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| Christ's Refutations of the Pharisees. Rendering Dues to Cæsar and to God. Next of the Sadducees, Respecting Marriage in the Resurrection. These Prove Him Not to Be Marcion's But the Creator's Christ. Marcion's Tamperings in Order to Make Room for His Second God, Exposed and Confuted.
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Chapter
XXXVIII.—Christ’s Refutations of the Pharisees. Rendering
Dues to Cæsar and to God. Next of the Sadducees, Respecting
Marriage in the Resurrection. These Prove Him Not to Be Marcion’s
But the Creator’s Christ. Marcion’s Tamperings in
Order to Make Room for His Second God, Exposed and Confuted.
Christ knew “the baptism of John, whence it
was.”4981
Then why did He ask
them, as if He knew not? He knew that the Pharisees would not give Him
an answer; then why did He ask in vain? Was it that He might judge them
out of their own mouth, or their own heart? Suppose you refer these
points to an excuse of the Creator, or to His comparison with
Christ; then consider what would have happened if the Pharisees had
replied to His question. Suppose their answer to have been, that
John’s baptism was “of men,” they would have been
immediately stoned to death.4982
Some Marcion, in
rivalry to Marcion, would have stood up4983
and said: O most excellent God; how different are his ways from the
Creator’s! Knowing that men would rush down headlong over
it, He placed them actually4984
on
the very precipice. For thus do men treat of the Creator respecting His
law of the tree.4985
But John’s
baptism was “from heaven.” “Why, therefore,”
asks Christ, “did ye not believe him?”4986
He therefore who had wished men to believe
John, purposing to censure4987
them because they
had not believed him, belonged to Him whose sacrament John was
administering. But, at any rate,4988
| 4988 Certe. [The word
sacrament not technical here.] | when He
actually met their refusal to say what they thought, with such
reprisals as, “Neither tell I you by what authority I do these
things,”4989
He returned evil
for evil! “Render unto Cæsar the things which be
Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which be
God’s.”4990
What will be
“the things which are God’s?” Such things as are like
Cæsar’s denarius—that is to say, His image and
similitude. That, therefore, which he commands to be “rendered
unto God,” the Creator, is man, who has been stamped with
His image, likeness, name, and substance.4991
Let Marcion’s god look after his own mint.4992
Christ bids the denarius of
man’s imprint to be rendered to His Cæsar, (His Cæsar I
say,) not the Cæsar of a strange god.4993
The truth, however, must be confessed, this god has not a
denarius to call his own! In every question the just and proper
rule is, that the meaning of the answer ought to be adapted to the
proposed inquiry. But it is nothing short of madness to return an
answer altogether different from the question submitted to you. God
forbid, then, that we should expect from Christ4994
| 4994 Quo magis absit a
Christo. |
conduct which would be unfit even to an ordinary man! The Sadducees,
who said there was no resurrection, in a discussion on that subject,
had proposed to the Lord a case of law touching a certain woman, who,
in accordance with the legal prescription, had been married to seven
brothers who had died one after the other. The question therefore was,
to which husband must she be reckoned to belong in the
resurrection?4995
This, (observe,)
was the gist of the inquiry, this was the sum and substance of the
dispute. And to it Christ was obliged to return a direct answer.
