One God, Old and New Testaments
Tertullian, Against Marcion 33
He denies that anyone can serve two masters, because you inevitably offend one to defend the other, and he makes his point by naming them: God and Mammon. So if you lack an interpreter for what he means by Mammon, you can learn it from him directly. He warns us to secure our worldly friendships by following the example of that steward who, once fired, reduced his master's debtors' obligations to feather his own nest. 'And I tell you,' he says, 'make friends for yourselves with the mammon of unrighteousness' — that is, with money, the very stuff that steward used (Luke 16:13). We all know money is the author and tyrant of all worldly injustice. When he saw the Pharisees' greed, he drove the point home: 'You cannot serve God and mammon.' The money-loving Pharisees sneered, precisely because they grasped that 'mammon' meant money — lest anyone think the Creator was meant by 'mammon' and that Christ had called them out of the Creator's service.
So learn this instead: Christ revealed one God. He named two lords — God and Mammon, the Creator and money — and said, 'You cannot serve God,' meaning the One they appeared to serve, 'and mammon,' the one they actually served. If Christ were playing for a different team, he would have had to present not two lords but three — since the Creator is Lord by virtue of being God, and a greater Lord than Mammon, more binding on man precisely because he is greater. What sense would it make for the one who called Mammon a lord and paired him with the true Lord to then fall silent about the Lord himself, the Creator God? Or did his silence concede that the Creator should be served, simply because he denied you can serve both him and Mammon? By positing one God and naming the Creator as that God, he shows that if he were someone else, he would have named the Creator as Lord without any other God beside him.
Therefore it becomes clear how the saying works: 'If you have not been faithful in unrighteous mammon, who will entrust you with what is true?' (Luke 16:11). That means unrighteous money, not the Creator — whom Marcion also declares just. 'And if you have not been faithful in what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?' What belongs to another must be the unjust thing, alien to the demiurge. But how was the Creator 'alien' to the Pharisees when he was the proper God of the Jewish nation? If these charges don't stick to the Creator but to Mammon, then 'who will trust you with what is truer?' and 'who will give you what is mine?' He could not have spoken as if it were another's, concerning the grace of another God. For that would only make sense if he had indicted them for unfaithfulness to the Creator, not to Mammon, and by invoking the Creator drawn a line between himself and another God, withholding his truth from the Creator's unfaithful.
When the Pharisees justified themselves before men and pinned their hope of reward on human approval, he rebuked them with the same sensibility as the prophet Jeremiah: 'Wretched is the man who trusts in man.' When he adds, 'But God knows your hearts,' he invokes the power of that God who declared himself the searcher of kidneys and hearts. When he strikes at pride — 'What is exalted among men is an abomination to God' — he sets Isaiah before their eyes: 'For the day of the Lord of Hosts comes upon every arrogant and haughty one, upon everyone lifted high, and they shall be humbled.'
I can now see why Marcion's God stayed hidden for so long. He was waiting, I suspect, until he had learned all this from the Creator. So he took notes up to John's time, then launched his announcement of the kingdom of God with the line: 'The Law and the Prophets were until John; from then on the kingdom of God is proclaimed.' As if we don't also recognize John as the boundary marker set between old and new, where Judaism stops and Christianity starts — not because a different power brought the Law and Prophets to a close and inaugurated the Gospel where God's kingdom resides, but Christ himself. If we have proved that the old passes and the new succeeds as predicted by the Creator, and John is shown to be the forerunner and preparer of the Lord's ways, to usher in the Gospel and proclaim the kingdom of God, then from John's arrival it follows that Christ is the one who came after John as his forerunner. And if the old ended and the new began with John as the hinge, it should not surprise us that this came from the Creator's own design — so that it might be proved even more decisively than by the Law and Prophets' sunset in John and the kingdom's sunrise from there.
Therefore let heaven and earth pass away sooner than one dot of the Lord's words — 'for the word of our God stands forever' —; since in Isaiah, Christ, the Word and Spirit of the Creator, had already foretold John: 'A voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord' (Isaiah 40:3). He was coming to bring the order of the Law and Prophets to an end through fulfillment, not destruction, and to announce the kingdom of God through Christ. That is why he more easily undermined the elements destined to pass away than his own words, confirming also what he had said about John: that John would not pass away.
