Against Marcion 5.8

“The head of the man is Christ.” Which Christ? Is he not the man's author? For he used “head” to mean authority, and authority will belong to no one but the author. Of what man, then, is he the head? Surely of the one of whom he goes on to say: “For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image of God.” So if he is the image of the Creator (for the Creator, looking upon Christ, his Word, who was to become man, said, “Let us make man in our image and likeness”), how can I have another head, and not him whose image I am? For since I am the image of the Creator, there is no room in me for another head. And why should a woman have authority over her head? If it is because she was made from the man and for the man, according to the Creator's ordinance, then in this way too the apostle cared for the rule of life of that God from whose ordinance he explains the reasons for the rule. He adds also: “because of the angels.” Which angels, that is, whose? If the Creator's apostate angels, rightly, so that the face which caused them to stumble should bear some mark in a humble dress and a darkening of its beauty; but if because of the angels of the other god, what does he fear, when not even the Marcionites themselves desire women? We have often shown already that heresies are placed by the apostle among evils as an evil, and that those are to be understood as approved who flee heresies as an evil. Likewise we have already proved in the Gospel, from the sacrament of the bread and the cup, the reality of the Lord's body and blood against Marcion's phantom; and that every mention of judgment belongs to the Creator, as God the judge, has been treated in almost the whole work. Now about spiritual gifts. I say that these too were promised to Christ by the Creator …, under that prescription, most just I think, by which the bestowal of a thing is to be believed to belong to no one other than him whose promise of it has been proved. Isaiah declared: “A rod will come forth from the root of Jesse, and a flower will rise up from the rod, and the Spirit of God will rest upon him.” Then he lists its kinds: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness; the spirit of the fear of God will fill him.” For in the figure of the flower he shows Christ, who was to arise from the rod that came from the root of Jesse, that is, from the virgin of the family of David, the son of Jesse; in which Christ the whole substance of the Spirit was to rest, not as though it would come to him afterwards, since he was always the Spirit of God, even before the flesh (so that you should not argue from this that the prophecy belongs to a Christ who, as a mere man, of David's descent alone, would later obtain the spirit of his God); but because from the time he had flowered in the flesh taken from the stock of David, every working of spiritual grace was to rest in him and to cease and come to an end, as far as the Jews were concerned. As the fact itself bears witness, nothing of the Creator's Spirit has breathed among them from then on, now that there has been taken away from Judaea the wise and prudent master builder and counsellor and prophet, so that this is the meaning of “the law and the prophets until John.” Hear now how he declared that the gifts would also come from Christ after he was received into heaven: “He ascended on high,” that is, into heaven; “he led captivity captive,” that is, death or human slavery; “he gave gifts to the sons of men,” that is, bounties, which we call charisms. Elegantly he says “to the sons of men,” not indiscriminately “to men,” showing us the sons of men, that is, of men in the true sense, the apostles. For, he says, “in the gospel I have begotten you,” and, “my children, with whom I am again in labour.” Now too that promise of the Spirit made through Joel has been fulfilled: “In the last times I will pour out of my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and daughters will prophesy; and on my menservants and maidservants I will pour out of my Spirit.” And surely, if the Creator promised the grace of the Spirit for the last days, and Christ, the dispenser of spiritual gifts, appeared in the last days, as the apostle says, “But when the time was fulfilled, God sent his Son,” and again, “For the time is now short,” it is plain from the prediction of the last times too that this grace of the Spirit belongs to the Christ of the one who foretold it. Compare, finally, the kinds listed by the apostle and by Isaiah. “To one,” he says, “is given through the Spirit the word of wisdom”: at once Isaiah too set down the spirit of wisdom. “To another the word of knowledge”: this will be the word of understanding and counsel. “To another faith in the same Spirit”: this will be the spirit of godliness and of the fear of God. “To another the gift of healings, to another of mighty works”: this will be the spirit of might. “To another prophecy, to another the discerning of spirits, to another kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues”: this will be the spirit of knowledge. See how the apostle agrees with the prophet both in making the distribution of the one Spirit and in explaining its particular forms. I can say this: the very fact that he likened the unity of the various gifts to the frame of our body with its many and different members shows that the same one is Lord both of the human body and of the Holy Spirit; he who did not want the gifts to have rank against one another in the body of the Spirit, just as he did not set the members in rank against one another in the human body; he who also taught the apostle that love is to be put before all the gifts, by the chief commandment, which Christ too approved: “You shall love the Lord with all your heart and all your strength and all your soul, and your neighbour as yourself.” And if he recalls that it was written in the law that the Creator would speak in other tongues and with other lips, and by this recollection confirms the gift of tongues, here too he cannot seem to have confirmed another's gift by the Creator's prophecy. Likewise, in prescribing silence to women in the church, so that they should not speak merely for the sake of learning (for he has already shown that they too have the right to prophesy, since he puts a veil on the woman even when she prophesies), he takes from the law the authority for subjecting the woman, a law which, to say it once for all, he ought not to have known except to destroy it. But to leave spiritual gifts now, the facts themselves will have to prove which of us claims them rashly for his own God, and whether they can be set against our side, even if the Creator promised them to his own Christ, not yet revealed, as destined for the Jews alone, to have their workings in their own time, in his own Christ, and among his own people. Let Marcion then produce gifts of his god: some prophets, who have spoken, however, not from human sense but from the Spirit of God, who have both foretold things to come and laid bare the secrets of the heart; let him bring out some psalm, some vision, some prayer, provided it is spiritual, in ecstasy, that is, out of one's senses, if any interpretation of a tongue has come with it; let him prove to me also that a woman among them has prophesied, one of those holier great women of his. I will say: if all these things are more readily brought forward by me, and all of them agreeing with the rules and arrangements and disciplines of the Creator, then without doubt the Christ and the Spirit and the apostle will belong to my God. Whoever wants to demand my declaration has it.