The traditional understanding that Antidote for the Scorpion’s Sting was written about 211 or 212 during Tertullian’s Montanist period (Harnack 1904:284 n. 3; Quasten 1953:282; Frend 1965:372; Frend 1968:8; Braun 1977:574) has been challenged by Barnes, who has redated it to late 203 or early 204 (Barnes 1969:105–32; 1985:34–5, 328–9). This has been accepted by some (Rankin 1995: xvi) but not by others (Fredouille 1972:488). More recently, Azzali Bernardelli has defended the date of 212 at some length (Azzali Bernardelli 1990a:51–84; 1990b:10–11) through a comparison with two of Tertullian’s other works concerning martyrdom: On the Military Crown and On Flight in Time of Persecution. She places it between the two, believing that there is a logical development and an enrichment of themes and modes of expression that would warrant this order. This would make it a Montanist work. She finds a reference to a promise in On the Military Crown 1.5, to write about the techniques used for obtaining confession from Christians, fulfilled in this treatise.
Barnes (1969:108–10) offers a rhetorical structure for the treatise that may be adopted here, with minor modifications. The work commences with an exordium (1.1–11), which includes a narratio (1.6–8). The propositio (1.12–2.2a) is that martyrdom is both necessary and good, and is commanded by God. This is restated in 8.1 and indicates that the treatise is forensic in nature. At the same time there is an underlying deliberative theme in that Tertullian was encouraging those Christians who had succumbed to the opponents’ arguments to return to an authentic Christian understanding of martyrdom and embrace its possibility. The vast bulk of the treatise, as would be expected, is confirmatio and refutatio (2.2b–14.3). This consists of a lengthy collection of texts from the Hebrew Scriptures indicating that idolatry was forbidden (2.2b–14) and would be punished by God (3.1–7). It has to be said that this section seems rather tangential to the whole argument of this treatise, which is not about idolatry but about martyrdom. The connection is that the faithful must face martyrdom rather than surrender to idolatry (4.1). The refutatio runs from chapter 4 to chapter 7. The argument of the opponents was either that the command to martyrdom was issued by another inferior god (and Tertullian’s reply to the Marcionites and other such heretics had already been given and need not be repeated), or that martyrdom was not the will of God. Tertullian’s refutation was that having established that it was the will of God that the faithful should avoid idolatry, it was sufficient to establish also that it was the will of God that the faithful should face martyrdom (4.2–5). The second argument that was countered was that martyrdom was not a good thing but an evil one (5.1–6.11). Tertullian’s response was to demonstrate that just as God is good, so too is God’s will (5.1–2); that if idolatry is evil then martyrdom, its opposite, must be good (5.3–5a); and that just because martyrdom is painful and difficult this does not make it any less good (5.5b–6.11). The last response is illustrated with two analogies about how short-term pain leads to long-term benefit: one medical (5.6–13) and the other athletic (6.1–11). The third response was to the argument that God was a murderer (7.1–7). In a ploy typical of forensic oratory, Tertullian admitted the action but debated about its quality. In other words, Tertullian found an extenuating circumstance to justify God’s murders, which was that life came from death. What amounts to the confirmatio starts in chapter 8. The Hebrew Scriptures are full of honourable characters who endured persecution and martyrdom (8.1–8). The New Testament likewise was full of admonitions to and examples of martyrdom (9.1–14.3): from Jesus (9.1–11.8), from Peter (12.2–3), from John (12.4–11) and from Paul (13.1– 14.3). Included in that is a digression (10.1–17) in which he responded to Valentinian opinion that the call to acknowledge one’s faith and face martyrdom was to answered in heaven not on earth. The works ends with a peroratio (15.1–5).
Who are Tertullian’s opponents in this treatise? At 1.5, Gnostics and Valentinians are mentioned, and Valentinus is mentioned at 10.1 and 15.6, along with Prodicus in the latter instance. Valentinus was an Egyptian of the early to mid-second century who had moved to Rome. He taught a full Gnostic theology deriving from Pythagorean cosmology: there is a higher spiritual world (Pleroma) made up of thirty spiritual pairs of powers (aeons), the youngest of which, Sophia, who splits from the Pleroma (there are two different accounts), is the mother of the Demiurge (who was identified with the Old Testament God, who created the material and hence evil world), and another of which, Christ, came to earth and united with the human Jesus in order to bring people the secret knowledge (gnosis) necessary to achieve salvation. People are divided into those who are spiritual because they have received this gnosis, those who are psychics, Christians without gnosis but still with faith, and the rest of humanity who have no hope of salvation. Tertullian dedicated Against the Valentinians to refuting this Gnostic theology, a work that depended heavily on Irenaeus’ Against Heresies.
The view of the Valentinians against the simple faith of ordinary Christians was that martyrdom was unnecessary. This was the scorpion’s poison that Tertullian believed infected ordinary Christians.
This text has not been translated into English since the middle of the nineteenth century in the Ante-Nicene Library/Ante-Nicene Fathers series. I have used the text by Reifferscheid and Wissowa in the Corpus Christianorum. I have made very few emendations to this text. I have consulted the Italian translation of Azzali Bernardelli (1990).
Text
[1069] 1.1 The earth discharges a great evil from the small scorpion. [There are] as many venoms as kinds [of scorpion], as many injuries as species, as many sufferings as colourings. Nicander writes and portrays [them]. And yet, the one movement of ferocity in all [scorpions] is not from the mouth [but] from the tail, which is whatever is extended from the rear of the body and strikes. [It is] just like [the missile launcher known as] ‘the scorpion’—that sequence of joints, [which has] an interior, venomous, slender small, vein, rising with the force of a bent bow, draws tight a hooked sting at its summit. 1.2 From [this analogy] about the scorpion they also name the war machine, the missiles [of which] are brought to life by having been drawn back. That ‘sting’ is also a pipe with a narrow aperture and where it pierces it pours forth poison into the wound. The usual time of danger [is] summer: the scourge sails on the south wind and the south-west wind. For relief [there are] many natural substances; sorcery also provides a bandage to some extent. Medical science remedies with surgical knife and potion. 1.3 For some drink a preventative for hastening the cure, but sleeping together drains [it] and they thirst [for it] again. For us, faith [is] a protection, unless it too is struck with a lack of trust by the need immediately to sign [ourselves with the cross], to entreat [God] and to anoint the heel [stung by] the beast. 1.4 Finally, in this way we often assist the pagans, as we have been gifted by God with that power which the apostle affirmed, when he spurned the bite of the viper. Therefore, what does your pen promise [, Nicander,] if faith is kept safe according to its own [properties]? It has been kept safe according to its own [properties] in other circumstances as well when it suffers its own scorpions? With these [scorpions to the faith there is] also a bitter meanness and a variety of kind, and they are armed in a single way, and are stirred up at a certain time and in no other way than by inflamed passions. 1.5 This is the persecution among Christians. Therefore, when faith is stirred up and the church is ignited, according to the figure of the thorn bush, then the Gnostics sprout up, then the Valentinians progress without being noticed, then all the opponents of martyrdom bubble to the surface, and they are roused to lash out, pierce and slay. For because they know [that] many [Christians are] simple and unpolished, and in this instance feeble—in truth [they know] a great many [are tossed about] in the wind and [are] Christians [1070] when it pleases them—they think [there is] never so great an opportunity for approaching than when fear has weakened the gateway to the soul, especially when some atrocity has already crowned the faith of the martyrs.
1.6 Therefore, [while] still dragging their tail, they first attach [it] with regard to the feelings or lash [it] as if into empty space. ‘Are innocent people to suffer these [persecutions]?’ [they ask], in order that you may think the brother or the pagan [to be] from the better [way of life]. 1.7 ‘Is a way of life that troubles no one to be treated thus [with persecution]?’ [they argue.] From this time they thrust [their tail] in: ‘People are lost without reason!’ For to be lost and moreover without reason [is] the first puncture. After that, they make the kill:
But these simple souls do not know anything concerning what was written [about] where and when and in the presence of whom [the faith] ought to be acknowledged, save only that [it is] not only simplicity but pointless, or rather madness, to die for God, as it is [God] who makes me safe. 1.8 If [God] slays, who will be bound to make [me] safe? Christ died but once for us, but he was slain once that we might not be slain. If he demands the same in return, surely he could not expect salvation from my violent death? Or does God demand human blood, especially if [God] objects to [the blood] of bulls and goats? Certainly, [God] prefers repentance rather than the death of a sinner. And why does [God] desire the death of [those who are] not sinners?
