Against Marcion, Book 2

1 The occasion for revising this work — what happened to it I explained in the preface to the first little book — has also brought us this: that, in dealing with the two gods against Marcion, we give each its own title and volume according to the division of the material, defining the one as not existing at all and defending the other as worthily God, since it has pleased the man of Pontus to bring in the one and exclude the other. For he could not build his lie without demolishing the truth; he had to undermine one thing in order to build what he wanted. So builds the man who has no materials of his own. But the dispute should have concerned this alone: that the god who is set above the Creator is no one; so that, once the false god had been driven off by sure rules prescribing a divinity both unique and perfect, there would be no further question about the true God. As surely as it was established that he exists — and so too while it is not established that another exists — it would befit us to hold him without controversy, of whatever kind he is: to be adored rather than judged, to be won over rather than discussed. For what is more necessary for man than care for the true God, upon whom, so to speak, he had fallen, since there was no other god?

1 But as it is, the almighty God, the Lord and Founder of the universe, is put on trial — for this reason alone, I think: that he has been known from the beginning, that he has never lain hidden, that he has always shone forth, even before Romulus himself, let alone before Tiberius — except that he is unknown to the heretics alone, who put him on trial. They suppose that another god must be presumed for this reason: that they can more easily censure than deny the one who plainly exists, weighing God by the judgment of their own mind; just as if some blind man, or one with swimming eyes, wanted to presume another sun, milder and healthier, because he does not see the one he sees. There is one sun, man, which tempers this world: even when you do not think so, it is excellent and useful; and when it seems to you harsher and more hostile, or even dirtier and more corrupting, it is still true to its own reason. If you cannot perceive that reason, you could not have borne the rays of any other sun either, had there been one — and surely a greater one. For if you are blind toward the lower god, what would you be toward the higher? Why not rather spare your weakness and not stretch yourself into danger, since you have a God certain and undoubted, and by this very fact sufficiently seen, once you have first perceived this: that he is one whom you do not know except in part, the part in which he himself willed to be known? 2 But you do not deny God, as though you knew him; you discuss him, as not knowing him; indeed you even accuse him, as though you knew him — whom, if you knew him, you would not accuse, nor even discuss. Giving him the name, you deny the substance of the name, that is, the greatness, not acknowledging it to be as great as it is; for if man could have known it in every respect, it would not be greatness. Isaiah himself, already then foreseeing heretical hearts, says: “Who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or with whom did he take counsel, or who showed him the way of understanding and knowledge?” And the apostle agrees with him: “the depth of the riches and wisdom of God! How unsearchable are his judgments” — surely of God as judge — “and his ways past finding out” — surely the ways of understanding and knowledge, which no one showed him; unless perhaps these censors of divinity did, who say, “God should not have done so,” and “He should instead have done so” — as though anyone knew what is in God except the Spirit of God. But having the spirit of the world, not recognizing God through wisdom in the wisdom of God, they think themselves better counselors than God; since, as the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God, so the wisdom of God is foolishness with the world. But we know that the foolishness of God is wiser than men and the weakness of God stronger than men. And so God is greatest when to man he is small, best when to man he is not good, most one when to man he is two or more. 3 But if from the beginning man, being natural and not receiving the things of the Spirit, thought God's law foolishness, so that he neglected to keep it, and therefore, having no faith, even what he seemed to have was taken from him — the grace of paradise and familiarity with God, through which he would have known all the things of God, had he obeyed — what wonder if, returned to his own material and banished to the workhouse of tilling the earth, bent and stooping toward the earth in that very labor, he passed on to his whole race the spirit of the world taken from it, a race natural, that is, and heretical, not receiving the things of God? Or who will hesitate to call that very sin of Adam a heresy, since he committed it by choosing his own opinion rather than God's? Except that Adam never said to his potter, “You have not shaped me wisely.” He confessed that he had been led astray; he did not hide the one who led him astray. He was a very raw heretic. He disobeyed, yet he did not blaspheme his Creator nor censure his author, whom from his own beginning he had found good and excellent, and whom he himself, if you like, had made his judge.

1 In entering, then, on the examination of the known God, if it is asked in what condition he is known, we must begin from his works, which are prior to man, so that his goodness — discovered at once along with him, and thereafter established and laid down — may suggest to us some sense of how to understand the way the subsequent ordering of things turned out. And Marcion's disciples, recognizing the goodness of our God, can also acknowledge it as worthy of God under the same headings under which we showed it unworthy in their god. First, this very point: the material for his being acknowledged he did not find in another's possession, but made for himself out of his own. The first goodness of the Creator, then, is that by which God did not will to lie hidden forever — that is, that there should be nothing by which God might be known. For what is so good as the knowledge and enjoyment of God? For even though it did not yet appear that this was good, since there was not yet anything to which it could appear, yet God foreknew what good would appear, and therefore entrusted it to his supreme goodness, as the agent of the good that was to appear — a goodness surely not sudden, nor of an accidental or provoked impulse, as though it were to be dated from the moment it began to work. For if it itself set the beginning from the moment it began to work, it had no beginning itself when it made the beginning. And once the beginning had been made by it, from it was born the reckoning of times as well, for distinguishing and marking which the stars and heavenly lights were set in order: “For they will be,” it says, “for times and months and years.” So it had no time before time, since it made time, just as it had no beginning before the beginning, since it established the beginning. And so, lacking both the order of a beginning and the measure of time, it will be considered immeasurably old and endless, and cannot be thought sudden or accidental or provoked, having nothing from which to be dated in this way — that is, any kind of time. It must be presumed eternal, inborn in God and perpetual, and therefore worthy of God; and from this point it puts to shame the goodness of Marcion's god, which is later, I do not say than beginnings and times, but than the very malice of the Creator — if indeed malice could have been produced by goodness.

1 When, then, the goodness of God had provided man for knowing God, it added this too to its praise: that it first devised a dwelling for man, a very great structure, and afterwards a greater one, so that in a great dwelling, as in a lesser, he might practise and advance, and so be promoted from God's good, that is, the great, to his best, that is, the greater dwelling. For this good work it employs also the best of ministers, his Word: “My heart,” he says, “has poured forth the best word.” Let Marcion recognize from this the first best fruit — of the best tree, surely. The most ignorant of peasants has grafted a bad tree onto the good. But the shoot of blasphemy will not thrive; it will wither with its gardener, and so the nature of the good tree will bear witness to itself. Look, in sum, at what fruit the Word has borne: “And God said, Let it be, and it was made; and God saw that it was good” — not as though he did not know it was good until he saw it, but because it was good he looked on it, honoring, sealing, and approving the goodness of his works by the favor of his gaze. So too he blessed what he made well, so that the whole God might be commended to you, good both in speaking and in doing. The Word did not yet know how to speak ill, because it did not yet know how to do ill. We will see the causes that required even this of God. Meanwhile the world consisted of good things only, showing plainly in advance how much good was being prepared for him for whom all this was being prepared. 2 Who, in short, was worthy to inhabit God's works but his own image and likeness? Goodness accomplished this too, and indeed more actively: not by a word of command but by a familiar hand, with even a coaxing word sent first: “Let us make man in our image and likeness.” Goodness spoke; goodness formed from clay so great a substance of flesh, built out of one material with so many qualities; goodness breathed into him a soul, not dead but living; goodness set him over all things, to enjoy and to rule them, even to name them; goodness went further and added delights for man, so that, though possessing the whole world, he might dwell in its pleasanter part, being moved into paradise — even then from the world into the church. The same goodness provided a helper too, so that nothing might be less than good: “For it is not good,” it says, “for the man to be alone.” It knew that the sex of Mary, and afterwards of the church, would be of benefit to him. And even the law which you blame, which you twist into controversies, goodness imposed, taking thought for man so that he might cleave to God and not seem so much free as cast off, placed on a level with his servants, the other animals, which are left loose by God and free out of disdain; but so that man alone might glory that he alone had been worthy to receive a law from God, and that, as a rational animal, capable of understanding and knowledge, he might be held within a rational freedom too, subject to him who had subjected all things to him. And goodness likewise added counsel for keeping this law: “On the day you eat, you will certainly die.” For most kindly it showed the outcome of transgression, so that ignorance of the danger would not encourage neglect of obedience. Further, if there was reason for imposing the law, there followed also reason for keeping it, so that a penalty was attached to transgression — a penalty which he who foretold it nevertheless did not want to come about. Recognize, then, the goodness of our God, for the present at least up to this point, from his good works, his good blessings, his indulgences, his providences, and his good and kindly laws and warnings.

