Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Right under this same mention of Abraham — where by the very sense of it he is refuted — Paul says, "I am still speaking after the manner of men: while we were children, we were kept under the elements of the world, in bondage to them." But that is not something said "after the manner of men." It is not a mere illustration; it is the plain truth. For what child, in the sense meant, is not subject to the elements of the world, which is exactly what the nations are — worshipping the elements as their god? No, the point is this: though he said "after the manner of men," nobody either despises or overrides a human will once it is made. [2] By the illustration of a standing human will he was defending the divine one. The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed — he did not say "seeds," as though of many, but "seed," as of one, which is Christ. Let Marcion's sponge blush for shame! Except that it does me a favor when I go back over what he wiped away, since it is a stronger thing to refute him from what he did keep. "But when the fullness of time came, God sent forth his son" — and this is the very God who is also the god of those times of which the age consists, who ordained the signs of the times too, sun, moon, star-clusters, and heavenly lights, who moreover both arranged and foretold the revelation of his son for the very end of the times: "In the last days the mountain of the Lord shall be made manifest," and, "afterward, in those closing days, I will pour a portion of my own spirit upon all flesh," as Joel has it. It belonged to him to have waited for the time to be fulfilled, whose it was also to set the end of time, as he set its beginning. [3] But that idle god of Marcion's, who does nothing and preaches nothing, and therefore has nothing to do with any time at all — what exactly did he do that made the time need fulfilling, and need waiting for its fulfillment? If he did nothing, it is quite absurd for him to have waited on the times of the Creator, as though serving him. And to what end did he send his son? "That he might redeem those who were under the law" — that is, to straighten out the crooked paths and to level the rugged ground, per Isaiah's wording, so that the old things might pass and new things arise, a fresh law issuing from Zion, the Lord's utterance going forth from Jerusalem, and "that sonship, as adopted heirs, might come to us" — meaning us, the nations, who were not sons before. [4] For indeed "he shall be a light of the nations, and in his name shall the nations hope." And so, to make it certain that we are sons of God, "he dispatched his spirit into our hearts, calling out, Abba, Father." For, he says, "afterward, in those closing days, I will pour a portion of my own spirit upon all flesh." And whose grace is that, if not the grace of the very one who promised it? [5] Who is the father, if not also the maker? After such riches, then, there was no going back to weak and beggarly elements. Now among the Romans too the "elements" are commonly the term for the first letters of the alphabet. So it was not by way of disparaging the elements of the world that he wanted to turn them away from God — even though, in saying earlier, "if then you serve those who by nature are not gods," he was rebuking the error of physical, that is natural, superstition, which treats the elements as God — yet even so he was not thereby impugning the God of the elements. What elements he means, he himself declares: namely, the first letters of the law. [6] "You observe days and months and seasons and years" — Sabbaths, I take it, and pure suppers and fasts and high days. For it was right to stop these things too, just as with circumcision, by the Creator's own decrees, who says through Isaiah, "Your new moons and Sabbaths and the great day I will not endure; my soul hates your fasting and your feast-days and your ceremonies"; and through Amos, "I hate, I have rejected your ceremonies, and I will not smell a savor in your assemblies"; likewise through Hosea, "I will put an end to all her gladness, her feasts, her new-moon rites, her rest-days, and every one of her solemn gatherings." [7] "So he erased," you say, "what he himself had established?" More than any other could — or if another did it, then that other only assisted the Creator's own sentence, taking away what the Creator himself had already condemned. But this is not the place to ask why the Creator broke his own laws. It is enough that I have shown he was going to break them, so as to confirm that the apostle has determined nothing against the Creator, since the very abolition of the law comes from the Creator himself. [8] But as it is common for thieves to drop some piece of the loot as evidence against them, so I believe Marcion likewise left behind this last mention of Abraham — nothing more deserving of removal, even though he did tamper with part of it. For if Abraham had two children, one by the slave woman and one by the free woman — but the one by the slave was born according to the flesh, while the one by the free woman was born through the promise: these things are allegorical, that is, they signify something else — for they are the two testaments, or the two showings-forth, as we find it interpreted: one from