Book 4
4.9 Knowing that the law was in the form of prophecy, he was safeguarding its figurative regulations even in his own mirrored images of them, which indicated that a man who has been a sinner, as soon as he is cleansed by the word of God, is bound to offer in the temple a sacrifice to God, which means prayer and giving of thanks in the church through Christ Jesus, the universal high priest of the Father. This is why he added, That it may be to you for a testimony
4.10 Yet even though nothing of this sort had been foretold in respect of Christ, I should have in the Creator instances of this kindness, such as promise me in the Son too the affections of the Father. I see the men of Nineveh obtaining from the Creator the forgiveness of their crimes—or I should rather say 'from Christ', because even from the beginning he has acted in the Father's name.
ibid On the expression Son of man my postulates are two: first that Christ was incapable of lying, so as to declare himself the Son of man if he was not really so: and that no one can be accepted as Son of man who is not of human birth, either on the father's side or the mother's: and this will call for discussion, on what side his human birth must be taken to be, the father's or the mother's. Now if he is from God as father, certainly his father is not a man: if his father is not a man, the only thing left is for him to be of a human mother: and if of a human <mother> it is already evident that she is a virgin. For as there is ascribed to him no human father, neither can his mother be reckoned to have a husband: and <this mother> to whom no husband is reckoned, is a virgin. Otherwise there will be two fathers involved, God and a man, if his mother is not a virgin. For she has to have a husband, if she is not to be a virgin, and by having a husband she will cause him who was to be the Son of God and of man to have two fathers, God and a man. That perhaps is the sort of nativity the old tales ascribe to Castor and Hercules. But if the distinctions are made in this form, that is, if on his mother's side he is the Son of man because he is not the Son of man on his father's side, and if his mother is a virgin because he has no man for his father, this must be Isaiah's Christ whom he prophesies that a virgin will conceive. By what reasoning then, Marcion, you accept Son of man I am unable to understand. If <you mean> son of a human father, you deny that he is the Son of God: if <you mean> son of God as well, you are making Christ into Hercules out of the old story: if only his mother was human, you admit that he is mine: if neither father nor mother was human, then he is not the son of man at all, and we must conclude that he told a lie when he called himself something that he was not. One thing alone can get you out of these straits—if you are bold enough either to give your god, the father of Christ, the name of Man, which is what Valentinus did with the aeon, or else to deny that the virgin is human, which is a thing not even Valentinus has done
4.11 Also in Isaiah, rejoicing in his father's presence, he says, Let my soul exult in the Lord, for he hath clothed me with the garment of salvation and with the robe of joyfulness, as for a bridegroom, and hath placed upon me a crown as for a bride
4.12 Even in this instance he fulfilled the law by explaining the circumstances which condition it, by throwing light upon different kinds of works, by doing the things which the law exempts from the restraints of the sabbath, by making even more holy by his own kind deeds that sabbath day which since the beginning had been holy by the Father's kind words
4.13 You cannot deny that he brings to Sion and Jerusalem good tidings of peace and of all good things, nor that he goes up into the mountain and there spends all night in prayer, and in effect is heard by his Father ... But concerning the voice of prayer all night to the Father, the psalm manifestly speaks: O my God, I will cry throughout the day, and thou wilt hear, and at night, and it shall not be to me for vanity.f And in another place a psalm speaks of the same place and voice: With my voice I cried unto the Lord, and he heard me from his holy mountain.g So you have his name made present, you have the action of one who brings good tidings, you have his place on the mountain, and the time at night, and the sound of the voice, and the Father hearing him: you have the Christ of the prophets.
ibid as he also says in Isaiah, I will place rivers in a waterless landi—and would like jewels shed light upon the holy vesture of the church, that vesture which Christ the Father's high priest has put on, and would be firm in the faith like stones which the true Joshua
ibid This the psalm had in mind: And behold, the Philistines and Tyre and the people of the Morians, these have been there: Mother Sion, a man will say, and he became man in her— because God as man was born—and he hath builded her by the will of the Fatherk—that you may know that the reason why the gentiles then came together to him was that God as Man had been born and was to build up the church by the Father's will, even from among the Philistines.
