Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So then, through all of this he shows whose god's wisdom he is speaking of among the perfect — namely the wisdom of the one who took away the wisdom of the wise and brought the prudence of the prudent to nothing, who made the wisdom of the world foolish, choosing what is foolish in it and arranging it for salvation. This, he says, is the wisdom that was hidden — hidden among the foolish and the lowly and the disreputable, hidden even under figures, allegories, and riddles — to be revealed only later in Christ, set as a light to the nations by the Creator who promised through the voice of Isaiah that he would lay open treasures invisible and hidden. [2] For that a god who did absolutely nothing should be thought to have hidden something in what he did — this is hardly credible. If he existed at all, he could not stay hidden, let alone any mysteries of his. The Creator, on the other hand, is himself as well known as his mysteries are — mysteries that ran their course openly enough among Israel, yet were shadowed over in their inner meanings, in which the wisdom of God lay concealed, to be recounted among the perfect in its own time, though set forth in God's purpose before the ages. [3] And whose are the ages, if not the Creator's? For if the ages are constructed from stretches of time, and every stretch of time is composed of days, months, and years — and these, the days, the months, the years, are in turn measured out by the Creator's sun, moon, and stars — set there by him for exactly this purpose ("And let them be," he says, "for signs of months and years") — then it is plain the ages too belong to the Creator, and whatever is said to have been purposed before the ages belongs to no one but the one to whom the ages themselves belong. [4] Let Marcion prove that his god has ages of his own; let him produce the very world in which the ages are to be reckoned, a kind of vessel of the times, and any signs or ordering of them. If he can show nothing, I come back to my question: why then did he purpose our glory before the ages belonging to the Creator? He might seem to have purposed it before the ages if he had then revealed it by introducing an age of his own. But since he does this only after nearly the whole span of the Creator's ages has already run out, he purposed it before the ages pointlessly — he ought rather to have purposed it within the ages, seeing that he was going to reveal it almost after the ages were over. [5] It is not in his character to have been in a hurry to purpose something and slow to reveal it. Both belong properly to the Creator: to have purposed before the ages and to have revealed at the end of the ages, since what he purposed and what he revealed he was, in the meantime, already administering through the whole span of the ages, in figures and riddles and allegories. But because the apostle adds, of our glory, that none of the rulers of this age knew it — for had they known, they would never have nailed the Lord of glory to the cross — from this the heretic argues that the rulers of this age crucified that Lord, meaning the Christ belonging to the other god, and so tries to make even this recoil onto the Creator. [6] But since we have already shown above in what sense our glory is to be reckoned as belonging to the Creator, it should already be settled beforehand that a thing which lay hidden with the Creator would rightly be unknown even to all the Creator's virtues and powers — for servants are not permitted to know the counsels of their masters, still less those apostate angels and that very prince of transgression, the devil, whom I would rather argue were kept all the more outside, on account of their guilt, from any knowledge of the Creator's dispositions. [7] But in fact it is not even my business to interpret the "rulers of this age" as the Creator's virtues and powers, since the apostle assigns ignorance to them, whereas Jesus — according to our own Gospel — was recognized even by the devil in the temptation, and according to the shared text the unclean spirit knew him to be the Holy One of God, knew he was called Jesus, and knew he had come for their destruction. Even the parable of the strong armed man, overpowered by one stronger who seized his goods, if taken by Marcion as referring to the Creator, means the Creator could no longer be said to be ignorant of the God of glory even while being overpowered by him — nor could he have nailed to the cross one against whom he had no power. It remains, then, that on my reading it is credible that the virtues and powers of the Creator crucified the Christ, the Lord of glory, knowingly — the very desperation and overflow of malice with which the most wicked slaves do not hesitate to murder their own masters. For it is written, in my text, that Satan entered into Judas. [8] But according to Marcion, the apostle does not, in this passage, allow ignorance to be assigned to the Creator's virtues in respect of the Lord of glory, precisely because he does not want those to be understood as "the rulers of this age." But if it does not seem that he spoke of spiritual rulers, then he spoke of worldly ones — of the ruling people, though certainly not among the nations, of its own archons, of King Herod, and of Pilate too, and of the Roman authority that presided as the greater power of this age still above them. [9] And so, even as the arguments of the opposing side are being demolished, our own exposition is being built up. But you still want our glory to belong to your god, and to have lain hidden with him. Then why does your god still lean on the same text as the apostle? What business has he with the sayings of the prophets, everywhere? "For who has known the mind of the Lord, and who has been his counselor?" That is Isaiah. What business has he even with the examples of our God? [10] For when Paul names himself a skilled master-builder, this, we discover, points to the man who uncovers God's own discipline, foretold by the Creator through Isaiah: "I will take away," he says, "from Judea, among other things, the wise master-builder." And was not Paul then destined to be taken away from Judea — that is, from Judaism — in order to be taken up into the building of Christianity, there to lay the one foundation, which is Christ? For the Creator says of this very thing through the same prophet, "Behold, I lay in the foundations of Zion a precious stone, a stone to be honored, and whoever believes in it shall not be put to shame." [11] Unless, that is, God was declaring himself a builder of some earthly work, rather than pointing to his own Christ, who was to be the foundation of those who believe in him — on which, according to what each man builds, sound doctrine or unsound, if his work is tested by fire, if his reward is repaid him by fire, that belongs to the Creator: for it is by fire that your building on top is judged — certainly the building on top of his own foundation, that is, of his own Christ. "Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's Spirit dwells in you?" If man, and the matter, and the workmanship, and the image, and the likeness, and the flesh from the earth, and the soul from the Creator's breath are all his, then Marcion's god dwells entirely as a stranger in another's house — if we are not the Creator's temple. [12] But "if anyone destroys God's temple, he will be destroyed" — by the God of the temple, of course. Threaten an avenger, and you threaten the Creator. "Become fools, that you may become wise." Why? "For the wisdom of this world is folly with God." With which God? If nothing else has already prejudged this point in our favor, it is well that here too he adds proof: "for it stands written, He seizes the clever in their own cunning"; and once more, "The Lord is aware of the reasonings of the clever, that they come to nothing." [13] In short, it will already stand proven, on our showing, that he could not have used a single saying belonging to the very God he was supposed to be demolishing, unless that God were his teacher. "Therefore," he says, "let no one boast in man." And this too follows the Creator's own teaching: "Wretched is the man who puts his hope in man!" and, "It is better to trust in God than to trust in men" — and so too, better to boast in him.
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