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| Another Foolish Erasure of Marcion's Exposed. Certain Figurative Expressions of the Apostle, Suggested by the Language of the Old Testament. Collation of Many Passages of This Epistle, with Precepts and Statements in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophets. All Alike Teach Us the Will and Purpose of the Creator.
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Chapter XVIII.—Another
Foolish Erasure of Marcion’s Exposed. Certain Figurative
Expressions of the Apostle, Suggested by the Language of the Old
Testament. Collation of Many Passages of This Epistle, with Precepts
and Statements in the Pentateuch, the Psalms, and the Prophets. All
Alike Teach Us the Will and Purpose of the Creator.
As our heretic is so fond of his pruning-knife, I
do not wonder when syllables are expunged by his hand, seeing that
entire pages are usually the matter on which he practises his effacing
process. The apostle declares that to himself, “less than the
least of all saints, was the grace given” of enlightening all men
as to “what was the fellowship of the mystery, which during the
ages had been hid in God, who created all things.”6003
The heretic erased the preposition
in, and made the clause run thus: (“what is the fellowship
of the mystery) which hath for ages been hidden from the God who
created all things.”6004
| 6004 The passage of St.
Paul, as Tertullian expresses it, “Quæ dispensatio
sacramenti occulti ab ævis in Deo, qui omnia condidit.”
According to Marcion’s alteration, the latter part runs,
“Occulti ab ævis Deo, qui omnia condidit.” The
original is, Τίς ἡ
οἰκονομία
τοῦ
μυστηρίου
τοῦ
ἀποκεκρυμμένου
ἀπὸ τῶν
αἰώνων ἐν τῷ
Θεῷ (compare Col. iii. 3) τῷ τὰ πάντα
κτίσαντι.
Marcion’s removal of the ἐν has
no warrant of ms. authority; it upsets St.
Paul’s doctrine, as attested in other passages, and destroys the
grammatical structure. | The falsification,
however, is flagrantly6005
absurd. For the
apostle goes on to infer (from his own statement): “in order that
unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might become
known through the church the manifold wisdom of God.”6006
Whose principalities and powers does
he mean? If the Creator’s, how does it come to pass that such a God
as He could have meant His wisdom to be displayed to the principalities
and powers, but not to Himself? For surely no principalities could
possibly have understood anything without their sovereign Lord. Or if
(the apostle) did not mention God in this passage, on the ground that
He (as their chief) is Himself reckoned among these (principalities),
then he would have plainly said that the mystery had been hidden from
the principalities and powers of Him who had created all things,
including Him amongst them. But if he states that it was hidden from
them, he must needs be understood6007
as having
meant that it was manifest to Him. From God, therefore,
the mystery was not hidden; but it was hidden in God, the
Creator of all things, from His principalities and powers. For
“who hath known the mind of the Lord, or who hath been His
counsellor?”6008
Caught in this
trap, the heretic probably changed the passage, with the view of saying
that his god wished to make known to his principalities and
powers the fellowship of his own mystery, of which God, who created all
things, had been ignorant. But what was the use of his obtruding this
ignorance of the Creator, who was a stranger to the superior
god,6009
| 6009 Marcion’s god,
of course. | and far enough removed from him, when even
his own servants had known nothing about him? To the Creator, however,
the future was well known. Then why was not that also known to Him,
which had to be revealed beneath His heaven, and on His earth? From
this, therefore, there arises a confirmation of what we have already
laid down. For since the Creator was sure to know, some time or other,
that hidden mystery of the superior god, even on the supposition that
the true reading was (as Marcion has it)—“hidden from the
God who created all things”—he ought then to have expressed
the conclusion thus: “in order that the manifold wisdom of God
might be made known to Him, and then to the principalities and powers
of God, whosoever He might be, with whom the Creator was destined to
share their knowledge.” So palpable is the erasure in this
passage, when thus read, consistently with its own true bearing. I, on
my part, now wish to engage with you in a discussion on the allegorical
expressions of the apostle. What figures of speech could the novel god
have found in the prophets (fit for himself)? “He led
captivity captive,” says the apostle.6010
| 6010 Eph.
iv. 8 and Ps. lxviii. 19. |
With what arms? In what conflicts? From the devastation of what
country? From the overthrow of what city? What women, what children,
what princes did the Conqueror throw into chains? For when by David
Christ is sung as “girded with His sword upon His
thigh,”6011
or by Isaiah as
“taking away the spoils of Samaria and the power of
Damascus,”6012
you make Him out to
be6013
really and truly a warrior confest to the
eye.6014
| 6014 See above, book iii.
