” from him who had declared through Habakkuk: “The righteous shall live by his faith.”