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| Chapter XXIX.—Refutation of the arguments of the Marcionites, who attempted to show that God was the author of sin, because He blinded Pharaoh and his servants.
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Chapter XXIX.—Refutation of the
arguments of the Marcionites, who attempted to show that God was the author of
sin, because He blinded Pharaoh and his servants.
1. “But,”
say they, “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh and of his
servants.”4208
Those, then, who allege such
difficulties, do not read in the Gospel that passage where the Lord
replied to the disciples, when they asked Him, “Why speakest Thou
unto them in parables?”—“Because it is given unto you
to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; but to them I speak in
parables, that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear,
understanding they may not understand; in order that the prophecy of
Isaiah regarding them may be fulfilled, saying, Make the heart of this
people gross and make their ears dull, and blind their eyes. But blessed
are your eyes, which see the things that ye see; and your ears, which
hear what ye do hear.”4209
For one and the same God
[that blesses others] inflicts blindness upon those who do not believe,
but who set Him at naught; just as the sun, which is a creature of His,
[acts with regard] to those who, by reason of any weakness of the eyes
cannot behold his light; but to those who believe in Him and follow Him,
He grants a fuller and greater illumination of mind. In accordance with
this word, therefore, does the apostle say, in the Second [Epistle] to
the Corinthians: “In whom the this world hath blinded the minds of
them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ
should shine [unto them].”4210
And
again, in that to the Romans: “And as they did not think fit to
have God in their knowledge, God gave them up to a reprobate mind, to do
those things that are not convenient.”4211
Speaking of antichrist, too, he says clearly in the Second to the
Thessalonians: “And for this cause God shall send them the working
of error, that they should believe a lie; that they all might be judged
who believed not the truth, but consented to iniquity.”4212
2. If, therefore, in the present time also, God,
knowing the number of those who will not believe, since He foreknows all
things, has given them over to unbelief, and turned away His face from
men of this stamp, leaving them in the darkness which they have
themselves chosen for themselves, what is there wonderful if He did also
at that time give over to their unbelief, Pharaoh, who never would have
believed, along with those who were with him? As the Word spake to Moses
from the bush: “And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let
you go, unless by a mighty hand.”4213
And for
the reason that the Lord spake in parables, and brought blindness upon
Israel, that seeing they might not see, since He knew the [spirit of]
unbelief in them, for the same reason did He harden Pharaoh’s
heart; in order that, while seeing that it was the finger of God which
led forth the people, he might not believe, but be precipitated into a
sea of unbelief, resting in the notion that the exit of these
[Israelites] was accomplished by magical power, and that it was not by
the operation of God that the Red Sea afforded a passage to the people,
but that this occurred by merely natural causes (sed naturaliter sic
se habere).E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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