Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Whom does he order to be invited to lunch or dinner? The very people he had already pointed out through Isaiah: "Break your bread for the hungry, and bring the beggars and the roofless into your house" — people, obviously, who cannot pay you back for such kindness in kind. If Christ forbids angling for return favors, promising repayment instead at the resurrection, that is the Creator's own pattern, the God who has no love for gift-seekers chasing a payback. Consider too which party the parable of the man who issues the invitations really fits. "A certain man gave a dinner and invited many." [2] Clearly the preparing of the dinner figures the full provision of eternal life. Now, I say first: strangers with no claim of kinship are not normally invited to dinner — household and family are the usual guests, and far more readily so. So the inviting was the Creator's doing, since those invited belonged to him — through Adam as men, and through the patriarchs as Jews — not to one to whom they belonged neither by nature nor by any prior claim. [3] Next, if the man who prepared the dinner sends for his guests, the dinner is the Creator's on this count too — he sent to remind guests already invited long before through the patriarchs, and now reminded through the prophets. He is not one who sent nobody to give warning, who did nothing beforehand to summon them, but who instead came down suddenly himself, only just making himself known while already inviting, only just inviting while already compelling them to the feast, making the hour of dining and the hour of invitation one and the same. "The invited began to make excuses." [4] If this is from some other god, fair enough — because the invitation was sudden; but if it is not fair, then it was not sudden either. And if it was not a sudden invitation, then it comes from the Creator, from whom it came long ago, from whom, in fact, they had turned away the summons — saying to Aaron at the outset, "Fashion gods for us who will march ahead of us," and thereafter hearing with their ears yet failing to hear — that is, the calling of God, who most fittingly speaks to this very parable through Jeremiah: "Hear my voice," he says, "and I will be to you a lord, and you to me a people, and you shall walk in all my ways, whatever I command you." Behold, the invitation of God. "And they did not listen," he says, "and did not incline their ear." Behold, the people's refusal. "But they went off after the things their evil heart desired." "I have purchased a field, and I have acquired five yoke of oxen, and I have taken a wife." [5] And he presses further: "And I sent to you all my servants the prophets" (here will be the Holy Spirit, the one who reminds the guests) "day and before daylight. And my people did not listen, and did not attend with their ears, and stiffened their neck." When this was reported to the head of the household, he was moved — moved, note well (for Marcion denies that his god is ever moved; so this, too, is mine) — and orders a rounding-up to be done from the town's boulevards and alleyways. Let us examine whether this carries the same sense as, once more through Jeremiah: "Have I turned into a desert for the house of Israel, or a territory left barren?" that is, do I not have people to summon, or a source from which to summon them? "Since my people said, We will not come to you." [6] So he sent for others to be called, still from the same city. Then, room still remaining, he ordered a gathering also from the highways and hedges — that is, now from us, from the outside nations; with just the same jealous rivalry as in Deuteronomy: "I will turn my face away from them, and I will reveal to them what awaits them in the final days" — meaning, others shall possess their place — "for it is a perverse generation, children in whom there is no faith. They have provoked me to jealousy with what is no god, and stirred me to wrath with their idols; so I will provoke them to jealousy with what is no nation, and with a foolish nation I will stir them to wrath" — with us, plainly, whose hope the Jews carry, though the Lord denies they shall ever taste it, Zion being abandoned, left "like a watchman's hut in a vineyard, and a shed in a cucumber field," after they had also refused the last invitation, the one to Christ. [7] Going through this whole sequence according to the Creator's own arrangement and his prophets' preaching, what part of it can possibly suit that other god, who has neither sequence nor arrangement to match the parable's design — he who did the whole work in a single stroke? What would his first calling be, and what would count as the second act of reminder? Some must first make excuses, and only afterward must others come in. But as it stands, he comes inviting both parties at once — city and hedgerows together — against the very mirror the parable holds up. [8] Nor can he now judge as disdainful people he never invited before, people he is approaching for the very first time. Or if he judges them as future rejecters of the invitation, then he is likewise foretelling, as a future event, the rounding-up of others from the nations to take their place. Clearly, then, he is to come a second time to preach to the nations. Yet even if he is to come, I think it will not be as one still summoning guests but as one already seating them. Meanwhile, you who read this dinner's invitation as the heavenly banquet of spiritual fullness and joy — remember also that the earthly promises of wine and oil and grain, and of the city itself, are equally figured by the Creator as spiritual realities.
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