Against Marcion 1.23

I hold up another rule against him: that, as everything in God must be natural, so it must be rational. I demand the reason of his goodness, since nothing else may be held good that is not rationally good, still less may goodness itself be found irrational. An evil in which there is some reason will more easily be taken for good than a good devoid of reason will escape being judged evil. I deny that the goodness of Marcion's god is rational, first on this ground: that it went forth to save a man who was a stranger to him. I know they will say that, on the contrary, this is the chief and perfect goodness, when it is poured out voluntarily and freely on strangers, without any debt of kinship; according to which we are commanded to love even our enemies, who on that account are strangers too. Why, then, did he not look upon man from the beginning, who was a stranger from the beginning? By holding back he prejudged that he had nothing to do with a stranger. Besides, the rule of loving the stranger or the enemy was preceded by the commandment to love your neighbour as yourself. Even though this comes from the Creator's law, you too must accept it, as not destroyed by Christ but rather built up. For you are commanded to love your enemy and the stranger so that you may love your neighbour all the more. The demand for goodness that is not owed is an intensifying of the goodness that is owed. But what is owed comes before what is not owed, as principal, as worthier, as prior to its servant and companion.

Since, then, the first reason of goodness is that it be shown to what is one's own, out of justice, and the second that it be shown to what is another's, out of a justice that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, how can the second reason be ascribed to one who lacks the first, having no man of his own, and whose goodness is therefore scanty? And how did a scanty goodness, which had nothing of its own, overflow onto what was another's? Show the principal reason, and then claim the one that follows. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order; far less can reason itself lose its order in anyone. Suppose now that the reason of goodness begins from the second step, toward the stranger: even that second step will not stand with reason, being destroyed in another way. For goodness even of the second kind, toward the stranger, will be held rational only if it works without injury to the one whose property he is. It is justice, first of all, that makes any goodness rational. Just as in the principal step, when shown to one's own, it will be rational if it is just, so toward the stranger too it can seem rational if it is not unjust. But what sort of goodness is it that stands by injury, and that for a stranger? For on behalf of one of one's own household an injurious goodness might perhaps be held rational to some extent. But on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest goodness would lawfully be owed, by what reason will so unjust a goodness be defended as rational? For what is more unjust, more iniquitous and dishonest, than to do good to another man's slave in such a way that he is snatched from his master, claimed for another, suborned against his master's life — and, what is more shameful, while still in his master's house, still living from his master's granaries, still trembling under his master's blows? Such a claimant would be condemned even in this world — let alone a kidnapper. No differently … Marcion's god, breaking into another's world, snatches man from God, the son from the father, the nursling from the one who reared him, the servant from the master, so as to make him impious toward God, undutiful toward his father, ungrateful toward the one who reared him, worthless toward his master. I ask you: if a rational goodness makes a man like this, what would an irrational one make him? I could not think anyone more impudent than one who is baptized for another god in another's water, stretches out his hands to another god toward another's heaven, prostrates himself before another god on another's earth, gives thanks to another god over another's bread, and does works in the name of almsgiving and love for the sake of another god out of another's goods. Who is this god, so good that man becomes bad through him, so gracious that he makes another god — his own master, indeed — angry with him?