Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] By the true reading of the church we have this letter sent to the Ephesians, not to the Laodiceans; but Marcion at some point took it into his head to tamper with the title, as though he were the most painstaking of investigators even in this. But the titles make no difference, since the apostle wrote to all even while writing to some in particular — certainly proclaiming as God the one in Christ to whom the things proclaimed properly belong. To whom then will it belong, according to the good pleasure he set forth in the mystery of his will, in the plan for the fulfillment of the times (to render the Greek word as it sounds) “to sum up” — that is, to bring back to the beginning, or to review from the beginning — all things in Christ, both things in heaven and things on earth, except to him whose all things will be, from the beginning, even the beginning itself, from whom come both the times and the plan for the fulfillment of the times, on account of which all things are reviewed and summed up in Christ? [2] But of the other god, what beginning — that is, from where — whose work is nothing? What times without a beginning? What fulfillment without times? What plan without fulfillment? In short, what deed has he to his name anywhere upon the earth, such that some protracted design for fulfilling the times could be credited to him, for the summing up of all things in Christ, even the things in heaven? [3] Nor shall we suppose that the things in heaven, whatever they are, were done by another than the one by whom it is agreed the things on earth were done as well. But if it will not do to reckon all these things as belonging to any other from the beginning than the Creator, who will believe that they are summed up by another into another Christ, and not by their own author into their own Christ? If they are the Creator's, they must of necessity be different from a different god; and if different, then certainly opposed. How then are opposites to be summed up in the very one by whom, in the end, they are destroyed? For what Christ do the words that follow proclaim, when he says, ‘that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had hoped beforehand in Christ’? For who could have hoped beforehand — that is, hoped in God before he came — except the Jews, to whom Christ was foretold from the beginning? [4] The one who was foretold, then, is the one who was hoped for beforehand. And indeed he applies this to himself — that is, to the Jews — so as to draw a distinction when he turns to the nations: ‘In whom you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel, in which you believed and were sealed with the Holy Spirit of his promise.’ Whose promise? The one made through Joel: ‘In the final days, from my own Spirit I will pour forth a portion onto all flesh’ — meaning, onto the nations as well. So both the Spirit and the gospel will belong to that very Christ who was hoped for beforehand, when he was being proclaimed. [5] But the father of glory is also the one whose Christ is sung as king of glory in the psalm, ascending: ‘Who is he, this glorious king? The Lord of the armies — he is that glorious king.’ From him is sought the spirit of wisdom, in whom this same class of spiritual gifts is also enumerated among the seven spirits through Isaiah. He will give enlightened eyes of the heart, he who also endowed the outward eyes with light, who is displeased by the blindness of his people: ‘And who is blind but my servants?’ and, ‘The servants of God have been blinded.’ [6] With him too are the riches of the inheritance among the saints, he who promised that inheritance from the calling of the nations: ‘Ask of me, and I will give you the nations for your inheritance.’ He exerted his mighty strength in Christ, when he brought him back up from among the dead and placed him at his own right hand, subjecting all things beneath him — he who also said, ‘Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’; since elsewhere as well the Spirit addresses the Father on the matter of the Son, saying, ