Against Marcion 4.27

I prefer to clear elsewhere the charges which the Marcionites bring against the Creator. For here it is enough if they are found in Christ too. See, he too is inconsistent, unstable, fickle, teaching one thing and doing another: he commands us to give to everyone who asks, and he himself does not give a sign to those who ask; for so long an age he hid his light from men, and yet he says a lamp is not to be hidden away, and insists that it must be set on a lampstand to give light to all; he forbids cursing in return, and much more surely cursing, and yet he heaps (woes) on the Pharisees and lawyers. Who (is) this Christ so like my God, if not his?

We have often established that he could in no way have been marked out as a destroyer of the law if he had proclaimed another god. That is why then too the Pharisee who had invited him to lunch was turning it over in his mind why one who went about with the God of the law had not first washed before reclining, according to the law. Jesus, however, even interpreted the law to him, saying that they cleaned the outside of the cup and the dish, but their inside was full of robbery and wickedness, to signify that the cleanness of vessels is to be understood before God as the cleanness of men; (and) since the Pharisee had been thinking to himself about a man, not about an unwashed cup, he says: “You wash the outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you have not cleansed your inside,” that is, the soul, adding: “Did not he who made the outside,” that is, the flesh, “make the inside also,” that is, the soul? By this saying he openly showed that the cleanness of the outer and the inner man belongs to the same God to whom both belong, who puts mercy before not only the washing of a man but even sacrifice. For he adds: “Give what you have as alms, and all things will be clean for you.” And even if another god could have commanded mercy, yet not before he was known. Moreover, it is clear here too that they were rebuked not about God but about the discipline of him who commanded them both the cleanness of vessels, figuratively, and works of mercy, plainly.

So too he reproves those who tithe their little herbs but pass over the calling and the love of God. The calling and love of what God, if not of him to whom they offered rue and mint as tithes according to the pattern of the law? For the whole reproach was this: that they cared for small things, surely toward the one to whom they did not render the greater, who says: “You shall love the Lord your God with all (your) heart and with all your soul and with all your strength, who called you out of Egypt.” Besides, the time would not have allowed Christ to demand so precocious, or rather so unripe, a love for a new and recent god, not to say one not yet made public.

When he also accuses those who seek the first places and the honor of greetings, he carries out the Creator's line, who calls such chiefs rulers of Sodom, who also forbids trusting in those set over us, and indeed pronounces the man most wretched who has hope in man. And if anyone aims at preeminence so as to glory in the services of others, the one who forbade such services by his ban on hoping and trusting in man also rebuked those who aim at preeminence.

He inveighs also against the lawyers themselves, because they burdened others with unbearable burdens which they themselves did not dare touch even with a finger; not censuring the burdens of the law as one who detested it. For how could he be its detester, who was just then accusing those who passed over the weightier things of the law — alms, and the calling and love of God — which are not even heavy, much less the tithes of rue and the cleaning of dishes? Besides, he would rather have thought them excusable if they could not carry what was unbearable. But what burdens does he censure? Those which they heaped up of their own, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men for their own advantage, joining house to house to take away what is their neighbor's, trampling the people, loving gifts, chasing rewards, plundering the judgments due to the poor, so that the widow might be their spoil and the orphan their prey. Of these the same Isaiah says: “Woe to those who are strong in Israel,” and again: “Those who make demands on you rule over you.” Who more than the lawyers? If these displeased Christ too, they displeased him as his own. For he would not have attacked at all the teachers of a law not his own.

But why do they hear (woe) also because they built tombs for the prophets killed by their fathers, when they were rather worthy of praise, since by that work of piety they were testifying that they did not consent to their fathers' deeds — unless he was a jealous God, such as the Marcionites accuse, exacting the sins of the fathers from the sons to the fourth generation?

And what key did the lawyers have but the interpretation of the law? To its understanding they neither went in themselves, not believing, of course — for “unless you believe, you will not understand” — nor let others in, since they taught rather the precepts and doctrines of men. Then is the one who rebuked those who neither entered themselves nor let others enter to be held a detractor of the law or its supporter? If a detractor, those who shut off the law should have pleased him; if a supporter, then he is no longer a rival of the law. But, they say, he was bringing all this in to blacken the Creator as cruel, since those who sinned against him would have (woe). And who would not rather fear to provoke a cruel God by falling away from him? So much the more, then, was he teaching that the one he presented as to be feared must be won over. So it befitted the Creator's Christ.