1 From here, then, on to all the questions — you dogs, whom the apostle drives outside, barking at the God of truth. These are the bones of argument you gnaw: “If God is good, and foreknows the future, and has power to avert evil, why did he allow man — his own image and likeness, indeed his own substance, by the origin of the soul — to fall away from obedience to the law into death, circumvented by the devil? For if he were good, and so unwilling that such a thing should happen, and foreknowing, and so not ignorant that it would happen, and powerful, and so able to prevent it, what could not happen under these three conditions of divine majesty would in no way have happened. But if it did happen, the opposite is established: God is to be believed neither good nor foreknowing nor powerful. For in so far as nothing of the kind would have happened if God were such — that is, good, foreknowing, and powerful — to that extent it happened because God is not such.” 2 To this we must first defend in the Creator the attributes that are called into doubt: I mean goodness, foreknowledge, and power. And I will not linger on this point, since Christ himself goes before us with the rule that proof is to be undertaken from works. The Creator's works testify to both his goodness, in that they are good, as we have shown, and his power, in that they are so great, and made moreover out of nothing. For even if they were made out of some matter, as some will have it, even so they were made out of nothing, since they were not what they are. In short, they are great in this way, by being good; and God is powerful in this way, in that all things are his — which is why he is called almighty. And what can I say of his foreknowledge, which has as many witnesses as it has made prophets? Yet what need is there to claim foreknowledge for the author of all things, who surely foreknew all things by arranging them and arranged them by foreknowing them? Certainly he foreknew the transgression itself; had he not foreknown it, he would not have enjoined caution against it under fear of death. 3 If, then, these faculties were in God, on account of which no evil either could or should have happened to humanity, and it nevertheless happened, let us look also at man's condition, to see whether it happened rather through it, since it could not have happened through God. I find that man was established by God free, master of his own choice and his own power; and I observe no image and likeness of God in him more than the form of such a state. For it is not by his face and bodily features, so varied in the human race, that he was modelled on the God who is uniform; but in that substance which he drew from God himself, that is, the soul, answering to the form of God, he was stamped with the freedom and power of his own choice. This state of his was confirmed by the very law that God then laid down. For a law would not be laid down for one who did not have in his power the obedience due to the law; nor again would the threat of death be attached to transgression, if contempt of the law were not also attributed to humanity as lying within the freedom of his choice. So too you will find in the Creator's later laws, as he sets before man good and evil, life and death. Nor would the whole order of discipline have been arranged through precepts, with God calling, threatening, and exhorting, except for man, free and willing both to obey and to despise.

1 But since it is already understood from this that we are building up man's free power of choice for this purpose — that what happened to him should be laid at his own door and not at God's — so that you too do not object at this point that he should not have been made this way, if the freedom and power of choice were going to prove fatal, I will first defend this too: that he should have been made this way; so that I may the more strongly commend both that he was so made and that he was made in a manner worthy of God, by showing the higher cause that led to his being made so. God's goodness and his reason will support this arrangement too, being in agreement in everything with our God. For neither is reason reason without goodness, nor goodness goodness without reason — except perhaps with Marcion's god, who is irrationally good, as we have shown. It was necessary that God be known: this surely is good and rational. It was necessary that there be something worthy to know God: what could be provided so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This too is without doubt good and rational. It was necessary, then, that the image and likeness of God be established with free choice and power of its own, so that this very thing — the freedom and power of choice — might be considered the image and likeness of God in it. To this end that substance was fitted to man which would be of this state: the breath of God, which is surely free and in its own power. And besides, how could it be that man, possessing the whole world, should not reign first of all in the possession of his own mind — lord of others, slave of himself? 2 You may recognize, then, God's goodness from his condescension and his reason from his arrangement. Let goodness alone now be credited with bestowing so much on man — that is, freedom of choice; let reason claim for itself the other part — the manner of establishing it. For God alone is good by nature. For he who has what he is without beginning has it not by being established but by nature. But man, who exists wholly by being established and who has a beginning, received with his beginning the form in which he was to exist; and so he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, not having it as his own to be good, since he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, according to the good one who established him, namely the maker of good things. So that man might then have the good as his own, emancipated to him by God, and that the good might become man's property and in a way his nature, there was assigned to him at his establishment — as a kind of scale-holder at the emancipation of the good from God — freedom and power of choice. This would cause the good to be performed by man spontaneously, as now his own, since the reason of goodness also required this: that it be exercised voluntarily, that is, out of freedom of choice, not favoring its establishment, not serving it. So man would at last be established as good if he were found good according to his establishment indeed, but now by his own will, as though by a property of nature; and likewise so that against evil too — for God certainly foresaw that as well — man might hold out the stronger, being free and in his own power. For if he lacked this right, so that he did even good not by will but by necessity, he would also be open to seizure by evil through the weakness of servitude, a slave to evil just as to good. So complete freedom of choice in both directions was granted him, so that as master of himself he might steadily meet both, freely keeping the good and freely avoiding the evil; since in any case it was necessary that man, placed under God's judgment, should make that judgment just by the merits of his own choice — a free choice, that is. Otherwise neither the reward of good nor that of evil could justly be weighed out to one who had been found good or evil by necessity and not by will. For this purpose the law too was established, not excluding but proving freedom, through obedience freely given or transgression freely committed. So freedom of choice lay open to either outcome. 3 If, then, both God's goodness and his reason are found in the freedom of choice granted to man, we must not set aside the first definition of goodness and reason, which must be established before any discussion, and prejudge from what happened afterwards that God should not have made man so, because things turned out otherwise than befitted God. Rather, having discerned that He should have made him so, we must examine the rest with that discernment kept intact. It is easy, however, for those who stumble at once at man's fall, before they have looked into his condition, to charge the author with what happened, because they have not examined the author's reason either. In short, God's goodness, observed from the beginning of his works, will persuade us that no evil could have come from God; and man's freedom, when reconsidered, will show that it is itself guilty of what it committed.

1 By this definition everything is kept safe for God: the nature of his goodness, the reason of his arrangement, and the fullness of his foreknowledge and power. You should, however, require of God also the utmost steadfastness and pre-eminent faithfulness in every arrangement he makes, so that you stop asking whether anything could have happened against God's will. For if you hold fast to God's steadfastness and faithfulness, which must be upheld by his good and rational arrangements, you will not be surprised either that God did not intervene against what he did not want to happen, in order to preserve what he did want. For if he had once granted man freedom and power of choice, and granted them worthily, as we have shown, he had surely granted them to be enjoyed, by the very authority of the arrangement — to be enjoyed, as far as it rested with him, according to himself, that is, according to God, that is, toward good (for who will allow anything against himself?); but as far as it rested with man, according to the movements of his own freedom (for who, having once granted someone the enjoyment of a thing, does not grant him to enjoy it according to his own mind and choice?). It followed, then, that God should stand back from the freedom he had once granted man — that is, keep within himself both his foreknowledge and his superior power, through which he could have intervened to prevent man, setting out to use his freedom badly, from falling into danger. For if he had intervened, he would have rescinded the freedom of choice that he had granted in reason and goodness. 2 In short, suppose he had intervened; suppose he had rescinded the freedom of choice, calling man back from the tree and keeping the cheating serpent itself from meeting the woman: would not Marcion exclaim, “futile, unstable, faithless lord, rescinding what he has established! Why had he granted free choice, if he intervenes? Why does he intervene, if he granted it?” Let him choose where to brand himself with error: in the establishing or in the rescinding. Would he not then have seemed the more deceived through lack of foreknowledge of the future, if he had stood in the way? And who would not have said that he had granted it as though not knowing how it would turn out? But even if he foreknew that man would use what he had been given badly, what is so worthy of God as steadfastness, as faithfulness to his arrangements, whatever they are? It was for man to see to it, if he did not rightly discharge what he had rightly received. He himself would be guilty before the law he refused to obey — not God. Or should the lawgiver himself cheat his own law by not allowing what it prescribed to be fulfilled? These speeches, which you would most fittingly have made against the Creator if he had obstructed man's free will out of the providence and power you demand, now whisper to yourself on the Creator's behalf: that he showed steadfastness and faithfulness in his arrangements, as being both rational and good.

