Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So too, praising the centurion's faith — hardly surprising if he declared he had found no such faith even in Israel, to whom Israel's faith did not even belong. But indeed it could not yet belong to him either, being still too raw to be tested or compared — I might almost say, not yet existing at all. But why should he not have been allowed to use the example of another's faith? Because if that were the point, he would have said that such faith had never existed in Israel at all; but instead, saying that he ought to have found such faith in Israel — he who indeed had come for the very purpose of finding it, being of course the god and Christ of Israel — he was not mocking Israel's faith except as its exactor and pursuer. [2] A rival god, however, would rather have preferred to find such faith existing precisely in the one he had come chiefly to weaken and destroy, not to confirm. He also raised the widow's dead son to life. Not a new kind of proof — the prophets of the creator had produced this too; how much more the Son? [3] Indeed, up to that very moment Christ had introduced no other god, so much so that all the people gathered there ascribed the glory to the creator, exclaiming, "A great prophet has risen up in our midst," and, "God has visited his people." Which god? Surely the one whose people they were, and from whom their prophets came. And if they were glorifying the creator, while Christ — hearing and knowing it — did not correct them, even in the face of so great a proof, a raised corpse, they still honoring the creator — then without doubt either he was proclaiming no other god than the one he allowed to be honored in his own benefits and mighty works, or else what sense would it make for him to put up with people erring so long, when he had come precisely to cure their error? [4] But John is scandalized on hearing of Christ's mighty works, as if at another god's. Well, let me first work out the reason for the scandal, so as more easily to dismiss the heretics' scandal. Since the Lord of powers himself was already at work on earth by word and by the Father's spirit, and preaching, it had to happen that whatever share of the Holy Spirit, measured out on the prophetic scale, had been at work within John to make ready the Lord's paths, would now be drawn back out of John, dissolving, one might say, into the Lord as into its own full sum. [5] And so John, now a common man, one of the crowd, was indeed scandalized — but as a man, not as one hoping for or understanding another Christ, since he had no ground for such hope: Christ was teaching and doing nothing new. No one is in doubt about someone he knows does not exist; he neither hopes for him nor imagines him. But John was certain there was no god except the creator — even as a Jew, indeed as a prophet. Rather, he was, so to speak, hesitating more over whether the one he knew existed was in fact the very one now present. [6] It was from this fear, then, that John also said: "Are you the one who is coming, or are we to expect another?" — simply asking whether the very one he was expecting had now come. "Are you the one who comes," that is, who is to come, "or are we to expect another?" — that is, is the one we are expecting someone else, if you are not the one whose coming we expect? For he was hoping, as everyone supposed, that from the similarity of the proofs it might be that a prophet had meanwhile been sent, distinct from — that is, less than — the one actually expected to come, namely the Lord himself. And this indeed was John's scandal, that he doubted whether the very one they were expecting had already come, whom they ought to have recognized by the very works being proclaimed, since it was through those same works that the Lord announced himself to be recognized by John. [7] Since these things, then, stand established as proclaimed concerning the creator's Christ, as we have shown point by point, it would be quite perverse for Christ not to be understood as declaring himself the creator's Christ through the very deeds by which he was compelling people all the more to recognize the creator's Christ. Far more perverse still, if it is Christ — not John's Christ — who bears witness to John, confirming him as a prophet, indeed as more than that, an angel, even quoting scripture concerning him: "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way" — fittingly recalling, in line with the sense given above of John's scandal, this prophecy, so that by confirming that the forerunner John had already come, he might dissolve the difficulty behind that question, "Are you the one who comes, or are we to expect another?" For the forerunner having now discharged his office, the way of the Lord having been prepared, it was the one to whom the forerunner had ministered who was to be understood — [8] greater indeed than all born of women; yet not for that reason is he made subject to the one who will be least in the kingdom of God, as though the kingdom in which some lesser person will be greater than John belonged to a different god, or as though the John who is greater than all born of women belonged to a different god. For whether by "the least" he means someone else, out of humility, or himself, since he was regarded as less than John — everyone, of course, flocking to John in the wilderness rather than to Christ ("What did you go out into the wilderness to see?") — it fits the creator equally well both that John is greater than those born of women, and that Christ, or whoever the least one is, will be greater than John in the kingdom of that same creator, and greater than so great a prophet, precisely because he was not scandalized in Christ, which is what diminished John on that occasion. [9] We have already spoken of the forgiveness of sins. As for the argument from that sinful woman — that when she fastened kisses on the Lord's feet, drenched them with tears, wiped them with her hair, and anointed them with ointment, she was handling the reality of a solid body, not an empty phantom, and that the penitence of a sinner earned pardon according to the creator's own principle, which is accustomed to set penitence above sacrifice. But also, if the goad of penitence had come to her from faith, then it was through a penitence justified by faith that she heard from him, "Your faith has saved you" — from him who, through Habakkuk, had proclaimed, "The just shall live by his faith."
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