Against Marcion 4.38
Summary: Christ's questions about John's baptism, his answer about Caesar's coin, his reply to the Sadducees on marriage and the resurrection, and his words on David's son and Lord all belong to the Creator's Christ.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:549–552
Sciebat Christus, baptisma Iohannis unde esset. et cur quasi nesciens interrogabat? sciebat non responsuros sibi Pharisaeos. et cur frustra interrogabat? an ut ex ore ipsorum iudicaret illos uel ex corde? refer ergo et haec ad excusationem creatoris et ad comparationem Christi, et considera iam, quid secuturum esset, si quid Pharisaei ad interrogationem renuntiassent. puta illos renuntiasse humanum Iohannis baptisma: statim lapidibus elisi fuissent. existeret aliqui Marcion aduersus Marcionem, qui diceret: o deum optimum, o deum diuersum a creatoris exemplis! sciens praeceps ituros homines ipse illos in praeruptum imposuit. sic enim et de creatore in arboris lege tractatur. sed de caelis fuit baptisma Iohannis). et quare, inquit Christus, non credidistis ei? ergo qui credi uoluerat Iohanni, increpaturus quod non credidissent, eius erat, cuius sacramentum Iohannes administrabat. certe nolentibus renuntiare, quid saperent. cum et ipse uicem opponit: et ego non dico uobis, in qua uirtute haec facio, malum malo reddidit. Reddite quae Caesaris Caesari, et quae sunt dei deo. quae erunt dei, quae similia sint denario Caesaris? imago scilicet et similitudo eius. hominem igitur reddi iubet creatori, in cuius imagine et similitudine et nomine et materia expressus est. quaerat sibi monetam deus Marcionis, Christus denarium hominis suo Caesari iubet reddi. non alieno; nisi quod necesse est, *** qui suum denarium non habet. Iusta et digna praescriptio est in omni quaestione ad propositum interrogationis pertinere debere sensum responsionis. ceterum aliud consulenti aliud respondere dementis est, quo magis absit a Christo quod ne homini quidem conuenit Saducaei, resurrectionis negatores, de ea habentes interrogationem proposuerant domino ex lege materiam mulieris, quae septem fratribus ex ordine defunctis secundum praeceptum legale nupsisset, cuius uiri deputanda esset in resurrectione. haec fuit materia quaestionis, haec substantia consultationis; ad hoc respondisse Christum necesse est. neminem timuit, ut quaestiones aut declinasse uideatur aut per occasionem earum quod alias palam non docebat subostendisse. respondit igitur huius quidem aeui filios nubere, — uides quam pertinenter ad causam, quia de aeuo uenturo quaerebatur, in quo neminem nubere definiturus praestruxit hic quidem nubi, ubi sit et mori — quos uero dignatus sit deus illius aeui possessione et resurrectione a mortuis neque nubere neque nubi, quia nec morituri iam sint, cum similes angelorum sint dei, resurrectionis filii facti. cum igitur sensus responsionis non ad aliud sit dirigendus quam ad propositum interrogationis, si hoc sensu responsionis propositum absoluitur interrogationis, non aliud responsio domini sapit quam quo quaestio absoluitur: habes et tempora permissarum et negatarum nuptiarum, non ex sua propria, sed ex resurrectionis quaestione, habes et, ipsius resurrectionis confirmationem et totum quod Saducaei sciscitabantur, non de alio deo interrogantes nec de proprio nuptiarum iure quaerentes. quodsi ad ea facis respondisse Christum, de quibus non est consultus, negas eum de quibus interrogatus est respondere potuisse, Saducaeorum scilicet sapientia captum. ex abundanti nunc et post praescriptionem retractabo aduersus argumentationes cohaerentes. nacti enim scripturae textum: quos autem dignatus est deus illius aeui ita in legendo decurrunt, (ut 