1 For he had brought man forward only as far as living, not as far as living rightly — with regard, that is, to God and his law. So he himself had granted him to live, making him a living soul; but living rightly he had laid upon him as a charge, admonishing him to obey the law. Thus he who even now desires man restored to life, preferring the sinner's repentance to his death, proves that man was not established for death. As, then, God brought upon man a state of life, so man drew upon himself a state of death — and this not through weakness, any more than through ignorance, so that nothing might be imputed to the author. For although it was an angel who seduced him, yet the one seduced was free and in his own power; although it was an angel, yet the image and likeness of God was stronger than an angel; although it was an angel, yet the breath of God was nobler than the material spirit of which the angels consist — “who makes,” it says, “his angels spirits and his attendants a flame of fire” — since he would not have subjected the universe to man if man were too weak to rule it and not superior to the angels, to whom he subjected nothing of the kind. So neither would he have laid the weight of the law — if the law is heavy — on one too weak to bear it, nor have confronted with the sentence of death one whom he knew to be excusable on the ground of weakness. Finally, he would have made him weak not by the freedom and power of choice but rather by the lack of them. And indeed the same man, the same substance of soul, the same state as Adam's, the same freedom and power of choice makes a man victor today over the same devil, when it is exercised in obedience to the laws of God.

1 “Yet in any case,” you say, “the Creator's substance is found capable of sin, since the breath of God, that is, the soul, sinned in man, and the corruption of the portion cannot but be referred back to the original whole.” To answer this we must explain the nature of the soul. First of all we must hold to what the Greek Scripture marked in calling it “breath,” not “spirit.” For some who translate from the Greek, not reflecting on the difference or caring about the proper meaning of words, put “spirit” for “breath,” and so give the heretics occasion to stain the Spirit of God with sin, that is, God himself. And the question has already been seized upon. Understand, then, that breath is less than spirit, a little breeze from it, as it were; and though it comes from the spirit, it is not spirit. For a breeze too is thinner than wind, and though the breeze comes from the wind, it is not wind. One may even call the breath the image of the spirit. For this is why man is the image of God, that is, of spirit — for God is spirit. The breath, then, is the image of the spirit. Further, an image will not be equal to the reality in every respect. For it is one thing to be according to the reality, another to be the reality itself. So the breath too, being the image of the spirit, cannot so match the image of God that, because the reality — that is, the spirit, that is, God — is without sin, therefore the image — that is, the breath, that is, man — could not have committed sin. In this the image will be less than the reality and the breath inferior to the spirit: it has indeed those lineaments of God, in that it is immortal, free and master of its own choice, often foreknowing, rational, capable of understanding and knowledge; yet even in these it is an image and does not reach to the very power of divinity; and so neither does it reach to perfect freedom from sin, for this belongs to God alone, that is, to the reality, and this alone is not allowed to the image. For just as an image, though it expresses all the lineaments of the reality, yet lacks its very power, having no motion, so the soul, the image of the spirit, could not express its power alone, that is, the happiness of not sinning. Otherwise it would not be soul but spirit, and he who received a soul would not be man but God. 2 And besides, not everything that is God's will be held to be God, so that you should demand that his breath too be God, that is, free from sin, because it is God's breath. Nor would you, if you blew into a flute, make the flute a man, though you blew from your own soul — as God too blew from his own spirit. In short, since Scripture plainly says that God breathed into man's face and man became a living soul, not a life-giving spirit, it separated the soul from the condition of its maker. For the work must necessarily be other than the craftsman, that is, inferior to the craftsman. A pitcher made by a potter will not itself be a potter; so neither will the breath made by the spirit therefore be spirit. The very fact that the breath has been called soul — see whether it has not passed even from the condition of breath into some lesser quality. “So,” you say, “you have given the soul the weakness you denied above.” Clearly, when you require it to be equal to God, that is, immune from sin, I say it is weak; but when it is compared with an angel, I must defend it as stronger — the lord of the universe, whom angels now serve, who will even judge angels, if it stands firm in God's law, which at the beginning it refused to do. This very thing, then, the breath of God could commit: it could, but it should not. It was able to, through the thinness of its substance, as being breath, not spirit; it was bound not to, through the power of choice, as being free, not a slave; and there was the further warning against sinning under threat of death, by which the thinness of its substance might be propped up and the freedom of its decision guided. So the soul cannot now be seen to have sinned through what it has akin to God, that is, through the breath, but through what was added to its substance, that is, free choice — granted indeed by God with reason, but driven by man wherever he wished. If this is so, God's whole arrangement is cleared of the reproach of evil. For freedom of choice will cast its fault back not on the one by whom it was given but on the one by whom it was not managed as it should have been. What evil, in short, will you charge to the Creator? If man's sin — what is man's will not be God's, nor is he to be held the author of sin who is found to be its forbidder, indeed its condemner. If death is an evil, death too will bring odium not on the one who threatened it but on the one who despised it, as its author. For by despising it he made it — and it would surely not have come about had he not despised.

1 But suppose you transfer the indictment of evil from man to the devil, as the instigator of sin, so as to direct the blame in this way too at the Creator as the devil's author — “who makes his angels spirits.” Then what was made by God, that is, an angel, will belong to him who made it; but what was not made by God, that is, the devil — that is, the accuser — it remains that he made himself, by bringing an accusation against God, and a false one: first, that God had forbidden them to eat of every tree; then, as though they would not die if they ate; third, as though God had grudged them divinity. Where, then, did the malice of lying and deceiving men and of slandering God come from? Certainly not from God, who established this angel too as good, after the pattern of his good works. Indeed he is proclaimed the wisest of all before he became the devil — unless wisdom is an evil. And if you unroll the prophecy of Ezekiel, you will easily see that that angel was both good by his establishment and corrupted of his own accord. For in the person of the prince of Tyre it is said of the devil: “And the word of the Lord came to me, saying: Son of man, take up a lament over the prince of Tyre, and say: Thus says the Lord: You are the seal of the likeness” — he, that is, who broke the seal on the integrity of the image and likeness — “a crown of beauty” — this as to the most eminent of angels, an archangel, the wisest of all — “in the delights of the paradise of your God you were born” — for it was there that God had made the angels, in the second formation of the shapes of living creatures — “you were clothed with the finest stone: sardius, topaz, emerald, carbuncle, sapphire, jasper, ligure, agate, amethyst, chrysolite, beryl, onyx; and you filled your storehouses and your treasuries with gold. From the day you were created, when I set you with the cherub on the holy mountain of God, you were in the midst of the stones of fire. You were blameless in your days, from the day you were created, until your wounds were found; from the abundance of your trading you filled your storerooms, and you sinned,” and so on. 2 These words plainly belong to the rebuke of the angel, not properly to that prince; for no human being was born in the paradise of God, not even Adam himself, who was rather moved there; nor was any man set with the cherub on the holy mountain of God, that is, in the heavenly heights, from which the Lord too testifies that Satan fell; nor did he dwell among the stones of fire, among the jewelled rays of the burning stars, from which Satan was cast down like lightning. It was the very author of sin who was being pointed out in the person of a sinful man: once blameless from the day of his creation, created by God for good, as by the good creator of blameless creatures, adorned with all angelic glory and placed with God, the good with the good; but afterwards turned by himself to evil. “From the time,” it says, “your wounds appeared” — imputing to him, of course, those wounds with which he wounded man and led him away from obedience to God. And he sinned from the time he sowed sin, and so thereafter carried on the abundance of his trading, that is, of his malice — the tally of sins, namely — he too having been established, as a spirit, with free choice no less. For God would have ordered nothing close to himself without freedom of this kind. Yet by condemning him beforehand God testified that he had gone off course from the form of his establishment through the lust of a malice conceived of his own accord; and by measuring out a period of leave for his operations he carried out the reason of his goodness, postponing the devil's destruction by the same counsel as man's restoration. For he gave room for a contest, so that man, by the same freedom of choice by which he had fallen to the enemy, might crush him, proving that the fault was his own and not God's, and so might worthily recover salvation through victory; and that the devil might be punished more bitterly, defeated by the one he had crushed before; and that God might be found so much the more good, waiting for man to return more glorious to paradise, now from life, with leave to pluck the tree of life.

