Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] It has long since been settled, on the evidence of the propriety of the names, that it belongs to him who was first to announce his own Christ to mankind and first to rename him Jesus. It will equally be settled, then, how shameless it is of him to say that many will come in his own name, when that name is not properly his at all — unless Christ and Jesus belong to the Creator, to whom the propriety of the names actually pertains — and, further, to forbid that such men be received, when he himself is in exactly the same case, coming as he does under a borrowed name. For if it was not the Creator's business to put his disciples on guard beforehand against the lie of the Name — he who, by owning the name properly, owned its truth — then whose business was it? [2] They will come, after all, saying 'I am the Christ.' Will you receive them, you who have received one just like them? For he too came in his own name. Then what of it, that the very Lord of the names will himself come, the Christ and Jesus of the Creator? Will you reject him? How unjust, how unfair, how unworthy of your excellent god, that you should refuse this one who arrives under a name properly his own, while you welcomed that other fellow, whose borrowed name was never truly his! [3] Let us look, too, at what signs he attaches to the times. Wars, I take it, kingdom rising against kingdom and nation clashing with nation, along with pestilence, and famines, and earthquakes, and terrors, and portents from heaven — all things that fit a stern and savage god to perfection. When he adds that these things must needs happen, what does he show himself to be — the destroyer of the Creator's arrangements, or their guarantor? By confirming that the Creator's dispositions must be fulfilled — dispositions which, being as grim as they are savage, the Best God would have abolished rather than established, had they not been his own to begin with. [4] Before all this, moreover, he foretells persecutions and coming sufferings for them, leading to martyrdom, and so to salvation. Take the prophecy in Zechariah: 'The Lord Almighty,' he says, 'will shield them, and they will devour and sling them down with slingstones, and drink their blood like wine, and fill the bowls as at the altar; and the Lord will save them in that day like sheep, his people, because holy stones roll.' [5] And lest you think this is foretold of sufferings of the kind that so many wars waged by foreign nations held in store for them, look at the particulars. No one, in foretelling wars fought with regular weapons, counts stoning among them — stoning belongs rather to mob violence and unarmed riot. No one measures such rivers of blood in war by the capacity of sacrificial bowls, or likens it to the bloodshed of a single altar. No one calls 'sheep' men who fall armed in battle, themselves fighting with the same ferocity as their foes — 'sheep' fits rather those who, true to their own character and patience, give themselves up rather than avenge themselves, and so are butchered. [6] Note, finally: 'because holy stones roll' — not 'because soldiers fight.' For stones, and foundations too, are what we are built up out of — built, as Paul says, upon the foundation of the apostles, who were the holy stones set up as a stumbling-block for all, and so were rolled about. And here too this same one forbids his followers to premeditate what answer to give before the tribunals — he who put into Balaam's mouth what Balaam had not premeditated, indeed the very opposite of what he had premeditated, and who promised speech to Moses even as Moses pleaded slowness of tongue. And that same wisdom, which none could resist, he showed forth through Isaiah: 'This one will say, I am the Lord's, and will cry in the name of Jacob, and another will be inscribed in the name of Israel.' [7] For what is wiser, what harder to gainsay, than the plain, open confession made in the martyr's name, growing strong with God — which is exactly what 'Israel' means? Nor is it strange that he restrained forethought, he who had himself received from the Father the gift of speaking in due season: 'The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction, that I may know when I ought to speak a word' — unless, that is, Marcion makes his Christ answer to no father at all. [8] That persecutions would come from their own kinsmen, and that blasphemy against the Name would be preached out of sheer hatred, I need not go on to demonstrate again. But 'by your endurance,' he says, 'you will save your souls' — of which endurance, of course, the psalm says, 'The endurance of the just will not perish forever.' Since elsewhere too: 'Precious is the death of the just' — through endurance, no doubt, since Zechariah also says, 'and there will be a crown for those who have endured.' [9] But do not presume to argue that the apostles, as heralds of some other god, were harassed by the Jews; remember that the prophets too suffered the very same things at the Jews' hands, and yet were not apostles of any god other than the Creator. But then, having pointed out the time of the city's overthrow, when Jerusalem should begin to be hemmed about with armies, he goes on to relate the signs of the very last end — portents of sun and moon and stars, and on earth the anguish of nations bewildered as at the roar of the surging sea, in dread expectation of the evils overhanging the world. That the very powers of the heavens will be shaken, take from Joel: 'And I will give portents in heaven, and on earth blood and fire and vapor of smoke; the sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes.' You have Habakkuk too: 'The earth will be torn apart by rivers; the peoples will see you and writhe; you will scatter the waters as you go; the deep gave forth its voice, the height of its dread was lifted up; the sun and moon stood still in their place; your lightnings will go forth to give light, your flashing spear to give brightness; in your rebuke you will diminish the earth, and in your wrath you will bring down nations.' [10] The pronouncements of the Lord and of the prophets agree, I think, on the shaking of the world and the earth, of the elements and the nations. After this, what does the Lord say? 'And then shall they behold the Son of man arriving amid the clouds, clothed in great power.' 