Against Marcion

Adversus Marcionem was Tertullian’s most extensive treatise. Begun as a single book, it was expanded into five in two successive revisions. The first book denies the god proposed by Marcion, the second shows that God is both Creator of the world, and good, and the third shows, by the argument of prophecy and fulfilment, that the Christ promised in the Old Testament is the same as the Christ revealed in the Gospels. The latter book draws on Justin and Irenaeus for much of its argument. In the fourth book Tertullian examines Marcion’s gospel, a truncated version of Luke, and in the fifth he considers the epistles of Paul recognized by Marcion. He argues in the last two books that Marcion’s own scriptures refute his position.

Ronald E. Heine, “The Beginnings of Latin Christian Literature,” in The Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature, ed. Frances Young, Lewis Ayres, and Andrew Louth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 135–36.