One God, Old and New Testaments
Tertullian, Against Marcion 38
Christ knew exactly where John's baptism came from, so why did He ask as if He didn't? He knew the Pharisees would not answer Him; so why ask in vain? Was it so He could condemn them by their own mouths, or by their hearts? Refer this, then, to the defense of the Creator and to the comparison with Christ, and consider what would have happened if the Pharisees had actually answered. Suppose they had declared John's baptism merely human: they would have been stoned on the spot. Some anti-Marcion Marcion would have cried out: 'Oh, best God! Oh, God different from the Creator's examples! Knowing men would rush headlong, He Himself shoved them over the precipice.' For that is exactly how the Creator is treated in the law of the tree. 'But John's baptism was from heaven,' Christ said, 'and why did you not believe him?' (Matthew 22:15-22; Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26). Therefore, the One who wanted John to be believed, and who was going to rebuke them for not believing, belonged to the One whose sacrament John administered. Naturally they refused to admit what they knew. When He countered in turn — 'And I will not tell you by what authority I do these things' — He repaid evil for evil. 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.' What things belong to God that are comparable to Caesar's denarius? The image and likeness of God, of course. So He commands that man be rendered to the Creator, in whose image and likeness and name and substance he was fashioned. Let Marcion's god hunt for his own coin; Christ orders the denarius of man to be rendered to His Caesar — not to a foreign one, unless it is necessary for the man who does not have his own denarius.
It is a just and proper rule that in every question the sense of the answer must pertain to the question asked. To answer something other than what was asked is the mark of a madman, and that is all the more alien to Christ, since it does not even befit a mere human. The Sadducees, who denied the resurrection, put a question to the Lord drawn from the law: a woman who had married seven brothers in succession, according to the legal precept — whose wife would she be in the resurrection? That was the substance of the question, the heart of the consultation; Christ had to answer this. He feared no one, so that He would not appear to dodge the questions or to hint through them at something else He did not teach openly. So He answered: the sons of this age marry — you see how precisely this fits the case, because they were asking about the coming age, in which no one will marry, as He had already established that here they marry, where there is also death — but those whom God has deemed worthy of the possession and resurrection of that age neither marry nor are given in marriage, because they no longer die, being like the angels of God, made sons of the resurrection. Since the sense of the answer must not be directed anywhere but to the question posed, if the question is resolved by the sense of the answer, then the Lord's answer carries no other meaning than that which resolves the question. You have, then, the times of permitted and forbidden marriages, not from His own invention, but from the resurrection question; you have, also, the confirmation of the resurrection itself and everything the Sadducees were asking about — not asking about another god, not asking about marriage law on its own terms. But if you make Christ answer things He was not asked about, you deny that He could answer what He was asked — caught by the wisdom of the Sadducees.
Now, at length and after the rule, I will turn back against their connected arguments. For, having gotten hold of the scriptural text — 'those whom God has deemed worthy of that age' — they run the words together in reading, so that they attach 'of God' to 'of that age,' in order to make another god of that age, when it ought to be read like this: 'those whom God has deemed worthy,' so that, with the distinction made after 'God,' 'of that age' attaches to what follows: that is, 'those whom God has deemed worthy of the possession and resurrection of that age.' For they were not consulting about God, but about the condition of that age — whose wife she would be after the resurrection in that age. And so they also twist the answer about marriages, so that 'the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage' is said of men as if the Creator permits marriages, but they themselves, whom the god of that age — that is, another god — has deemed worthy of the resurrection, do not marry even now, because they are not sons of this age. When He was consulted about the marriages of that age, not this one, He denied them — the very ones they were asking about. Therefore, those who caught the force of the voice and pronunciation and pause understood nothing other than what pertained to the matter of the consultation, and so the scribes said: 'Teacher, you have spoken well.' For He had confirmed the resurrection by giving it shape against the Sadducees' opinion. Finally, He did not refuse the testimony of those who presumed He had answered thus.
But if the scribes thought Christ was the son of David, and David calls Him Lord, what does this have to do with Christ, who is not David? Was He obscuring the scribes' error? No — He was securing honor for Christ, whom David calls Lord, confirming that Christ is more Lord than son of David, which does not suit the destroyer of the Creator. How fitting is this interpretation for our side! For the One who was once invoked as 'son of David' by that blind man — which He then let pass in silence, not having the scribes present — now, on the contrary, brought it forward before them on purpose, so that He might show Himself, whom the blind man had proclaimed as only the son of David according to the scribes' teaching, to be also his Lord — rewarding the blind man's faith, who had believed in Him as the son of David, and striking down the scribes' tradition, who did not know Him as Lord. Whatever pertains to the glory of Christ the Creator, Christ the Creator does not defend in any other way.
