Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] My discussion of the preceding letter proceeded on the understanding that I would not go back over its title, being certain that I could revisit it elsewhere -- it being, after all, common to and identical in all the letters. That it does not, in fact, prescribe "health" to those he writes to, but rather "grace and peace," I need not say again. What has this destroyer of Judaism still to do with the Jewish manner of speech? For even today the Jews use the word "peace" as a greeting, and in times past they saluted one another so in the scriptures. But I understand that he was, in the performance of his own office, defending the preaching of the Creator: "How timely are the feet of those who preach good things, who preach peace." [2] For the one who preaches good things -- that is, the grace of God -- knew that peace was to be set before all else. Since, in announcing these things as coming from God our Father and the Lord Jesus, he uses names common to us as well, appropriate to our own confession too, I do not think it can be doubted which God is preached as Father and which Lord Jesus, once we attend to what accompanies the names and to whom they more properly belong. [3] First, then, I lay it down that the Father-Lord must be acknowledged as none other than the creator and founder both of man and of the universe: further, that the title "Lord" attaches to the Father precisely on account of power, a power which the Son also receives through the Father: and then, that "grace and peace" belong not only to him by whom they were preached, but to him who had been offended. For grace does not occur except toward an offense, nor peace except after a war. [4] Now the people, through transgression of the Law, and the whole race of men, through the suppression of nature, had thus both offended in sin and revolted against the Creator. But Marcion's god, being unknown, could not have been offended, and, knowing no anger, cannot give grace. What grace, then, from one never offended? What peace from one never rebelled against? [5] Paul says the cross of Christ is folly to those who are perishing, but the power and wisdom of God to those who are attaining salvation; and to show where this comes from, he goes on: "For scripture says, I shall bring to ruin the cleverness of the clever, and set aside the discernment of the shrewd." If these words belong to the Creator, and he reckons as folly the things pertaining to the cause of the cross, then both the cross and Christ through the cross will belong to the Creator, by whom what pertains to the cross was foretold. [6] Or if the Creator, out of rivalry, took away wisdom precisely so that the cross of Christ -- his rival's cross -- might be reckoned folly, how could a Creator have pronounced anything at all about the cross of a Christ not his own, whom he did not even know when he was prophesying? But further, why, under a Lord who is supremely good and of boundless mercy, do some ascribe salvation to themselves, believing the cross to be the power and wisdom of God, while others count it their ruin, reckoning the cross of Christ folly -- unless it belongs to the Creator to have fined some offense of both people and human race with the loss of wisdom and prudence? [7] This the following words confirm, when he says, "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" -- and here too he adds the reason: "Since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know the Lord, it pleased God, through the foolishness of the preaching, to save those who believe." But first I will settle the matter of "the world," since it is exactly here that the subtlest of heretics interpret "world" as meaning the world's own Lord, whereas we understand it to mean the man who is in the world, following the simple form of ordinary human speech, by which we very often put the container for the thing contained. The circus shouted, and the forum spoke, and the basilica roared -- meaning those who did business in these places. So then, since it was man, not God, who in his wisdom did not know God, whom he ought to have known -- the Jew in the wisdom of the scriptures, and every nation in the wisdom of its works -- for that reason the same God who had not been known in his own wisdom determined to strike back at the wisdom of men with foolishness, saving those who believe through the very preaching of the cross that is reckoned foolish. [8] "Since the Jews demand signs" -- they who ought already to have been certain about God -- "and the Greeks seek wisdom" -- setting up, that is, their own wisdom, not God's. But if it were a new god being preached, in what had the Jews sinned by demanding signs to believe in, or the Greeks by pursuing the wisdom in which they would rather believe? So too the very manner of the reward, dealt out to Jews and Greeks alike, confirms this God as jealous and as judge, since it is by a rewarding that is both jealous and judicial that he has made foolish the wisdom of the world. But if the causes belong to the one to whom the scriptures cited belong, then the apostle, discoursing about the Creator, teaches -- even though he was not recognized -- that it is precisely the Creator who must be recognized. [9] Again, in preaching Christ as "a stumbling-block to the Jews," he seals this with the Creator's own prophecy about him, spoken through Isaiah: "See, I am placing in Zion a stumbling-stone and an obstacle-rock." Now that Rock was Christ -- even Marcion preserves this. And what is "the foolishness of God, wiser than men," if not Christ's cross and his dying? What is "God's weakness, mightier than men," if not God's nativity and his taking of flesh? But if Christ was not truly born of a virgin, nor truly built up of flesh, and therefore did not truly suffer either cross or death, then there was nothing foolish and nothing weak in him; nor did God select "the world's foolish elements so as to put wisdom to shame," nor did God select "the world's feeble elements so as to shame what is strong," nor "its lowly, discounted, despised elements, the things that are not" -- that is, which are not truly -- "to confound the things that are," that is, the things that truly are. For nothing arranged by God is truly petty, ignoble, and contemptible -- only what comes from man is that. But with the Creator, even old things can be reckoned to folly and weakness and dishonor and smallness and contempt. [10] What is more foolish, what more weak, than God's demand for bloody sacrifices and reeking whole burnt offerings? What more weak than the cleansing of vessels and pallets? What more dishonorable than the disfigurement, in various ways, of flesh that already blushes to name it? What so humble as the imposing of a law of retaliation? What so contemptible as dietary restriction? The whole of the Old Testament, so far as I know, every heretic mocks. "For God selected the world's foolish elements so as to put wisdom to shame" -- Marcion's god does nothing of the kind, since he has no rivalry with which to refute the contrary by the contrary -- "so that no flesh should glory," so that, as it is written, "he who glories, let him glory in the Lord." In whom? Surely in him who gave this command -- unless it was the Creator who commanded that one should glory in Marcion's god.
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