Against Marcion 5.6

So by all these things he shows of which God it is that he speaks the wisdom among the perfect: of him, namely, who took away the wisdom of the wise and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent, who made foolish the wisdom of the world, choosing its foolish things and appointing them for salvation. This wisdom, he says, was hidden: it lay in things foolish and small and dishonourable, and it lay concealed also under figures, allegories, and riddles, to be revealed afterwards in Christ, who was set as a light of the nations by the Creator, who promised through the voice of Isaiah that he would open up treasures unseen and hidden. For that the god who did nothing at all in which he might be thought to have hidden something should have hidden anything is quite incredible. If he himself existed, he could not stay hidden, much less any mysteries of his. But the Creator is as well known himself as his mysteries are, which ran their course openly in Israel, yet were overshadowed as to their meanings, and in them the wisdom of God lay hidden: to be told among the perfect in its own time, but set forth in God's purpose before the ages. And whose are the ages, if not the Creator's? For if the ages are built of times, and times are put together from days and months and years, and days and months and years are marked by the Creator's suns and moons and stars, set by him for this purpose (“and they shall be,” he says, “for signs of months and years”), it is plain that the ages too are the Creator's, and that whatever is said to have been purposed before the ages belongs to no other than him whose the ages are. Or let Marcion prove that the ages belong to his god; let him also show the world itself in which ages may be reckoned, the vessel, so to speak, of the times, and some signs or instruments of them. If he shows nothing, I return to say this too: why did he purpose our glory before the Creator's ages? It might seem that he had purposed it before the ages if he had revealed it at the beginning of the age. But since he does so when almost the whole of the Creator's ages has already run out, he purposed it before the ages to no purpose, and not rather within the ages, since he was going to reveal it almost after the ages. For it does not belong to one who was slow in revealing to have been in a hurry in purposing. But both suit the Creator: to have purposed before the ages and to have revealed at the end of the ages, because what he both purposed and revealed he prepared in the intervening span of the ages in figures and riddles and allegories. But since he adds about our glory that none of the rulers of this age knew it, and that if they had known it they would never have crucified the Lord of glory, the heretic argues that the rulers of this age crucified the Lord …, that is, the Christ of the other god, so as to lay this too at the door of the Creator. Now, since we have shown above in what ways our glory is to be ascribed to the Creator, it must be taken as settled that the glory which was hidden with the Creator was rightly unknown also to all the Creator's virtues and powers, since not even servants may know their masters' plans, much less those apostate angels and the prince of transgression himself, the devil, whom I would contend were, because of their guilt, all the more strangers to any knowledge of the Creator's arrangements. But it no longer suits me either to take the rulers of this age as the Creator's virtues and powers, because the apostle ascribes ignorance to them. For even the devil, according to our Gospel too, recognized Jesus in the temptation; and according to the common document the evil spirit knew that he was the Holy One of God and was called Jesus and had come to destroy them. Also the parable of that strong armed man, whom another, stronger man overpowered and whose goods he seized, …: if in Marcion's reading it is taken of the Creator, then the Creator could no longer have been ignorant of the Lord of glory while he was being overpowered by him, nor could he have fixed on a cross the one against whom he had no strength. And it remains (credible enough on my view) that the Creator's virtues and powers, knowing the Lord of glory, their own Christ, crucified him, with that despair and overflowing malice with which even the most wicked slaves do not hesitate to kill their masters; for it is written in my Gospel that Satan entered into Judas. But according to Marcion, the apostle in this place does not allow ignorance of the Lord of glory to be ascribed to the Creator's powers, since he does not want them understood as the rulers of this age. And if he does not seem to have spoken of spiritual rulers, then he spoke of worldly ones: of the ruling people (not among the nations, of course), of its own rulers, of King Herod, and also of Pilate, and, above him, of the greater power of this age, the Roman authority that presided over them. So, when the arguments of the other side are torn down, our interpretations are built up. But you still want our glory to belong to your god and to have been hidden with him. Then why does both the god and the apostle still lean on the same document? What has he to do everywhere with the sayings of the prophets? “For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counsellor?” That is Isaiah's. What has he to do, too, with the examples of our God? For when he affirms that he is a wise master builder, we find this meant by the Creator through Isaiah of one who would lay out the divine rule of life: “For I will take away from Judaea,” he says, among other things, “the wise master builder.” And was it not Paul himself who was then marked out, destined to be taken away from Judaea, that is, from Judaism, for the building of Christianity, to lay the one foundation, which is Christ? For of this too the Creator says through the same prophet: “Behold, I am laying in the foundations of Zion a precious stone, held in honour, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” Unless God was professing himself a builder of an earthly work, so as not to be pointing to his Christ, who was to be the foundation of those who believe in him. On this foundation, according as each builds on it doctrine worthy or unworthy, if his work is to be tested by fire, if his reward is to be paid out through fire, it is the Creator's doing, because through fire our superstructure is judged, the superstructure, of course, on his own foundation, that is, on his own Christ. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” If man (thing and work and image and likeness, flesh from the earth and soul from the breath) is the Creator's, then, if we are not the Creator's temple, Marcion's god dwells wholly in what belongs to another. “If anyone corrupts the temple of God, he will be corrupted,” by the God of the temple, of course. In threatening an avenger he has threatened the Creator. “Be fools, that you may be wise.” Why? “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.” With which God? Even if the earlier arguments have settled nothing for us in favour of this sense, it is well that he confirms it here too: “For it is written, ‘He catches the wise in their wickedness,’ and again, ‘The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.’” For on the whole we shall have laid it down that he could not have used any saying of that God whom he ought to be destroying, if he were not teaching in his service. “So,” he says, “let no one boast in man”: and this too is according to the Creator's rule of life: “Wretched is the man who puts his hope in man,” and, “It is better to trust in God than to trust in men”; and so too with boasting.