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| The Precept of Loving One's Enemies. It is as Much Taught in the Creator's Scriptures of the Old Testament as in Christ's Sermon. The Lex Talionis of Moses Admirably Explained in Consistency with the Kindness and Love Which Jesus Christ Came to Proclaim and Enforce in Behalf of the Creator. Sundry Precepts of Charity Explained.
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Chapter XVI.—The Precept of Loving One’s Enemies. It
is as Much Taught in the Creator’s Scriptures of the Old
Testament as in Christ’s Sermon. The Lex Talionis of Moses
Admirably Explained in Consistency with the Kindness and Love Which
Jesus Christ Came to Proclaim and Enforce in Behalf of the Creator.
Sundry Precepts of Charity Explained.
“But I say unto you which hear”
(displaying here that old injunction, of the Creator: “Speak to
the ears of those who lend them to you”4035
),
“Love your enemies, and bless4036
| 4036 Benedicite. St.
Luke’s word, however, is καλῶς
ποιεῖτε, “do
good.” | those which
hate you, and pray for them which calumniate you.”4037
| 4037 Calumniantur.
St. Luke’s word applies to injury of speech as well as of
act. | These commands the Creator included in one
precept by His prophet Isaiah: “Say, Ye are our brethren, to
those who hate you.”4038
For if they who are
our enemies, and hate us, and speak evil of us, and calumniate us, are
to be called our brethren, surely He did in effect bid us bless them
that hate us, and pray for them who calumniate us, when He instructed
us to reckon them as brethren. Well, but Christ plainly teaches a new
kind of patience,4039
| 4039 “We have
here the sense of Marcion’s objection. I do not suppose
Tertullian quotes his very words.”—Le
Prieur. | when He actually
prohibits the reprisals which the Creator permitted in requiring
“an eye for an eye,4040
| 4040 Le Prieur refers to a
similar passage in Tertullian’s De Patientia, chap.
vi. Oehler quotes an eloquent passage in illustration from Valerianus
Episc. Hom. xiii. | and a tooth for a
tooth,”4041
and bids us, on the
contrary, “to him who smiteth us on the one cheek, to offer the
other also, and to give up our coat to him that taketh away our
cloak.”4042
No doubt these are
supplementary additions by Christ, but they are quite in keeping with
the teaching of the Creator. And therefore this question must at once
be determined,4043
Whether the
discipline of patience be enjoined by4044
the Creator? When by Zechariah He commanded, “Let none of you
imagine evil against his brother,”4045
He
did not expressly include his neighbour; but then in another
passage He says, “Let none of you imagine evil in your hearts
against his neighbour.”4046
He who
counselled that an injury should be forgotten, was still more likely to
counsel the patient endurance of it. But then, when He said,
“Vengeance is mine, and I will repay,”4047
| 4047 Deut. xxxii. 35; comp. Rom. xii. 19 and Heb. x.
30. | He thereby teaches that patience calmly
waits for the infliction of vengeance. Therefore, inasmuch as it is
incredible4048
that the same (God)
should seem to require “a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an
eye,” in return for an injury, who forbids not only all
reprisals, but even a revengeful thought or recollection of an injury,
in so far does it become plain to us in what sense He required
“an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,”—not,
indeed, for the purpose of permitting the repetition of the injury by
retaliating it, which it virtually prohibited when it forbade
vengeance; but for the purpose of restraining the injury in the first
instance, which it had forbidden on pain of retaliation or
reciprocity;4049
so that every man,
in view of the permission to inflict a second (or retaliatory) injury,
might abstain from the commission of the first (or provocative) wrong.
For He knows how much more easy it is to repress violence by the
prospect of retaliation, than by the promise of (indefinite)
vengeance. Both results, however, it was necessary to provide, in
consideration of the nature and the faith of men, that the man who
believed in God might expect vengeance from God, while he who had no
faith (to restrain him) might fear the laws which prescribed
retaliation.4050
| 4050 Leges talionis.
