Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But who is this who commands both winds and sea? Surely not some new ruler and owner of the elements, now that the Creator has been subdued and shut out! It is not so. Rather, the elements recognized their own Author — elements that had always been accustomed to obey even his servants. Look at Exodus, Marcion; behold, at the Red Sea, vaster than every pool of Judea, the rod of Moses giving its command, so that the sea, split clean through and fixed on both sides in equal astonishment at the breach, let the people cross dry-shod along an inland road — and then, at the nod of that same rod, as nature flowed back, overwhelmed the Egyptian army in the concord of the returning waves, a work in which the south winds too lent their service. [2] Read how, at the drawing of lots to divide the tribes at the crossing of the Jordan, there was a sword — whose onrush and downward flow, at any rate, Jesus [Joshua] had plainly taught to stand still, while the prophets passed through. What is there to say to this? If this is your Christ, he will be no more powerful than the Creator's own servants. But I would rely on these examples alone, were it not also true that the prophetic announcement of this very seafaring expedition preceded Christ. [3] For when he crosses the water, the Psalm is fulfilled to the letter: "The Lord," it says, "is above many waters." When he scatters the waves of the strait, Habakkuk is fulfilled: "Scattering," it says, "the waters in his path." When the sea shrinks back at his rebuke, Nahum too is discharged in full: "Rebuking," it says, "the sea and drying it up" — along with the winds, of course, by which it had been stirred. From whom do you want my avenger Christ to come — from examples, or from the prophets, of the Creator? [4] Come now — you who suppose that a soldier and armed warrior is being foretold, not figuratively or allegorically, but one who was going to wage spiritual war against spiritual enemies with spiritual troops and spiritual weapons, spiritually — when you find in a single man a multitude of demons professing themselves a legion (unmistakably a spiritual host), learn to understand Christ likewise as the conqueror of spiritual enemies, spiritually armed and spiritually warlike, and understand that he is the very one who was going to do battle with a legion of demons as well — so that the Psalm may be seen to have spoken of this very war too: "The Lord mighty, the Lord powerful in battle." [5] For indeed, in his final combat, he fought against death itself and triumphed through the trophy of the cross. But whose son did the legion testify Jesus to be? Beyond doubt, son of that god whose torments and pit they dreaded and had knowledge of. Nor does it seem they could have been unaware, even then, that the power of a new and unknown god was at work on earth — for it is not plausible that the Creator was unaware of it. Even if he had once, long ago, been ignorant of some god above himself, he would certainly, by then, have learned of one operating beneath his own heaven. [6] But whatever the Lord had come to know, the whole household would already have learned as well, within that same world and within the compass of the same heaven under which the foreign divinity was moving about. So, to the extent the Creator would have known of this deity — and of its very substance, had it existed — to that same extent (which is to say, not at all, since there was no such substance) the demons knew no other Christ than the Son of their own god. For they would not have begged of another for what they remembered they must beg of the Creator — namely, pardon for the abyss that belonged to the Creator. And in the end they obtained it! [7] On what grounds? Because they had lied — because they had made him the son of a savage god? And what sort of god would he be, to come to the aid of liars, to put up with slanderers? No — it was rather because they had not lied, because they had recognized the god of the abyss as their own god, that he himself confirmed that he was indeed the one the demons had recognized: that same Jesus, judge and offspring of the god who avenges. Here, then, is something more, drawn from those very "pettinesses" and "weaknesses" of the Creator supposedly showing up in Christ. I am even willing to grant him ignorance — allow me this, against the heretic! A woman with a flow of blood touches him, and he does not know who it was. [8] "Who touched me?" he says. Even as the disciples try to excuse it, he persists in his tone of ignorance: "Someone touched me" — and he backs this up with proof: "For I perceived power going out from me." What does the heretic say to this? Did he know who the person was? Then why did he speak as though he did not? So as to draw out her confession, to test her fear. In just this way Adam too, at one time, had asked as though not knowing: "Adam, where are you?" So you have both the Creator excused alongside Christ, and Christ made equal to the Creator! [9] But might it also be — since he is the adversary of the Law — that, precisely because the Law bars contact with a bleeding woman, he was eager not merely to permit her touch but even to grant healing for it? A god who is not naturally kind, but only out of rivalry! But look: if we find that it was the woman's faith that earned this, since he says, "Your faith has made you well" — who are you, to read the rivalry of the Law into this deed, when the Lord himself shows it to have been granted as the reward of faith? [10] But you want to make this the very faith by which she had scorned the Law. And is it credible that a woman, as yet unacquainted with any god, as yet uninitiated into any new law, should break the very law she was still bound by? By what faith, in fact, did she break it? Believing in which god? Spurning which? The Creator? For she certainly touched him out of faith. If it was out of faith in the Creator — a faith that knew nothing of any other god — how then did she break his law? For if she broke it at all, she broke it precisely by faith in the Creator. [11] How, then, can both things fit together — that she broke it, and that she broke it out of a faith on whose account she ought not to have broken it? I will explain. This was her faith, first: that she trusted her God preferred mercy to sacrifice itself; that she was certain this same God was at work in Christ; that this was why she touched him — not as a holy man, nor as a prophet whom she might suppose could be defiled, being of human substance, but as God himself, whom she had presumed no uncleanness could possibly pollute. [12] And so she did not rashly reinterpret the Law for herself, which meant that things capable of defilement would be defiled — not God, whom she trusted was present in Christ. But she had also considered this: that it was the ordinary and regular flow of menstrual or post-partum blood that the Law taxed with impurity — blood that comes from the office of nature, not from a defect of health. Hers, however, was flowing from a defect of health, one for which she knew she needed, not the mere passage of time, but the help of divine mercy. [13] And so it can be seen that she did not break the Law but rather distinguished within it. This will be the faith that had also conferred understanding: "Unless you believe," he says, "you will not understand." In approving the faith of this woman — who believed simply in the Creator — Christ declared himself, in his answer, to be the God of the very faith he approved. Nor will I pass over this: that while his garment was being touched — a garment, mind you, fitted to a real body, not a phantom — a body was thereby also being demonstrated; not that we need retrace that question here, but because it bears directly on the one now before us. [14] For if there had been no reality of body, a phantom, being an empty thing, simply could not have been touched and defiled. How, then, could one who cannot be defiled, for want of any real substance, have even wished to appear so? As a rival of the Law, he would have been lying, pretending to be truly polluted when he was not.
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