1.9 Whom will these [taunts] and, if [they exist], any other inventions of the heretical venoms not pierce with doubt if not with destruction or with anger if not with death? But you, if faith is vigilant, shall stomp on the scorpion immediately with a curse, instead of with your sandal, and shall leave [it] dying in its own purulence. 1.10 Otherwise, if it should engorge the punctured area, the poison flows in and rapidly fills the internal organs. Immediately, all the normal senses become sluggish, the blood of the soul freezes, the flesh of the spirit decays, the nausea at the [Christian] name increases. The mind seeks [a place] where it may vomit. In this way also infirmity, which has been stung once only, exhales its impaired faith either into heresy or into heathenism. And now, in the present state of things, it is mid-summer, the very dog days of persecution, certainly from the dog-headed one itself. 1.11 Fire has tested some Christians, the sword others, the beasts [have tested] others, and others hunger in prison for martyrdom, having become acquainted with clubs and claws in the meantime. [1071] We ourselves, like hares intended for the hunting spectacle, are under attack from a distance, and heretics prowl about as is their usual practice.
1.12 On that account, the present situation urged that I administer the antidote against the native little beasts in my usual manner with the pen to bring about a remedy. You who read, will drink. And the potion is not a bitter thing. If the eloquent words of the Lord are sweeter than honey or the honeycomb, then they are juice. If the promise of God flows with milk and honey, it tastes of its ingredients. However, ‘woe betide the ones who turn sweet into bitter and light into darkness’. 1.13 For in the same way as the ones who oppose martyrdoms, interpreting salvation as destruction, change sweet into bitter and light into darkness, they also substitute this most lamentable life for that most blessed [one] by preferring bitter instead of sweet as well as darkness instead of light. 2.1 But [we] ought not to learn about the good of martyrdom, without first [learning] about its obligation; nor about the usefulness of it, as much as about its necessity. Divine authority leads the way: God has willed and commanded this in order that they who deny the good may not become persuaded of its usefulness only when they have been overcome. It is right that heretics be compelled to duty, not enticed. Stubbornness ought to be subdued, not sweet-talked. 2.2 And certainly it will be a completely sufficient preliminary judgement because [martyrdom] will be shown [as] having been established and commanded by God.
Let them hold back the gospels for a little while, until I articulate their underpinning law, until I elicit from there the will of God, from where I recognize God’s very self who says:
I am God, your God, who led you from the land of Egypt. There shall not be other gods for you besides me. You shall not make images for yourselves of the things either in heaven, on earth below, or in the sea under the earth. You shall not worship them nor be in service to them. For I am the Lord your God.
Likewise, in the same [book of] Exodus: ‘You yourselves have seen that I have spoken to you from heaven. You shall not make for yourselves gods of silver and you shall not make for yourselves gods of gold.’ 2.3 Following these [passages, we find others] too in Deuteronomy: ‘Listen [1072] Israel, the Lord your God is one, and you shall love the Lord your God from your whole heart and from your whole strength and from your whole soul.’ And again
You shall not forget the Lord your God, who led you from the land of Egypt from the house of slavery. You shall fear the Lord your God and be in service to [God] alone and adhere to [God] and take the oath in the name of [God]. 2.4 You shall not go after other gods from the gods of the foreigners that encircle you, because God your God is jealous for you, lest an angered [God] be offended and wipe you out from the face of the earth.
2.5 But laying before them blessings and curses [God] says, ‘Blessings to you if you obey the commands of the Lord your God, whatever I command you today, and if you do not stray from the path I have mandated for you, such that departing you serve other gods, whom you do not know.’ 2.6 About rooting [foreign gods] out in every way [God] says
You shall destroy completely every place on mountains and hills and under lush trees in which the tribes whom you shall possess by inheritance served their gods. You shall dig out every altar of theirs. You shall overturn and smash their figurines and you shall mow down their sacred groves and you shall burn up with fire the carvings of their gods and obliterate their name from that place.
2.7 In addition [God] adds, when they had entered the land of promise and had wiped out its tribes, ‘Be on your guard lest you follow them after they had been wiped out from your sight, lest you ask about their gods saying, “Just as the foreigners do with their gods, let me also do likewise.”’ 2.8 But [God] also says,
If a prophet himself should arise among you, or one dreaming a dream, and should he give a sign or a portent to you, and should he come and say, ‘Let us go and serve other gods’ whom you do not know, do not listen to the words of that prophet or dreamer because the Lord your God is testing you, [to discover] whether you fear God from your whole heart and from your whole soul. You shall follow after the Lord [1073] your God and you shall fear [God] and you shall keep [God’s] commandments and you shall obey [God’s] voice and serve [God] and you shall be added to [God].
However, that prophet or dreamer shall die, for he has spoken to lead you away from the Lord your God.
2.9 But in another section
However, if your brother, [the son of your] father or mother, or your son or daughter, or the wife whom you love, or the friend who is equal to your soul, asks privately saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods, whom neither you nor your ancestors know, from the gods of the foreigners that encircle you near and far,’ do not be willing to go with that [person] and do not obey him [or her]. 2.10 Your eye shall not have mercy on that [person], neither shall you have feelings for, nor preserve, him [or her].
Declaring you shall denounce that [person]. Your hand shall be the first to slay him [or her] and the hands of your people the last. You shall stone and kill that [person] because he [or she] has sought to turn you from the Lord your God.
2.11 [God] adds [comments] as well about cities that, if one of these had agreed with the advice of evil men to go over to other gods, then all inhabiting it would be slain and everything in it would come under a curse and all its plunder would be collected together into every outlet and would be incinerated by fire with all its provisions and all the people in the sight of the Lord God. And [God] says, ‘It shall not be habitable ever again. It shall not be rebuilt any more, nor shall you hold on to anything that is under a curse, in order that the Lord may be turned from the provocation of anger.’ 2.12 [God] has also combined a series of curses from the solemn oath about idols, ‘A curse to the man who has made an abomination by carving or casting, a product of skilled hands, and who has erected it in a secret place.’ Indeed, in Leviticus [God] says, ‘You shall not follow idols and you shall not make gods cast from molten metals for yourselves. I am the Lord your God.’ And elsewhere, To me the children of Israel [are] young domestic servants. They are the ones whom I have led out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. You shall not make for yourselves hand-made [things] nor set up carved figurines for yourselves. Neither shall you place a chiselled stone in [1074] your land. I am the Lord your God.’ 2.13 And these things indeed, said first through Moses, are certainly relevant to all whom the Lord God of Israel will similarly have led out from the Egypt of a most superstitious world and from the house of human slavery. 2.14 But afterwards, the mouth of every prophet resonates with the words of the same God by adding to the same law of [God] a renewal of the same commands. [A prophet] does not denounce anything else as of greater importance than to guard against all manufacture and cult of idols. As [God says] through David, The gods of the foreigners are silver and gold. They have eyes but they do not see. They have ears but they do not hear, noses but they do not smell, a mouth but they do not speak, hands but they do not feel, feet and they do not walk. They are similar to those who make them and trust in them.’
3.1 And let me not think that it ought to be discussed whether God is right to prohibit [the divine] name and honour being awarded to a lie, or is right to be unwilling to send back those again into Egypt who were torn away from the error of superstition, or is right not to suffer the departure of those who have been chosen for [God’s] self. Thus, we are not required to re-examine whether [God] has intended the teaching that was planned to be instituted to be kept, and has taken a deserved revenge against the abandonment of that which was intended to be observed. This is because it would have been a pointless institution if [the teaching] had not been intended to be observed, and it would have been in vain that [God] wanted it to be observed if there was no wish to avenge [its abandonment]. 3.2 For it follows that I must show that these sanctions of God against superstitions are as known as they are also avenged, as the whole rationale for martyrdoms depends on these.
