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Anti-Marcion
Meanwhile the Marcionite will exhibit nothing of this kind; he is by this time afraid to say which side has the better right to a Christ who is not yet revealed. Just as my Christ is to be expected,[5581] who was predicted from the beginning, so his Christ therefore has no existence, as not having been announced from the beginning. Ours is a better faith, which believes in a future Christ, than the heretic’s, which has none at all to believe in. Touching the resurrection of the dead,[5582] let us first inquire how some persons then denied it. No doubt in the same way in which it is even now denied, since the resurrection of the flesh has at all times men to deny it. But many wise men claim for the soul a divine nature, and are confident of its undying destiny, and even the multitude worship the dead[5583] in the presumption which they boldly entertain that their souls survive. As for our bodies, however, it is manifest that they perish either at once by fire or the wild beasts,[5584] or even when most carefully kept by length of time. When, therefore, the apostle refutes those who deny the resurrection of the flesh, he indeed defends, in opposition to them, the precise matter of their denial, that is, the resurrection of the body. You have the whole answer wrapped up in this.[5585] All the rest is superfluous. Now in this very point, which is called the resurrection of the dead, it is requisite that the proper force of the words should be accurately maintained.[5586] The word dead expresses simply what has lost the vital principle,[5587] by means of which it used to live. Now the body is that which loses life, and as the result of losing it becomes dead. To the body, therefore, the term dead is only suitable. Moreover, as resurrection accrues to what is dead, and dead is a term applicable only to a body, therefore the body alone has a resurrection incidental to it. So again the word Resurrection, or (rising again), embraces only that which has fallen down. “To rise,” indeed, can be predicated of that which has never fallen down, but had already been always lying down. But “to rise again” is predicable only of that which has fallen down; because it is by rising again, in consequence of its having fallen down, that it is said to have re-risen.[5588] For the syllable RE always implies iteration (or happening again). We say, therefore, that the body falls to the ground by death, as indeed facts themselves show, in accordance with the law of God. For to the body it was said, (“Till thou return to the ground, for out of it wast thou taken; for) dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”[5589] That, therefore, which came from the ground shall return to the ground. Now that falls down which returns to the ground; and that rises again which falls down. “Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection.”[5590] Here in the word man, who consists of bodily substance, as we have often shown already, is presented to me the body of Christ. But if we are all so made alive in Christ, as we die in Adam, it follows of necessity that we are made alive in Christ as a bodily substance, since we died in Adam as a bodily substance. The similarity, indeed, is not complete, unless our revival[5591] in Christ concur in identity of substance with our mortality[5592] in Adam. But at this point[5593] (the apostle) has made a parenthetical statement[5594] concerning Christ, which, bearing as it does on our present discussion, must not pass unnoticed. For the resurrection of the body will receive all the better proof, in proportion as I shall succeed in showing that Christ belongs to that God who is believed to have provided this resurrection of the flesh in His dispensation. When he says, “For He must reign, till He hath put all enemies under His feet,”[5595] we can see at once[5596] from this statement that he speaks of a God of vengeance, and therefore of Him who made the following promise to Christ: “Sit Thou at my right hand, until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. The rod of Thy strength shall the Lord send forth from Sion, and He shall rule along with Thee in the midst of Thine enemies.”[5597] It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view. Now they say that this Psalm[5598] was a chant in honour of Hezekiah,[5599] because “he went up to the house of the Lord,”[5600] and God turned back and removed his enemies. Therefore, (as they further hold,) those other words, “Before the morning star did I beget thee from the womb,”[5601] are applicable to Hezekiah, and to the birth of Hezekiah. We on our side[5602] have published Gospels (to the credibility of which we have to thank[5603] them[5604] for having given some confirmation, indeed, already in so great a subject[5605]); and these declare that the Lord was born at night, that so it might be “before the morning star,” as is evident both from the star especially, and from the testimony of the angel, who at night announced to the shepherds that Christ had at that moment been born,[5606] and again from the place of the birth, for it is towards night that persons arrive at the (eastern) “inn.” Perhaps, too, there was a mystic purpose in Christ’s being born at night, destined, as He was, to be the light of the truth amidst the dark shadows of ignorance. Nor, again, would God have said, “I have begotten Thee,” except to His true Son. For although He says of all the people (Israel), “I have begotten[5607] children,”[5608] yet He added not “from the womb.” Now, why should He have added so superfluously this phrase “from the womb” (as if there could be any doubt about any one’s having been born from the womb), unless the Holy Ghost had wished the words to be with especial care[5609] understood of Christ? “I have begotten Thee from the womb,” that is to say, from a womb only, without a man’s seed, making it a condition of a fleshly body[5610] that it should come out of a womb. What is here added (in the Psalm), “Thou art a priest for ever,”[5611] relates to (Christ) Himself. Hezekiah was no priest; and even if he had been one, he would not have been a priest for ever. “After the order,” says He, “of Melchizedek.” Now what had Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, and him uncircumcised too, who blessed the circumcised Abraham, after receiving from him the offering of tithes? To Christ, however, “the order of Melchizedek” will be very suitable; for Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham, which by and by is to acknowledge Him. Well, then, there is also another Psalm, which begins with these words: “Give Thy judgments, O God, to the King,” that is, to Christ who was to come as King, “and Thy righteousness unto the King’s son,”[5612] that is, to Christ’s people; for His sons are they who are born again in Him. But it will here be said that this Psalm has reference to Solomon. However, will not those portions of the Psalm which apply to Christ alone, be enough to teach us that all the rest, too, relates to Christ, and not to Solomon? “He shall come down,” says He, “like rain upon a fleece,[5613] and like dropping showers upon the earth,”[5614] describing His descent from heaven to the flesh as gentle and unobserved.[5615] Solomon, however, if he had indeed any descent at all, came not down like a shower, because he descended not from heaven. But I will set before you more literal points.[5616] “He shall have dominion,” says the Psalmist, “from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”[5617] To Christ alone was this given; whilst Solomon reigned over only the moderately-sized kingdom of Judah. “Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him.” Whom, indeed, shall they all thus worship, except Christ? “All nations shall serve Him.”[5618] To whom shall all thus do homage, but Christ? “His name shall endure for ever.” Whose name has this eternity of fame, but Christ’s? “Longer than the sun shall His name remain,” for longer than the sun shall be the Word of God, even Christ. “And in Him shall all nations be blessed.”[5619] In Solomon was no nation blessed; in Christ every nation. And what if the Psalm proves Him to be even God? “They shall call Him blessed.”[5620] (On what ground?) Because blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who only doeth wonderful things.”[5621] “Blessed also is His glorious name, and with His glory shall all the earth be filled.”[5622] On the contrary, Solomon (as I make bold to affirm) lost even the glory which he had from God, seduced by his love of women even into idolatry. And thus, the statement which occurs in about the middle of this Psalm, “His enemies shall lick the dust”[5623] (of course, as having been, (to use the apostle’s phrase,) “put under His feet”[5624]), will bear upon the very object which I had in view, when I both introduced the Psalm, and insisted on my opinion of its sense,—namely, that I might demonstrate both the glory of His kingdom and the subjection of His enemies in pursuance of the Creator’s own plans, with the view of laying down[5625] this conclusion, that none but He can be believed to be the Christ of the Creator.
Let us now return to the resurrection, to the defence of which against heretics of all sorts we have given indeed sufficient attention in another work of ours.[5626] But we will not be wanting (in some defence of the doctrine) even here, in consideration of such persons as are ignorant of that little treatise. “What,” asks he, “shall they do who are baptized for the dead, if the dead rise not?”[5627] Now, never mind[5628] that practice, (whatever it may have been.) The Februarian lustrations[5629] will perhaps[5630] answer him (quite as well), by praying for the dead.[5631] Do not then suppose that the apostle here indicates some new god as the author and advocate of this (baptism for the dead. His only aim in alluding to it was) that he might all the more firmly insist upon the resurrection of the body, in proportion as they who were vainly baptized for the dead resorted to the practice from their belief of such a resurrection. We have the apostle in another passage defining “but one baptism.”[5632] To be “baptized for the dead” therefore means, in fact, to be baptized for the body;[5633] for, as we have shown, it is the body which becomes dead. What, then, shall they do who are baptized for the body,[5634] if the body[5635] rises not again? We stand, then, on firm ground (when we say) that[5636] the next question which the apostle has discussed equally relates to the body. But “some man will say, ‘How are the dead raised up? With what body do they come?’”[5637] Having established the doctrine of the resurrection which was denied, it was natural[5638] to discuss what would be the sort of body (in the resurrection), of which no one had an idea. On this point we have other opponents with whom to engage. For Marcion does not in any wise admit the resurrection of the flesh, and it is only the salvation of the soul which he promises; consequently the question which he raises is not concerning the sort of body, but the very substance thereof. Notwithstanding,[5639] he is most plainly refuted even from what the apostle advances respecting the quality of the body, in answer to those who ask, “How are the dead raised up? with what body do they come?” For as he treated of the sort of body, he of course ipso facto proclaimed in the argument that it was a body which would rise again. Indeed, since he proposes as his examples “wheat grain, or some other grain, to which God giveth a body, such as it hath pleased Him;”[5640] since also he says, that “to every seed is its own body;”[5641] that, consequently,[5642] “there is one kind of flesh of men, whilst there is another of beasts, and (another) of birds; that there are also celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial; and that there is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars”[5643]—does he not therefore intimate that there is to be[5644] a resurrection of the flesh or body, which he illustrates by fleshly and corporeal samples? Does he not also guarantee that the resurrection shall be accomplished by that God from whom proceed all the (creatures which have served him for) examples? “So also,” says he, “is the resurrection of the dead.”[5645] How? Just as the grain, which is sown a body, springs up a body. This sowing of the body he called the dissolving thereof in the ground, “because it is sown in corruption,” (but “is raised) to honour and power.”