Against Marcion 5.16
Summary: In 2 Thessalonians the Lord who comes in flaming fire to punish, even those who do not know God, and who sends deceit through the man of sin on those who rejected the truth, is the Creator; so the gospel and salvation are his too.
Textual problem in this passage: the printed text is uncertain or disputed here. See the notes.
Latin text · CSEL 47:629–632
Cogimur quaedam identidem iterare, ut cohaerentia eis confirmemus. dominum et hic retributorem utriusque meriti dicimus circumferri ab apostolo, aut creatorem aut, quod nolit Marcion, parem creatoris, apud quem iustum sit adflictatoribus nostris rependi adflictationem et nobis, qui adflictemur, requietem in reuelatione domini Iesu uenientis a caelo cum angelis uirtutis suae et in flamma ignis. sed flammam et ignem delendo haereticus extinxit, ne scilicet nostratem deum faceret. lucet tamen uanitas liturae. cum enim ad ultionem uenturum scribat apostolus dominum exigendam de eis, qui deum ignorent et qui non obaudiant euangelio, quos ait poenam luituros exitialem aeternam a facie domini et a gloria ualentiae eius, sequitur, ut flammam ignis inducat, scilicet ueniens ad puniendum. ita et in hoc, nolente Marcione, crematoris dei Christus est, et in illo creatoris [est], quod etiam de ignorantibus dominum ulciscitur, id est de ethnicis. seorsum enim posuit *** euangelio non obaudientes, siue Christianos peccatores siue Iudaeos. porro de ethnicis exigere poenas, qui euangelium forte non norint, non est dei eius, qui naturaliter sit ignotus nec usquam nisi in euangelio sit reuelatus, non omnibus scibilis. creatori autem etiam naturalis agnitio debetur, ex operibus intellegendo et exinde in pleniorem notitiam requirendo. illius est ergo etiam ignorantes deum plectere, quem non liceat ignorari. ipsum quod ait: a facie domini et a gloria ualentiae eius, uerbis usus Esaiae et ex ipsa causa, eundem sapit dominum, consurgentem ut comminuat terram. Quis autem est homo delicti, filius perditionis, quem reuelari prius oportet ante domini aduentum, extollens se super omne quod deus dicitur et omnem religionem, consessurus in templo dei et deum se iactaturus? secundum nos quidem antichristus, ut docent ueteres ac nouae prophetiae, ut Iohannes apostolus, qui iam antichristos dicit processisse in mundum, praecursores antichristi spiritus, negantes Christum in carne uenisse et soluentes Iesum, scilicet in deo creatore; secundum uero Marcionem nescio, ne Christus sit creatoris. nondum (enim) uenit apud illum. quisquis est autem ex duobus, quaero, cur ueniat in omni uirtute et signis et ostentis mendacii. propterea, inquit, quod dilectionem ueritatis non susceperint, ut salui essent; et propter hoc erit eis (in) instinctum fallaciae, ut (credant mendacio, ut) iudicentur omnes, qui non crediderunt ueritati, sed consenserunt iniquitati. igitur si antichristus est secundum creatorem, deus erit creator, qui eum mittit ad impingendos eos in errorem, qui non crediderunt ueritati, ut salui fierent; eiusdem erit ueritas et salus, qui eas summissu erroris ulciscitur, id est creatoris, cui et competit zelus ipse, errore decipere quos ueritate non cepit. si uero non est antichristus secundum nos, ergo Christus est creatoris secundum Marcionem. et quale erit, ut ad ulciscendam ueritatem suam Christum creatoris summittat? sed et (si) de antichristo consentit, proinde dixerim: quale est, ut illi satanas, angelus creatoris, sit necessarius et occidatur ab eo, habens fallaciae operatione fungi creatori? in summa, si indubitatum est eius esse et angelum et ueritatem et salutem, cuius et ira et aemulatio et fallaciae inmissio aduersus contemptores et desultores, etiam aduersus ignorantes — ut iam et Marcion de gradu cedat, deum quoque suum zeloten concedens —, quis dignius irascetur? puto qui a primordio rerum naturam operibus beneficiis plagis praedicationibus testibus ad agnitionem sui praestruxit nec tamen agnitus est, non qui semel unico euangelii instrumento, et ipso incerto nec palam alium deum praedicante, productus est. ita cui competit uindicta, ei competet materia uindictae, euangelium dico et ueritas et salus. Iubere autem operari eum, qui uelit manducare, eius disciplina est, qui boui trituranti os liberum iussit.
