Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Community in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error. Prophecies of Christ's Rejection Examined.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter VI.—Community
in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error. Prophecies of
Christ’s Rejection Examined.
Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two
characteristics in the Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader
remember,3157
| 3157 “Remember, O
reader.” | whenever we adduce
any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent,3158
the point of discussion is not the form of
the scripture, but the subject it is called in to prove. When,
therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say that that
Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed that, on
their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who
had always been predicted;
and thus they are obliged to make common cause with3159
Jewish error, and construct their arguments
with its assistance, on the pretence that the Jews were themselves
quite certain that it was some other who came: so they not only
rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an enemy, although they
would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with all religious
devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves. Our
shipmaster3160
of course got his
craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian law,3161
| 3161 The model of wise
naval legislation, much of which found its way into the Roman
pandects. |
but from the Pontic,3162
| 3162 Symbol of barbarism
and ignorance—a heavy joke against the once seafaring
heretic. | which cautioned him
against believing that the Jews had no right to sin against their
Christ; whereas (even if nothing like their conduct had been predicted
against them) human nature alone, liable to error as it is, might well
have induced him to suppose that it was quite possible for the Jews to
have committed such a sin, considered as men, without assuming any
unfair prejudice regarding their feelings, whose sin was antecedently
so credible. Since, however, it was actually foretold that they would
not acknowledge Christ, and therefore would even put Him to death, it
will therefore follow that He was both ignored3163
and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being about to
commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this,
instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they
declare Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm
the possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected,
He could not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the
subject of His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment
with adducing those which simply show that there was a probability of
Christ’s rejection. This is quickly done, since the passages
indicate that the entire power of understanding was by the Creator
taken from the people. “I will take away,” says He,
“the wisdom of their wise men; and the understanding of their
prudent men will I hide;”3164
and again:
“With your ear ye shall hear, and not understand; and with your
eyes ye shall see, but not perceive: for the heart of this people hath
growth fat, and with their ears they hear heavily, and their eyes have
they shut; lest they hear with their ears, and see with their eyes, and
understand with the heart, and be converted, and I heal
them.”3165
Now this blunting
of their sound senses they had brought on themselves, loving God with
their lips, but keeping far away from Him in their heart. Since, then,
Christ was announced by the Creator, “who formeth the lightning,
and createth the wind, and declareth unto man His Christ,” as the
prophet Joel says,3166
| 3166 A supposed quotation
of Amos iv. 13. See Oehler’s marginal
reference. If so, the reference to Joel is either a slip of Tertullian
or a corruption of his text; more likely the former, for the best
mss. insert Joel’s name.
Amos iv. 13, according to the LXX., runs,
᾽Απαγγέλλων
εἰς
ἀνθρώπους
τὸν Χριστὸν
αὐτοῦ, which exactly suits
Tertullian’s quotation. Junius supports the reference to Joel,
supposing that Tertullian has his ch. ii. 31 in view, as compared with
Acts ii.
16–33. This is too
harsh an interpretation. It is simpler and better to suppose that
Tertullian really meant to quote the LXX. of the passage in Amos, but
in mistake named Joel as his prophet. | since the entire
hope of the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the
manifestation of Christ,—it was demonstrated that they, by their
being deprived of those powers of knowledge and
understanding—wisdom and prudence, would fail to know and
understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief of
their wise men should be in error respecting Him—that is to say,
their scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like
them, should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while
teaching them, and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ,
although giving them signs. Similarly it is said elsewhere: “Who
is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he who ruleth over
them?”3167
Also when He
upbraids them by the same Isaiah: “I have nourished and brought
up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth
his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not
know; my people doth not consider.”3168
We
indeed, who know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets,
as the Spirit of the Creator (for so says the prophet: “The
person of our Spirit, Christ the Lord,”3169
| 3169 This seems to be a
translation with a slight alteration of the LXX. version of Lam. iv.
20, πνεῦμα
προσώπου
ἡμῶν Χριστὸς
Κύριος . |
who from the beginning was both heard and seen as the Father’s
vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that His words, when
actually upbraiding Israel, were the same as those which it was
foretold that He should denounce against him: “Ye have forsaken
the Lord, and have provoked the Holy One of Israel to
anger.”3170
If, however, you
would rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole
imputation of Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness
to allow that even anciently3171
the Creator’s
word and Spirit—that is to say, His Christ—was despised and
not acknowledged by them, you will even in this subterfuge be
defeated. For when you
do not deny that the Creator’s Son and Spirit and Substance is
also His Christ, you must needs allow that those who have not
acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to acknowledge the Son
through the identity of their natural substance;3172
| 3172 Per ejusdem
substantiæ conditionem. | for if in Its fulness It has baffled
man’s understanding, much more has a portion of It, especially
when partaking of the fulness.3173
| 3173 He seems here to
allude to such statements of God’s being as Col. ii. 9. | Now, when these
things are carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both
rejected Christ and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a
strange Christ, but because they did not acknowledge Him, although
their own. For how could they have understood the strange One,
concerning whom nothing had ever been announced, when they failed to
understand Him about whom there had been a perpetual course of
prophecy? That admits of being understood or being not understood,
which, by possessing a substantial basis for prophecy,3174
| 3174 Substantiam
prædictationis. | will also have a subject-matter3175
for either knowledge or error; whilst that
which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom. So that it was
not as if He belonged to another3176
| 3176 Alterius, “the
other,” i.e., Marcion’s rival God. | god that they
conceived an aversion for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a
man whom they regarded as a wonder-working juggler,3177
| 3177 Planum in signis, cf.
the Magnum in potestate of Apolog. 21. | and an enemy3178
| 3178 Æmulum, “a
rival,” i.e., to Moses. | in
His doctrines. They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and
one of themselves too—that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a
destroyer of Judaism)—and punished Him according to their law. If
He had been a stranger, indeed, they would not have sat in judgment
over Him. So far are they from appearing to have understood Him to be a
strange Christ, that they did not even judge Him to be a stranger to
their own human nature.3179
| 3179 Nec hominem ejus ut
alienum judicaverunt, “His manhood they judged not to be
different.” | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
