Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Here now, when he brings up interest, "And if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you?" — run through what follows in Ezekiel about that same just man: "His money," he says, "he did not give at interest, and what has been excess he will not take" — that is, the surplus of interest, which is usury. So it was arranged first that he should root out the fruit of usury, so as more easily to accustom man to usury itself, in case, by losing it, he might learn to give up the profit he had grown used to. [2] For we say this was the law's work, making provision for the gospel. It was shaping the faith of certain people then, still stammering under the earliest precepts of a kindness only gradually being formed toward the polished perfection of Christian discipline. For above too: "and you shall return the pledge to the debtor" — surely if he is not solvent, since the pledge must certainly be restored to one who is about to pay: could a mere man have written that? [3] Much more plainly in Deuteronomy: "You shall not sleep upon his pledge; you shall by all means return to him his cloak by sunset, and he will sleep in his own cloak." Even clearer above: "You shall release every debt that your neighbor owes you, and you shall not demand it back from your brother, because the release of the Lord your God has been proclaimed." [4] Further, when he orders a debt to be released — surely to one who is not going to repay it (it is even more when, though he is going to repay it, he forbids demanding it back) — what else does he teach but that we should lend to one who will not repay, since he attached such a penalty to interest itself? "And you will be sons of God." Nothing more shameless — if that god is going to make us his sons who forbade us to make sons for ourselves, by abolishing marriage! How is he going to enroll his own people under a name he has already erased? [5] A eunuch cannot possibly be my father, seeing above all that I share one father with the whole of creation. For he is as much the father of all who is the maker of the universe, as the other is a eunuch, maker of nothing. And had the creator not paired man and woman together, had he further declined to grant offspring to every kind of animal besides, I would still have been his even before paradise, before the sin, before the exile, before the two became one. I was made a son afresh the very moment he brought me forth with his own hands, when he stirred me with his own breath. [6] He is the one who now again calls me son, no longer bringing me forth into a soul but into a spirit. "For he himself," it says, "is kind toward the ungrateful and wicked." Well done, Marcion — cleverly enough you stripped him of rains and suns, so he wouldn't look like the creator! But who is this "kind" one, who up to now has not even been known? [7] How is he kind, when no benefits of this kind of kindness — the kind that belongs to the sun and rain — had ever preceded from him, who lent them out without expecting to get anything back from mankind? Whereas the creator, who despite such generosity of the elements still to this day puts up with men who more readily render thanks to idols than to himself, is truly kind even in spiritual benefits: "How sweet unto my throat are your words, O Lord, beyond honey and the honeycomb to my mouth." He, then, is the one who rebuked the ungrateful, since he deserved to find them grateful — his sun and his rain you too, Marcion, enjoyed ungratefully. As for your god, he could hardly complain of ingratitude, since he had never prepared any grateful people to begin with. [8] He also enjoins mercy: "Be merciful," he says, "as your Father has had mercy on you." This comes to: "Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the homeless into your house, and if you see someone naked, cover him," and, "Judge for the orphan, and do justice for the widow." I recognize the old teaching of the one who prefers mercy to sacrifice. Or if it is some other god now commanding mercy, because he too is merciful, why has he shown me no mercy for so long an age? [9] "Do not judge, that you may not be judged. Do not condemn, that you may not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you — good measure, pressed down and running over, will be poured into your lap. With the same measure you measure, it will be measured back to you." As I take it, these words ring of a repayment summoned according to deserts. From whom, then, does this repayment come? [10] If from men only, then he is teaching a merely human discipline and reward, and we shall be obeying men altogether; but if from the creator, as from a judge and reckoner of deserts, then he is urging obedience toward the very one with whom he has fixed a repayment to be either courted or feared, according as each has judged, or condemned, or forgiven, or measured; and if from Christ himself, then he too already judges — which Marcion denies. [11] So let the Marcionites choose — whether it is really worth so much to fall away from their master's rule, as to have Christ teaching in the service of either men or the creator. But the blind leads the blind into the pit. Some put their trust in Marcion; yet no pupil ranks higher than his teacher. Apelles ought to have remembered this — Marcion's would-be corrector, once his own disciple. Let the heretic first haul the plank out from his own eye, only then go hunting whatever speck he imagines lodged in a Christian's eye. Likewise a good tree does not bring forth bad fruit, since truth does not bring forth heresy, nor does a bad tree bring forth good fruit, since heresy does not bring forth truth. So neither did Marcion bring forth anything good from Cerdo's evil storehouse, nor Apelles from Marcion's. [12] For it is far more fitting that we apply to these men themselves what Christ figuratively applied to mankind, and not — following Marcion's scandalous reading — to two gods. I think I have not been standing without cause on this line all along, by which I maintain that no other god at all has ever been revealed by Christ. On this one point alone I am amazed that even Marcion's adulterating hand has faltered — except that even thieves get frightened. No crime is without its dread, because none is without a conscience of itself. For just as long, then, the Jews knew no other god than the one besides whom they had as yet known no one, nor did they call any other "god" than the one they alone knew. If that is so, who could be understood as saying, "Why do you call me, Lord, Lord..."? [13] Was it the one who had never before been called that, since he had not yet been revealed anywhere — or the one who had always been held as Lord, as known from the beginning, namely the god of the Jews? Likewise, who could have added, "and do not do what I say"? Was it the one who was, for the very first time, trying to teach them — or the one who from the beginning had committed to them the words of the law and the prophets? Who could reproach them for disobedience, even had he never reproached them before? Moreover, the one who, before Christ, proclaimed, "This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me," was surely charging them with a long-standing stubbornness. Otherwise how absurd it would be for a novel deity, a fresh Christ, the illuminator of so great and new a religion, to pronounce stubborn and disobedient people he could never have put to the test!
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