[5646] Now, just as in the case of the grain, so here: to Him will belong the work in the revival of the body, who ordered the process in the dissolution thereof. If, however, you remove the body from the resurrection which you submitted to the dissolution, what becomes of the diversity in the issue? Likewise, “although it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.”[5647] Now, although the natural principle of life[5648] and the spirit have each a body proper to itself, so that the “natural body” may fairly be taken[5649] to signify the soul,[5650] and “the spiritual body” the spirit, yet that is no reason for supposing[5651] the apostle to say that the soul is to become spirit in the resurrection, but that the body (which, as being born along with the soul, and as retaining its life by means of the soul,[5652] admits of being called animal (or natural[5653]) will become spiritual, since it rises through the Spirit to an eternal life. In short, since it is not the soul, but the flesh which is “sown in corruption,” when it turns to decay in the ground, it follows that (after such dissolution) the soul is no longer the natural body, but the flesh, which was the natural body, (is the subject of the future change), forasmuch as of a natural body it is made a spiritual body, as he says further down, “That was not first which is spiritual.”[5654] For to this effect he just before remarked of Christ Himself: “The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”[5655] Our heretic, however, in the excess of his folly, being unwilling that the statement should remain in this shape, altered “last Adam” into “last Lord;”[5656] because he feared, of course, that if he allowed the Lord to be the last (or second) Adam, we should contend that Christ, being the second Adam, must needs belong to that God who owned also the first Adam. But the falsification is transparent. For why is there a first Adam, unless it be that there is also a second Adam? For things are not classed together unless they be severally alike, and have an identity of either name, or substance, or origin.[5657] Now, although among things which are even individually diverse, one must be first and another last, yet they must have one author. If, however, the author be a different one, he himself indeed may be called the last. But the thing which he introduces is the first, and that only can be the last, which is like this first in nature.[5658] It is, however, not like the first in nature, when it is not the work of the same author. In like manner (the heretic) will be refuted also with the word “man: ” “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven.”[5659] Now, since the first was a man, how can there be a second, unless he is a man also? Or, else, if the second is “Lord,” was the first “Lord” also?[5660] It is, however, quite enough for me, that in his Gospel he admits the Son of man to be both Christ and Man; so that he will not be able to deny Him (in this passage), in the “Adam” and the “man” (of the apostle). What follows will also be too much for him. For when the apostle says, “As is the earthy,” that is, man, “such also are they that are earthy”—men again, of course; “therefore as is the heavenly,” meaning the Man, from heaven, “such are the men also that are heavenly.”[5661] For he could not possibly have opposed to earthly men any heavenly beings that were not men also; his object being the more accurately to distinguish their state and expectation by using this name in common for them both. For in respect of their present state and their future expectation he calls men earthly and heavenly, still reserving their parity of name, according as they are reckoned (as to their ultimate condition[5662]) in Adam or in Christ. Therefore, when exhorting them to cherish the hope of heaven, he says: “As we have borne the image of the earthy, so let us also bear the image of the heavenly,”[5663]—language which relates not to any condition of resurrection life, but to the rule of the present time. He says, Let us bear, as a precept; not We shall bear, in the sense of a promise—wishing us to walk even as he himself was walking, and to put off the likeness of the earthly, that is, of the old man, in the works of the flesh. For what are this next words? “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.”[5664] He means the works of the flesh and blood, which, in his Epistle to the Galatians, deprive men of the kingdom of God.[5665] In other passages also he is accustomed to put the natural condition instead of the works that are done therein, as when he says, that “they who are in the flesh cannot please God.”[5666] Now, when shall we be able to please God except whilst we are in this flesh? There is, I imagine, no other time wherein a man can work. If, however, whilst we are even naturally living in the flesh, we yet eschew the deeds of the flesh, then we shall not be in the flesh; since, although we are not absent from the substance of the flesh, we are notwithstanding strangers to the sin thereof. Now, since in the word flesh we are enjoined to put off, not the substance, but the works of the flesh, therefore in the use of the same word the kingdom of God is denied to the works of the flesh, not to the substance thereof. For not that is condemned in which evil is done, but only the evil which is done in it. To administer poison is a crime, but the cup in which it is given is not guilty. So the body is the vessel of the works of the flesh, whilst the soul which is within it mixes the poison of a wicked act. How then is it, that the soul, which is the real author of the works of the flesh, shall attain to[5667] the kingdom of God, after the deeds done in the body have been atoned for, whilst the body, which was nothing but (the soul’s) ministering agent, must remain in condemnation? Is the cup to be punished, but the poisoner to escape? Not that we indeed claim the kingdom of God for the flesh: all we do is, to assert a resurrection for the substance thereof, as the gate of the kingdom through which it is entered. But the resurrection is one thing, and the kingdom is another. The resurrection is first, and afterwards the kingdom. We say, therefore, that the flesh rises again, but that when changed it obtains the kingdom. “For the dead shall be raised incorruptible,” even those who had been corruptible when their bodies fell into decay; “and we shall be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.