Against Marcion 4.8

The Creator's Christ was to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy. That is why the Jews call us by that very name, Nazarenes, because of him. For we are those of whom it is written, “The Nazirites were made whiter than snow,” we, that is, who were formerly livid with the stains of sin and blackened with the darkness of ignorance. And the title of Nazarene was to suit Christ from the hiding-place of his infancy, in which he went down to Nazareth to avoid Archelaus, the son of Herod. I have not left this out, because Marcion's Christ ought to have renounced all dealings even with the places familiar to the Creator's Christ, when he had so many towns of Judea not so made over to the Creator's Christ by the prophets. But he will be the Christ of the prophets wherever he is found in accordance with the prophets. And yet at Nazareth too he is not recorded to have preached anything new, while he is reported to have been thrown out for another reason, one proverb. Here, noticing that hands were laid on him for the first time, I must settle in advance the question of his bodily substance: that he cannot be believed a phantom who submitted to contact, and violent contact at that, being seized, taken hold of, and dragged to the very edge of the cliff. For even if he escaped through the midst of them, he had already experienced their force and was afterwards let go, the uproar dying down, as usually happens, or even being broken through; he did not slip away through a mist, which would not have been subject to any touch at all, if it had been one. For “nothing can touch or be touched except a body” is a sentence worthy even of worldly wisdom. In sum, he himself soon touched others, and by laying hands on them, hands that could certainly be felt, he conferred the benefits of healing, as real and as far from imaginary as the hands by which he conferred them. He is therefore Isaiah's Christ, the healer of diseases: “He,” it says, “takes away our weaknesses and carries our sicknesses.” And the Greeks commonly use “carry” for “take away.” The general promise is enough for me for now: whatever Jesus healed, he is mine. We shall come, however, to the particular kinds of healing. Freeing people from demons is also a healing of disease. And so the evil spirits went out, as though on the pattern of the former example, with a testimony, crying out, “You are the Son of God.” Of which God, let it be made clear here too. But they were likewise rebuked and ordered to be silent. For Christ likewise wished to be recognized as the Son of God by men, not by unclean spirits; that Christ, at least, to whom this was fitting, because he had sent ahead those through whom he could be recognized, and certainly worthier heralds. It belonged to him to reject the proclamation of an unclean spirit who had holy ones in abundance. But one who had never been announced, if he wished to be recognized (and he had come in vain if he did not), would not have scorned the testimony of a substance foreign to him, whatever it was, since he who had come down into another's domain had none of his own. And now, as the destroyer of the Creator, he would have wanted nothing more than to be recognized by the Creator's spirits and published abroad through their fear; except that Marcion denies that his god is feared, maintaining that the good one is not feared, but the judge, with whom lie the grounds of fear: anger, severity, judgments, vengeance, condemnation. But the demons certainly gave way through fear; therefore they were confessing the Son of a God to be feared, and would have had reason not to give way if he were not to be feared. And he, expelling them by command and rebuke, not by persuasion as a good one would, showed himself one to be feared. Or did he rebuke them because he was feared, not wishing to be feared? And how did he want them to go out, which they would not do except from fear? He fell, then, into a necessity by which he acted unlike his own nature, when as good he could have spared them once for all. He fell too into another mark of betrayal, in that he allowed himself to be feared by the demons as the Creator's Son, so that he expelled the demons not by his own power but by the Creator's authority. He goes out into a desert place. This too is a customary region of the Creator. It was fitting that the Word should be seen there too in a body, where he had once acted in a cloud as well. The setting of the place which had pleased the law suited the gospel too. So let the wilderness be glad: this Isaiah had promised. Detained by the crowds, he says, “I must announce the kingdom of God to other cities too.” Had he already shown his god anywhere? Not yet at all, I think. Was he speaking to people who knew of another god as well? I do not believe that either. So if neither had he made known another god, nor did they know any but the Creator, he was proclaiming the kingdom of the same God whom alone he knew to be known to those who heard him.