Chapter XXXIII.—The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted. The Prophets Justify Christ’s Admonition Against Covetousness and Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations of the Creator. So Said Christ—But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the Dispensations.  No New God Had a Hand in the Change.

What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served,2451    Luke xvi. 13. on the ground that while one is pleased2452    Defendi. the other must needs be displeased,2453    Offendi. He Himself makes clear, when He mentions God and mammon. Then, if you have no interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have understood by mammon.2454    What in the Punic language is called Mammon, says Rigaltius, the Latins call lucrum, “gain or lucre.” See Augustine, Serm. xxxv. de Verbo domini. I would add Jerome, On the VI. of Matthew where he says: “In the Syriac tongue, riches are called mammon.” And Augustine, in another passage, book ii., On the Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, says: “Riches in Hebrew are said to be called mammon.  This is evidently a Punic word, for in that language the synonyme for gain (lucrum) is mammon.” Compare the same author on Ps. ciii. (Oehler). For when advising us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs, after the example of that steward who, when removed from his office,2455    Ab actu. relieves his lord’s debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their recompensing him with their help, He said, “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is to say, of money, even as the steward had done. Now we are all of us aware that money is the instigator2456    Auctorem. of unrighteousness, and the lord of the whole world. Therefore, when he saw the covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship2457    Famulatam. to it, He hurled2458    Ammentavit. this sentence against them, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”2459    Luke xvi. 13. Then the Pharisees, who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by mammon He meant money. Let no one think that under the word mammon the Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of the Creator. What folly! Rather learn therefrom that one God was pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and mammon—the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve God—Him, of course whom they seemed to serve—and mammon to whom they preferred to devote themselves.2460    Magis destinabantur: middle voice. If, however, he was giving himself out as another god, it would not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out.  For the Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure,2461    Utique. than mammon, and more to be adored, as being more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called mammon a master, and had associated him with God, should say nothing of Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might be rendered to Him, since it was to Himself alone and to mammon that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered?  When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He would have been sure to mention2462    Nominaturus. the Creator if He were Himself a rival2463    Alius. to Him, He did (virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from insisting”2464    Quem non posuit. that He was Master alone, without a rival god.  Accordingly, this will throw light upon the sense in which it was said, “If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?”2465    Luke xvi. 11. “In the unrighteous mammon,” that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give to you that which is mine?”2466    Meum: Luke xvi. 12, where, however, the word is τὸ ὑμέτερον, that which is your own.” For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God. But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, seeing that He was the proper God of the Jewish nation?  Forasmuch then as the words, “Who will entrust to you the truer riches?” and, “Who will give you that which is mine?” are only suitable to the Creator and not to mammon, He could not have uttered them as alien to the Creator, and in the interest of the rival god. He could only seem to have spoken them in this sense, if, when remarking2467    Notando. their unfaithfulness to the Creator and not to mammon, He had drawn some distinctions between the Creator (in his manner of mentioning Him) and the rival god—how that the latter would not commit his own truth to those who were unfaithful to the Creator. How then can he possibly seem to belong to another god, if He be not set forth, with the express intention of being separated2468    Ad hoc ut seperatur. from the very thing which is in question.  But when the Pharisees “justified themselves before men,”2469    Luke xvi. 15. and placed their hope of reward in man, He censured them in the sense in which the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man.”2470    Jer. xvii. 5. Since the prophet went on to say, “But the Lord knoweth your hearts,”2471    Jer. xvii. 10, in sense but not in letter. he magnified the power of that God who declared Himself to be as a lamp, “searching the reins and the heart.”2472    Jer. xx. 12. When He strikes at pride in the words: “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God,”2473    Luke xvi. 15. He recalls Isaiah: “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is arrogant and lifted up, and they shall be brought low.”2474    Isa. ii. 12 (Sept). I can now make out why Marcion’s god was for so long an age concealed. He was, I suppose, waiting until he had learnt all these things from the Creator. He continued his pupillage up to the time of John, and then proceeded forthwith to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is proclaimed.”2475    Luke xvi. 16. Just as if we also did not recognise in John a certain limit placed between the old dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity began—without, however, supposing that it was by the power of another god that there came about a cessation2476    Sedatio: literally, “a setting to rest,” ἠρέμησις. of the law and the prophets and the commencement of that gospel in which is the kingdom of God, Christ Himself. For although, as we have shown, the Creator foretold that the old state of things would pass away and a new state would succeed, yet, inasmuch as John is shown to be both the forerunner and the preparer of the ways of that Lord who was to introduce the gospel and publish the kingdom of God, it follows from the very fact that John has come, that Christ must be that very Being who was to follow His harbinger John. So that, if the old course has ceased and the new has begun, with John intervening between them, there will be nothing wonderful in it, because it happens according to the purpose of the Creator; so that you may get a better proof for the kingdom of God from any quarter, however anomalous,2477    Ut undeunde magis probetur…regnum Dei. than from the conceit that the law and the prophets ended in John, and a new state of things began after him. “More easily, therefore, may heaven and earth pass away—as also the law and the prophets—than that one tittle of the Lord’s words should fail.”2478    Luke xvi. 17 and xxi. 23. “For,” as says Isaiah: “the word of our God shall stand for ever.”2479    Isa. xl. 8. Since even then by Isaiah it was Christ, the Word and Spirit2480    See above, note on chap. xxviii., towards the end, on this designation of Christ’s divine nature. of the Creator, who prophetically described John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord,”2481    Isa. xl. 3. and as about to come for the purpose of terminating thenceforth the course of the law and the prophets; by their fulfilment and not their extinction, and in order that the kingdom of God might be announced by Christ, He therefore purposely added the assurance that the elements would more easily pass away than His words fail; affirming, as He did, the further fact, that what He had said concerning John had not fallen to the ground.

