Book III.
Book III.
Wherein Christ is shown to be the son of God, who created the world; to have been predicted by the prophets; to have taken human flesh like our own, by a real incarnation.
Chapter I.-Introductory; A Brief Statement of the Preceding Argument in Connection with the Subject of This Book.
Following the track of my original treatise, the loss of which we are steadily proceeding(1) to restore, we come now, in the order of our subject, to treat of Christ, although this be a work of supererogation,(2) after the proof which we have gone through that there is but one only God. For no doubt it has been already ruled with sufficient clearness, that Christ must be regarded as pertaining to(3) no other God than the Creator, when it has been determined that no other God but the Creator should be the object of our faith. Him did Christ so expressly preach, whilst the apostles one after the other also so clearly affirmed that Christ belonged to(4) no other God than Him whom He Himself preached-that is, the Creator-that no mention of a second God (nor, accordingly, of a second Christ) was ever agitated previous to Marcion's scandal. This is most easily proved by an examination(5) of both the apostolic and the heretical churches,(6) from which we are forced to declare that there is undoubtedly a subversion of the rule (of faith), where any opinion is found of later date,(7) -a point which I have inserted in my first book.(8) A discussion of it would unquestionably be of value even now, when we are about to make a separate examination into (the subject of) Christ; because, whilst proving Christ to be the Creator's Son, we are effectually shutting out the God of Marcion. Truth should employ all her available resources, and in no limping way.(9) In our compendious rules of faith, however, she has it all her own way.(10) But I have resolved, like an earnest man,(11) to meet my adversary every way and everywhere in the madness of his heresy, which is so great, that he has found it easier to assume that that Christ has come who was never heard of, than He who has always been predicted.
Chapter II.-Why Christ's Coming Should Be Previously Announced.
Coming then at once to the point,(12) I have to encounter the question, Whether Christ ought to have come so suddenly?(13) (I answer, No.) First, because He was the Son of God His Father. For this was a point of order, that the Father should announce(14) the Son before the Son should the Father, and that the Father should testify of the Son before the Son should testify of the Father. Secondly, because, in addition to the title of Son, He was the Sent. The authority,(15) therefore, of the Sender must needs have first appeared in a testimony of the Sent; because none who comes in the authority of another does himself set it forth(16) for himself on his own assertion, but rather looks out for protection from it, for first comes the support(17) of him who gives him his authority. Now (Christ) will neither be acknowledged as Son if the Father never named Him, nor be believed in as the Sent One if no Sender(18) gave Him a commission: the Father, if any, purposely naming Him; and the Sender, if any, purposely commissioning Him. Everything will be open to suspicion which transgresses a rule. Now the primary order of all things will not allow that the Father should come after the Son in recognition, or the Sender after the Sent, or God after Christ. Nothing can take precedence of its own original in being acknowledged, nor in like manner can it in its ordering.(19) Suddenly a Son, suddenly Sent, and suddenly Christ! On the contrary, I should suppose that from God nothing comes suddenly, because there is nothing which is not ordered and arranged by God. And if ordered, why not also foretold, that it may be proved to have been ordered by the prediction, and by the ordering to be divine? And indeed so great a work, which (we may be sure) required preparation,(20) as being for the salvation of man, could not have been on that very account a sudden thing, because it was through faith that it was to be of avail.(21) Inasmuch, then, as it had to be believed in order to be of use, so far did it require, for the securing of this faith, a preparation built upon the foundations of pro-arrangement and fore-announcement. Faith, when informed by such a process, might justly be required(22) of man by God, and by man be reposed in God; it being a duty, after that knowledge(23) has made it a possibility, to believe those things which a man had learned indeed to believe from the fore-announcement.(24)
Chapter III.-Miracles Alone, Without Prophecy, an Insufficient Evidence of Christ's Mission.
