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  • The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ. The Newness of the New Testament. The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel, Not Reprehensible on Marcion's Principles. The Jews Guilty in Rejecting the Christ of the Creator. Satan, the God of This World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The Creator's Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies.
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    Chapter XI.—The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ.  The Newness of the New Testament.  The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel, Not Reprehensible on Marcion’s Principles. The Jews Guilty in Rejecting the Christ of the Creator.  Satan, the God of This World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The Creator’s Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies.

    If, owing to the fault of human error, the word God has become a common name (since in the world there are said and believed to be “gods many”5679

    5679 1 Cor. viii. 5.

    ), yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ,”5680

    5680 2 Cor. i. 3.

    will be understood to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that He had made), as you find in Genesis,5681

    5681 Gen. i. 22.

    and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells us.5682

    5682 Dan. ii. 19, 20; iii. 28, 29; iv. 34, 37" id="v.iv.vi.xi-p6.1" parsed="|Dan|2|19|2|20;|Dan|3|28|3|29;|Dan|4|34|0|0;|Dan|4|37|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Dan.2.19-Dan.2.20 Bible:Dan.3.28-Dan.3.29 Bible:Dan.4.34 Bible:Dan.4.37">Dan. ii. 19, 20; iii. 28, 29; iv. 34, 37.

    Now, if the title of Father may be claimed for (Marcion’s) sterile god, how much more for the Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also “the Father of mercies,”5683

    5683 2 Cor. i. 3.

    and (in the prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy.”5684

    5684 Ps. lxxxvi. 15; cxii. 4; cxlv. 8; Jonah iv. 2.

    In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites.5685

    5685 Jonah iii. 8.

    How inflexible was He at the tears of Hezekiah!5686

    5686 2 Kings xx. 3; 5.

    How ready to forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel, the blood of Naboth, when he deprecated His anger.5687

    5687 1 Kings xxi. 27; 29.

    How prompt in pardoning David on his confession of his sin5688

    5688 2 Sam. xii. 13.

    —preferring, indeed, the sinner’s repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of mercy.5689

    5689 Ezek. xxxiii. 11.

    Now, if Marcion’s god has exhibited or proclaimed any such thing as this, I will allow him to be “the Father of mercies.” Since, however, he ascribes to him this title only from the time he has been revealed, as if he were the father of mercies from the time only when he began to liberate the human race, then we on our side, too,5690

    5690 Atquin et nos.

    adopt the same precise date of his alleged revelation; but it is that we may deny him! It is then not competent to him to ascribe any quality to his god, whom indeed he only promulged by the fact of such an ascription; for only if it were previously evident that his god had an existence, could he be permitted to ascribe an attribute to him. The ascribed attribute is only an accident; but accidents5691

    5691 The Contingent qualities in logic.

    are preceded by the statement of the thing itself of which they are predicated, especially when another claims the attribute which is ascribed to him who has not been previously shown to exist. Our denial of his existence will be all the more peremptory, because of the fact that the attribute which is alleged in proof of it belongs to that God who has been already revealed. Therefore “the New Testament” will appertain to none other than Him who promised it—if not “its letter, yet its spirit;”5692

    5692 2 Cor. iii. 6.

    and herein will lie its newness. Indeed, He who had engraved its letter in stones is the same as He who had said of its spirit, “I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh.”5693

    5693 Joel ii. 28.

    Even if “the letter killeth, yet the Spirit giveth life;”5694

    5694 2 Cor. iii. 6.

    and both belong to Him who says: “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.”5695

    5695 Deut. xxxii. 39.

    We have already made good the Creator’s claim to this twofold character of judgment and goodness5696

    5696 See above in book ii. [cap. xi. p. 306.]

    —“killing in the letter” through the law, and “quickening in the Spirit” through the Gospel. Now these attributes, however different they be, cannot possibly make two gods; for they have already (in the prevenient dispensation of the Old Testament) been found to meet in One.5697

    5697 Apud unum recenseri prævenerunt.

    He alludes to Mosesveil, covered with which “his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children of Israel.”5698

    5698 2 Cor. iii. 7; 13.

    Since he did this to maintain the superiority of the glory of the New Testament, which is permanent in its glory, over that of the Old, “which was to be done away,”5699

    5699 2 Cor. iii. 7, 8.

    this fact gives support to my belief which exalts the Gospel above the law and you must look well to it that it does not even more than this. For only there is superiority possible where was previously the thing over which superiority can be affirmed. But then he says, “But their minds were blinded5700

    5700 Obtunsi: “blunted,” 2 Cor. iii. 14.

    —of the world; certainly not the Creator’s mind, but the minds of the people which are in the world.5701

    5701 He seems to have read the clause as applying to the world, but St. Paul certainly refers only to the obdurate Jews. The text is:  “Sed obtunsi sunt sensus mundi.

