Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] When he had prayed in a certain place to that "higher" father of his, lifting his eyes to the creator's heaven with quite shameless and reckless nerve — the very heaven from which he might have been struck down by hail so harsh and savage, and by lightning, just as Jerusalem could be pinned down by it — one of his disciples came up to him and said, "Lord, show us how to pray, in the way John instructed those who followed him," evidently supposing that a different god had to be prayed to differently. Whoever presumes this must first prove that a different god had been made known by Christ. [2] For nobody would have cared to learn the manner of prayer before first learning to whom the prayer was addressed. So if he had learned it, let Marcion prove it. If he still nowhere proves it, let him understand that the disciple was asking for a form of prayer directed to the creator, the very one to whom John's disciples also prayed. But since John too had introduced some new order of prayer, his disciple not unreasonably presumed to ask the same of Christ, on the strength of his own master's practice — that they too should pray to God not differently, but not to a different God. [3] Accordingly Christ would not have given his disciple knowledge of prayer before knowledge of God himself. So he taught prayer directed to the very God the disciple had known all along. Now examine the sense of the prayer, to see which God it savors of. To whom shall I say, "Father"? To one who did not make me at all, from whom I trace no origin, or to one who by making and forming me begot me? [4] From whom shall I ask the Holy Spirit? From one who does not even supply the spirit of this world, or from one by whom even the angels are made spirits, whose Spirit from the beginning was borne over the waters? Shall I long for the arrival of the reign of one I never heard styled King of Glory, or of one who holds in his grasp the very hearts of kings? Who will give me my daily bread — one who does not even provide me millet, or one who furnished his people daily bread from heaven, the bread of angels? Who will forgive my sins — one who, by not judging them, does not even hold them against me, or one who, if he does not forgive, will hold them to judge them? [5] Who will keep us from being led into temptation — one whom the tempter need never fear, or one who from the beginning condemned the tempting angel in advance? On this reckoning, whoever supplicates a different god instead of the creator is not praying to him but slandering him. Well then, from whom shall I ask, that I may receive? With whom shall I seek, that I may find? At whose door am I to knock, so that entry will be granted me? Who has anything at all to hand over to the petitioner, save him to whom everything belongs, and to whom I too, the petitioner, belong? What, moreover, have I lost with that other god, that I should seek with him and find? [6] If it is wisdom and prudence, the creator hid these; with him, then, I shall seek them. If it is salvation and life, these too are with the creator. Nothing will be sought elsewhere to be found than where it lay hidden to be revealed. Nor shall I knock anywhere else than whence I was driven out. Finally, if receiving and finding and being admitted are the fruit of the labor and persistence of the one who asked and sought and knocked, understand that these very things are commanded and promised by the creator. [7] For that "supremely good" god, coming of his own accord to give benefits to a man not his own, would never have imposed on him any labor or persistence — for he would no longer be supremely good if he did not give without being asked, and grant finding without being sought, and open without being knocked at. But the creator was able to impose these conditions through Christ, so that, since man by sinning had offended his God, he should labor, and by persistence in asking receive, and by seeking find, and by knocking enter in. [8] So too the preceding parable makes the midnight petitioner for bread a friend, not a stranger, and has him knocking at a friend's door, not an unknown one's. Now a friend, even when he gives offense, belongs to the creator's man more than to the god of Marcion. And so he knocks at the door where he had a right to knock, whose door he knew, whom he knew to have loaves, already lying down with the children he had willed to be born. Even the fact that he knocks late at night belongs to the creator's time — his is the evening, whose is the age and the setting of the age. No one would have knocked late at a new god — only at first light. It is the creator who once closed the door to the nations — the door that used to be knocked on by the Jews; [9] he it is who rises and gives, though not now as to a friend, yet not as to a stranger either, but, he says, as to one who is being a nuisance. But no one could have been a nuisance so quickly to a god just newly arrived. Recognize, then, the Father you also call "creator." He is the one who knows what his children ask for. For to those asking for bread he gave manna from heaven, and to those craving meat he sent quail — not a serpent instead of a fish, nor a scorpion instead of an egg. It belongs to one who has both to refrain from giving evil for good; but Marcion's god, having no scorpion, could not claim he would not give what he did not have — rather it is the one who, having a scorpion, does not give it. [10] So too it is he with whom the spirit is holy who will give the Holy Spirit — not one with whom it is not holy at all. When he had cast out a demon of deafness (so that in this very kind of healing he might fulfill Isaiah), and was said to cast out demons by Beelzebub, he replied, "If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by whom do your own sons cast them out?" What does this remark point to, if not that he expels them through the identical power their own sons employ for casting them out — that is, the creator's power? But suppose you would rather read it thus, [11] "If I by Beelzebub, by whom do your sons?" as though he were mocking them for casting out by Beelzebub — the earlier meaning tells against you: a divided Satan cannot stand opposed to himself. So they were not expelling by Beelzebub either, but rather, as already noted, through the creator's might — and to drive the point home he continues, "But if I cast out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you." For before Pharaoh those sorcerers, set against Moses, called the creator's power "the finger of God." "Finger of God" was meant to signify something small yet immensely powerful. And Christ, showing this — recalling, not erasing, his own ancient acts — called the power of God "the finger of God," meaning none other than the God to whom it was already ascribed by that name. So the kingdom that had drawn near belonged to the very one whose power was called a finger. [12] Fittingly, then, he applied the parable of the strong armed man overpowered by one stronger — the prince of demons, whom he had earlier called Beelzebub and Satan — implying that it was God's own finger which had overpowered him, rather than some other, alien deity bringing the creator down. Besides, how could his kingdom still stand within its own borders and laws and offices, if that stronger god of Marcion's could plausibly be thought to have overcome him even now, with the world still whole — unless, according to that god's law, Marcionites too went on dying, sinking into the earth, and often were taught by a scorpion's sting that the creator had not been overcome? [13] A woman cries out from the crowd, calling blessed the womb that bore him and the breasts that nursed him. And the Lord says, "Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and do it" — because he had also earlier rejected his mother or brothers in this same way, preferring the hearers and doers of God. For not even here was his mother present with him. So neither had he denied her before as his mother. When he hears this again, he again transfers the blessedness from the womb and breasts of his mother to his disciples — a transfer he could not have made had he not truly had a mother.
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