Against Marcion 4.7

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, he lays it down, Christ came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee: from the Creator's heaven, of course, into which he had first come down from his own. Would it not have been proper order, then, that he should first be described as coming down from his own heaven into the Creator's? For why should I not criticize these things too, which do not fulfill the credibility of an orderly narrative, which always fails in a lie? Let what we have already dealt with elsewhere be said plainly once more: whether, coming down through the Creator's realm, and indeed against him, he could have been let in by him and passed on from there to the earth, which was equally his. But now I demand the rest of the order of his descent too, holding that he came down. Let it pass, if anywhere it is written that he “appeared.” To appear smacks of a sudden and unexpected sight, which strikes the eyes once upon what has appeared without delay; but to have come down is seen while it is happening, and brings the fact under the eyes. It also implies an order, and so compels us to ask in what form, with what equipage, with what speed or restraint, and even at what time of day or night he came down; besides, who saw him coming down, who reported it, who vouched for the fact, which would not easily be believed even from one who vouched for it. It is shameful, in short, that Romulus had Proculus to affirm his ascent into heaven, while the Christ of God did not find anyone to announce his descent from heaven … as if the one did not ascend by the same ladder of lies by which the other came down. And what had he to do with Galilee, if he was not the Creator's, for whom this region was destined as he entered on his preaching, as Isaiah says: “Drink this first, act quickly, land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, and you others who inhabit the seacoast and the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations: you people who sit in darkness, see a great light; you who inhabit the land, sitting in the shadow of death, a light has risen upon you”? And it is well that Marcion's god too is claimed as the enlightener of the nations; all the more should he, even if he came down from heaven, have come down to Pontus rather than to Galilee. But since both the place and the work of enlightening agree with the prophecy in Christ, we begin to recognize him already as the one prophesied, showing at his first entry that he had come not to dissolve the law and the prophets but rather to fulfill them. This Marcion erased as an addition. But in vain will he deny that Christ said what he at once in part did. For he meanwhile fulfilled the prophecy about the place. From heaven, at once, to the synagogue. As the saying goes, “Do what we came for.” Marcion, take this out of the gospel as well: “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and, “It is not right to take the children's bread and give it to the dogs,” so that Christ may not seem to be Israel's. Deeds are enough for me in place of words. Take away the sayings of my Christ: the facts will speak. Look, he comes to the synagogue: surely to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Look, he offers the bread of his teaching to the Israelites first: surely as preferring them as sons. Look, he does not yet share it with others: surely as passing them by as dogs. But to whom would he rather have given it than to strangers to the Creator, if he had not himself been above all the Creator's? And yet how could one so sudden, so unknown, be admitted to the synagogue, one about whom no one was yet certain of his tribe, his people, his house, or finally his registration in Augustus's census, which the Roman archives keep as the most faithful witness to the Lord's birth? They certainly remembered that unless they knew him to be circumcised he was not to be admitted into the holy of holies. And even if the synagogue could be entered freely, it was not so for teaching, except by one well known, examined, and long approved for this very purpose, or recommended from elsewhere with this office. But all were astonished at his teaching. Of course, “for his word,” it says, “was with authority,” not because he taught against the law and the prophets. For the divine speech certainly showed both power and grace, building up rather than destroying the substance of the law and the prophets. Otherwise they would not have been astonished but horrified; they would not have wondered but at once have turned away from a destroyer of the law and the prophets, and above all from the preacher of another god, since he could not have taught against the law and the prophets, and on this account against the Creator, without first professing a different and rival divinity. Since, then, Scripture indicates nothing of the kind, except that the power and authority of his word alone were the object of wonder, it more readily shows that he taught in accordance with the Creator, because it did not deny it, than against the Creator, because it did not indicate it. And so he must either be recognized as belonging to the one according to whom he taught, or be judged a traitor if he taught according to the one against whom he had come. In the same place the spirit of a demon cries out: “What have we to do with you, Jesus? You have come to destroy us. I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” Here I shall not reopen the question whether this name too suited one who ought not even to be called Christ if he was not the Creator's (the names have been argued elsewhere already); but I now dispute how the demon knew that he was called by this name, when no foretelling about him had ever been sent out beforehand by a god unknown and up to that time mute, of whom he could not even attest him to be the Holy One, as being of a god unknown even to his own Creator. What had he yet brought forth of a new divinity, by which he could be understood as the Holy One of another god? Only that he had entered the synagogue, and had not even done anything by word against the Creator! Just as, then, he could in no way recognize as Jesus and the Holy One of God one whom he did not know, so he recognized one whom he knew. For he remembered both that the prophet had foretold the Holy One of God, and that the name Jesus was the name of the Lord in the son of Nun. These things he had also caught from the angel, according to our gospel: “Therefore that which will be born in you will be called holy, the Son of God,” and, “you shall call his name Jesus.” Besides, he certainly had some sense of the Lord's arrangement, demon though he was, rather than of a foreign one not yet well known. For he said first, “What have we to do with you, Jesus?” not as to a stranger, but to one to whom the spirits of the Creator belong. For he did not say, “What have you to do with us?” but, “What have we to do with you?”, lamenting himself and reproaching his lot, which he already saw, as he adds: “You have come to destroy us.” So he had recognized Jesus as the Son of the God who judges and avenges and, so to speak, is severe, not of that supremely good one who knows neither how to destroy nor how to punish. To what end have we set out this passage? To show that Jesus was recognized by the demon, and confirmed by himself, as none other than the Creator's. “But,” you say, “Jesus rebuked him.” Of course, as spiteful and impudent even in his confession, as flattering wickedly, as if this were the highest glory of Christ, that he had come for the destruction of demons and not rather for the salvation of men; he who wished his disciples to glory not in the subjection of spirits but in the whiteness of salvation. Or why did he rebuke him? If as having lied entirely, then he was not Jesus nor the Holy One of God at all. If as having lied in part, because he had thought him to be Jesus and the Holy One of God, but the Creator's, he rebuked him most unjustly for thinking what he knew should be thought, and for not supposing what he did not know should be supposed: another Jesus, the Holy One of another god. But if the rebuke has no more likely standing than the one we give it, then the demon told no lie, and was not rebuked for a lie; for he himself was Jesus, and the demon could not have recognized any other; and Jesus confirmed the one whom the demon had recognized, in not rebuking the demon for a lie.