Chapter XX.—Marcion, Justifying His Antithesis Between the Law and the Gospel by the Contention of St. Paul with St. Peter, Shown to Have Mistaken St. Paul’s Position and Argument. Marcion’s Doctrine Confuted Out of St. Paul’s Teaching, Which Agrees Wholly with the Creator’s Decrees.

This most patent conclusion requires to be defended by us against the clamours of the opposite side. For they allege that Marcion did not so much innovate on the rule (of faith) by his separation of the law and the gospel, as restore it after it had been previously adulterated. O Christ,233    Tertullian’s indignant reply. most enduring Lord, who didst bear so many years with this interference with Thy revelation, until Marcion forsooth came to Thy rescue! Now they adduce the case of Peter himself, and the others, who were pillars of the apostolate, as having been blamed by Paul for not walking uprightly, according to the truth of the gospel—that very Paul indeed, who, being yet in the mere rudiments of grace, and trembling, in short, lest he should have run or were still running in vain, then for the first time held intercourse with those who were apostles before himself. Therefore because, in the eagerness of his zeal against Judaism as a neophyte, he thought that there was something to be blamed in their conduct—even the promiscuousness of their conversation234    Passivum scilicet convictum.—but afterwards was himself to become in his practice all things to all men, that he might gain all,—to the Jews, as a Jew, and to them that were under the law, as under the law,—you would have his censure, which was merely directed against conduct destined to become acceptable even to their accuser, suspected of prevarication against God on a point of public doctrine.235    Prædicationis. [Largely ad hominem, this argument.] Touching their public doctrine, however, they had, as we have already said, joined hands in perfect concord, and had agreed also in the division of their labour in their fellowship of the gospel, as they had indeed in all other respects:236    Et alibi. “Whether it were I or they, so we preach.”237    1 Cor. xv. 11. When, again, he mentioned “certain false brethren as having crept in unawares,” who wished to remove the Galatians into another gospel,238    See Gal. i. 6, 7, and ii. 4. he himself shows that that adulteration of the gospel was not meant to transfer them to the faith of another god and christ, but rather to perpetuate the teaching of the law; because he blames them for maintaining circumcision, and observing times, and days, and months, and years, according to those Jewish ceremonies which they ought to have known were now abrogated, according to the new dispensation purposed by the Creator Himself, who of old foretold this very thing by His prophets. Thus He says by Isaiah: Old things have passed away. “Behold, I will do a new thing.”239    Isa. xliii. 19. And in another passage: “I will make a new covenant, not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.”240    This quotation, however, is from Jer. xxxi. 32. In like manner by Jeremiah: Make to yourselves a new covenant, “circumcise yourselves to the Lord, and take away the foreskins of your heart.”241    Jer. iv. 4. It is this circumcision, therefore, and this renewal, which the apostle insisted on, when he forbade those ancient ceremonies concerning which their very founder announced that they were one day to cease; thus by Hosea: “I will also cause all her mirth to cease, her feast-days, her new moons, and her Sabbaths, and all her solemn feasts.”242    Hos. ii. 11. So likewise by Isaiah: “The new moons, and Sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; your holy days, and fasts, and feast-days, my soul hateth.”243    Slightly altered from Isa. i. 13, 14. Now, if even the Creator had so long before discarded all these things, and the apostle was now proclaiming them to be worthy of renunciation, the very agreement of the apostle’s meaning with the decrees of the Creator proves that none other God was preached by the apostle than He whose purposes he now wished to have recognised, branding as false both apostles and brethren, for the express reason that they were pushing back the gospel of Christ the Creator from the new condition which the Creator had foretold, to the old one which He had discarded.

CAPUT XX.

Huic expeditissimae probationi defensio quoque a nobis necessaria est adversus obstrepitacula diversae partis. Aiunt enim Marcionem non tam innovasse 0268B regulam separatione Legis et Evangelii, quam retro adulteratam recurasse. O Christe patientissime Domine! qui tot annis interversionem praedicationis tuae sustinuisti, donec tibi scilicet Marcion subveniret. Nam et ipsum Petrum, caeterosque, columnas Apostolatus, a Paulo reprehensos (Gal., II) opponunt, quod non recto pede incederent ad Evangelii veritatem; ab illo certe Paulo, qui adhuc in gratia rudis, trepidans denique ne in vacuum cucurrisset aut curreret (Ibid.), tunc primum cum antecessoribus apostolis conferebat. Igitur, si ferventer, ut adhuc neophytus, adversus Judaismum aliquid in conversatione reprehendendum existimavit, passivum scilicet convictum, postmodum et ipse usu omnibus omnia futurus, ut omnes lucraretur, Judaeis quasi Judaeus, et eis qui 0268C sub lege, tamquam sub lege (I Cor., IX); tu illam solius conversationis, placiturae postea accusatori suo, reprehensionem suspectam vis haberi etiam de praedicationis erga Deum praevaricatione. Atquin de praedicationis unitate, quod supra legimus, dexteras junxerant, et ipsa officii distributione, de Evangelii societate condixerant; sicut et alibi (I Cor., XV, 11): Sive ego, inquit, sive illi, sic praedicamus. 0269A Sed et si quosdam falsos fratres irrepsisse descripsit, qui vellent Galatas ad aliud Evangelium transferre (Gal., I, 7), ipse demonstrat adulterium illud Evangelii, non ad alterius Dei et Christi fidem transferendam, sed ad disciplinam Legis conservandam , habuisse intentionem; reprehendens scilicet illos circumcisionem vindicantes, et observantes tempora, et dies et menses et annos judaicarum caeremoniarum (Gal., IV, 10), quas jam exclusas agnovisse debuerant, secundum innovatam dispositionem Creatoris, olim de hoc ipso praedicantis per prophetas suos, ut per Isaiam (Is., XLIII, 19): Vetera transierunt, inquit; ecce nova quae ego nunc facio; et alibi (Jerem. XXXI, 32): Et disponam testamentum, non quale disposui ad patres vestros, cum illos eduxissem de terra 0269B Aegypti; sic et per Hieremiam (Jerem. IV, 4): Renovate vobis novamen novum, et circumcidimini Deo vestro, et circumcidimini praeputia cordis vestri. Hanc ergo circumcisionem jam sistens Apostolus et hoc novamen, illas quoque vetustates caeremoniarum dissuadebat, de quibus idem Conditor earum quandoque cessaturis profitebatur per Osee (Os. II, 11): Et avertam omnes jocunditates ejus, et dies festos ejus, et neomenias, et sabbata, et omnes caeremonias ejus. Sic enim et per Isaiam (Is. I, 14): Neomenias vestras, et sabbata, et diem magnum non sustineo: ferias et jejunium, et dies festos vestros odit anima mea. Quod si et Creator omnia haec jampridem recusaverat, et Apostolus ea jam recusanda pronuntiabat, ipsa sententia Apostoli, consentanea decretis Creatoris, probat 0269C non alium Deum ab Apostolo praedicatum, quam cujus decreta cupiebat jam agnosci; falsos et apostolos et fratres notans in hac caussa, qui Evangelium Christi Creatoris transferrent a novitate praenuntiata a Creatore, ad vetustatem recusatam a Creatore (Gal., I, 6, seqq.).