A procedure(25) of this kind, you say, was not necessary, because He was forthwith to prove Himself the Son and the Sent One, and the Christ of God in very deed, by means of the evidence of His wonderful works.(26) On my side, however, I have to deny that evidence simply of this sort was sufficient as a testimony to Him. He Himself afterwards deprived it of its authority,(27) because when He declared that many would come and "show great signs and wonders,"(28) so as to turn aside the very elect, and yet for all that were not to be received, He showed how rash was belief in signs and wonders, which were so very easy of accomplishment by even false christs. Else how happens it, if He meant Himself to be approved and understood, and received on a certain evidence-I mean that of miracles-that He forbade the recognition of those others who had the very same sort of proof to show, and whose coming was to be quite as sudden and unannounced by any authority?(29) If, because He came before them, and was beforehand with them in displaying the signs of His mighty deeds, He therefore seized the first right to men's faith,-just as the firstcomers do the first place in the baths,-and so forestalled all who came after Him in that right, take care that He, too, be not caught in the condition of the later comers, if He be found to be behindhand with the Creator, who had already been made known, and had already worked miracles like Him,(30) and like Him had forewarned men not to believe in others, even such as should come after Him. If, therefore, to have been the first to come and utter this warning, is to bar and limit faith,(31) He will Himself have to be condemned, because He was later in being acknowledged; and authority to prescribe such a rule about later comers will belong to the Creator alone, who could have been posterior to none. And now, when I am about to prove that the Creator sometimes displayed by His servants of old, and in other cases reserved for His Christ to display, the self-same miracles which you claim as solely due to faith in your Christ, I may fairly even from this maintain that there was so much the greater reason wherefore Christ should not be believed in simply on account of His miracles, inasmuch as these would have shown Him to belong to none other (God) than the Creator, because answering to the mighty deeds of the Creator, both as performed by His servants and reserved for(32) His Christ; although, even if some other proofs should be found in your Christ-new ones, to wit-we should more readily believe that they, too, belong to the same God as do the old ones, rather than to him who has no other than new(33) proofs, such as are wanting in the evidences of that antiquity which wins the assent of faith,(34) so that even on this ground he ought to have come announced as much by prophecies of his own building up faith in him, as by miracles, especially in opposition to the Creator's Christ who was to come fortified by signs and prophets of His own, in order that he might shine forth as the rival of Christ by help of evidence of different kinds. But how was his Christ to be foretold by a god who was himself never predicted? This, therefore, is the unavoidable inference, that neither your god nor your Christ is an object of faith, because God ought not to have been unknown, and Christ ought to have been made known through God.(35)
Chapter IV.-Marcion's Christ Not the Subject of Prophecy. The Absurd Consequences of This Theory of the Heretic.
He(36) disdained, I suppose, to imitate the order of our God, as one who was displeasing to him, and was by all means to be vanquished. He wished to come, as a new being in a new way-a son previous to his father's announcement, a sent one before the authority of the sender; so that he might in person(37) propagate a most monstrous faith, whereby it should come to be believed that Christ was come before it should be known that He had an existence. It is here convenient to me to treat that other point: Why he came not after Christ? For when I observe that, during so long a period, his lord(38) bore with the greatest patience the very ruthless Creator who was all the while announcing His Christ to men, I say, that whatever reason impelled him to do so, postponing thereby his own revelation and interposition, the self-same reason imposed on him the duty of bearing with the Creator (who had also in His Christ dispensations of His own to carry out); so that, after the completion and accomplishment of the entire plan of the rival God and the rival Christ,(39) he might then superinduce his own proper dispensation. But he grew weary of so long an endurance, and so failed to wait till the end of the Creator's course. It was of no use, his enduring that his Christ should be predicted, when he refused to permit him to be manifested.(40) Either it was without just cause that he interrupted the full course of his rival's time, or without just cause did he so long refrain from interrupting it. What held him back at first? Or what disturbed him at last? As the case now stands, however,(41) he has committed himself in respect of both, having revealed himself so tardily after the Creator, so hurriedly before His Christ; whereas he ought long ago to have encountered the one with a confutation, the other to have forborne encountering as yet-not to have borne with the one so long in His ruthless hostility, nor to have disquieted the other, who was as yet quiescent! In the case of both, while depriving them of their title to be considered the most good God, he showed himself at least capricious and uncertain; lukewarm (in his resentment) towards the Creator, but fervid against His Christ, and powerless(42) in respect of them both! For he no more restrained the Creator than he resisted His Christ. The Creator still remains such as He really is. His Christ also will come,(43) just as it is written of Him. Why did he(44) come after the Creator, since he was unable to correct Him by punishment?(45) Why did he reveal himself before Christ, whom he could not hinder from appearing?(46) If, on the contrary,(47) he did chastise the Creator, he revealed himself, (I suppose, ) after Him in order that things which require correction might come first. On which account also, (of course, ) he ought to have waited for Christ to appear first, whom he was going to chastise in like manner; then he would be His punisher coming after Him,(48) just as he had been in the case of the Creator. There is another consideration: since he will at his second advent come after Him, that as he at His first coming took hostile proceed-rags against the Creator, destroying the law and the prophets, which were His, so he may, to be sure,(49) at his second coming proceed in opposition to Christ, upsetting(50) His kingdom. Then, no doubt, he would terminate his course, and then (if ever)(51) be worthy of belief; for else, if his work has been already perfected, it would be in vain for him to come, for there would indeed be nothing that he could further accomplish.
