One God, Old and New Testaments
Tertullian, Against Marcion 39
It was once settled that the authority over names belongs to the One who first announced His Christ to humanity and renamed the laws. So it will also be settled that the one who claims many will come in His name — a name that is not his if Christ and Jesus are not the Creator's, to whom the authority over names belongs — acts with sheer impudence. He should bar the reception of those whose equal he himself is, so that the one who comes in a borrowed name finds no welcome; otherwise, it was his duty to shield his disciples from the lie of that name, he who held the truth of the name by its very authority. In the end, men will come declaring, 'I am the Christ,' and you will receive them, since you have already accepted their counterpart; after all, this claimant does not come in his own name. What then? When the Lord of names Himself arrives — Christ and Jesus of the Creator — will you reject Him? How unjust, how wicked, and how unworthy of the best God, that you refuse to welcome Him coming in His own name, when you have welcomed another in that same name! Let us also examine the signs He assigns to the times: wars, I suspect, and kingdom rising against kingdom, nation against nation, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, terrors, and portents from heaven — all of which befit a severe and cruel God. Since He insists these things must happen, what sort of God does He reveal Himself to be: a destroyer or an approver of the Creator? He confirms that the Creator's own decrees must be fulfilled, decrees which the best God would have removed rather than established, if they were not His own. Yet He predicts these persecutions and sufferings for them, ordeals that lead to martyrdom and salvation. Take the prophecy in Zechariah: 'The Lord Almighty will protect them and consume them; they will stone them with slingstones and drink their blood like wine and fill the bowls like the corners of the altar, and the Lord will save them on that day like sheep, His people, because the holy stones are rolled.' Do not imagine these words forecast the sufferings they endured in so-called wars at the hands of foreigners; look at the details. No prophecy of wars fought with legitimate weapons lists stoning by popular mobs and unarmed tumults; no one measures rivers of blood by the capacity of bowls or equates the slaughter to a single altar's staining; no one calls those who fall armed in battle, fighting with equal ferocity, 'sheep' — but those who surrender themselves rather than retaliate, and are slaughtered in their innocence and patience. Finally: 'because the holy stones are rolled,' He says, not 'because soldiers fight.' For the stones are also the foundations on which we are built, constructed, as Paul says, on the foundation of the apostles — those holy stones, opposed to every offense, rolling on. And here, therefore, He forbids anxiety over what to answer before tribunals, He who suggested to Balaam what he had not thought — indeed, contrary to what he had thought — and who, because of Moses' slow tongue, promised him a mouth.
Latin
Olim constitit de nominum proprietate, ei illam *, qui prior et Christum suum in homines adnuntiarit et legum transnominarit. constabit itaque et de impudentia eius, qui multos dicat uenturos in nomine ipsius, quod non sit ipsius, si non Christus et Iesus creatoris est, ad quem proprietas nominum pertinet. amplius et prohibeat eos recipi, quorum et ipse par sit, ut qui proinde in nomine uenit alieno: si non, ipsius erat a mendacio nominis praeuenire discipulos, qui per proprietatem nominis possidebat ueritatem eius. uenient denique illi dicentes: ego sum Christus: recipies eos, qui consimilem recepisti; nec hic enim in nomine suo uenit. quid nunc? quando et ipse ueniet nominum dominus, Christus et Iesus creatoris, reicies illum P et quam iniquum, quam iniustum et optimo deo indignum, ut non recipias eum in suo nomine uenientem, qui alium in nomine eius recepisti! Videamus et quae signa temporibus imponat: bella, opinor., et regnum super regnum et gentem super gentem et pestem et fames terraeque motus et formidines et prodigia de caelo, quae omnia seuero et atroci deo congruunt. haec cum adicit etiam oportere fieri, quem se praestat? destructorem an probatorem creatoris? cuius dispositiones confirmat impleri oportere, quas ut optimus tam tristes quam atroces abstulisset potius quam constituisset, si non ipsius fuissent ante haec autem persecutiones eis praedicat et passiones euenturas, in martyrium utique et in salutem. accipe praedicatum in Zacharia: dominus, inquit, omnipotens proteget eos et consument illos, et lapidabunt lapidibus fundae et bibent sanguinem illorum uelut uinum et replebunt pateras quasi altaris, et saluos eos faciet dominus illo die uelut oues, populum suum, quia lapides sancti uolutant. et ne putes haec in passiones praedicari, quae illos tot bellorum nomine ab allophylis manebant, respice ad species. nemo in praedicatione bellorum legitimis armis debellandorum lapidationem enumerat popularibus coetibus magis et inermi tumultui familiarem; nemo, tanta in bello sanguinis flumina paterarum capacitate metitur aut unius altaris cruentationi adaequat; nemo oues appellat eos, qui in bello armati et ipsi ex eadem feritate certantes cadunt, sed qui in sua proprietate atque patientia dedentes potius semetipsos quam uindicantes trucidantur. denique: quia lapides, inquit, sancti uolutant, non 'quia milites pugnant'. lapides enim sunt et fundamenta, super quae nos aedificamur, exstructi secundum Paulum super fundamenta apostolorum, qui lapides sancti oppositi omnium offensui uolutant. et hic igitur ipse cogitari uetat, quid responderi oporteat apud tribunalia, qui et Balaae quod non cogitauerat, immo contra quam cogitauerat suggessit et Moysi causato linguae tarditatem os repromisit.