Moses was away with God on the mountain when the people, so impatient with his necessary absence, sought to produce gods for themselves that they should rather have destroyed. 3.3 Aaron is pressured and orders that their women’s earrings be melted together in the fire. In fact, the true ornaments of the ears, the words of God, were going to be lost in their self-judgement. The fire of wisdom poured out the likeness of a bull calf, taunting them [with] having their heart where their treasure also is, [which was] certainly in Egypt, which also consecrates [the likeness] of a certain cow, among other animals. 3.4 For that reason, the 3,000 [1075] men killed by their closest relatives because they had so offended God, their closest relative, announced the commencement and the recompense of transgression. In Numbers, when Israel had turned away [from God] at Shittim and had lusted, they went away to the daughters of Moab and were invited to the idols, such that they fornicated in spirit as well. Finally, they eat from their polluted [sacrifices]. Next, they both worship the gods of the clans and are initiated into [the rites of) Baal Peor. 3.5 On account of idolatry also, the sister of adultery, [only the deaths of] 23,000 of their family, who were cut down by swords, appeased the divine anger. When Joshua, son of Nun, died, they abandoned the God of their ancestors and served the idols of Baal and Ashtarath, and the angry Lord handed them over into the hands of the plunderers, and they were plundered by them and sold to their enemies, and they were completely unable to stand in the sight of their enemies. 3.6 Wherever they went, the hand [of God] was on them with severity and they were greatly restrained. After these things, God established judges over them, whom we understand as censors. But they did not persevere in obeying them. When any of the judges died, they tended to fail [even] more than their ancestors by going after other gods and serving and worshipping them. 3.7 For that reason the Lord [was] angry, asserting, ‘Since even that clan has transgressed my covenant which I arranged with their ancestors and they have not listened to my voice, I will not direct my attention to the removal from their sight of the foreign people whom Joshua left when he died.’ And thus throughout almost all of the records of the judges and of the kings that followed, Israel paid for the anger of God with war and captivity and a foreign yoke, with the strength of the clans that surrounded [them] preserved, whenever they deviated from [God], especially into idolatry.
4.1 Therefore, if it is evident from the beginning that this [situation of idolatry was the case], both having been prohibited according to so many and such important commands, and never having been committed without punishment according to so many and such important warnings (nor [is] any crime in the presence of God to be counted so arrogant as a transgression of this kind), we ought to understand better the intention of the divine threats and punishments [1076] that even then defended martyrdoms, not only by not calling [them] into question but also by supporting [them] as well, as [God] had certainly created the opportunity by prohibiting idolatry. For otherwise martyrdoms would not have occurred. And, at any rate, [God] established [God’s] own authority, intending [martyrdoms], for which the opportunity had been created, to occur.
4.2 For now we are being stung concerning the will of God, and the scorpion inflames the punctured area, denying this will [concerning martyrdoms] and complaining about it, such that it insinuates either [the existence of] another god, who did not have such a will, or denies the will of God altogether if it is not able to deny [God]. 4.3 We, however, having taken up the fight elsewhere about God and also about the remaining body of heretical doctrine about God, now sketch certain lines [of attack] for one form of contest: we defend this will [of God as being] of no other god than that of the God of Israel, who has created the opportunity for martyrdoms. As idolatry has always been prohibited by the commands, so it has been punished by [God’s] judgements. For if by observing the command I suffer violence, this will be, in some way, a command about observing the command, such that I suffer that violence by which I can observe the command, no matter how much it seeks to draw me away from avoiding idolatry. 4.4 And certainly the one who imposes the command exacts compliance. Therefore, [God] cannot but intend these things to occur by which compliance will be established. I am directed not to call anything else ‘god, not even by speaking—no less with the tongue than with the hand—[nor] to fashion or worship another god and only to venerate that one who so directs, and whom I am ordered to fear, in order that I do not depart from [God], and {am directed} to love from my whole being, such that I may die for [God]. 4.5 I am challenged by the enemies [as] a soldier [committed] to this oath. If I do not surrender my hand to them, I am equal to them. I fight defending this [oath] in battle, I am wounded, I am cut down, I am slain. Who desired this conclusion for their soldier if not the one who sealed him by such an oath?
5.1 Therefore, you have the will of my God. It counteracts this punctured area. Now let us consider another strike [of the scorpion] about the nature of [God’s] will. It would take too long for me to show that my God is good, which the Marcionites have already learnt from us. Meanwhile, it is enough simply to mention [the word] ‘God’ [1077] in order to believe that [God] is unavoidably good. 5.2 For the one who puts it forward that God is evil will not be able to establish both points. He will have either to deny that the one whom he considers evil is God, or to declare that the one whom he proclaims God is good. Therefore, the will also is good of the one who, if not good, is not God.
5.3 The goodness of the matter itself—I mean martyrdom—that God intends will also prove this, because it is not good unless the good one wills [it]. I contend that martyrdom is good to the same God for whom idolatry is both prohibited and punished. For martyrdom resists and is opposed to idolatry. However, to resist and be opposed to evil is not possible unless [one is] good. 5.4 [It is] not as if I deny that there could be a rivalry between evil things themselves, as much as there is among good, but that is something different from what is under discussion here. For martyrdom does not contend with idolatry from some shared spitefulness but from its own regard, for it frees [one] from idolatry. Who will not proclaim [as] good that which frees from evil? What else is the opposition [between] idolatry and martyrdom than [that] of death and life? 5.5 Life will be as much calculated by martyrdom as idolatry by death. The one who declares life to be evil rather than good has death.
And this [is] human perversity—to shake off the beneficial, to support the pernicious, to seek out the dangerous, to avoid the remedy, or, in short, to desire to die sooner than to be cured. 5.6 For there are many who flee the protection of medical science, for many are foolish, many are afraid and falsely modest. And just as obvious is the severity of medical science owing to the scalpel, the hot iron and the fire of the mustard. Nevertheless, to be cut and burned and stretched and bitten is not evil on that account, because it brings useful pain. It will not be refused because it only brings sorrow, but because it necessarily brings sorrow it will be employed. 5.7 The benefit excuses the horror of this work. Further, the one howling and groaning and bellowing will afterwards fill up the same hands of the doctor with the fee and will declare [them] the most skilled and will then deny the cruelty. Thus also martyrdoms rage violently, [1078] but for salvation. And it will be permissible for God to administer eternal life through fires and swords and anything sharp. 5.8 But you will be astonished indeed at the doctor as well in this regard, because he employs medicines that are almost of an equal character to that of the complaints, when he helps, as if incorrectly, by means of the assistance of those things through which [the complaint] is produced. For he even restrains fever by applying more heat, quenches a burning thirst by tormenting the thirst more, concentrates the excess of bile by each bitter small potion, and he restrains the flow of blood by draining other small veins. 5.9 You will judge even God guilty of jealousy if [God] wished to deal with the cause and to do good by emulating the injury—to abolish death by death, to scatter slaying by slaying, to shatter the instruments of torture by the instruments of torture, to dry tearful entreaty by tearful entreaty, to confer life by removing [it], to help the flesh by damaging [it], [and] to serve the soul by tearing [it] out. 5.10 That which you held up [to be] perversity is rational, because that which you judge [to be] severity is a favour. Thus, with God healing that which is eternal by these momentary things, exalt your God for your good {fortune}. You have fallen into [God’s] hands, but you are fortunate to have done so. [God] also fell into your illness. The person always first provides business for the doctor, [because] in the end, people attract the danger of death to themselves. 5.11 [Adam] received from his Lord, as from a doctor, enough useful teaching for living according to the law, such that indeed he ate everything and refrained only from one shrub, which that very doctor had known to be unsuitable. 5.12 [Adam] listened to whom he preferred and broke off his restraint. He ate what was not allowed and having been filled by the transgression he suffered terminal indigestion, certainly being most deserving to perish completely as that was his wish. But with the inflammation of the offence having been sustained until the time the medicine was concocted, the Lord gradually prepared the relief—all the teachings of faith, matching themselves to the failing, repealing the word of death by the word of life, diminishing the hearing of transgression by the hearing of devotion. Thus, even when that doctor prescribes death, [God] removes the torpidity of death. 5.13 Why is a person now annoyed to suffer from a remedy that which he or she was not previously annoyed to suffer from an offence? Is it displeasing to be slain for salvation [1079] for the one who was not displeased to be slain for destruction? Will [that person} who has longed for the venom be nauseous about the antidote?
