Tertullian's third book against Marcion argues, chapter by chapter from the creator's own scriptures, that the crucified, once-humble Jesus is the Christ the Hebrew prophets foretold, not a rival deity's bodiless phantom.
Book Three of Against Marcion picks up where Books One and Two left off: having already argued that there is only one God, the creator, Tertullian turns to Christ himself. Against the Pontic teacher Marcion, who held that Jesus was sent by a separate, higher "Good God" utterly unrelated to the creator-god of the Jews, Tertullian sets out to prove line by line that Jesus fulfills the creator's own prophetic scriptures and can therefore belong to no one else. He works chapter by chapter through the objections Marcion raised: why did Christ come without prior heralding, why was his body a mere phantom rather than real flesh, why does the name "Christ" and "Jesus" fit him, why did he suffer an accursed death on a tree, and why does he promise a kingdom the Jews never expected.
The argument unfolds as a running exegetical duel. Tertullian first accuses Marcion of borrowing the Jews' own mistake — reading only the prophecies of a glorious, warrior Messiah and missing the parallel, older strand foretelling a lowly, suffering one, the two together forming the "double dress" of a first and second coming. He then attacks Marcion's docetism (the claim that Christ's body was only apparent) as self-defeating: if the flesh was a lie, so was the death, and if the death was a lie, so is the resurrection, and the whole of Christian preaching collapses with it. From there he moves through the cross itself, reading Isaac's wood, Joseph's horns, Moses's outstretched hands and bronze serpent, and psalm 21's pierced hands and feet as long-laid figures of the crucifixion, and closes the book defending the heavenly kingdom promised to Christ's people as itself already foretold in the blessings of Jacob and Esau and the vision of Jacob's ladder.
Written in the early third century as part of a five-book polemic that is our fullest surviving window onto Marcionite Christianity, the work matters historically as a record of a live, high-stakes argument inside the second-century church over whether the Jewish scriptures belonged to the Christian story at all. Marcion's own writings are lost; Tertullian's rebuttal, quoting and paraphrasing them at length to refute them, is one of the main routes by which we know his positions. The text also preserves an early witness to messianic prophecy-reading (the servant-of-Isaiah and psalm-21 passages read as pointing to a suffering, then glorified, Christ) and, in its closing chapters, an explicit chiliast (thousand-year kingdom) eschatology and a report of a sky-city phenomenon seen over Judea, both windows onto the range of belief circulating in the pre-Nicene African church.
“We say that two conditions of Christ were shown by the prophets, foretelling as many comings of him: one in lowliness — the first, of course — when he was to be led like a sheep to slaughter, and like a lamb before its shearer without a voice, so opening not his mouth, not even comely to look at.”
— Adversus Marcionem 3 – Chapter 7
“For nothing has truly suffered that has not truly existed; but a phantom cannot truly suffer. The whole work of God is thus overturned.”
— Adversus Marcionem 3 – Chapter 8
“And so, first of all, Isaac — handed over by his own father to be a sacrifice, while he himself bore the wood meant for his own offering — already sketched in advance the fate of Christ, handed over as a sacrifice by the Father and bearing the timber of his own suffering.”
— Adversus Marcionem 3 – Chapter 18
“psalm twenty-one is amply sufficient, holding within it the entire suffering of Christ, who even there gave voice to his own coming glory: "They have bored through," it says, "my hands and my feet"”
— Adversus Marcionem 3 – Chapter 19
“We do indeed acknowledge that we have a kingdom pledged to us upon the earth, prior to heaven, though in a different mode of being”
— Adversus Marcionem 3 – Chapter 24
That Jesus Christ matches, in flesh, name, career, suffering, and promised kingdom, what the creator-god's own prophets already foretold, so he cannot belong to Marcion's separate, unrelated "Good God." Tertullian works through Marcion's specific objections one by one, from why Christ came unheralded to why he died on a cross, and answers each from Isaiah, the Psalms, and the Torah.
Marcion of Pontus taught that the vengeful creator-god of the Jewish scriptures was a different, lesser deity than the wholly good, previously unknown God who sent Christ. He rejected the Old Testament as scripture for Christians and held that Christ's body was not real flesh but only an appearance. Tertullian devotes this book to refuting both claims from the creator's own scriptures.
He argues it collapses the whole of Christian belief by chain reaction: if the flesh was unreal, the suffering was unreal, if the suffering was unreal the death was unreal, and if the death was unreal there was no genuine resurrection either, leaving faith "empty" and the apostles' preaching a lie. He calls this position self-refuting because Marcion's Christ borrows the name "Christ" and a bodily career while denying the substance that makes both meaningful.
He treats a series of figures typologically: Isaac carrying the wood for his own sacrifice, Joseph's horned blessing, Moses's outstretched arms during the battle with Amalek, the bronze serpent lifted on a pole, and psalm 21's pierced hands and feet are each read as a veiled prophecy of Christ's cross, deliberately obscure so as not to give the fact away too plainly in advance.
Because Marcion's Christ used those very names, which Tertullian says are tied to the creator's own dispensation (the anointing, the Hebrew associations) and therefore cannot honestly belong to an entirely separate, previously unknown god. He argues it would have been more consistent for a genuinely different god to invent different names rather than borrow the creator's.
Tertullian defends a real earthly-then-heavenly kingdom: after the resurrection, the saints will dwell for a thousand years in a divinely built Jerusalem descending from the sky, before being changed into angelic substance and carried into the heavenly kingdom proper. He argues this two-stage promise was already sketched in Jacob and Esau's blessings and Jacob's ladder, so Marcion cannot claim it as evidence of a brand-new god.
Yes. In Chapter 24 he reports, on the word of "pagan witnesses," that for forty mornings a city was seen suspended in the sky over Judea, its walls fading as the day advanced, which he takes as a sign confirming the promised heavenly Jerusalem.
Marcion's own writings do not survive, so Tertullian's detailed paraphrase and rebuttal of his positions, chapter by chapter, is one of the main sources scholars use to reconstruct what Marcion actually taught. The book also preserves an early, developed instance of Christian messianic prophecy-reading and an explicit pre-Nicene chiliastic (thousand-year kingdom) eschatology.
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