Giuseppe wrote: ↑Tue May 28, 2019 2:45 am
Tertullian,
Contra Marcionem, 42
1:
Indeed, if it was not flesh (upon the cross), but a phantom of flesh (and a phantom is but spirit, and so the spirit breathed its own self out, and departed as it did so), no doubt the phantom departed, when the spirit which was the phantom departed: and so the phantom and the spirit disappeared together, and were nowhere to be seen. Nothing therefore remained upon the cross, nothing hung there, after the giving up of the ghost; there was nothing to beg of Pilate, nothing to take down from the cross, nothing to wrap in the linen, nothing to lay in the new sepulchre. Still it was not nothing that was there. What was there, then? If a phantom Christ was yet there. If Christ had departed, He had taken away the phantom also. The only shift left to the impudence of the heretics, is to admit that what remained there was the phantom of a phantom!
Tertullian is saying that the Gospel Jesus was for some heretics the mere allegory of a "real" Jesus crucified in the lower heavens. In this sense: "
the phantom (=the Gospel Jesus)
of a phantom (=the celestial Jesus)".
Contra/Adversus Marcion Book IV, 42
Tertullian makes reference to phantom a few times before that later section in
Contra Marcion -
Bk I, chapter 22 - Gods "shadow or phantom as we have it in Christ ...
that condition which makes Him superior to the Creator" [
italics mine].
Tertullian goes on to philosophise about creation and goodness [the root of all Jewish and Christian theology], -
... how shall (this) Antichrist be fully overthrown unless we ... give ourselves scope for rebutting all his other attacks? Let us therefore next take the very 'person' of God Himself, or rather His shadow or phantom as we have it in Christ, and let Him be examined by that condition which makes Him superior to the Creator. And undoubtedly there will come to hand unmistakable rules for examining God's goodness. My first point, however, is to discover and apprehend the attribute, and then to draw it out into rules. Now, when I survey the subject in its aspects of time, I nowhere descry it from the beginning of material existences, or at the commencement of those causes, with which it ought to have been found, proceeding thence to do whatever had to be done. For there was death already, and sin the sting of death, and that malignity too of the Creator, against which the goodness of the other god should have been ready to bring relief; falling in with this as the primary rule of the divine goodness (if it were to prove itself a natural agency), at once coming as a succour when the cause for it began. For in God all things should be natural and inbred, just like His own condition indeed, in order that they may be eternal, and so not be accounted casual and extraneous, and thereby temporary and wanting in eternity. In God, therefore, goodness is required to be both perpetual and unbroken, such as, being stored up and kept ready in the treasures of His natural properties, might precede its own causes and material developments; and if thus preceding, might underlie every first material cause, instead of looking at it from a distance, and standing aloof from it. In short, here too I must inquire, Why his goodness did not operate from the beginning? No less pointedly than when we inquired concerning himself, Why he was not revealed from the very first? Why, then, did it not? Since he had to be revealed by his goodness if he had any existence.
Later in Bk 1; the beginning of chapter 27, -
he plainly judges evil by not willing it, and condemns it by prohibiting it; while, on the other hand, he acquits it by not avenging it, and lets it go free by not punishing it. What a prevaricator of truth is such a god! What a dissembler with his own decision! Afraid to condemn what he really condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love, permitting that to be done which he does not allow, choosing to indicate what he dislikes rather than deeply examine it! This will turn out an imaginary goodness, a phantom of discipline, perfunctory in duty, careless in sin. Listen, you sinners; and you who have not yet come to this, hear, that you may attain to such a pass! A better god has been discovered, who never takes offense, is never angry, never inflicts punishment, who has prepared no fire in hell, no gnashing of teeth in the outer darkness!
Then Book III, chapters 8, 9, 11, 15, and the very end of the last chapter, chapter 25; in part, -
chapter 8
Our heretic must now cease to borrow poison from the Jew — the asp, as the adage runs, from the viper — and henceforth vomit forth the virulence of his own disposition, as when he alleges Christ to be a phantom1. Except, indeed, that this opinion of his will be sure to have others to maintain it in his precocious and somewhat abortive Marcionites, whom the Apostle John designated as antichrists, when they denied1 that Christ had come in the flesh; not that they did this with the view of establishing the right of the other god (for on this point also they had been branded by the same apostle), but because they had started1 with assuming the incredibility of an incarnate God.