[Judicial, not personal, reprisals.] | This
purpose4051
of the law, which
it was difficult to understand, Christ, as the Lord of the Sabbath and
of the law, and of all the dispensations of the Father, both revealed
and made intelligible,4052
| 4052 Compotem facit. That
is, says Oehler, intellectus sui. | when He commanded
that “the other cheek should be offered (to the smiter),”
in order that He might the more effectually extinguish all reprisals of
an injury, which the law had wished to prevent by the method of
retaliation, (and) which most certainly revelation4053
had manifestly restricted, both by
prohibiting the memory of the wrong, and referring the vengeance
thereof to God. Thus, whatever (new provision) Christ introduced, He did it
not in opposition to the law, but rather in furtherance of it, without
at all impairing the prescription4054
| 4054 Disciplinas: or,
“lessons.” | of the
Creator. If, therefore,4055
one looks
carefully4056
| 4056 Considerem, or, as
some of the editions have it, consideremus. | into the very
grounds for which patience is enjoined (and that to such a full
and complete extent), one finds that it cannot stand if it is not the
precept of the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents Himself as
the judge (in the case). If it were not so,4057
—if so vast a weight of
patience—which is to refrain from giving blow for blow; which is
to offer the other cheek; which is not only not to return railing for
railing, but contrariwise blessing; and which, so far from keeping the
coat, is to give up the cloak also—is laid upon me by one who
means not to help me,—(then all I can say is,) he has taught me
patience to no purpose,4058
because he shows me
no reward to his precept—I mean no fruit of such patience. There
is revenge which he ought to have permitted me to take, if he meant not
to inflict it himself; if he did not give me that permission, then he
should himself have inflicted it;4059
| 4059 Præstare, i.e.,
debuerat præstare. | since it is
for the interest of discipline itself that an injury should be avenged.
For by the fear of vengeance all iniquity is curbed. But if licence is
allowed to it without discrimination,4060
it
will get the mastery—it will put out (a man’s) both eyes;
it will knock out4061
every tooth in the
safety of its impunity. This, however, is (the principle) of your
good and simply beneficent god—to do a wrong to patience, to open
the door to violence, to leave the righteous undefended, and the wicked
unrestrained! “Give to every one that asketh of
thee”4062
—to the
indigent of course, or rather to the indigent more especially, although
to the affluent likewise. But in order that no man may be indigent, you
have in Deuteronomy a provision commanded by the Creator to the
creditor.4063
“There shall
not be in thine hand an indigent man; so that the Lord thy God shall
bless thee with blessings,”4064
—thee meaning the creditor to
whom it was owing that the man was not indigent. But more than this. To
one who does not ask, He bids a gift to be given. “Let there be,
not,” He says, “a poor man in thine hand;” in other
words, see that there be not, so far as thy will can prevent;4065
by which command, too, He all the more
strongly by inference requires4066
men to give to him
that asks, as in the following words also: “If there be among you
a poor man of thy brethren, thou shalt not turn away thine heart, nor
shut thine hand from thy poor brother. But thou shalt open thine hand
wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him as much as he
wanteth.”4067
Loans are not
usually given, except to such as ask for them. On this subject of
lending,4068
however, more
hereafter.4069
| 4069 Below, in the next
chapter. | Now, should any one
wish to argue that the Creator’s precepts extended only to a
man’s brethren, but Christ’s to all that ask, so as to make
the latter a new and different precept, (I have to reply) that one rule
only can be made out of those principles, which show the law of the
Creator to be repeated in Christ.4070
| 4070 This obscure passage
runs thus: “Immo unum erit ex his per quæ lex Creatoris erit
in Christo.” | For that is
not a different thing which Christ enjoined to be done towards all men,
from that which the Creator prescribed in favour of a man’s
brethren. For although that is a greater charity, which is shown
to strangers, it is yet not preferable to that4071
which was previously due to one’s neighbours. For what man
will be able to bestow the love (which proceeds from knowledge of
character,4072
| 4072 This is the idea,
apparently, of Tertullian’s question: “Quis enim
poterit diligere extraneos?” But a different turn
is given to the sense in the older reading of the passage: Quis enim
non diligens proximos poterit diligere extraneos? “For who
that loveth not his neighbours will be able to love strangers?”
The inserted words, however, were inserted conjecturally by Fulvius
Ursinus without ms. authority. | upon strangers?