CAPUT XXXIII.

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Quibus duobus dominis neget posse serviri, quia alterum offendi sit necesse, alterum defendi, ipse declarat, Deum proponens et mammonam. Deinde mammonam quem intelligi velit, si interpretem non habes, ab ipso potes discere. Admonens enim nos, de saecularibus suffragia nobis prospicere amicitiarum, secundum servi illius exemplum, qui ab actu summotus, dominicos debitores diminutis cautionibus revelat in subsidium sibi. Et ego, inquit, dico vobis, facite vobis amicos de mammona injustitiae; de nummo scilicet, de quo et servus ille. Injustitiae enim auctorem et dominatorem totius saeculi nummum scimus omnes. Cui famulatam videns Pharisaeorum cupiditatem, ammentavit hanc sententiam : Non potestis Deo servire 0439D et mammonae. Irridebant denique Pharisaei pecuniae cupidi, quod intellexissent scilicet mammonam 0440A de nummo dictum, ne quis existimet in mammona Creatorem intelligendum, et Christum a Creatoris illos servitute revocasse. Quid? nunc potius ex hoc disce, unum a Christo Deum ostensum. Duos enim dominos nominavit, Deum et mammonam, Creatorem et nummum. Denique, non potestis Deo servire: utique ei, cui servire videbantur; et mammonae, cui magis destinabantur. Quod si ipse alium se ageret, non duos dominos, sed tres demonstrasset. Et Creator enim Dominus, quia Deus. Et utique magis dominus, quam mammonas; magisque observandus, qua magis dominus. Quare est enim, ut qui mammonam dominum dixerat, et cum Deo junxerat, vere ipsorum dominum taceret, id est Creatorem? Aut numquid tacendo eo, concessit serviendum ei esse, si solummodo 0440B sibi et mammonae negavit posse serviri? Ita, cum unum Deum ponit nominaturus et Creatorem, si alius esset ipse, Creatorem nominavit, quem dominum sine alio Deo non posuit. Et illud itaque relucebit, quomodo dictum: Si in mammona injusto fideles non extitistis, quod verum est quis vobis credet? In nummo scilicet injusto, non in Creatore, quem et Marcion justum facit. Et si in alieno fideles inventi non estis, quod meum est quis dabit vobis? Alienum enim debet esse a servis Dei, quod injustum est. Creator autem, quomodo alienus erat Pharisaeis, proprius Deus Judaicae gentis? Si ergo haec non cadunt in Creatorem, sed in mammonam, quis vobis credet quod verius est? et quis vobis dabit quod meum est? Non potest quasi alius dixisse de alterius 0440C Dei gratia. Tunc enim videretur ita dixisse, si eos in Creatorem, non in mammonam infideles notando, per Creatoris mentionem distinctiones fecisset Dei alterius, non commissuri suam veritatem infidelibus Creatoris. Quomodo tunc alterius videri potest, si non ad hoc proponatur, ut a te de qua agitur separetur? Si autem et justificantes se coram hominibus Pharisaei, spem mercedis in homine ponebant, illo eos sensu increpabat, quo et propheta Hieremias (Jerem., XVII, 5): Miser homo, qui spem habet in homine. Si et adjicit: Scit autem Deus corda vestra; illius Dei vim commemorabat, qui lucernam se pronuntiabat, scrutantem renes et corda. Si superbiam tangit: Quod elatum est apud homines, perosum est Deo, Esaiam ponit ante oculos (Is., II, 12): Dies enim 0440D Domini sabaoth, in omnem contumeliosum et superbum, in omnem sublimem et elatum; et humiliabuntur. Possum 0441A jam colligere, cur tanto aevo Deus Marcionis fuerit in occulto. Exspectabat, opinor, donec haec omnia disceret a Creatore. Didicit ergo usque ad Joannis tempora, atque ita exinde processit annuntiare regnum Dei dicens: Lex et Prophetae usque ad Joannem, ex quo regnum Dei annuntiatur. Quasi non et nos limitem quemdam agnoscamus Joannem constitutum inter vetera et nova, ad quem desineret judaismus, et a quo inciperet christianismus: non tamen ut ab alia virtute facta sit sedatio Legis et Prophetarum, et initiatio Evangelii, in quo est Dei regnum, Christus ipse. Nam etsi probavimus et vetera transitura et nova successura (Is., XLIII, 19) praedicari a Creatore; si et Joannes antecursor et praeparator ostenditur viarum Domini, Evangelium 0441B superducturi, et regnum Dei promulgaturi; et ex hoc jam quod Joannes venit, ipse erit Christus, qui Joannem erat subsecuturus, ut antecursorem; et si desierunt vetera, et coeperunt nova interstite Joanne, non erit mirum quod ex dispositione est Creatoris, ut aliunde magis probetur, quam ex Legis et Prophetarum in Joannem occasu, et exinde ortu, regnum Dei. Transeat igitur coelum et terra citius, sicut et Lex et Prophetae, quam unus apex verborum Domini. Verbum enim, inquit (Is., XL, 8) Esaias, Dei nostri manet in aevum. Nam quoniam in Esaia jam tunc Christus, Sermo scilicet et spiritus Creatoris, Joannem praedicarat, vocem clamantis in deserto, parare viam Domini, in hoc venturum ut Legis et Prophetarum ordo exinde cessaret, per adimpletionem, 0441C non per destructionem, et regnum Dei a Christo annuntiaretur; ideo subtexuit, facilius elementa transitura, quam verba sua; confirmans hoc quoque, quod de Joanne dixerat, non praeteriisse.