Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Nothing is without an origin except God alone. Whatever precedence a thing holds in the order of things generally, it must hold that same precedence when those things come under review, so that its status may be established — since you cannot properly judge what a thing is like unless you are first certain that it is, and you cannot be certain that it is until you know where it comes from. And so, having arrived by the order of this little work at this next matter, I want to know, from Marcion, the origin of his apostle too — some novel disciple, pupil of no one else — I who for now believe nothing except that nothing should be believed rashly, and that whatever is believed without acknowledgment of its origin is believed rashly; and I who am most entitled to press this inquiry seriously, since I am assured of an apostle whom I cannot find on the roll of apostles in the Gospel. [2] Then, hearing afterward that he was recruited by the Lord, who was already at rest in the heavens, I take it either as a lapse of foresight — if Christ had not known beforehand that this man was necessary to him — or, with the apostolic office already arranged and dispatched to its work, he judged it necessary to add him on as an afterthought rather than by foresight, out of necessity, so to speak, rather than intention. So then, Pontic skipper, if you have never taken smuggled or illicit cargo aboard your ships, if you have never diverted or adulterated a single consignment, being — one supposes — all the more careful and trustworthy in the business of God, do please tell us under what seal you took the apostle Paul on board, who stamped him with the mark of his title, who handed him over to you, who loaded him aboard — so that you may confidently produce him, lest he turn out to belong to the one who can produce all the documentation of his apostleship. [3] "He himself," Marcion says, "professed himself an apostle, and indeed not from men nor through man, but through Jesus Christ." Certainly a man can profess himself whatever he likes; but his profession is only made good by someone else's authority. One man writes, another countersigns, another seals, another enters it in the record. No one is both his own advocate and his own witness. Besides, you have surely read that many will come saying, "I am the Christ." [4] If there can be one who falsely claims to be Christ, how much more one who falsely proclaims himself an apostle of Christ? I am still speaking here in the person of the disciple and the inquirer, so as, right from this point, to blunt your confidence — you who have no way to prove it — and to cover with shame your presumption — you who claim him for your own without any right to claim him. Let him be Christ, let him be an apostle — as belonging to another — so long as they are proved only by the documentation of the Creator. [5] For as for me, Genesis long ago promised me Paul too. Among those figures and prophetic blessings upon his sons, when Jacob turned to Benjamin, he said: "Benjamin is a ravening wolf; in the morning he will still be devouring, and at evening he will give out food." For he foresaw that Paul would arise from the tribe of Benjamin, a ravening wolf devouring in the morning — that is, in his early years ravaging the Lord's flock as a persecutor of the churches — and afterward, at evening, giving out food — that is, in his declining years feeding the sheep of Christ as teacher of the nations. [6] And indeed Saul's initial harshness in pursuing David, followed by his repentance and amends, repaying evil with good, foreshadowed nothing other than Paul in Saul according to the tribe, and Jesus in David according to the virgin's lineage. But if these figurative mysteries do not satisfy you, at any rate the Acts of the Apostles have handed down to me this very account of Paul's history — a book you too cannot deny. From it I show the apostle to have been a persecutor, called neither from men nor through man; from it I am led to believe in him myself; from it I evict you from any defense of him — nor am I troubled if someone objects, "So then you reject Paul as an apostle?" I speak no slander against the man I am defending. I deny him — in order to force you to prove him. [7] I deny him — in order to establish that he is mine. Or if you have regard for our faith, produce what supports it. If you appeal to your own, bring forward what underpins it. Either prove that what you believe exists, or, if you cannot prove it, how can you believe it? Or what sort of believer are you in one whose very existence is vouched for only by the one you say you disbelieve? [8] Well then, take from me an apostle too, just as you took a Christ — as much mine as Christ is. On these same lines we shall fight this battle too; at this very same step we shall raise our plea of prescription — namely, that an apostle who is denied to be the Creator's, indeed who is put forward against the Creator, must teach nothing, hold nothing, will nothing in accordance with the Creator, and above all must proclaim another god with as much consistency as he broke away from the Creator's law. For it is not plausible that in turning people from Judaism he would fail equally to show into whose god's faith he was turning them, since no one could cross over from the Creator, not knowing to whom he was meant to cross. [9] For either Christ had already revealed another god, in which case the apostle's testimony had to follow suit — or else he could not rightly be called the messenger of that god whom Christ himself had already made known, since it was not allowed to conceal what Christ had already disclosed by way of an apostle; or else Christ had revealed nothing of the kind about God, in which case it was all the more incumbent on the apostle to reveal it — since an apostle could no longer draw on any other source, and would surely not be believed at all if he too revealed nothing. And I have laid this groundwork so that from this point on I may declare that I will go on to prove that no other god was carried about by the apostle either, just as I have proved none was by Christ — from the very letters of Paul himself, which, precisely because of that, the heretic's gospel, already mutilated in its very number and shape, ought to have prejudged as tampered with.
2. ON THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.