Latin
Sciebat Christus, baptisma Iohannis unde esset. et cur quasi nesciens interrogabat? sciebat non responsuros sibi Pharisaeos. et cur frustra interrogabat? an. ut ex ore ipsorum iudicaret illos uel ex corde? refer ergo et haec ad excusati. onem creatoris et ad comparationem Christi, et considera iam, quid secuturum esset, si quid Pharisaei ad interrogationem renuntiassent. puta illos renuntiasse humanum Iohannis baptisma: statim lapidibus elisi- fuissent. existeret aliqui Marcion aduersus Marcionem, qui diceret: o deum optimum, o deum diuersum a creatoris exemplis! sciens praeceps ituros homines ipse illos in praerupium imposuit. sic enim et de creatore in arboris lege tractatur. 'sed de caelis fuit baptisma Iohannis). et quare, inquit Christus, non credidistis ei? ergo qui credi uoluerat Iohanni, increpaturus quod non credidissent, eius erat, cuius sacramentum Iohannes administrabat. certe nolentibus renuntiare, quid saperent. cum et ipse uicem opponit: et ego non dico uobis, in qua uirtute haec facio, malum malo reddidit. Reddite quae Caesaris Caesari, et quae sunt dei deo. quae erunt dei, quae similia sint denario Caesaris? imago scilicet et similitudo eius. hominem igitur reddi iubet creatori, in cuius imagine et similitudine et nomine et materia expressus est. quaerat sibi monetam deus Marcionis, Christus denarium hominis suo Caesari iubet reddi. non alieno; nisi quod necesse est, *** qui suum denarium non habet. Iusta et digna praescriptio est in omni quaestione ad propositum interrogationis pertinere debere sensum responsionis. ceterum aliud consulenti aliud respondere dementis est, quo magis absit a Christo quod ne homini quidem conuenit Saducaei, resurrectionis negatores, de ea habentes interrogationem proposuerant domino ex lege materiam mulieris, quae septem fratribus ex ordine defunctis secundum praeceptum legale nupsisset, cuius uiri deputanda esset in resurrectione. haec fuit materia quaestionis, haec substantia consultationis; ad hoc respondisse Christum necesse est. neminem timuit, ut quaestiones aut declinasse uideatur aut per occasionem earum quod alias palam non docebat subostendisse. respondit igitur huius quidem aeui filios nubere, — uides quam pertinenter ad causam, quia de aeuo uenturo quaerebatur, in quo neminem nubere definiturus praestruxit hic quidem nubi, ubi sit et mori — quos uero dignatus sit deus illius aeui possessione et resurrectione a mortuis neque nubere neque nubi, quia nec morituri iam sint, cum similes angelorum sint dei, resurrectionis filii facti. cum igitur sensus responsionis non ad aliud sit dirigendus quam ad propositum interrogationis, si hoc sensu responsionis propositum absoluitur interrogationis, non aliud responsio domini sapit quam quo quaestio absoluitur: habes et tempora permissarum et negatarum nuptiarum, non ex sua propria, sed ex resurrectionis quaestione, habes et, ipsius resurrectionis confirmationem et totum quod Saducaei sciscitabantur, non de alio deo interrogantes nec de proprio nuptiarum iure quaerentes. quodsi ad ea facis respondisse Christum, de quibus non est consultus, negas eum de quibus interrogatus est respondere potuisse, Saducaeorum scilicet sapientia captum. ex abundanti nunc et post praescriptionem retractabo aduersus argumentationes cohaerentes. nacti enim scripturae textum: quos autem dign atus est deus illius aeui ita in legendo decurrunt, (ut 'illius aeui') 'deo') adiungant, quo alium deum faciant illius aeui, cum sic legi oportet: quos autem dignatus est deus, ut facta hic distinctione post 'deum') ad sequentia pertineat 'illius aeui', id est: quos dignatus sit deus illius aeui possessione et resurrectione. non enim de deo, sed de statu illius aeui consulebatur, cuius uxor futura esset post resurrectionem in illo aeuo. sic et de ipsis nuptiis responsum subuertunt, ut 'filii huius aeui nubunt et nubuntur) de hominibus dictum sit creatoris nuptias permittentis, se autem, quos deus illius aeui, alter scilicet, dignatus sit resurrectione, iam et hic non nubere, quia non sint filii huius aeui. ***, quando de nuptiis illius aeui consultus, non de huius, eas negauerit, de quibus consulebatur. itaque qui ipsam uim et uocis et pronuntiationis et distinctionis exceperant nihil aliud senserunt, quam quod ad materiam consultationis pertinebat, atque adeo scribae: magister, inquiunt. bene dixisti. confirmauerat enim [per] resurrectionem, formam eius edendo aduersus Saducaeorum opinionem. denique testimonium eorum, qui ita eum respondisse praesumpserant, non recusauit. Si autem scribae Christum filium Dauid existimabant, ipse autem Dauid dominum eum appellat, quid hoc ad Christum non Dauid? errorem scribarum obtundebat? (non.) sed honorem Christo Dauid procurabat, quem Christum dominum magis quam filium Dauid confirmabat, quod non congrueret destructori creatoris. at ei nostra parte quam conueniens interpretatio! nam qui olim a caeco illo (filius Dauid' fuerat inuocatus, quod tunc reticuit non habens in praesentia scribas, nunc ultro coram eis de industria protulit, ut se, quem caecus secundum scribarum doctrinam filium tantum Dauid praedicarat, dominum quoque eius ostenderet, remunerata quidem fide caeci, qua filium Dauid crediderat [in] illum, pulsata uero traditione scribarum, qua non et dominum eum norant. quodcumque ad gloriam spectaret Christi creatoris sic non alius tueretur, quam Christus creatoris..