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| Parallels from the Prophets to Illustrate Christ's Teaching in the Rest of This Chapter of St. Luke. The Sterner Attributes of Christ, in His Judicial Capacity, Show Him to Have Come from the Creator. Incidental Rebukes of Marcion's Doctrine of Celibacy, and of His Altering of the Text of the Gospel.
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Chapter XXIX.—Parallels
from the Prophets to Illustrate Christ’s Teaching in the Rest of
This Chapter of St. Luke. The Sterner Attributes of Christ, in His
Judicial Capacity, Show Him to Have Come from the Creator. Incidental
Rebukes of Marcion’s Doctrine of Celibacy, and of His Altering of
the Text of the Gospel.
Who would be unwilling that we should distress
ourselves4651
| 4651 Agere curam: take
thought.—A.V. | about sustenance
for our life, or clothing for our body,4652
but He who has provided these things already for man; and who,
therefore, while distributing them to us, prohibits all anxiety
respecting them as an outrage4653
against his
liberality?—who has adapted the nature of “life”
itself to a condition “better than meat,” and has fashioned
the material of “the body,” so as to make it “more
than raiment;” whose “ravens, too, neither sow nor reap,
nor gather into storehouses, and are yet fed” by Himself; whose
“lilies and grass also toil not, nor spin, and yet are
clothed” by Him; whose “Solomon, moreover, was transcendent
in glory, and yet was not arrayed like” the humble
flower.4654
Besides, nothing
can be more abrupt than that one God should be distributing His bounty,
while the other should bid us take no thought about (so kindly a)
distribution—and that, too, with the intention of derogating
(from his liberality). Whether, indeed, it is as depreciating the
Creator that he does not wish such trifles to be thought of, concerning
which neither the crows nor the lilies labour, because, forsooth, they
come spontaneously to hand4655
by reason of their
very worthlessness,4656
will appear a
little further on. Meanwhile, how is it that He chides them as
being “of little faith?”4657
What
faith? Does He mean that faith which they were as yet unable to
manifest perfectly in a god who has hardly yet revealed,4658
| 4658 Tantum quod
revelato. | and whom they were in process of learning as
well as they could; or that faith which they for this express reason
owed to the Creator, because they believed that He was of His own will
supplying these wants of the human race, and therefore took no thought
about them? Now, when He adds, “For all these things do the
nations of the world seek after,”4659
even by their not believing in God as the Creator and Giver of all
things, since He was unwilling that they should be like these nations,
He therefore upbraided them as being defective of faith in the same
God, in whom He remarked that the Gentiles were quite wanting in
faith. When He further adds, “But your Father knoweth that
ye have need of these things,”4660
I would first
ask, what Father Christ would have to be here understood? If He points
to their own Creator, He also affirms Him to be good, who knows what
His children have need of; but if He refers to that other god, how does
he know that food and raiment are necessary to man, seeing that he has
made no such provision for him? For if he had known the want, he would
have made the provision. If, however, he knows what things man has need
of, and yet has failed to supply them, he is in the failure guilty of
either malignity or weakness. But when he confessed that these things
are necessary to man, he really affirmed that they are good. For
nothing that is evil is necessary. So that he will not be any
longer a depreciator
of the works and the indulgences of the Creator, that I may here
complete the answer4661
which I deferred
giving above. Again, if it is another god who has foreseen man’s
wants, and is supplying them, how is it that Marcion’s
Christ himself promises them?4662
Is he liberal
with another’s property?4663
“Seek
ye,” says he, “the kingdom of God, and all these
things shall be added unto you”—by himself, of course. But
if by himself, what sort of being is he, who shall bestow the
things of another? If by the Creator, whose all things
are, then who4664
is he that promises
what belongs to another? If these things are
“additions” to the kingdom, they must be placed in the
second rank;4665
and the second rank
belongs to Him to whom the first also does; His are the food and
raiment, whose is the kingdom. Thus to the Creator belongs the
entire promise, the full reality4666
of its
parables, the perfect equalization4667
of its
similitudes; for these have respect to none other than Him to whom they
have a parity of relation in every point.4668
| 4668 Cui per omnia
pariaverint. | We
are servants because we have a Lord in our God. We ought “to have
our loins girded:”4669
