One God, Old and New Testaments

Let us see whether this people or the first one inherits, and whether the covenant belongs to us or to them. Listen, then, to what the Scripture says about the people: Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife Rebekah because she was barren, and she conceived (Genesis 25:21).

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Yes, but let us see whether the covenant God swore to give the people was actually given. It was given, but the people themselves were not worthy to receive it because of their sins. The prophet says that Moses fasted on Mount Sinai for forty days and forty nights to receive the Lord's covenant for the people.

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John, the Lord's disciple, proclaims this faith because he wants to tear out the error that Cerinthus sowed in human hearts — and earlier still, the error that the so-called Nicolaitans planted.

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Many prophets and righteous men, knowing through the Holy Spirit that He would come, prayed to live in the time when they might see their Lord face to face and hear His words.

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We do not know God by his magnitude; it is impossible to measure the Father. But we are led to God through his Word by his love, and by obeying him we always learn how great God is. He himself establishes, chooses, and adorns all things through himself — he who is present to us.

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Thus the new and old brought out of the treasure speak, without contradiction, of the two testaments: the old, which was the former legislation, and the new, which is the way of life according to the Gospel.

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Where was Marcion then, that Pontic shipowner and student of Stoicism? Where was Valentinus, the follower of Platonism? The record shows they were not always what they became;

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We also need to defend that very clear proof against the clamor of the opposing side. They claim Marcion didn't so much innovate the rule by separating Law and Gospel as revert to a rule previously adulterated.

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If Marcion preaches a new God while trying to shut out the old God's law, why does he lay down not a single rule about this new deity, but only about the old law — unless it's because faith stayed put in the Creator, so that only the Creator's law could still be acknowledged?

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Ponticus drags out two gods like the twin Symplegades that wrecked his ship: the Creator, our God, whom he cannot deny, and his own deity, whom he will never prove.

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So the whole debate comes down to numbers: whether we're allowed to posit two gods — maybe by poetic license, maybe by artistic license, and now, heretical license too. But Christian truth calls it straight: if God isn't one, God isn't. Period.

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