Chapter V.-Sundry Features of the Prophetic Style: Principles of Its Interpretation.
These preliminary remarks I have ventured to make(52) at this first step of the discussion and while the conflict is, as it were, from a distance. But inasmuch as I shall now from this point have to grapple with my opponent on a distinct issue and in close combat, I perceive that I must advance even here some lines, at which the battle will have to be delivered; they are the Scriptures of the Creator. For as I shall have to prove that Christ was from the Creator, according to these (Scriptures), which were afterwards accomplished in the Creator's Christ, I find it necessary to set forth the form and, so to speak, the nature of the Scriptures themselves, that they may not distract the reader's attention by being called into controversy at the moment of their application to subjects of discussion, and by their proof being confounded with the proof of the subjects themselves. Now there are two conditions of prophetic announcement which I adduce, as requiring the assent of our adversaries in the future stages of the discussion. One, that future events are sometimes announced as if they were already passed. For it is(53) consistent with Deity to regard as accomplished facts whatever It has determined on, because there is no difference of time with that Being in whom eternity itself directs a uniform condition of seasons. It is indeed more natural(54) to the prophetic divination to represent as seen and already brought to pass,(55) even while forseeing it, that which it foresees; in other words, that which is by all means future. As for instance, in Isaiah: "I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks (I exposed) to their hands. I hid not my face from shame and spitting."(56) For whether it was Christ even then, as we hold, or the prophet, as the Jews say, who pronounced these words concerning himself, in either case, that which as yet had not happened sounded as if it had been already accomplished. Another characteristic will be, that very many events are figuratively predicted by means of enigmas and allegories and parables, and that they must be understood in a sense different from the literal description. For we both read Of "the mountains dropping down new wine,"(57) but not as if one might expect "must" from the stones, or its decoction from the rocks; and also hear of "a land flowing with milk and honey,"(58) but not as if you were to suppose that you would ever gather Samian cakes from the ground; nor does God, forsooth, offer His services as a water-bailiff or a farmer when He says, "I will open rivers in a land; I will plant in the wilderness the cedar and the box-tree."(59) In like manner, when, foretelling the conversion of the Gentiles, He says, "The beasts of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls," He surely never meant to derive(60) His fortunate omens from the young of birds and foxes, and from the songsters of marvel and fable. But why enlarge on such a subject? When the very apostle whom our heretics adopt,(61) interprets the law which allows an unmuzzled mouth to the oxen that tread out the corn, not of cattle, but of ourselves;(62) and also alleges that the rock which followed (the Isrealites) and supplied them with drink was Christ;(63) teaching the Galatians, moreover, that the two narratives of the sons of Abraham had an allegorical meaning in their course;(64) and to the Ephesians giving an intimation that, when it was declared in the beginning that a man should leave his father and mother and become one flesh with his wife, he applied this to Christ and the church.(65)
Chapter VI.-Community in Certain Points of Marcionite and Jewish Error. Prophecies of Christ's Rejection Examined.