6.1 But if, in the name of the contest [between good and evil that I mentioned earlier], God had proposed martyrdoms for us, through which we might have been pitted against the adversary, in order that [God] may now strike the one by whom a person willingly is struck, here too the generosity more than the harshness of God is present. For [God] wished to produce a human person, plucked from the devil’s throat through faith, who now tramples on [the devil] through virtue, in order that [the person] might not only have escaped the enemy but completely vanquished it as well. 6.2 [God], who has called to salvation, loved to invite to glory also, so that we who have been freed may rejoice, [and] that we who have been crowned may exalt as well. With what favour the world celebrates those festive games, {those} solemn competitions and superstitious contests of the Greeks, [dedicated to] both worship of the gods and pleasure; now it is allowed also in Africa. Cities continue to pester Carthage by congratulating it, one after another, for the Pythian Games having been awarded [to it so long] after the stadium was constructed. 6.3 Thus it has been believed by [this] age that [these games are] the most suitable [way] to test the result of studies and to evaluate the skills of bodies and voices according to [their] excellence, with the reward [being] the title, the spectacle [being] the judge, the pleasure [being] the decision. Where the combats are nude, there are wounds, fists fly, heels butt like rams, boxing gloves tear to pieces, whips lacerate. 6.4 However, there will be no one [who] protests to the judge of the games because people are confronted with violence. Accusations of injury [are only made} outside the stadium. But however many bruises, gashes and swellings they may trade [with one another inside the stadium], [the referee] extends to them, of course, crowns and glory and gifts, public privileges, civic handouts, images, statues and the kinds of things the world is able to offer, eternity through renown [and] resurrection through memory. 6.5 The boxer himself does not complain of the pain to himself, for he wishes [for it]. The crown [of victory] presses down on the wound, the palm branch [of victory] hides the blood, he swells more with victory than with injury! You, will you consider him hurt when you see him happy? Not even the defeated contestant himself will complain to the supervisor of the games about his situation. 6.6 Will it be unbecoming for God to bring forth skills and teachings into public view, into this ‘secular stage’, as a spectacle for people and angels and the universal powers? [Will it be unbecoming] to test flesh and [1080] soul for their constancy and tolerance? [Will it be unbecoming] to give to this one the palm [of victory], to this one honour, to that one citizenship, to that one handouts, even to condemn certain ones and to remove the punished with disgrace? You will without doubt direct God about which times or means or places [God] may judge [God’s] own dependants, as if it were not suitable for the judge to give a preliminary decision. 6.7 What now if [God] had exposed the faith to martyrdoms, not in the name of the struggle but also for its own benefit, would it not be proper that [faith] has some gathering of hope to which its zeal may focus and lift up a prayer in order that it may struggle to ascend as earthly offices also rise in steps? Or how [can there be] many dwelling places with the Father if not in accordance with the variety of rewards? In what way also will a star differ from [another] star in glory if not in accordance with the diversity of brightness? 6.8 Furthermore, if on that account some extension of fame is suitable for the height of faith, it ought to have been something of such effort that exists by great labour, torture, torment and death. But reflect upon the compensation when flesh and soul, than which there is nothing more precious in the human person, is given up: one {from} the hand of God, the other {from} the breath—themselves having been paid for the effort of which it has been obtained, themselves having been obtained which are made for profit, the price [is] the same which also [is] the income. 6.9 God had also foreseen other weaknesses of the human condition—the snares of the adversary, the deception of affairs, the trap of the world, the faith that would be endangered even after ritual washing, and after salvation the majority, the sort who soiled the wedding garment, who had not prepared oil for their little torches, and who needed to be looked for in the mountains and ravines and needed to be carried back on the shoulders, would be destroyed again. Therefore [God] established second atonements and the final defences, the contest of martyrdoms and the ritual washing with blood following after that. 6.10 David says about the happiness of such a person, ‘Blessed are they whose iniquities have been let go and whose sins have been covered. Blessed is the one to whom God charges no fault.’ For in a proper sense nothing now is able to be reconsidered with the martyrs with whom, in the ritual washing, life itself is handed over. 6.11 Thus love covers a multitude of sins’, which certainly, while loving God [1081] from [its] whole strength, with which it fights in martyrdom, [and] from [its] whole soul, which is handed over for God, moulds a person [into] a martyr. You, will you call these things—relief, pieces of advice, decisions, even spectacles—the atrocity of God? Does God desire human blood? However, I may even dare to say [yes], if a person also [desires] the reign of God, if a person [desires] sure salvation, and if a person [desires] a second new birth. No compensation is hateful in which the reason [for] either grace or injury is the same.
7.1 The scorpion, still swinging [its tail], may sting, [claiming] that God [is] a murderer. I shall shudder thoroughly at the filthy breath of blasphemy from the stinking mouth of the heretic, but I embrace even such a God by confidence of reason, by which reason even God’s very self has proclaimed from the person of [God’s] Sophia by the voice of Solomon, that [God is] more than a murderer. [Solomon] says, ‘Sophia has cut the throat of her children.’ Sophia is wisdom. Certainly she has cut their throat wisely, provided that [it is] into life, and reasonably, provided that [it is] into glory. 7.2 O the cleverness of family murder! O the skill of crime! O the proof of cruelty that has slain for that reason lest that one die whom she has killed! And therefore what follows? ‘Sophia is sung with hymns at the gates,’ in fact the death of martyrs is sung also. ‘Sophia goes into the streets with firmness,’ for she cuts the throat of her children for their well-being. 7.3 However, on top of the walls, when she is filled with confidence, she says, exclaiming according to Isaiah, ‘“I am God’s,” and this one gives voice, “In the name of Jacob,” and another writes, “In the name of Israel.”’ O good mother! I wish also to be restored to her children in order that I may be killed by her. I wish to be killed in order that I may become her child. However, does she only cut the throat of her children or torture [them] as well? For I also hear God saying elsewhere, ‘I shall burn them just as gold is burned and test them just as silver is tested.’ 7.4 At any rate [it is done] through the torments of fire and execution, through the examining martyrdoms of faith. The apostle knows also what kind of God he has written about when he writes, ‘If God has not been sparing with [God’s] Son, but surrendered him for us, how did [God] not present everything to us with him as well?’ You see in what way even divine Sophia has cut the throat of her own unique, firstborn and only-begotten Son, [who] certainly was going to live, or rather also was going to bring others back to life. 7.5 I am able to say with the Sophia of God, ‘Christ is the one who surrendered himself for our offences.’ Sophia now has slaughtered herself as well. They know about a word not only by its sound but also by its sense, not only just with the ears [1082] ought they to be heard, but also with minds. The one who does not understand believes God [to be] cruel. Nevertheless, there is also a determination given for the one who does not understand, in order to control their rashness in understanding differently: 7.6 ‘For who knows the mind of the Lord? Who has been an advisor to [the Lord], who has trained [the Lord] or who has demonstrated to [the Lord] the way of understanding?’ But indeed in this present age it has been allowed that Diana of the Scythians or Mercury of the Gauls or Saturn of the Africans be appeased by human sacrifice and Jupiter has been given a taste of human blood in the middle of the city in Latium to the present day. Nobody reconsiders [it] or supposes [it is] not something rational or [is] the unfathomable will of their god. 7.7 If our God too had demanded martyrdoms for [the divine] self by claiming a personal victim, who would have reproached [God] about a deadly religion and mournful rites and the altar funeral pile and the undertaker priest and who would not have gone further and counted as happy the one whom God consumed?
