Against Marcion 4.41

“Woe,” he says, “to him through whom the Son of Man is betrayed.” So it is now established that “woe” must be understood as an outcry of imprecation and threat, and attributed to one who is angry and offended, unless Judas was to carry off so great a crime with impunity. But if with impunity, the “woe” is empty; if not with impunity, then surely he was to be punished by the one against whom he committed the crime of betrayal. Moreover, if he knowingly allowed a man whom he himself had taken into his company to rush into so great a crime, then stop raking up against the Creator, in the case of Adam, charges which are turned back on your god too: either that he did not know, since he did not in foresight stand in the way of the one about to sin; or that he could not stand in the way, if he did (not) fail to know; or that he did not want to, if he both knew and could, and so must be judged malicious, since he allowed his own man to perish through sin. I advise you, then, to recognize the Creator in this one too, rather than make the most good god equal to him, against your own opinion. For by destining Peter, who had spoken somewhat presumptuously, to denial, he shows you a jealous God. He had to be betrayed with a kiss too, as the Christ of prophecy, namely as the Son of him who was loved by the people with their lips.

Brought into the council, he is asked whether he is the Christ. About what Christ would the Jews have asked, if not their own? Why then did he not, even then, reveal another to them? So that he could suffer, you say; that is, so that that most good one might plunge people who were still ignorant into crime. And yet even if he had told them, he would have suffered. “For if I tell you,” he says, “you will not believe.” Moreover, not believing, they would have persisted in putting him to death. And why would he not have been all the more likely to suffer, if he had revealed (himself) as belonging to another god, and therefore as the Creator's adversary? So it was not in order to suffer that even then he refrained from showing himself to be another, but because they were eager to wring a confession from his mouth, and yet would not believe him even if he confessed, they who ought to have recognized him from the works that fulfilled the Scriptures. So it was fitting that one to whom recognition was owed without asking should conceal himself. And yet, still reaching out a hand to them, he says: “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God.” For he was suggesting that he was the Son of Man from Daniel's prophecy and the one seated at the right hand of God from David's psalm. So, enlightened by this saying and by comparison with Scripture as to whom he wished to be understood as, they say: “So you are the Son of God?” Of what God, if not the one whom alone they knew? Of what God, if not the one whom they remembered saying to his Son in the psalm, “Sit at my right hand”? (But he answered, “You say so,” as if to mean, “Not I.”) On the contrary, he confirmed that he was what they had said, while they were questioning him again. But how will you prove that they too spoke interrogatively and not affirmatively — “So you are the Son of God” — in the sense that, because he had indirectly shown through the Scriptures that he was to be understood as the Son of God, they took it thus: “So you are the Son of God, which you will not say openly”? And so he too answered “You say so” affirmatively; and so much was this his meaning that they persisted in what his words implied.