Chapter XIX.—The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the Creator’s Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion’s God. The Catholic Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to the Substance.

I am accustomed in my prescription against all heresies, to fix my compendious criterion3734    Compendium figere. (of truth) in the testimony of time; claiming priority therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the apostle, when he says: “For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.”3735    Col. i. 5, 6. For if, even at that time, the tradition of the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel, much less Marcion’s, which only dates from the reign of Antoninus,3736    Antoniniani Marcionis: see above in book i. chap. xix. then ours will be the gospel of the apostles.  But should Marcion’s gospel succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be entitled to the character of apostolic. For this quality, it will be evident, can only belong to that gospel which was the first to fill the world; in other words, to the gospel of that God who of old declared this of its promulgation: “Their sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”3737    Ps. xix. 4. He calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.”3738    Col. i. 15. We in like manner say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father) Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote this we find a description of our God to this effect: “No man can see the Lord, and live.”3739    Ex. xxxiii. 20. If Christ is not “the first-begotten before every creature,”3740    Col. i. 15. Our author’s “primogenitus conditionis” is St. Paul’s πρωτότοκος πάσης κτίσεως, for the meaning of which see Bp. Ellicott, in loc. as that “Word of God by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made;”3741    John i. 3. if “all things were” not “in Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers;” if “all things were” not “created by Him and for Him” (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it down, that “He is before all.”3742    Ante omnes. For how is He before all, if He is not before all things?3743    Ante amina. How, again, is He before all things, if He is not “the first-born of every creature”—if He is not the Word of the Creator?3744    Creatoris is our author’s word. Now how will he be proved to have been before all things, who appeared after all things?  Who can tell whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he had any existence at all?  In what way also could it have “pleased (the Father) that in Him should all fulness dwell?”3745    Col. i. 19. For, to begin with, what fulness is that which is not comprised of the constituents which Marcion has removed from it,—even those that were “created in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth,” whether angels or men? which is not made of the things that are visible and invisible? which consists not of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? If, on the other hand,3746    Aut si. our false apostles and Judaizing gospellers3747    Evangelizatores. have introduced all these things out of their own stores, and Marcion has applied them to constitute the fulness of his own god, (this hypothesis, absurd though it be, alone would justify him;) for how, on any other supposition,3748    Ceterum quale. could the rival and the destroyer of the Creator have been willing that His fulness should dwell in his Christ? To whom, again, does He “reconcile all things by Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross,”3749    Col. i. 20. but to Him whom those very things had altogether3750    “Una ipsa” is Oehler’s reading instead of universa. offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, (but) to whom they had at last returned?3751    Cujus novissime fuerant.Conciliated they might have been to a strange god; but reconciled they could not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly, ourselves “who were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works”3752    Col. i. 21. does He reconcile to the Creator, against whom we had committed offence—worshipping the creature to the prejudice of the Creator. As, however, he says elsewhere,3753    Eph. i. 23. that the Church is the body of Christ, so here also (the apostle) declares that he “fills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body’s sake, which is the Church.”3754    Col. i. 24. But you must not on this account suppose that on every mention of His body the term is only a metaphor, instead of meaning real flesh. For he says above that we are “reconciled in His body through death;”3755    Col. i. 22. meaning, of course, that He died in that body wherein death was possible through the flesh: (therefore he adds,) not through the Church3756    As if only in a metaphorical body, in which sense the Church is “His body.” (per ecclesiam), but expressly for the sake of the Church (proper ecclesiam), exchanging body for body—one of flesh for a spiritual one.  