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| The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted. The Prophets Justify Christ's Admonition Against Covetousness and Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations of the Creator. So Said Christ--But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the Dispensations. No New God Had a Hand in the Change.
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Chapter
XXXIII.—The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted.
The Prophets Justify Christ’s Admonition Against Covetousness and
Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations
of the Creator. So Said Christ—But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long
Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the
Dispensations. No New God Had a Hand in the Change.
What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be
served,4772
on the ground that
while one is pleased4773
the other must
needs be displeased,4774
He Himself makes
clear, when He mentions God and mammon. Then, if you have no
interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have
understood by mammon.4775
| 4775 What in the
Punic language is called Mammon, says Rigaltius, the Latins
call lucrum, “gain or lucre.” See
Augustine, Serm. xxxv. de Verbo domini. I
would add Jerome, On the VI. of Matthew where he says:
“In the Syriac tongue, riches are called
mammon.” And Augustine, in another passage, book ii.,
On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, says:
“Riches in Hebrew are said to be called
mammon. This is evidently a Punic word, for in that
language the synonyme for gain (lucrum) is
mammon.” Compare the same author on Ps. ciii.
(Oehler). | For when advising
us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs,
after the example of that steward who, when removed from his
office,4776
relieves his
lord’s debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their
recompensing him with their help, He said, “And I say unto you,
Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness,” that is to say, of money, even as the steward
had done. Now we are all of us aware that money is the
instigator4777
of unrighteousness,
and the lord of the whole world. Therefore, when he saw the
covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship4778
to it, He hurled4779
this sentence against them, “Ye cannot serve God and
mammon.”4780
Then the Pharisees,
who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by
mammon He meant money. Let no one think that under the word mammon the
Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of
the Creator. What folly! Rather learn therefrom that one God was
pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and
mammon—the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve
God—Him, of course whom they seemed to serve—and mammon to
whom they preferred to devote themselves.4781
| 4781 Magis destinabantur:
middle voice. |
If, however, he was giving himself out as another god, it would
not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out. For the
Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure,4782
than mammon, and more to be adored, as being
more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called
mammon a master, and had associated him with God, should say nothing of
Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or
else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might
be rendered to Him, since it was to Himself alone and to mammon
that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered?
When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He
would have been sure to mention4783
the Creator if
He were Himself a rival4784
to Him, He did
(virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from
insisting”4785
that He was Master
alone, without a rival god. Accordingly, this will throw light
upon the sense in which it was said, “If ye have not been
faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the
true riches?”4786
“In the
unrighteous mammon,” that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not
in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: “And
if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who
will give to you that which is mine?”4787
| 4787 Meum: Luke xvi. 12, where, however, the word is τὸ
ὑμέτερον, that which is your own.” |
For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God.
But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, seeing that
He was the proper God of the Jewish nation? Forasmuch then as the
words, “Who will entrust to you the truer riches?” and,
“Who will give you that which is mine?” are only suitable
to the Creator and not to mammon, He could not have uttered them as
alien to the Creator, and in the interest of the rival god. He could
only seem to have spoken them in this sense, if, when
remarking4788
their
unfaithfulness to the Creator and not to mammon, He had drawn some
distinctions between the Creator (in his manner of mentioning Him) and
the rival god—how that the latter would not commit his own truth
to those who were unfaithful to the Creator. How then can he possibly
seem to belong to another god, if He be not set forth, with the express
intention of being separated4789
| 4789 Ad hoc ut
seperatur. | from the very thing
which is in question. But when the Pharisees “justified
themselves before men,”4790
and placed their
hope of reward in man, He censured them in the sense in which the
prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in
man.”4791
Since the prophet
went on to say, “But the Lord knoweth your
hearts,”4792
he magnified the
power of that God who declared Himself to be as a lamp,
“searching the reins and the heart.”4793
When He strikes at pride in the words:
“That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the
sight of God,”4794
He recalls Isaiah:
“For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is
proud and lofty, and upon every one that is arrogant and lifted up, and
they shall be brought low.”4795
I can now make
out why
Marcion’s god was for so long an age concealed. He was, I
suppose, waiting until he had learnt all these things from the Creator.
He continued his pupillage up to the time of John, and then proceeded
forthwith to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and
the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is
proclaimed.”4796
Just as if we also
did not recognise in John a certain limit placed between the old
dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity
began—without, however, supposing that it was by the power of
another god that there came about a cessation4797
| 4797 Sedatio: literally,
“a setting to rest,” ἠρέμησις. | of
the law and the prophets and the commencement of that gospel in which
is the kingdom of God, Christ Himself. For although, as we have shown,
the Creator foretold that the old state of things would pass away and a
new state would succeed, yet, inasmuch as John is shown to be both the
forerunner and the preparer of the ways of that Lord who was to
introduce the gospel and publish the kingdom of God, it follows from
the very fact that John has come, that Christ must be that very Being
who was to follow His harbinger John. So that, if the old course has
ceased and the new has begun, with John intervening between them, there
will be nothing wonderful in it, because it happens according to the
purpose of the Creator; so that you may get a better proof for the
kingdom of God from any quarter, however anomalous,4798
| 4798 Ut undeunde magis
probetur…regnum Dei. | than from the conceit that the law and the
prophets ended in John, and a new state of things began after him.
“More easily, therefore, may heaven and earth pass away—as
also the law and the prophets—than that one tittle of the
Lord’s words should fail.”4799
| 4799 Luke
xvi. 17 and xxi. 23. |
“For,” as says Isaiah: “the word of our God shall
stand for ever.”4800
Since even
then by Isaiah it was Christ, the Word and Spirit4801
| 4801 See above, note on
chap. xxviii., towards the end, on this designation of Christ’s
divine nature. | of the Creator, who prophetically described
John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the
way of the Lord,”4802
and as about to
come for the purpose of terminating thenceforth the course of the law
and the prophets; by their fulfilment and not their extinction, and in
order that the kingdom of God might be announced by Christ, He
therefore purposely added the assurance that the elements would more
easily pass away than His words fail; affirming, as He did, the further
fact, that what He had said concerning John had not fallen to the
ground.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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