[5668] For this corruptible”—and as he spake, the apostle seemingly pointed to his own flesh—“must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality,”[5669] in order, indeed, that it may be rendered a fit substance for the kingdom of God. “For we shall be like the angels.”[5670] This will be the perfect change of our flesh—only after its resurrection.[5671] Now if, on the contrary,[5672] there is to be no flesh, how then shall it put on incorruption and immortality? Having then become something else by its change, it will obtain the kingdom of God, no longer the (old) flesh and blood, but the body which God shall have given it. Rightly then does the apostle declare, “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;”[5673] for this (honour) does he ascribe to the changed condition[5674] which ensues on the resurrection. Since, therefore, shall then be accomplished the word which was written by the Creator, “O death, where is thy victory”—or thy struggle?[5675] “O death, where is thy sting?”[5676]—written, I say, by the Creator, for He wrote them by His prophet[5677]—to Him will belong the gift, that is, the kingdom, who proclaimed the word which is to be accomplished in the kingdom. And to none other God does he tell us that “thanks” are due, for having enabled us to achieve “the victory” even over death, than to Him from whom he received the very expression[5678] of the exulting and triumphant challenge to the mortal foe.
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]), yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our Lord Jesus Christ,”[5680] 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] and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells us.[5682] 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] and (in the prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and gracious, and plenteous in mercy.”[5684] In Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the praying Ninevites.[5685] How inflexible was He at the tears of Hezekiah![5686] How ready to forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel, the blood of Naboth, when he deprecated His anger.[5687] How prompt in pardoning David on his confession of his sin[5688]—preferring, indeed, the sinner’s repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of mercy.[5689] 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] 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 accidents[5691] 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] 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] Even if “the letter killeth, yet the Spirit giveth life;”[5694] and both belong to Him who says: “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.”[5695] We have already made good the Creator’s claim to this twofold character of judgment and goodness[5696]—“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] He alludes to Moses’ veil, covered with which “his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children of Israel.”[5698] 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] 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 blinded”[5700]—of the world; certainly not the Creator’s mind, but the minds of the people which are in the world.[5701] Of Israel he says, Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart;”[5702] 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] properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze Moses’ veil 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] 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 Lord”[5705]—he testifies that the whole Mosaic system[5706] 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] 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] “In whom” means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel is still hidden under Moses’ veil. Now it is these whom God had threatened for “loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their heart was far from Him,”[5709] in these angry words: “Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see with your eyes, but not perceive;”[5710] and, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not understand;”[5711] and again, “I will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought[5712] 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] 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] Content with my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater length[5715] this point of ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any advantage,[5716] 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] The whole superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands,[5718] 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] Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?”[5720] 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]—to them, that is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?”[5722] (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] Now the countenance (or person[5724]) of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the image of God.”[5725] 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 tells[5726] 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] 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] 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] in which we bear about with us the very dying of God,[5730] (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] For he gives prominence to the statement, “That the life also of Christ may be manifested in our body,”[5732] 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 eternal[5733]—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] then he has clearly predicted the resurrection of the flesh.[5735] He says, too, that “our outward man perishes,”[5736] 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] 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 tear[5738] of its trials, and the renewal of the soul[5739] by its contemplation of the promises.
