Against Marcion 4.36

For, when he commands perseverance and urgency in prayer, he sets forth the parable of the judge who was compelled to hear the widow by the urgency and perseverance of her appeals. So he shows that it is God the judge who must be prayed to, not himself, if he himself is not the judge. But he (also) added that God would avenge his elect. If, then, the one who is judge will also be the avenger, he has proved the Creator to be the better god, since he showed him to be the avenger of his elect who cry to him day and night. And yet, when he brings in the Creator's temple and describes two men praying with different minds, the Pharisee in pride, the publican in humility, and says that the one went down rejected and the other justified, surely, by teaching with what discipline one must pray, he established here too that the one to be prayed to is he from whom they would receive this discipline of prayer, whether it rejects pride or justifies humility. I find with Christ no temple, no worshipers, no judgment of another god, but only of the Creator: him he commands us to worship in humility, as the one who lifts up the humble, not in pride, as the one who destroys the proud. What other does he show me to be worshiped? With what discipline? With what hope? None, I think. For the prayer he taught, too, we have proved fits the Creator. It is another matter if, being the most good god and good unasked, he does not even want to be worshiped.

“But who is good but one, God?” he says. Not as though he had shown one of two gods to be the good one, but that (one) God alone is good, who is thus alone good because he alone is God. And surely he is good who rains on the just and the unjust and makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, sustaining and feeding and helping even the Marcionites. In short, when he was asked by a certain man, “Good teacher, by doing what shall I possess eternal life?”, he asked whether he knew, that is, did, the Creator's commandments, so as to testify that eternal life is gained by the Creator's commandments; and when the man affirmed that he had kept all the chief ones from his youth, he said: “One thing you lack: sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” Come now, Marcion, and all you heretics, his fellow wretches and fellow haters, what will you dare to say? Did Christ cancel the earlier commandments — not to kill, not to commit adultery, not to steal, not to bear false witness, to love father and mother — or did he both keep them and add what was lacking — although this commandment too, of generosity to the needy, is spread everywhere through the law and the prophets — so that that most glorious keeper of the commandments might be exposed as one who would hold his money much dearer? Let this saying of the gospel, then, stand safe here too: “I have not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but rather to fulfill them.” At the same time he freed the other points from doubt, by making it plain that the name of God and of (the good one), and eternal life, and treasure in heaven, and he himself, all belong to one God, whose commandments he both kept and increased by supplementing them. He is to be recognized in this place also according to Micah, who says: “Has a man told you what is good? Or what does the Lord require of you but to do judgment, to love mercy, and to be ready to follow the Lord your God?” For Christ is the man telling what is good: the knowledge of the law — “You know the commandments,” he says; to do judgment — “Sell what you have,” he says; to love mercy — “And give to the needy,” he says; to be ready to go with the Lord — “And come,” he says, “follow me.”

The Jewish nation was from the beginning so distinctly arranged by tribes and peoples and families and houses that no one could easily be unknown as to his descent, not least because of the recent censuses of Augustus, which were then perhaps still on record. But Marcion's Jesus — even (if) there was no doubt of the birth of one who appeared to be a man — surely, not having been born, could have had no public record of his family, but was to be counted as one of those who were regarded, in whatever way, as unknown. When, then, the blind man heard that he was passing by, why did he cry out, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” if not because he was not without reason reckoned the son of David, (that) is, of David's family, through his mother and brothers, who had once been announced to him, surely by people who knew them? (But those who went ahead rebuked the blind man, to make him be quiet. Rightly, since he was shouting, not because he was lying about the son of David. Or show that those who rebuked him knew that Jesus was not the son of David, so that they may be believed to have imposed silence on the blind man for that reason. But even if you showed it, you would more easily presume that they were ignorant than that the Lord could have allowed a false proclamation about himself. But the Lord is patient. Yet he does not confirm error. Nay more, as the one who exposes the Creator, would he not first have cleared away this blindness of that man, so that he would no longer think Jesus the son of David? But in fact, so that you should not defame his patience nor fasten on him any motive for dissembling, he most plainly confirmed the blind man's proclamation, both by the very reward of healing and by the testimony to his faith: “Your faith,” he says, “has saved you.” What do you want the blind man to have believed? That Jesus had come down from another god to expose the Creator, to destroy the law and the prophets? That he was not the one who was destined to come from the root of Jesse and from the fruit of David's loins, the one who would reward the blind as well? But the blind were not yet, I think, of Marcion's kind, so that this was the faith of that blind man, by which he believed in the words, “Jesus, son of David.” He who both knew himself to be this and wished to be known as this by all, granted to the man's faith, which already had better eyes and possessed the true light, outward sight as well, so that we too might learn the rule of faith and at the same time its reward: whoever wishes to see, let him believe that Jesus is the son of David through the virgin's descent; whoever does not so believe will not hear from him, “Your faith has saved you,” and so will remain blind, falling into the antithesis, which itself falls (into) an antithesis. For so the blind is accustomed to lead the blind. For if, (because) the blind had once offended David at the recovery of Zion by resisting his entry — as a figure of the people who were likewise blind and would one day refuse to admit Christ the son of David — therefore Christ, on the contrary, came to the aid of a blind man, to show by this that he was not the son of David, being by a difference of disposition good to the blind whom David had ordered to be struck down, then why did he say he had granted it to faith, and to a wrong faith at that? But in fact this too (the son of David) (gives) an antithesis to be beaten back with his own weapon. For because the blind had offended David, and now a man of the same flesh had presented himself as a suppliant to the son of David, therefore the son of David, as though appeased by his making amends, restored his sight with a testimony to his faith, by which he had believed this very thing, that the son of David must be entreated by him. And yet it was, I think, the audacity of those men, not their infirmity, that had offended David.