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| Examination of the Antitheses of Marcion, Bringing Them to the Test of Marcion's Own Gospel. Certain True Antitheses in the Dispensations of the Old and the New Testaments. These Variations Quite Compatible with One and the Same God, Who Ordered Them.
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Book
IV.3480
| 3480 [The remarks of
Bishop Kaye on our author’s Marcion are simply invaluable,
and the student cannot dispense with what is said more particularly of
this Book. See Kaye, pp. 450–480.] |
In Which Tertullian Pursues His
Argument. Jesus is the Christ of the Creator. He Derives His Proofs
from St. Luke’s Gospel; That Being the Only Historical Portion of
the New Testament Partially Accepted by Marcion. This Book May Also Be
Regarded as a Commentary on St. Luke. It Gives Remarkable Proof of
Tertullian’s Grasp of Scripture, and Proves that “The Old
Testament is Not Contrary to the New.” It Also Abounds in
Striking Expositions of Scriptural Passages, Embracing Profound Views
of Revelation, in Connection with the Nature of Man.
————————————
Chapter I.—Examination of the
Antitheses of Marcion, Bringing Them to the Test of Marcion’s Own
Gospel. Certain True Antitheses in the Dispensations of the Old and the
New Testaments. These Variations Quite Compatible with One and the Same
God, Who Ordered Them.
Every opinion and the
whole scheme3481
of the impious and
sacrilegious Marcion we now bring to the test3482
| 3482 Provocamus ad.
[Kaye, p. 469, refers to Schleiermacher’s Critical Essay
on St. Luke and to a learned note of Mr. Andrews Norton of Harvard
(vol. iii. Appendix C.) for valuable remarks on Marcion’s
Gospel.] | of
that very Gospel which, by his process of interpolation, he has made
his own. To encourage a belief of this Gospel he has
actually3483
devised for it a
sort of dower,3484
in a work composed
of contrary statements set in opposition, thence entitled
Antitheses, and compiled with a view to such a severance of the
law from the gospel as should divide the Deity into two, nay, diverse,
gods—one for each Instrument, or Testament3485
| 3485 [See cap. 2,
infra.] | as it is more usual to call it; that by such
means he might also patronize3486
belief in
“the Gospel according to the Antitheses.” These, however, I
would have attacked in special combat, hand to hand; that is to say, I
would have encountered singly the several devices of the Pontic
heretic, if it were not much more convenient to refute them in and with
that very gospel to which they contribute their support. Although it is
so easy to meet them at once with a peremptory demurrer,3487
| 3487 Præscriptive
occurere. This law term (the Greek παραγραφή)
seems to refer to the Church’s “rule of faith”
(præscriptio), which he might at once put in against
Marcion’s heresy; only he prefers to refute him on his own
ground. | yet, in order that I may both make them
admissible in argument, and account them valid expressions of opinion,
and even contend that they make for our side, that so there may be all
the redder shame for the blindness of their author, we have now drawn
out some antitheses of our own in opposition to Marcion. And
indeed3488
I do allow that one
order did run its course in the old dispensation under the
Creator,3489
and that another is
on its way in the new under Christ. I do not deny that there is a
difference in the language of their documents, in their precepts of
virtue, and in their teachings of the law; but yet all this
diversity is consistent with one and the same God, even Him by whom it
was arranged and also foretold. Long ago3490
did Isaiah declare that “out of Sion should go forth the law, and
the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”3491
—some other law, that is, and another
word. In short, says he, “He shall judge among the nations, and
shall rebuke many people;”3492
meaning not
those of the Jewish people only, but of the nations which are judged by
the new law of the gospel and the new word of the apostles, and are
amongst themselves rebuked of their old error as soon as they have
believed. And as the result of this, “they beat their swords into
ploughshares, and their spears (which are a kind of hunting
instruments) into pruning-hooks;”3493
that is to say, minds, which once were fierce and cruel, are changed by
them into good dispositions productive of good fruit. And again:
“Hearken unto me, hearken unto me, my people, and ye kings, give
ear unto me; for a law shall proceed from me, and my judgment for a
light to the nations;”3494
wherefore He had
determined and decreed that the nations also were to be enlightened by
the law and the word of the gospel. This will be that law which
(according to David also) is unblameable, because “perfect,
converting the soul”3495
from idols unto
God. This likewise will be the word concerning which the same Isaiah
says, “For the Lord will make a decisive word in the
land.”3496
| 3496 T.’s version of
Isa. x. 23. “Decisus Sermo”
="determined” of A.V. | Because the New
Testament is compendiously short,3497
and freed from
the minute and perplexing3498
burdens of the law.
