Against Marcion, Book 1

1 Whatever we have done against Marcion in the past, let it now be as it may. We are undertaking a new work out of an old one. My first little work, being somewhat hurried, I had afterwards withdrawn in favor of a fuller composition. This one too, before it had been furnished with copies, I lost through the fraud of a man who was then a brother and afterwards an apostate, who happened to have copied out certain parts most inaccurately and displayed them to the public. The need to correct it made a new version necessary, and the occasion persuaded me to add something. So this written work, the third after the second and now, from the third, the first, must of necessity explain at the outset how its work turned out, so that no one may be confused on finding its different versions scattered about. 2 Pontus, then, which is called Euxine (“hospitable”), is belied by its nature and mocked by its name. You should not judge Pontus hospitable from its situation either: it has withdrawn from our more civilized seas as though ashamed of its own barbarism. Most savage tribes inhabit it — if indeed one can be said to inhabit a wagon. Their dwelling is uncertain, their life raw, their lust promiscuous and for the most part naked; even when they hide it, they mark it by hanging their quivers from the yoke as a sign, so that no one may intrude. So they do not blush even at their own weapons. The corpses of their parents they cut up together with cattle and devour at a banquet. Those who have died in such a way that they are not fit for eating — theirs is an accursed death. Nor are the women softened toward modesty by their sex: they cut off their breasts, do their spinning with axes, and prefer soldiering to marrying. There is harshness from the sky as well. The day is never clear, the sun never smiles; the only air is fog; the whole year is winter; every wind that blows is the north wind. Liquids turn back into snow, rivers are denied by ice, mountains are heaped high with frost. Everything is numb, everything is stiff; nothing is warm there but savagery — that savagery, of course, which has given the stage its tales of the sacrifices of the Tauri, the loves of the Colchians, and the crosses of the Caucasus. 3 But nothing in Pontus is so barbarous and grim as the fact that Marcion was born there: more loathsome than a Scythian, more unsettled than a wagon-dweller, more inhuman than a Massagete, more audacious than an Amazon, darker than its cloud, colder than its winter, more brittle than its ice, more treacherous than the Danube, more precipitous than the Caucasus. And why not? At his hands the true Prometheus, God Almighty, is torn apart by blasphemies. Marcion is more savage even than the beasts of that barbarous land. For what beaver was ever such a castrator of the flesh as the man who abolished marriage? What Pontic mouse ever so gnawing as the man who gnawed away the Gospels? Truly, Euxine, you have brought forth a beast more acceptable to philosophers than to Christians. For that dog Diogenes, carrying a lamp around at noon, wanted to find a man; Marcion, having put out the light of his faith, lost the God he had found. 4 His disciples will not deny that his first faith was one with ours, his own letter being witness; so that from this point he can already be marked out as a heretic, since, deserting what he had been before, he afterwards chose for himself what had not been before. For a thing will be counted heresy to the extent that it is brought in later, just as that will be held to be truth which has been handed down from before and from the beginning. But another treatise will uphold this step against heretics, who are to be refuted even without discussing their doctrines: that they are such by the prescription of novelty. Now, since a real engagement must sometimes be allowed, so that relying everywhere on a preliminary legal objection is not taken as a lack of confidence, I will first explain my opponent's rule, so that no one may be unaware of the ground on which the principal question is to be fought.

1 The man of Pontus brings in two gods, like the two Clashing Rocks of his own shipwreck: the one whom he could not deny, that is, the Creator, that is, ours; and the one whom he will never be able to prove, that is, his own. The unhappy man took the impulse for this presumption from a simple saying of the Lord, who applied those examples of the good and the bad tree to human beings, not to gods: that the good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor the bad tree good fruit — that is, neither does a good mind or faith produce bad works, nor a bad one good works. For he was sick (as many are even now, and heretics above all) over the question of evil — where does evil come from? — and, his senses dulled by the very excess of his curiosity, he found the Creator declaring: “I am he who creates evils.” The more he presumed him to be the author of evil, on the strength of other arguments too, which persuade any perverse person in that way, the more he interpreted the Creator as the bad tree producing bad fruit, namely evils, and presumed that there must be another god, on the side of the good tree, with good fruit. And so, finding in Christ what seemed to be another arrangement, one of sole and pure kindness, as though different from the Creator's, he easily argued that a new and foreign divinity had been revealed in his Christ; and thereafter, with a little leaven, he soured the whole lump of the faith with heretical acid. He also had a certain Cerdo as instructor in this stumbling-block; the two of them, being blind, the more easily supposed they had seen two gods, for they had not seen the one whole. To the bleary-eyed even a single lamp is many. The one god, then, whom he was compelled to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming him with evil; the other, whom he strove to invent, he built up by preferring him for goodness. On what articles he has arranged these natures we will show in our replies themselves.

1 The main dispute, and therefore the whole dispute, concerns number: whether it is permissible to bring in two gods — by poetic and pictorial license, if it comes to that, and now by a third kind, the heretical. But Christian truth has declared strictly: “God, if he is not one, is not,” because we more worthily believe that whatever is not as it should be does not exist. And so that you may know that God must be one, ask what God is, and you will find it no other way. As far as the human condition can define anything about God, I define what the conscience of all will also acknowledge: that God is the supreme being, established in eternity — for this state must be ascribed to eternity, which makes God supremely great, since this is what eternity is in God — and so with the rest, so that God is supremely great in form, in reason, in might, and in power. Since all agree on this — for no one will deny that God is something supremely great, except one who could declare, on the contrary, that God is something lowest and small, so as to deny God by taking away what is God's — what will then be the condition of the supreme being itself? Surely that nothing be equal to it, that is, that there be no other supreme being; because if there were, it would be equaled, and if it were equaled it would no longer be the supreme being, the condition and, so to speak, the law being overturned which allows nothing to be equal to the supreme being. Therefore the supreme being must be unique — which it will be by having no equal — or it will not be the supreme being. So it will exist in no other way than through that by which it has being, that is, by being altogether unique. Accordingly, since God is the supreme being, our truth has rightly declared: “God, if he is not one, is not” — not as though we doubted that God exists when we say “if not one, he is not,” but because we define the one whom we confidently hold to exist as being that which, if he is not, he is not God. Further, if the supreme being must be unique, then God will also be unique: not God except as the supreme being, not the supreme being except as having no equal, and not having no equal except by being unique. Certainly, whatever other god you introduce, you will not be able to maintain him as God in any other form than by ascribing to him too what is proper to divinity, both eternity and supreme greatness. How then will two supreme beings stand together, when this is what the supreme being is — to have no equal — and to have no equal belongs to one alone and can in no way exist in two?

1 But someone will argue that two supreme beings can indeed exist, distinct and separated within their own borders, and will doubtless cite the example of the kingdoms of the earth, so many in number and yet each supreme in its own region; and he will think that human things may everywhere be compared with divine. Well, if room is given to this argument, what prevents the introduction — I do not say of a third and a fourth god — but of as many gods as there are kings of nations? It is God who is in question, and it is chiefly his property to admit comparison with no example. Nature itself will proclaim this, even if there were no Isaiah — or rather God himself through Isaiah: “To whom will you liken me?” Human things may perhaps be compared with divine things, but not so with God. For God is one thing, the things of God another. In short, you who use the example of a king as a supreme being, take care that you may no longer be able to use it. For a king, even though he is supreme on his throne, next to God, is nevertheless below God; and when compared with God he will fall from being the supreme being, since that is transferred to God. If so, how do you use for comparison with God the example of a thing which is lost the moment it comes to comparison? And what if even among kings the supreme being cannot be seen in many places but is unique and singular — namely in him who, as king of kings, by the height of his greatness and the subjection of the other ranks, is held to be the summit of dominion? But even kings who preside singly, with undivided rule, over what I may call petty kingdoms — if they are brought together from every side for examination, to establish which of them excels in the resources and strength of his kingdom, the summit of greatness must necessarily be distilled into one, all the others being gradually squeezed out and excluded from the height of greatness by the outcome of the comparison. So then, although the supreme being seems to exist in many places while scattered, in its own strength, its own nature, and its own state it is unique. Accordingly, when two gods are compared as two supreme beings, the unity of the supreme being must yield to one of them by the verdict of the comparison; for the supreme consists in its victory, when another great one — not, however, supreme — has been overcome, and, possessing through the defeat of its rival a kind of solitude in the singularity of its pre-eminence, it is unique. This inescapable grip constrains the verdict to this: either it must be denied that God is the supreme being, which no wise man will allow, or that greatness must be shared with no other.

