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| Christ's Reprehension of the Pharisees Seeking a Sign. His Censure of Their Love of Outward Show Rather Than Inward Holiness. Scripture Abounds with Admonitions of a Similar Purport. Proofs of His Mission from the Creator.
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Chapter
XXVII.—Christ’s Reprehension of the Pharisees Seeking a
Sign. His Censure of Their Love of Outward Show Rather Than
Inward Holiness. Scripture Abounds with Admonitions of a Similar
Purport. Proofs of His Mission from the Creator.
I prefer elsewhere refuting4575
the faults which the Marcionites find in the
Creator. It is here enough that they are also found in Christ.4576
| 4576 From the Marcionite
point of view. | Behold how unequal, inconsistent, and
capricious he is! Teaching one thing and doing another, he enjoins
“giving to every one that seeks;” and yet he himself
refuses to give to those “who seek a sign.”4577
For a vast age he hides his own light from
men, and yet says that a candle must not be hidden, but affirms that it
ought to be set upon a candlestick, that it may give light to
all.4578
He forbids cursing again, and cursing
much more of course; and yet he heaps his woe upon the Pharisees
and doctors of the law.4579
Who so closely
resembles my God as His own Christ? We have often already laid it down
for certain,4580
that He could not
have been branded4581
as the destroyer of
the law if He had promulged another god. Therefore even the Pharisee,
who invited Him to dinner in the passage before us,4582
expressed some surprise4583
in His presence that He had not washed
before He sat down to meat, in accordance with the law, since it was
the God of the law that He was proclaiming.4584
Jesus also interpreted the law to him when He told him that they
“made clean the outside of the cup and the platter, whereas their
inward part was full of ravening and wickedness.” This He
said, to signify that by the cleansing of vessels was to be
understood before God the purification of men, inasmuch as it was about
a man, and not about an unwashed vessel, that even this Pharisee had
been treating in His presence. He therefore said: “You wash the
outside of the cup,” that is, the flesh, “but you do not
cleanse your inside part,”4585
that is, the
soul; adding: “Did not He that made the outside,” that is,
the flesh, “also make the inward part,” that is to say, the
soul?—by which assertion He expressly declared that to the same
God belongs the cleansing of a man’s external and internal
nature, both alike being in the power of Him who prefers mercy not only
to man’s washing,4586
but even to
sacrifice.4587
| 4587 Matt. ix. 13, xii. 7; comp. Hos. viii.
6. | For He subjoins the
command: “Give what ye possess as alms, and all things shall be
clean unto you.”4588
Even if another god
could have enjoined mercy, he could not have done so previous to his
becoming known. Furthermore, it is in this passage evident that
they4589
were not reproved concerning their God, but
concerning a point of His instruction to them, when He prescribed to
them figuratively the cleansing of their vessels, but really the works
of merciful dispositions. In like manner, He upbraids them for tithing
paltry herbs,4590
but at the same
time “passing over hospitality4591
| 4591 Marcion’s gospel
had κλῆσιν (vocationem,
perhaps a general word for hospitality) instead of
κρίσιν,
judgment,—a quality which M. did not allow in his god. See
Epiphanius, Hæres. xlii., Schol. 26 (Oehler and Fr.
Junius). | and the love
of God.”4592
The vocation and
the love of what God, but Him by whose law of tithes they used to offer
their rue and mint? For the whole point of the rebuke lay in this, that
they cared about small matters in His service of course, to whom they
failed to exhibit their weightier duties when He commanded them:
“Thou shalt love with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and
with all thy strength, the Lord thy God, who hath called thee out of
Egypt.”4593
Besides, time
enough had not yet passed to admit of Christ’s requiring so
premature—nay, as yet so distasteful4594
—a love towards a new and recent, not
to say a hardly yet developed,4595
deity. When, again,
He upbraids those who caught at the uppermost places and the honour of
public salutations, He only follows out the Creator’s
course,4596
who calls ambitious
persons of this character “rulers of Sodom,”4597
who forbids us “to put confidence even
in princes,”4598
and pronounces him
to be altogether wretched who places his confidence in man. But
whoever4599
aims at high
position, because he would glory in the officious attentions4600
of other people, (in every such case,)
inasmuch as He forbade such attentions (in the shape) of placing hope
and confidence in man, He at the same time4601
censured all who were ambitious of high positions. He also inveighs
against the doctors of the law themselves, because they were
“lading men with burdens grievous to be borne, which they did not
venture to touch with even a finger of their own;”4602
but not as if He made a mock of4603
the burdens of the law with any feeling of
detestation towards it. For how could He have felt aversion to the law,
who used with so much earnestness to upbraid them for passing over its
weightier matters, alms—giving, hospitality,4604
| 4604 Vocationem:
Marcion’s κλῆσιν. | and the love of God? Nor, indeed, was it
only these great things (which He recognized), but even4605
the tithes of rue and the cleansing of
cups. But, in
truth, He would rather have deemed them excusable for being unable to
carry burdens which could not be borne. What, then, are the
burdens which He censures?4606
None but those
which they were accumulating of their own accord, when they taught for
commandments the doctrines of men; for the sake of private advantage
joining house to house, so as to deprive their neighbour of his own;
cajoling4607
the people, loving
gifts, pursuing rewards, robbing the poor of the rights of judgment,
that they might have the widow for a prey and the fatherless for a
spoil.4608
| 4608 See Isa. v.
5, 23, and x. 2. | Of these Isaiah
also says, “Woe unto them that are strong in
Jerusalem!”4609
and again,
“They that demand you shall rule over you.”4610
| 4610 The books point to
Isa. iii. 3, 4 for this; but there is only a slight
similarity in the latter clause, even in the Septuagint. | And who did this more than the
lawyers?4611
| 4611 Legis doctores: the
νομικοί of the
Gospels. | Now, if these
offended Christ, it was as belonging to Him that they offended
Him. He would have aimed no blow at the teachers of an alien law.
But why is a “woe” pronounced against them for
“building the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers had
killed?”4612
They rather
deserved praise, because by such an act of piety they seemed to show
that they did not allow the deeds of their fathers. Was it not because
(Christ) was jealous4613
of such a
disposition as the Marcionites denounce,4614
visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children unto the fourth
generation? What “key,” indeed, was it which these lawyers
had,4615
but the interpretation of the law? Into the
perception of this they neither entered themselves, even because they
did not believe (for “unless ye believe, ye shall not
understand”); nor did they permit others to enter, because they
preferred to teach them for commandments even the doctrines of men.
When, therefore, He reproached those who did not themselves enter in,
and also shut the door against others, must He be regarded as a
disparager of the law, or as a supporter of it? If a disparager, those
who were hindering the law ought to have been pleased; if a supporter,
He is no longer an enemy of the law.4616
| 4616 As Marcion held Him to
be. | But all these
imprecations He uttered in order to tarnish the Creator as a cruel
Being,4617
| 4617 A Marcionite
position. | against whom such
as offended were destined to have a “woe.” And who would
not rather have feared to provoke a cruel Being,4618
by withdrawing allegiance4619
from Him? Therefore the more He represented
the Creator to be an object of fear, the more earnestly would He teach
that He ought to be served. Thus would it behove the Creator’s
Christ to act.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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