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| The Divine Way of Wisdom, and Greatness, and Might. God's Hiding of Himself, and Subsequent Revelation. To Marcion's God Such a Concealment and Manifestation Impossible. God's Predestination. No Such Prior System of Intention Possible to a God Previously Unknown as Was Marcion's. The Powers of the World Which Crucified Christ. St. Paul, as a Wise Master-Builder, Associated with Prophecy. Sundry Injunctions of the Apostle Parallel with the Teaching of the Old Testament.
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Chapter
VI.—The Divine Way of Wisdom, and Greatness, and Might.
God’s Hiding of Himself, and Subsequent Revelation. To
Marcion’s God Such a Concealment and Manifestation
Impossible. God’s Predestination. No Such Prior System of
Intention Possible to a God Previously Unknown as Was Marcion’s.
The Powers of the World Which Crucified Christ. St. Paul, as a Wise
Master-Builder, Associated with Prophecy. Sundry Injunctions of
the Apostle Parallel with the Teaching of the Old Testament.
By all these statements, therefore, does he show
us what God he means, when he says, “We speak the wisdom of God
among them that are perfect.”5426
It is that God
who has confounded the wisdom of the wise, who has brought to nought
the understanding of the prudent, who has reduced to folly5427
the world’s wisdom, by choosing its
foolish things, and disposing them to the attainment of salvation. This
wisdom, he says, once lay hidden in things that were foolish, weak, and
lacking in honour; once also was latent under figures, allegories, and
enigmatical types; but it was afterwards to be revealed in Christ, who
was set “as a light to the Gentiles,”5428
by the Creator who promised through the
mouth of Isaiah that He would discover “the hidden treasures,
which eye had not seen.”5429
Now, that that god
should have ever hidden anything who had never made a cover wherein to
practise concealment, is in itself a wholly incredible idea. If he
existed, concealment of himself was out of the question—to say
nothing5430
of any of his
religious ordinances.5431
The Creator, on the
contrary, was as well known in Himself as His ordinances were.
These, we know, were publicly instituted5432
in
Israel; but they lay overshadowed with latent meanings, in which the
wisdom of God was concealed,5433
to be brought to
light by and by amongst “the perfect,” when the time should
come, but “pre-ordained in the counsels of God before the
ages.”5434
But whose ages, if
not the Creator’s? For because ages consist of times, and times
are made up of days, and months, and years; since also days, and
months, and years are measured by suns, and moons, and stars, which He
ordained for this purpose (for “they shall be,” says He,
“for signs of the months and the years”),5435
it clearly follows that the ages belong to
the Creator, and that nothing of what was fore-ordained before the ages
can be said to be the property of any other being than Him who claims
the ages also as His own. Else let Marcion show that the ages belong to
his god. He must then also claim the world itself for
him; for it is in it that the
ages are reckoned, the vessel as it were5436
of
the times, as well as the signs thereof, or their order. But he has no
such demonstration to show us. I go back therefore to the point, and
ask him this question: Why did (his god) fore-ordain our glory before
the ages of the Creator? I could understand his having predetermined it
before the ages, if he had revealed it at the commencement of
time.5437
| 5437 Introductione
sæculi. | But when he does this almost at the very
expiration of all the ages5438
| 5438 Pæne jam totis
sæculis prodactis. | of the Creator, his
predestination before the ages, and not rather within the ages, was in
vain, because he did not mean to make any revelation of his purpose
until the ages had almost run out their course. For it is wholly
inconsistent in him to be so forward in planning purposes, who is so
backward in revealing them.
In the Creator, however, the two courses were
perfectly compatible—both the predestination before the ages and
the revelation at the end thereof, because that which He both
fore-ordained and revealed He also in the intermediate space of time
announced by the pre-ministration of figures, and symbols, and
allegories. But because (the apostle) subjoins, on the subject of
our glory, that “none of the princes of this world knew it, for
had they known it they would not have crucified the Lord of
glory,”5439
the heretic argues
that the princes of this world crucified the Lord (that is, the Christ
of the rival god) in order that this blow might even
recoil5440
on the Creator
Himself. Any one, however, who has seen from what we have already said
how our glory must be regarded as issuing from the Creator, will
already have come to the conclusion that, inasmuch as the Creator
settled it in His own secret purpose, it properly enough was unknown to
all the princes5441
and powers of the
Creator, on the principle that servants are not permitted to know their
masters’ plans, much less the fallen angels and the leader of
transgression himself, the devil; for I should contend that
these, on account of their fall, were greater strangers still to
any knowledge of the Creator’s dispensations. But it is no longer
open to me5442
| 5442 Sed jam nec mihi
competit. | even to interpret
the princes and powers of this world as the Creator’s, since the
apostle imputes ignorance to them, whereas even the devil
according to our Gospel recognised Jesus in the temptation,5443
and, according to the record which is common
to both (Marcionites and ourselves) the evil spirit knew that Jesus was
the Holy One of God, and that Jesus was His name, and that He was come
to destroy them.5444
The parable also of
the strong man armed, whom a stronger than he overcame and seized his
goods, is admitted by Marcion to have reference to the
Creator:5445
| 5445 In Creatoris accipitur
apud Marcionem. | therefore the
Creator could not have been ignorant any longer of the God of glory,
since He is overcome by him;5446
| 5446 Considered, in the
hypothesis, as Marcion’s god. | nor could He have
crucified him whom He was unable to cope with. The inevitable
inference, therefore, as it seems to me, is that we must believe that
the princes and powers of the Creator did knowingly crucify the God of
glory in His Christ, with that desperation and excessive malice with
which the most abandoned slaves do not even hesitate to slay their
masters. For it is written in my Gospel5447
that “Satan entered into Judas.”5448
According to Marcion, however, the apostle in the passage under
consideration5449
does not allow the
imputation of ignorance, with respect to the Lord of glory, to the
powers of the Creator; because, indeed, he will have it that these are
not meant by “the princes of this world.” But (the
apostle) evidently5450
did not speak of
spiritual princes; so that he meant secular ones, those of the princely
people, (chief in the divine dispensation, although) not, of course,
amongst the nations of the world, and their rulers, and king Herod, and
even Pilate, and, as represented by him,5451
that power of Rome which was the greatest in the world, and then
presided over by him. Thus the arguments of the other side are pulled
down, and our own proofs are thereby built up. But you still maintain
that our glory comes from your god, with whom it also lay in
secret. Then why does your god employ the self-same
Scripture5452
which the apostle
also relies on? What has your god to do at all with the sayings of the
prophets? “Who hath discovered the mind of the Lord, or who hath
been His counsellor?”5453
So says Isaiah.
