mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue May 03, 2022 2:26 am
Kunigunde doesn't convince, the "introduction requirements" are lame and stale.
I had in mind the
other Kunigunde's argument: the presumed Jesus's appeal to John's authority to confute the pharisees in *Ev 20:1-4.
It has some force, as argument, under the traditional explanation (that Jesus is
really appealing to John's authority to justify his own authority), however, that is not the way Tertullian interpreted it. So
Tertullian:
Christ knew "the baptism of John, whence it was."(20) Then why did He ask them, as if He knew not? He knew that the Pharisees would not give Him an answer; then why did He ask in vain? Was it that He might judge them out of their own mouth, or their own heart? Suppose you refer these points to an excuse of the Creator, or to His comparison with Christ; then consider what would have happened if the Pharisees had replied to His question. Suppose their answer to have been, that John's baptism was "of men," they would have been immediately stoned to death.(21) Some Marcion, in rivalry to Marcion, would have stood up(22) and said: O most excellent God; how different are his ways from the Creator's! Knowing that men would rush down headlong over it, He placed them actually(1) on the very precipice. For thus do men treat of the Creator respecting His law of the tree.(2) But John's baptism was "from heaven." "Why, therefore," asks Christ, "did ye not believe him?"(3) He therefore who had wished men to believe John, purposing to censure(4) them because they had not believed him, belonged to Him whose sacrament John was administering. But, at any rate,(5) when He actually met their refusal to say what they thought, with such reprisals as, "Neither tell I you by what authority I do these things,"(6) He returned evil for evil!
It appears to me that Tertullian insists on Jesus's knowledge
in advance of the answer of the pharisees. So, as the Tertullian's argument goes, given the Jesus's knowledge in advance, it would be evident that Jesus
wants a submission to John's baptism and authority. Accordingly, a submission to creator, the same god adored by John.
However Tertullian appears to betray that the emphasis of Marcion was rather on the fact that, whatever possible answer the Pharisees would have given,
the creator would have punished them:
- if the Pharisees had answered: "the baptism of John comes from men", then the creator would have istigated the people against the Pharisees.
- if the Pharisees had answered: "the baptism of John comes from heaven", then the creator would have punished himself the pharisees, since they would have admitted their moral sin.
So, in
both the cases, the silence of the pharisees is a
confession of their fear of the creator.
Jesus doesn't answer, because who fears too much the creator is not worthy of the knowledge of the Unknown Father.
That Jesus's reaction is the same reaction he had when he descended in Hades
and found there also a group of people fearing too much the demiurge:
In addition to his blasphemy against God Himself, he advanced this also, truly speaking as with the mouth of the devil, and saying all things in direct opposition to the truth,--that Cain, and those like him, and the Sodomites, and the Egyptians, and others like them, and, in fine, all the nations who walked in all sorts of abomination, were saved by the Lord, on His descending into Hades, and on their running unto Him, and that they welcomed Him into their kingdom. But the serpent(3) which was in Marcion declared that Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and those other righteous men who sprang(4) from the patriarch Abraham, with all the prophets, and those who were pleasing to God, did not partake in salvation. For since these men, he says, knew that their God was constantly tempting them, so now they suspected that He was tempting them, and did not run to Jesus, or believe His announcement: and for this reason he declared that their souls remained in Hades.