1 Or what reason has put together two supreme beings? For first I will ask: why not more, if two? since the substance of divinity would have to be believed the richer if number were fitting for it. Valentinus was more honorable and more generous: having once dared to conceive two, Bythos and Sige, he then poured out a swarm of divinity, a litter of as many as thirty Aeons, like Aeneas's sow. Whatever reason does not allow several supreme beings to be admitted does not allow two either, since two are themselves several. After one comes number. A reason that could admit two could admit more as well; for two is already a multitude, once unity has been exceeded. In short, among us the force of that reason does not allow many gods to be believed, by the very limit by which that rule, establishing one God, does not allow two: namely, that God must be that to which nothing is equal, as the supreme being, and that that is unique to which nothing is equal. Now then, two supreme beings, two equals — for what worthwhile purpose, what advantage, would they be recognized? What would number matter, when two equals do not differ from one? For what is the same in two is one thing. Even if there were more equals, they would all have been just as much one, differing in nothing among themselves since they are equal. Further, if neither of the two differs from the other, since both are supreme beings since both are gods, and neither surpasses the other, they show no reason for their number, having no pre-eminence; yet the number of divinity should rest on the highest reason, not least because its worship too would be thrown into doubt. For see: looking on two gods as equal as two supreme beings, what should I do? If I worshiped both, I should fear that the excess of duty might be thought superstition rather than religion, because two so equal, each containing both, I could win over in one, bearing witness by that very act to their equality and unity, as I venerated the one in the other, since in one there are two for me. If I worshiped one, I should equally reflect that I might seem to pour shame on the emptiness of a number made superfluous by having no difference. That is, I would judge it safer to worship neither than one with scruple, or both in vain.

1 So far we seem to have argued as though Marcion set up two equal gods. For while maintaining that God, the supreme being, must be believed unique, and excluding equality from him, we have treated them as two equals; nevertheless, by teaching that they cannot be equal according to the form of the supreme being, we have sufficiently established that there cannot be two. Otherwise, we know well that Marcion sets up unequal gods: the one a judge, fierce, mighty in war; the other gentle, mild, and simply good and supremely good. Let us examine this side too: whether difference at least can accommodate two, if equality could not. Here again the same rule of supreme greatness will be our advocate, since it lays claim to the whole state of divinity. For, meeting my opponent and, as it were, laying hands on him to hold his view fast — since he does not deny that the Creator is God — I raise this entirely justified preliminary objection against him that there is no room for difference between those whom, having confessed them equally to be gods, he cannot make different. Not that even human beings may not be very different under the same name; but because nothing is to be called God, since nothing is to be believed God, except the supreme being. Since, then, he is compelled to acknowledge as the supreme being the one whom he does not deny to be God, it cannot be allowed that he should ascribe to the supreme being any diminution by which it would be made subject to another supreme being. For it ceases to be, if it is made subject. But it is not God's part to fall from his state, that is, from being the supreme being. For even in that more powerful god supreme greatness could be endangered, if it can be depreciated in the Creator. So when two gods are declared to be two supreme beings, neither can be greater or less than the other, neither loftier or lower than the other. Deny that he is God whom you call inferior; deny that he is the supreme being whom you believe less. But if you have confessed both to be God, you have confessed two supreme beings. You will take nothing away from the one, nor add anything to the other. By acknowledging the divinity you have denied the difference.

1 Against this you will try to shake our treatment by way of the name of God, as a name loosely used and allowed to others as well, because it is written: “God has stood in the assembly of gods, and in their midst he will judge between gods,” and: “I said, You are gods.” Yet, you will say, supreme greatness does not belong to these just because they are called gods; so neither does it belong to the Creator. I will answer the fool — who has not reflected on this either — that the same argument might be turned back against Marcion's god: he too is called god, and yet is not proved by that to be the supreme being, any more than the Creator's angels or men. If sharing names prejudges conditions, how many worthless slaves insult kings by bearing the names of Alexander and Darius and Holofernes! Yet the kings will not for that reason lose what they are. For even the idols of the nations are commonly called gods, but none is God by the fact that it is called god. So I defend the Creator’s supreme greatness not for the sake of the name of God, nor the sound or sign of that name, but for the very substance to which this name has fallen. Finding this alone unborn and unmade, alone eternal and the founder of the universe, I ascribe supreme greatness to it not because of its name but because of its state, not because of its title but because of its condition. And because the substance to which I ascribe it has already come to be called God, you think I am ascribing it to the name, since I must necessarily indicate by the name the substance to which I ascribe it — namely, that in which he consists who is called God. But supreme greatness is determined by substance, not by a name. Indeed Marcion too, claiming it for his god, claims it according to state, not according to vocabulary. 2 That supreme greatness, then, which we ascribe to God by the law of substance, not by the chance of a name, we contend must be present equally in two who consist of that substance which is called God; because in so far as they are called gods — that is, supreme beings, being of a substance rightly called unborn and eternal and therefore great and supreme — to that extent one supreme being cannot be held less or lower than another supreme being. If the happiness, loftiness, and integrity of supreme greatness will stand firm in Marcion's god, it will stand equally in ours; if not in ours, then not in Marcion's either. Therefore the two supreme beings will be neither equal, because the rule of supreme greatness already laid down forbids it, not tolerating comparison; nor unequal, because another rule of the supreme being confronts us, not admitting diminution. You are stuck, Marcion, in the middle of the surge of your own Pontus. The waves of truth engulf you on both sides. You can set up gods neither equal nor unequal, for there are not two. As far as the treatment of number properly goes — although the whole matter is fought over the two gods — we have meanwhile enclosed him within these lines, within which we will now engage on the particular properties.

1 First, the Marcionites build their stupor on a lofty brow, because they bring forward a new god, as though we were ashamed of the old one. Children too are puffed up by new shoes; but, shod by the old tutor, they will soon be beaten for their vain glory. So I hear of a new god — in the old world, in the old age, and under the old God unknown and unheard of — a god whom, through so many ages past known to no one and ancient only in his very obscurity, a certain Jesus Christ (himself new under old names) has revealed, and no one else before him. I thank them for this boast, since with its great help I will now prove the heresy — that is, the profession of a new divinity. This is the novelty that has produced gods for the heathen too, by a new and ever new title of consecration for each. What new god is there except a false one? Not even Saturn will his great antiquity prove a god today, since novelty too brought him forth once, when it first consecrated him. But living and genuine divinity is judged neither by novelty nor by antiquity but by its own truth. Eternity has no time, for it is itself all time. What it makes, it cannot undergo. That which may not be born is without age. God, if he is old, will not be; if he is new, was not. Novelty testifies to a beginning; age threatens an end. But God is as foreign to beginning and end as he is to time, the arbiter and measurer of beginning and end.