1 So until man's sin God was from the beginning only good; from then on a judge, and severe, and — as the Marcionites will have it — cruel. At once the woman is condemned to give birth in pain and to serve her husband — she who before had heard, without any sorrow, by way of blessing, of the increase of the race: “Only increase and multiply”; she who had been destined to be a helper to the man, not his servant. At once the earth too is cursed — but before it was blessed. At once thistles and thorns — but before grass and herbs and fruitful trees. At once sweat and toil for bread — but before, food from every tree free of labor and nourishment without care. From then on man is bound for the earth — but before he was taken from the earth; from then on for death — but before for life; from then on in garments of skin — but before naked without shame. So God's goodness came first, according to his nature; his severity afterwards, according to the cause. The one is inborn, the other incidental; the one his own, the other adapted; the one put forth, the other applied. For His nature should neither have kept his goodness idle, nor should the occasion have let his severity slip by in silence. The one God displayed for his own sake, the other for the occasion. 2 Now go on and accuse the judge's state too, as akin to evil — you who dreamed up another god, only good, because you cannot bear a judge; although we have shown that he too is either a judge or, if not a judge, then certainly the perverse and empty founder of a discipline that is not enforced, that is, not judged. But you who reject God as judge, without proving him not to be a judge, will surely have to accuse justice itself, which makes the judge, or else count it among the kinds of malice — that is, list injustice among the titles of goodness. For justice is evil only if injustice is good. Further, when you are compelled to declare injustice among the worst things, you are pressed by the same yoke to reckon justice among the best. For nothing that is the rival of evil is not good, just as nothing that is the rival of good is not evil. So as much as injustice is evil, so much is justice good. And it must be considered not merely a kind of goodness but its safeguard; for goodness, unless it is governed by justice so as to be just, will not be goodness, if it is unjust. For nothing unjust is good, and everything just is good.

1 So if the fellowship and harmony of goodness and justice cannot admit their separation, with what face will you set up the difference of two gods by separating them, reckoning a good god on one side and a just god on the other? Where the good is, there the just stands too. From the beginning, in short, the Creator was just as much as he was good; both went forth together. His goodness made the world; his justice regulated it — justice which, even when it judged that the world should be made of good things, judged with the counsel of goodness. It is the work of justice that a separation was pronounced between light and darkness, between day and night, between heaven and earth, between the upper and the lower water, between the gathering of the sea and the mass of dry land, between the greater and the lesser lights, those of day and of night, between male and female, between the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, between the world and paradise, between the animals born of water and those born of earth. As goodness conceived all things, so justice distinguished them. All of this was arranged and ordered by judgment. Every position, condition, effect, motion, state, rising, and setting of each of the elements is a judgment of the Creator — so that you should not think he is to be defined as judge only from the time evil began, and so darken justice with the cause of evil. For in these ways we have shown that justice came forth together with goodness, the author of all things, so that it too is to be considered inborn in God and natural, not incidental, since it has been found in the Lord as the arbiter of his works.

1 But when evil afterwards broke out, and from then on God's goodness began to deal with an adversary, that same justice of God took on another task as well: to direct goodness now in view of the opposition. So, setting aside the freedom by which God is good even unasked, goodness is weighed out according to each one's merits: offered to the worthy, refused to the unworthy, taken away from the ungrateful, and likewise avenged against all its rivals. So this whole work of justice is a management of goodness: in that it condemns by judging, punishes by condemning, and, as you put it, rages, it serves good, surely, not evil. In short, the fear of judgment contributes to good, not to evil. For it was not enough for the good to be commended by itself, now that it was laboring under an adversary. For even if it was commendable by itself, it was not also preservable, being now open to attack by the adversary, unless some power of fear presided, to compel even the unwilling to seek and guard the good. Otherwise, with so many allurements of evil attacking the good, who would seek what he could despise with impunity? Who would guard what he could lose without danger? You have read that the way of evil is broad and far more crowded: would not all slide into it, if nothing were feared on it? We shudder at the Creator's terrible threats, and even so are scarcely torn away from evil. What if he threatened nothing? 2 Will you call this justice evil, which does not favor evil? Will you deny that it is good, when it provides for the good? What sort of god would you want? What sort would suit the wicked? Under whom would sins rejoice? Whom would the devil mock? Would you judge that god good who could make man worse by making sin safe? Who is the author of good, except one who also requires it? Likewise, who is a stranger to evil, except one who is also its enemy? Who is its enemy, except one who also fights it? Who fights it, except one who also punishes it? So God is wholly good, since he is everything on behalf of the good. So, in short, he is almighty, because he is powerful both to help and to harm. Merely to do good is less, because such a one can do nothing but do good. With what confidence should I hope for good from such a one, if this is all he can do? How should I pursue the reward of innocence, if I do not also keep in view the penalty of guilt? I must distrust him, for fear that, unable to do both, he might reward neither side. So far is justice the very fullness of divinity, displaying God as perfect, both Father and Lord: Father in clemency, Lord in discipline; Father in gentle power, Lord in severe; Father to be loved dutifully, Lord to be feared necessarily; to be loved because he prefers mercy to sacrifice, to be feared because he does not want sin; to be loved because he prefers the sinner's repentance to his death, to be feared because he does not want sinners who still do not repent. Therefore the law lays down both: “You must love God,” and “You must fear God.” The one it set before the obedient, the other before the one who strays.

1 At every point the same God meets you: striking but also healing, killing but also making alive, humbling but also exalting, creating evils but also making peace — so that here too I may answer the heretics. “See,” they say, “he himself professes to be the creator of evils, when he says: I am he who creates evils.” Seizing on a word that is shared, which by its ambiguity confuses two kinds of evils — since both sins and punishments are called evils — they want him to be understood indiscriminately as the creator of evils, so that he may be declared the author of malice as well. We, however, drawing a distinction between the two forms, and separating the evils of sin from the evils of punishment, the evils of fault from the evils of penalty, assign to each part its own author: of the evils of sin and fault, the devil; of the evils of punishment and penalty, God the Creator; so that the former part is credited to malice and the latter to justice — the justice of a judgment that creates evils against the evils of sin. It is of these evils, then, that the Creator professes to be the author, the evils that befit a judge. They are indeed evils to those on whom they are repaid; but in their own right they are good, as being just, defending the good, and hostile to sins, and in this order worthy of God. Or else prove them unjust, so that you may prove they are to be credited to malice, that is, that they are evils of injustice; for if they belong to justice, they will no longer be evils but goods — evils only to the wicked, by whom even goods are condemned outright as evils. 2 Establish, then, that it was unjust that man, the willful despiser of the divine law, received in return what he had not wanted to do without; unjust that the malice of that age was struck down by rains, and later by fires; unjust that Egypt, most foul and superstitious, and moreover the oppressor of a people who were its guests, was struck with a tenfold chastisement. He hardens Pharaoh's heart — but the man had deserved to be delivered to destruction, who had already denied God, who had already so often proudly rebuffed his envoys, who had already added to the people's burden of labor; and finally, as an Egyptian, he had long been guilty before God of heathen idolatry, worshiping the ibis and the crocodile sooner than the living God. He gave up even his own people — but they were ungrateful. He sent bears against the boys too — but they were irreverent toward the prophet. The impudence of an age that owed modesty had to be punished.