'illius aeui ) 'deo') adiungant, quo alium deum faciant illius aeui, cum sic legi oportet: quos autem dignatus est deus, ut facta hic distinctione post 'deum') ad sequentia pertineat 'illius aeui, id est: quos dignatus sit deus illius aeui possessione et resurrectione. non enim de deo, sed de statu illius aeui consulebatur, cuius uxor futura esset post resurrectionem in illo aeuo. sic et de ipsis nuptiis responsum subuertunt, ut filii huius aeui nubunt et nubuntur) de hominibus dictum sit creatoris nuptias permittentis, se autem, quos deus illius aeui, alter scilicet, dignatus sit resurrectione, iam et hic non nubere, quia non sint filii huius aeui. ***, quando de nuptiis illius aeui consultus, non de huius, eas negauerit, de quibus consulebatur. itaque qui ipsam uim et uocis et pronuntiationis et distinctionis exceperant nihil aliud senserunt, quam quod ad materiam consultationis pertinebat, atque adeo scribae: magister, inquiunt, bene dixisti. confirmauerat enim [per] resurrectionem, formam eius edendo aduersus Saducaeorum opinionem. denique testimonium eorum, qui ita eum respondisse praesumpserant, non recusauit. Si autem scribae Christum filium Dauid existimabant, ipse autem Dauid dominum eum appellat, quid hoc ad Christum non Dauid? errorem scribarum obtundebat? (non.) sed honorem Christo Dauid procurabat, quem Christum dominum magis quam filium Dauid confirmabat, quod non congrueret destructori creatoris. at ei nostra parte quam conueniens interpretatio! nam qui olim a caeco illo (filius Dauid fuerat inuocatus, quod tunc reticuit non habens in praesentia scribas, nunc ultro coram eis de industria protulit, ut se, quem caecus secundum scribarum doctrinam filium tantum Dauid praedicarat, dominum quoque eius ostenderet, remunerata quidem fide caeci, qua filium Dauid crediderat [in] illum, pulsata uero traditione scribarum, qua non et dominum eum norant. quodcumque ad gloriam spectaret Christi creatoris sic non alius tueretur, quam Christus creatoris.
English · Claude translation
Christ knew where John's baptism came from. Then why did he ask as though he did not know? He knew that the Pharisees would not answer him. Then why did he ask to no purpose? Or was it to judge them out of their own mouth, or heart? Refer these things, then, to the Creator's defense and to the comparison with Christ, and consider now what would have followed if the Pharisees had given any answer to the question. Suppose they had answered that John's baptism was human: they would at once have been crushed with stones. Some Marcion would have risen up against Marcion to say: “O most good god, O god unlike the Creator's examples! Knowing that men would go headlong, he himself set them on the edge of the precipice.” For that is how they argue about the Creator in the law of the tree. But John's baptism was from heaven. “And why,” says Christ, “did you not believe him?” So he who had wanted John to be believed, since he was going to rebuke them for not believing, belonged to him whose sacrament John was administering. Certainly, when they would not report what they thought, and he in turn set against them, “Neither do I tell you by what power I do these things,” he returned evil for evil.
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” What will be God's, like Caesar's denarius? His image and likeness, of course. So he commands man to be rendered to the Creator, in whose image and likeness and name and material man has been stamped. Let Marcion's god look for coinage of his own; Christ commands man's denarius to be rendered to his own Caesar, not to a stranger; unless it is necessary … who has no denarius of his own.