As to the house of this our earthly dwelling-place, when he says that “we have an eternal home in heaven, not made with hands,”[5740] he by no means would imply that, because it was built by the Creator’s hand, it must perish in a perpetual dissolution after death.[5741] He treats of this subject in order to offer consolation against the fear of death and the dread of this very dissolution, as is even more manifest from what follows, when he adds, that “in this tabernacle of our earthly body we do groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with the vesture which is from heaven,[5742] if so be, that having been unclothed,[5743] we shall not be found naked;” in other words, shall regain that of which we have been divested, even our body. And again he says: “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed[5744] with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish) to be clothed upon.”[5745] He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly[5746] in his first epistle, where he wrote:) “The dead shall be raised incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), “and we shall be changed” (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh).[5747] Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body—and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, whilst encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as “a clothing upon” with the vesture which is from heaven.[5748] So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part[5749] recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven;[5750] because of these it was that he said: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”[5751] The one put on this (heavenly) apparel,[5752] when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture,[5753] when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change). It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as “not wishing indeed to be unclothed,” but (rather as wanting) “to be clothed upon;”[5754] in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life,[5755] “that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life,”[5756] by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state. This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God “the earnest of His Spirit”[5757] (pledged as it were thereby to have “the clothing upon,” which is the object of our hope), and that “so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;”[5758] moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer[5759] “rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord,”[5760] and so to be ready to meet even death with joy. In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.”[5761] Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with[5762] God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences,[5763] and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies. For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition,[5764] wherein the merit was itself achieved. “If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;”[5765] and so is accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah.[5766] When also he (in a later passage) enjoins us “to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and blood”[5767] (since this substance enters not the kingdom of God[5768]); when, again, he “espouses the church as a chaste virgin to Christ,”[5769] a spouse to a spouse in very deed,[5770] an image cannot be combined and compared with what is opposed to the real nature of the thing (with which it is compared). So when he designates “false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves” into likenesses of himself,[5771] of course by their hypocrisy, he charges them with the guilt of disorderly conversation, rather than of false doctrine.[5772] The contrariety, therefore, was one of conduct, not of gods.[5773] If “Satan himself, too, is transformed into an angel of light,”[5774] such an assertion must not be used to the prejudice of the Creator. The Creator is not an angel, but God. Into a god of light, and not an angel of light, must Satan then have been said to be transformed, if he did not mean to call him “the angel,” which both we and Marcion know him to be. On Paradise is the title of a treatise of ours, in which is discussed all that the subject admits of.[5775] I shall here simply wonder, in connection with this matter, whether a god who has no dispensation of any kind on earth could possibly have a paradise to call his own—without perchance availing himself of the paradise of the Creator, to use it as he does His world—much in the character of a mendicant.[5776] And yet of the removal of a man from earth to heaven we have an instance afforded us by the Creator in Elijah.[5777] But what will excite my surprise still more is the case (next supposed by Marcion), that a God so good and gracious, and so averse to blows and cruelty, should have suborned the angel Satan—not his own either, but the Creator’s—“to buffet” the apostle,[5778] and then to have refused his request, when thrice entreated to liberate him! It would seem, therefore, that Marcion’s god imitates the Creator’s conduct, who is an enemy to the proud, even “putting down the mighty from their seats.”[5779] Is he then the same God as He who gave Satan power over the person of Job that his “strength might be made perfect in weakness?”[5780] How is it that the censurer of the Galatians[5781] still retains the very formula of the law: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established?”[5782] How again is it that he threatens sinners “that he will not spare” them[5783]—he, the preacher of a most gentle god? Yea, he even declares that “the Lord hath given to him the power of using sharpness in their presence!”[5784] Deny now, O heretic, (at your cost,) that your god is an object to be feared, when his apostle was for making himself so formidable!
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