Against Praxeas; Against Marcion; On Baptism; Apology

But God also swears. Well, is it, I wonder, by the God of Marcion? No, no, he says; a much vainer oath—by Himself!¹ What was He to do, when He knew² of no other God; especially when He was swearing to this very point, that besides himself there was absolutely no God? Is it then of swearing falsely that you convict³ Him, or of swearing a vain oath? But it is not possible for him to appear to have sworn falsely, when he was ignorant, as you say he was, that there was another God. For when he swore by that which he knew, he really committed no perjury. But it was not a vain oath for him to swear that there was no other God. It would indeed be a vain oath, if there had been no persons who believed that there were other Gods, like the worshippers of idols then, and the heretics of the present day. Therefore He swears by Himself, in order that you may believe God, even when He swears that there is besides Himself no other God at all. But you have yourself, O Marcion, compelled God to do this. For even so early as then were you foreseen. Hence, if He swears both in His promises and His threatenings, and thus extorts⁴ faith which at first was difficult, nothing is unworthy of God which causes men to believe in God. But (you say) God was even then mean⁵ enough in His very fierceness, when, in His wrath against the people for their consecration of the calf, He makes this request of His servant Moses: "Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them; and I will make of thee a great nation."⁶ Accordingly, you maintain that Moses is better than his God, as the deprecator, nay the averter, of His anger. "For," said he, "Thou shalt not do this; or else destroy me along with them."⁷ Pitiable are ye also, as well as the people, since you know not Christ, prefigured in the person of Moses as the deprecator of the Father, and the offerer of His own life for the salvation of the people. It is enough, however, that the nation was at the instant really given to Moses. That which he, as a servant, was able to ask of the Lord, the Lord required of Himself. For this purpose did He say to His servant, "Let me alone, that I may consume them," in order that by his entreaty, and by offering himself, he might hinder⁸ (the threatened judgment), and that you might by such an instance learn how much privilege is vouchsafed⁹ with God to a faithful man and a prophet.

And now, that I may briefly pass in review¹⁰ the other points which you have thus far been engaged in collecting, as mean, weak, and unworthy, for demolishing¹¹ the Creator, I will propound them in a simple and definite statement:¹² that God would have been unable to hold any intercourse with men, if He had not taken on Himself the emotions and affections of man, by means of which He could temper the strength of His majesty, which would no doubt have been incapable of endurance to the moderate capacity of man, by such a humiliation as was indeed degrading¹³ to Himself, but necessary for man, and such as on this very account became worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. If I were arguing with heathens, I should dwell more at length on this point; although with heretics too the discussion does not stand on very different grounds. Inasmuch as ye yourselves have now come to the belief that God moved about¹⁴ in the form and all other circumstances of man's nature,¹⁵ you will of course no longer require to be convinced that God conformed Himself to humanity, but feel yourselves bound by your own faith. For if the God (in whom ye believe,) even from His higher condition, prostrated the supreme dignity of His majesty to such a lowliness as to undergo death, even the death of the cross, why can you not suppose that some humiliations¹⁶ are becoming to our God also, only more tolerable than Jewish contumelies, and crosses,¹⁷ and sepulchres? Are these the humiliations which henceforth are to raise a prejudice against Christ (the subject as He is of human passions¹⁸) being a partaker of that Godhead¹⁹ against which you make the participation in human qualities a reproach? Now we believe that Christ did ever act in the name of God the Father; that He actually²⁰ from the beginning held intercourse with (men); actually²¹ communed with²² patriarchs and prophets; was the Son of the Creator; was His Word; whom God made His Son²³ by emitting Him from His own self,²⁴ and thenceforth set Him over every dispensation and (administration of) His will,²⁵ making Him a little lower than the angels, as is written in David.²⁶ In which lowering of His condition He received from the Father a dispensation in those very respects which you blame as human; from the very beginning learning,²⁷ even then, (that state of a) man which He was destined in the end to become.²⁸ It is He who descends, He who interrogates, He who demands, He who swears. With regard, however, to the Father, the very gospel which is common to us will testify that He was never visible, according to the word of Christ: "No man knoweth the Father, save the Son."²⁹ For even in the Old Testament He had declared, "No man shall see me, and live."³⁰ He means that the Father is invisible, in whose authority and in whose name was He God who appeared as the Son of God. But with us³¹ Christ is received in the person of Christ, because even in this manner is He our God. Whatever attributes therefore you require as worthy of God, must be found in the Father, who is invisible and unapproachable, and placid, and (so to speak) the God of the philosophers; whereas those qualities which you censure as unworthy must be supposed to be in the Son, who has been seen, and heard, and encountered, the Witness and Servant of the Father, uniting in Himself man and God, God in mighty deeds, in weak ones man, in order that He may give to man as much as He takes from God. What in your esteem is the entire disgrace of my God, is in fact the sacrament of man's salvation. God held converse with man, that man might learn to act as God. God dealt on equal terms³² with man, that man might be able to deal on equal terms with God. God was found little, that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God, I hardly know whether you ex fidebelieve that God was crucified. How great, then, is your perversity in respect of the two characters of the Creator! You designate Him as Judge, and reprobate as cruelty that severity of the Judge which only acts in accord with the merits of cases. You require God to be very good, and yet despise as meanness that gentleness of His which accorded with His kindness, (and) held lowly converse in proportion to the mediocrity of man's estate. He pleases you not, whether great or little, neither as your judge nor as your friend! What if the same features should be discovered in your God? That He too is a judge, we have already shown in the proper section:³³ that from being a judge He must needs be severe; and from being severe He must also be cruel, if indeed cruel.³⁴