But why enlarge, when the Creator by the same prophet foretells the
renovation more manifestly and clearly than the light itself?
“Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of
old” (the old things have passed away, and new things are
arising). “Behold, I will do new things, which shall now spring
forth.”3499
So by Jeremiah:
“Break up for yourselves new pastures,3500
| 3500 Novate novamen novum.
Agricultural words. |
and sow not among thorns, and circumcise yourselves in the foreskin of
your heart.”3501
And in another
passage: “Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make
a new covenant with the house of Jacob, and with the house of Judah;
not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day
when I arrested their dispensation, in order to bring them out of the
land of Egypt.”3502
He thus shows that
the ancient covenant is temporary only, when He indicates its change;
also when He promises that it shall be followed by an eternal one. For
by Isaiah He says: “Hear me, and ye shall live; and I will make
an everlasting covenant with you,” adding “the sure mercies
of David,”3503
in order that He
might show that that covenant was to run its course in Christ. That He
was of the family of David, according to the genealogy of
Mary,3504
| 3504 Secundum Mariæ
censum. See Kitto’s Cyclopædia of Biblical
Literature (third edition), in the article “Genealogy of
Jesus Christ,” where the translator of this work has largely
given reasons for believing that St. Luke in his genealogy, (chap.
iii.) has traced the descent of the Virgin Mary. To the authorities there given may be added this
passage of Tertullian, and a fuller one, Adversus
Judæos, ix., towards the end. [p. 164,
supra.] | He declared in a figurative way even by the
rod which was to proceed out of the stem of Jesse.3505
Forasmuch then as he said, that from the
Creator there would come other laws, and other words, and new
dispensations of covenants, indicating also that the very sacrifices
were to receive higher offices, and that amongst all nations, by
Malachi when he says: “I have no pleasure in you, saith the Lord,
neither will I accept your sacrifices at your hands. For from the
rising of the sun, even unto the going down of the same, my name shall
be great among the Gentiles; and in every place a sacrifice is offered
unto my name, even a pure offering”3506
—meaning simple prayer from a pure
conscience,—it is of necessity that every change which comes as
the result of innovation, introduces a diversity in those things of
which the change is made, from which diversity arises also a
contrariety. For as there is nothing, after it has undergone a
change, which does not become different, so there is nothing different
which is not contrary.3507
Of that very thing,
therefore, there will be predicated a contrariety in consequence of its
diversity, to which there accrued a change of condition after an
innovation. He who brought about the change, the same instituted the
diversity also; He who foretold the innovation, the same announced
beforehand the contrariety likewise. Why, in your interpretation,
do you impute a difference in the state of things to a difference of
powers? Why do you wrest to the Creator’s prejudice those
examples from which you draw your antitheses, when you may recognise
them all in His sensations and affections? “I will wound,”
He says, “and I will heal;” “I will kill,” He
says again, “and I will make alive”3508
—even the same “who createth evil and
maketh peace;”3509
from which you are
used even to censure Him with the imputation of fickleness and
inconstancy, as if He forbade what He commanded, and commanded what He
forbade. Why, then, have you not reckoned up the Antitheses also
which occur in the natural works of the Creator, who is for ever
contrary to Himself? You have not been able, unless I am misinformed,
to recognise the fact,3510
that the world, at
all events,3511
even amongst your
people of Pontus, is made up of a diversity of elements which are
hostile to one another.3512
It was therefore
your bounden duty first to have determined that the god of the light
was one being, and the god of darkness was another, in such wise that
you might have been able to have distinctly asserted one of them to be
the god of the law and the other the god of the gospel. It is, however,
the settled conviction already3513
of my mind from
manifest proofs, that, as His works and plans3514
| 3514 In the external
world. |
exist in the way of Antitheses, so also by the same rule exist
the mysteries of His religion.3515
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