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| Other Proofs from the Same Chapter, that Jesus, Who Preached at Nazareth, and Was Acknowledged by Certain Demons as Christ the Son of God, Was the Creator's Christ. As Occasion Offers, the Docetic Errors of Marcion are Exposed.
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Chapter
VIII.—Other Proofs from the Same Chapter, that Jesus, Who
Preached at Nazareth, and Was Acknowledged by Certain Demons as Christ
the Son of God, Was the Creator’s Christ. As Occasion Offers, the
Docetic Errors of Marcion are Exposed.
The Christ of the Creator had3677
to be called a Nazarene according to
prophecy; whence the Jews also designate us, on that very
account,3678
| 3678 Ipso nomine, or by His
very name. |
Nazerenes3679
| 3679 Nazaræos;
or, Nazarites. [Christians were still so called by the Jews in
the Third Century. Kaye, 446.] | after Him. For we
are they of whom it is written, “Her Nazarites were whiter than
snow;”3680
even they who were
once defiled with the stains of sin, and darkened with the clouds of
ignorance. But to Christ the title Nazarene was destined to become a
suitable one, from the hiding-place of His infancy, for which He went
down and dwelt at Nazareth,3681
to escape from
Archelaus the son of Herod. This fact I have not refrained from
mentioning on this account, because it behoved Marcion’s Christ
to have forborne all connection whatever with the domestic
localities of the Creator’s Christ, when he had so many towns in
Judæa which had not been by the prophets thus assigned3682
to the Creator’s Christ. But Christ
will be (the Christ) of the prophets, wheresoever He is found in
accordance with the prophets. And yet even at Nazareth He is not
remarked as having preached anything new,3683
whilst in another verse He is said to have been
rejected3684
by reason of a
simple proverb.3685
Here at once, when
I observe that they laid their hands on Him, I cannot help drawing a
conclusion respecting His bodily substance, which cannot be believed to
have been a phantom,3686
since it was
capable of being touched and even violently handled, when He was seized
and taken and led to the very brink of a precipice. For although He
escaped through the midst of them, He had already experienced their
rough treatment, and afterwards went His way, no doubt3687
because the crowd (as usually happens) gave
way, or was even broken through; but not because it was eluded as by an
impalpable disguise,3688
which, if there had
been such, would not at all have submitted to any touch.
“Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest
res,”3689
| 3689 “For nothing can
touch and be touched but a bodily substance.” This line
from Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, i. 305, is again quoted by
Tertullian in his De Anima, chap. v. (Oehler). |
is even a sentence worthy of a place in the world’s
wisdom. In short, He did himself touch others, upon whom He laid His
hands, which were capable of being felt, and conferred the blessings of
healing,3690
which were not less
true, not less unimaginary, than were the hands wherewith He bestowed
them. He was therefore the very Christ of Isaiah, the healer of our
sicknesses.3691
“Surely,” says he, “He hath borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows.” Now the Greeks are accustomed to use
for carry a word which also signifies to take away. A
general promise is enough for me in passing.3692
Whatever were the cures which Jesus effected, He is mine. We will come,
however, to the kinds of cures. To liberate men, then, from evil
spirits, is a cure of sickness. Accordingly, wicked spirits (just
in the manner of our former example) used to go forth with a testimony,
exclaiming, “Thou art the Son of God,”3693
—of what God, is clear enough from the
case itself. But they were rebuked, and ordered not to speak;
precisely because3694
Christ willed
Himself to be proclaimed by men, not by unclean spirits, as the
Son of God—even that Christ alone to whom this was befitting,
because He had sent beforehand men through whom He might become known,
and who were assuredly worthier preachers. It was natural to
Him3695
to refuse the proclamation of an unclean
spirit, at whose command there was an abundance of saints. He,
however,3696
who had never been
foretold (if, indeed, he wished to be acknowledged; for if he did not
wish so much, his coming was in vain), would not have spurned the
testimony of an alien or any sort of substance, who did not happen to
have a substance of his own,3697
| 3697 Propriæ non
habebat. | but had descended
in an alien one. And now, too, as the destroyer also of the Creator, he
would have desired nothing better than to be acknowledged by His
spirits, and to be divulged for the sake of being feared:3698
only that Marcion says3699
| 3699 See above, book i.
chap. vii. xxvi. and xxvii. | that his god is not feared; maintaining that
a good being is not an object of fear, but only a judicial being, in
whom reside the grounds3700
of
fear—anger, severity, judgments, vengeance, condemnation. But it
was from fear, undoubtedly, that the evil spirits were cowed.3701
Therefore they confessed that (Christ) was
the Son of a God who was to be feared, because they would have an
occasion of not submitting if there were none for fearing.
Besides, He showed that He was to be feared, because He drave them out,
not by persuasion like a good being, but by command and reproof. Or
else did he3702
reprove them,
because they were making him an object of fear, when all the while he
did not want to be feared? And in what manner did he wish them to go
forth, when they could not do so except with fear? So that he fell into
the dilemma3703
of having to
conduct himself contrary to his nature, whereas he might in his simple
goodness have at once treated them with leniency. He fell, too, into
another false position3704
—of
prevarication, when he permitted himself to be feared by the demons as
the Son of the Creator, that he might drive them out, not indeed by his
own power, but by the authority of the Creator. “He departed, and
went into a desert place.”3705
This was,
indeed, the Creator’s customary region. It was proper that the
Word3706
should there appear in body, where He had
aforetime, wrought in a cloud. To the gospel also was suitable that
condition of place3707
which had once been
determined on for the law.3708
“Let the
wilderness and the solitary place, therefore, be glad and
rejoice;” so had Isaiah promised.3709
When “stayed” by the crowds, He said, “I must preach
the kingdom of God to other cities also.”3710
Had He displayed His God anywhere yet? I suppose as yet nowhere. But
was He speaking of those who knew of another god also? I do not believe
so. If, therefore, neither He had preached, nor they had known, any
other God but the Creator, He was announcing the kingdom of that God
whom He knew to be the only God known to those who were listening to
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