8.1 Therefore, we insist on one position and on this alone we issue a challenge— whether martyrdoms have been commanded by God, in order that you may believe that they have been commanded with reason, if you recognize them as commanded, because God will have commanded nothing without reason. If indeed the death of the faithful has been honoured in the presence of [God], as David sings, it is not the common death, I believe, to which everyone is destined—even though that too, [which derives] from the record of the transgression and from the merit of the condemnation, is disgraceful—but [it is] that [kind], which is addressed in this very work, [that comes] through the proof of religion and the battle of acknowledgement on behalf of justice and the oath [of baptism]. 8.2 [It is] just as Isaiah says, ‘See how the just person perishes and no one takes it to heart, and just people are removed and no one takes notice. For from the face of injustice the just person perishes and will have honour with their burial.’ There too you have both the foretelling and reward of martyrdom. For from the beginning justice suffers violence. 8.3 As soon as God begins to be cultivated in worship, religion has received ill will. The one who has pleased God is slain and is so by a brother. Impiety, from its own beginning by auguries, has finally pursued not only the truth of the just but also of the prophets as well, that it may more easily pursue foreign blood. David [1083] is harassed, Elijah is driven away, Isaiah is cut, Jeremiah is stoned, Zechariah is slaughtered between altar and temple, leaving a permanent stain in his own blood on the stone pavement. That one, with the ending of the law and of the prophets, said [to be] not a prophet but a messenger, with outrageous shedding of blood, is beheaded as the reward for a dancing girl. 8.4 And certainly they who were being driven by the Spirit of God were directed by [the Spirit] to martyrdoms, in order that they might endure those things they had also foretold. Similarly, the three brothers together, when the dedication of the image of the king urged the mob to submission, were not ignorant of what faith— which alone in them had not been taken captive—demanded, namely dying in opposition to idolatry. 8.5 For they too remembered the writing of Jeremiah to those to whom captivity was looming.
And now you will see that the gods of the Babylonians in gold and silver and wood are carried on shoulders, exposing to view the fear of the tribes.
Therefore, be on your guard lest you too are the same as the foreigners and be seized with fear while you behold the mob behind and before them worshipping, but say in your soul, ‘We ought to worship you, Lord.’
8.6 And thus with confidence gained from God they spoke with great vigour of soul, they shake off those conditional threats of the king,
We have no need of responding to this your authority. For our God, whom we cultivate in worship, is able to tear us out from the furnace of fire and from your hands, and then it will become obvious to you that neither will we be in service to your idol nor will we worship your golden image which you have erected.
8.7 O martyrdoms, perfected also without suffering! They suffered enough, they are burned enough, whom God protected on that account lest they were seen as having lied about his power. For certainly the caged and typically fierce lions would also have immediately devoured Daniel, who was a suppliant of no one except God and who, on that account, had been driven away and reproached by the Chaldeans, if the proper presumption of Darius about God had been due to deception. 8.8 For the rest, every preacher of God and worshipper who, having been summoned to idolatry, had refused submission, ought to have suffered, according to the nature of that reason too by which the truth ought to have been recommended both to those then there and to those following, in order that the suffering of its very defenders would affirm confidence on its behalf, because no one would have wanted [1084] to be slain in vain unless possessing the truth. Such commands and examples from the beginning show that faith [is] in debt to martyrdoms.
9.1 It remains, lest the ancient [covenant] perhaps had its own unique deposit, to review the Christian new [covenant] to see whether it is any different with regard to God and therefore [whether it is] also opposed [to the ancient covenant] with regard to its teaching, the Sophia of which does not know to cut the throat of her own children [it is claimed]. Obviously, the divinity, the will and the followers [would be] different in a Christ who has either not commanded any martyrdoms at all or [whose command] is going to be understood differently, who has exhorted no one to this kind of danger, [and] who promised nothing to those who suffered on his behalf because he does not wish them to suffer, and for that reason does he say at the beginning of his commands, ‘Blessed are they who suffer persecution on account of justice, since the reign of heaven is theirs.’? 9.2 This indeed [was said] in an absolute way for everyone. Then, exclusively for the apostles themselves [he says], ‘Blessed will you be, when people shall have dishonoured you and shall have persecuted you and shall have spoken all evil against you because of me; rejoice and exult seeing that your reward is greater in heaven. For thus also their fathers did to the prophets in order that it be foretold also that they themselves had to be slain, according to the example of the prophets. 9.3 Nonetheless, even if he had intended all this persecution for the apostles alone [as] a condition of that time, at any rate through them, with the total mystery [of faith], with the offspring of the name, [and] with the grafting of the Holy Spirit, he would have aimed it—by the teaching of [the need to] undergo persecution—at us too as disciples of the inheritance and as the shrub of the apostolic seed. 9.4 For if he also directs himself again to the apostles—‘Behold, I shall send you like sheep among wolves,’ and ‘Be on your guard against people, for they will hand you over to the assembly and they will lash you in their synagogues and you will be led to judges and kings for my sake as a testimony for them and their tribes,’ and so on—he then adds in addition, ‘Moreover, brother will hand over brother, and a father [hand over] a son for death, and children will rise against their parents and cause them to die.’ Obviously he has foretold that iniquity, which we do not discover in the apostles, for others. 9.5 For none of them had suffered a brother or a father as traitor, as very many of us now [have]. [1085] Next he refers to the apostles, ‘And you will be hated by everyone on account of my name.’ How much more [he means] us, [for] whom it is proper to be handed over by parents too? Thus, by arranging this handing over itself now for the apostles, now for everyone, he pours out the same end for everyone who bears the designation ‘Christian’, [for everyone] on whom the designation has settled with its law of hatred for him. ‘However, the one who has endured right through to the end, that one will be saved.’ By enduring what, if not persecution, handing over, slaying? For to endure to the end is nothing other than to suffer an end. 9.6 And therefore it follows immediately, ‘A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a servant above their lord’, because as the teacher and Lord himself endured persecution and handing over and slaying, by much more ought servants and disciples to pay the same price lest they are seen to be superior, having been exempted from iniquity when this itself ought to be sufficient glory for them—to be equal to the sufferings of the lord and teacher. Creating tolerance of these things, he warns them ‘not to fear those who slay only the body but who are not able however to destroy the soul, but rather [they] ought to save their fear for the one who is able to slay both body and soul and do away with them in Gehenna’. 9.7 Who are these murderers of the body alone if not the judges and kings mentioned above whom I believe to be men? Who also is the master of the soul if not God alone? Who is that one who threatens fire if not the one without whose will not one of the sparrows falls to the ground, that is neither of the two substances of the human person, flesh or soul? [This is] because the number of hairs is recorded by [God]. 9.8 When he says above, ‘Do not be afraid, you surpass many sparrows’, he promises in return they will not fall to the ground without reason, that is without advantage, if we choose more to be slain by people than by God. Therefore, ‘all who shall have placed their acknowledgement in me before people, I shall place my acknowledgement in them, as well as before my Father who is in heaven, and all who shall have denied me before people, I shall deny them as well before my Father who is in heaven.’ The explanation and reason for the acknowledgement, as for the denial, is obvious, even if the arrangement is different. 9.9 The ones who acknowledge themselves as Christian [1086] declare themselves to be of Christ. The ones who are of Christ of necessity must be in Christ. If they are in Christ, certainly they will place their acknowledgement in Christ when they confess themselves to be Christian. For they are not able to be this unless they be in Christ. Further, by placing their acknowledgement in Christ they, who are in Christ himself, acknowledge Christ as well, while he too is in them in as much as they are Christian. For if you were to say ‘day’ you have shown the reality of the light, which constitutes day, even though you will not have said light’. Even if he would not have declared it directly [by saying] ‘the one who shall have acknowledged me,’ the daily behaviour of acknowledgement is not different from the sense of the Lord’s declaration. 9.10 The ones who acknowledge themselves for what they are, that is Christian, also acknowledge him by whom they are [Christian], that is Christ. As a consequence, the ones who have denied themselves [as] Christian have denied in Christ, by denying themselves to be in Christ so long as they deny themselves [being} Christian. However, by also denying Christ in themselves while they deny themselves [being] in Christ, they will deny Christ too. Thus also the ones who will have denied [being] in Christ will deny Christ as well, and the ones who will have placed their acknowledgement in Christ will acknowledge Christ. And yet, it would have been enough therefore if the Lord had made only this declaration about acknowledging. 9.11 For, from the statement about acknowledgement it would have been possible already to have reached a determination about its opposite (that is, denial), that denial is repaid similarly by the Lord with denial, just as acknowledgement [is repaid] with acknowledgement. And therefore in the manner of the acknowledgement is understood the condition of the denial as well, it appears to apply not to another manner of denial about which the Lord has made some other declaration, than by saying about acknowledgement ‘the one who shall have denied me’ not ‘the one who [shall have] denied [that they are] in me’. 9.12 For he had foreseen also that this violence, for the most part, in the assaulting of the name, would follow, such that the ones who had denied [being] Christian themselves were compelled to deny Christ himself too by blaspheming. And thus, not long ago, at the beginning of the disgrace, we shuddered at those who struggled in this way against the entire faith of certain persons. And thus it will be a mistake to say, ‘Even if I deny myself [as being] Christian, I shall not be denied by Christ, for I have not denied him.’ 9.13 For from that denial so much will be grasped, because by denying themselves [as being] Christian, denying also that Christ [is] in themselves, they have denied him. However, there is more, because he also threatens shame with shame. The ones who will have been ashamed of me before people, [1087] I shall also be ashamed of them before my Father who is in heaven.’ For he knew that denial is formed above all by shame, that the state of mind is evident on one’s face, and that the punctured area of disgrace is prior to [that] of the body.
