Chapter 34. Against the Marcionites: The Prophets Speak of the One Christ.
Chapter 34
1. Against all the heretics, and especially against the Marcionites and their ilk, who assert that the Prophets were from another god, we shall say: Read with greater care the Gospel that has been given us by the apostles, and read with greater care the Prophets, and you will find proclaimed in them all the deeds and all the doctrines and the entire passion of Our Lord.
If, however, a thought like this should come to mind and you should say: “What new thing, then, did the Lord bring by coming?” know that he who was heralded in advance brought something quite new by presenting himself. Really, this very thing had been heralded in advance that a newness would come to renew and give life to man. To illustrate, the coming of a king is heralded by servants who are sent ahead to prepare those who are to welcome their sovereign. But when the king comes, his subjects are filled with the joy that had been heralded; and when they have received his freedom, and have actually seen him, they have heard his discourses and have enjoyed his gifts, those who have any sense at all no longer ask, “What did the king bring that is newer than what the heralds of the coming announced?” To be sure, he brought himself and gave to men the blessings that had been predicted, into which angels longed to look.
2. The servants would have been liars and not sent by the Lord if Christ had not fulfilled their words by coming just as he was heralded in advance. For that reason he said, Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish but to fulfill [them]. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot will pass from the law until all is accomplished. For by coming he fulfilled all things and still fulfills in the Church, until the consummation, the new covenant predicted by the Law. Paul, his Apostle, said the same thing in his Letter to the Romans: But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it; for he who is righteous lives by faith. Now, the fact that the righteous man lives by faith was predicted by the Prophets.
3. How could the Prophets predict the King’s coming; how could they tell in advance about the good news of the liberty he would give; how could they announce beforehand all that was done by Christ, both by words and by deeds, and his passion; how could they foretell the new covenant, if they had received prophetic inspiration from some other god, and had been ignorant, according to you, of the ineffable Father, of his kingdom, and of his dispensations, which God’s Son fulfilled by coming on earth in the last days? You cannot, in truth, say that these things happened by some chance, as if the Prophets had said them of some other god, but they happened just like that to the Lord. For, all the Prophets foretold the same things, but they did not happen to any of the ancients. To be sure, if they had happened to any of the ancients, the later Prophets would not have foretold that they would take place in the last times.
More yet, there is no Patriarch or Prophet or ancient king who properly and specially experienced anything like these things. For, all of them prophesied Christ’s sufferings; they themselves, however, were far from suffering things similar to what they prophesied. And the elements of the Lord’s passion that were prophesied took place in no one else. For example, the sun did not set at the death of any of the ancients, nor was the veil rent in two, nor was there an earthquake, nor were the rocks split open, nor did the dead rise, nor did any of them rise, nor was any of them taken into heaven, nor on being taken up were the heavens opened, nor did the Gentiles believe in the name of any of them, nor did any of them die and rise again and then inaugurate a new covenant of liberty. So the Prophets did not speak of anyone except the Lord in whom all the signs spoken of before converged.
4. Again, if anyone advocating the cause of the Jews should say that the new covenant is the building of the temple that took place under Zerubbabel, after the migration into Babylonia and the return of the people, after seventy-two years, let him know that at that time a stone temple was rebuilt—for the Law which had been given on stone tablets was still observed—but no new covenant was given. No, the Law which had been given by Moses was used until the Lord’s coming. By the Lord’s coming, however, the new covenant for the reconciliation of peace and the life-giving Law went out into the whole earth, as the Prophets had foretold: For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge many peoples and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks, neither shall they learn war any more. Consequently, if another law and message went out from Jerusalem and brought so great peace to the nations that accepted it, and through them rebuked the imprudence of many people, it seems to follow that the Prophets spoke of another god. On the contrary, if the Law of liberty, namely, the word of God [preached] by the apostles who went out from Jerusalem has been proclaimed to the whole earth, and has brought about such a change that they made the swords and the war-lances into plowshares, and that they changed them into pruning hooks for reaping grain, (that is), into peaceful tools, and no longer know how to wage war, but if struck would offer the other cheek, then the Prophets did not say these things of some other god, but of him who made these things. But this is Our Lord, and in that the word is true; for he it is who made the plow and brought the pruning hook, that is, the first planting of man which was the handiwork Adam, and the harvest gathered through the Word in the last times. And because he joined the beginning to the end, being Lord of both, he showed the plow in the end, the wood joined to iron, and thus he purged the earth, since the secure Word, having been united with the flesh, and with that form was crucified and cleansed the savage earth. Now, in the beginning he prefigured the pruning hook by Abel, pointing out that there would be a gleaning of a righteous race of men. For he said, See, how the righteous man perishes, and no one understands; and the devout men are taken away, while no one lays it to heart. These things were practiced in advance in Abel, but they were heralded by the Prophets and were fulfilled in the Lord. In us, too, it is the same, because the Body follows the Head.
5. Such things are appropriate against those, too, who assert that the Prophets and Our Lord were from different gods, that they might in some manner finally desist from so great irrationality. Really, for that reason we exert ourselves to produce proofs from the Scriptures, that we may refute them by the very words, as far as we can, and restrain them from so great blasphemy, and from making such a foolish fabrication with a multitude of gods.