Against Marcion 4.26

When in a certain place he had prayed to that higher Father — lifting quite shameless and reckless eyes to the Creator's heaven, from which he could have been crushed by such harsh and cruel hail and lightning, just as he could be nailed up by him (at) Jerusalem — one of his disciples approached him and said: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples,” (because, of course, he thought that another god had to be prayed to in another way. Whoever presumes this must first prove that another god was made known by Christ. For no one would have wanted to know how to pray before he had learned to whom he should pray. So if he had learned, prove it. If up to now you nowhere prove it, know that he asked for a form of prayer to the Creator, to whom John's disciples too were praying. But because John too had introduced some new order of prayer, this disciple not unreasonably presumed that the same should be asked of Christ, so that they too, by an institution of their own master, might pray not to another god but to God in another way. Accordingly, Christ would not have given the disciple a knowledge of prayer before a knowledge of God himself. So he too taught a prayer to the one whom the disciple had known up to then. In short, recognize which God the meaning of the prayer savors of. To whom shall I say “Father”? To one who did not make me at all, from whom I do not draw my origin, or to him who begot me by making and fashioning me? From whom shall I ask for the Holy Spirit? From one by whom not even the spirit of this world is granted, or from him by whom even angels are made spirits, and whose Spirit also in the beginning was borne upon the waters? Shall I wish for the coming of the kingdom of one whom I have never heard called the king of glory, or of him in whose hand are even the hearts of kings? Who will give me daily bread? One who does not even grow millet for me, or he who even from heaven supplied his people daily with the bread of angels? Who will forgive me my sins? One who does not retain them because he does not judge, or he who, if he does not forgive, will retain them in order to judge? Who will not allow us to be led into temptation? One whom the tempter might have no reason to fear, or he who from the beginning condemned the tempter angel in advance? Whoever makes supplication in this order to another god and not to the Creator does not pray to him but defames him. Likewise, from whom shall I ask, that I may receive? With whom shall I seek, that I may find? At whose door shall I knock, that it may be opened to me? Who has the means to give to one who asks, except him to whom all things belong, to whom I myself, who ask, belong? And what have I lost with that god, that I should seek it with him and find it? If wisdom and prudence, the Creator hid these; so it is with him that I shall seek. If salvation and life, these too are with the Creator. Nothing will be sought, in order to be found, anywhere but where it lay hidden, in order to appear. So too I shall knock nowhere else than where I was driven out from. In short, if receiving and finding and being admitted is the fruit of labor and perseverance for the one who has asked and sought and knocked, understand that these things are commanded and promised by the Creator. For that most good god, coming of his own accord to show kindness to a man not his own, would have imposed on him no labor and no perseverance. For he would no longer be most good if he did not give of his own accord to one who did (not) ask, and grant finding to one who did not seek, and open to one who did not knock. But the Creator could impose these things through Christ, so that, since man had offended his God by sinning, he might receive by the labor and perseverance of asking, find by that of seeking, and enter by that of knocking.

So too the parable set before this makes the one who asks for bread by night a friend, not a stranger, and has him knock at a friend's door, not an unknown man's. And a friend, even if he gives offense, is a man of the Creator's rather than of Marcion's god. So he knocks at the door of one on whom he had a claim, whose door he knew, whom he knew to have loaves, who was already lying in bed with the children whom he had willed to be born. Even the knocking late belongs to the Creator: the late hour is his whose is the world and the world's setting; but no one would have knocked late at the door of a new god, whose day was only just dawning. The door too is the Creator's, who formerly had shut it to the nations, the door that formerly was (not) knocked at. O what a God! He rises and gives, even if no longer as to a friend, yet not as to a stranger. (But as to a nuisance, he says. But a newly arrived god could not so soon have found anyone a nuisance.

Recognize, then, as Father the one whom you even call so, the Creator. He is the one who knows what his children ask. For to those who asked for bread he gave manna from heaven, and to those who longed for meat he sent quails, not a serpent for a fish nor a scorpion for an egg. And it will belong to him who has both to refrain from giving evil instead of good. Marcion's god, on the other hand, having no scorpion, could not say that he would not give what he did not have; it is the one who has a scorpion too, and does not give it, who can say this. So too the Holy Spirit will be given by him with whom there is also a spirit that is not holy.

When he had cast out a mute demon, so as to fulfill Isaiah in that kind of healing too, and was said to cast out demons by Beelzebul, he said: “If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your sons cast them out?” By these words what does he indicate, if not that he casts them out by the same power as their sons, namely by the power of the Creator? For if you think it should be taken thus: “If I by Beelzebul, your sons by whom?”, as though he were reproaching them for casting out by Beelzebul, the earlier sense will stand against you, that Satan cannot be divided against himself. So neither were they casting out by Beelzebul, but, as we have said, by the power of the Creator; and to make this understood he adds: “But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, has not the kingdom of God come near to you?” For in Pharaoh's presence those sorcerers who were brought in against Moses called the Creator's power the finger of God — “This is the finger of God” — because a finger signifies something small yet very strong. Showing this too, Christ, who recalls rather than obliterates ancient things, his own, of course, called the power of God the finger of God, to be understood as belonging to none other than him by whom it had been so named. So it was his kingdom too that had drawn near, whose power was called a finger.

Rightly, then, he attached to this the parable of that strong armed man whom another stronger than he overpowered, meaning the prince of demons, whom he had called Beelzebul and Satan above, overpowered by the finger of God, not the Creator subdued by another god. Besides, how would the Creator's kingdom still stand within its own bounds and laws and offices — the Creator whom, even with the world left intact, that stronger god of Marcion could in this way have seemed to overcome — if the Marcionites too did not die according to his law, crumbling into earth, and were not often taught even by a scorpion that the Creator has not been overcome?

A woman from the crowd cries out that blessed is the womb that carried him, and the breasts that nursed him; and the Lord says: “No, rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Why not? Earlier too he had rejected his mother in the same way, as well as his brothers, while preferring those who hear and obey God: for his mother was not standing by him here either. So neither earlier had he denied that he was born, since, taking the point up again here, he likewise transferred the blessedness from the womb and breasts of his mother to the disciples; and he would not have transferred it from her if he had not had her.