Against Marcion 5.18

Given the heretic's mania for cutting, I do not wonder if he takes away syllables, when he often removes whole pages. The apostle says that grace was given to him, the least of all, to enlighten all, as to what is the arrangement of the mystery hidden from the ages in God, who created all things. The heretic snatched away the preposition “in” and has it read thus: “hidden from the ages from the God who created all things.” But the forgery flashes out. For the apostle goes on: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the church.” Whose principalities and powers does he mean? If the Creator's, how can it be that that god wanted his wisdom to be shown to the Creator's principalities and powers, but not to the Creator himself? When not even the powers could have learned anything without their own prince? Or if he did not name God here because the prince himself is also counted among them, then he would likewise have declared that the mystery was hidden from the principalities and powers of him who created all things, counting him among them in the same way. And if he says it was hidden from him, he ought to have said that it was made manifest to him. So it was not hidden from God, but hidden in God, the Creator of all, and hidden from his principalities and powers. “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counsellor?” Caught here, the heretic will perhaps change his ground and say that his god wanted to make known to his own powers and principalities the arrangement of his mystery, of which God, the Creator of all, had been ignorant. And what was the point of pleading the ignorance of the Creator, a stranger separated from him by a long distance, when even the household of the higher god had not known it? Yet the future event was known to the Creator too. Or was it not surely known to him, since it was to be revealed under his heaven and on his earth? So from this too what we built up above is confirmed. For if the Creator was one day to know that hidden mystery of the higher god, and the text ran, “hidden from the God who created all things,” he ought to have gone on thus: “that the manifold wisdom of God might be made known to him,” and then, “and to the powers and principalities of whatever god,” with whom the Creator would come to know it. So it is clear that something was removed, which in this way is kept safe for its truth. I too now want to join issue with you over the apostle's allegories, whose forms you will not allow to have been in the prophets. “He led captivity captive,” he says. With what arms? In what battles? By laying waste what nation? By overthrowing what city? What women, what children, what petty kings did the victor put in chains? For when in David Christ is sung as girded with a sword upon his thigh, or in Isaiah as taking the spoils of Samaria and the strength of Damascus, you hammer him out into a real and visible warrior. Recognize, then, now both his armour and his warfare as spiritual, if you have now learned that the captivity is spiritual, so that you may recognize this too as his; or because the apostle took the mention of this captivity from the prophets, from whom he also took the commands: “Putting away lying, speak the truth, each to his neighbour,” and, “Be angry, and do not sin” (to set out the psalm's sense in the psalm's own words); “Do not let the sun go down on your anger”; “Do not take part in the works of darkness” (for “with the righteous you will be righteous, and with the perverse you will be perverted,” and, “Remove the evil from your midst,” and, “Go out from among them and touch nothing unclean; be separate, you who carry the vessels of the Lord”). So too, to be drunk with wine, a disgrace, comes from where those who make the saints drunk are rebuked: “And you gave my holy ones wine to drink,” which Aaron and his sons were forbidden to drink when they went into the holy place. And to teach that they should sing to God in psalms and hymns belongs to him who knew that those who drink wine to the sound of timbrels and harps were rather accused by God. So the one whose precepts I find, and the seeds or the growth of those precepts, is the one whose apostle I recognize. Further, from where does he confirm that wives ought to be subject to their husbands? “Because the husband,” he says, “is the head of the wife.” Tell me, Marcion, does your god build up the authority of his law from the Creator's work? That is plainly a smaller matter, since he takes from there the standing of his Christ himself and of his church: “as Christ too is the head of the church.” Likewise when he says, “He who loves his wife loves his own flesh, as Christ too loves the church,” you see your Christ and your church compared to the Creator's work. What honour is given to the flesh under the name of the church! “No one,” he says, “hates his own flesh” (except, plainly, Marcion alone), “but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the church.” But you, who alone hate it, taking away its resurrection, will have to hate the church too, since it is loved by Christ in the same way. Indeed Christ loved the flesh as he did the church. No one will fail to love even the image of his bride; rather he will keep it and honour it and crown it. The likeness shares the honour with the reality. Shall I labour now to prove that the same God is God of the man and of Christ, of the woman and of the church, of the flesh and of the spirit, when the apostle himself brings in the Creator's sentence, and even expounds it: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and the two will be in one flesh. This mystery is great”? It is enough for now that, if these mysteries of the Creator are great with the apostle, they are very small with the heretics. “But I,” he says, “speak of Christ and the church.” You have an interpretation of the mystery, not a separation from it. He shows that a figure of the mystery was provided beforehand by the one to whom the mystery surely belonged. What does Marcion think? The Creator could not provide figures beforehand for an unknown god, and not for a known one either, being his adversary; and the higher god ought not to borrow anything from the lower, still less from one he was to destroy. “Children, obey your parents”: for (although Marcion took away “for this is the first commandment with a promise”) the law says, “Honour your father and mother.” “And parents, bring up your children in the discipline and correction of the Lord”: for you have heard that it was said to those of old too, “You shall tell these things in the ears of your children, and your children likewise in the ears of their children.” Why do I now need two gods, if the rule of life is one? And if there are two, I will follow the one who taught first. “But our struggle is against the rulers of the world”: oh, how many creator gods there are now! For why should not a single ruler of the world have been named, if he meant the Creator, to whom the powers he mentioned before would belong? Moreover, since above he bids us put on the armour in which to stand against the schemes of the devil, he now shows that what he joins to the devil belongs to the devil: the powers and the rulers of this darkness, which we too ascribe to the devil. Or if the devil is the Creator, who will be the devil with the Creator? Or are there, as two gods, so also two devils, and powers and world rulers in the plural? But how are the Creator and the devil and God the same, when the devil is not at the same time both God and devil? For either both are gods, if both are devils; or he who is God is not also the devil, just as the devil is not God. I ask about the very word “devil”: from what slander does it fit the Creator? Perhaps he slandered some purpose of the higher god, as he himself suffered at the hands of the archangel, and a lying one at that. For he had not forbidden the tasting of that little tree so that they should not become gods, but so that they should not die of the transgression. Nor will “the spiritual forces of wickedness” mean the Creator because he added “in the heavenly places.” For the apostle knew that spiritual forces of wickedness had worked in the heavenly places, the angels who were made to stumble over the daughters of men. And what sort of thing would it be for him to censure the Creator through ambiguities and riddles of some kind, he who, already placed in chains [for the freedom of his preaching], was surely showing the church the boldness to make known the mystery in the opening of his mouth, which he bade them ask of God for him?