What has he also to do with illustrations from our God? For when (the
apostle) calls himself “a wise master-builder,”5454
we find that the Creator by Isaiah
designates the teacher who sketches5455
out the divine
discipline by the same title, “I will take away from Judah the
cunning artificer,”5456
| 5456 So the A.V. of
Isa. iii. 3; but the Septuagint and St. Paul use the
self-same term, σοφὸς
ἀρχιτέκτων. | etc. And was it not Paul himself who was
there foretold, destined “to be taken away from
Judah”—that is, from Judaism—for the erection of
Christianity, in order “to lay that only foundation, which is
Christ?”5457
Of this work the
Creator also by the same prophet says, “Behold, I lay in Sion for
a foundation a precious stone and honourable; and he that resteth
thereon shall not be confounded.”5458
Unless it be, that God professed Himself to be the builder up of
an earthly work, that so He might not give any sign of His Christ, as
destined to be the foundation of such as believe in Him, upon which
every man should build at will the superstructure of either sound or
worthless doctrine; forasmuch as it is the Creator’s function,
when a man’s work shall be tried by fire, (or) when a reward
shall be recompensed to him by fire; because it is by fire that the
test is applied to the building which you erect upon the foundation
which is laid by Him, that is, the foundation of His Christ.5459
| 5459 We add the original of
this sentence: “Nisi si structorem se terreni operis Deus
profitebatur, ut non de suo Christo significaret, qui futurus esset
fundamentum credentium in eum, super quod prout quisque superstruxerit,
dignam scilicet vel indignam doctrinam si opus ejus per ignem
probabitur, si merces illi per ignem rependetur, creatoris est, quia
per ignem judicatur vestra superædificatio, utique sui fundamenti,
id est sui Christi.” Tertullian is arguing upon an
hypothesis suggested by Marcion’s withdrawal of his Christ
from everything “terrene.” Such a process as is
described by St. Paul in this passage, 1 Cor. i. 12–15, must be left to the Creator and
His Christ. | “Know ye not that ye are the temple of
God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?”5460
Now, since man is the property, and the
work, and the image and likeness of the Creator, having his flesh,
formed by Him of the ground, and his soul of His afflatus, it
follows that Marcion’s god wholly dwells in a temple which
belongs to another, if so be we are not the Creator’s temple. But
“if any man defile the temple of God, he shall be himself
destroyed”5461
| 5461 The text has
vitiabitur, “shall be
defiled.” | —of course, by
the God of the temple.5462
If you threaten an
avenger, you threaten us with the Creator. “Ye must become fools,
that ye may be wise.”5463
Wherefore?
“Because the wisdom of this world is foolishness with
God.”5464
With what God? Even
if the ancient Scriptures have contributed nothing in support of our
view thus far,5465
| 5465 The older reading,
“adhuc sensum pristina præjudicaverunt,” we
have preferred to Oehler’s “ad hunc sensum,” etc. | an excellent
testimony turns up in what (the apostle) here adjoins: “For it is
written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness; and again, The
Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise, that they are
vain.”5466
| 5466 1 Cor. iii. 19, 20; Job v. 13; Ps. xciv.
11. | For in general we
may conclude for certain that he could not possibly have cited the
authority of that God whom he was bound to destroy, since he would not
teach for Him.5467
| 5467 Si non illi
doceret. |
“Therefore,” says he, “let no man glory in
man;”5468
an injunction which
is in accordance with the teaching of the Creator, “wretched is
the man that trusteth in man;”5469
again,
“It is better to trust in the Lord than to confide in
man;”5470
and the same thing
is said about glorying (in princes).5471
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