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| The Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion's Christ. The Man of Sin--What? Inconsistency of Marcion's View. The Antichrist. The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning. Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the Creator. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XVI.—The
Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its
Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the
Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion’s Christ. The Man of
Sin—What? Inconsistency of Marcion’s View. The Antichrist.
The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and
Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning.
Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the
Creator.
We are obliged from time to time to recur to
certain topics in order to affirm truths which are connected
with them. We repeat then here, that as the Lord is by the apostle
proclaimed5920 as the awarder of
both weal and woe,5921
5921 Utriusque meriti:
“of both the eternal sentences.” | He must be either
the Creator, or (as Marcion would be loth to admit) One like the
Creator—“with whom it is a righteous thing to recompense
tribulation to them who afflict us, and to ourselves, who are
afflicted, rest, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed as coming from
heaven with the angels of His might and in flaming
fire.”5922 The heretic,
however, has erased the flaming fire, no doubt that he might
extinguish all traces herein of our own God. But the folly of the
obliteration is clearly seen. For as the apostle declares that the Lord
will come “to take vengeance on them that know not God and that
obey not the gospel, who,” he says, “shall be punished with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the
glory of His power”5923 —it follows
that, as He comes to inflict punishment, He must require “the
flaming fire.” Thus on this consideration too we must,
notwithstanding Marcion’s opposition, conclude that Christ
belongs to a God who kindles the flames5924
(of vengeance), and therefore to the Creator, inasmuch as He takes
vengeance on such as know not the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he
has mentioned separately “those who obey not the gospel of our
Lord Jesus Christ,”5925 whether they be
sinners among Christians or among Jews. Now, to inflict punishment on
the heathen, who very likely have never heard of the Gospel, is not the
function of that God who is naturally unknown, and who is revealed
nowhere else than in the Gospel, and therefore cannot be known by all
men.5926
5926 Non omnibus
scibilis. | The Creator, however, ought to be known even
by (the light of) nature, for He may be understood from His works, and
may thereby become the object of a more widely spread knowledge. To
Him, therefore, does it appertain to punish such as know not
God, for none ought to be ignorant of Him. In the (apostle’s)
phrase, “From the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His
power,”5927 he uses the words
of Isaiah who for the express reason makes the self-same Lord
“arise to shake terribly the earth.”5928 Well, but who is the man of sin, the son of
perdition,” who must first be revealed before the Lord comes;
“who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or
that is worshipped; who is to sit in the temple of God, and boast
himself as being God?”5929 According indeed to
our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and
the new prophecies,5930
5930 The prophets of the
Old and the New Testament. | and
especially by the Apostle John, who says that “already
many false prophets are gone out into the world,” the
fore-runners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ is come in the
flesh,5931 and do not
acknowledge5932
5932 Solventes Jesum. This
expression receives some explanation from the Vulgate version of
1 John iv. 3: “Et omnis spiritus qui
solvit Jesum Christum ex Deo non est.” From
Irenæus, Vol. I., 443 (Harvey, ii. 89), we learn that the Gnostics
divided Jesus from Christ: “Alterum quidem Jesum
intelligunt, alterum autem Christum,”—an error which
was met in the clause of the creed expressing faith in “One
Lord Jesus Christ.” Grabe, after Socrates, Hist.
Eccles. vii. 32, says that the oldest mss. of St. John’s epistle read πᾶν
πνεῦμα ὅ λύει
τὸν
᾽Ιησοῦν. If so, Tertullian
must be regarded as combining the two readings, viz., that which we
find in the received text and this just quoted. Thus Grabe. It would be
better to say that T. read ver. 2
as we have it, only omitting ᾽Ιησοῦν; and in ver.
3 read the old lection to
which Socrates refers instead of πᾶν πνεῦμα ὅ
μὴ
ὁμολογεὶ. | Jesus (to be the
Christ), meaning in God the Creator. According, however, to
Marcion’s view, it is really hard to know whether He might not be
(after all) the Creator’s Christ; because according to him
He is not yet come. But whichsoever of the two it is, I want to
know why he comes “in all power, and with lying signs and
wonders?”5933
“Because,” he says, “they received not the love of
the truth, that they might be saved; for which cause God shall send
them an instinct of delusion5934
5934 Instinctum
fallaciæ. | (to believe a lie),
that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had
pleasure in unrighteousness.”5935 If therefore
he be Antichrist, (as we hold), and comes according to the
Creator’s purpose, it must be God the Creator who sends him to
fasten in their error those who did not believe the truth, that they
might be saved; His likewise must be the truth and the
salvation, who avenges (the contempt of) them by sending error as their
substitute5936 —that is, the
Creator, to whom that very wrath is a fitting attribute, which deceives
with a lie those who are not captivated with truth. If, however, he is
not Antichrist, as we suppose (him to be) then He is the Christ of the
Creator, as Marcion will have it. In this case how happens it that
he5937
5937 Marcion, or
rather his Christ, who on the hypothesis absurdly employs the
Creator’s Christ on the flagrantly inconsistent mission of
avenging his truth, i.e. Marcionism. | can suborn the Creator’s Christ to
avenge his truth? But should he after all agree with us, that
Antichrist is here meant, I must then likewise ask how it is that he
finds Satan, an angel of the Creator, necessary to his purpose? Why,
too, should Antichrist be slain by Him, whilst commissioned by
the Creator to execute the function5938
5938 Habens
fungi…Creatori. | of inspiring
men with their love of untruth? In short, it is incontestable
that the emissary,5939 and the truth, and
the salvation belong to Him to whom also appertain the wrath, and the
jealousy,5940 and “the
sending of the strong delusion,”5941 on
those who despise and mock, as well as upon those who are ignorant of
Him; and therefore even Marcion will now have to come down a step, and
concede to us that his god is “a jealous god.” (This being
then an unquestionable position, I ask) which God has the greater right
to be angry? He, as I suppose, who from the beginning of all things has
given to man, as primary witnesses for the knowledge of Himself, nature
in her (manifold) works, kindly providences, plagues,5942
5942 Plagis: “heavy
strokes,” in opposition to the previous
“beneficiis.” | and indications (of His divinity),5943 but who in spite of all this evidence has
not been acknowledged; or he who has been brought out to view5944 once for all in one only copy of the
gospel—and even that without any sure authority—which
actually makes no secret of proclaiming another god? Now He who has the
right of inflicting the vengeance, has also sole claim to that which
occasions5945 the vengeance, I
mean the Gospel; (in other words,) both the truth and (its
accompanying) salvation. The charge, that “if any would not work,
neither should he eat,”5946 is in strict
accordance with the precept of Him who ordered that “the mouth of
the ox that treadeth out the corn should not be
muzzled.”5947
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