Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Parables of the Importunate Widow, and of the Pharisee and the Publican. Christ's Answer to the Rich Ruler, the Cure of the Blind Man. His Salutation--Son of David. All Proofs of Christ's Relation to the Creator, Marcion's Antithesis Between David and Christ Confuted.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XXXVI.—The Parables of the Importunate Widow, and of
the Pharisee and the Publican. Christ’s Answer to the Rich Ruler,
the Cure of the Blind Man. His Salutation—Son of David. All
Proofs of Christ’s Relation to the Creator, Marcion’s
Antithesis Between David and Christ Confuted.
When He recommends perseverance and earnestness in
prayer, He sets before us the parable of the judge who was compelled to
listen to the widow, owing to the earnestness and importunity of her
requests.4917
He show us that it
is God the judge whom we must importune with prayer, and not Himself,
if He is not Himself the judge. But He added, that “God would
avenge His own elect.”4918
Since, then, He who
judges will also Himself be the avenger, He proved that the
Creator is on that
account the specially good God,4919
whom He
represented as the avenger of His own elect, who cry day and night to
Him. And yet, when He introduces to our view the Creator’s
temple, and describes two men worshipping therein with diverse
feelings—the Pharisee in pride, the publican in
humility—and shows us how they accordingly went down to their
homes, one rejected,4920
the other
justified,4921
He surely, by thus
teaching us the proper discipline of prayer, has determined that that
God must be prayed to from whom men were to receive this discipline of
prayer—whether condemnatory of pride, or justifying in
humility.4922
| 4922 Sive reprobatricem
superbiæ, sive justificatricem humilitatis. | I do not find from
Christ any temple, any suppliants, any sentence (of approval or
condemnation) belonging to any other god than the Creator. Him does He
enjoin us to worship in humility, as the lifter-up of the humble, not
in pride, because He brings down4923
the proud.
What other god has He manifested to me to receive my
supplications? With what formula of worship, with what hope
(shall I approach him?) I trow, none. For the prayer which He has
taught us suits, as we have proved,4924
| 4924 See above, chap. xxvi.
p. 392. | none but the
Creator. It is, of course, another matter if He does not wish to be
prayed to, because He is the supremely and spontaneously good God! But
who is this good God? There is, He says, “none but
one.”4925
It is not as if He
had shown us that one of two gods was the supremely good; but He
expressly asserts that there is one only good God, who is the only
good, because He is the only God. Now, undoubtedly,4926
He is the good God who “sendeth rain
on the just and on the unjust, and maketh His sun to rise on the evil
and on the good;”4927
sustaining and
nourishing and assisting even Marcionites themselves! When afterwards
“a certain man asked him, ‘Good Master, what shall I do to
inherit eternal life?’” (Jesus) inquired whether he
knew (that is, in other words, whether he kept) the
commandments of the Creator, in order to testify4928
that it was by the Creator’s precepts
that eternal life is acquired.4929
Then, when he
affirmed that from his youth up he had kept all the principal
commandments, (Jesus) said to him: “One thing thou yet lackest:
sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.”4930
Well now, Marcion, and all ye who are companions in misery, and
associates in hatred4931
| 4931 See above, chap. ix.,
near the beginning. | with that heretic,
what will you dare say to this? Did Christ rescind the forementioned
commandments: “Do not kill, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal,
Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother?” Or
did He both keep them, and then add4932
| 4932 Adjecit quod
deerat. | what was
wanting to them? This very precept, however, about giving to the poor,
was very largely4933
diffused through
the pages of the law and the prophets. This vainglorious observer of
the commandments was therefore convicted4934
of
holding money in much higher estimation (than charity). This verity of
the gospel then stands unimpaired: “I am not come to destroy the
law and the prophets, but rather to fulfil them.”4935
He also dissipated other doubts, when He
declared that the name of God and of the Good belonged to one and the
same being, at whose disposal were also the everlasting life and the
treasure in heaven and Himself too—whose commandments He both
maintained and augmented with His own supplementary precepts. He may
likewise be discovered in the following passage of Micah, saying:
“He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord
require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to be ready
to follow the Lord thy God?”4936
| 4936 Mic. vi. 8. The last clause agrees with the
Septuagint: καὶ
ἕτοιμον
εἶναι τοῦ
πορεύεσθαι
μετὰ Κυρίου
Θεοῦ σου. | Now Christ is
the man who tells us what is good, even the knowledge of the
law. “Thou knowest,” says He, “the
commandments.” “To do justly”—“Sell all
that thou hast;” “to love mercy”—“Give to
the poor:” “and to be ready to walk with
God”—“And come,” says He, “follow
me.”4937
| 4937 The clauses of
Christ’s words, which are here adapted to Micah’s, are in
every case broken with an inquit. | The Jewish nation
was from its beginning so carefully divided into tribes and clans, and
families and houses, that no man could very well have been ignorant of
his descent—even from the recent assessments of Augustus, which
were still probably extant at this time.4938
| 4938 Tunc pendentibus:
i.e., at the time mentioned in the story of the blind man. |
But the Jesus of Marcion (although there could be no doubt of a
person’s having been born, who was seen to be a man), as being
unborn, could not, of course, have possessed any public
testimonial4939
of his descent, but
was to be regarded as one of that obscure class of whom nothing was in
any way known.
