Tertullian, Against Marcion 36

Jesus commands perseverance and insistence in prayer, putting forward the parable of a judge forced to hear a widow because of her insistence and perseverance in petitioning him. He therefore shows that God is the one to be prayed to, not himself — unless he himself is the judge. But he also adds that God will execute vengeance for his elect. If, then, he is to be the avenger who is also the judge, he has thereby proved the Creator to be the better God, the one he shows as the avenger of his elect who cry out to him day and night. And yet, when he brings in the Creator's temple and describes two worshipers with different dispositions — a Pharisee in pride, a tax collector in humility — with the result that one is rejected and the other justified, he is teaching by what discipline one ought to pray. He establishes that one must pray to the very God from whom they will receive that discipline of prayer, whether it condemns pride or justifies humility. I find no temple, no worshipers, and no judgment belonging to any other God in Christ except the Creator's. He commands worship in humility, as the helper of the humble, not in pride, as the destroyer of the proud. Who else does he show me to worship? By what discipline? By what hope? No one, I think. For even the prayer he taught, we have proved, suits the Creator. It would be a different matter if he also refuses to be worshiped, since he is the best and kindest God. 'But who is best except the one God?' He does not present one of two gods as the best, but that the one God alone is best — best because he alone is God. And he is certainly the best who rains on the just and the unjust and makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, sustaining and nourishing and helping even Marcionites (Matthew 5:45).

Finally, when someone asked him, 'Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' he challenged him on whether he knew the Creator's commandments — that is, whether he kept them — to testify that eternal life is acquired by the Creator's commandments. When the man affirmed he had kept the principal ones from his youth, Jesus said, 'One thing you lack: sell everything you have, give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' Come now, Marcion, and all you fellow-feelers and co-worshipers, heretics — what will you dare say? Did Christ abolish the former commandments — do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, honor your father and mother — or did he keep those and add what was lacking? Although this command to give to the poor is spread throughout the Law and the Prophets, so that the most glorious keeper of the commandments, who valued his money far more, would be led astray? Let this Gospel stand: 'I did not come to abolish the Law and the Prophets but to fulfill them.' At the same time he resolved the other doubts, making clear that the name of God, and the Best, and eternal life, and treasure in heaven belong to one God, and that he himself — whose commandments he was supplementing, conserving, and increasing — is recognized in Micah, who says in this place: 'He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God?' (Micah 6:8). And Christ, announcing what is good: 'You know the commandments' — that is the knowledge of the Law; 'Do justice,' he says, 'sell what you have'; 'Love mercy,' he says, 'and give to the poor'; 'Be prepared to follow the Lord,' he says, 'and come, follow me.'

The Jewish people were so distinct from the beginning, divided into tribes, peoples, families, and houses, that no one could easily be ignorant of their lineage — even from the recent Augustan censuses, which were perhaps still underway at that time. But Jesus, according to Marcion — and if he was not born, it would not be doubted that he seemed a man — certainly, because he was not born, he could have had no public knowledge of his lineage; he would simply have been counted among those unknown in some way. So when a blind man heard him passing by, why did he cry out, 'Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me,' unless he was not rashly considered the Son of David — that is, from the family of David — through his mother and brothers, who had at some point been made known to him, presumably from public knowledge? Those going before rebuked the blind man to silence — rightly, because he was shouting, not because he was lying about the Son of David. Or are you teaching that the rebukers knew Jesus was not the Son of David, so that they supposedly imposed silence on the blind man for that reason? But even if you taught that, it would be easier to presume they were ignorant than that the Lord could have endured a false proclamation about himself. 'But the Lord is patient' — yet not a confirmer of error. On the contrary, he is also the detector of the Creator, as if he did not previously dispel that man's blindness lest he think Jesus was the Son of David. But lest you defame his patience or pin any motive of dissimulation on him, he plainly confirmed the blind man's proclamation both by the reward of healing and by the testimony of faith: 'Your faith has saved you.' What do you want the blind man to have believed? That Jesus descended from another God to detect the Creator, to destroy the Law and the Prophets? Is he not the one destined from the root of Jesse and the fruit of David's loins, the rewarder even of the blind? But I think the blind were not yet of Marcion's stripe, so that this was the faith of that blind man — that he believed in the cry, 'Jesus, Son of David.'

The one who knew himself and wanted to be known by all gave the man's faith — even if better sighted, even if endowed with true light — also an external vision, so that we might learn both the rule and the reward of faith at once: whoever wants to see, let him believe Jesus to be the Son of David through the census of the Virgin; whoever does not believe thus will not hear from him, 'Your faith has saved you,' and so will remain blind, rushing into contradiction, and dragging the contradiction itself down with him. For the blind typically lead the blind. For if the blind once offended David during the recovery of Zion, resisting his admission — a figure, therefore, of a blind people who would not admit Christ the Son of David — then Christ helps a blind man in the opposite way, to show himself not to be the Son of David? As if, from a diversity of mind, he is good to the blind whom David ordered killed — why then did he say he endured false faith? On the contrary, this 'Son of David' returns a contradiction to be blunted. Because the blind offended David, but now a man of the very same flesh offered himself as a suppliant to the Son of David, the Son of David, placated by satisfying him in a way, restored his sight with the testimony of faith by which he had believed this very thing was to be prayed for — that he might be the Son of David. And yet, I think, David was offended by the audacity of men, not by their infirmity.