1 I know, of course, in what sense they boast of a new god: in respect of his being acknowledged. But I wished to strike back at the very novelty of the knowledge that strikes untrained souls, and at the natural charm of novelty itself, and so to go on from here to challenge them about an unknown god. For in setting him up as new by acknowledgment, they show that before acknowledgment he was unknown. Come, then, back to the lines and to your position! Persuade me that God could have been unknown. I do indeed find altars set out to unknown gods, but that is Attic idolatry; likewise to uncertain gods, but that is Roman superstition. Further, uncertain gods are less known, as being less certain, and so unknown, in so far as they are less certain. Which of the two titles should we carve for Marcion's god? Both, I think: uncertain now and unknown before. For just as the known God, the Creator, made him unknown, so the certain God made him uncertain. But I will not wander so far as to say: if God was unknown and hidden, some region of hiding-places overshadowed him, itself also new and unknown, and likewise still uncertain now — certainly some immense region, and undoubtedly greater than the one it hid. Rather I will propose briefly and pursue most fully the plea that God neither could have been unknown by reason of his greatness nor should have been by reason of his goodness, especially being superior to our Creator in both. 2 But since I notice that in certain matters the proof of every new and formerly unknown god must be referred to the pattern of the Creator, I must first show that we do this with reason, so that I may the more firmly rely on the support of a reason once set out. Before all else, how can it be that you, who acknowledge the Creator as God and confess that he was known first, should not realize that the other must be examined by you by the same methods by which you have already learned, in the first case, to know God? Everything earlier has set the norm for what is later. Two gods are now proposed, an unknown and a known. About the known there is no question: it is agreed that he exists, for he would not have been known unless he existed. About the unknown the dispute presses: for he may even not exist, since if he existed he would have been known. What is sought, then, is uncertain as long as it is unknown; and as long as it is sought it may also not exist, as long as it is uncertain. You have a God who is certain, as known, and one who is uncertain, as unknown. If so, do you not think it can be defended with just reason that uncertain things be proved by the norm, form, and rule of certain things? Otherwise, if in this cause, itself still uncertain, arguments are also drawn from uncertain things, a chain of questions will be tangled up from the discussion of those arguments, equally uncertain, which put faith at risk through uncertainty; and one will go on into those endless questions which the apostle does not love. But if the certain, undoubted, and settled parts of the rule are used, they will prejudge the uncertain, doubtful, and unsettled ones. Clearly, where a difference of state is found, uncertain things perhaps need not be referred to the form of certain ones, being released from any further appeal to comparison by the difference in their principal state. But when two gods are proposed, their principal state is common to them. For in being God, both are: unborn, unmade, eternal. This will be the principal state; the rest Marcion must see to, if he has arranged them in difference. For the later points are not under discussion — indeed they will not even be admitted — if the principal state is agreed. And it is agreed, since both are gods. And so those whose state is agreed to be common, when under it they are called to proof, if they are uncertain, must be referred to the form of those certain ones with whom they are considered to share the principal state, so that they may accordingly share in the manner of proof as well. So I will draw the line most firmly: he is not God who is uncertain today because he was unknown before, since of one who is agreed to exist it would be agreed on this very ground that he was never unknown,

1 since from the beginning of things their Maker was discovered along with them, and they were brought forth for this very purpose, that God might be known. For even if Moses, somewhat later, seems to have been the first to dedicate the God of the world in the temple of his writings, the birth of acknowledgment will not for that reason be dated from the Pentateuch; for the whole of Moses' pen does not institute knowledge of the Creator but narrates it from the beginning, to be traced from paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. Indeed, the greater part of the human race, who have not even heard the name of Moses, let alone his writings, nevertheless know the God of Moses. Even while idolatry overshadows them with so great a dominion, they still speak of him apart, as though by a proper name, as “God,” and “God of gods,” and “if God grant,” and “what pleases God,” and “I commend it to God.” See whether they know him whom they testify to be able to do all things. Nor do they owe this to any books of Moses. The soul came before prophecy. For the consciousness of God is the soul's dowry from the beginning, the same and no other in Egyptians, in Syrians, and in the people of Pontus. Do not, barbarous heretic, make Abraham earlier than the world. Even if the Creator had been the God of one family, he would still not have been later than yours: he was known even to the people of Pontus before him. Let yours, then, take his pattern from his predecessor, the uncertain from the certain, the unknown from the known. Never will God be hidden, never will God be lacking; he will always be understood, always heard, even seen, in the way he wills. God has witnesses: all this that we are and in which we are. Thus he is proved both God and one, in that he is not unknown, while the other still labors to be proved.

1 “And rightly so,” they say; “for who is not better known to his own than to strangers?” No one. I seize on this saying too. For how can anything be foreign to God? To him nothing would be foreign, if he were anyone at all — for this belongs to God, that all things are his and all things belong to him — or else he would at once hear from us: “What then has he to do with strangers?” He will hear this more fully in its place. For now it is enough that no one is proved whose work is not proved. For just as the Creator is on this ground both God and undoubted God, that all things are his and nothing is foreign to him, so the other is on this ground not God, that all things are not his and are therefore foreign to him. In short, if the universe is the Creator's, I do not even see room for another god. All things are full and occupied by their Author. If any space in creation is empty for any divinity, clearly it will be empty for a false one. Truth is plain to be seen before falsehood. Why does not so great a host of idols make room somewhere for Marcion's god? 2 So I demand this also after the pattern of the Creator: that his god should have been known from the works of some world, some man, some age of his own; since even the error of the world has presumed to be gods, for this very reason, those whom it sometimes admits to have been men, because something seems to have been provided by each for the needs and comforts of life. So this too, after the pattern of God, has been believed divine: to establish or show something fitting and necessary for human affairs. Since, then, authority was lent to false divinity from the same source from which it had first come to the true, Marcion’s god should have produced at least one little chickpea of his own, so that he might be proclaimed some new Triptolemus. Or else show a reason worthy of God why he created nothing, if he exists; for he would have created, if he had existed — by that same prejudgment by which it is plain that our God exists for no other reason than that he created all this. For the prescription will stand once for all: they cannot both confess the Creator to be God and fail to prove the one whom they wish to be equally believed God by the pattern of him whom they and everyone acknowledge as God; so that, since no one doubts the Creator to be God for this very reason — that he created all this — for this very reason no one should believe that he too is God who created nothing, unless perhaps some reason is offered. 3 That reason must be one of two: either he did not will to create anything, or he could not. There is no third. But not to have been able is unworthy of God. Whether not to have willed is worthy, I wish to inquire. Tell me, Marcion: did your god will to be known at some time or not? With what other purpose did he come down and preach and suffer and rise again, than that he might be known? Without doubt, if he was known, he willed it; for nothing would be done concerning him unless he had willed it. He, then, who took such pains to make himself known that he was displayed in the disgrace of flesh — and a greater disgrace if the flesh was false, for it is the more shameful if he also lied about the substance of his body — who even took upon himself the Creator's curse, hanging on a tree: how much more honorably he would have prepared the way for knowledge of himself by some signs of his own workmanship! — especially since he had to be made known against one by whom he had not been known from the beginning through works. For how can it be that the Creator, not knowing (as the Marcionites will have it) that there was another god above him, and asserting even on oath that he alone existed, armed the knowledge of himself with such great works, though, presuming himself unique, he need not have taken such care; while that loftier one, knowing that the inferior god was so equipped, provided himself with no means of being acknowledged? — when he should have created works even more distinguished and splendid, so that, like the Creator, he might be known as God from his works, and from nobler works as more powerful and more noble than the Creator.

1 Moreover, even if we could admit that he exists, we should have to argue that he exists without cause. For he would be without cause who had no work, since every work is the cause of there being someone whose work it is. Further, since nothing should exist without cause — because if it is without cause, it is just as if it did not exist — to that extent I will more worthily believe that God does not exist than that he exists without cause. For he is without cause who, having no work, has no cause. But God should not exist without cause, that is, without work. So whenever I show that he exists without cause, as though he existed, I establish this: that he does not exist, because if he had existed, he would certainly not have been without cause. In the same way I say that he seeks faith from man without cause — faith which is accustomed otherwise to believe in God as shaped by the authority of his works — because he has provided nothing of the kind through which man has learned God. For even if very many believe in him, they do not therefore believe with reason, having no pledge of God, namely works worthy of God. And so on this account of idleness and lack of works he is close to both impudence and malice: impudence, in that he seeks a faith not owed to him, having provided nothing to prepare it; malice, in that he has made many guilty of unbelief by providing nothing for faith.