in other words, we
are to be free from the embarrassments of a perplexed and much occupied
life; “to have our lights burning,”4670
that is, our minds kindled by faith, and resplendent with the works of
truth. And thus “to wait for our Lord,”4671
that is, Christ. Whence
“returning?” If “from the wedding,” He is
the Christ of the Creator, for the wedding is His. If He is not
the Creator’s, not even Marcion himself would have gone to the
wedding, although invited, for in his god he discovers one who hates
the nuptial bed. The parable would therefore have failed in the person
of the Lord, if He were not a Being to whom a wedding is consistent. In
the next parable also he makes a flagrant mistake, when he assigns to
the person of the Creator that “thief, whose hour, if the father
of the family had only known, he would not have suffered his house to
be broken through.”4672
How can the Creator
wear in any way the aspect of a thief, Lord as He is of all mankind? No
one pilfers or plunders his own property, but he4673
rather acts the part of one who swoops down
on the things of another, and alienates man from his Lord.4674
| 4674 A censure on
Marcion’s Christ. | Again, when He indicates to us that the
devil is “the thief,” whose hour at the very beginning of
the world, if man had known, he would never have been broken in
upon4675
by him, He warns us “to be
ready,” for this reason, because “we know not the hour when
the Son of man shall come”4676
—not as
if He were Himself the thief, but rather as being the judge of those
who prepared not themselves, and used no precaution against the thief.
Since, then, He is the Son of man, I hold Him to be the Judge, and in
the Judge I claim4677
the Creator. If
then in this passage he displays the Creator’s Christ under the
title “Son of man,” that he may give us some
presage4678
of the thief, of
the period of whose coming we are ignorant, you still have it ruled
above, that no one is the thief of his own property; besides which,
there is our principle also unimpaired4679
—that in as far as He insists on
the Creator as an object of fear, in so far does He belong to
the Creator, and does the Creator’s work. When, therefore, Peter
asked whether He had spoken the parable “unto them, or even to
all,”4680
He sets forth for
them, and for all who should bear rule in the churches, the similitude
of stewards.4681
That steward who
should treat his fellow-servants well in his Lord’s absence,
would on his return be set as ruler over all his property; but he who
should act otherwise should be severed, and have his portion with the
unbelievers, when his lord should return on the day when he looked not
for him, at the hour when he was not aware4682
—even that Son of man, the
Creator’s Christ, not a thief, but a Judge. He accordingly, in
this passage, either presents to us the Lord as a Judge, and instructs
us in His character,4683
or else as the
simply good god; if the latter, he now also affirms his judicial
attribute, although the heretic refuses to admit it. For an attempt is
made to modify this sense when it is applied to his god,—as if it
were an act of serenity and mildness simply to sever the man off, and
to assign him a portion with the unbelievers, under the idea that he
was not summoned (before the judge), but only returned to his own
state! As if this very process did not imply a judicial act! What
folly! What will be the end of the severed ones? Will it not be the
forfeiture of salvation, since their separation will be from those who
shall attain salvation? What, again, will be the condition of the
unbelievers?
Will it not be damnation? Else, if these severed and unfaithful ones
shall have nothing to suffer, there will, on the other hand, be nothing
for the accepted and the believers to obtain. If, however, the accepted
and the believers shall attain salvation, it must needs be that the
rejected and the unbelieving should incur the opposite issue, even the
loss of salvation. Now here is a judgment, and He who holds it out
before us belongs to the Creator. Whom else than the God of
retribution can I understand by Him who shall “beat His servants
with stripes,” either “few or many,” and shall exact
from them what He had committed to them? Whom is it suitable4684
for me to obey, but Him who
remunerates? Your Christ proclaims, “I am come to send fire
on the earth.”4685
That4686
most lenient being, the lord who has no
hell, not long before had restrained his disciples from demanding fire
on the churlish village. Whereas He4687
burnt up Sodom and Gomorrah with a tempest of fire. Of Him the psalmist
sang, “A fire shall go out before Him, and burn up His enemies
round about.”4688
By Hoses He uttered
the threat, “I will send a fire upon the cities of
Judah;”4689
and4690
| 4690 Vel: or, “if you
please;” indicating some uncertainty in the quotation. The
passage is more like Jer. xv.