Why then did the blind man, on hearing that He was passing by, exclaim,
“Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me?”4940
unless he was considered, in no uncertain
manner,4941
to be the Son of
David (in other words, to belong to David’s family) through his
mother and his brethren, who at some time or other had been made known
to him by public notoriety? “Those, however, who went before
rebuked the blind man, that he should hold his peace.”4942
And properly enough; because he was very
noisy, not because he was wrong about the son of David. Else you must
show me, that those who rebuked him were aware that Jesus was not the
Son of David, in order that they may be supposed to have had this
reason for imposing silence on the blind man. But even if you could
show me this, still (the blind man) would more readily have presumed
that they were ignorant, than that the Lord could possibly have
permitted an untrue exclamation about Himself. But the Lord
“stood patient.”4943
Yes; but not as
confirming the error, for, on the contrary, He rather displayed the
Creator. Surely He could not have first removed this man’s
blindness, in order that he might afterwards cease to regard Him as the
Son of David! However,4944
that you may not
slander4945
His patience, nor
fasten on Him any charge of dissimulation, nor deny Him to be the Son
of David, He very pointedly confirmed the exclamation of the blind
man—both by the actual gift of healing, and by bearing testimony
to his faith: “Thy faith,” say Christ, “hath made
thee whole.”4946
What would you have
the blind man’s faith to have been? That Jesus was descended from
that (alien) god (of Marcion), to subvert the Creator and overthrow the
law and the prophets? That He was not the destined offshoot from the
root of Jesse, and the fruit of David’s loins, the
restorer4947
also of the blind?
But I apprehend there were at that time no such stone-blind persons as
Marcion, that an opinion like this could have constituted the faith of
the blind man, and have induced him to confide in the mere
name,4948
| 4948 That is, in the
sound only, and phantom of the word; an allusion to the Docetic
absurdity of Marcion. | of Jesus, the Son
of David. He, who knew all this of Himself,4949
| 4949 That is, that He was
“Son of David,” etc. |
and wished others to know it also, endowed the faith of this
man—although it was already gifted with a better sight, and
although it was in possession of the true light—with the external
vision likewise, in order that we too might learn the rule of faith,
and at the same time find its recompense. Whosoever wishes to see Jesus
the Son of David must believe in Him; through the Virgin’s
birth.4950
| 4950 Censum: that is, must
believe Him born of her. | He who will not
believe this will not hear from Him the salutation, “Thy faith
hath saved thee.” And so he will remain blind, falling into
Antithesis after Antithesis, which mutually destroy each
other,4951
| 4951 This, perhaps, is the
meaning in a clause which is itself more antithetical than clear:
“Ruens in antithesim, ruentem et ipsam antithesim.” | just as “the
blind man leads the blind down into the ditch.”4952
| 4952 In book iii. chap.
vii. (at the beginning), occurs the same proverb of Marcion and the
Jews. See p. 327. | For (here is one of Marcion’s
Antitheses): whereas David in old time, in the capture of Sion,
was offended by the blind who opposed his admission (into the
stronghold)4953
—in which
respect (I should rather say) that they were a type of people equally
blind,4954
who in after-times
would not admit Christ to be the son of David—so, on the
contrary, Christ succoured the blind man, to show by this act that He
was not David’s son, and how different in disposition He was,
kind to the blind, while David ordered them to be slain.4955
If all this were so, why did Marcion
allege that the blind man’s faith was of so worthless4956
| 4956 Fidei equidem
pravæ: see preceding page, note 3. | a stamp? The fact is,4957
the Son of David so acted,4958
| 4958 Et hoc filius David:
i.e., præstitit, “showed Himself good,”
perhaps. | that the Antithesis must lose its
point by its own absurdity.4959
| 4959 De suo
retundendam. Instead of contrast, he shows the
similarity of the cases. | Those persons who
offended David were blind, and the man who now presents himself as a
suppliant to David’s son is afflicted with the same
infirmity.4960
| 4960 Ejusdem carnis: i.e.,
infirmæ (Oehler). | Therefore the Son
of David was appeased with some sort of satisfaction by the blind man
when He restored him to sight, and added His approval of the faith
which had led him to believe the very truth, that he must win to his
help4961
the Son of David by earnest entreaty.
But, after all, I suspect that it was the audacity (of the old
Jebusites) which offended David, and not their
malady.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
