Reading Scripture: Types and Figures
Tertullian, Against Marcion 19
I have a standard opening against heresies: all people must rely on the testimony of the times, upholding our original rule against every heretical successor. The Apostle now proves this point, writing about the hope reserved in heaven, which you heard in the word of truth, the gospel, which has come to you just as it has to the whole world (Col 1:5-6). For if the gospel tradition had already poured out everywhere back then, how much more so now? And if ours is the one that has spread everywhere, it is more apostolic than any heretical version — certainly more than the one from Antoninus' Marcion. Even if Marcion managed to fill the whole world, he still could not defend himself as apostolic. It will be obvious that the one who filled the world first is the true apostolic gospel — specifically, the gospel of the God who sang of its preaching: 'Their sound has gone out into all the earth, and their words to the ends of the world' (Ps 19:4). He claims Christ is the image of the invisible God. But we say the Father of Christ is the invisible one, knowing the Son has always been seen — whenever he was seen by anyone — in God's name, as God's image. This prevents any distinction splitting the visible from the invisible God, since our God has always been defined as the one 'whom no one has seen and lived' (Ex 33:20). If Christ is not the firstborn of creation — the Word of the Creator through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made — if all things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers, were not established in him and through him (Col 1:15-16), then the Apostle would not have stated so flatly: 'He is before all things' (Col 1:17). How can he be before all things if he is not before everything? How can he be before everything if he is not the firstborn of creation, the Word of the Creator? How will it be proven he existed before all things when he appeared after all things? Who can know someone existed earlier if they do not even know he exists? And how did he lead 'all the fullness' to dwell in himself (Col 1:19)? First, what is this fullness, if not the very things Marcion stripped away — things established in Christ in heaven and on earth, angels and humans, the visible and invisible: thrones, dominions, principalities, powers? Or if our pseudo-apostles and Jewish evangelists introduced these on their own authority, let Marcion produce the fullness of his own god, who created nothing. What kind of logic is it that the rival and destroyer of the Creator wants his Christ to house the Creator's fullness? Who finally reconciles all things to himself, making peace through the blood of his cross (Col 1:20), except the one against whom all things offended, who was rebelled against through transgression, and to whom all things ultimately belonged? They might be reconciled to a stranger, but true reconciliation is only to their own. So we too, once alienated and enemies in mind by evil works, are brought back to the Creator's grace, whose offense we committed by worshiping the creation against the Creator (Col 1:21). Wherever he also calls the church the body of Christ — as here, where he says he fills up what is lacking in Christ's sufferings in his flesh for the sake of his body, which is the church (Col 1:24) — he does not transfer the word 'body' from the substance of flesh. For he also says above that we are reconciled in his body through death (Col 1:22). That must mean the body in which he could die — he died through flesh, not through the church — plainly for the church's sake, swapping body for body, carnal for spiritual. But when he warns against clever speech and philosophy as empty seduction 'according to the elements of the world' — not according to heaven or earth, but according to worldly letters and human tradition, specifically the tradition of clever speakers and philosophers (Col 2:8) — it would take another whole work to show this sentence condemns every heresy, since they all run on the power of clever speech and the rules of philosophy. Yet Marcion admits the core term of his faith comes from the school of Epicurus: a god who is not dull, so he need not be feared; matter placed alongside the Creator, lifted from the Stoic porch; denial of the resurrection of the flesh, which no philosophy supports. His ingenuity is so far from our truth that he fears to provoke God's wrath, yet confidently asserts God brought all things from nothing, promises to restore the very same flesh, and does not blush to say Christ was born from a virgin's womb — with philosophers, heretics, and pagans all laughing. 