Now, touching the weaknesses and malignities, and the other (alleged), notes (of the Creator), I too shall advance antitheses in rivalry to Marcion's. If my God knew not of any other superior to Himself, your god also was utterly unaware that there was any beneath himself. It is just what Heraclitus "the obscure"³⁵ said; whether it be up or down,³⁶ it comes to the same thing. If, indeed, he was not ignorant (of his position), it must have occurred to Him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the author of sin too—the devil—and all the evil which my God permitted to be, this also, did your god permit; for he allowed Him to permit it. Our God changed His purposes;³⁷ in like manner yours did also. For he who cast his look so late in the human race, changed that purpose, which for so long a period had refused to cast that look. Our God repented Him of the evil in a given case; so also did yours. For by the fact that he at last had regard to the salvation of man, he showed such a repentance of his previous disregard³⁸ as was due for a wrong deed. But neglect of man's salvation will be accounted a wrong deed, simply because it has been remedied³⁹ by his repentance in the conduct of your god. Our God you say commanded a fraudulent act, but in a matter of gold and silver. Now, inasmuch as man is more precious than gold and silver, in so far is your god more fraudulent still, because he robs man of his Lord and Creator. Eye for eye does our God require; but your god does even a greater injury, (in your ideas,) when he prevents an act of retaliation. For what man will not return a blow, without waiting to be struck a second time.⁴⁰ Our God (you say) knows not whom He ought to choose. Nor does your god, for if he had foreknown the issue, he would not have chosen the traitor Judas. If you allege that the Creator practised deception⁴¹ in any instance, there was a far greater mendacity in your Christ, whose very body was unreal.⁴² Many were consumed by the severity of my God. Those also who were not saved by your god are verily disposed by him to ruin. My God ordered a man to be slain. Your god willed himself to be put to death; not less a homicide against himself than in respect of him by whom he meant to be slain. I will moreover prove to Marcion that they were many who were slain by his god; for he made every one a homicide: in other words, he doomed him to perish, except when people failed in no duty towards Christ.⁴³ But the straightforward virtue of truth is contented with few resources.⁴⁴ Many things will be necessary for falsehood.

But I would have attacked Marcion's own Antitheses in closer and fuller combat, if a more elaborate demolition of them were required in maintaining for the Creator the character of a good God and a Judge, after⁴⁵ the examples of both points, which we have shown to be so worthy of God. Since, however, these two attributes of goodness and justice do together make up the proper fulness of the Divine Being as omnipotent, I am able to content myself with having now compendiously refuted his Antitheses, which aim at drawing distinctions out of the qualities of the (Creator's) artifices,⁴⁶ or of His laws, or of His great works; and thus sundering Christ from the Creator, as the most Good from the Judge, as One who is merciful from Him who is ruthless, and One who brings salvation from Him who causes ruin. The truth is,⁴⁷ they⁴⁸ rather unite the two Beings whom they arrange in those diversities (of attribute), which yet are compatible in God. For only take away the title of Marcion's book,⁴⁹ and the intention and purpose of the work itself, and you could get no better demonstration that the self-same God was both very good and a Judge, inasmuch as these two characters are only competently found in God. Indeed, the very effort which is made in the selected examples to oppose Christ to the Creator, conduces all the more to their union. For so entirely one and the same was the nature of the Divine Beings, the good and the severe, as shown both by the same examples and in similar proofs, that It willed to display Its goodness to those on whom It had first inflicted Its severity. The difference in time was no matter of surprise, when the same God was afterwards merciful in presence of evils which had been subdued,⁵⁰ who had once been so austere whilst they were as yet unsubdued. Thus, by help of the Antitheses, the dispensation of the Creator can be more readily shown to have been reformed by Christ, rather than destroyed;⁵¹ restored, rather than abolished;⁵² especially as you sever your own god from everything like acrimonious conduct,⁵³ even from all rivalry whatsoever with the Creator. Now, since this is the case, how comes it to pass that the Antitheses demonstrate Him to have been the Creator's rival in every disputed cause?⁵⁴ Well, even here, too, I will allow that in these causes my God has been a jealous God, who has in His own right taken especial care that all things done by Him should be in their beginning of a robuster growth;⁵⁵ and this in the way of a good, because rational⁵⁶ emulation, which tends to maturity. In this sense the world itself will acknowledge His "antitheses," from the contrariety of its own elements, although it has been regulated with the very highest reason.⁵⁷ Wherefore, most thoughtless Marcion, it was your duty to have shown that one (of the two Gods you teach) was a God of light, and the other a God of darkness; and then you would have found it an easier task to persuade us that one was a God of goodness, the other a God of severity. How ever, the "antithesis" (or variety of administration) will rightly be His property, to whom it actually belongs in (the government of) the world.