Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] So neither can you sustain that thrust of yours toward a difference between two Christs — as though the Jewish Christ were destined by the Creator solely for a people to be gathered back from dispersion, while yours was granted by the Good God for the deliverance of all mankind — when, in the end, it turns out that Christians of the Creator existed before Marcion's, once all peoples had been called into his kingdom from the moment God began to reign from the wood of the cross, with no Cerdo yet in sight, let alone Marcion. [2] But once refuted on the calling of the nations, you now turn to proselytes. You ask which of the nations pass over to the Creator, since proselytes are named by the prophet separately, as a different and distinct category: 'Behold,' says Isaiah, 'proselytes shall come to me through me' — showing that even proselytes themselves were to come to God through Christ. And the nations — which is what we are — likewise had their own designation, hoping in Christ: 'And in his name,' he says, 'shall the nations hope.' [3] But proselytes, whom you would substitute into the prophecy of the nations, are not accustomed to hope in the name of Christ, but under the order of Moses, from which their whole institution derives. Besides, the drawing-in of the nations arose only in the last days. In the same passage Isaiah states: 'It will happen in the final days that the Lord's mountain shall be revealed' — that is, the loftiness of God — 'and the house of God upon the tops of the mountains' — that is, Christ, the catholic temple of God, in whom God is worshipped, set up above every eminence of powers and authorities — 'and all nations shall come to it, and many peoples shall go and say, Come, let us ascend to the Lord's mountain, to the house of Jacob's God, and he shall teach us his path, and in it we will walk; for out of Zion the law shall issue forth, and the Lord's word out of Jerusalem.' This will be the path of the new law — the gospel, the new word — found in Christ, not any longer in Moses. 'And he shall render judgment between the nations' — concerning their error, that is — 'and shall convict a great people' — the Jews and proselytes foremost among them — 'and their swords they shall hammer into plowshares, their spears into sickles' — that is, they will turn the instincts of harmful minds and hostile tongues and every kind of malice and blasphemy into pursuits of gentleness and peace — 'and nation shall not take up sword against nation' — the sword of discord, that is — 'nor shall they train for war any longer' — that is, practice enmities — so that here too you may learn that Christ was promised not as a warlord, but as a peacemaker. [4] Either deny these things were prophesied, when you see them plainly before your eyes, or deny they are fulfilled, when you read them — or, if you deny neither, then they must be fulfilled in the one of whom they were prophesied. Consider, further, the very entrance and course of the calling of the nations, coming to the God the Creator from the last days onward — not proselytes, whose recruitment belongs rather to the earliest days. For it was this very faith that the apostles introduced.
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