10.1 [With regard to] the ones who truly believe that [it is] not here, that is not on the face of this earth, nor through this passage of life, nor before people of this shared nature, that [the requirement for] acknowledgement has been established, how much is [their] presumption contrary to the whole order of things that are to be experienced on this earth and in this life and under human power? Undoubtedly, when the souls have departed from their bodies, and have begun to be evaluated concerning the return through each level of the heavens and to be questioned about those secret mysteries of the heretics, they must offer acknowledgement before the true powers and true people, namely the Teleti, the Acineti, and the Abascanti of Valentinus! 10.2 For they say, The Demiurge itself did not constantly approve our people, whom he counts as a drop in the bucket and dust on the threshing-floor, and spittle and locusts, and values the same as irrational beasts of burden.’ Clearly, it is so written. Yet for that reason we ought not to understand any other species of person except us, [a species] which, because it corresponds with reality, has been able to assume, with a sound acquisition, both the properties of species and [its own] individual [properties]. 10.3 For if life has been corrupted, such that having been sentenced for contempt it was united with contemptible things, [human] nature did not suffer immediately, such that another [species of person that the Valentinians advocate] might have been counted in its place. Rather nature is protected, even if life is stained. Nor does Christ know another people than those about whom he says, ‘Whom do people affirm me to be?’ and ‘in the same way you wish that people would do to you, thus also you do to them.’ 10.4 See whether he has protected the species, from which he expects also his witness and to which he orders the duty of justice. However, if I should demand that those heavenly people [the Valentinians advocate] be shown to me, Aratus would more easily sketch Perseus and Cepheus, Erigona and Ariadne among the stars [than show me their species of persons]. However, who prevented the Lord clearly determining also that the acknowledgement of the people ought to be made there [in heaven] where he openly declared his [people] were going to be, such that [, if the Valentinians were right,] he should have asserted thus, The one who has placed acknowledgement in me before the heavenly people, I shall also place my acknowledgement in them before my Father [1088] who is in heaven.’? 10.5 He ought to have rescued me from that ‘error’ of [making] an earthly acknowledgement that he had not wished be undertaken, if he had taught a heavenly one [instead], because I know no other people except the dwellers of the earth, since no people themselves have been observed from then till now in heaven! Further, what kind of faith is it, such that I am tested there [in heaven], having been raised above after death, to where I would not be located if I had not been tested already, [and such that] there I was examined about my return, to where I would not be able to arrive if I had not been admitted [already]? 10.6 Heaven lies open to the Christian before the way [of getting there does] because [there is] no way into heaven if not for the one [for whom] heaven lies open, and the one who has reached [it] will enter. What gate-keeping angels do you affirm for me on a par with Roman superstition: a certain Carna, Forculus and Limentinus? What powers do you appoint at the barriers? 10.7 If ever you have read in [the psalms of] David, ‘Lift up your gates, rulers, and let the eternal gates be raised above and the king of glory will enter,’ if you have heard in Amos, The ones who build their way up to heaven and lay the foundation of their abundance on earth,’ know also that way was later made level by the footsteps of the Lord and the entrance was later opened by the strength of Christ, that no delay or investigation is going to occur at the border [into heaven] for Christians, who are not to be distinguished there but recognized, not interrogated but admitted. 10.8 For even if you think heaven is shut till now, remember that the Lord left his keys here to Peter and through him to the church, which everyone here will carry with themselves after they have been interrogated and placed their acknowledgement. But the devil asserts boldly that acknowledgement ought to be located there [in heaven] in order that [the devil] may urge that denial ought to located here [on earth]. Clearly, I shall present excellent documents, I shall carry good keys with me, I shall have been esteemed by the forsaking of this [supposed] command to fear those who slay only the body yet can do nothing to the soul, I shall stand firm respectably in the heavens, who, on earth, was not able to stand firm, I shall restrain the major powers who ceded nothing to the lesser, I shall certainly obtain admittance, having now been excluded! 10.9 It is enough to say the following, ‘If acknowledgement ought to be placed in the heavens, also here there ought to be denial.’ For where there [is] one, there will be both. For rival things go together. It will be proper for persecution to be maintained in the heavens, which is a matter of acknowledgement or denial. And so, why do you delay, most bold heretic, [1089] to transfer into the heights [of heaven] every type of agitation against the Christians, and to place there, where Christ governs at the right of the Father, in particular, the very hatred of the name? 10.10 Will you also establish there [in heaven] the synagogues of the Jews, the sources of persecution, before whom the apostles suffered the whips, and [establish] the peoples of the tribes there with their own circus, where even they willingly shout, ‘For what reason does the third division [of humanity] continue to exist?’ 10.11 But you ought to produce in that same place [— heaven—] our brothers and fathers and sons and mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law and our family members, through whom betrayal has been arranged. The same [goes for] kings, judges and armed powers, before whom the issue must be fought. Certainly, there will also be a prison in heaven, without light or unpleasant brightness, and perhaps with chains from belts [of Orion], and for a rack the axis itself that turns [heaven around]. 10.12 But if a Christian has to be stoned [in heaven], hail will be present; if burned, lightning is at hand; if slaughtered, the hands of the armed Orion will be engaged; if finished off by the beasts, the northern sky will send the bears and the zodiac [will send] bulls and lions. The one who has endured these things to the end, that one will be saved! 10.13 Therefore, [is there] death and suffering and slaying and first acknowledgement in the heavens? And where [is] the necessary flesh for all this? Where [is] the body that alone has to be slain by people? A solid reason has entrusted these things to us [to be said] even in a sportive way; nor will anyone raise an objection to [the conditions for acknowledgement in heaven rather than on earth] I have just written about, in such a way that one is not compelled to transfer every wave of persecution, every powerful instrument that brings it about, there [to heaven] where acknowledgement shall have been given a forum. 10.14 If indeed acknowledgement is extracted by persecution, and persecution is perfected by acknowledgment, it is not possible to arrange both entrance and exit, that is beginning and end, not to follow one another. Furthermore, hatred of the name will be here, persecution erupts here, betrayal brings [people] forth here, interrogation compels here, torment rages violently here, and acknowledgement or denial completes this whole series here on earth. 10.15 Therefore, if these other parts of the series are here, acknowledgement will not be elsewhere. If acknowledgement [is] elsewhere, the other things will not be here. Certainly the other things are not elsewhere, thus neither [is] acknowledgement in heaven. Or if they wish that their method of heavenly interrogation and acknowledgement be different, it follows that they ought to construct their own order very differently from the arrangement that is noted in the Scriptures. 10.16 And we are able to say, ‘Let them see whether this earthly order of interrogation and acknowledgement, which flows from the opportunity [provided by] persecution and public discord, [1090] is wholly safe by its own faith, [and whether] it should thus be believed just as also it is written, [and] should thus be understood just as it is heard.’ Here [on this earth] we are maintaining the whole order [of events], as the Lord himself has selected no other region of the world. For what did he add after the end of acknowledgement and denial? 10.17 ‘Do not think that I have come in order to bring peace on earth, but a sword’ certainly on earth. ‘For I come to divide a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a mother-inlaw against her daughter-in-law, and a man’s enemies are his own family members.’ ‘And thus it is brought about, such that brother betrays brother to death, and father [betrays] son, and children rebel against their parents and cause their death.’ ‘And the one who has endured to the end will be safe.’ To such an extent this whole order of the Lord’s sword, not having been sent to heaven but to earth, established acknowledgement there as well, which, by enduring to the end, is about to suffer death.