When, again, he warns them to “beware of subtle words and philosophy,” as being “a vain deceit,” such as is “after the rudiments of the world” (not understanding thereby the mundane fabric of sky and earth, but worldly learning, and “the tradition of men,” subtle in their speech and their philosophy),3757    Col. ii. 8. it would be tedious, and the proper subject of a separate work, to show how in this sentence (of the apostle’s) all heresies are condemned, on the ground of their consisting of the resources of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent;3758    “Dominum inferens hebetem;” with which may be compared Cicero (De Divin. ii. 50, 103): “Videsne Epicurum quem hebetem et rudem dicere solent Stoici…qui negat, quidquam deos nec alieni curare, nec sui.” The otiose and inert character of the god of Epicurus is referred to by Tertullian not unfrequently; see above, in book iv. chap. xv.; Apolog. 47, and Ad Nationes, ii. 2; whilst in De Anima, 3, he characterizes the philosophy of Epicurus by a similar term: “Prout aut Platonis honor, aut Zenonis vigor, aut Aristotelis tenor, aut Epicuri stupor, aut Heracliti mæror, aut Empedoclis furor persuaserunt.” wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator.3759    The Stoical dogma of the eternity of matter and its equality with God was also held by Hermogenes; see his Adv. Hermogenem, c. 4, “Materiam parem Deo infert.” He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold.3760    Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 55, refers to the peculiar opinion of Democritus on this subject (Fr. Junius). But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin’s womb! At this, philosophers, and heretics, and the very heathen, laugh and jeer. For “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise”3761    1 Cor. i. 27.—that God, no doubt, who in reference to this very dispensation of His threatened long before that He would “destroy the wisdom of the wise.”3762    Isa. xxix. 14, quoted 1 Cor. i. 19; comp. Jer. viii. 9 and Job v. 12, 13. Thanks to this simplicity of truth, so opposed to the subtlety and vain deceit of philosophy, we cannot possibly have any relish for such perverse opinions.  Then, if God “quickens us together with Christ, forgiving us our trespasses,”3763    Col. ii. 13. we cannot suppose that sins are forgiven by Him against whom, as having been all along unknown, they could not have been committed. Now tell me, Marcion, what is your opinion of the apostle’s language, when he says, “Let no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ?”3764    Col. ii. 16, 17. We do not now treat of the law, further than (to remark) that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance—that is, from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ. The shadow, therefore, is His to whom belongs the body also; in other words, the law is His, and so is Christ. If you separate the law and Christ, assigning one to one god and the other to another, it is the same as if you were to attempt to separate the shadow from the body of which it is the shadow. Manifestly Christ has relation to the law, if the body has to its shadow. But when he blames those who alleged visions of angels as their authority for saying that men must abstain from meats—“you must not touch, you must not taste”—in a voluntary humility, (at the same time) “vainly puffed up in the fleshly mind, and not holding the Head,”3765    Col. ii. 18, 19, 21. (the apostle) does not in these terms attack the law or Moses, as if it was at the suggestion of superstitious angels that he had enacted his prohibition of sundry aliments. For Moses had evidently received the law from God. When, therefore, he speaks of their “following the commandments and doctrines of men,”3766    Col. ii. 22. he refers to the conduct of those persons who “held not the Head,” even Him in whom all things are gathered together;3767    Recensentur: Eph. i. 10. for they are all recalled to Christ, and concentrated in Him as their initiating principle3768    Initium.—even the meats and drinks which were indifferent in their nature. All the rest of his precepts,3769    Contained in Vol. iii. and iv. as we have shown sufficiently, when treating of them as they occurred in another epistle,3770    In the Epistle to the Laodiceans or Ephesians; see his remarks in the preceding chapter of this book v. emanated from the Creator, who, while predicting that “old things were to pass away,” and that He would “make all things new,”3771    Isa. xliii. 18, 19, and lxv. 17; 2 Cor. v. 17. commanded men “to break up fresh ground for themselves,”3772    Jer. iv. 3. This and the passage of Isaiah just quoted are also cited together above, book iv. chap. i. and ii. p. 345. and thereby taught them even then to put off the old man and put on the new.

CAPUT XIX.