It is a just and fitting rule in every question that the sense of the answer ought to bear on the point of the question. To answer one thing to one who asks another is the mark of a madman; all the more let what does not befit even a man be far from Christ. The Sadducees, who deny the resurrection, having a question about it, had set before the Lord a case from the law: a woman who, when seven brothers had died one after another, had married them according to the legal precept — whose wife was she to be counted in the resurrection? This was the matter of the question, this the substance of the inquiry; to this Christ must have answered. He feared no one, so as to seem either to have dodged questions or to have used them as an occasion to hint at what he did not otherwise teach openly. He answered, then, that the sons of this age marry — you see how pertinently to the case: because the question was about the age to come, in which he was going to lay down that no one marries, he first established that here there is marrying, where there is also dying — but those whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, because they will no longer die, since they are like the angels of God, having been made sons of the resurrection. Since, then, the sense of the answer must be directed to nothing other than the point of the question, if the point of the question is settled by this sense of the answer, the Lord's answer means nothing other than what settles the question: you have the times of marriage permitted and denied, arising not from a question about marriage itself but from the question of the resurrection; you have also the confirmation of the resurrection itself and all that the Sadducees were asking about, since they were not inquiring about another god nor asking about the proper right of marriage. But if you make Christ answer about things he was not asked, you deny that he could answer what he was asked, as though he were caught, of course, by the wisdom of the Sadducees.
Now, more than is needed and after the rule has been laid down, I will go over the matter against their connected arguments. For having got hold of the text of Scripture, “But those whom God has deemed worthy of that age,” they run through it in reading so as to join “of that age” to “God,” in order to make another god, the god of that age; whereas it should be read, “But those whom God has deemed worthy,” so that, with a pause made here after “God,” “of that age” belongs to what follows, that is: “whom God has deemed worthy of the possession of that age and of the resurrection.” For the question was not about God but about the state of that age, whose wife she would be after the resurrection in that age. So too they twist the answer about marriage itself, so that “the sons of this age marry and are given in marriage” is said of the men of the Creator, who permits marriage, whereas those whom the god of that age — the other one, of course — has deemed worthy of the resurrection do not marry even here, because they are not sons of this age. … since, when he was asked about the marriages of that age and not of this, he denied those about which he was asked. And so those who had taken in the very force of the words and of the delivery and of the pauses understood nothing but what bore on the matter of the question; and so the scribes said: “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For he had confirmed the resurrection by setting forth its form against the opinion of the Sadducees. In short, he did not refuse the testimony of those who had taken him to have answered in this way.
But if the scribes thought Christ was the son of David, while David himself calls him Lord, what has this to do with a Christ who is not David's? Was he beating down the error of the scribes? (No.) Rather he was securing honor for David's Christ, whom he confirmed as Lord rather than as son of David — which would not suit a destroyer of the Creator. But on our side how fitting the interpretation is! For he who had once been invoked by that blind man as (son of David), and had then kept silent on the point, since no scribes were present, now of his own accord deliberately brought it forward in their presence, to show that he, whom the blind man had proclaimed, according to the scribes' teaching, only as David's son, was also his Lord; rewarding the blind man's faith, by which he had believed him to be the son of David, and striking at the tradition of the scribes, by which they did not know him to be David's Lord as well. Whatever tended to the glory of the Creator's Christ, no one but the Creator's Christ would so defend.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations and allusions are Luke 20:1–8, 20–44; Gen 2:16–17; Gen 1:26–27; Deut 25:5–6; Ps 110:1 (109:1 Vulg.); Luke 18:38. “The law of the tree” refers to the Marcionite charge that the Creator, foreknowing Adam's fall, still gave the command about the tree. The digital text marks gaps (***) at the end of the paragraph on Caesar's coin and in the paragraph on reading Luke 20:35; those sentences are incomplete and rendered with “…”. On marriage Tertullian argues that Luke 20:34–36 concerns the age to come and was not, as the Marcionites held, a prohibition of marriage in this life. The editor deletes as spurious per (before resurrectionem) and in (before illum).
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (doubled point in the digital text; letter misread in the digital text; point misread for comma in the digital text; split word in the digital text; stray hyphen in the digital text; stray point in the digital text): an. ut ex ore → an ut ex ore; excusati. onem → excusationem; elisi- fuissent → elisi fuissent; praerupium → praeruptum; dign atus → dignatus; magister, inquiunt. bene dixisti → magister, inquiunt, bene dixisti; Christus creatoris.. → Christus creatoris..
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 4.38 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/38/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 4.38 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/4/38/).
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