1 First, then, look at the judge's justice; if its reason is established, then his severity too, and the means by which his severity runs its course, will be credited to reason and justice. And not to linger over more, plead the causes as well, if you would condemn the sentences; excuse the sins, if you would reject the judgments. Do not censure the judge; convict him of being a bad judge. For even if he exacted the sins of the fathers from the sons, the hardness of the people had compelled such remedies, so that, looking out at least for their descendants, they might obey the divine law. For who does not care more for his children's welfare than for his own? And if the blessing of the fathers was destined for their seed too, without any merit of the seed as yet, why should not the guilt of the fathers overflow onto the sons as well, so that both grace and offense might run through the whole race? — saving what was later to be decreed: that they would no longer say that the fathers had eaten a sour grape and the sons' teeth were set on edge; that is, that the father would not bear the son's sin nor the son the father's, but each would be guilty of his own sin; so that, once the hardness of the people had been tamed by the hardness of the law, justice would then judge not the race but persons. And yet, if you accept the true Gospel, you will learn to whom the sentence of him who repays the fathers' sins on the sons applies: to those, namely, who were of their own accord to call this sentence down on themselves: “His blood be upon our heads and on our children's.” So God's providence decreed for man what it had already heard.

1 Severity, then, is good because it is just, if the judge is good, that is, just. Likewise the other things are good through which the good work of good severity runs its course, whether anger or jealousy, without cruelty. For all these are owed to severity, as severity is owed to justice. And so the things that belong to a judge cannot be made a reproach to the judge, since they too are without fault, as the judge is. For what if you were to say that there must be a physician, but were to accuse his instruments of cutting and burning and amputating and binding, when a physician cannot exist without the instruments of his art? No — accuse the one who cuts badly, amputates at the wrong time, burns rashly, and so censure his instruments too as bad servants. It is just the same when you admit God as judge but destroy those movements and feelings through which he judges. 2 We learn about God from the prophets and from Christ, not from the philosophers nor from Epicurus. We who believe that God even lived on earth and took on the humility of human condition for the sake of human salvation are far from the opinion of those who hold that God cares about nothing. It is from there that a definition of this kind has come to the heretics too: “If God is angry and jealous and lifted up and embittered, then he will also be corrupted, then he will also die.” Well, it belongs to Christians to believe even that God died, and yet that he lives for ages of ages. Most foolish are those who prejudge divine things from human, so that, because passions of this kind are held in man to belong to a corruptible condition, they suppose them to be of the same state in God as well. Distinguish the substances and assign them their own feelings, as different as the substances require, though they seem to share names. For we read of God's right hand and eyes and feet, and yet they will not for that reason be compared with human ones because they share a name. As great as the difference will be between the divine body and the human under the same names of members, so great will be the difference between the divine mind and the human, even under the same names of feelings — feelings which the corruptibility of human substance makes corruptible in man, just as the incorruptibility of divine substance makes them incorruptible in God. 3 You certainly confess the Creator to be God? “Certainly,” you say. How, then, do you suppose anything human in God, and not everything divine? The one you do not deny to be God you confess not to be human, since by confessing him God you have surely prejudged that he differs from every quality of human conditions. Further, since you equally acknowledge that man was breathed by God into a living soul, not God by man, it is quite perverse to set human things in God rather than divine things in man, and to clothe God with man's image rather than man with God's. And so this must be considered the image of God in man: that the human mind has the same movements and feelings as God, though not such as God has; for according to their substance both their state and their outcome differ. In short, the opposite feelings — I mean gentleness, patience, mercy, and their very mother, goodness — why do you presume them to be divine? And yet we do not possess them perfectly, because God alone is perfect. So too those other kinds — I mean anger and exasperation — we do not undergo with the same happiness, because God alone is happy, by the property of incorruptibility. He will be angry, but not [shaken]; he will be embittered, but not endangered; he will be moved, but not overthrown. He must employ all things for the sake of all things, as many feelings as there are causes: anger because of the wicked, bile because of the ungrateful, jealousy because of the proud, and whatever is to the disadvantage of the wicked; so also mercy because of those who go astray, patience because of those who do not yet look back, generosity because of the deserving, and whatever the good need. All these he undergoes in his own manner, in which it befits him to undergo them — he on whose account man undergoes the same things, equally in his own manner.

1 These points, thus examined, show that the whole order of God as judge is the worker — and, to put it more worthily, the protector — of that universal and supreme goodness which the Marcionites refuse to acknowledge in the same God, as though it were set apart from judicial feelings and pure in its own state: the God who rains on the good and the evil and makes his sun rise on the just and the unjust — which the other god does not do at all. For although Marcion dared to erase from the gospel this testimony of Christ to the Creator, the world itself is inscribed with it, and it is read by every conscience. And this very patience of the Creator will serve for Marcion's condemnation — that patience which waits for the sinner's repentance rather than his death and prefers mercy to sacrifice; which turned away the destruction already decreed for the Ninevites, granted Hezekiah a span of life for his tears, and restored his kingdom to the tyrant of Babylon when he had repented. I mean that mercy which granted to the people the son of Saul, who was to die because of a vow; which released David with pardon when he confessed his sins against the house of Uriah; and which restored Israel itself as often as it judged it, and cherished it again as often as it rebuked it. Do not, then, look only at the judge; turn also to the examples of the supremely good. As you note when he avenges, consider when he pardons; set his gentleness against his austerity. When you have found both in the Creator, you will find in him also that for which you believe in another god. 2 Come, finally, to an inspection of his teachings, disciplines, precepts, and counsels. Perhaps you will say that these are also laid down by human laws. But before all the Lycurguses and Solons came Moses and God. There is no later age that does not receive from the first beginnings. At any rate, my Creator did not learn from your god to prescribe: “Do not kill, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not covet what is another's, honor father and mother,” and “You must love your neighbor as yourself.” To these principal counsels of innocence and chastity, of justice and piety, are added prescriptions of humanity as well: when every seventh year slaves are set free; when at the same season the land is left alone, making room for the needy; when even the ox that treads out the grain has the bonds around its mouth untied, for the fruit of its present labor — so that humanity, practised first on animals, might more easily be taught to bring relief to men.

1 But what good things of the law should I defend rather than those which the heresy has been eager to shake? Such as the rule of retaliation, which demands eye for eye, tooth for tooth, and bruise for bruise. It does not savor of a licence to inflict injury in turn, but looks to restraining violence altogether. To a people most hard and unfaithful toward God it would have seemed a long wait, or even incredible, to expect vindication from God, which was later to be proclaimed through the prophet: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord.” Meanwhile, therefore, the committing of injury was to be checked by fear of a requital that would meet it at once, and the licence to retaliate was to be a prohibition of provocation, so that wickedness might cease, made safe from itself: while the second blow is permitted, the first is deterred, and when the first is deterred, the second is not struck either — since in other respects too the fear of retaliation works more readily through a taste of the same suffering. Nothing is more bitter than to suffer the very thing you have done to others. 2 And if the law takes something away from food and declares unclean animals that were once blessed, understand the plan of exercising self-control, and recognize the reins put on that gluttony which, while eating the bread of angels, longed for the cucumbers and melons of the Egyptians. Recognize too that provision was made against gluttony's companions, lust and luxury, which generally cool when the belly is disciplined — for “the people ate and drank and rose up to play.” Likewise, so that the craving for money might also be quenched in part, where it pleads the necessity of food, the ambition for costly foods was taken away. Lastly, so that man might more easily be trained to fast for God, he was accustomed to few and unglamorous foods, so as not to go hungry for any of the more luxurious. The Creator is surely to be blamed for taking foods away from his own people rather than from the more ungrateful Marcionites! Nor let anyone blame the burdens of sacrifices and the fussy scrupulousness of rituals and offerings, as though God had desired such things for himself, when he so plainly cries out: “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?” and “Who has required these things from your hands?” Rather, let him perceive God's careful purpose, by which he wished to bind a people prone to idolatry and transgression to his own religion by duties of the kind in which the superstition of the world was carried on, so as to call them away from it — commanding that these things be done to himself, as though he desired them, so that they do not sin by performing them for images.

