Tertullian, Against Marcion 1

Nothing has an origin except God alone. Just as he precedes all things in their very existence, so must he also precede our investigation of them. We cannot determine what something is like unless we are first certain that it exists, and we cannot know that until we have learned where it came from. That is why, following the order of this treatise, I turn to the question of the apostle Paul's origin — a question Marcion cannot answer. I am a new disciple, beholden to no other master. I believe nothing that ought not to be believed rashly; indeed, anything believed without knowledge of its origin is believed rashly. I take up this inquiry with the seriousness it deserves, because Paul is presented to me as an apostle whom I simply do not find in the Gospel's list of apostles. Later I hear he was called by the Lord, already enthroned in heaven. That strikes me as a failure of foresight: if Christ did not know beforehand that he needed Paul, then with the apostolic office already established and dispatched, he added Paul only as an afterthought — a sudden raid, not a planned reinforcement — out of necessity, so to speak, not by choice.

So, Ponticus, captain of your own ship: if you have never taken stolen or contraband cargo aboard, if you have never shorted or adulterated a load, then be at least as careful and faithful in the things of God. Tell us by what token you received the apostle Paul — who branded him with his title, who handed him over to you, who imposed him on you — so that you can give a consistent account of him. Do not let it be proved that the man who produced all the credentials of his own apostleship is the one who says, 'I am an apostle — not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ' (Gal 1:1). Anyone can profess himself, but a profession is confirmed only by another's authority. One writes, another subscribes, another seals, another enters it in the record. No one is both professor and witness for himself. Besides, you have read that many will come saying, 'I am the Christ' (Matt 24:5). If someone can lie and claim to be Christ, how much more will someone lie and claim to be an apostle of Christ?

I am still speaking as a disciple and an examiner. My aim is to blunt your faith — since you have no source from which to prove it — and to shame your impudence, since you defend a claim you cannot substantiate. Let Christ be; let there be another apostle for now — provided they are not authenticated except from the Creator's own documents. For Genesis promised Paul to me long ago. Among those prophetic figures and blessings Jacob pronounced over his sons, when he turned to Benjamin he said: 'Benjamin is a ravenous wolf; in the morning he devours the prey, in the evening he divides the spoil' (Gen 49:27). From the tribe of Benjamin, Jacob foresaw Paul rising — a ravenous wolf devouring in the morning, that is, in his youth ravaging the Lord's flocks as a persecutor of the churches; then in the evening distributing food, that is, in his later years feeding Christ's sheep as a teacher of the nations. Saul's early ferocity against David, followed by repentance and restitution — receiving good for evil — foreshadowed nothing other than Paul in Saul, of the tribe of Benjamin and under the Law, and David according to the virgin's lineage.

If these sacramental figures displease you, the Acts of the Apostles have handed down this same sequence for Paul, and you cannot deny it. From Acts I show the apostle as a persecutor — not from men nor through a man (Gal 1:1); from Acts I bring you to believe; from Acts I drive you from his defense. I do not fear your retort: 'So you deny the apostle Paul?' I do not blaspheme the one I defend. I deny him precisely to force you to prove him; I deny him to demonstrate that he belongs to me. If you look to our faith, accept the evidence that establishes it; if you challenge us to yours, produce the evidence that constitutes it. Either prove that what you believe exists, or if you cannot prove it, how do you believe? What kind of believer are you, trusting a man by whom alone the object of your faith is proven to exist? You now have the apostle from my side, just as you have Christ — whom I claim as my apostle no less than my Christ. We will fight on the same lines; we will press the prescription at the same point: that an apostle who is repudiated by the Creator, or rather deployed against the Creator, teaches nothing, knows nothing, wills nothing according to the Creator, and above all proclaims another god with the same constancy with which he tore himself from the Creator's Law. It is not plausible that, turning from Judaism, he would not equally declare whose God he was turning to — because no one can pass from the Creator without knowing to whom he is passing. Either Christ had already revealed another God, and the apostle's testimony followed — otherwise he would not be the apostle of the God Christ revealed, and what Christ had revealed could not be hidden from the apostle — or Christ revealed nothing of the sort about God, in which case the apostle was all the more obliged to reveal it, since he could no longer be believed without doubt if the revelation did not come through him. We have laid this groundwork so that from now on we may declare our intention to prove that no other God is being smuggled in by the apostle, just as we have proven none is smuggled in by Christ — and we will do it from Paul's own letters, which the heretic's Gospel, in its very number and form, has already prejudged as mutilated.