Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the Creator's Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion's God. The Catholic Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to the Substance.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XIX.—The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the
Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of
the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the
Creator’s Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness
of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion’s God. The Catholic
Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to
the Substance.
I am accustomed in my prescription against all
heresies, to fix my compendious criterion6057
(of truth) in the testimony of time; claiming priority
therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the
characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the
apostle, when he says: “For the hope which is laid up for you in
heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel;
which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.”6058
For if, even at that time, the tradition of
the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our
gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel,
much less Marcion’s, which only dates from the reign of
Antoninus,6059
| 6059 Antoniniani Marcionis:
see above in book i. chap. xix. | then ours will be
the gospel of the apostles. But should Marcion’s gospel
succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be
entitled to the character of apostolic. For this quality, it will be
evident, can only belong to that gospel which was the first to fill the
world; in other words, to the gospel of that God who of old declared
this of its promulgation: “Their sound is gone out through all
the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”6060
He calls Christ “the image of the
invisible God.”6061
We in like manner
say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the
Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was
vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father)
Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference
between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote
this we find a description of our God to this effect: “No man can
see the Lord, and live.”6062
If Christ is not
“the first-begotten before every creature,”6063
| 6063 Col. i. 15. Our author’s “primogenitus
conditionis” is St. Paul’s πρωτότοκος
πάσης
κτίσεως, for the
meaning of which see Bp. Ellicott, in loc. | as that “Word of God by whom all
things were made, and without whom nothing was made;”6064
if “all things were” not
“in Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and
invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or
powers;” if “all things were” not “created by
Him and for Him” (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow
concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it
down, that “He is before all.”6065
For how is He before all, if He is not before all
things?6066
How, again, is He
before all things, if He is not “the first-born of every
creature”—if He is not the Word of the Creator?6067
| 6067 Creatoris is
our author’s word. | Now how will he be proved to have been
before all things, who appeared after all things? Who can tell
whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he
had any existence at all? In what way also could it have
“pleased (the Father) that in Him should all fulness
dwell?”6068
For, to begin with,
what fulness is that which is not comprised of the constituents which
Marcion has removed from it,—even those that were “created
in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth,” whether angels or men?
which is not made of the things that are visible and invisible? which
consists not of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers?
If, on the other hand,6069
our false apostles
and Judaizing gospellers6070
have
introduced all these
things out of their own stores, and Marcion has applied them to
constitute the fulness of his own god, (this hypothesis, absurd though
it be, alone would justify him;) for how, on any other
supposition,6071
could the rival and
the destroyer of the Creator have been willing that His fulness should
dwell in his Christ? To whom, again, does He “reconcile all
things by Himself, making peace by the blood of His
cross,”6072
but to Him whom
those very things had altogether6073
| 6073 “Una ipsa”
is Oehler’s reading instead of universa. | offended,
against whom they had rebelled by transgression, (but) to whom they had
at last returned?6074
| 6074 Cujus novissime
fuerant. | Conciliated
they might have been to a strange god; but reconciled they could
not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly,
ourselves “who were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by
wicked works”6075
does He reconcile
to the Creator, against whom we had committed offence—worshipping
the creature to the prejudice of the Creator. As, however, he says
elsewhere,6076
that the Church is
the body of Christ, so here also (the apostle) declares that he
“fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in
his flesh for His body’s sake, which is the
Church.”6077
But you must not on
this account suppose that on every mention of His body the term is only
a metaphor, instead of meaning real flesh. For he says above that we
are “reconciled in His body through death;”6078
meaning, of course, that He died in that
body wherein death was possible through the flesh: (therefore he adds,)
not through the Church6079
| 6079 As if only in a
metaphorical body, in which sense the Church is “His
body.” | (per
ecclesiam), but expressly for the sake of the Church
(proper ecclesiam), exchanging body for body—one of flesh
for a spiritual one. When, again, he warns them to “beware
of subtle words and philosophy,” as being “a vain
deceit,” such as is “after the rudiments of the
world” (not understanding thereby the mundane fabric of sky and
earth, but worldly learning, and “the tradition of men,”
subtle in their speech and their philosophy),6080
it
would be tedious, and the proper subject of a separate work, to show
how in this sentence (of the apostle’s) all heresies are
condemned, on the ground of their consisting of the resources of subtle
speech and the rules of philosophy. But (once for all) let Marcion know
that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus,
implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent;6081
| 6081 “Dominum
inferens hebetem;” with which may be compared
Cicero (De Divin. ii. 50, 103): “Videsne Epicurum quem
hebetem et rudem dicere solent Stoici…qui negat, quidquam deos
nec alieni curare, nec sui.” The otiose and
inert character of the god of Epicurus is referred to by
Tertullian not unfrequently; see above, in book iv. chap. xv.;
Apolog. 47, and Ad Nationes, ii. 2; whilst in
De Anima, 3, he characterizes the philosophy of Epicurus by a
similar term: “Prout aut Platonis honor, aut Zenonis vigor,
aut Aristotelis tenor, aut Epicuri stupor, aut Heracliti
mæror, aut Empedoclis furor persuaserunt.” | wherefore he refuses to say that He is an
object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings
out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine
Creator.6082
| 6082 The Stoical
dogma of the eternity of matter and its equality with God
was also held by Hermogenes; see his Adv. Hermogenem, c.
