Against Marcion 4.33
Summary: Christ's sayings on God and mammon, on the Pharisees' self-justification, and on the law and the prophets lasting until John show one God, the Creator, whose law is fulfilled rather than destroyed.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:529–532
Quibus duobus dominis neget posse seruiri, quia alterum offendi sit necesse alterum defendi, ipse declarat, deum proponens et mamonam. proinde mamonam quem intellegi uelit, si interpretem non habes, ab ipso potes discere. admonens enim nos de saecularibus suffragia nobis prospicere amicitiarum secundum serui illius exemplum, qui ab actu summotus dominicos debitores diminutis cautionibus releuat in subsidium sibi: et ego, inquit, dico uobis, facite uobis amicos de mamona iniustitiae, de nummo scilicet, de quo et seruus ille. iniustitiae enim auctorem et dominatorem totius saeculi nummum scimus omnes. cui famulatam uidens Pharisaeorum cupiditatem ammentauit hanc sententiam: non potestis deo seruire et mamonae. inridebant denique Pharisaei pecuniae cupidi, quod intellexissent scilicet mamonam de nummo dictum, ne quis existimet in mamona creatorem intellegendum et Christum a creatoris illos seruitute reuocasse. quid nunc? potius ex hoc disce unum a Christo deum ostensum. duos enim dominos nominauit, deum et mamonam, creatorem et nummum: denique non potestis deo seruire, utique ei, cui uidebantur seruire, et mamonam, cui magis destinabantur. quodsi ipse alium se ageret, non duos dominos, sed tres demonstrasset — et creator enim dominus, quia deus, et utique magis dominus quam mamonas magisque homini obseruandus, qua magis dominus —; quale est enim, ut qui mamonam dominum dixerat et cum domino iunxerat uero, ipsum dominum taceret, id est deum creatorem? aut numquid tacendo eo concessit seruiendum ei esse, si solummodo sibi et mamonae negauit posse seruiri? ita cum unum deum ponit, nominaturus et creatorem, si alius esset ipse, creatorem nominauit quem [dominum] sine alio [deo non] posuit. et illud itaque relucebit, quomodo dictum sit: (si) in mamona iniusto fideles non extitistis, quod uerum est quis uobis credet? in nummo scilicet iniusto, non in creatore, quem et Marcion iustum facit, et: si in alieno fideles inuenti non estis, meum quis dabit uobis? alienum enim debet esse a seruis dei quod iniustum est. creator autem quomodo alienus erat Pharisaeis, proprius deus Iudaicae gentis? si ergo haec non cadunt in creatorem, sed in mamonam, quis uobis credet quod uerius est? et quis uobis dabit quod meum est? non potest quasi ali{en)us dixisse de alterius dei gratia. tunc enim uideretur ita dixisse, si eos in creatorem, non in mamonam infideles notando per creatoris mentionem distinctione se fecisset dei alterius, non commissuri suam ueritatem infidelibus creatoris, t quoniam tunc alterius uideri potest, si non ad hoc proponatur, ut a re, de qua agitur, separetur. Si autem et iustificantes se coram hominibus Pharisaei spem mercedis in homine ponebant, illo eos sensu increpabat, quo et propheta Hieremias: miser homo, qui spem habet in homine. si et adicit: scit autem deus corda uestra, illius dei uim commemorabat, (qui) lucernam se pronuntiarat scrutantem renes et corda. si superbiam tangit: quod elatum est apud homines perosum est deo, Esaiam ponit ante oculos: dies enim domini Sabaoth in omnem contumeliosum et superbum, in omnem sublimem et elatum, et humiliabuntur. Possum iam colligere, cur tanto aeuo deus Marcionis fuerit in occulto. expectabat, opinor, donec haec omnia disceret a creatore. didicit igitur usque ad Iohannis tempora atque ita exinde processit adnuntiare regnum dei dicens: lex et prophetae usque ad Iohannem; ex quo regnum dei adnuntiatur. quasi non et nos limitem quendam agnoscamus Iohannem constitutum inter uetera et noua, ad quem desineret Iudaismus et a quo inciperet Christianismus, non tamen, ut ab alia uirtute facta sit sedatio legis et prophetarum et initiatio euangelii, in quo est dei regnum. [Christus ipse.] nam id si probauimus, et uetera transitura et noua successura praedicari a creatore, si et Iohannes antecursor et praeparator ostenditur uiarum domini euangelium, superducturi et regnum dei promulgaturi, et ex hoc iam, quod Iohannes uenit, ipse erit Christus qui Iohannem erit subsecutus ut antecursorem; et, si desierunt uetera et coeperunt noua interstite Iohanne, non erit mirum quod ex dispositione est creatoris, ut unde(unde) magis probetur ** quam ex legis et prophetarum in Iohannem occasu et exinde ortu regni dei. transeat igitur caelum et terra citius, sicut et lex et prophetae, quam unus apex uerborum domini - uerbum enim, inquit Esaias, dei nostri manet in aeuum —: nam quoniam in Esaia iam tunc Christus, sermo scilicet et spiritus creatoris, Iohannem praedicarat — uocem clamantis in deserto: parate uiam domini — in hoc uenturum, ut legis et] prophetarum ordo exinde cessaret, per adimpletionem, non per destructionem, et regnum dei a Christo adnuntiaretur, I ideo subtexuit facilius elementa transitura quam uerba sua, confirmans hoc quoque, quod de Iohanne dixerat, non praeterisse.