'But when these things begin to happen, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near' — namely, at the time of the very kingdom to which the parable that follows refers. [11] 'So you too, when you see all these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is near.' This will be the great and glorious day of the Lord, when the Son of man comes from the heavens, according to Daniel: 'Behold, one coming with the clouds of heaven like a son of man,' and so forth — 'and royal power was given to him,' the very power that in the parable he goes off to seek, leaving money with his servants to trade with; and 'all the nations,' which the Father had promised him in the psalm: 'Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance' — 'and all glory serving him, and his power everlasting, which will not be taken away, and his kingdom, which will not be destroyed' — since in it they neither die nor marry, but are as the angels. [12] Of this same coming of the Son of man, and its fruit, we read in Habakkuk: 'You went forth for the salvation of your people, to save your anointed' — namely those who will then rise up and lift their heads, redeemed at the time of the kingdom. Since, then, these promises fit the case just as well as those shakings and terrors do — by the very consonance of the prophetic and dominical pronouncements — you will find no way here to draw a line, crediting the convulsions to the Creator, as though he were some god of savagery whom the Best God ought never to have permitted, let alone expected, while crediting the promises to the Best God, promises which the Creator, knowing nothing of him, could never have prophesied. Or if he did prophesy his own promises, in no way distinct from the promises of your Christ, then he stands on equal footing of freedom with your Best God, and your Christ will be found to promise no more than my Son of man does. [13] Trace the whole run of the gospel narrative, from the disciples' question down to the parable of the fig tree, and you will find it woven throughout in a single continuous sense clinging to the Son of man from beginning to end, so that he binds together in himself both the grim and the glad, both the convulsions and the promises — nor can you cut one part away from him. [14] For since the coming of one and the same Son of man is established between the two outcomes, the convulsions and the promises, it follows of necessity that to one and the same Son of man belong both the distress of the nations and the longing of the saints — he stands set in the middle as the common terminus for both outcomes, about to close one with his coming, the distress of the nations, and to open the other, the longing of the saints. So that, whether you grant the coming of the Son of man to my Christ — in which case you must assign him the evils which precede his coming, [15] you will also be forced to credit him with the blessings that arise from his coming — or whether you prefer him to be your Christ's, to whom you assign the blessings arising from his coming, you will likewise be forced to load onto him the evils that precede his coming. For the evils cling to the coming of the Son of man by preceding it, just as the blessings cling to it by following after. Ask yourself, then, which of your two Christs you will set up in the single person of this one Son of man, to whom both dispensations must be referred. Either you have given the Best Creator's character to the harsher, or you have given your harsh god the Creator's goodness. [16] Consider, in sum, the example in the parable itself: 'Consider the fig tree, together with the rest of the trees: once they put forth fruit, men recognize that summer is near; so you too, when you see these things happening, know that the kingdom of God is close at hand.' For if the fruiting of the little trees is a sign of the summer season, preceding it, then in just the same way the convulsions of the world are a foretoken of the kingdom, preceding it. Now every sign belongs to the very thing of which it is a sign, and every sign is imposed by the one to whom the thing signified belongs. [17] So then, if the convulsions are signs of the kingdom, just as the fruiting is a sign of summer, then the kingdom too belongs to the Creator, since the convulsions credited to him are the very signs of that kingdom. The Best God had, after all, foretold beforehand that these things — so dreadful, so terrible — must happen, foretold, to be sure, by the prophets and the Law; thus he was so far from destroying the Law and the Prophets that he confirms that what they had foretold must come to pass. [18] Further, he insists that heaven and earth will not pass away until all these things are accomplished. Which heaven and earth is this? If they belong to the Creator, then his elements will rightly hold out until his own order of things is worked out to the end; but if they belong to the Best God, I hardly see how heaven and earth could hold out to see fulfilled what a rival deity had decreed. If the Creator would tolerate that, then he is no jealous god after all. Let heaven and earth pass away now, if you like — for so their own Lord decreed: 'while my word abides forever' — for so Isaiah too had foretold. Let the disciples also be warned, lest at any time their hearts be weighed down with surfeiting and drunkenness and the cares of this life, and that day come upon them suddenly like a snare — meaning, of course, those forgetful of God amid the fullness and preoccupation of the world. This will be the warning of Moses. So far is it true that he alone will free men from the snare of that day who was the one who gave this same warning long before. [19] There were other places near Jerusalem for teaching, and places outside Jerusalem for withdrawing. And indeed by day he taught in the temple — he who through Hosea had foretold, 'In my temple they found me,' and there the argument was carried on with them. But toward night he would withdraw to the Mount of Olives. For so Zechariah had foreshown: 'And his feet will stand upon the Mount of Olives.' There were also hours proper to the audience. One had to gather at dawn, since through Isaiah, after saying, 'The Lord gives me a tongue of instruction,' he added, 'He wakens my ear morning by morning to hear.' If this is to dissolve the prophecies, what would it take to fulfill them?
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