4.16 and when the fulfilment began of that which was spoken by Hosea, Not-my-people <shall be> My-people, and She that had not obtained mercy <shall be> She that hath obtained mercyi—the gentile nation, it means—from thenceforth Christ extended towards all men the law of his Father's bounty, excluding none from his compassion as he excludes none from his vocation.
4.17 I cannot become the son of a eunuch, especially when I have for Father the same one whom all things have. For just as he who is the Creator of the universe is the Father of all things, so he who is the creator of no substance is but a eunuch.
4.18 When the Lord of hosts himself was by the Word and Spirit of the Father working and preaching upon earth, it was necessary that that apportionment of the Holy Spirit which, after the manner of what was measured out to the prophets, had in John had the function of preparing the ways of the Lord, should now depart from John, having been drawn back again into the Lord, as into its all-inclusive headspring
4.21 So it cannot have been your Christ who said, Whoso shall be ashamed of me. It must have been our Christ who used this expression, he who was made by the Father a little lower than the angels;e a worm and no man, a very scorn of men and the outcast of the people;f because so it pleased him, that by his bruise we should be healed,g and in his dishonour should our salvation stand firm.
4.22 Likewise even now the cloud was not silent, but there is the accustomed voice from heaven, and the Father's new testimony concerning the Son.
ibid So also Isaiah: Who is there among you that feareth God? Let him hear the voice of his Son.e This voice the Father himself would some time commend, for it says, Establishing the words of his Son,f by saying, This is my beloved Son, hear him. So that even though there has been a transference made of this hearing from Moses and from Elijah to Christ, this is not as from one god to another god, nor to a different Christ, but by the Creator to his own Christ, in accordance with the demise of the old covenant and the succession of the new: Not a delegate, says Isaiah, nor a messenger, but God himself shall save them,g now in his own person preaching, and fulfilling the law and the prophets. So the Father has put into the Son's charge the new disciples, by first displaying Moses and Elijah along with him in his excellence of glory, and thus granting them release, as having at length fully discharged their office and dignity—so that for Marcion's benefit confirmation might be given of this very fact, that there is even a sharing of Christ's glory with Moses and Elijah.
4.24 So when he had told of benefits of healing, then it was that he put scorpions and serpents under subjection to his saints: and this was he who had first received from his Father this authority so as to grant it also to others, and now made it manifest in the order the prophecy had foretold.
4.25 Consequently, seeing he had made no provision of materials in which he could have hidden something, nor had been dealing with offenders from whom he ought to have hidden it, nor had the right to hide things even if he had been dealing with such offenders, it follows that he can never be the revealer of things, because he has never been the hider of them, and in that case is neither the lord of heaven nor the father of Christ: but rather he is, who satisfies all these conditions.
ibid He says all things are delivered to him by his Father. You can believe this, if Christ belongs to the Creator to whom all things belong, because the Creator has not delivered all things to the Son as to one less than himself: for by the Son, who is his own Word, he created them all. But if Christ is 'he that doth come', what are those 'all things' that are delivered to him by the Father? The Creator's things? Then those are good things which the Father has delivered to the Son, and good too is that Creator whose 'all things' are good, and that other one is not good who has broken in upon another's goods so as to deliver them to his son. If he teaches men to keep their hands off what is another's, he is certainly in extreme poverty in having nothing to enrich a son with except what is another's. Or, if nothing of the Creator's has been delivered to him by his father, by what right does he lay claim to the Creator's man? Or else, if it is only man who has been delivered to him, then man is not 'all things'. But the scripture says that delivery of all things has been made to the Son.
ibid But, No man knoweth who the Father is, but the Son, and who the Son is, but the Father, and he to whomsoever the Son shall reveal him. And thus it was an unknown god whom Christ preached. From this sentence other heretics1 too take for themselves support, objecting that the Creator was known to all men, to Israel because they were his particular friends, to the gentiles by the law of nature ... For his reason for inserting the statement that the Father is known by that man to whom the Son has revealed him, is that it was he himself who was proclaimed as set by the Father as a light of the gentiles, and that they were to receive light concerning God, the God of Israel, and this by virtue of a fuller acknowledgement of God.