    Of Israel he says, Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart;”5702

    5702 2 Cor. iii. 15.

    showing that the veil which was on the face of Moses was a figure of the veil which is on the heart of the nation still; because even now Moses is not seen by them in heart, just as he was not then seen by them in eye. But what concern has Paul with the veil which still obscures Moses from their view, if the Christ of the Creator, whom Moses predicted, is not yet come? How are the hearts of the Jews represented as still covered and veiled, if the predictions of Moses relating to Christ, in whom it was their duty to believe through him, are as yet unfulfilled? What had the apostle of a strange Christ to complain of, if the Jews failed in understanding the mysterious announcements of their own God, unless the veil which was upon their hearts had reference to that blindness which concealed from their eyes the Christ of Moses? Then, again, the words which follow, But when it shall turn to the Lord, the evil shall be taken away,”5703

    5703 2 Cor. iii. 16.

    properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze Mosesveil is spread, to the effect that, when he is turned to the faith of Christ, he will understand how Moses spoke of Christ. But how shall the veil of the Creator be taken away by the Christ of another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not possibly have veiled—unknown mysteries, as they were of an unknown god? So he says that “we now with open face” (meaning the candour of the heart, which in the Jews had been covered with a veil), “beholding Christ, are changed into the same image, from that glory” (wherewith Moses was transfigured as by the glory of the Lord) “to another glory.”5704

    5704 2 Cor. iii. 18.

    By thus setting forth the glory which illumined the person of Moses from his interview with God, and the veil which concealed the same from the infirmity of the people, and by superinducing thereupon the revelation and the glory of the Spirit in the person of Christ—“even as,” to use his words, “by the Spirit of the Lord5705

    5705 2 Cor. iii. 18, but T.’s reading is “tanquam a domino spirituum” (“even as by the Lord of the Spirits,” probably the sevenfold Spirit.). The original is, καθάπερ ἀπὸ Κυρίου Πνεύματος, “by the Lord the Spirit.”

    —he testifies that the whole Mosaic system5706

    5706 Moysi ordinem totum.

    was a figure of Christ, of whom the Jews indeed were ignorant, but who is known to us Christians. We are quite aware that some passages are open to ambiguity, from the way in which they are read, or else from their punctuation, when there is room for these two causes of ambiguity. The latter method has been adopted by Marcion, by reading the passage which follows, “in whom the God of this world,”5707

    5707 2 Cor. iv. 4.

    as if it described the Creator as the God of this world, in order that he may, by these words, imply that there is another God for the other world. We, however, say that the passage ought to be punctuated with a comma after God, to this effect: “In whom God hath blinded the eyes of the unbelievers of this world.”5708

    5708 He would stop off the phrase τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου from ὁ Θεὸς, and remove it to the end of the sentence as a qualification of τῶν ἀπίστων. He adds another interpretation just afterwards, which, we need not say, is both more consistent with the sense of the passage and with the consensus of Christian writers of all ages, although “it is historically curious” (as Dean Alford has remarked) “that Irenæus [Hæres. iv. 48, Origen, Tertullian (v. 11, contra Marcion)], Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Theodoret, Theophylact, all repudiate, in their zeal against the Manichæans, the grammatical rendering, and take τῶν ἀπίστων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου together” (Greek Testament, in loc.). [I have corrected Alford’s reference to Tertullian which he makes B. iv. 11.]

    “In whom” means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel is still hidden under Mosesveil. Now it is these whom God had threatened for “loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their heart was far from Him,”5709

    5709 Isa. xxix. 13.

    in these angry words: “Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see with your eyes, but not perceive;”5710

    5710 Isa. vi. 10 (only adapted).

    and, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand;”5711

    5711 Isa. vii. 9, Sept.

    and again, “I will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought5712

    5712 Sept. κρὐψω, “will hide.”

    the understanding of their prudent ones.”  But these words, of course, He did not pronounce against them for concealing the gospel of the unknown God.  At any rate, if there is a God of this world,5713

    5713 Said concessively, in reference to M.’s position above mentioned.

    He blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be understood from His Scriptures.5714

    5714 Marcion’s “God of this world” being the God of the Old Testament.

    Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length5715

    5715 Hactenus: pro non amplius (Oehler) tractasse.

    this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage,5716

    5716 “A fuller criticism on this slight matter might give his opponent the advantage, as apparently betraying a penury of weightier and more certain arguments” (Oehler).

    indeed, I might have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready to hand in interpreting “the god of this world” of the devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: “I will be like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the clouds.”5717

    5717 Isa. xiv. 14.

    The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands,5718

    5718 Mancipata est illi.

    so that he blinds effectually the hearts of unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion’s. Now he did not observe how much this clause of the sentence made against him: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to (give) the light of the knowledge (of His glory) in the face of (Jesus) Christ.”5719

    5719 2 Cor. iv. 6.

    Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?”5720

    5720 Gen. i. 3.

    And who was it that said to Christ concerning giving light to the world: “I have set Thee as a light to the Gentiles”5721

    5721 Isa. xlix. 6 (Sept. quoted in Acts xiii. 47).

    —to them, that is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?”5722

    5722 Isa. ix. 2 and Matt. iv. 16.

    (None else, surely, than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of the future, saying, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath been displayed upon us.”5723

    5723 Ps. iv. 7 (Sept.).

    Now the countenance (or person5724

    5724 Persona: the πρόσωπον of the Septuagint.

    ) of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the image of God.”5725

    5725 2 Cor. iv. 4.

    Since Christ, then, is the person of the Creator, who said, “Let there be light,” it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel, and the veil, and Moses—nay, the whole of the dispensations—belong to the God who is the Creator of this world, according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and certainly not to him who never said, “Let there be light.” I here pass over discussion about another epistle, which we hold to have been written to the Ephesians, but the heretics to the Laodiceans. In it he tells5726

    5726 Ait.

    them to remember, that at the time when they were Gentiles they were without Christ, aliens from (the commonwealth of) Israel, without intercourse, without the covenants and any hope of promise, nay, without God, even in his own world,5727

    5727 Eph. ii. 12.

    as the Creator thereof. Since therefore he said, that the Gentiles were without God, whilst their god was the devil, not the Creator, it is clear that he must be understood to be the lord of this world, whom the Gentiles received as their god—not the Creator, of whom they were in ignorance. But how does it happen, that “the treasure which we have in these earthen vessels of ours”5728

    5728 2 Cor. iv. 7.

    should not be regarded as belonging to the God who owns the vessels? Now since God’s glory is, that so great a treasure is contained in earthen vessels, and since these earthen vessels are of the Creator’s make, it follows that the glory is the Creator’s; nay, since these vessels of His smack so much of the excellency of the power of God, that power itself must be His also! Indeed, all these things have been consigned to the said “earthen vessels” for the very purpose that His excellence might be manifested forth. Henceforth, then, the rival god will have no claim to the glory, and consequently none to the power. Rather, dishonour and weakness will accrue to him, because the earthen vessels with which he had nothing to do have received all the excellency! Well, then, if it be in these very earthen vessels that he tells us we have to endure so great sufferings,5729

    5729 2 Cor. iv. 8–12.

    in which we bear about with us the very dying of God,5730

    5730 Oehler, after Fr. Junius, defends the reading “mortificationem dei,” instead of Domini, in reference to Marcion, who seems to have so corrupted the reading.

    (Marcion’s) god is really ungrateful and unjust, if he does not mean to restore this same substance of ours at the resurrection, wherein so much has been endured in loyalty to him, in which Christ’s very death is borne about, wherein too the excellency of his power is treasured.5731

    5731 2 Cor. iv. 10.

    For he gives prominence to the statement, “That the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body,”5732

    5732 2 Cor. iv. 10.

    as a contrast to the preceding, that His death is borne about in our body. Now of what life of Christ does he here speak?  Of that which we are now living?  Then how is it, that in the words which follow he exhorts us not to the things which are seen and are temporal, but to those which are not seen and are eternal5733

    5733 2 Cor. iv. 16–18.

    —in other words, not to the present, but to the future? But if it be of the future life of Christ that he speaks, intimating that it is to be made manifest in our body,5734

    5734 2 Cor. iv. 11.

    then he has clearly predicted the resurrection of the flesh.5735

    5735 2 Cor. iv. 14.

    He says, too, that “our outward man perishes,”5736

    5736 2 Cor. iv. 16.

    not meaning by an eternal perdition after death, but by labours and sufferings, in reference to which he previously said, “For which cause we will not faint.”5737

    5737 2 Cor. iv. 16.

    Now, when he adds of “the inward man” also, that it “is renewed day by day,” he demonstrates both issues here—the wasting away of the body by the wear and tear5738

    5738 Vexatione.

    of its trials, and the renewal of the soul5739

    5739 Animi.

    by its contemplation of the promises.

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