Against Marcion 4.16

“But I say to you who hear,” he says (showing that this was commanded long ago by the Creator: “Speak in the ears of those who hear”), “love your enemies, and bless those who hate you, and pray for those who slander you.” These things the Creator enclosed in a single declaration through Isaiah: “Say, You are our brothers, to those who hate you.” For if those who are enemies, and hate, and curse, and slander are to be called brothers, then surely he who commanded that they be counted brothers also commanded that those who hate be blessed and that prayer be made for slanderers. Christ plainly teaches a new patience, restraining even the retaliation for injury that the Creator permitted when he demanded an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; he, on the contrary, commands that the other cheek be offered as well, and that the cloak be given up besides the tunic. Plainly, unless Christ added these things as supplements in keeping with the Creator's discipline. And so this must be answered at once: is the discipline of patience preached in the Creator? If through Zechariah he commanded, “Let no one remember his brother's malice,” nor his neighbor's either, for again he says, “Let no one think over his neighbor's malice,” then much more did he enjoin patience under injury who enjoined forgetting it. And when he says, “Vengeance is mine, and I will avenge,” he likewise teaches patience that waits for vengeance. In so far, then, as it is incredible that the same one should seem to demand an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth in retaliation for injury who forbids not only retaliation but even revenge, and even the remembering and thinking over of an injury, to that extent it becomes clear to us how he meant “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth”: not to permit a second injury by way of retaliation, which he had forbidden by prohibiting revenge, but to restrain the first by setting retaliation against it, so that each person, considering the license given to a second injury, would restrain himself from the first. For he knew that violence is more easily checked by the immediate prospect of retaliation than by the promise of vengeance. Both, however, had to be established, according to the nature and faith of men, so that one who believed God would wait for vengeance from God, and one who trusted less would fear the retaliations of the law. This intention of the law, which was hard to understand, Christ, the Lord of the sabbath and of the law and of all the Father's arrangements, both revealed and made effective, commanding the offering of the other cheek too, in order all the more to extinguish retaliation for injury, which the law too had wished to prevent through the retaliation clause, and which prophecy had plainly restrained, both forbidding the memory of injury and referring vengeance to God. So if Christ brought in anything, it was by a precept that assists and does not oppose; he did not destroy the Creator's disciplines. Indeed, if we consider the very reason for commanding patience, and one so full and perfect, it will not stand unless it belongs to the Creator, who promises vengeance, who presents himself as judge. Otherwise, if one who is not going to defend me lays on me so great a weight of patience, not only not to strike back but to offer the other cheek as well, not only not to curse back but even to bless, not only not to keep my tunic but to give up my cloak besides, he commands patience in vain, not showing me the reward of the precept, I mean the fruit of patience, which is vengeance; which he ought to have permitted me if he does not provide it himself, or, if he did not permit it to me, to provide himself, since it concerns discipline too that injury be avenged. For every iniquity is curbed by fear of vengeance; otherwise, let loose at will, it will rule, ready to gouge out both eyes and knock out every tooth in the security of impunity. But this is what belongs to the supremely and merely good god: to wrong patience, to throw open the door to violence, not to defend the upright, not to restrain the wicked. “Give to everyone who asks you”: to the needy, of course, or all the more to the needy, if also to one who has plenty. That no one, then, may need a giver, you have the Creator's pattern commanded in Deuteronomy: “There shall be no one in need among you, so that the Lord your God may bless you with blessing,” you as the giver, that is, who have caused there to be no one in need. And there is more here: for he does not command giving to one who asks, but, “Let there be no one in need among you,” that is, take care of your own accord that there be none. All the more does he prejudge that one who asks is to be given to, in what follows too: “But if there is one in need among your brothers, you shall not turn away your heart nor close your hand against your needy brother; you shall surely open your hand to him; you shall lend to him as much as he desires.” For a loan is usually not given except to one who asks. But of lending later. Now, if anyone wishes to argue that the Creator commanded giving to brothers, but Christ to all who ask, so that this is new and different: on the contrary, it will be one of the things through which the Creator's law will be … in Christ. For Christ commanded nothing else toward all than the Creator toward brothers. For even if kindness that works toward strangers is greater, it does not come before that which is owed first to neighbors. For who will be able to love strangers …? But if the second step of kindness is toward strangers, the first toward neighbors, the second step will belong to the one to whom the first belongs, more readily than the second will belong to one to whom the first did not belong. So the Creator, according to the order of nature, taught kindness first toward neighbors, intending afterwards to extend it to strangers too; and according to the plan of his arrangement, first toward the Jews, afterwards to the whole human race as well. And so, as long as the sacrament was within Israel, he rightly commanded mercy toward brothers alone; but when he gave Christ the nations as his inheritance and the ends of the earth as his possession, and what was said through Hosea began to be fulfilled, “Not my people, my people; and she who had not obtained mercy, has obtained mercy,” the nation, namely, from then on Christ extended the law of the Father's kindness to all, excepting no one from compassion, as no one from the calling. So even if he taught something more, this too he received as the inheritance of the nations. “And as you wish men to do to you, so do you also to them.” In this precept its other half is surely understood: “And as you do not wish men to do to you, so do not you do to them.” If a new god, unknown before and not yet clearly made known, commanded this, one who had formed me by no previous instruction by which I might first know what I ought to wish or not wish for myself, and so do to others what I would wish for myself and not do what I would not wish for myself, then he left the meaning of the saying open and did not bind me to agreement between will and deed, to do to others what I wish for myself and not to do to others what I do not wish for myself. For he did not define what I ought to wish or not wish for myself and others, so that I might make my deed match the law of my will. And I can refuse to give another what I would wish another to give me: love, service, comfort, protection, and goods of that kind; and likewise do to another what I would not wish another to do to me: violence, injury, insult, fraud, and evils of that kind. In fact, the heathen, not yet instructed by God, act with this disagreement between will and deed. For even if good and evil are known by nature, they are not known by God's discipline, through the knowledge of which, and only then, the agreement of will and deed is practiced out of faith, as under the fear of God. So Marcion's god, just then revealed, if indeed revealed, could not put out so tight, obscure, and still blind a summary of this precept, one more easily interpreted by my own choice, when he had laid down no distinction for it beforehand. But my Creator long ago and everywhere commanded that the needy, the poor, orphans, and widows be protected, helped, and refreshed, as through Isaiah: “Break your bread for the beggars, and bring those without shelter into your house, and if you see the naked, cover him”; likewise through Ezekiel, of the righteous man: “He will give his bread to the hungry and cover the naked.” So he already then taught me well enough to do to others what I would wish done to me. Likewise, declaring, “You shall not kill, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness,” he taught me not to do to others what I would not wish done to me. And so the precept in the gospel will be his who in the past both laid it down beforehand, distinguished it, and arranged it according to the judgment of his discipline, and now rightly bound it up in a summary; since the Lord, that is Christ, was foretold as one who would make a cut-short word on the earth.