Against Marcion 4.18

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.”