Now, the more firmly the antichrist Marcion had seized this assumption, the more prepared was he, of course, to reject the bodily substance of Christ1, since he had introduced his very god to our notice as neither the author nor the restorer of the flesh; and for this very reason, to be sure, as pre-eminently good, and most remote from the deceits and fallacies of the Creator. His Christ1, therefore, in order to avoid all such deceits and fallacies, and the imputation, if possible, of belonging to the Creator, was not what he appeared to be, and feigned himself to be what he was not — incarnate without being flesh, human without being man, and likewise a divine Christ without being God! But why should he not have propagated also the phantom of God? Can I believe him on the subject of the internal nature, who was all wrong touching the external substance? How will it be possible to believe him true on a mystery, when he has been found so false on a plain fact? How, moreover, when he confounds the truth of the spirit with the error of the flesh, could he combine within himself that communion of light and darkness, or truth and error, which the apostle says cannot co-exist?
Since however, Christ's being flesh is now discovered to be a lie, it follows that all things which were done by the flesh of Christ were done untruly, — every act of intercourse, of contact, of eating or drinking, yea, His very miracles. If with a touch, or by being touched, He freed any one of a disease, whatever was done by any corporeal act cannot be believed to have been truly done in the absence of all reality in His body itself. Nothing substantial can be allowed to have been effected by an unsubstantial thing; nothing full by a vacuity. If the habit were putative, the action was putative; if the worker were imaginary, the works were imaginary. On this principle, too, the sufferings of Christ will be found not to warrant faith in Him. For He suffered nothing who did not truly suffer; and a phantom could not truly suffer. God's entire work, therefore, is subverted. Christ's death, wherein lies the whole weight and fruit of the Christian name, is denied although the apostle asserts it so expressly as undoubtedly real, making it the very foundation of the gospel, of our salvation and of his own preaching. I have delivered unto you before all things, says he, how that Christ died for our sins, and that he was buried, and that He rose again the third day.
Besides, if His flesh is denied, how is His death to be asserted; for death is the proper suffering of the flesh, which returns through death back to the earth out of which it was taken, according to the law of its Maker? Now, if His death be denied, because of the denial of His flesh, there will be no certainty of His resurrection. For He rose not, for the very same reason that He died not, even because He possessed not the reality of the flesh, to which as death accrues, so does resurrection likewise. Similarly, if Christ's resurrection be nullified, ours also is destroyed. If Christ's resurrection be not realized, neither shall that be for which Christ came. For just as they, who said that there is no resurrection of the dead, are refuted by the apostle from the resurrection of Christ, so, if the resurrection of Christ falls to the ground, the resurrection of the dead is also swept away. And so our faith is vain, and vain also is the preaching of the apostles. Moreover, they even show themselves to be false witnesses of God, because they testified that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise. And we remain in our sins still. And those who have slept in Christ have perished; destined, forsooth, to rise again, but perhaps in a phantom state, just like Christ.
1Tertullian is admitting Christ is primarily a creation of Marcion; Tertullian is seeking to capture that Christ for other purposes ...
... as shown at the beginning of the next chapter of Book III, chapter 9, -
Now, in this discussion of yours, when you suppose that we are to be met with the case of the Creator's angels, as if they held intercourse with Abraham and Lot in a phantom state, that of merely putative flesh, and yet did truly converse, and eat, and work, as they had been commissioned to do, you will not, to begin with, be permitted to use as examples the acts of that God whom you are destroying. For by how much you make your god a better and more perfect being, by just so much will all examples be unsuitable to him of that God from whom he totally differs, and without which difference he would not be at all better or more perfect. But then, secondly, you must know that it will not be conceded to you that in the angels there was only a putative flesh, but one of 'a true and solid human substance ...
Then Tertullian appeals to the creation narrative, (in a 'my god' v 'your god' narrative) -
Contra Marcion Bk III, chapter 9, continued, -
But your god, perhaps on the ground of his having produced no flesh at all, was quite right in introducing the mere phantom of that of which he had been unable to produce the reality. My God, however, who formed that which He had taken out of the dust of the ground in the true quality of flesh, although not issuing as yet from conjugal seed, was equally able to apply to angels too a flesh of any material whatsoever, who built even the world out of nothing, into so many and so various bodies, and that at a word!