'God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise' (1 Cor 1:27) — that God, beyond doubt, who promised to destroy the wisdom of the wise, judging from his own disposition. With this simplicity of truth, opposed to clever speech and philosophy, we cannot think anything perverse. Finally, if God makes us alive with Christ, granting forgiveness of sins, we cannot believe sins are forgiven by a god to whom they were never committed — as if he were previously unknown. Come now: when he says, 'Let no one judge you in food and drink, or regarding a festival, a new moon, or a Sabbath — which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is Christ's' (Col 2:16-17), what do you say, Marcion? We are not abandoning the law, except to show how it is excluded here: while the argument moves from shadow to body, from figures to the truth, which is Christ. Therefore the shadow also belongs to the one whose body it is — that is, the law belongs to the one whose Christ it is. Try to separate one law for one god and one Christ for another, if you can detach any shadow from the body that casts it. Clearly, the law is Christ's, if the body belongs to the shadow. Even if he censures some who demanded food abstinence based on angelic visions — 'Do not handle, do not taste' — wanting to walk in humility of mind, not holding the Head (Col 2:18-19), that does not mean he rejects the law and Moses. As if the ban on certain foods came from angelic superstition. It is certain Moses received the law from God. Ultimately, he assigns this discipline — 'according to human precepts and teachings' (Col 2:22) — to those who do not hold the Head, that is, Christ, to whom all things are summed up, even the distinction of foods (Eph 1:10). I have shown sufficiently elsewhere that the rest of the commandments, being the same, flow from the Creator, who, while preaching the old things that were passing away and preparing to make all things new, also commanded: 'Renew your new moon' — already then teaching to put off the old man and put on the new (Isa 1:14; Eph 4:22-24; Col 3:9-10).
Latin
Soleo in praescriptione aduersus haeresis: omnes de testimomio temporum compendium figere, priorem uindicans regulam nostram omni haeretica posteritate. hoc nunc probabit et apostolus dicens: de spe reposita ia caelis quam audistis in sermone ueritatis euangelii, quod peruenit ad uos sicut et in totum mundum. nam si iam tunc traditio euangelica ubique manauerat, quanto magis nunc? porro, si nostra est quae ubique manauit, magis quam omnis haeretica, nedum Antoniniani Marcionis, nostra erit apostolica. Marcionis autem cum totum impleuerit mundum, ne tunc quidem se defendere poterit de apostolica. eam enim et sic constabit esse, quae prior mundum repleuit, illius scilicet dei euangelio, qui et hoc cecinit de praedicationibus eius: in omnem terram exiit sonus eorum et in terminos orbis uerba eorum. Inuisibilis dei imaginem ait Christum. sed nos enim inuisibilem dicimus patrem Christi, scientes filium semper retro uisum, si quibus uisus est, in dei nomine, ut imaginem ipsius; ne quam et hinc differentiam scindat dei uisibilis et inuisibilis, cum olim dei nostri sit definitio: dominum nemo uidebit et uiuet. Si non est Christus primogenitus conditionis, ut sermo creatoris, per quem omnia facta sunt et sine quo nihil factum est, si non in illo condita sunt uniuersa in caelis et in terris, uisibilia et inuisibilia, siue throni siue dominationes siue principatus siue potestates, si non cuncta per illum et in illo sunt condita, — haec enim Marcioni displicere oportebant — non utique tam nude posuisset apostolus: et ipse est ante omnes. quomodo enim ante omnes, si non ante omnia? quomodo ante omnia, si non primogenitus conditionis, si non sermo creatoris? unde (autem) ante omnes probabitur fuisse qui post omnia