Mount Sinai, bearing children into bondage for the synagogue of the Jews according to the law; the other bearing children above every rule, authority, and power, and above every title that can be spoken, whether in the present age or in the age still to come — which is our mother, the holy church, to which we have been promised. That is why he adds, "For this reason, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman but of the free" — thereby plainly showing that the noble birth of Christianity, in the son of Abraham born of the free woman, holds the sacrament of allegory, just as the legal bondage of Judaism does in the son of the slave woman; and thus both dispositions belong to the one God in whom we find the outline of both dispositions drawn. [9] As for his saying, "With the freedom with which Christ has set us free" — does this not make Christ the manumitter who was also the master? For no one, not even Galba, manumits another man's slaves — he would sooner free his own. So freedom is granted by the one under whom there was the servitude of the law. And rightly so. It hardly suited one set free to be shackled once more beneath a servile yoke — the law's yoke, that is — seeing the psalm's words had by then reached fulfillment: "Let us break their bonds and cast their yoke from us," after "the rulers were gathered together in one against the Lord and against his Christ." [10] Having exempted them from servitude, then, he persisted in erasing the very mark of that servitude — circumcision — on the authority precisely of prophetic preaching, remembering what was said through Jeremiah, "Circumcise the foreskins of your hearts"; for Moses too said, "You shall circumcise your hardness of heart," that is, not the flesh. Now if it was a god other than the Creator who excluded circumcision, why does Paul also say that uncircumcision counts for nothing in Christ, exactly as circumcision does? [11] He ought to have preferred the rival practice to the one he was fighting against, if it really came from a god who was the rival of the god of circumcision. No — because both circumcision and uncircumcision were assigned to the one God, both alike became void in Christ, in favor of faith — that faith of which it was written, "And in his name shall the nations believe," that faith which, by saying it is made perfect through love, he thereby shows to belong to the Creator as well. For whether he speaks of the love that is toward God, that too is the Creator's: "You shall love God with your whole heart, and with your whole soul, and with your whole strength"; or of the love toward one's neighbor, "and your neighbor as yourself," that too is the Creator's. [12] "He who troubles you shall bear his judgment." From what god? From the good one? But he does not judge. From the Creator? But he will not condemn a champion of circumcision either. But if there is to be no judge but the Creator, then he will condemn none but the defenders of a law that he himself has ordained to cease. What now, if Paul also confirms the law in the part it deserves? "For the whole law," he says, "is fulfilled in you: You shall love your neighbor as yourself." [13] Or if he wants "fulfilled" to be understood as meaning it no longer needs fulfilling, then he does not want me to love my neighbor as myself, so that this too has ceased along with the law. But no — this precept must always be kept. So the Creator's law is even approved by the adversary, and it has come off from him not with loss but with gain, its whole sum reduced now to one single precept. But this fits no one better than its own author. And indeed, when he says, "Bear one another's burdens, and so you shall fulfill the law of Christ," if this cannot be done except by loving one's neighbor as oneself, it becomes clear that "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," through which is heard "Bear one another's burdens," is the law of Christ — which is the Creator's law — and so Christ belongs to the Creator, since the law of Christ is the Creator's law. [14] "Be not deceived, God is not mocked." Well, Marcion's god certainly can be mocked, seeing he knows neither anger nor vengeance. "For whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." This proclaims a God of requital and of judgment. "And let us not grow weary in well-doing," and "While we have time, let us do good." Deny that the Creator commanded the doing of good, and you have made different teachings belong to different divinities. But further, if Paul preaches requital, then from the same God comes both the harvest of corruption and the harvest of life. [15] "For in due season we shall reap," since Ecclesiastes too says, "There is a time for everything." But as for me, servant of the Creator, the world has been crucified to me — though not the god of the world — and I to the world, though not to the god of the world. For he set "the world" in terms of its manner of life, and in renouncing that, we are mutually transfixed and die to one another. He calls them persecutors of Christ. And when he adds that he bears the marks of Christ in his own body — surely bodily marks are meant — he has confessed a flesh of Christ that is not putative but real and solid, since it is bodily marks of it that he shows.
5. On the First Epistle to the Corinthians.