4, “Materiam parem Deo infert.” | He also denies the
resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of
philosophy agreed together to hold.6083
| 6083 Pliny, Nat.
Hist. vii. 55, refers to the peculiar opinion of Democritus on this
subject (Fr. Junius). | But how remote
is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it
dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced
all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the
grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that
Christ was born of the virgin’s womb! At this, philosophers, and
heretics, and the very heathen, laugh and jeer. For “God hath
chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
wise”6084
—that God, no
doubt, who in reference to this very dispensation of His threatened
long before that He would “destroy the wisdom of the
wise.”6085
| 6085 Isa. xxix. 14, quoted 1 Cor. i. 19; comp. Jer.
viii. 9 and Job v. 12, 13. | Thanks to this
simplicity of truth, so opposed to the subtlety and vain deceit of
philosophy, we cannot possibly have any relish for such perverse
opinions. Then, if God “quickens us together with Christ,
forgiving us our trespasses,”6086
we cannot
suppose that sins are forgiven by Him against whom, as having been all
along unknown, they could not have been committed. Now tell me,
Marcion, what is your opinion of the apostle’s language, when he
says, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect
of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, which is a shadow
of things to come, but the body is of Christ?”6087
We do not now treat of the law, further than
(to remark) that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been
abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance—that is, from
figurative types to the reality, which is Christ. The shadow,
therefore, is His to whom belongs the body also; in other words, the
law is His, and so is Christ. If you separate the law and Christ,
assigning one to one god and the other to another, it is the same as if
you were to attempt to
separate the shadow from the body of which it is the shadow. Manifestly
Christ has relation to the law, if the body has to its shadow. But when
he blames those who alleged visions of angels as their authority for
saying that men must abstain from meats—“you must not
touch, you must not taste”—in a voluntary humility, (at the
same time) “vainly puffed up in the fleshly mind, and not holding
the Head,”6088
(the apostle) does
not in these terms attack the law or Moses, as if it was at the
suggestion of superstitious angels that he had enacted his prohibition
of sundry aliments. For Moses had evidently received the law from God.
When, therefore, he speaks of their “following the commandments
and doctrines of men,”6089
he refers to the
conduct of those persons who “held not the Head,” even Him
in whom all things are gathered together;6090
for they are all recalled to Christ, and concentrated in Him as their
initiating principle6091
—even the
meats and drinks which were indifferent in their nature. All the rest
of his precepts,6092
| 6092 Contained in Vol. iii.
and iv. | as we have shown
sufficiently, when treating of them as they occurred in another
epistle,6093
| 6093 In the Epistle to the
Laodiceans or Ephesians; see his remarks in the preceding chapter of
this book v. | emanated from the
Creator, who, while predicting that “old things were to pass
away,” and that He would “make all things
new,”6094
| 6094 Isa. xliii. 18, 19, and lxv. 17; 2 Cor. v.
17. | commanded men
“to break up fresh ground for themselves,”6095
| 6095 Jer. iv. 3. This and the passage of Isaiah just
quoted are also cited together above, book iv. chap. i. and ii. p.
345. | and thereby taught them even then to put off
the old man and put on the new.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