14 than anything in Isaiah
(see, however, Isa. xxx. 27;
30). | by Isaiah, “A fire has been kindled in
mine anger.” He cannot lie. If it is not He who uttered His voice
out of even the burning bush, it can be of no importance4691
what fire you insist upon being
understood. Even if it be but figurative fire, yet, from the very
fact that he takes from my element illustrations for His own sense, He
is mine, because He uses what is mine. The similitude of fire must
belong to Him who owns the reality thereof. But He will Himself best
explain the quality of that fire which He mentioned, when He
goes on to say, “Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on
earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division.”4692
It is written “a
sword,”4693
| 4693 Pamelius supposes that
Tertullian here refers to St. Matthew’s account, where the word
is μάχαιραν,
on the ground that the mss. and versions of St.
Luke’s Gospel invariably read διαμερισμόν. According to Rigaltius, however, Tertullian means that sword
is written in Marcion’s Gospel of Luke, as if the heretic had
adulterated the passage. Tertullian no doubt professes to quote all
along from the Gospel of Luke, according to Marcion’s
reading. | but Marcion makes
an emendation4694
| 4694 St. Luke’s word
being διαμερισμόν
(division), not μάχαιραν
(sword). | of the word, just
as if a division were not the work of the sword. He,
therefore, who refused to give peace, intended also the fire of
destruction. As is the combat, so is the burning. As is the
sword, so is the flame. Neither is suitable for its lord.
He says at last, “The father shall be divided against the son,
and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and
the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the
daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the
mother-in-law.”4695
Since this battle
among the relatives4696
was sung by the
prophet’s trumpet in the very words, I fear that Micah4697
must have predicted it to Marcion’s
Christ! On this account He pronounced them
“hypocrites,” because they could “discern the face of
the sky and the earth, but could not distinguish this
time,”4698
when of course He
ought to have been recognised, fulfilling (as he was) all things which
had been predicted concerning them, and teaching them so. But then who
could know the times of him of whom he had no evidence to prove his
existence? Justly also does He upbraid them for “not even
of themselves judging what is right.”4699
Of
old does He command by Zechariah, “Execute the judgment of truth
and peace;”4700
by Jeremiah,
“Execute judgment and righteousness;”4701
by Isaiah, “Judge the fatherless,
plead for the widow,”4702
charging it as a
fault upon the vine of Sorech,4703
| 4703 Tertullian calls by a
proper name the vineyard which Isaiah (in his chap. v.) designates “the vineyard of the
Lord of hosts,” and interprets to be “the house of
Israel” (ver. 7).
The designation comes from ver. 2,
where the original clause ירשֹ
והע[טָיִּוַ
is translated in the Septuagint, Καὶ
ἐφύτευσα
ἄμπελον
Σωρήκ. Tertullian is most frequently
in close agreement with the LXX. | that when “He
looked for righteousness therefrom, there was only a
cry”4704
(of oppression).
The same God who had taught them to act as He commanded them,4705
was now requiring that they should act of
their own accord.4706
He who had sown the
precept, was now pressing to an abundant harvest from it. But how
absurd, that he should now be commanding them to judge righteously, who
was destroying God the righteous Judge! For the Judge, who commits to
prison, and allows no release out of it without the payment of
“the very last mite,”4707
they treat of
in the person of the Creator, with the view of disparaging Him. Which
cavil, however, I deem it necessary to meet with the same
answer.4708
For as often as the
Creator’s severity is paraded before us, so often is Christ
(shown to be) His, to whom He urges submission by the motive of
fear.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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