Since, however, the second step4073
in charity is
towards strangers, while the first is towards one’s neighbours,
the second step will belong to him to whom the first also belongs, more
fitly than the second will belong to him who owned no first.4074
| 4074 Cujus non extitit
primus. | Accordingly, the Creator, when following the
course of nature, taught in the first instance kindness to
neighbours,4075
intending
afterwards to enjoin it towards strangers; and when following
the method of His dispensation, He limited charity first to the Jews,
but afterwards extended it to the whole race of mankind. So long,
therefore, as the mystery of His government4076
was confined to Israel, He properly
commanded that pity should be shown only to a man’s brethren; but
when Christ had given to Him “the Gentiles for His heritage, and
the ends of the earth for His possession,” then began to be
accomplished what was said by Hosea: “Ye are not my people, who
were my people; ye have not obtained mercy, who once obtained mercy”4077
| 4077 The sense rather than
the words of Hos. i. 6;
9. | —that is, the (Jewish) nation.
Thenceforth Christ extended to all men the law of His Father’s
compassion, excepting none from His mercy, as He omitted none in His
invitation. So that, whatever was the ampler scope of His teaching, He
received it all in His heritage of the nations. “And as ye would
that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.”4078
In this command is no doubt implied its
counterpart: “And as ye would not that men should do to
you, so should ye also not do to them likewise.” Now, if
this were the teaching of the new and previously unknown and not yet
fully proclaimed deity, who had favoured me with no instruction
beforehand, whereby I might first learn what I ought to choose or to
refuse for myself, and to do to others what I would wish done to
myself, not doing to them what I should be unwilling to have done to
myself, it would certainly be nothing else than the chance-medley of my
own sentiments4079
| 4079 Passivitatem
sententiæ meæ. | which he would have
left to me, binding me to no proper rule of wish or action, in order
that I might do to others what I would like for myself, or refrain from
doing to others what I should dislike to have done to myself. For he
has not, in fact, defined what I ought to wish or not to wish for
myself as well as for others, so that I shape my conduct4080
according to the law of my own will, and
have it in my power4081
not to
render4082
to another what I
would like to have rendered to myself—love, obedience,
consolation, protection, and such like blessings; and in like manner to
do to another what I should be unwilling to have done to
myself—violence, wrong, insult, deceit, and evils of like
sort. Indeed, the heathen who have not been instructed by God act
on this incongruous liberty of the will and the conduct.4083
| 4083 Hac inconvenientia
voluntatis et facti. Will and action. | For although good and evil are severally
known by nature, yet life is not thereby spent4084
under the discipline of God, which alone at last teaches men the proper
liberty of their will and action in faith, as in the fear of God. The
god of Marcion, therefore, although specially revealed, was, in spite
of his revelation, unable to publish any summary of the precept in
question, which had hitherto been so confined,4085
and obscure, and dark, and admitting of no ready interpretation, except
according to my own arbitrary thought,4086
because he had provided no previous discrimination in the matter of
such a precept. This, however, was not the case with my God,
for4087
| 4087 At enim. The Greek
ἀλλὰ γάρ. | He always and everywhere enjoined that the
poor, and the orphan, and the widow should be protected, assisted,
refreshed; thus by Isaiah He says: “Deal thy bread to the hungry,
and them that are houseless bring into thine house; when thou seest the
naked, cover him.”4088
By Ezekiel also He
thus describes the just man: “His bread will he give to the
hungry, and the naked will he cover with a garment.”4089
That teaching was even then a sufficient
inducement to me to do to others what I would that they should do unto
me. Accordingly, when He uttered such denunciations as, “Thou
shalt do no murder; thou shalt not commit adultery; thou shalt not
steal; thou shalt not bear false witness,”4090
—He taught me to refrain from doing to
others what I should be unwilling to have done to myself; and therefore
the precept developed in the Gospel will belong to Him alone, who
anciently drew it up, and gave it distinctive point, and arranged it
after the decision of His own teaching, and has now reduced it,
suitably to its importance,4091
to a compendious
formula, because (as it was predicted in another passage) the
Lord—that is, Christ—“was to make (or utter) a
concise word on earth.”4092
| 4092 “Recisum
sermonem facturus in terris Dominus.” This reading of
Isa. x. 23 is very unlike the original, but (as
frequently happens in Tertullian) is close upon the Septuagint version:
῞Οτι λόγον
συντετμημένον
Κύριος
ποιήσει ἐν τῇ
οἰκουμένῃ
ὅλῃ. [Rom. ix. 28.] | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
