Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Out of so many kinds of work, why on earth did he turn to fishing, to take Simon and the sons of Zebedee from that trade into the apostolate? — for so telling an act as this cannot look like a mere accident. To Peter, trembling at the huge catch of fish, he says, "Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching men." By this saying he was suggesting to them the understanding of a fulfilled prophecy: that he was the one who had proclaimed through Jeremiah, "Behold, I will send many fishermen, and they shall fish them" — namely, men. And so, leaving their boats, they followed him, recognizing him as the very one who had begun to do what he had announced beforehand. It would be a different matter if he had wanted to enroll a member of the boatmen's guild, meaning to have Marcion someday as an apostle-shipmaster. We have already shown against the Antitheses that Marcion gains nothing from his supposed contrast between Law and Gospel, since this contrast too was arranged by the Creator, and indeed was foretold in the promise of a new law, a new word, and a new covenant. But since he argues more pointedly, invoking some "sympathy," as he calls it — that is, fellow-suffering — and "agreement," that is, harmony, of his god, in the matter of the cleansing of the leper, it will be worth meeting him and first pointing out the force of the figurative Law, which in the case of forbidding contact with — indeed, banishing altogether from company — the leper, was prohibiting association with a man stained by the marks of sin, with such persons even the apostle forbids sharing food; for the stain of sins is thought to be contracted, as if by contagion, by anyone who mixes with a sinner. So then, the Lord, wanting the Law to be understood at a deeper level as signifying spiritual things through carnal ones — and by this very fact not destroying it but rather building it up higher, since he wanted it recognized in its truer bearing — touched the leper; and though a man might have been defiled by such contact, God certainly could not be defiled, being of course incapable of contamination. Thus no rule could be laid against him that he ought to have kept the Law and not touched an unclean person, since he was not the kind of being that contact with uncleanness could defile. I show this fits my Christ all the better by demonstrating how it fails to fit yours. For if he touched the leper as a rival of the Law, treating the Law's precept with contempt for defilement, how could he be defiled who had no body capable of being defiled? A phantom cannot be defiled. So then, if he could not be defiled because he was a phantom, his immunity from contamination is no longer a divine power but merely the emptiness of a phantom; nor can he be said to have despised defilement, when he had no substance for defilement to touch; and so he did not really set aside the Law either, having escaped uncleanness by the accident of being a phantom, not by any display of power. Now, if Elisha, a prophet of the Creator, cleansed one leper — Naaman the Syrian — out of so many lepers in Israel, this does nothing to establish a difference in Christ, as though this proves him better because, being a foreigner, he cleansed a leprous Israelite whom his own Lord had failed to cleanse; rather, the Syrian's easier cleansing signified, through the nations, the cleansing accomplished in the light of Christ for those disfigured by the seven blemishes of deadly sin — the worship of idols, blasphemy, murder, adultery, fornication, bearing false witness, and fraud. And that is why he washed seven times in the Jordan, once for each count, as it were, both to sing the expiation of a whole week, and because the power and fullness of a single washing was reserved for Christ alone, who would perform on earth, just as he compressed his word, so too his washing. For Marcion raises this objection too: Elisha needed material means, used water, and that seven times over, whereas Christ, using word alone, and that only once, produced the cure instantly. As though I would not dare claim the word itself for the Creator's own substance! No one is a better author of anything than the one who came first. It is simply incredible that the Creator's power should have needed a word to work the cure of a single ailment, when by a word it once brought forth the entire mass of the world. By what better mark is the Creator's Christ recognized than by the power of the word? But no — he must be a different Christ, because he did it differently from Elisha, because a Lord is more powerful than his servant! What do you mean to establish, Marcion, by claiming that things are done by servants the same way they are done by masters themselves? Are you not afraid this will turn to your own disgrace, if you deny that Christ belongs to the Creator on the grounds that he was more powerful than the Creator's servant — a Christ recognized as "greater" only by comparison with the smallness of Elisha, if indeed he is greater at all? For the healing is equal, though the operation differs. What did your Christ accomplish beyond what my Elisha did? Indeed, what great thing did your Christ's word accomplish, when it achieved no more than the Creator's river achieved? On these same lines other points follow too. As far as concerned turning aside human glory, he forbade the man to spread the news; but as far as concerned the Law's safeguarding, he ordered the proper procedure fulfilled: "Go, show yourself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded." For he was still upholding the figurative arguments of the Law he had prophesied, still in their images — images which signified that a man once a sinner, now suddenly cleansed by the word of God, ought to offer a gift to God at the temple: that is, prayer and thanksgiving offered in the church through Christ Jesus, the catholic priest of the Father. And so he added, "that it may be a testimony to you" — undoubtedly to bear witness that his coming was not meant to dissolve the Law, but rather to bring it to fulfillment, and to attest that he himself was the one foretold, the one destined to take up their diseases and infirmities. This fitting and proper interpretation of the testimony, Marcion, flatterer of his own Christ, tries to exclude under cover of gentleness and mildness. "He was good," Marcion says, "and also knew that everyone healed of leprosy would go on to perform the Law's customary rites, and that is why he gave the command." What then? Did he go on persevering in goodness — that is, in permitting the Law — or not? For if he did persevere in goodness, he will never be the destroyer of the Law, nor will he be reckoned the god of another, since the destruction of the Law through which another god is claimed has ceased. But if the good one did not persevere, since he afterward destroyed the Law, then he set up a false testimony earlier, at the healing of the leper; for he abandoned goodness the moment he destroyed the Law. He was already evil, then, once he became the overturner of the Law, if he was good while he was its indulger. Yet by the very fact that he indulged obedience to the Law, he confirmed the Law as good — for no one allows obedience to something evil. So then, on this reasoning he is evil either way: evil if he indulged obedience to an evil law, and worse if he came as the destroyer of a good one. Furthermore, if — as one who knew that everyone cleansed of leprosy would do this anyway — he therefore commanded the offering of the gift, he could equally well have not commanded something he knew would happen on its own regardless. His descent, then, was pointless, as though meant to destroy the Law, when he yields to those who observe it. And yet, if he knew their custom, he ought all the more, if this was his mission, to have moved to turn them away from it beforehand. Why did he not simply stay silent, letting the man obey the Law purely on his own initiative? Then, at least, he might in some sense be seen to have deferred to the man's own patience. But instead he adds his own authority, reinforced by the weight of testimony. Testimony to what, if not to the Law's validity? Certainly it makes no difference how he came to confirm the Law — whether out of goodness, or superfluity, or patience, or inconsistency — so long as I dislodge you, Marcion, from your position. Look: he commanded the Law to be fulfilled. However he commanded it, on the same grounds he could equally well have uttered that earlier saying too: "My arrival is not meant to overturn the Law, but rather to complete it." What reason, then, did you have for erasing from the Gospel what actually stands intact? For you have admitted that, out of goodness, he did what you deny he said. It follows, then, that he did say it, since he did do it — and that it is you, rather, who have torn the Lord's word out of the Gospel, not we who put it in.
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