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| Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several Quotations from the Prophets.
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Chapter
X.—Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the
Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which
Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several
Quotations from the Prophets.
The sick of the palsy is healed,3761
and that in public, in the sight of the
people. For, says Isaiah, “they shall see the glory of the
Lord, and the excellency of our God.”3762
What glory, and what excellency? “Be strong, ye weak hands, and
ye feeble knees:”3763
this refers to the
palsy. “Be strong; fear not.”3764
Be strong is not vainly repeated, nor is fear not vainly
added; because with the renewal of the limbs there was to be,
according to the promise, a restoration also of bodily energies:
“Arise, and take up thy couch;” and likewise moral
courage3765
not to be afraid of
those who should say, “Who can forgive sins, but God
alone?” So that you have here not only the fulfilment of the
prophecy which promised a particular kind of healing, but also of the
symptoms which followed the cure. In like manner, you should also
recognise Christ in the same prophet as the forgiver of sins.
“For,” he says, “He shall remit to many their sins,
and shall Himself take away our sins.”3766
For in an earlier passage, speaking in the person of the Lord himself,
he had said: “Even though your sins be as scarlet, I will
make them as white as snow; even though they be like crimson, I will
whiten them as wool.”3767
In the scarlet
colour He indicates the blood of the prophets; in the crimson, that of
the Lord, as the brighter. Concerning the forgiveness of sins, Micah
also says: “Who is a God like unto Thee? pardoning iniquity, and
passing by the transgressions of the remnant of Thine heritage. He
retaineth not His anger as a testimony against them, because He
delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, and will have compassion upon
us; He wipeth away our iniquities, and casteth our sins into the depths
of the sea.”3768
Now, if nothing of
this sort had been predicted of Christ, I should find in the Creator
examples of such a benignity as would hold out to me the promise of
similar affections also in the Son of whom He is the Father. I see how
the Ninevites obtained forgiveness of their sins from the
Creator3769
—not to say
from Christ, even then, because from the beginning He acted in the
Father’s name. I read, too, how that, when David acknowledged his
sin against Uriah, the prophet Nathan said unto him, “The Lord
hath cancelled3770
thy sin, and thou
shalt not die;”3771
how king Ahab in
like manner, the husband of Jezebel, guilty of idolatry and of the
blood of Naboth, obtained pardon because of his repentance;3772
and how Jonathan the son of Saul blotted out
by his deprecation the guilt of a violated fast.3773
Why should I recount the frequent
restoration of the nation itself after the forgiveness of their
sins?—by that God, indeed, who will have mercy rather than
sacrifice, and a sinner’s repentance rather than his
death.3774
You will first have
to deny that the Creator ever forgave sins; then you must in reason
show3775
| 3775 Consequens est ut
ostendas. | that He never ordained any such prerogative
for His Christ; and so you will prove how novel is that
boasted3776
benevolence of the,
of course, novel Christ when you shall have proved that it is neither
compatible with3777
the Creator nor
predicted by the Creator. But whether to remit sins can appertain
to one who is said to be unable to retain them, and whether to absolve
can belong to him who is incompetent even to condemn, and whether to
forgive is suitable to him against whom no offence can be committed,
are questions which we have encountered elsewhere,3778
| 3778 See book i. chap.
xxvi.–xxviii. | when we preferred to drop
suggestions3779
rather than treat
them anew.3780
| 3780 Retractare: give a set
treatise about them. | Concerning the Son
of man our rule3781
is a twofold one:
that Christ cannot lie, so as to declare Himself the Son of man, if He
be not truly so; nor can He be constituted the Son of man, unless He be
born of a human parent, either father or mother. And then the
discussion will turn on the point, of which human parent He ought to be
accounted the son—of the father or the mother? Since He is
(begotten) of God the Father, He is not, of course, (the son) of a
human father. If He is not of a human father, it follows that He must
be (the son) of a human mother. If of a human mother, it is evident
that she must be a virgin. For to whom a human father is not ascribed,
to his mother a husband will not be reckoned; and then to what mother a
husband is not reckoned, the condition of virginity belongs.3782
| 3782 To secure
terseness in the premisses, we are obliged to lengthen out the
brief terms of the conclusion, virgo est. | But if His mother be not a virgin, two
fathers will have to be reckoned to Him—a divine and a human one.