1 When we drive out by this step a god for whom no creation of his own has set up in advance a witness as proper and as worthy of God as the Creator's, the most shameless Marcionites, wrinkling their noses, turn to demolishing the Creator's works. “Of course,” they say, “a great work, worthy of God, is the world!” Is the Creator, then, not God at all? Certainly he is God. Then neither is the world unworthy of God; for God would have made nothing unworthy of himself, even though he made the world for man and not for himself, and even though every work is inferior to its maker. And yet, if it is unworthy of God to have made something of a certain kind, how much more unworthy of God is it to have made nothing at all, not even something unworthy, so that he might be hoped to be the author of worthier things as well. 2 To say something, then, even about this supposedly unworthy world — which among the Greeks too has a name meaning ornament and adornment, not filth — those very professors of wisdom from whose minds every heresy draws its life declared these “unworthy” substances to be gods: Thales water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato heaven and earth, Zeno air and ether, Plato the stars, which he calls the fiery race of gods. For concerning the world — considering its greatness, force, power, honor, and beauty, and the help, faithfulness, and law of the several elements, which conspire to generate, nourish, complete, and renew all things — they were afraid, as most of the natural philosophers were, for fear that its elements, great as they are, might be thought less than divine; and these substances the magi of the Persians, the hierophants of the Egyptians, and the gymnosophists of the Indians also worship. Even the common superstition of popular idolatry, when it is ashamed of the names and fables of the dead of old in its images, takes refuge in interpreting them as natural things and cloaks its disgrace with cleverness: it figures Jupiter as fiery substance and his Juno as airy, following the sound of the Greek words; likewise Vesta as fire, the Camenae as water, and the Great Mother as the earth, reaped for its seed, plowed with arms, watered with washings. So too, because Osiris is forever being buried, sought alive, and found with joy, they argue from him the reliability of the returning crops, the living elements, and the recurring year; just as the lions of Mithras philosophize the mysteries of dry and burning nature. And for the substances higher in place or state it is enough that they have more readily been held to be gods than unworthy of God. Should I come down to lowly things? One little flower from the hedgerows — I do not say from the meadows; one little shell from any sea — I do not say from the Red Sea; one little feather of a grouse — I say nothing of the peacock: will it tell you that the Creator is a shabby craftsman?

1 But when you mock even the smaller animals, which the greatest Craftsman has deliberately enlarged with skill or strength — teaching in this way that greatness is proved in smallness, just as power is in weakness, according to the apostle — imitate, if you can, the bee's buildings, the ant's granaries, the spider's webs, the silkworm's threads; endure, if you can, those very beasts of your bed and your mat, the blister-beetle's poison, the fly's sting, the gnat's trumpet and lance. What will the greater things be like, when you are either helped or harmed by such small ones? — so that you should not despise the Creator even in small things. Finally, look around at yourself, consider man inside and out: will even this work of our God please you, which your lord, that better god, loved so much, for whose sake he took the trouble to come down from the third heaven into these poor elements, for whose cause he was even crucified in this little cell of the Creator? He, at least, has not to this day rejected the Creator's water, with which he washes his own, nor the oil with which he anoints his own, nor the mixture of honey and milk with which he feeds his own as infants, nor the bread by which he represents his very body, needing even in his own sacraments the beggarly elements of the Creator. But you, a disciple above your master and a servant above your lord, are wiser than he, destroying what he desires. I want to see whether you are at least sincere, so that you yourself do not covet what you destroy. You are against heaven, and yet in your houses you seek the freedom of heaven; you despise the earth — plainly the mother of your flesh, which you now treat as an enemy — and yet you wring out all its marrow for your food; you reject the sea too, but only up to its produce, which you reckon a holier food. If I offer you a rose, you will not scorn the Creator. Hypocrite! Even if you were to prove yourself a Marcionite — that is, a repudiator of the Creator — by starving yourself to death (for that is what you should seek among you in place of martyrdom, if the world displeased you), into whatever matter you are dissolved, you will be making use of the Creator's substance. How great is the obstinacy of your hardness! You depreciate the things in which you both live and die.

1 After this, or before it, you will say that he too has his own creation, his own world, and his own heaven — about that third heaven we will see, if we come to discussing your apostle as well. Meanwhile, whatever his substance is, it surely should have appeared along with its god. But as it is, how can it be that the lord was revealed in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, while his substance has not been discovered at all even by now, the fifteenth year of the emperor Severus? Since it surpasses the Creator's trifles, it would surely have ceased to lie hidden once its lord and author was no longer hidden. And so, if it could not itself be shown in this world, how did its lord appear in this world? If this world held the lord, why could it not hold his substance — unless perhaps the substance was greater than its lord? 2 Now comes the question of place, which concerns both that higher world and its god himself. For see: if he too has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he must have made it in a place, whose space lay empty between his own feet and the Creator's head. So God himself was in a place and was making the world in a place, and that place will now be greater than both God and the world; for what contains is always greater than what is contained. And we must see whether some leftover plots are not still empty there, in which some third god could squeeze himself in with his world. So start counting gods now. For the place too will be a god, not only as greater than God but also as unborn and unmade and therefore eternal and equal to God, the place in which God has always been. Next, if he too built his world out of some underlying matter, unborn, unmade, and coeval with God, as Marcion holds concerning the Creator, you reduce this too to the majesty of the place, which has enclosed both God and matter, two gods. For matter too is a god according to the form of divinity, being unborn, unmade, and eternal. Or if he built the world out of nothing, Marcion will be compelled to hold this of the Creator as well, to whom he assigns matter as the substance of the world. But he too will have to have made it out of matter, since the same reasoning that is set against the Creator confronts him as well, as being equally God. And so for the moment count me three gods of Marcion: the maker, the place, and the matter. In the same way he puts the Creator in a place, reckoning him surely on the same terms, and assigns him matter, surely unborn and unmade and on that account eternal, like its lord. Further, by ascribing evil to matter — unborn to the unborn, unmade to the unmade, eternal to the eternal — he has now made a fourth god. You have, then, three substances of divinity in the higher realm and four in the lower. When their own Christs are added to these — one who appeared under Tiberius, the other who is promised by the Creator — Marcion is plainly wronged by those who presume that he introduces two gods, since he assigns nine, though without knowing it.

1 Since, then, no other world appears, any more than its god does, it follows that they divide the two kinds of things, visible and invisible, between two gods as their authors, and so claim the invisible things for their own god. But who could bring himself to believe — unless it be a heretical spirit — that the invisible things belong to him who has produced nothing visible, rather than to him who, by making the visible things, has also created faith in the invisible, when it is much more just to give assent on the strength of some samples than of none? We will see to which author the apostle too ascribes the invisible things, when we have examined him as well. For now, mostly by common sense and sound arguments, we are laying the ground of faith for the appeal to the Scriptures that is to follow, confirming that this diversity of visible and invisible is to be ascribed to God the Creator, just as his whole work consists of diversities: of corporeal and incorporeal, animate and inanimate, vocal and mute, moving and stationary, fertile and barren, dry and moist, hot and cold. So too diversity has tempered man himself, both in body and in feeling: some members strong, others weak; some honorable, others dishonourable; some paired, others single; some matching, others unmatched. So also in feeling: now joy, now anxiety; now love, now hatred; now anger, now gentleness. If it is so, that this universe of creation has been composed of parts that rival one another, then invisible things too are owed to the visible, and are to be ascribed to no other author than the one to whom their rivals are ascribed. Those who brand the Creator himself as inconsistent — commanding what he forbade and forbidding what he commanded, striking and healing — why do they take him as uniform in this one respect, as maker of visible things only, when he should likewise be believed to have made both visible and invisible, just as both life and death, both evils and peace? And surely, if those invisible things are greater than the Creator's visible things, which are great in their own place, it is fitting in this way too that the greater should belong to him to whom the great belong; for neither great things, still less greater, belong to one to whom not even small things are shown to belong.