11.1 Therefore, in the same way we maintain that other expressions too are relevant to the status of martyrdom. The one who has made even more of their soul than of me is not worthy of me,’ that is, the one who would prefer to live by denying me than to die by acknowledging me, and ‘the one who has found their soul shall lose it, the one who truly has lost [it] on my behalf shall find it.’ 11.2 For similarly, [the person] finds it [but only temporarily] who denies [it in order] to gain life, as [that person] shall lose [it] in Gehenna who thinks to themselves they have gained it by denying. On the other hand, [the person] shall lose it in the present, who is slain when they have acknowledged, but is also going to find it in eternal life. 11.3 Finally, judges themselves, when they encourage denial, say, ‘Save your soul!’ and ‘Do not lose your soul!’ How would Christ speak if not in the way a Christian should be treated? But when he prohibits planning a response to the tribunal, he equips his domestic servants, he promises in return that the Holy Spirit is going to answer [for them], and when he wishes a brother [or sister] to be visited in prison he orders care for the acknowledger, and when he affirms that God will be making vindication for [God’s] chosen ones he consoles their sufferings. [1091] In the parable of the seed, after having made the soil dry, he represents the heat of persecutions. 11.4 If these [expressions] are thus not accepted as they were uttered, [as they should be accepted,] without a doubt they suggest more than the sound they make. There is one thing in the sound and another in the sense, as with allegories, parables and riddles. Therefore, whatever wind of argument these scorpions may have taken hold of, wherever they may have thrust themselves with their point, there is now one line [of argument]: they shall be challenged on the facts themselves as to whether they be completed according to the Scriptures, 11.5 as [it would] then [mean that] another thing will be signified in the Scriptures if the thing itself would not be found to exist. For what is written must happen. Further, what is written then will happen, if something else does not. Behold, however, we are hated by all people because of the name, as it is written; we are betrayed by those closest to us, as it is written; we are brought before the powers, interrogated, tortured, place acknowledgement, and are slaughtered, as it is written. Thus the Lord determined. 11.6 If he determined these things differently, why do those things he determined not happen [any] differently, that is, in the manner he [supposedly] determined? Nevertheless, they do not happen differently than he determined. Therefore, just as they happen, thus he determined, and just as he determined, thus they happen. For neither would they have been permitted to happen differently than he determined, nor would he himself have determined differently than he wished [them] to happen. 11.7 Thus these Scriptures will signify nothing other than we recognize in reality. Or, if those things that have been proclaimed are not yet occurring, how are things occurring that have not been proclaimed? For these things that are occurring have not been proclaimed if the things that have been proclaimed are different and are not the things occurring. But now, because the things, which are believed [by the Valentinians] to have been said differently [from what is} in the words, are a reality, what would happen if the deeds should be found to be different? 11.8 But this will be a perversity of faith not to believe what has been proved, [and] to presume what has not been proved. To that perversity I shall make this objection too: that if these things that are thus occurring—just as they have been written—are not those which have been proclaimed, the others too ought not thus to be occurring as they have been written, lest they themselves also be in danger of being excluded by the example of these, as one thing is in the words, another is in the reality. It remains that the things proclaimed are not yet seen when they have happened, if [1092] they are proclaimed differently than they have to happen. And in what way will the things that have not been proclaimed be believed, because they were not proclaimed in the way they happened? Thus the heretics believe those things that have not been proclaimed by not believing those things that have been proclaimed as they have been proved.
12.1 Who now should know the innermost part of the Scriptures better than the followers of Christ themselves? [They are] the ones whom the Lord adopted for himself as disciples, certainly who should be taught everything, and he set [them as] teachers for us, certainly to instruct in everything. To whom had he declared the meaning of his words more than to Peter, John, James and afterwards to Paul (whom he also made a participant in paradise before martyrdom), to whom he revealed the likeness of his glory? Or do they also write differently than they think, those teachers of deceit not of truth?
12.2 Peter even says to those in Pontus, ‘How great [is] the glory if you endure without being punished as offenders. For this is [God’s] favour [to us]. In this also you have been called, since Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example of himself in order that you may follow after his steps.’ 12.3 And again, ‘Beloved, do not be terrified of the trial by fire that is set in motion among you, as if [something] new has happened to you. For in accord with what you share in the sufferings of Christ, rejoice in order that you may rejoice in the revelation of his glory with exultation. If you are dishonoured in the name of Christ, you are blessed because glory and the Spirit of God rest on you, provided that no one of you suffers as a murderer or a thief or an evil-doer or one who desires what is another’s. If, however, as a Christian [one suffers], do not blush but glorify the Lord by that name.’
12.4 John truly exhorts in order that we may lay down our souls on behalf of our brothers [and sisters], denyingthere is any fear in love. ‘For perfect love throws out fear, as fear has punishment and the one who fears has not been perfected in love.’ 12.5 What other kind of fear should we understand if not (the one that is] the author of denial? What perfect love does he assert if not the one that puts fear to flight and the one that stimulates acknowledgement? With what punishment may he punish fear if not that which the one who denies is about to repay with body [1093] and soul slain in Gehenna? Even though he teaches dying on behalf of the brothers [and sisters], how much more for the Lord? This has been established sufficiently from his [book of] Revelation to persuade [us]. 12.6 For indeed the Spirit had given a commission to the messenger to the church of the Smyrneans [to say], ‘Behold, the devil will hurl some from your number into prison that you may be tested for ten days. Be faithful up to death and I shall give you the crown of life.’ 12.7 Also [the messenger speaks] to the Pergameni about Antipas, the most faithful martyr, who was killed in the dwelling place of Satan. Again, to the Philadelphians, [the Spirit attests] the fact that the one who did not deny the name of the Lord would be freed from the final trial. 12.8 Next, to every victor [the Spirit] promises now the tree of life and pardon from the second death, now the hidden manna with the white pebble and the unknown name, now the power of the iron rod and the brightness of the morning star, now to be clothed in a white garment and not to be blotted out from the book of life and to become a column in the temple of God, having been inscribed with the name of God and of the Lord and of the heavenly Jerusalem, now to reside with the Lord on his throne, which once was denied to the sons of Zebedee. 12.9 Who [are] these blessed victors if not proper martyrs? For indeed, theirs [are] the victories, whose also [are] the fights, but indeed theirs [are] the fights, whose also [is] the blood. But also, in the meantime, the souls of the martyrs rest quiet under the altar and they nourish their patience with the assurance of revenge and, having been covered with long garments, they use the dazzling white [garment] of brightness until others also may fill the share of their glory. 12.10 For the innumerable multitude clothed in white is revealed, distinguished with the palms of victory, no doubt triumphant over the antichrist, as one of the elders affirms, These are the ones who are coming from that great affliction and have washed their clothing and whitened it in the blood of the lamb.’ For theat tire of the soul is flesh. Even filth is washed away by baptism, but stains are truly made white by martyrdom. For Isaiah also promises whiteness like the snow and wool from the red and scarlet. 12.11 Even the drunkenness of great [1094] Babylon, when it is described as drunk with the blood of the holy ones,is, without a doubt, catered for from the cups of martyrdoms, the terror of which, since it is about to be endured, is equally shown. For among all the deceitful, or rather before [them] all, [are] the fearful. ‘However, the lot for the fearful/ says [the author]—and then follows the others [in the list]—‘[will be] in the pool of fire and sulphur.’ Thus fear, [as he says] in his letter, which love throws out, has punishment.