He had nobody to fear; that it should seem advisable4996
for Him either to evade their questions, or
to make them the occasion of indirectly mooting4997
a
subject which He was not in the habit of teaching publicly at any other
time. He therefore gave His answer, that “the children of this
world marry.”4998
You see how
pertinent it was to the case in point. Because the question concerned
the next world, and He was going to declare that no one marries there,
He opens the way by laying down the principles that here, where there
is death, there is also marriage. “But they whom God shall
account worthy of the possession of that world and the resurrection
from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; forasmuch as
they cannot die any more, since they become equal to the angels, being
made the children of God and of the resurrection.”4999
If, then, the meaning of the answer must not
turn on any other point than on the proposed question, and since the
question proposed is fully understood from this sense of the
answer,5000
| 5000 Surely Oehler’s
responsio ought to be responsionis, as the older books
have it. | then the
Lord’s reply admits of no other interpretation than that by which
the question is clearly understood.5001
You have both
the time in which marriage is permitted, and the time in which it is
said to be unsuitable, laid before you, not on their own account, but
in consequence of an inquiry about the resurrection. You have likewise
a confirmation of the resurrection itself, and the whole question which
the Sadducees mooted, who asked no question about another god, nor
inquired about the proper law of marriage. Now, if you make Christ
answer questions which were not submitted to Him, you, in fact,
represent Him as having been unable to solve the points on which He was
really consulted, and entrapped of course by the cunning of the
Sadducees. I shall now proceed, by way of supererogation,5002
and after the rule (I have laid down about
questions and answers),5003
| 5003 We have translated
here, post præscriptionem, according to the more frequent
sense of the word, præscriptio. But there is another
meaning of the word, which is not unknown to our author, equivalent to
our objection or demurrer, or (to quote Oehler’s
definition) “clausula qua reus adversarii intentionem
oppugnat—the form by which the defendant rebuts the
plaintiff’s charge.” According to this sense, we read:
“I shall now proceed…and after putting in a demurrer (or
taking exception) against the tactics of my opponent.” | to deal with the
arguments which have any consistency in them.5004
They procured then a copy of the Scripture, and made short work with
its text, by reading it thus:5005
| 5005 Decucurrerunt in
legendo: or, “they ran through it, by thus reading.” | “Those whom
the god of that world shall account worthy.” They
add the phrase “of
that world” to the word “god,” whereby
they make another god “the god of that world;” whereas the
passage ought to be read thus: “Those whom God shall account
worthy of the possession of that world” (removing the
distinguishing phrase “of this world” to the end of
the clause,5006
| 5006 We have
adapted, rather than translated, Tertullian’s words in
this parenthesis. His words of course suit the order of the
Latin, which differs from the English. The sentence in Latin is,
“Quos autem dignatus est Deus illius ævi possessione
et resurrectione a mortuis.” The phrase in question is illius
ævi. Where shall it stand? The Marcionites placed
it after “Deus” in government, but Tertullian
(following the undoubted meaning of the sentence) says it depends on
“possessione et resurrectione,” i.e.,
“worthy of the possession, etc., of that world.” To effect
this construction, he says, “Ut facta hic distinctione post deum
ad sequentia pertineat illius ævi;” i.e., he requests that a
stop be placed after the word “deus,” whereby the phrase
“illius ævi” will belong to the words which
follow—“possessione et resurrectione a
mortuis.” | in other words,
“Those whom God shall account worthy of obtaining and rising to
that world.” For the question submitted to Christ had nothing to
do with the god, but only with the state, of that world.
It was: “Whose wife should this woman be in that world after the
resurrection?”5007
They thus subvert
His answer respecting the essential question of marriage, and apply His
words, “The children of this world marry and are given in
marriage,” as if they referred to the Creator’s men, and
His permission to them to marry; whilst they themselves whom the god of
that world—that is, the rival god—accounted worthy of the
resurrection, do not marry even here, because they are not children of
this world. But the fact is, that, having been consulted about marriage
in that world, not in this present one, He had simply declared
the non-existence of that to which the question related. They, indeed,
who had caught the very force of His voice, and pronunciation, and
expression, discovered no other sense than what had reference to the
matter of the question. Accordingly, the Scribes exclaimed,
“Master, Thou hast well said.”5008
For He had affirmed the resurrection, by describing the form5009
| 5009 Formam: “its
conditions” or “process.” | thereof in opposition to the opinion of the
Sadducees. Now, He did not reject the attestation of those who had
assumed His answer to bear this meaning. If, however, the Scribes
thought Christ was David’s Son, whereas (David) himself calls Him
Lord,5010
what relation has this to Christ? David did
not literally confute5011
an error of the
Scribes, yet David asserted the honour of Christ, when he more
prominently affirmed that He was his Lord than his Son,—an
attribute which was hardly suitable to the destroyer of the Creator.
But how consistent is the interpretation on our side of the question!
For He, who had been a little while ago invoked by the blind man as
“the Son of David,”5012
then made no
remark on the subject, not having the Scribes in His presence; whereas
He now purposely moots the point before them, and that of His
own accord,5013
in order that He
might show Himself whom the blind man, following the doctrine of the
Scribes, had simply declared to be the Son of David, to be also his
Lord. He thus honoured the blind man’s faith which had
acknowledged His Sonship to David; but at the same time He struck a
blow at the tradition of the Scribes, which prevented them from knowing
that He was also (David’s) Lord. Whatever had relation to
the glory of the Creator’s Christ, no other would thus guard and
maintain5014
but Himself the
Creator’s Christ.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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