Tertullian, Against Marcion 31

What kind of people does He command to be invited to lunch or dinner? He showed us through Isaiah: break your bread for the hungry, and bring the poor and the homeless into your house — people who, obviously, cannot repay this kindness. If Christ forbids angling for that repayment here, promising it instead in the resurrection, that is the Creator's signature: He takes no pleasure in those who love gifts, but in those who pursue recompense. (Isaiah 58:7)

Now weigh the parable of the host: to whom does it more properly belong? A certain man prepared a great dinner and invited many. That dinner's preparation plainly figures the satisfaction of eternal life. First point: strangers and those with no claim are not the ones usually summoned to a feast; it is household members and family. Therefore the invitation belongs to the Creator, to whom the invitees belonged — through Adam as human beings, and through the patriarchs as Jews — not to a god to whom they belonged neither by nature nor by privilege.

Next, if the one who prepared the dinner sends a summons to the guests, the dinner is the Creator's as well: He sent word to those already called through the patriarchs, now to be admonished through the prophets. This is not a god who sent no one to warn them and did nothing beforehand to call them, only to descend suddenly — merely making Himself known as inviter, merely inviting as He already compels them into the banquet, collapsing the hour of dining and the hour of invitation into one.

The invited make excuses. If they were summoned by some other god, their refusal is justified, because the call came suddenly; if not justified, then the call was not sudden. But if not sudden, then it came from the Creator, from whom they received the call long ago — and whose call they then rejected, first saying to Aaron, 'Make us gods to go before us,' and from then on hearing with their ears but not hearing, the call of the God who fits this parable most precisely through Jeremiah: 'Listen to my voice, and I will be your God and you shall be my people; walk in all the ways I command you' — there is the invitation — 'but they did not listen, nor did they turn their ear' — there is the people's refusal — 'but they walked in the stubbornness of their evil hearts: I bought a field, I bought oxen, I took a wife.' (Jeremiah 7:23)

And still He presses: 'I sent all my servants the prophets to you, rising early and sending them' — here is the Holy Spirit, the guests' admonisher — 'but my people did not listen, did not incline their ears, and stiffened their necks.' This was reported to the householder, who was then moved — and well that He was moved, since Marcion denies his god can be moved; so this one is mine. He then orders a roundup from the streets and alleys of the city.

Let us test whether this fits the sense of Jeremiah again: 'Have I become a wilderness to the house of Israel, or a land left desolate?' — that is: 'Do I lack people to call, or places to call them from?' — because my people said, 'We will not come to you.' So He sent to call others from the same city. Then, with room still to spare, He commanded gathering from the roads and hedges — that is, us from the foreign nations — by that very jealousy with which Deuteronomy says: 'I will hide my face from them and see what becomes of them in the end' — meaning others will take their place — 'for they are a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faith. They provoked me with a no-god, angered me with their idols; so I will provoke them with a no-people, anger them with a foolish nation' — in us, that is, whose hope the Jews groan over, and from whose taste the Lord says they will be barred, once Zion is abandoned like a watchtower in a vineyard, like a hut in a cucumber field, after they also rejected the final invitation in Christ. (Deuteronomy 32:21)

What in this sequence — according to the Creator's own dispositions and proclamations — can possibly suit the rival god, who has neither order nor disposition to match the parable's plot, who made the whole work at once? What would be his first call, and what his second act of admonition? Others must excuse themselves first; only then are others summoned. But now he comes inviting both groups at once — from the city, from the hedges — flatly contradicting the parable's mirror. Nor can he judge as haughty those he never invited before, whom he now confronts most aggressively. Or if he judges them for a future contempt of the call, then he also signals a future roundup from the nations to take their place. Clearly he must come a second time: [to preach to the nations. And if] he comes, I suspect it will not be to call guests again, but to seat them.

Meanwhile, you who read this dinner's invitation as the heavenly banquet of spiritual satisfaction and joy, remember that the Creator equally figures the earthly promises of wine, oil, grain, and the city itself into spiritual realities.