1 And in the very dealings of life and of human conduct, at home and abroad, down to the care of vessels, he made distinctions in every way, so that, as these legal disciplines met them everywhere, they might not for a single moment be free from regard for God. For what would make a man blessed more than this: “his will is in the law of the Lord, and in the law of the Lord he will meditate day and night”? This law was not promulgated by the hardness of its author but by the reason of supreme kindness, taming rather the hardness of the people and hewing into shape, by laborious duties, a faith still rough in obedience — to say nothing of the hidden meanings of the law, which is spiritual and prophetic and figurative in nearly all its matters. For the present it is enough that it simply bound man to God, so that no one should reject it but one who does not care to serve God. To aid this benefit — not burden — of the law, the same goodness of God also ordained the prophets, teaching things worthy of God: to remove wickedness from the soul, to learn to do good, to seek judgment, to judge for the orphan and do justice to the widow, to love inquiry, to shun contact with the wicked, to let the oppressed go free, to tear up unjust contracts, to break bread for the hungry, to bring the homeless into your house, if you see the naked to cover him, and not to despise the members of your own family; to keep the tongue from evil and the lips from speaking deceit; to turn from evil and do good; to seek peace and pursue it; to be angry and not sin, that is, not to persist in anger or rage; not to walk in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the pestilent. 2 But where, then? “Look how good and pleasant it is for brothers to dwell in unity,” meditating day and night in the law of the Lord, since it is good to trust in God rather than to trust in man, and to hope in God rather than to hope in man. For what reward has man with God? “And he will be like a tree planted by the channels of water, which will yield its fruit in its season, and its leaf will not fall, and whatever he does will prosper.” “But the innocent and pure in heart, who does not take the name of God in vain and does not swear deceitfully to his neighbor, he will receive a blessing from the Lord and mercy from God his savior.” “For the eyes of the Lord are on those who fear him, who hope in his mercy, to deliver their souls from death” — surely eternal death — “and to nourish them in famine” — surely of eternal life. “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, and the Lord will deliver them out of them all.” “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.” “The Lord keeps all their bones; not one of them will be broken.” “The Lord will redeem the souls of his servants.” These few passages we have brought in from the great Scriptures of the Creator, and nothing, I think, is now lacking to the testimony of a supremely good God, which his precepts of goodness and his promises sufficiently seal.

1 But these cuttlefish — in figure of whom the law also refused that fishy creature as food — as soon as they feel themselves exposed, spew out the ink of blasphemy and so scatter each person's attention just when it is closing in, flaunting and asserting things that would darken the shining goodness of the Creator. But even through these mists we will follow their wickedness and drag the devices of darkness into the light — devices which charge the Creator above all with that fraud and robbery of gold and silver which he commanded the Hebrews to commit against the Egyptians. Come, most unhappy heretic, I call on you yourself as arbiter: first hear the case on both sides, and then you will judge the author of the command. The Egyptians demand back from the Hebrews the vessels of gold and silver. The Hebrews in turn bring counter-claims, alleging that, in the name of the same fathers and on the evidence of the same document of Scripture, wages must be paid to them too for that servile labor: for bricks made, for cities and country houses built. What will you judge, you who have chosen the supremely good god? That the Hebrews must admit fraud, or the Egyptians compensation? For it is said that the case was argued in this way through envoys on both sides, the Egyptians demanding back the vessels and the Jews demanding back their labor. And the Egyptians, being in the wrong, gave up their claims; but today the Hebrews plead further against the Marcionites, denying that any quantity of gold and silver would be enough to compensate them, if the labor of six hundred thousand men over so many years were valued at even a single coin a day. Which is the greater claim: that of those demanding back vessels, or of those who built country houses and cities? Which, then, is greater: the Egyptians' complaint or the Hebrews' claim? If free men, forced into a workhouse, were to strike back at the Egyptians only with a suit for injuries — if only their overseers were to show before the judges' benches their backs torn by the insulting savagery of the lash — the court would have pronounced that satisfaction was due to the Hebrews not with a few dishes and cups, the property of a few rich men at most, but with the entire wealth of them all and a levy on the whole population. If, then, the Hebrews' cause is good, the Creator's cause too — that is, his command — is good, who both made the Egyptians generous without their knowing it and, at the time of the departure, settled accounts with his people by the slight comfort of a silent compensation. He plainly ordered less to be exacted than was owed: for the Egyptians should have given the Hebrews back their sons as well.

1 So too in other matters you reproach him with contradictory precepts, as fickle and unstable: forbidding work on the sabbath and yet commanding the ark to be carried around for eight days — that is, on a sabbath too — in the siege of the city of Jericho. For you do not look into the law of the sabbath either, which forbids human works, not divine. For “six days,” it says, “you must work and do all your works, but the seventh day is the sabbath to the Lord your God; you must not do any work on it.” What work? Surely your own. For it follows that he took away on the sabbath those works which he had assigned above to the six days — yours, that is, human and daily ones. But carrying the ark around cannot be thought either a daily work or a human one; it was rare and sacred, and, since it came at that time from God's own command, surely divine. What this itself signified I would explain, were it not tedious to unfold the figures in all the Creator's matters, which perhaps you do not even accept. But it is more telling if you are refuted from plain facts, by the simplicity of truth, not by ingenuity. So now there is a sure distinction: the sabbath forbids human works, not divine. And therefore the man who gathered sticks on the sabbath was put to death, for he had done his own work, which the law forbade; but those who carried the ark around on sabbaths did so with impunity, for they had carried out not their own work but God's, at his own command.

1 Likewise, in forbidding the making of a likeness of anything in heaven and on earth and in the waters, he also showed the reasons. For he adds: “Do not worship or serve them.” But the image of the bronze serpent, afterwards commanded to Moses by the Lord, did not belong under the heading of idolatry; it served to heal those who were being attacked by serpents — and I say nothing of the figure in the remedy. So too the golden cherubim and seraphim, a figurative model on the ark, were certainly a simple ornament, fitted to the stand; having reasons far different from the condition of idolatry for which likeness is forbidden, they do not seem to contradict the law forbidding likenesses, since they are not found in that state of likeness for which likeness is forbidden. 2 We have spoken of the rational institution of sacrifices, which called those duties away from idols to God. And if he afterwards cast them off again, saying, “What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?”, he wanted precisely this to be understood: that he had not required them for his own sake. “For I will not drink,” he says, “the blood of bulls”; as he says elsewhere too: “The eternal God will neither hunger nor thirst.” For although he looked with favor on Abel's offerings and gladly smelled Noah's burnt offerings, what pleasure is there in the entrails of sheep or in the smoke of burning victims? But the simple and God-fearing mind of those who offered to God what they had from God, both food and sweet savor, was counted as thanks before God, who did not require what was done but that for which it was done, namely the honor of God. If a client offers a rich man or a king, who wants for nothing, some little gift, however cheap, will the size and quality of the gift shame the rich man and king, or will the dutiful intent delight him? But if a client offers him gifts, whether of his own accord or even as prescribed in his turn, and observes the king's solemnities, yet not in good faith, nor with a pure heart, nor with full obedience in other matters too, does it not follow that the king or rich man would exclaim: “What to me is the multitude of your gifts? I am full,” and in saying “your solemnities and feast days and your sabbaths” — which, by celebrating them according to their own desire and not according to the religion of God, they had already made their own and not God's. So he showed that his rejection of the things he had prescribed to be performed was conditional and rational.