apparuit? quis scit priorem fuisse quem esse nesciit? Quomodo item boni duxit omnem plenitudinem in semetipso habitare? primo enim, quae est ista plenitudo, nisi ex illis, quae Marcion detraxit, conditis in Christo in caelis et in terris, angelis et hominibus, nisi ex illis inuisibilibus et uisibilibus: nisi ex thronis et dominationibus et principatibus et potestatibus? aut si haec pseudoapostoli nostri et Iudaici euangelizatores de suo intulerint, edat plenitudinem dei sui Marcion. qui nihil condidit. ceterum quale est, ut plenitudinem creatoris aemulus et destructor eius in suo Christo habitare uoluerit? cui denique reconciliat omnia in semetipsum, pacem faciens per crucis suae sanguinem, nisi quem offenderant uniuersa, aduersus quem rebellauerant per transgressionem, cuius nouissime fuerant? conciliari enim extraneo possent. reconciliari uero non alii quam suo. Ita et nos quondam alienatos et inimicos sensu in malis operibus creatori redigit in gratiam, cuius admiseramus offensam colentes conditionem aduersus creatorem. sicubi autem et ecclesiam corpus Christi dicit esse - ut hic ait adimplere se reliqua pressurarum Christi in carne pro corpore eius, quod est ecclesia —, non propterea et in totum mentionem corporis transferens a substantia carnis. nam et supra reconciliari nos ait in corpore eius per mortem. utique in eo corpore, in quo mori potuit, per carnem mortuus et non per ecclesiam, plane propter ecclesiam corpus commutando pro corpore, carnale pro spiritali. At cum monet cauendum a subtililoquentia et philosophia, ut inani seductione, quae sit secundum elementa mundi, — non secundum caelum aut terram dicens, sed secundum litteras saeculares et secundum traditionem, scilicet hominum subtililoquorum et philosophorum - longum est quidem et alterius operis ostendere hac sententia omnes haereses damnari, quod omnes ex subtililoquentiae uiribus et philosophiae regulis constent, sed Marcion principalem suae fidei terminum de Epicuri schola agnoscat, deum inferens [nec] hebetem, ne timeri eum dicat, collocans et cum deo creatore materiam de porticu Stoicorum, negans carnis resurrectionem, de qua proinde nulla philosophia consentit. cuius ingeniis tam longe abest ueritas nostra, ut et iram dei excitare formidet et omnia ilium ex nihilo protulisse confidat et carnem eandem restituturum repromittat, et Christum ex uulua uirginis natum non erubescat, ridentibus philosophis, et haereticis et ethnicis ipsis. stulta enim mundi elegit deus, ut confundat sapientes, ille sine dubio, qui ex respectu huius suae dispositionis perditurum se sapientiam sapientium praeminabatur. hac simplicitate ueritatis contraria subtililoquentiae et philosophiae nihil peruersi possumus sapere. Denique si nos deus cum Christo uiuificat donans delicta nobis, non possumus credere ab eo donari delicta, in quem admissa non fuerint, ut retro ignotum. Age iam, cum dicit: nemo uos iudicet in cibo et potu et in parte diei festi et neom-eniae et sabbati, quae est umbra futurorum, corpus autem Christi, quid tibi uidetur, Marcion? de lege iam non retractamus, nisi quod et hic quemadmodum exclusa sit, edocet, dum scilicet de umbra transfertur in corpus, id est de figuris ad ueritatem, quod est Christus. ergo et umbra eius, cuius et corpus, id est et lex eius, (cuius) et Christus. «egrega alii deo legem et alii deo Christum, si potes aliquam umbram ab eo corpore, cuius umbra est, separare. manifeste legis est Christus, si corpus est umbrae. Si autem et aliquos taxat, qui ex uisionibus angelicis dicebant cibis abstinendum — ne attigeris, ne gustaueris - uolentes in humilitate sensus incedere, non tenentes caput, non ideo legem et Moysen pulsat. quasi de angelica superstitione constituerit interdictionem quorundam edulium. Moysen enim a deo accepisse legem constat. denique hanc disciplinam — secundum praecepta, inquit, et doctrinam hominum - deputauit in eos, qui caput non tenerent, id est ipsum, in quo omnia recensentur [in Christum] ad initium reuocata, etiam differentia escarum. cetera praeceptorum, ut eadem, satis sit iam alibi docuisse quam a creatore manarint, qui, cum uetera praedicaret transitura noua facturus uniuersa, mandans etiam: nouate uobis nouamen nonum, iam tum docebat exponere ueterem hominem et nouum induere.