1 Hard pressed by these arguments, they burst out: “This one work is enough for our god: that he has set man free by his supreme and pre-eminent goodness, which is to be preferred to all your locusts.” greater god, whose work, great as it is, could be found only in the man of a lesser god! But first you must prove that he exists, through the means by which God must be proved — through works — and only then through benefits. For first it is asked whether he exists, and then what he is like; the one is discerned from works, the other from benefits. Besides, it is not established that he exists because he is said to have set man free; rather, if it is established that he exists, then he will also be said to have set man free, so that it may be established whether he did, since he could both exist and not have set man free. How, then, because he is said to have set man free, will he be believed to exist, when he could both exist and not have set man free? 2 Now, in this part of the question of the unknown god, if it has been sufficiently established that he created nothing as surely as that he should have created, so as to be known from his works — since, if he had existed, he should have been known, and indeed from the beginning of things, for it would not have befitted God to lie hidden — I must go back to the root of the question of the unknown god, so as to shake down its other twigs too. For first it must be asked why he who afterwards brought himself forward into knowledge did so afterwards and not from the beginning of things. For these he was surely necessary, as God — and indeed, the better, the more necessary — and he should not have remained hidden. For it cannot be said that there was no material or cause for knowing God, since man, whom he now succours, was in the world from the beginning, and so was the Creator's malice, against which, as the good god, he brings succour. Therefore he was either ignorant of the cause and material of his necessary revelation, or doubted, or could not, or would not. All these are unworthy of God, above all of the supremely good. But we will develop this topic elsewhere with a reproach of his late revelation, as now with a demonstration only.

1 Suppose, then, that he has now come forward into knowledge when he wished, when he could, when the fated hour arrived. For perhaps the ascending node stood in his way, or some malignant stars, or Saturn in quartile, or Mars in trine. For the Marcionites are very much given to astrology, and are not ashamed even of this: of making their living from the Creator's own stars. Here we must deal with the quality of the revelation: whether he was revealed in a worthy manner, so that it may be established whether truly, and so that he may be believed to exist whose worthy revelation has been established. For what is worthy of God will prove God. We lay down that God is first to be known by nature and then recognized by teaching: by nature from his works, by teaching from his proclamations. But one who has no nature of his own has no natural instruments at hand. He should therefore at least have made Himself known by proclamations, especially since he had to be revealed against one who, by so many and such great works both of creation and of proclamation, had yet scarcely filled man with faith. How, then, was he known? If by human conjecture, I deny that God can be known otherwise than through himself — appealing not only to the pattern of the Creator but also to the condition both of divine greatness and of human smallness — so that humanity does not seem greater than God, as having dragged him out by his own powers, as it were, into the public light of acknowledgment when he did not of his own accord wish to be known; since human smallness, as the experience of every age shows, knows how to invent gods for itself more easily than to follow the true one, whom men already understand by nature. Otherwise, if man is to invent a god in this way — as Romulus did Consus, Tatius Cloacina, Hostilius Fear, Metellus Alburnus, and a certain person not long ago Antinous — others will be allowed to do it too. We know Marcion as a shipmaster, not as a king or an emperor.

1 “On the contrary,” say the Marcionites, “our god, even if not from the beginning, even if not through creation, has been revealed through himself in Christ Jesus.” A book will be devoted to Christ as well, on his whole state — for the subjects must be kept apart, so that they may be treated more fully and in better order. Meanwhile it will be enough, at this stage, to meet them by showing, and that briefly, that Christ carried about the laws of no other god than the Creator. In the fifteenth year of Tiberius Christ Jesus was willing to descend from heaven. In what year of the elder Antoninus the saving spirit of Marcion, as he would have it, breathed out of his Pontus like a dog-day wind, I have not troubled to find out. This much, however, is agreed: he is an Antonine heretic, impious under Pius. Now from Tiberius to Antoninus there are about one hundred and fifteen and a half years and half a month. They put just that much time between Christ and Marcion. Since, then, it was under Antoninus that Marcion first introduced this god, as we have proved, the matter is at once plain, if you have any sense: the dates prejudge that what first came forward under Antoninus did not come forward under Tiberius; that is, that the god of Antoninus's reign was not the god of Tiberius's, and so that he was not revealed by Christ who, it is agreed, was first proclaimed by Marcion. 2 To prove now that this is agreed, I will take what remains from our opponents themselves. The separation of the law and the gospel is Marcion's own and principal work, and his disciples cannot deny what they hold in their chief document, by which they are initiated into this heresy and hardened in it. For this is Marcion's Antitheses, that is, “Contrary Oppositions,” which try to set the gospel at odds with the law, so that from the difference between the sayings of the two documents they may argue a difference of gods as well. Since, then, it is precisely that separation of law and gospel that has insinuated another god of the gospel over against the god of the law, it is evident that before that separation the god who became known from the argument of separation was not known; and so that he was not revealed by Christ, who lived before the separation, but was invented by Marcion, who set up the separation against the peace of gospel and law — a peace which, from the appearing of Christ to the audacity of Marcion, had been kept unharmed and unshaken by that reasoning which held no other god of both law and gospel than the Creator, against whom, so long afterwards, separation was let loose by the man of Pontus.

1 To this most straightforward proof we must add a defense against the clamor of the other side. For they say that Marcion did not so much innovate the rule by separating law and gospel as restore it after it had earlier been adulterated. Christ, most patient Lord, who put up with the perversion of your preaching for so many years, until, of course, Marcion should come to your rescue! For they also bring up Peter himself and the others, the pillars of the apostleship, as having been rebuked by Paul for not walking with a straight foot toward the truth of the gospel — by that Paul, surely, who, still raw in grace and indeed anxious that he might have run or be running in vain, was then conferring for the first time with the apostles who came before him. If, then, still fervent as a neophyte against Judaism, he thought something in their conduct deserved rebuke — namely, their table-fellowship that shifted with the company — though afterwards he himself was in practice to become all things to all, that he might gain all, to the Jews as a Jew and to those under the law as under the law: do you want that rebuke, which concerned conduct alone, and conduct that would later please its own accuser, to be held suspect of a betrayal of the preaching about God as well? On the contrary, concerning the unity of the preaching, as we read above, they had joined right hands, and by the very division of their tasks had agreed on their partnership in the gospel; as he says elsewhere too: “Whether it was I or they, so we preach.” 2 And even if he wrote that certain false brothers had crept in who wanted to transfer the Galatians to another gospel, he himself shows that this adulteration of the gospel aimed not at transferring them to faith in another god and Christ but at keeping the discipline of the law: he catches them, that is, insisting on circumcision and observing times and days and months and years of Jewish ceremonies, which they should have recognized as already set aside according to the renewed arrangement of the Creator, who had long ago proclaimed this very thing through his prophets. So through Isaiah: “The old things have passed away,” he says; “look, the new things which I now make.” So too through Jeremiah: “And I will make a covenant, not such as I made with your fathers when I brought them out of the land of Egypt”; and elsewhere: “Break up for yourselves new fallow ground, and be circumcised to your God, and circumcise the foreskins of your heart.” So the apostle, establishing this circumcision and this new ground, was dissuading them from those old ceremonies as well, which their own founder declared would one day cease, through Hosea: “And I will turn away all her joy, and her feast days, and new moons, and sabbaths, and all her ceremonies.” So too through Isaiah: “Your new moons and sabbaths and the great day I cannot bear; your holidays and fasting and feast days my soul hates.” If, then, the Creator had long since rejected all these things and the apostle was declaring that they must now be rejected, the apostle's very judgment, in agreement with the Creator's decrees, proves that no other god was preached by the apostle than the one whose decrees he wished now to be acknowledged; and in this cause he brands as false both the apostles and the brothers who were transferring the gospel of the Creator's Christ from the newness foretold by the Creator to the oldness rejected by the Creator.