chap. xiii. and xiv. p. 332. | Learn then now, that His is a spiritual
armour and warfare, since you have already discovered that the
captivity is spiritual, in order that you may further learn that
this also belongs to Him, even because the apostle derived the
mention of the captivity from the same prophets as suggested to him his
precepts likewise: “Putting away lying,” (says he,)
“speak every man truth with his neighbour;”6015
and again, using the very words in which the
Psalm6016
expresses his meaning, (he says,) “Be
ye angry, and sin not;”6017
“Let not the
sun go down upon your wrath.”6018
“Have no
fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness;”6019
for (in the Psalm it is written,)
“With the holy man thou shalt be holy, and with the perverse thou
shalt be perverse;”6020
and, “Thou
shalt put away evil from among you.”6021
Again, “Go ye out from the midst of them; touch not the unclean
thing; separate yourselves, ye that bear the vessels of the
Lord.”6022
(The apostle says
further:) “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is
excess,”6023
—a precept
which is suggested by the passage (of the prophet), where the seducers
of the consecrated (Nazarites) to drunkenness are rebuked: “Ye
gave wine to my holy ones to drink.”6024
This prohibition from drink was given also to the high priest Aaron and
his sons, “when they went into the holy place.”6025
The command, to “sing to the Lord with
psalms and hymns,”6026
comes suitably from
him who knew that those who “drank wine with drums and
psalteries” were blamed by God.6027
Now, when I find to what God belong these precepts, whether in their
germ or their development, I have no difficulty in knowing to whom the
apostle also belongs. But he declares that “wives ought to
be in subjection to their husbands:”6028
what reason does he give for this? “Because,” says he,
“the husband is the head of the wife.”6029
Pray tell me, Marcion, does your god build
up the authority of his law on the work of the Creator? This, however,
is a comparative trifle; for he actually derives from the same source
the condition of his Christ and his Church; for he says: “even as
Christ is the head of the Church;”6030
and again, in like manner: “He who loveth his wife, loveth his
own flesh, even as Christ loved the Church.”6031
You see how your Christ and your Church are
put in comparison with the work of the Creator. How much honour
is given to the flesh in the name of the church! “No man,”
says the apostle, “ever yet hated his own flesh” (except,
of course, Marcion alone), “but nourisheth and cherisheth it,
even as the Lord doth the Church.”6032
But you are the only man that hates his flesh, for you rob it of its
resurrection. It will be only right that you should hate the
Church also, because it is loved by Christ on the same
principle.6033
Yea, Christ loved
the flesh even as the Church. For no man will love the picture of his
wife without taking care of it, and honouring it and crowning it. The
likeness partakes with the reality in the privileged honour. I shall
now endeavour, from my point of view,6034
to
prove that the same God is (the God) of the man6035
and of Christ, of the woman and of the Church, of the flesh and the
spirit, by the apostle’s help who applies the Creator’s
injunction, and adds even a comment on it: “For this cause shall
a man leave his father and his mother, (and shall be joined unto his
wife), and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great
mystery.”6036
In
passing,6037
(I would say that)
it is enough for me that the works of the Creator are great
mysteries6038
in the estimation
of the apostle, although they are so vilely esteemed by the heretics.
“But I am speaking,” says he, “of Christ and the
Church.”6039
This he says in
explanation of the mystery, not for its disruption. He shows us that
the mystery was prefigured by Him who is also the author of the
mystery. Now what is Marcion’s opinion? The Creator could not
possibly have furnished figures to an unknown god, or, if a known one,
an adversary to Himself. The superior god, in fact, ought to have
borrowed nothing from the inferior; he was bound rather to annihilate
Him. “Children should obey their parents.”6040
Now, although Marcion has erased (the next
clause), “which is the first commandment with
promise,”6041
| 6041 Eph. vi. 2. “He did this (says Lardner) in
order that the Mosaic law might not be thought to be thus
established.” | still the law says
plainly, “Honour thy father and thy mother.”6042
Again, (the apostle writes:) “Parents,
bring up your children in the fear and admonition of the
Lord.”6043
For you have heard
how it was said to them of old time: “Ye shall relate these
things to your children; and your children in like manner to their
children.”6044
Of what use are two
gods to me, when the discipline is but one? If there must be two, I
mean to follow Him who was the first to teach the lesson. But as our
struggle lies against “the rulers of this world,”6045
what a host of Creator Gods there must
be!6046
| 6046 An ironical
allusion to Marcion’s interpretation, which he has considered in
a former chapter, of the title God of this world. | For why should I not insist upon this point
here, that he ought to have mentioned but one “ruler of
this world,” if he meant only the Creator to be the being to whom
belonged all the powers which he previously mentioned? Again, when in
the preceding verse he bids us “put on the whole armour of God,
that we may be able to stand against the wiles of the
devil,”6047
does he not show
that all the things which he mentions after the devil’s name
really belong to the devil—“the principalities and the
powers, and the rulers of the darkness of this world,”6048
which we also ascribe to the devil’s
authority? Else, if “the devil” means the Creator,
who will be the devil in the Creator’s dispensation?6049
As there are two gods, must there also be
two devils, and a plurality of powers and rulers of this world? But how
is the Creator both a devil and a god at the same time, when the devil
is not at once both god and devil? For either they are both of them
gods, if both of them are devils; or else He who is God is not also
devil, as neither is he god who is the devil. I want to know indeed by
what perversion6050
the word
devil is at all applicable to the Creator. Perhaps he perverted
some purpose of the superior god—conduct such as He experienced
Himself from the archangel, who lied indeed for the purpose. For
He did not forbid (our first parents) a taste of the miserable
tree,6051
from any apprehension that they would become
gods; His prohibition
was meant to prevent their dying after the transgression. But
“the spiritual wickedness”6052
| 6052 Spiritalia
nequitiæ: “wicked spirits.” |
did not signify the Creator, because of the apostle’s additional
description, “in heavenly places;”6053
for the apostle was quite aware that “spiritual wickedness”
had been at work in heavenly places, when angels were entrapped into
sin by the daughters of men.6054
| 6054 Gen. vi. 1–4. See also Tertullian, De Idol. 9;
De Habit. Mul. 2; De Cultu Femin. 10; De Vel.
Virg. 7; Apolog. 22. See also Augustin, De
Civit. Dei. xv. 23. | But how happened it
that (the apostle) resorted to ambiguous descriptions, and I know not
what obscure enigmas, for the purpose of disparaging6055
| 6055 Ut taxaret. Of course
he alludes to Marcion’s absurd exposition of the 12th
verse, in applying St.
Paul’s description of wicked spirits to the Creator. | the Creator, when he displayed to the Church
such constancy and plainness of speech in “making known the
mystery of the gospel for which he was an ambassador in bonds,”
owing to his liberty in preaching—and actually requested (the
Ephesians) to pray to God that this “open-mouthed
utterance” might be continued to him?6056
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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