Tertullian's second book against Marcion argues that the Creator God of Genesis is both good and just, defending free will and divine justice as the answer to the problem of evil and the origin of idols, sacrifices, and law.
Book 2 of Against Marcion picks up where Book 1 left off: having argued in Book 1 that Marcion's alien 'better' god is no god at all, Tertullian now turns to positive theology, defending the Creator (the God of the Old Testament) as worthy of the name 'God' in his own right. He opens by explaining the two-part structure of the whole project � one book to demolish Marcion's rival god, the next to vindicate the Creator � and then works through the classic Marcionite indictment: if God is good, foreknowing, and powerful, how did evil and death enter the world through Adam? Tertullian's answer centers on free will, deliberately given to man as the necessary condition for man's being a worthy image of a rational, good God, so that responsibility for the Fall falls on man's choice, not God's nature.
From there the treatise unfolds as a running commentary defending the Creator's goodness and justice as inseparable, twin, and simultaneous rather than sequential or opposed � against Marcion's claim that the Old Testament God is merely a harsh, legalistic judge distinct from the New Testament God of love. Tertullian works through the Genesis creation account, the fashioning of Adam, the giving of the law, and a long sequence of Old Testament episodes (the bronze serpent, the golden cherubim, sacrifices, divorce, retaliation, the flood, Sodom, Nineveh, Hezekiah, Saul, David) to show that justice and mercy operate together throughout, and that apparent divine 'passions' (anger, jealousy, repentance) are figures of speech necessary for God's dealings with man rather than defects in the divine nature. The book closes by taking on Marcion's own list of contradictions (the Antitheses) directly, arguing that the qualities Marcion tries to split apart � good and severe, saving and destroying � belong together in one God.
Historically the work matters as one of the fullest surviving statements of orthodox theodicy from the pre-Nicene Latin church, and as a direct rebuttal, point by point, of the most influential rival Christian theology of the second century. Marcion's own writings do not survive independently; Tertullian's Adversus Marcionem (all five books) is a principal source through which Marcion's arguments and his edited, Pauline-only canon are known at all, making this text as valuable for reconstructing Marcionism as for its own defense of a single Creator God who is both just and good.
“He could not build his lie without first tearing down the truth.”
— Adversus Marcionem 2 — Chapter 1
“There is one sun only, my good man, that governs this world, and when you do not think so, it is still the best and most useful”
— Adversus Marcionem 2 — Chapter 2
“For reason without goodness is no reason, nor is goodness without reason any goodness”
— Adversus Marcionem 2 — Chapter 6
“Where the good stands, there the just stands too.”
— Adversus Marcionem 2 — Chapter 12
“God could not have entered into human dealings without taking on human feelings and human passions, through which he might temper the force of his majesty”
— Adversus Marcionem 2 — Chapter 27
Having spent Book 1 arguing that Marcion's alien 'better' god does not really exist, Tertullian uses Book 2 to positively defend the Creator God of Genesis as truly, fully God — both good and just at once. He answers the classic problem-of-evil objection by grounding it in human free will rather than any deficiency in God.
He argues that God gave man free power of choice because that freedom, not mere obedience, is what makes man a worthy rational image of a good and reasonable God. Since freedom necessarily allows the possibility of a wrong choice, the blame for the Fall belongs to man's use of that freedom, not to any failure of God's goodness, foreknowledge, or power.
Marcion pointed to Old Testament images like the bronze serpent and the cherubim on the Ark as contradictions of the law against graven images. Tertullian answers that these objects served entirely different, non-idolatrous purposes — healing and ornament rather than worship — so they never fall under the prohibition's actual rationale.
Yes, largely by rebuttal. Because Marcion's writings do not survive on their own, Tertullian's point-by-point answers, including his direct engagement with Marcion's list of 'Antitheses' in the closing chapters, are a major surviving window onto what Marcion actually argued.
He treats these as accommodated figures of speech necessary for describing God's dealings with human beings in terms they can grasp, not as literal passions that would make God changeable or imperfect.
The Antitheses were Marcion's own compiled list of contradictions between the Creator's character in the Old Testament and Christ's character in the New Testament, meant to prove they were different gods. Tertullian's final chapters argue instead that the paired qualities — good and severe, saving and destroying — belong together in a single divine nature.
Tertullian explicitly frames Book 1 and Book 2 as a matched pair: Book 1 tears down Marcion's rival god, and Book 2 builds up the case for the Creator's goodness and justice, before later books in the work take up Christ and the Gospel and Paul's letters as Marcion edited them.
It is a polemical theological treatise, written as a sustained point-by-point rebuttal addressed directly to Marcion and his followers, combining close scriptural exegesis with argumentative logic drawn from the philosophical vocabulary of goodness, justice, reason, and free will.
Ad Martyras · Ad Nationes 1 · Ad Nationes 2 · Adversus Marcionem 1 · Adversus Marcionem 3 · Adversus Marcionem 4 · Adversus Marcionem 5 · Adversus Praxean · Apologeticum · De Anima · De Baptismo · De Carne Christi