1 Besides, if, in preaching a new god, he wished to exclude the law of the old God, why does he lay down nothing about the new god but only about the old law — unless because, while faith in the Creator remained, only his law was to cease? As that psalm had sung beforehand: “Let us break their bonds from us and cast away their yoke from us” — from the time, that is, when “the nations raged and the peoples meditated vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ.” And surely, if another god were being preached by Paul, there would be no dispute whether the law was to be kept or not, since it would not belong to the new lord, the rival of the law. For the very newness and difference of the god would have removed not only the question of an old and alien law but all mention of it. But this was the whole state of the question: how, when the same God of the law was being preached in Christ, his law could be set aside. Faith, then, always stood firm in the Creator and his Christ, but conduct and discipline wavered. For some disputed about eating what had been sacrificed to idols, others about the veiling of women, others about marriages and divorces, some even about the hope of the resurrection; about God, no one. For if this question too had been disputed, it would also be found in the apostle, and all the more as the principal question. 2 But if after the times of the apostles the truth suffered adulteration concerning the rule of God, then the apostolic tradition in its own time suffered none concerning the rule of God; and no other tradition of the apostles is to be acknowledged than that which is presented today in their own churches. But you will find no church of apostolic stock that is not Christian in the Creator. Or if these are to have been corrupt from the beginning, which will be sound? The Creator's opponents, no doubt! Produce, then, one of your churches of apostolic stock, and you will have carried the case. Since, then, it is established in every way that there was no other god in the rule of this sacred pledge from Christ down to Marcion than the Creator, our proof is now sufficiently fortified, by which we have shown that knowledge of the heretical god began from the separation of gospel and law; and the earlier definition is also supported, that no god is to be believed whom a man has composed from his own mind — unless, plainly, he is a prophet, that is, one who does not speak from his own mind. If Marcion can be called that, it will also have to be proved. There will be no need to discuss it further. For with this wedge of truth every heresy is driven out, once Christ is shown to be the bearer of no other god than the Creator.

1 But how is the antichrist to be overthrown from the foundation, unless, the defense by prescription being relaxed, room is also given for crushing his other insinuations? Let us come, then, from here to the very person of the god — or rather to his shadow and phantom, like his Christ — and let him be examined by that for which he is preferred to the Creator. And surely there will be sure rules for examining the goodness of a god. But first I must find it and lay hold of it, and so bring it to the rules. For when I look around at the times, it is nowhere to be found from the beginning of the materials and the entry of the causes with which it should have been found, acting from the moment it had occasion to act. For there already was death, and sin, the sting of death, and the very malice of the Creator, against which the other god's goodness should have brought help, meeting this first rule of divine goodness, if it would prove itself natural: helping at once, as soon as the cause arose. For everything in God must be natural and inborn, so as to be eternal according to his state, so that it is not considered accidental and external and therefore temporal and foreign to eternity. So in God a goodness perpetual and unbroken will be required, which, stored and ready in the treasuries of his natural properties, would precede its causes and materials and take up each as it first arose — not despise and abandon it, if it was there before. 2 In short, I will ask here no less why his goodness did not work from the beginning than we asked about him why he was not revealed from the beginning. Why not, indeed? He had to be revealed through his goodness, if he existed at all. What God may not do is to be unable, still less to fail to exercise his natural properties; for if these are held back from running their course, they will not be natural. Nature knows no idleness of its own; it is judged by its acting. So neither will he seem to have been unwilling for a while to exercise his goodness, if it is by nature; for nature cannot be unwilling to be itself, since it so directs itself that if it ceased it would not exist. But goodness in Marcion's god did at one time cease from its work: therefore it was not natural goodness, since it could at some time cease, which natural things may not. And if it is not natural, it must no longer be believed eternal or equal to God: not eternal, because not natural, and establishing no perpetuity for itself from the past nor promising it for the future. For as it was not from the beginning, so without doubt it will not be to the end; it can cease to exist at some time, as it once did not exist. 3 Since, then, it is established that the goodness of that god ceased at the beginning — for he did not set man free from the beginning — and that it ceased by will rather than by weakness, the will that suppressed goodness will now be found to be the height of malice. For what is so malicious as to refuse to help when you can, to torment what is useful, to allow injury? In short, the whole indictment against the Creator will be written back against the one who aided his cruelties by the delay of his own goodness. For whoever has it in his hand to keep a thing from happening is held responsible for it when it happens. Man is condemned to death for tasting of one little tree; from then on sins advance with their penalties, and all now perish who have never known a single sod of paradise. And does some better god either not know this or put up with it? If he did so in order to be found better by it, how much the worse would the Creator be held! He is malicious enough in this plan too, since he both wanted the Creator to be burdened, letting his workings go on, and kept the world in distress. What will you judge of a physician who feeds a disease by delaying aid and prolongs the danger by postponing the remedy, so that he may cure it at a higher fee or with greater fame? Such is the sentence that must be passed on Marcion's god too: permitter of evil, abettor of injury, pander of grace, betrayer of kindness, which he did not show at once to its cause — as he plainly would have shown it, if he were good by nature and not by addition, supremely good by disposition and not by training, God from eternity and not from Tiberius — or rather, to speak more truly, from Cerdo and Marcion. Suppose now that this god did Tiberius the favor of having divine goodness dedicated on earth in his reign:

1 I hold up another rule against him: that, as everything in God must be natural, so it must be rational. I demand the reason of his goodness, since nothing else may be held good that is not rationally good, still less may goodness itself be found irrational. An evil in which there is some reason will more easily be taken for good than a good devoid of reason will escape being judged evil. I deny that the goodness of Marcion's god is rational, first on this ground: that it went forth to save a man who was a stranger to him. I know they will say that, on the contrary, this is the chief and perfect goodness, when it is poured out voluntarily and freely on strangers, without any debt of kinship; according to which we are commanded to love even our enemies, who on that account are strangers too. Why, then, did he not look upon man from the beginning, who was a stranger from the beginning? By holding back he prejudged that he had nothing to do with a stranger. Besides, the rule of loving the stranger or the enemy was preceded by the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Even though this comes from the Creator's law, you too must accept it, as not destroyed by Christ but rather built up. For you are commanded to love your enemy and the stranger so that you may love your neighbor all the more. The demand for goodness that is not owed is an intensifying of the goodness that is owed. But what is owed comes before what is not owed, as principal, as worthier, as prior to its servant and companion. 2 Since, then, the first reason of goodness is that it be shown to what is one's own, out of justice, and the second that it be shown to what is another's, out of a justice that exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, how can the second reason be ascribed to one who lacks the first, having no man of his own, and whose goodness is therefore scanty? And how did a scanty goodness, which had nothing of its own, overflow onto what was another's? Show the principal reason, and then claim the one that follows. Nothing can be claimed as rational without order; far less can reason itself lose its order in anyone. Suppose now that the reason of goodness begins from the second step, toward the stranger: even that second step will not stand with reason, being destroyed in another way. For goodness even of the second kind, toward the stranger, will be held rational only if it works without injury to the one whose property he is. It is justice, first of all, that makes any goodness rational. Just as in the principal step, when shown to one's own, it will be rational if it is just, so toward the stranger too it can seem rational if it is not unjust. But what sort of goodness is it that stands by injury, and that for a stranger? For on behalf of one of one's own household an injurious goodness might perhaps be held rational to some extent. But on behalf of a stranger, to whom not even an honest goodness would lawfully be owed, by what reason will so unjust a goodness be defended as rational? For what is more unjust, more iniquitous and dishonest, than to do good to another man's slave in such a way that he is snatched from his master, claimed for another, suborned against his master's life — and, what is more shameful, while still in his master's house, still living from his master's granaries, still trembling under his master's blows? Such a claimant would be condemned even in this world — let alone a kidnapper. In just this way, Marcion's god, breaking into another's world, snatches man from God, the son from the father, the nursling from the one who reared him, the servant from the master, so as to make him impious toward God, undutiful toward his father, ungrateful toward the one who reared him, worthless toward his master. I ask you: if a rational goodness makes a man like this, what would an irrational one make him? I could not think anyone more impudent than one who is baptized for another god in another's water, stretches out his hands to another god toward another's heaven, prostrates himself before another god on another's earth, gives thanks to another god over another's bread, and does works in the name of almsgiving and love for the sake of another god out of another's goods. Who is this god, so good that man becomes bad through him, so gracious that he makes another god — his own master, indeed — angry with him?