English · Claude translation
We are compelled to repeat some things again and again, so as to confirm what hangs together with them. Here too we say that a Lord who repays both kinds of desert is carried about by the apostle: either the Creator or, which Marcion would not want, one like the Creator, with whom it is just to repay affliction to those who afflict us, and to us who are afflicted rest, at the revelation of the Lord Jesus coming from heaven with the angels of his power and in a flame of fire. But the heretic, by deleting “flame” and “fire,” has quenched them, so as not to make him our God. Yet the emptiness of the erasure shines through. For since the apostle writes that the Lord will come to take vengeance on those who do not know God and who do not obey the gospel, who, he says, will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power, it follows that he brings in a flame of fire, since he is coming to punish. So in this too, against Marcion's will, Christ belongs to the God who burns; and in that other point he belongs to the Creator, in that he also takes vengeance on those who do not know the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he set apart … those who do not obey the gospel, whether sinful Christians or Jews. Now to exact penalties from the heathen, who may not have known the gospel, is not the part of that god who is by nature unknown and has been revealed nowhere except in the gospel, and so is not knowable by all. But to the Creator even natural knowledge is owed, by understanding him from his works and then seeking a fuller knowledge of him. It belongs, then, to him to punish even those who do not know God, since he may not be ignored. The very words, “from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his power,” which use the words of Isaiah and for the same reason, savour of the same Lord, who rises up to shatter the earth. And who is the man of sin, the son of perdition, who must be revealed before the Lord's coming, exalting himself above everything that is called God and every object of worship, who will sit in the temple of God and boast himself to be God? In our view he is the Antichrist, as the ancient and the new prophecies teach, and as the apostle John teaches, who says that antichrists have already gone out into the world, forerunners of the Antichrist in spirit, denying that Christ has come in the flesh and dissolving Jesus, that is, in God the Creator. But in Marcion's view I do not know, unless he is the Creator's Christ; for in his view the Creator's Christ has not yet come. But whichever of the two he is, I ask why he comes “with all power and signs and lying wonders.” “Because,” he says, “they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved; and for this reason there will be for them an impulse of deceit, so that they believe the lie, that all may be judged who did not believe the truth but consented to iniquity.” So if he is the Antichrist, as on our view, the Creator will be God, who sends him to drive into error those who did not believe the truth so as to be saved; and the truth and salvation will belong to the same one who avenges them by sending error, that is, to the Creator, to whom such jealousy belongs, to deceive by error those whom he did not win by truth. But if he is not the Antichrist, as on our view, then he is the Creator's Christ, as on Marcion's. And how will it be that he sends the Creator's Christ to avenge his own truth? And even if he agrees about the Antichrist, I would say likewise: how is it that Satan, the Creator's angel, is necessary to him, and is killed by him, though he has to perform the working of deceit for the Creator? In sum, if it is beyond doubt that the angel and the truth and the salvation belong to the one to whom the wrath and the jealousy and the sending of deceit against despisers and deserters belong, and even against those who do not know him (so that Marcion too now gives ground and grants that his god too is a jealous God), who will be angry with better right? I think the one who from the beginning of things laid a foundation in nature for the knowledge of himself by works, benefits, plagues, prophecies, and witnesses, and yet was not known; not the one who was brought forward once, by the single document of the gospel, and that itself uncertain and not openly preaching another god. So to whom vengeance belongs, to him will belong the matter of vengeance: I mean the gospel and the truth and salvation. And to command that one who wants to eat should work is the rule of life of him who ordered that the mouth of the ox treading out the grain be left free.
About this passage
Notes
Translation notes
- The quotations are 2 Thess 1:6–9; 2:3–4, 9–12; 3:10; Isa 2:10, 19, 21; 1 John 2:18; 4:2–3 (Tertullian's text reads “dissolving Jesus”); Deut 25:4. Tertullian says Marcion deleted “in a flame of fire” (2 Thess 1:8). “Crematoris” (“of the God who burns”) is probably a deliberate play on “creatoris” (“of the Creator”). “***” after “seorsum enim posuit” marks a gap in the text, shown as “…”. In the sentence beginning “But if he is not the Antichrist, as on our view,” the logic seems to require “as on Marcion's view” or similar; the text is translated as printed.
Notes on the original text
- Digital text corrected (OCR misreading): antiohristus → antichristus.
Cite this passage
Tertullian, Marc. 5.16 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/5/16/).
Plain text
Tertullian, Marc. 5.16 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/tertullian-marcionem/5/16/).
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