Latin
Quibus duobus dominis neget posse seruiri, quia alterum offendi sit necesse alterum defendi, ipse declarat, deum proponens et mamonam. proinde mamonam quem intellegi uelit, si interpretem non habes, ab ipso potes discere. admonens enim nos de saecularibus suffragia nobis prospicere amicitiarum secundum serui illius exemplum, qui ab actu summotus dominicos debitores diminutis cautionibus releuat in subsidium sibi: et ego, inquit, dico uobis, facite uobis amicos de mamona iniustitiae, de nummo scilicet, de ' quo et seruus ille. iniustitiae enim auctorem et dominatorem totius saeculi nummum scimus omnes. cui famulatam uidens Pharisaeorum cupiditatem ammentauit hanc sententiam: non potestis deo seruire et mamonae. inridebant denique Pharisaei pecuniae cupidi, quod intellexissent scilicet mamonam de nummo dictum, ne quia existimet in mamona creatorem intellegendum et Christum a creatoris illos seruitute reuocasse.. quid nunc? potius ex hoc disce unum a Christo deum ostensum. duos enim dominos nominauit, deum et mamonam, crea. torem et nummum: denique non potestis deo seruire, utique ei, cui uidebantur seruire, et mamonam, cui magis destinabantur. quodsi ipse alium se ageret, non duos dominos, sed tres demonstrasset — et creator enim dominus, quia deus, et utique magis dominus quam mamonas magisque homini obseruandus, qua magis dominus —; quale est enim, ut qui mamonam dominum dixerat et cum domino iunxerat uero, ipsum dominum taceret, id est deum creatorem? aut numquid tacendo eo concessit seruiendum ei esse, si solummodo sibi et mamonae negauit posse seruiri? ita cum unum deum ponit, nominaturus et creatorem, si alius esset ipse, creatorem nominauit quem [dominum] sine alio [deo non] posuit. et illud itaque relucebit, quomodo dictum sit: (si) in mamona iniusto fideles non extitistis, quod uerum est quis uobis credet? in nummo scilicet iniusto, non in creatore, quem et Marcion iustum facit, et: si in alieno fideles inuenti non estis, meum quis dabit uobis? alienum enim debet esse a semis dei quod iniustum est. creator autem quomodo alienus erat Pharisaeis, proprius deus Iudaicae gentis? si ergo haec non cadunt in creatorem, sed in mamonam, 'quis uobis credet quod uerius est'? et 'quis uobis dabit quod meum est'? non potest quasi ali{en)us dixisse de alterius dei gratia. tunc enim uideretur ita dixisse, si eos in creatorem, non in mamonam infideles notando per creatoris mentionem distinctione se fecisset dei alterius, non commissuri suam ueritatem infidelibus creatoris, t quoniam tunc alterius uideri potest, si non ad hoc proponatur, ut a re, de qua agitur, separetur. Si autem et iustificantes se coram hominibus Pharisaei spem mercedis in homine ponebant, illo eos sensu increpabat, quo et propheta Hieremias: miser homo, qui spem habet in homine. si et adicit: scit autem deus corda uestra, illius dei uim commemorabat, (qui) lucernam se pronuntiarat scrutantem renes et corda. si superbiam tangit: quod elatum est apud homines perosum est deo, Esaiam ponit ante oculos: dies enim domini Sabaoth in omnem contumeliosum et superbum, in omnem sublimem et elatum, et humiliabuntur. Possum iam colligere, cur tanto aeuo deus Marcionis fuerit in occulto. expectabat, opinor, donec haec omnia disceret a creatore. didicit igitur usque ad Iohannis tempora atque ita exinde processit adnuntiare regnum dei dicens: lex et prophetae usque ad Iohannem; ex quo regnum dei adnuntiatur. quasi non et nos limitem quendam agnoscamus Iohannem constitutum inter uetera et noua, ad quem desineret Iudaismus et a quo inciperet Christianismus, non tamen, ut ab alia uirtute facta sit sedatio legis et prophetarum et initiatio euangelii, in quo est dei regnum.' [Christus ipse.] nam id si probauimus, et uetera transitura et noua successura praedicari a creatore, si et Iohannes antecursor et praeparator ostenditur uiarum domini euangelium', superducturi et regnum dei promulgaturi, et ex hoc iam, quod Iohannes uenit, ipse erit Christus qui Iohannem erit subsecutus ut antecursorem; et, si desierunt uetera et coeperunt ! noua interstite Iohanne, non erit mirum quod ex dispositione est creatoris, ut unde(unde) magis probetur ** quam ex legis et prophetarum in Iohannem occasu et exinde ortu regni dei. transeat igitur caelum et terra citius, sicut et lex et: prophetae, quam unus apexuerborum domini-nerbum enim, inquit Esaias, dei nostri manet in aeuum —: nam quoniam in Esaia iam tunc Christus, sermo scilicet et spiritus creatoris, Iohannem praedicarat — uocem clamantis in deserto: parate uiam domini — in hoc uenturum, ut legis et] prophetarum ordo exinde cessaret, per adimpletionem, non per destructionem, et regnum dei a Christo adnuntiaretur, I ideo subtexuit facilius elementa transitura quam uerba sua,' confirmans hoc quoque, quod de Iohanne dixerat, non praeterisse.