Since, therefore, there clearly exist these two characteristics in the Jewish prophetic literature, let the reader remember,(66) whenever we adduce any evidence therefrom, that, by mutual consent,(67) the point of discussion is not the form of the scripture, but the subject it is called in to prove. When, therefore, our heretics in their phrenzy presumed to say that that Christ was come who had never been fore-announced, it followed that, on their assumption, that Christ had not yet appeared who had always been predicted; and thus they are obliged to make common cause with(68) Jewish error, and construct their arguments with its assistance, on the pretence that the Jews were themselves quite certain that it was some other who came: so they not only rejected Him as a stranger, but slew Him as an enemy, although they would without doubt have acknowledged Him, and with all religious devotion followed Him, if He had only been one of themselves: Our shipmaster(69) of course got his craft-wisdom not from the Rhodian law,(70) but from the Pontic,(71) which cautioned him against believing that the Jews had no right to sin against their Christ; whereas (even if nothing like their conduct had been predicted against them) human nature alone, liable to error as it is, might well have induced him to suppose that it was quite possible for the Jews to have committed such a sin, considered as men, without assuming any unfair prejudice regarding their feelings, whose sin was antecedently so credible. Since, however, it was actually foretold that they would not acknowledge Christ, and therefore would even put Him to death, it will therefore follow that He was both ignored(72) and slain by them, who were beforehand pointed out as being about to commit such offences against Him. If you require a proof of this, instead of turning out those passages of Scripture which, while they declare Christ to be capable of suffering death, do thereby also affirm the possibility of His being rejected (for if He had not been rejected, He could not really suffer anything), but rather reserving them for the subject of His sufferings, I shall content myself at the present moment with adducing those which simply show that there was a probability of Christ's rejection. This is quickly done, since the passages indicate that the entire power of understanding was by the Creator taken from the people. "I will take away," says He, "the wisdom of their wise men; and the understanding of their prudent men will I hide; "(73) and again: "With your ear ye shall hear, and not understand; and with your eyes ye shall see, but not perceive: for the heart of this people hath growth fat, and with their ears they hear heavily, and their eyes have they shut; lest they hear with their ears, and see with their eyes, and understand with the heart, and be converted, and I heal them."(74) Now this blunting of their sound senses they had brought on themselves, loving God with their lips, but keeping far away from Him in their heart. Since, then, Christ was announced by the Creator, "who formeth the lightning, and createth the wind, and declareth unto man His Christ," as the prophet Joel says,(75) since the entire hope of the Jews, not to say of the Gentiles too, was fixed on the manifestation of Christ,-it was demonstrated that they, by their being deprived of those powers of knowledge and understanding-wisdom and prudence, would fail to know and understand that which was predicted, even Christ; when the chief of their wise men should be in error respecting Him-that is to say, their scribes and prudent ones, or Pharisees; and when the people, like them, should hear with their ears and not understand Christ while teaching them, and see with their eyes and not perceive Christ, although giving them signs. Similarly it is said elsewhere: "Who is blind, but my servant? or deaf, but he who ruleth over them? "(76) Also when He upbraids them by the same Isaiah: "I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but Isreal doth not know; my people doth not consider."(77) We indeed, who know for certain that Christ always spoke in the prophets, as the Spirit of the Creator (for so says the prophet: "The person of our Spirit, Christ the Lord,"(78) who from the beginning was both heard and seen as the Father's vicegerent in the name of God), are well aware that His words, when actually upbraiding Isreal, were the same as those which it was foretold that He should denounce against him: "Ye have forsaken the Lord, and have provoked the Holy One of Isreal to anger."(79) If, however, you would rather refer to God Himself, instead of to Christ, the whole imputation of Jewish ignorance from the first, through an unwillingness to allow that even anciently(80) the Creator's word and Spirit-that is to say, His Christ-was despised and not acknowledged by them, you will even in this subterfuge be defeated. For when you do not deny that the Creator's Son and Spirit and Substance is also His Christ, you must needs allow that those who have not acknowledged the Father have failed likewise to acknowledge the Son through the identity of their natural substance;(81) for if in Its fulness It has baffled man's understanding, much more has a portion of It, especially when partaking of the fulness(82) Now, when these things are carefully considered, it becomes evident how the Jews both rejected Christ and slew Him; not because they regarded Him as a strange Christ, but because they did not acknowledge Him, although their own. For how could they have understood the strange One, concerning whom nothing had ever been announced, when they failed to understand Him about whom there had been a perpetual course of prophecy? That admits of being understood or being not understood, which, by possessing a substantial basis for prophecy,(83) will also have a subject-matter(84) for either knowledge or error; whilst that which lacks such matter admits not the issue of wisdom. So that it was not as if He belonged to another(85) god that they conceived an aversion for Christ, and persecuted Him, but simply as a man whom they regarded as a wonder-working juggler,(86) and an enemy(87) in His doctrines. They brought Him therefore to trial as a mere man, and one of themselves too-that is, a Jew (only a renegade and a destroyer of Judaism)-and punished Him according to their law. If He had been a stranger, indeed, they would not have sat in judgment over Him. So far are they from appearing to have understood Him to be a strange Christ, that they did not even judge Him to be a stranger to their own human nature.(88)
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