(In. Ep. ad. Coloss.) Soleo in praescriptione adversus omnes, de haereses testimonio temporum compendium figere, priorem vindicans regulam nostram omni haeretica posteritate. Hoc nunc probabit et Apostolus dicens: De spe reposita in coelis, quam audistis in sermone veritatis Evangelii, quod pervenit ad vos sicut et in totum mundum. Nam si jam tum traditio Evangelica ubique manaverat, quanto magis nunc! Porro, si nostra est quae ubique manavit, magis quam omnis haeretica, 0519C nedum Antoniniani Marcionis, nostra erit apostolica. Marcionis autem, cum totum impleverit mundum, ne tunc quidem se defendere poterit de Apostolica. Eam enim et sic constabit esse, quae prior mundum replevit, illius scilicet Dei Evangelio, qui et haec cecinit de praedicationibus ejus (Ps. XVIII, 4): In omnem terram exiit sonus eorum, et in terminos orbis verba eorum. Invisibilis Dei imaginem ait Christum. Sed nos enim invisibilem dicimus Patrem Christi, scientes Filium semper retro visum, si quibus visus est in Dei nomine, ut imaginem ipsius: ne quam et hinc differentiam scindat Dei visibilis et invisibilis, cum olim Dei nostri sit definitio (Exod. 0520A XXXIII, 20): Deumnemo videbit, et vivet. Si non est Christus primogenitus conditionis, ut Sermo Creatoris per quem omnia facta sunt, et sine quo nihil factum est; si non in illo condita sunt universa in coelis et in terris, visibilia et invisibilia, sive throni, sive dominationes, sive principatus, sive potestates; si non cuncta per illum et in illo sunt condita (haec enim Marcioni displicere oportebat), non utique tam nude posuisset Apostolus: Et ipse est ante omnes. Quomodo enim ante omnes, si non ante omnia? Quomodo ante omnia, si non primogenitus conditionis? si non Sermo Creatoris? Unde ante omnes probabitur fuisse, qui post omnia apparuit? Quis scit priorem fuisse, quem esse nesciit? Quomodo item boni duxit omnem plenitudinem in semetipso habitare? Primo enim, quae est 0520B ista plenitudo, nisi ex illis quae Marcion detraxit, conditis in Christo, in coelis et in terris, angelis et hominibus, nisi ex illis invisibilibus et visibilibus? nisi ex thronis, et dominationibus et principatibus, et potestatibus? Aut si haec pseudapostoli nostri et judaici evangelizatores de suo intulerint, et ad plenitudinem Dei sui Marcion qui nihil condidit: caeterum, quale est ut plenitudinem Creatoris, aemulus et destructor ejus, in suo Christo habitare voluerit? Cui denique reconciliat omnia in semetipsum, pacem faciens per crucis suae sanguinem, nisi quem offenderant una ipsa , adversus quem rebellaverant per transgressionem, cujus novissime fuerant? Conciliari enim extraneo possent; reconciliari vero, non alii quam suo. Ita et nos quondam alienatos et inimicos sensu in malis 0520Coperibus, Creatori redigit in gratiam, cujus admiseramus offensam, colentes conditionem adversus Creatorem. Sicubi autem et Ecclesiam corpus Christi dicit esse, ut hic ait, Adimplere se reliqua pressurarum Christi in carne, pro corpore ejus quod est Ecclesia; non propterea et in totum mentionem corporis tranferes a substantia carnis. Nam et supra reconciliari nos ait in corpore ejus per mortem; utique in eo corpore, in quo mori potuit per carnem; mortuus est, non per Ecclesiam, plane propter Ecclesiam; corpus commutando pro corpore, carnale pro spiritali. At cum monet cavendum a subtililoquentia et philosophia etinani seductione, quae sitsecundum 0521Aelementa mundi; non secundum coelum aut terram dicens, sed secundum literas saeculares; et secundum traditionem, scilicet hominum subtililoquorum et philosophorum: longum est quidem et alterius operis ostendere, hac sententia omnes haereses damnari, quod omnes ex subtililoquentiae viribus et philosophiae regulis constent. Sed Marcion principalem suae fidei terminum de Epicuri schola agnoscat, Dominum inferens hebetem, ne timeri eum dicat, collocans et cum Deo Creatore materiam, de porticu Stoicorum: negans carnis resurrectionem, de qua proinde nulla philosophia consentit. Cujus ingeniis tam longe abest veritas nostra, ut et iram Dei excitare formidet, et omnia illum ex nihilo protulisse confidat, et carnem eamdem restituturum repromittat, et Christum 0521B ex vulva virginis natum non erubescat, ridentibus philosophis et haereticis et ethnicis ipsis. Stulta enim (I Cor., I) mundi elegit Deus, ut confundat sapientes: ille sine dubio, qui ex respectu hujus suae dispositionis perditurum se sapientiam sapientium praeminabatur. Hac simplicitate veritatis contraria subtililoquentiae et philosophiae, nihil perversi possumus sapere. Denique si nos Deus cum Christo vivificat, donans delicta nobis, non possumus credere ab eo delicta donari, in quem admissa non fuerint, ut retro ignotum. Age jam, cum dicit: Nemo vos judicet in cibo et potu, et in parte diei festi et neomeniae et sabbati, quae est umbra futurorum, corpus autem Christi; quid tibi videtur, Marcion? De lege jam non retractamus, nisi quod et hic quemadmodum exclusa sit edocet, 0521C dum scilicet de umbra transfertur in corpus, id est, de figuris ad veritatem, quod est Christus. Ergo et umbra ejus, cujus et corpus; id est et lex ejus, et Christus. Segrega alii Legem, et alii Deo Christum, si potes aliquam umbram ab eo corpore, cujus umbra est, separare. Manifeste Legis est Christus, si corpus est umbrae. Si autem et aliquos taxat, qui ex visionibus angelicis dicebant cibis abstinendum, ne attigeris, ne gustaveris, volentes in humilitate sensus incedere, non tenentes caput; non ideo Legem et Moysen pulsat, quasi de angelica superstitione constituerit interdictionem quorumdam edulium. Moysen enim a Deo accepisse Legem constat. Denique, hanc disciplinam, secundum praecepta, inquit, et doctrinam hominum deputavit in eos, qui caput non tenerent, 0521D id est, ipsum; in quo omnia recensentur, in Christum ad initium revocata, etiam indifferentia escarum. Caetera praeceptorum, ut eadem, satis sit jam alibi docuisse quam a Creatore manarint; qui cum vetera praedicaret transitura, nova facturus universa, mandans 0522A etiam (Jerem., IV, 3): Novate vobis novamen novum; jam tunc docebat deponere veterem hominem, et novum induere (In Ep. ad Philipp.).