1 But if you would also have him understood as fickle in regard to persons, when he rejects those he once approved, or as improvident, when he approves those who are later to be rejected — as though he either condemned his own past judgments or did not know the future — yet nothing so befits one who is both good and a judge as to reject and to choose according to present merits. Saul is chosen, but not yet as a despiser of the prophet Samuel. Solomon is rejected, but only when already possessed by foreign women and enslaved to the idols of the Moabites and Sidonians. What should the Creator have done so as not to be censured by the Marcionites? Condemn in advance those still acting well, on account of sins to come? But it was not for a good God to condemn in advance those who did not yet deserve it. Or, on the other hand, not reject those now sinning, on account of their former good deeds? But it was not for a just judge to pardon crimes once the former good deeds had been cancelled. Or what man is without sin, so that God should always choose him and could never reject him? Or likewise, who is without any good work, so that God should always reject him and could never choose him? Show me one who is always good, and he will not be rejected; show me one who is always evil, and he will never be chosen. But if the same person, being in both states at different times, will be assessed in both by God, who is both good and judge, and who does not change his sentences out of fickleness or lack of foresight, but with the weightiest and most provident judgment gives to each time its merits.

1 So too you perversely interpret repentance in him, as though he repents out of fickleness or lack of foresight, or indeed from remembering a fault, because he said: “I repent that I made Saul king” — laying it down, of course, that repentance savors of confessing some bad deed or error. But not always. For the confession of repentance also occurs in regard to good deeds, to cast odium and reproach on one who has proved ungrateful for a kindness. So it was then declared by the Creator in order to load the blame on Saul personally. The Creator had not sinned when he took Saul into the kingship and enriched him with the Holy Spirit; for he had most worthily chosen one who was then the best — “such as there was not,” it says, “among the sons of Israel.” Nor had he failed to know that things would turn out so. For no one will put up with you ascribing lack of foresight to God, whom, since you do not deny him to be God, you confess to be also provident; for this is established as the very property of his divinity. But, as I said, he was loading Saul's evil deed by professing his own repentance; and since there was no fault in the choosing of Saul, it follows that this repentance is to be understood as reproachful rather than self-accusing. 2 “See,” you say, “I find it self-accusing in the case of the Ninevites, where the Scripture of Jonah says: And the Lord repented of the evil which he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it. As Jonah himself also says to God: This is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish, because I knew that you are merciful and compassionate, patient and abounding in mercy, repenting of evils.” Good, then, that he put first the title of the supremely good God: most patient, that is, toward the wicked, and most abundant in mercy and compassion toward those who acknowledge and bewail their sins, as the Ninevites then did. For if he who is such is supremely good, you will first have to concede this: that any concurrence with malice does not befit such a one, that is, the supremely good. And since Marcion too maintains that a good tree may not produce bad fruit either, and yet Scripture has named “evil,” which the supremely good does not admit, is there not some interpretation by which to understand those evils as being able to occur even in the supremely good? There is. We say, in short, that “evil” here signifies not what is to be referred to the Creator's nature, as though he were evil, but to his power, as judge; according to which he declared: “I am he who creates evils,” and “Look, I send evils upon you” — not sinful evils but avenging ones. We have sufficiently washed away their ill repute, as befitting a judge. And just as these, though called evils, are not censured in a judge nor by their name show him to be an evil judge, so too this “evil” must now be understood, which, counted among those judicial evils, befits the judge together with them. For among the Greeks too “evils” are sometimes used for afflictions and injuries, not for malignities, as in this passage. And so, if the Creator repented of this evil as though of a creature of his own — something, that is, to be rejected and judged a fault — yet here too no criminal act will be charged to the Creator, who had worthily and deservedly decreed that a most wicked city be destroyed. So what he had justly purposed, he had purposed not maliciously but from justice, not from malice; but he named the punishment itself “evil,” from the evil and the deserving of the suffering itself. 3 “Then,” you will say, “if you excuse the evil under the name of justice, since he had justly purposed destruction for the Ninevites, even so he is to be blamed, since he repented of a justice that surely should not be repented of.” No, I say: God will not repent of justice either; and it remains now to recognize what God's repentance is. For if man repents mostly from remembering a sin, and sometimes from the ingratitude that met some good work, it does not follow that God does likewise. For in so far as God neither commits evil nor condemns good, so far there is no room with him for repenting of either good or evil. The same Scripture defines this for you too, when Samuel says to Saul: “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from your hand today and will give it to your neighbor, who is better than you; and Israel will be split in two; and he will not turn nor repent, for he is not as a man, that he should repent.” This definition, then, establishes throughout another form of divine repentance, which is not to be understood, like human repentance, as coming from lack of foresight or fickleness or from any condemnation of a good or bad work. What, then, will be the manner of divine repentance? It is already shining out, if you do not refer it to human conditions. For it will be understood as nothing else than a simple change of a previous sentence, which may be admitted without blame even in a man, much more in God, whose every sentence is free from fault. For in Greek too the word for repentance is formed not from the confession of a sin but from a change of mind, which in God, as we have shown, comes about according to the encounter of changing circumstances.

1 Now, to dispose of everything of this kind, I will go on to interpret and clear up the other pettinesses, weaknesses, and incongruities, as you think them. God calls out: “Adam, where are you?” — not knowing, of course, where he was; and when Adam pleads the shame of his nakedness, God asks whether he has tasted of the tree — being uncertain, of course! On the contrary, he was neither uncertain of the deed nor ignorant of the place. Rather, it was fitting that the man hiding in the consciousness of his sin should be summoned to come out into the Lord's sight, not by the mere calling of his name but with some reproach, even then, for what he had done. For “Adam, where are you?” is not to be read in a simple, that is, a questioning tone, but in an emphatic, striking, and accusing one: “Adam, where are you!” — that is, you are lost, you are no longer here — so that the cry is one both of rebuke and of grief. Otherwise, from the eyes of him who holds the whole world in his hand like a nest, whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is the earth, some corner of paradise had escaped, no doubt, so that he could not see Adam, wherever he was, before calling him — both hiding and eating of the forbidden fruit! The hare or the petty thief does not escape the watchman of your vineyard or garden; so think that God, sharper-eyed from on high, cannot miss anything beneath him. Fool, to turn up your nose at so great a proof of divine majesty and of human instruction! God asks as though uncertain so that here too, proving that man has free choice, he might give him room, in the matter of denial or confession, to confess his sin of his own accord and so to lighten it. So too he asks Cain where his brother is, as though he had not already heard Abel's blood crying out from the earth, so that Cain too might have the power, by the same power of choice, to deny his sin of his own accord and so to aggravate it. And so examples were established for us of confessing rather than denying sins, so that even then the gospel teaching might begin: “By your mouth you will be justified, and by your mouth you will be condemned.” 2 For although Adam was given over to death because of the state of the law, hope is kept safe for him, as the Lord says: “Look, Adam has become like one of us” — concerning, that is, man's future adoption into divinity. And then what follows? “And now, so that he does not reach out his hand, take from the tree of life, and live forever.” For by inserting “and now,” a word of present time, he shows that he has made a delay of life which is temporary and for the present. And so he cursed neither Adam himself nor Eve, as candidates for restoration, as relieved by their confession; but Cain he both cursed and, when Cain wished to atone for his sin by death, forbade him to die for the time being, since besides his crime he was burdened also with its denial. This, then, will be the ignorance of our God, which is feigned so that sinning man may not be ignorant of what he must do. Again, going down to Sodom and Gomorrah he says: “I will see whether they are doing altogether according to the cry that has come to me; and if not, that I may know” — here too, no doubt, uncertain from ignorance and eager to know! Or is the tone of the utterance necessary here too, expressing not a doubting but a threatening sense under the guise of inquiry? And if you also mock God's coming down, as though he could not carry out judgment without coming down, take care you do not strike your own god too. For he too came down to accomplish what he wished.

