Against Marcion 4.29

Who would forbid us to take thought for the soul about food and for the body about clothing, except the one who provided these things for man beforehand, and who, since he supplies them from then on, rightly forbids anxiety about them as a rival to his own generosity; who also made the substance of the soul itself worth more than food, and shaped the material of the body itself to be worth more than a tunic; whose ravens too neither sow nor reap nor store up in barns and yet are fed by him; whose lilies and grass too neither weave nor spin and yet are clothed by him; whose Solomon too was most glorious and yet not more finely arrayed than any little flower? Besides, nothing is so abrupt as that one should provide and another should command us to be carefree about his provision, and he a disparager of him at that. In short, whether he does not want thought given to such trifles as a disparager of the Creator — trifles about which neither ravens nor lilies labor, since they are supplied unasked, of course, because they are cheap — will appear a little later. Meanwhile, why does he accuse them of little faith, that is, of what faith? Of the faith which they could not yet show in perfection to a God only just (re)vealed, since they were only now learning him, or of the faith which they owed the Creator on this very account, to believe that he supplies these things to the human race unasked, and not to take thought about them? For when he also adds, “For the nations of the world seek these things,” that is, by not believing in God, the founder and provider of all things, he was rebuking as of little faith toward the same God those whom he did not want to be like the gentiles, whom he was marking as unbelieving toward him. Moreover, when he adds, “But the Father knows that you need these things,” I shall first ask which Father Christ wants to be understood. If theirs, he points to the Creator and confirms him as good, since he knows what his children need; (if) his own, that other god, how does he know that food and clothing are necessary to man, when he supplied none of them? For if he had known, he would have supplied them. But if he knew what is necessary to man and still did not supply it, he failed to supply it either from malice or from weakness. And by declaring these things necessary to man, he surely confirmed them as good — for nothing evil is necessary — and he will no longer be a depreciator of the Creator's works and kindnesses, so that I have now settled what I put off above. Moreover, if another both provided and supplies what he knows is necessary to man, how does he himself promise these things? Or is he good at another's expense? “For seek,” he says, “the kingdom of God, and these things will be added to you,” surely by himself. But if by himself, what sort of god is he who will supply what belongs to another? If by the Creator, to whom they belong, who is he to promise another's things? If these things are to be added to the kingdom, to be restored in second place, the second place belongs to the one who also has the first; the food and clothing belong to the one to whom the kingdom also belongs. So the whole promise is the Creator's.

If the structure of parables and the matching of similitudes look to no one other than the one to whom they correspond in every respect, and we are servants — for we have God as Lord —, then we must gird our loins, that is, be free from the encumbrances of a trailing and entangled life, and likewise have lamps burning, that is, minds kindled by faith and shining with works of truth, and so wait for the Lord, that is, Christ. Returning from where? If from a wedding, he is the Creator's, whose weddings they are; if he is not the Creator's, not even Marcion himself would have gone to a wedding if invited, looking to his own god, the hater of weddings. So the parable fails in the person of the Lord if he were not one to whom weddings are fitting.

In the following parable too, he errs badly who assigns to the person of the Creator that thief whose hour, if the master of the house knew it, he would not let his house be broken into. For how can the Creator, Lord of the whole man, seem a thief? No one steals or breaks into what is his own; rather it is he who comes down upon what is another's and estranges man from his Lord. Moreover, since he shows us that the thief is the devil, whose hour, had man known it even in the beginning, he would never have been broken into by him, he therefore commands us to be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour we do not expect: not as though he himself were the thief, but as the judge, of course, of those who have not prepared themselves and have not guarded against the thief. So if he himself is the Son of Man, I hold him as judge, and in the judge I defend the Creator; but if in this place, under the name of the Son of Man, he shows the Creator's Christ so as to depict him as the thief whose coming we do not know, you have the rule laid down above that no one is a thief of his own property; and this too remains safe, that insofar as he presents the Creator as one to be feared, so far he is doing the Creator's business and belongs to him. So when Peter asked whether he was speaking the parable to them or to all, he sets forth, (that) is, for them and for all who would preside over the churches, a similitude of stewards: the one among them who has treated his fellow servants well in his lord's absence will, when the lord returns, be set over all his goods; but the one who has acted otherwise, when the lord returns on a day he did not expect, at an hour he did not know — that Son of Man, namely, the Creator's Christ, not a thief but a judge — will be cut off, and his portion will be put with the unbelievers. Accordingly, either here too he sets forth the Lord as judge, (as) he teaches there, or, if it is the most good god, he now affirms that he too is a judge, however little the heretic may like it. For they try to soften this sense when it is claimed for their god, as though it were a matter of peace and gentleness merely to cut off and to put a man's portion with the unbelievers, as if he had simply not been called, and were only returned to his own condition. As if this very thing were not done by judgment! What folly! What will be the outcome of those cut off? Is it not the loss of salvation? For they will be cut off from those who will attain salvation. And what is the state of the unbelievers? Is it not damnation? Or if those cut off and the unbelievers will suffer nothing, then equally, on the other side, those kept and the believers will gain nothing. But if those kept and the believers will gain salvation, those cut off and the unbelievers must on the other side lose it. This will be judgment, and whoever threatens it is the Creator's.

Whom else am I to understand as beating his servants with few or many blows, and requiring of them according to what he entrusted to them, than God who repays? Whom does he teach me to obey, if not one who rewards?

Your Christ proclaims: “I have come to cast fire on the earth,” he, the most good, lord of no Gehenna, who a little before had restrained his disciples from calling down fire on a most inhospitable village! When this other burned up Sodom and Gomorrah with a storm of fire; when it was sung (of him): “Fire will go before him and burn up his enemies”; when he threatened through Hosea, “I will send fire on the cities of Judah,” or through Isaiah, “Fire has blazed out from my indignation”: he must be lying, if he is not the one who sent forth his voice also from the burning bush. Consider what fire you insist is to be understood: even if it is a figure, by the very fact that he takes proofs for his meaning from my element, the one who uses what is mine is mine. The likeness of fire will belong to him to whom the reality of fire belongs. He himself will better interpret the nature of this fire when he adds: “Do you think I have come to send peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but separation.” “A sword,” indeed, is what is written, but Marcion emends it. As if separation too were not the work of a sword! So he who denied peace intends also a fire of overthrow. As the battle, so the burning; as the sword, so the flame; neither befits (your) lord. In short: “Father,” he says, “will be divided against son and son against father, and mother against daughter and daughter against mother, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law and mother-in-law against daughter-in-law.” If the prophet's trumpet sounded this war among relatives in these very words, I fear that Micah was preaching for Marcion's Christ.

And therefore he pronounced them hypocrites, who could test the face of the sky and of the earth, but did not discern that time in which, of course, he ought to have been recognized, as he fulfilled everything that had been foretold of him and taught nothing different. Besides, who could have known the times of one who had nothing by which to prove them? He rightly reproaches them also for not judging what is right of themselves. Long ago he commanded this through Ezekiel: “Judge just and peaceable judgment”; through Jeremiah: “Do judgment and righteousness”; through Isaiah: “Judge for the orphan and justify the widow,” charging the vineyard of Sorek too that it had produced not judgment but an outcry. So he who had taught them to do it by precept was requiring them to do it of their own judgment as well. He who had sown the precept was also pressing for its overflow. And how absurd, that one should command us to judge justly who was destroying God the just judge! For they also discuss, by way of disparagement, the judge who sends a man into prison and does not bring him out until even the last farthing has been paid, as representing the Creator. To this I must respond with the same step. For as often as the Creator's severity is thrown up against us, so often does Christ belong to the one to whom he compels obedience through fear.