Book III, chapter 11
... If Christ truly suffered all this, to be born was a less thing for Him. If Christ suffered evasively, as a phantom; evasively, too, might He have been born[?]. Such are Marcion's chief arguments by which he makes out another Christ; and I think that we show plainly enough that they are utterly irrelevant, when we teach how much more truly consistent with God is the reality rather than the falsehood of that condition in which He manifested His Christ. Since He was 'the truth', He was flesh; since He was flesh, He was born. For the points which this heresy assaults are confirmed, when the means of the assault are destroyed. Therefore if He is to be considered in the flesh, because He was born; and born, because He is in the flesh, and because 'He is no phantom' — it follows that He must be acknowledged as Himself the very Christ of the Creator, who was by the Creator's prophets foretold as about to come in the flesh, and by the process of human birth.
Bk III chapter 15,
... Christ means anointed, and to be anointed is certainly an affair of the body. He who had not a body, could not by any possibility have been anointed; he who could not by any possibility have been anointed, could not in any wise have been called Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he only assumed the phantom of a name too. But how, he asks, was he to insinuate himself into being believed by the Jews, except through a name which was usual and familiar among them? Then 'tis a fickle and tricksty God whom you describe! To promote any plan by deception, is the resource of either distrust or of maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the conduct of the false prophets against the Creator, when they came in His name as their own God. But I do not find that any good came of this proceeding, since they were more apt to suppose either that Christ was their own, or rather was some deceiver, than that He was the Christ of the other god; and this the gospel will show.
the end of Bk III; the end of chapter 25, -
... You, however, argue for another Christ, from the very circumstance that He proclaims a new kingdom. You ought first to bring forward some example of His beneficence, that I may have no good reason for doubting the credibility of the great promise, which you say ought to be hoped for; nay, it is before all things necessary that you should prove that a heaven belongs to Him, whom you declare to be a promiser of heavenly things. As it is, you invite us to dinner, but do not point out your house; you assert a kingdom, but show us no royal state. Can it be that your Christ promises a kingdom of heaven, without having a heaven; as He displayed Himself man, without having flesh? O what a phantom from first to last! O hollow pretence of a mighty promise!
Book IV, chapter 8
The Christ of the Creator had to be called a Nazarene according to prophecy; whence the Jews also designate us, on that very account, Nazerenes after Him. For we are they of whom it is written, "Her Nazarites were whiter than snow" [Lamentations 4:7] even they who were once defiled with the stains of sin, and darkened with the clouds of ignorance. But to Christ the title Nazarene was destined to become a suitable one, from the hiding-place of His infancy, for which He went down and dwelt at Nazareth, to escape from Archelaus the son of Herod. This fact I have not refrained from mentioning on this account, because it behooved Marcion's Christ to have forborne all connection whatever with the domestic localities of the Creator's Christ, when he had so many towns in Judæa which had not been by the prophets thus assigned to the Creator's Christ. But Christ will be (the Christ) of the prophets, wheresoever He is found in accordance with the prophets. And yet even at Nazareth He is not remarked as having preached anything new [Luke 4:23] while in another verse He is said to have been rejected [Luke 4:29] by reason of a simple proverb [Luke 4:24].
Here at once, when I observe that they laid their hands on Him, I cannot help drawing 'a conclusion' respecting His bodily substance, which cannot be believed to have been a phantom, since it was capable of being touched and even violently handled, when He was seized and taken and led to the very brink of a precipice. For although He escaped through the midst of them [Luke 4:30], He had already experienced their rough treatment, and afterwards went His way, no doubt because the crowd (as usually happens) gave way, or was even broken through; but not because it was eluded as by an impalpable disguise, which, if there had been such, would not at all have submitted to any touch.
Tangere enim et tangi, nisi corpus, nulla potest res, is even a sentence worthy of a place in the world's wisdom. In short, He did himself touch others, upon whom He laid His hands, which were capable of being felt, and conferred the blessings of healing [Luke 4:40] which were not less true, not less unimaginary, than were the hands wherewith He bestowed them. He was therefore the very Christ of Isaiah, the healer of our sicknesses. Surely, says he, He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows. Now the Greeks are accustomed to use for carry a word which also signifies to take away. A general promise is enough for me in passing. Whatever were the cures which Jesus effected, He is mine. We will come, however, to the kinds of cures. To liberate men, then, from evil spirits, is a cure of sickness. Accordingly, wicked spirits (just in the manner of our former example) used to go forth with a testimony, exclaiming, You are the Son of God [Luke 4:41] — of what God, is clear enough from the case itself. But they were rebuked, and ordered not to speak; precisely because Christ willed Himself to be proclaimed by men, not by unclean spirits, as the Son of God— even that Christ alone to whom this was befitting, because He had sent beforehand men through whom He might become known, and who were assuredly worthier preachers.