For she must have a husband, not to be a virgin; and by having a
husband, she would cause two fathers—one divine, the other
human—to accrue to Him, who would thus be Son both of God and of
a man. Such a nativity (if one may call it so)3783
the mythic stories assign to Castor or to Hercules. Now, if this
distinction be observed, that is to say, if He be Son of man as born of
His mother, because not begotten of a father, and His mother be a
virgin, because His father is not human—He will be that Christ
whom Isaiah foretold that a virgin should conceive,3784
on what principle you, Marcion, can admit
Him Son of man, I cannot possibly see. If through a human
father, then you deny him to be Son of God; if through a divine one
also,3785
then you make
Christ the Hercules of fable; if through a human mother only, then you
concede my point; if not through a human father also,3786
then He is not the son of any man,3787
| 3787 On Marcion’s
principles, it must be remembered. | and He must have been guilty of a lie for
having declared Himself to be what He was not. One thing alone can help
you in your difficulty: boldness on your part either to surname your
God as actually the human father of Christ, as Valentinus did3788
| 3788 Compare T.’s
treatise, Adversus Valentinianos, chap. xii. | with his Æon; or else to deny that the
Virgin was human, which even Valentinus did not do. What now, if Christ
be described3789
in Daniel by this
very title of “Son of man?” Is not this enough to
prove that He is the Christ of prophecy? For if He gives Himself that
appellation which was provided in the prophecy for the Christ of the
Creator, He undoubtedly offers Himself to be understood as Him to whom
(the appellation) was assigned by the prophet. But perhaps3790
it can be regarded as a simple identity of
names;3791
| 3791 Nominum communio
simplex. | and yet we have
maintained3792
| 3792 Defendimus. See above,
book iii. chap. xv. xvi. | that neither Christ
nor Jesus ought to have been called by these names, if they possessed
any condition of diversity. But as regards the appellation
“Son of man,” in as far as it occurs by
accident,3793
| 3793 Ex accidenti
obvenit. | in so far
there is a difficulty in its occurrence along with3794
a casual identity of names. For it is of
pure3795
accident, especially when the same cause
does not appear3796
whereby the
identity may be occasioned. And therefore, if Marcion’s
Christ be also said to be born of man, then he too would receive an
identical appellation, and there would be two Sons of man, as also two
Christs and two Jesuses. Therefore, since the appellation is the
sole right of Him in whom it has a suitable reason,3797
if it be claimed for another in whom there
is an identity of name, but not of appellation,3798
| 3798 The context explains
the difference between nomen and appellatio. The
former refers to the name Jesus or Christ, the latter to
the designation Son of man. |
then the identity of name even looks suspicious in him for whom is
claimed without reason the identity of appellation. And it
follows that He must be believed to be One and the Same, who is found
to be the more fit to receive both the name and the appellation; while
the other is excluded, who has no right to the appellation, because he
has no reason to show for it. Nor will any other be better entitled to
both than He who is the earlier, and has had allotted to Him the name
of Christ and the appellation of Son of man, even the Jesus of the
Creator. It was He who was seen by the king of Babylon in the furnace
with His martyrs: “the fourth, who was like the Son of
man.”3799
He also was
revealed to Daniel himself expressly as “the Son of man, coming
in the clouds of heaven” as a Judge, as also the Scripture
shows.3800
What I have
advanced might have been sufficient concerning the designation in
prophecy of the Son of man. But the Scripture offers me further
information, even in the interpretation of the Lord Himself. For when
the Jews, who looked at Him as merely man, and were not yet sure that
He was God also, as being likewise the Son of God, rightly enough said
that a man could not forgive sins, but God alone, why did He not,
following up their point3801
| 3801 Secundum intentionem
eorum. | about man,
answer them, that He3802
had power to remit
sins; inasmuch as, when He mentioned the Son of man, He also named a
human being? except it were because He wanted, by help of the very
designation “Son of man” from the book of Daniel, so to
induce them to reflect3803
as to show them
that He who remitted sins was God and man—that only Son of man,
indeed, in the prophecy of Daniel, who had obtained the power of
judging, and thereby, of course, of forgiving sins likewise (for He who
judges also absolves); so that, when once that objection of
theirs3804
was shattered to
pieces by their recollection of Scripture, they might the more easily
acknowledge Him to be the Son of man Himself by His own actual
forgiveness of sins. I make one more observation,3805
how that He has nowhere as yet professed
Himself to be the Son of God—but for the first time in this
passage, in which for the first time He has remitted sins; that is, in
which for the first time He has used His function of judgment,
by the absolution. All that the opposite side has to allege in argument
against these things, (I beg you) carefully weigh3806
what it amounts to. For it must needs strain
itself to such a pitch of infatuation as, on the one hand, to maintain
that (their Christ) is also Son of man, in order to save Him from the
charge of falsehood; and, on the other hand, to deny that He was born
of woman, lest they grant that He was the Virgin’s son.
Since, however, the divine authority and the nature of the case, and
common sense, do not admit this insane position of the heretics, we
have here the opportunity of putting in a veto3807
in
the briefest possible terms, on the substance of Christ’s
body, against Marcion’s phantoms. Since He is born of man,
being the Son of man. He is body derived from body.3808
You may, I assure you,3809
| 3809 Plane: introducing the
sharp irony. | more easily find a man born without a heart
or without brains, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like
Marcion’s Christ. And let this be the limit to your examination
of the heart, or, at any rate, the brains of the heretic of
Pontus.3810
| 3810 This is perhaps the
best sense of T.’s sarcasm: “Atque adeo (thus
far) inspice cor Pontici aut (or else)
cerebrum.” | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