4.26 When he had been praying in a certain place, to that higher-class father, looking up with eyes above measure presumptuous and audacious towards the heaven of that Creator by whose sternness and savagery he could easily have been struck down by lightning and hail—even as at Jerusalem he can have been crucified by him—one of his disciples approached him and said, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples, because, as you will have it, he thought a different god must needs be prayed to in different terms.
ibid Again, take note of which God the terms of the prayer suggest. Whom shall I address as Father? Him who has had nothing at all to do with the making of me, and from whom I in no sense take my origin, or him who by making me and fashioning me became my begetter?
ibid But 'troublesome' is what a god lately arrived could not in so short a time have found any man to be. Acknowledge then as your Father the God you refer to as the Creator. He it is who knows what his sons are in need of.
4.28 And so it was with good reason that he disapproved of the hypocrisy of the pharisees, who loved God with their lips and not with their heart. Beware, he says to the disciples, of the leaven of the pharisees, which is hypocrisy, not the preaching of the Creator. The Son hates these who show insolence to his Father: it is against him, not against another, that he would not have his disciples so behave.
4.29 But when he adds once more, But the Father knoweth that ye have need of these things, I must first inquire whom Christ wishes them to understand by the Father. If he means their own Creator, he thereby affirms the goodness of him who knows what his sons have need of: but if he means that other god, how does this one know that food and clothing are what man has need of, when he has provided none of these?
4.30 The kingdom of God, he says, is like a grain of mustard seed which a man took and sowed in his own garden. Whom must we understand in the person of the man? Evidently Christ, because, even though he be Marcion's Christ, he is described as the Son of man, who has received from the Father the seed of the kingdom, which is the word of the gospel, and has sown it in his garden, meaning the world, and, if you like, on this occasion in a human being. But since he has said in his own garden, while neither the world nor that human being belongs to Marcion's god, but to the Creator, it follows that he who has sown the seed on his own property is proved to be the Creator.
4.34 When he forbids divorce, while yet claiming as his father him who has joined together the male and the female, must he not rather have defended than abolished Moses' regulation? But now, let us suppose that this Christ is yours, giving oppo- site teaching to Moses and the Creator—provided that if I prove it was not opposite, I may claim him as mine.
ibid Hence it becomes plain to any wise man who has ever heard of the Elysian fields, that there is a sort of distinct locality referred to as Abraham's bosom, for the reception of the souls of his sons even from among the gentiles— for he is the father of those many nations who are to be reckoned Abraham's offspring—and those of that same faith by which Abraham himself believed God, beneath no yoke of the law, and without the sign of circumcision.
4.35 So then, since he himself was with primary and plenary authority the high priest of God the Father, he did examine them in accor- dance with the secret meaning of the law, which indicates that Christ is the true examiner and remover of the defilements of men.
4.39 For what is there wiser or more irresistible than a plain and express confession in the name of a martyr who prevails with God ? For this is the meaning of Israel. And no wonder that a check was put upon premeditation by one who himself received from the Father the ability to speak words in season: The Lord giveth me the tongue of discipline <to know> when I ought to utter speech: except that Marcion suggests that Christ is not subject to the Father.
ibid his will be that great and notable day of the Lord, when he comes as the Son of man from heaven, as Daniel says: Behold one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven, and what follows: and there was given to him kingly authority,l that which in the parable he had gone forth to claim, when he left money with his servants for them to do business with: and all the nationsl—those which the Father had promised him in the psalm, Desire of me and I will give thee the gentiles for thine inheritancem—and all glory serving him, and his dominion is everlasting, that shall not be taken away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed,l because in it they will not die, nor marry, but will be like the angels.
4.43 And see how it continues, even in the thirtieth psalm, to present Christ in his own person: he cries aloud to the Father, so as even in dying, with his last words, to fulfil the prophets