English · Claude translation
Which two masters he says cannot both be served, since one must necessarily be offended and the other defended, he himself declares, setting forth God and mammon. So whom he wants to be understood by mammon, if you have no interpreter, you can learn from him. For when he advises us to secure for ourselves, from worldly goods, the support of friendships, after the example of that servant who, removed from his stewardship, relieved his master's debtors by reducing their bonds as a help for himself, he says: “And I say to you, make friends for yourselves by the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is, by money, as that servant also did. For we all know money to be the author of unrighteousness and the ruler of the whole world. Seeing the greed of the Pharisees enslaved to it, he attached this sentence: “You cannot serve God and mammon.” In fact the money-loving Pharisees mocked him, because they understood, of course, that mammon was said of money; so let no one think that by mammon the Creator is to be understood, and that Christ called them back from the service of the Creator. What then? Rather learn from this that one God was shown by Christ. For he named two masters, God and mammon, the Creator and money: so, “You cannot serve God” — surely the one whom they seemed to serve — “and mammon,” to whom they were more devoted. But if he were presenting himself as another, he would have pointed out not two masters but three — for the Creator too is a master, since he is God, and surely more a master than mammon, and more to be observed by man, inasmuch as he is more a master —; for what sort of thing is it that one who had called mammon a master and had joined it with the true master should have kept silent about the master himself, that is, God the Creator? Or by keeping silent about him did he concede that he must be served, since he denied only that both he himself and mammon could be served? So when he sets down one God — he who would have named the Creator too if he himself were another — he named as the Creator the one whom he set down without any other. And so that saying too will shine out, in what sense it was said: “(If) you have not been faithful in unrighteous mammon, who will entrust to you what is true?” — in unrighteous money, of course, not in the Creator, whom even Marcion makes just; and: “If you have not been found faithful in what is another's, who will give you what is mine?” For what is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God. But how was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, being the proper God of the Jewish nation? If, then, these things do not apply to the Creator but to mammon, “who will entrust to you what is truer?” and “who will give you what is mine?” He cannot have spoken as though of another's gift, that of another god. For he would seem to have spoken so only if, by marking them as unfaithful toward the Creator and not toward mammon, he had by mentioning the Creator distinguished himself as another god, who would not entrust his truth to those unfaithful to the Creator; … since a thing can seem to belong to another only when it is not set forth for the purpose of being separated from the matter at hand.
And if the Pharisees too, justifying themselves before men, placed their hope of reward in man, he rebuked them in the same sense as the prophet Jeremiah: “Wretched is the man who has hope in man.” If he adds too, “But God knows your hearts,” he was recalling the power of that God (who) had declared himself a lamp searching the reins and hearts. If he touches on pride — “What is exalted among men is abhorrent to God” — he sets Isaiah before our eyes: “For the day of the Lord of hosts is upon everyone insolent and proud, upon everyone lofty and exalted, and they shall be brought low.”
I can now gather why Marcion's god was in hiding for so long an age. He was waiting, I suppose, until he had learned all these things from the Creator. So he learned up to John's time, and then came forward to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since then the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” As if we too did not recognize John as a kind of boundary set between the old and the new, at which Judaism would cease and from which Christianity would begin; yet not so that the stilling of the law and the prophets and the beginning of the gospel, in which is the kingdom of God, was brought about by another power. For if we have proved that the passing away of the old and the succession of the new were foretold by the Creator; if John too is shown to be the forerunner and preparer of the ways of the Lord, who would bring in the gospel and proclaim the kingdom of God; and if from the very fact that John came, the one who followed John as his forerunner will be the Christ; and if the old ceased and the new began with John standing between them, it will be no wonder that this comes from the Creator's arrangement, so that it may be proved from anywhere at all … more than from the setting of the law and the prophets in John and the rising of the kingdom of God from then on. Let heaven and earth pass away, then, sooner — as the law and the prophets did — than one tittle of the Lord's words: “For the word of our God,” says Isaiah, “abides forever.” For since in Isaiah even then Christ, that is, the Word and Spirit of the Creator, had foretold that John — “the voice of one crying in the wilderness: prepare the way of the Lord” — would come for this purpose, that the order of the law and prophets should cease from then on, by fulfillment, not by destruction, and the kingdom of God be proclaimed by Christ, he therefore added that the elements would pass away more easily than his words, confirming this too, that what he had said about John had not passed away.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations and allusions are Luke 16:1–17; Jer 17:5; Prov 20:27 with Jer 17:10 (“a lamp searching the reins and hearts”); Isa 2:12–17; Isa 40:8; Isa 40:3. The digital text is damaged near the end of the first paragraph (a stray “t” and a probable gap) and in the sentence “so that it may be proved from anywhere at all …” (a gap marked **); both are rendered with “…”. The editor deletes as spurious dominum and deo non in the clause quem [dominum] sine alio [deo non] posuit, and the gloss Christus ipse (“Christ himself”) after “the kingdom of God”; they are left out of the translation.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (doubled point in the digital text; letter misread in the digital text; letters misread in the digital text; split word in the digital text; stray character in the digital text; words run together and letter misread in the digital text): ne quia existimet → ne quis existimet; reuocasse.. → reuocasse.; crea. torem → creatorem; a semis dei → a seruis dei; coeperunt! noua → coeperunt noua; et: prophetae → et prophetae; apexuerborum domini-nerbum → apex uerborum domini - uerbum.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 4.33 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/33/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 4.33 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/33/).
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