13.1 In fact Paul, the persecutor turned apostle, who first poured out the blood of the church (afterwards changing the sword for the pen and converting the sword into a plough) [and who first was] a greedy wolf of Benjamin (but later himself carrying food just like Jacob), how he commends the desired martyrdoms now also for himself! 13.2 When rejoicing about the Thessalonians he says, ‘… such that we boast about you in the ecclesial community of God in view of your tolerance and faith in every persecution and affliction, in which you manifest the right judgement of God in order that you may be held worthy of [God’s] reign, for which you also are suffering.’ 13.3 Just as to the Romans [he writes], ‘However, not only [that], but also exulting in afflictions certain that affliction brings about tolerance, and tolerance [brings about] trial, trial however [brings about] hope, and hope does not disappoint.’ 13.4 And again, ‘Because if [we are] children [we are] heirs as well, heirs even of God, but co-heirs of Christ. Since we suffer with him, we are also glorified with him. For I calculate that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy of the glory that has to be revealed to us.’ And for that reason later he says,
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Affliction or difficulty or hunger or nakedness or danger or the sword? As it is written, ‘For your sake we are killed the whole day; we have been counted as a flock for the slaughter.’ But in all this we are overcome on account of him who loved us. For we are persuaded that neither death nor life, nor strength, nor heights nor depth nor [any] other circumstance is able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
13.5 But also retelling his own sufferings to the Corinthians he certainly prescribed suffering, ‘…in my more abundant efforts, in my numerous imprisonments, [1095] and in my frequent [brushes with] death, five times from the Jews I received forty less one [strokes of the lash], three times having been struck with rods, once having been stoned…’ and so on. 13.6 If these misfortunes seem greater than martyrdoms, yet again he says, ‘On account of this I count it as good [to be] in infirmities, in injuries, in deprivation, in persecutions, in difficulties for the sake of Christ.’ 13.7 [He says] as well in an earlier section, ‘We are the ones who are troubled in everything but not confined, who are wanting but not in great need, who are hunted by persecutions but not forsaken, who are thrown down but not perishing, always carrying around the death of Christ in our bodies.’ ‘But even if our exterior person is damaged’—the flesh no doubt by the force of persecution—‘yet the interior is renewed daily’—no doubt the soul by the hope of the promises. 13.8 ‘For our affliction in the present time, which is light and momentary, accomplishes step by step an eternal weight of glory, with us perceiving not the things that are seen, but the things that are not seen. In fact, the things that are seen are temporal’—speaking about misfortunes—‘the things that are not seen really are eternal’—promising rewards. 13.9 Yet writing to the Thessalonians from his chains, he affirmed them certainly as blessed to whom it had been given not only to believe in Christ but even to suffer for him. He says, ‘Having the same contest that you both have seen in me and now hear.’ For although I am offered as a sacrifice, I rejoice and rejoice with you all, as you also rejoice and rejoice with me in the same way.’ 13.10 You see how he defines the happiness of martyrdoms, for whom it becomes a solemn festival with mutual joy. When he finally came very close [to this happiness], he writes to Timothy as rejoicing about his prospects, For I am now offered up, and the time of separation is at hand. I have fought a good contest, I have completed the course, I have guarded the faith, the crown that the Lord will give to me on that day remains’—without a doubt [the crown] of suffering. 13.11 He had roused [them] enough in the earlier [section], ‘The word [is] faithful. For if we are dead with Christ, we shall also live with [him], if we have suffered, we shall also reign with [him], if we have denied [him], he shall deny us, if we do not believe, he is faithful [1096] [since] he cannot deny himself.’ Therefore, do not be troubled by the witness of our Lord nor of me his prisoner’ because he had earlier said, For God did not give us a spirit of fear but of bravery and of love and of a sound mind.’ 13.12 For we suffer with bravery from love of God and with a sound mind, when we suffer on account of innocence. But also if anywhere he prescribes tolerance for what more is he foreseeing it than for suffering? If anywhere he removes [people] from idolatry for what more is he removing them than for martyrdoms? 14.1 Plainly he warns the Romans ‘to be subject to all powers because there is no power except from God’ and ‘because he [the ruler] does not carry the sword without reason, because he is the attendant of God, but also the avenger for wrath to those who have done evil.’ For he had already said before, ‘For rulers are not fearful for those who do good but for those who do evil. However, do you wish not to fear the power? Do what is good and you will receive back praise from it. Therefore, he is an attendant of God for your good. But you do what is evil, be afraid.’ 14.2 Thus he orders you to be subject to the powers that be, not as an opportunity for eluding martyrdoms but as a challenge to live well, and even [to live] with regard for those [in authority] as if [they were] aids of justice [and] assistants of divine judgement, who even here prejudge the guilty. Further, he also maintains the manner in which he wishes you to be subject to the powers that be, ordering, ‘Give back tribute to whom tribute [is owed] and tax to whom tax [is owed], that is, To Caesar the things which are of Caesar and to God the things of God.’ The human person, however, [belongs to] God alone. 14.3 No doubt Peter had agreed that the king too should be honoured, such that he is honoured as king only when he pursues his own proper interests, when he is far from divine honours. And because brother, father and mother will be loved together with God, they will not be equal [to God]. It will not be permitted to love another above God, not even life.
15.1 Surely, therefore, the letters of the apostles are now well-known? ‘And do we, simple souls and mere doves, make mistakes everywhere [in our interpretation of these letters] willingly?’ [the Valentinians ask.] I believe [their mistake comes] from a desire for living. This may well be the case, with the result that they make their own interpretation of the letters. Nevertheless, we know the things the apostles suffered, the doctrine is clear. I become aware of this simply by scanning Acts [of the Apostles], I do no seek it out. 15.2 The prisons there, the chains, whips, stones, swords, the attacks of the Jews, the meetings of the tribes, the tribunes’ [1097] records, the hearings [before] kings, the tribunals of the proconsuls, and the name of Caesar do not need interpretation. That Peter is struck, that Stephen is crushed, that James is sacrificed, that Paul is dragged away, has been written with their own blood. 15.3 And if a heretic has [tried to] drag down the faith by [using] commentaries, the public records of the empire will speak [for us], as do the stones of Jerusalem. We read in the Lives of the Caesars that Nero was the first who stained the rising faith with blood at Rome. Then Peter is roped around the waist by another when he is tied to the cross. Then Paul obtains the birth of Roman citizenship when he is reborn therewith the nobility of martyrdom. 15.4 Whenever I read these now, I discover suffering. It makes no difference to me which teachers of martyrdom I follow, whether [it is] the thinking or the death of the apostles, except that I also recognize the thinking in their deaths. For they would suffer nothing that they had not known earlier they were going to suffer. Although Agabus had foretold in gesture the chains of Paul, the weeping and praying disciples had prayed in vain that he not entrust himself to Jerusalem. 15.5 For he says, having been animated by what he had always taught, ‘Why are you weeping and saddening my heart? But I have wished not only to suffer chains in Jerusalem, but even to die for the name of my Lord, Jesus Christ.’ And thus they stopped by saying, ‘Let the will of the Lord be done,’ no doubt believing that sufferings belong to the will of God. 15.6 For they had tried to hold [him] back, not by a council of dissuasion but of love, as ones who yearned for the apostle, not as ones who dissuaded from martyrdom. But if then, at that time, Prodicus or Valentinius had been standing by, suggesting that acknowledgement ought not be placed before people on earth who are less than truthful,—lest God [be seen to] thirst for human blood or Christ {be seen to] demand a recompense through [someone else’s] suffering, as if he himself were going to achieve salvation through [someone else’s suffering]— immediately he would have heard from a servant of God what the devil had heard from the Lord, ‘Stand back, Satan! You are offensive to me.’ It is written, “You shall worship the Lord, your God and serve only [God].”’ 15.7 But even now he will be bound to hear [these words], in as much as, long after he has spread them, those venoms harm none of the weak, unless one of the faithful does not drink our potion before, or even after, [being bitten by the heretic scorpion].
