Against Marcion 5.1

Nothing is without an origin except God alone. And just as origin comes first in the state of all things, so it must also come first in the examination of them, so that one may be clear about their state; for you cannot discern what a thing is like unless you are sure that it is, once you have learned where it comes from. And so, brought by the order of this little work to this subject, I ask Marcion also for the origin of the apostle Paul: I, a new sort of disciple and the hearer of no one else, who for the present believe nothing except that nothing is to be believed rashly, and that whatever is believed without knowledge of its origin is believed rashly; and who with every right bring this inquiry to careful scrutiny, since a man is affirmed to me as an apostle whom I do not find in the roll of the apostles in the Gospel. Then, hearing that he was chosen afterwards by the Lord, when the Lord was already at rest in heaven, I judge it a kind of lack of foresight if Christ did not know beforehand that he needed him, but, when the office of the apostolate had already been ordered and its holders sent off to their work, thought that he must be added on the spur of the moment rather than by foresight: by necessity, so to speak, not by will. Therefore, shipmaster from Pontus, if you have never taken smuggled or unlawful goods aboard your boats, if you have never made off with or adulterated a cargo, then, being more cautious and more faithful in the things of God, tell us, please, under what bill of lading you took on the apostle Paul, who stamped him with the mark of his title, who handed him over to you, who put him aboard, so that you may confidently unload him; lest he be proved to belong to the One who produced all the documents of his apostleship. He himself, he says, professed himself an apostle, and that “not from men nor through a man, but through Jesus Christ.” Certainly anyone can profess himself; but his profession is completed by another's authority. One writes, another signs; one seals, another enters it in the record. No one is both his own claimant and his own witness. Besides, you have certainly read that many will come who say, “I am the Christ.” If there is one who falsely claims to be Christ, how much more one who proclaims himself an apostle of Christ? So far I am playing the part of a disciple and an inquirer, so as from here on both to blunt your faith, since you have nothing to prove it from, and to put your impudence to the blush, since you lay claim to him yet do not accept the means by which you could lay claim to him. Let Christ belong to another, and let the apostle now belong to another too, so long as they are proved only from the Creator's documents. For Genesis too promised me Paul long ago. Among those figures and prophetic blessings that Jacob spoke over his sons, when he turned to Benjamin he said: “Benjamin is a ravening wolf; in the morning he will still devour, and at evening he will give food.” For he foresaw that Paul would arise from the tribe of Benjamin, a ravening wolf devouring in the morning, that is, in the first part of his life laying waste the Lord's flocks as a persecutor of the churches, and then at evening giving food, that is, as his life was already declining, feeding Christ's sheep as teacher of the nations. So too Saul's harsh pursuit of David at first, and afterwards his repentance and amends when he received good for evil, foreshadowed nothing other than Paul in Saul, according to his tribe, and Jesus in David, according to the virgin's descent. If these mysteries of figures displease you, at any rate the Acts of the Apostles have handed down to me this course of Paul's, which you too must not deny. From there I show that the apostle, once a persecutor, was “not from men nor through a man”; from there I am led to believe him myself; from there I drive you from defending him, and I do not fear your saying, “So you deny the apostle Paul?” I do not blaspheme the one I am protecting. I deny him in order to compel you to prove him; I deny him in order to prove that he is mine. Either, if you look to our faith, accept what makes it; or, if you appeal to yours, produce what lays its foundation. Either prove that what you believe is so, or, if you do not prove it, how do you believe it? Or what sort of believer are you, set against the one by whom alone what you believe is proved to be? Take the apostle now from my side, as you took Christ: as much my apostle as my Christ. Here too we shall fight along the same lines and challenge you on the same ground of prescription: namely, that an apostle who is denied to be the Creator's, indeed who is put forward against the Creator, must teach nothing, know nothing, will nothing according to the Creator, and above all must proclaim another god with as much constancy as he broke away from the Creator's law. For it is not likely that, in turning people away from Judaism, he would not equally show into faith in which god he was turning them, since no one could pass over from the Creator without knowing to whom he was to pass. For either Christ had already revealed another god, and then the apostle's testimony would follow as well, if only so that he should not be thought an apostle of a god other than the one Christ had revealed, and because one who had already been revealed by Christ could not be kept hidden by the apostle; or Christ had revealed nothing of the kind about God, and then it was all the more the apostle's duty to reveal him, since he could no longer be revealed by anyone else, and he would without doubt not be believed in if he were not revealed even by the apostle. We have laid this down beforehand so that we may declare from here on that we shall prove, just as we proved it of Christ, that no other god was carried about by the apostle; and this from Paul's own letters, which the form of the heretic's gospel must already have led us to judge in advance to be likewise mutilated, even in their number.