Tertullian, Against Marcion 33
Jesus declares that you cannot serve two masters, because serving one inevitably offends the other; He names them: God and mammon (Luke 16:13). If you lack an interpreter for what He means by mammon, you can learn it straight from Him. He warns us to secure our future through worldly friendships, citing the shrewd manager who, once fired, cut his master's debtors' bills to buy their favor. "I tell you," He says, "make friends for yourselves with the mammon of injustice — that is, with money, the very stuff that manager used" (Luke 16:11). Everyone knows money is the author and ruler of all worldly injustice. When the money-loving Pharisees sneered, Jesus doubled down: you cannot serve God and mammon. They mocked Him because they realized He was talking about cash, not because they thought He was identifying the Creator with mammon and recalling them from the Creator's service. So learn this instead: Christ reveals one God. He names two lords — God and mammon, the Creator and money — and says you cannot serve God, the very One the Pharisees claimed to serve, and mammon, the one they actually served. If Jesus were some other deity, He would have presented three lords, not two — for the Creator is Lord by virtue of being God, a far greater Lord than mammon, and far more binding on humanity. What kind of logic would have Jesus call mammon a lord, pair it with the Lord, and then fall silent about the Lord Himself, the Creator God? Or did His silence concede that the Creator deserves service, simply because He denied that He and mammon could be served together? By positing one God and naming the Creator, Jesus shows He is not another god; if He were, He would have named the Creator as a separate lord, which He did not. This also clarifies His words: "If you have not been faithful with the mammon of injustice, who will trust you with what is true?" — meaning unjust money, not the Creator, whom even Marcion calls just. And: "If you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is mine?" (Luke 16:11). What belongs to another must be unjust and 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 land on mammon, not the Creator, then "who will trust you with what is more true? And who will give you what is mine?" Jesus could not have spoken as if dispensing another god's gift; that would only make sense if He had indicted them for unfaithfulness to the Creator, not mammon, and used the Creator's mention to distinguish a rival God — refusing to entrust His truth to the Creator's unfaithful. Since the Pharisees justified themselves before men and pinned their hope of reward on human approval, Jesus rebuked them with the same force as Jeremiah: "Wretched is the man who puts his hope 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: "The day of the Lord of Hosts will come upon every arrogant and proud man, upon everyone lifted high, and they will be humbled." I can now see why Marcion's god stayed hidden so long: he was waiting, I suppose, to learn all this from the Creator. He studied up to John's time, then launched his announcement of God's kingdom: "The Law and the Prophets were until John; from then on the kingdom of God is proclaimed." As if we do not also recognize John as the boundary between old and new, where Judaism ended and Christianity began — not because another power effected the Law's cessation and the Gospel's inception, but Christ Himself. If we have proven that the old passes and the new succeeds by the Creator's prediction, and John is shown as the forerunner and preparer of the Lord's ways, the Gospel, and the kingdom's proclamation, then from John's arrival it follows that Jesus is the Christ who follows John as forerunner. And if the old ceased and the new began with John as the hinge, it is no surprise this flows from the Creator's own design — so that it is proven even more decisively by the Law and Prophets' sunset in John and the kingdom's sunrise thereafter than by any other means. Therefore let heaven and earth pass away sooner than one dot of the Lord's words — "The word of our God stands forever" —; for 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) — signaling that the order of Law and Prophets would cease from that point through fulfillment, not destruction, and the kingdom of God would be announced by Christ. That is why He made the passing elements easier to dismantle than His own words, confirming that what He said about John had not failed.
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.