1 But God, as he is eternal and rational, is also, I think, perfect in all things: “For you must be perfect, as your Father who is in heaven.” Show that his goodness too is perfect — though it is sufficiently established that it is imperfect, since it is found to be neither natural nor rational. Now it will be exposed in another way as well: no longer merely imperfect but deficient, scanty and exhausted, since it falls short of the number of its objects and is not shown to all. For not all are saved, but fewer than all the Creator's Jews and Christians. And since more perish, how can a goodness be defended as perfect which is idle for the greater part — something for a few, nothing for the many, yielding to perdition, a partner in destruction? If more are not saved, then it will be not goodness but malice that is the more perfect. For as it is the work of goodness to save, so it is the work of malice not to save. And indeed, not saving while it saves a few, it will be more perfect in not helping than in helping. You cannot turn back on the Creator the failure of goodness toward all; for the one you hold to be a judge you show must be understood as a dispenser of goodness, if you like, not a lavisher of it, as you claim yours to be. So much do you prefer your god to the Creator on the ground of this goodness alone. If he professes this alone and wholly, no one should have lacked it. 2 But I do not now wish to convict Marcion's god of imperfect goodness from the greater number of those who perish: it is enough that the very ones whom he saves, being found to have an imperfect salvation, show his goodness imperfect — saved, that is, as far as the soul, lost in the flesh, which with him does not rise again. Where does this halving of salvation come from, if not from a failure of goodness? What would have befitted perfect goodness more than to bring the whole man back to salvation — the whole man condemned by the Creator, the whole man chosen by the supremely good god? As far as I know, with him too it is the flesh that is baptized, the flesh that is taken away from marriage, the flesh that is butchered for confessing the name. And even if sins are imputed to the flesh, the soul's guilt comes first, and the leadership in fault is to be ascribed rather to the soul, which the flesh attends in the role of servant. In short, flesh without a soul does not sin at all. So in this too his goodness is unjust and therefore imperfect, abandoning to destruction the more innocent substance, which offends by obedience, not by choice. Though his Christ did not put on its reality, as your heresy has decided, he was nevertheless willing to take on its likeness; the very fact that he feigned it shows that he owed it something. And what is man but flesh, since it was the bodily material, not the soul, that received the name of man from its author? “And God made man,” it says, “clay from the earth” — not soul, for the soul came from the breath — “and man became a living soul.” Who? Surely the one made of clay. “And God placed man in paradise”: what he formed, not what he breathed; he who is now flesh, not he who is soul. 3 If this is so, with what face will you claim the title of perfect goodness for one whose goodness has failed not merely in a particular part of the man to be freed but in what belongs to him as a whole? If that is full grace and solid mercy which saves the soul alone, this present life gives more, which we enjoy whole and entire. Besides, to rise in part will be to be penalized, not freed. This too belonged to perfect goodness: that man, once freed into faith in the supremely good god, should at once be taken out of the dwelling and dominion of the fierce god. But as it is, Marcionite, the pain of your flesh brings forth for you both little fevers and all the other thistles and thorns; and exposed not only to the Creator's thunderbolts, wars, plagues, and other blows but even to his scorpions, in what respect do you think yourself freed from his kingdom, when his flies still walk all over you? If you have been rescued for the future, why not from the present too, so as to be perfectly rescued? Our condition is different: we are with our author, our judge, the offended head of our race. You put forward only a good god; but you cannot show to be perfectly good one by whom you are not perfectly freed.

1 As regards the question of goodness, we have shown along these lines that it by no means befits God, being neither inborn nor rational nor perfect, but dishonest and unjust and unworthy of the very name of goodness; so that, in so far as it befits a god, it follows that he is no god who is preferred on the strength of such goodness — and not merely such goodness, but goodness alone. For now it is right to discuss this too: whether God is to be judged by goodness alone, the other attendant feelings and affections being denied — which the Marcionites drive away from their god onto the Creator. We, however, acknowledge them in the Creator as worthy of God, and on this ground too we will deny that he is God in whom not everything worthy of God is found. If he aimed to entitle with the name of Christ some god of Epicurus's school — such that “what is blessed and incorruptible causes trouble neither to itself nor to another” (for Marcion, chewing over this maxim, removed from him all severity and judicial power) — he should either have conceived a god wholly unmoved and insensible (and then what has he to do with Christ, who was troublesome to the Jews by his teaching and to himself by his suffering?), or else to have acknowledged him in the other emotions too (and then what has he to do with Epicurus, who is of no use either to him or to Christians?). 2 For see: by the very fact that he who before was quiet, who meanwhile did not trouble to make himself known by any work, after so long an age has been moved for man's salvation — surely by an act of will — was he not then shaken by a new will, so that he appears subject to the other emotions as well? For what will is there without the spur of desire? And care too will attend will. For who will will something and desire it and not care about it? Since, then, he both willed and desired man's salvation, he has already made trouble both for himself and for others, against the wishes of Epicurus, Marcion's counselor. For he has also set up an adversary for himself: that very thing against which he willed, desired, and cared — whether sin or death — and above all their arbiter and man's lord, the Creator. Moreover, nothing will proceed without rivalry that does not proceed without an adversary. In short, in willing, desiring, and caring to set man free, he is by that very fact already a rival both of the one from whom he frees him — freeing him, of course, for himself against him — and of the things from which he frees him, freeing him for other things. So rivalry must be attended by its officers against what it rivals: anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, bile, ill will, offense. If all these attend rivalry, and rivalry works to free man, and the freeing of man is the work of goodness, that goodness cannot exist without its endowments — that is, without the feelings and affections through which it is carried on against the Creator — otherwise it will be judged irrational on this ground too, if it lacks the feelings and affections that are its due. These things we will defend much more fully in the Creator's case, where they are also made a reproach against him.

1 But here it is enough to show that the god is most perverse in the very proclamation of his solitary goodness, for which they refuse to ascribe to him such movements of mind as they censure in the Creator. For if he neither rivals nor is angry nor condemns nor afflicts, since he does not even act as judge, I do not see how any system of moral rules can hold for him — and a fuller one at that. For how can it be that he lays down precepts he will not enforce, forbids sins he will not punish, because he will not judge, being a stranger, of course, to all feelings of severity and punishment? Why does he forbid the doing of what he does not avenge when done, when it would have been much more right not to forbid what he was not going to avenge than not to avenge what he had forbidden? Indeed he should have permitted it outright, since he would forbid without cause, not meaning to avenge. For even now what is forbidden without punishment is tacitly permitted. And surely he forbids the doing only of what he does not like to be done. He is utterly stupid, then, who is not offended by the doing of what he does not like to be done, since offense is the companion of frustrated will. Or if he is offended, he must be angry; if he is angry, he must avenge. For vengeance is the fruit of anger, anger the due of offense, and offense, as I said, the companion of frustrated will. But he does not avenge; therefore neither is he offended; if he is not offended, then neither is his will injured when what he did not will to be done is done; and sin is then done in accordance with his will, since what does not injure the will is not done against the will. 2 Or if it is to be the part of divine virtue or goodness to be unwilling that a thing be done and to forbid it, yet not to be moved if it is done, we reply that he was already moved who was unwilling, and that it is idle for him not to be moved at the deed who was moved against its being done, when he did not will that it be done; for by being unwilling he forbade it. And did he not also judge, in being unwilling that it be done and therefore forbidding it? For he judged that it should not be done, and by forbidding he pronounced it. So he too already judges. If it is unworthy of God to judge — or if it is worthy of God to judge only so far as merely to be unwilling and to forbid, not also to avenge what is done — yet nothing is so unworthy of God as not to carry out what he was unwilling and forbade to be done. First, because he owes to any sentence and law of his a sanction, for its authority and to make obedience necessary. Second, because what he was unwilling to have done, and by being unwilling forbade, must be the rival of the good; and it is more unworthy of God to spare evil than to punish it — above all for the supremely good God, who is not plainly good in any other way than as the rival of evil, so that he exercises his love of good by hatred of evil and fulfills his protection of good by overthrowing evil.

