Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] In the fifteenth year of Tiberius's reign, Marcion proposes that he came down into Capernaum, a city of Galilee — down, of course, from the Creator's heaven, into which he had earlier come down from his own. What order of events was this, I ask, that he should first be described as descending from his own heaven into the Creator's, before descending further? For why should I not likewise take issue with details that fail to fill out the credibility of an orderly narrative — a narrative that keeps falling short in falsehood? Let it be said just this once, since we have already gone over elsewhere whether, in descending through the Creator's territory — and indeed against the Creator himself — he could have been admitted by him and from there sent on down into a land equally the Creator's own. [2] But now I press the matter of the rest of the order of this descent as well, holding him to having descended. He may, of course, simply have "appeared" wherever it is so stated. To appear suggests a sudden thing, out of the blue, striking the gaze of someone who has fixed his eyes without delay on what has appeared instantly. But "to descend," while it is happening, is something seen and comes gradually before the eyes. Being a deed, it also has a sequence of its own, and so it forces us to ask: in what manner, by what conveyance, with what force or pace, and at what time of day or night did he descend? Further, who saw him descending, who reported it, who vouched for a thing that not even the one vouching for it could easily be believed about? [3] It is disgraceful, in short, that Romulus had Proculus to affirm his ascent into heaven, while Christ, god's own descent from his heaven, found no one to announce it — as if Romulus too had not ascended by those same rungs of falsehood by which this Christ is said to have descended. But what business had he with Galilee at all, had he no connection to the Creator, to whom that region was destined, on the eve of his entry into his preaching? — as Isaiah says: "Drink this first, do it quickly, land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, and the rest along the sea and the Jordan, Galilee of the nations, people sitting in darkness, see a great light: you who dwell in the land, sitting in the shadow of death, a light has risen upon you." [4] And it fits well that even Marcion's god is claimed as an illuminator of the nations — all the more reason he should have descended from heaven, and, if he really did, descended into Pontus rather than into Galilee. Yet given that the location together with the deed of illumination both align with the prophecy at Christ's coming, we begin to recognize in him one already prophesied, showing at his first entrance that he came, not to dissolve the Law and the Prophets, but instead to bring them to fulfillment. This is exactly what Marcion erased, as though it were an addition. [5] But it will do him no good to deny that Christ said this, when Christ did it at once, in part. For he fulfilled the prophecy about the place straightaway: from heaven, at once to the synagogue. As the saying goes, "to what we came for" — go on then, Marcion, strike this too out of the gospel: "I was sent to none but the stray sheep belonging to Israel's house," and, "It is not fitting to take the bread meant for children and toss it to the dogs" — lest, of course, Christ should be seen to belong to Israel. [6] Deeds are enough for me in place of words. Strip away the sayings of my Christ; the facts will still speak. Look: he enters the synagogue — surely among the stray sheep belonging to Israel's house. Look: he offers the bread of his teaching first to the Israelites — surely as preferring the children. Look: he has not yet shared it with others — surely as passing over the dogs. Yet to whom would he sooner have shared it than to those outside the Creator's family, if he himself had not, first of all, belonged to the Creator? [7] And yet how could someone so sudden, so unknown, be admitted into the synagogue — someone about whom no one yet had any certainty of tribe, of people, of household, or even of Augustus's census, which the Roman archives keep as the most faithful witness of the Lord's birth? Surely they would have remembered — unless they knew him to be circumcised — that he ought not to be admitted into the holy of holies. But even granting that the synagogue was open to all comers, still no one was permitted to teach there unless first well known, examined, and approved — already commended for this very office beforehand, from some quarter or other, along with this charge. "And all were amazed at his teaching." Certainly. "Because," it says, "his word had authority" — not because he was teaching against the Law and the Prophets. Indeed, his divine utterance displayed both power and grace, building up rather than tearing down the substance of the Law and the Prophets. [8] Otherwise they would not have been amazed but appalled; they would not have marveled but would instantly have turned away from a destroyer of the Law and the Prophets, and, above all, from a herald of another god — since he could not have taught against the Law and the Prophets, and hence against the Creator, without first announcing a profession of a different and rival divinity. Since, then, Scripture gives no hint of any such thing, but only that it was the sheer power and authority of his speech that was the object of wonder, it more readily shows that he taught in accordance with the Creator — since it says nothing against it — than that he taught against the Creator, since it gives no indication of that at all. [9] And so he must either be acknowledged as belonging to the one according to whose teaching he taught, or judged a turncoat, if he taught in accordance with the very one against whom he had supposedly come. There in that same place the spirit of a demon cries out: "What have we to do with you, Jesus? You have come to destroy us: I know who you are, the Holy One of God." [10] Here I will not go back over whether this title too fit one who ought not even to be called Christ, supposing him unconnected to the Creator — that question of names has already been dealt with elsewhere. But now I ask how the demon came to know him by this name, when no proclamation had ever before gone out concerning him from the unknown god — a god mute up until that very moment — who could not even have had the demon attest him as holy, since he was unknown even to his own Creator, so to speak. And what, in any case, had he by then done to reveal his new divinity, by which he might be recognized as the Holy One of some other god? [11] Only this — that he had entered the synagogue, and had not, even by his speech, achieved anything against the Creator? Just as, then, he could in no way have recognized as Jesus and Holy One of God someone he did not know, so he recognized the one he did know. For the demon recalled that a prophet had foretold a Holy One of God, Jesus being the name in which God dwelt within the son of Nun. This, too, he had picked up from the angel, according to our own gospel: "Therefore that which will be born in you shall be called holy, the Son of God"; and, "You shall call his name Jesus." [12] But he also had, of course, some sense — demon though he was — of the Lord's own arrangement, more so than of one foreign and not yet properly known. For he began by saying, "What have we to do with you, Jesus?" — not as to a stranger, but to one to whom the spirits of the Creator belong. He did not, in fact, phrase it as “What business do you have with us?” but rather “What business do we have with you?” — bewailing his own state and reproaching his own lot; and seeing that lot clearly, he adds, "You have come to destroy us." [13] So thoroughly had he recognized Jesus as the son of a judge and avenger, a god who, if I may put it so, is stern — not that other, "supremely good" god who knows nothing of destroying and punishing. Why have we brought up this passage? To show that Jesus was recognized as none other, even by the demon, and confirmed by himself to be none other, than the Creator's own. But, you say, Jesus rebuked him. Certainly — as being tiresome, brash even in his very confession, and flattering him in a bad way; as though it were the summit of Christ's glory to have arrived for demons' ruin rather than for humanity's salvation — he who did not even want his disciples to boast of subduing spirits, but rather of the shining glory of salvation. [14] Or why did he rebuke him? If as one who had lied outright, then he was not Jesus at all, nor in any sense the Holy One of God; if as one who had lied only in part — in supposing him to be Jesus and Holy One of God, yes, but the Creator's — then he rebuked most unjustly one who was thinking exactly what he ought to have thought, and failing to suppose only what he had no way of knowing he ought to suppose: another Jesus, the Holy One of another god. [15] But if the rebuke has no more plausible explanation than the one we give, then the demon told no lie at all, and was not rebuked for a lie; for he indeed was Jesus, and the demon could have recognized no other besides him, and Jesus confirmed the very one the demon had recognized, in rebuking the demon for something other than a lie.
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