1 But God also swears. By Marcion's god, perhaps? “No,” he says, “much more idly: by himself.” What would you have him do, if no other god was within his knowledge — especially when he swears precisely that there is no other at all besides himself? Do you catch him, then, perjuring himself, or swearing idly? But he cannot be seen to have perjured himself who did not know, as you say, that another existed; for in swearing to what he knew, he swore truly and did not perjure himself. Nor does he swear idly that there is no other god. For he would swear idly only if there had been no one who believed in other gods — then the worshipers of images, and now the heretics too. He swears by himself, then, so that you might believe God, at least on oath, that there is no other god at all. You too, Marcion, compelled God to do this; for even then you were foreseen. Likewise, if he swears in his promises or threats, extorting a faith that was difficult in the beginning, nothing is unworthy of God that makes men believe God. 2 “God was petty enough then, even in his very ferocity, when, enraged against the people over the consecration of the calf, he demands of his servant Moses: Let me alone, and in indignant anger I will destroy them, and I will make you a great nation.” That is why you are accustomed to declare that Moses was better than his God, as the one who interceded — indeed, who prevented his anger: “For you must not do this,” he says, “or else spend me too along with them.” You too are to be pitied along with the people, you who do not recognize Christ, prefigured in the person of Moses, the intercessor with the Father, who offers his own life for the salvation of the people. But it is enough that for the present the people was granted to Moses in his own right. So that the servant might be able to ask this of the Lord, the Lord asked it of himself. For this reason he said to the servant, “Let me alone, and I will destroy them”: so that Moses, by asking and offering himself, would not let him alone; and so you might learn how much is allowed to a faithful man and a prophet with God.

1 Now, to dispose of the rest in brief — whatever else you collect as petty, weak, and unworthy, in order to destroy the Creator — I will give one simple and sure reason: God could not have entered into dealings with men unless he had taken on human feelings and affections, by which he might temper with humility the force of his majesty, which human smallness surely could not bear. This humility was unworthy of himself but necessary for man, and so already worthy of God, since nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. I should treat this more fully if I were dealing with pagans — although the encounter with heretics is not very different — but since you yourselves already believe that God has lived in the form and the whole order of the human condition, you will surely not require long persuading that God conformed himself to humanity; you are refuted by your own faith. For if God — and a loftier god at that — laid low the height of his majesty with such humility as even to be subjected to death, and the death of the cross, why should you not think that some pettinesses befitted our God too — more tolerable, at any rate, than the insults of the Jews and the cross and the tomb? Or are these the pettinesses which must from now on prejudge that Christ, exposed to human sufferings, belongs to that God whom you reproach with human traits? 2 For we too profess that Christ always acted in the name of God the Father; that it was he himself who lived among men from the beginning, he himself who met with the patriarchs and prophets: the Son of the Creator, his Word, whom by bringing him forth from himself he made his Son, and thereafter set over his whole arrangement and will, making him a little lower than the angels, as is written in his Scripture. By this lowering he was also appointed by the Father to those things which you censure as human, learning even from the beginning what he was to be at the end. It is he who comes down, he who asks, he who demands, he who swears. Moreover, even the gospel we hold in common will testify that the Father has been seen by no one, since Christ says: “No one has known the Father except the Son.” For he himself had declared in the Old Testament too: “No one will see God and live,” marking the Father as invisible, in whose authority and name he himself was God who was seen, the Son of God. But with us too Christ is received in the person of Christ, because in this way too he is ours. Whatever, then, you require as worthy of God will be found in the Father, invisible and unapproachable and serene, the god, so to speak, of the philosophers; but whatever you censure as unworthy will be attributed to the Son, who was seen and heard and met with, the Father's agent and minister, mingling in himself man and God — God in mighty works, man in weaknesses — so that he confers on man as much as he takes from God. 3 In short, the whole of what you count my God's disgrace is the sacrament of human salvation. God lived among men in human fashion so that man might be taught to act in divine fashion. God dealt with man as an equal so that man might be able to deal with God as an equal. God was found small so that man might become very great. You who disdain such a God — I do not know whether you believe, in faith, in a crucified God. How great, then, is your perversity toward both aspects of the Creator! You designate him a judge, and reproach as cruelty the judge's severity, which fits the merits of the cases; you demand a supremely good God, and belittle as pettiness his gentleness, which fits his kindness and has been conducted more humbly to suit the capacity of human smallness. Neither the great God pleases you nor the small, neither the judge nor the friend. What if the same things are now detected in yours as well? We have already shown in its own book that he too is a judge, and, being a judge, necessarily severe, and, being severe, of course cruel — if severity is cruel at all.

1 Now, regarding pettinesses and malignities and the other marks of censure, I too will make rival antitheses against Marcion. If my God did not know that there was another above him, your god too did not know at all that there was another below him. For what does that obscure Heraclitus say? “The way up and the way down are the same.” In short, if he had not been ignorant, he would have opposed him from the beginning. Sin and death, and the devil himself, the author of sin, and every evil which my God allowed to exist — this yours too allowed, since he allowed my God to allow it. Our God changed his sentences; just so did yours. For he who looked upon the human race so late changed that sentence by which for so long an age he did not look upon it. Our God repented of something; so did yours. For by at last turning his attention to man's salvation he repented of his former neglect, a repentance owed for a bad deed. And the neglect of human salvation will be counted a bad deed, amended with your god only by repentance. Our God commanded a fraud — but of gold and silver. But as much as man is more precious than gold and silver, so much more fraudulent is your god, who snatches man away from his lord and maker. Our God demands an eye for an eye; but yours, by forbidding retaliation, rather multiplies injury. For who will not strike again if he is not struck back? Our God did not know what sort of men he was choosing; neither, then, did yours: he would not have chosen Judas the traitor if he had known beforehand. If you say that the Creator lied somewhere, a far greater lie is in your Christ, whose body was not real. The cruelty of my God has consumed many; your god too surely consigns to destruction those he does not save. My God ordered someone to be killed; yours willed himself to be killed, no less a murderer of himself than of the one by whom he wished to be killed. And I will prove to Marcion that his god killed many: for he made the people murderers, who will surely perish — unless they did no wrong against Christ. But the ready strength of truth is content with few words; falsehood will need many.

1 For the rest, I would have cut down Marcion's Antitheses themselves at close quarters, if the defense of the Creator needed a more laborious demolition of them — the Creator who is both good and judge, according to examples of each aspect that befit God, as we have shown. But if both aspects, goodness and justice, make up the worthy fullness of the divinity of the Almighty, I can meanwhile beat back in brief the Antitheses, which are eager to distinguish Christ from the Creator by the qualities of their characters, or of their laws, or of their mighty works, and so to estrange them, as the supremely good from the judge, the gentle from the fierce, the saving from the destroying. For they rather join together those whom they set in differences that befit God. Take away Marcion's title and the aim and purpose of his work itself, and it would offer nothing other than a demonstration of one and the same God, supremely good and judge, since these two belong to God alone. For the very effort to set Christ against the Creator in those examples points rather to their unity. For so truly was the substance of divinity one and the same, good and severe, that by the same examples and in similar matters it chose to show its goodness where it had first shown its severity; and the difference of times will be no wonder, if God is afterwards milder because things have been tamed, who before was more austere because they were untamed. So by means of the Antitheses it can more easily be shown that the Creator's order was reformed by Christ rather than struck down, restored rather than excluded — especially since you set your god apart from every harsher emotion, and so surely from rivalry with the Creator too. For if so, how do the Antitheses show him rivalling the Creator in each particular? I will recognize, then, in this also, through them, my jealous God, who by his own right, with a good because rational jealousy, took care to bring to ripeness his works that at the beginning were still rough and woody; whose antitheses even his world itself will acknowledge, regulated as it is out of contrary elements, yet by the highest reason. Therefore, most thoughtless Marcion, you should have shown one god of light and another of darkness, so that you might more easily have persuaded us of one god of goodness and another of severity. But the antitheses will belong to him to whom they belong in the world too.