1 “But he plainly judges evil by being unwilling, and condemns it by forbidding; he lets it go, however, by not avenging, and acquits it by not punishing.” god, betrayer of truth, cheat of his own sentence! He is afraid to condemn what he condemns, afraid to hate what he does not love; he allows to be done what he does not allow to be done; he prefers to show what he does not want rather than to prove it. This will be an imaginary goodness, a discipline that is itself a phantom, perfunctory precepts, carefree sins. Hear, you sinners — and you who are not yet such, so that you may become so: a better god has been found, who is neither offended nor angry nor avenges; for whom no fire is cooked up in Gehenna, for whom no gnashing of teeth shudders in the outer darkness: he is only good. In short, he forbids sinning — but only in writing. It is up to you whether you choose to put your signature to obedience to him, so that you may seem to have paid honor to God; for he does not want fear. And so the Marcionites openly profess that they do not fear their god at all. “For a bad god,” they say, “will be feared, but a good one loved.” Fool, do you say that one whom you call Lord is not to be feared, when this is a name of power, and of power to be feared? And how will you love unless you fear not to love? Plainly he is neither your father, to whom both love for dutiful affection and fear for his power are due, nor your lawful master, so that you love him for his kindness and fear him for his discipline. It is kidnappers who are loved like that, and not feared as well. For only a just and regular dominion will be feared; an adulterous one can be loved, since it rests on seduction, not authority, on flattery, not power. And what is more flattering than not to punish sins? 2 Come then, you who do not fear God because he is good: why do you not boil over into every lust — the highest fruit of life, as far as I know, for all who do not fear God? Why do you not frequent the solemn pleasures of the raving circus, the savage arena, and the lascivious stage? Why, in persecutions too, when the incense box is held out, do you not at once gain your life by denial? “Far be it,” you say, “far be it!” Then you already fear sin, and by fearing it you have proved that he is feared who forbids sin. Unless, by the same perversity as your god's, you keep what you do not fear, just as he forbids what he does not avenge. It is still more foolish when, asked what will become of every sinner on that day, they answer that he will be cast away. Cast away where? If out of sight, is not this too done by a judgment? For he is judged fit to be cast away — and surely by a judgment of condemnation; unless the sinner is cast away for salvation, so that this too may suit the supremely good god! And what will being cast away be, but losing what he would have obtained if he had not been cast away — that is, salvation? So he will be cast away to the loss of salvation; and this cannot be decreed except by one who is angry and offended and punishes sin — that is, by a judge.

1 And what is the end of that castaway? “He will be seized,” they say, “by the Creator's fire.” Has their god, then, no element provided even for this purpose, by which he might banish his sinners, even without cruelty, rather than hand them over to the Creator? And what will the Creator do then? I suppose he will prepare them a Gehenna with extra sulphur, as for his blasphemers — unless perhaps, being a jealous God, he spares those who desert his adversary. god perverse at every point, everywhere irrational, empty in everything, and so no one at all! I see neither his state nor his condition nor his nature nor any order in him hold together — no, not even the very sacrament of his faith. For to what purpose does he too require baptism? If it is the remission of sins, how will he be seen to remit sins who is not seen to retain them? For if he retained them, he would judge. If it is release from death, how will he release from death who did not bind to death? For he would have condemned, if he had bound from the beginning. If it is man's regeneration, how does he regenerate who did not generate? For doing again does not suit one by whom a thing was not done even once. If it is the obtaining of the Holy Spirit, how will he grant the Spirit who did not first give the soul? For the Spirit is in a sense the complement of the soul. So he seals a man who has never been unsealed with him, washes a man who has never been defiled with him; and into this whole sacrament of salvation he plunges flesh that has no share in salvation? Not even a farmer will water land that will yield no fruit — unless he is as foolish as Marcion's god. Accordingly, when he lays on the weakest or most unworthy flesh so great a holiness, whether as burden or as glory, why does he either burden it when it is weak or adorn it when it is unworthy? Why does he not reward with salvation what he burdens or adorns? Why does he cheat it of the wages of its work, not repaying the flesh with salvation? Why does he even let the honor of holiness die in it?

1 And what can I say of the emptiness of his discipline, by which he sanctifies a substance that is holy already? With him the flesh is not baptized unless it is a virgin, a widow, or celibate, or has purchased baptism by divorce — as though even eunuchs were not born of marriage. Without doubt this rule will rest on the condemnation of marriage. Let us see whether it is just — not as though we meant to destroy the happiness of holiness, like certain Nicolaitans, champions of lust and luxury, but as those who know holiness without condemning marriage, and pursue it and prefer it, not as good over evil but as better over good. For we do not throw marriage away but lay it aside; we do not prescribe holiness but advise it, keeping both the good and the better, each pursuing them as he has strength; and we defend marriage openly only when it is attacked with hostility as filth, so as to destroy the Creator, who blessed marriage, as befits the honorable thing it is, for the increase of the human race, just as he blessed the whole of creation for sound and good uses. Foods will not be condemned because, sought out too elaborately, they give people over to gluttony; nor will clothes be accused because, bought too expensively, they swell into vanity. So neither will the things of marriage be spat upon because, poured out too intemperately, they flare into lust. There is a great difference between cause and fault, between a state and its excess. So it is not the institution of such things that must be rejected but their going off course, according to the judgment of their very institutor, who said both “Increase and multiply” and “Do not commit adultery” and “Do not covet your neighbor's wife,” and who punishes with death both incest and the sacrilegious and monstrous madness of lust toward males and toward beasts. 2 And even if a limit is now set to marrying — which among us, indeed, a spiritual reason defends on the authority of the Paraclete, prescribing one marriage in the faith — it will belong to the same one to fix the limit who once let it spread; he will gather who scattered; he will cut down the forest who planted it; he will reap the crop who sowed it; he will say, “It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none,” who also said long ago, “Increase and multiply”: the end belongs to him to whom the beginning also belonged. Yet the forest is not cut down as deserving blame, nor the crop reaped as deserving condemnation, but as obedient to its season. So too the business of marriage admits the axe and sickle of holiness not as evil but as ripe to be finished, as kept in reserve for holiness itself, to which, by giving way, it would give being. 3 So I will now say that Marcion's god, when he rejects marriage as evil and a traffic in unchastity, acts against the very holiness he seems to favor. For he roots out its material: if there are no marriages, there is no holiness. The witness of abstinence is void when the freedom to do otherwise is taken away, since certain things are proved by their opposites. Just as power is made perfect in weakness, so abstinence from marrying is recognized where marrying is possible. Who, in short, will be called abstinent when that from which one must abstain is taken away? What temperance in eating is there in famine? What rejection of ambition in poverty? What bridling of lust in castration? And further, to check completely the sowing of the human race — I doubt whether this too befits the supremely good god. For how will he want man saved whom he forbids to be born, by taking away that by which he is born? How will he have anyone on whom to set the seal of his goodness, when he does not allow him to exist? How will he love one whose origin he does not love? Perhaps he fears an overflow of offspring, for fear of having to work at freeing more, of making many heretics, or of having Marcionites of nobler birth, born of Marcionites. Will not the harshness of Pharaoh, the killer of newborns, be more humane? For he takes lives away, this one does not give them; he removes from life, this one does not admit to life. As to homicide there is no difference between them: under both a human being is killed — under the one already born, under the other yet to be born. You would owe gratitude, heretic god, if you existed, to the Creator's arrangement in uniting male and female; for surely your Marcion too was born of marriage. 4 Enough of this concerning Marcion's god, whom both the definitions of the one divinity and the conditions of its states confirm not to exist at all. But the course of the whole work will lead to this conclusion too. So if anyone thinks we have done too little, let him expect that it has been kept for its own time — as has the examination of the very Scriptures that Marcion uses.