In Book
V, Tertullian appeals a lot to passages from the Pauline Corinthians epistle in single references to phantom in each of chapters 7 and 8.
Then, chapter 14, Bk V, -
If the Father sent His Son in the likeness of sinful flesh [Romans 8:3] it must not therefore be said that the flesh which He seemed to have was but a phantom. For he in a previous verse ascribed sin to the flesh, and made it out to be the law of sin dwelling in his members, and warring against the law of the mind. On this account, therefore ... the Son was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh, that He might redeem this sinful flesh by a like substance, even a fleshly one, which bare a resemblance to sinful flesh, although it was itself free from sin. Now this will be the very perfection of divine power to effect the salvation (of man) in a nature like his own. For it would be no great matter if the Spirit of God remedied the flesh; but when a flesh, which is the very copy of the sinning substance — itself flesh also — only without sin, (effects the remedy, then doubtless it is a great thing). The likeness, therefore, will have reference to the quality of the sinfulness, and not to any falsity of the substance.
and
Contra Marcion Bk V, 14
Thus the likeness of flesh would not be called spirit, because flesh is not susceptible of any likeness to spirit; but it would be called phantom if it seemed to be that which it really was not. It is, however, called likeness, since it is what it seems to be. Now it is (what it seems to be), because it is on a par with the other thing (with which it is compared). But a phantom, which is merely such and nothing else, is not a likeness. The apostle, however, himself here comes to our aid; for, while explaining in what sense he would not have us "live in the flesh", although in the flesh — even by not living in the works of the flesh — he shows that when he wrote the words, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God" [1 Corinthians 15:50] it was not with the view of condemning the substance (of the flesh), but the works thereof; and because it is possible for these not to be committed by us while we are still in the flesh, they will therefore be properly chargeable, not on the substance of the flesh, but on its conduct. Likewise, "if the body indeed is dead because of sin" (from which statement we see that not the death of the soul is meant, but that of the body), "but the spirit is life because of righteousness" [Romans 8:10] it follows that this life accrues to that which incurred death because of sin, that is, as we have just seen, the body. Now 'the body is only restored to him who had lost it'; so that 'the resurrection of the dead implies the resurrection of their bodies'. He accordingly subjoins: He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies [Romans 8:11]. In these words he both affirmed the resurrection of the flesh (without which nothing can rightly be called body, nor can anything be properly regarded as mortal), and 'proved' the bodily substance of Christ;
In chapter 17 of Book V, Tertullin appeals to Ephesians 2, -
one new man, making peace (really new, and really man — no phantom — but new, and newly born of a virgin by the Spirit of God), that He might reconcile both unto God [Ephesians 2:15-16] (even the God whom both races had offended — both Jew and Gentile), in one body, says he, having in it slain the enmity by the cross [Ephesians 2:16]
and finally chapter 20, Bk V, has
Of course the Marcionites suppose that they have the apostle on their side in the following passage in the matter of Christ's substance — that in Him there was nothing but a phantom of flesh. For he says of Christ, that, "being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant", not the reality, "and was made in the likeness of man", not a man, and "was found in fashion as a man" [Philippians 2:6-7] not in his substance, that is to say, his flesh; just as if to a substance there did not accrue both form and likeness and fashion. It is well for us that in another passage (the apostle) calls Christ "the image of the invisible God" [Colossians 1:15]. For will it not follow with equal force from that passage, that Christ is not truly God, because the apostle places Him in the image of God, if, (as Marcion contends) He is not truly man because of His having taken on Him the form or image of a man? For in both cases the true substance will have to be excluded, if image (or fashion) and likeness and form shall be claimed for a phantom. But since he is truly God, as the Son of the Father, in His fashion and image, He has been already by the force of this conclusion determined to be truly man, as the Son of man, found in the fashion and image of a man.
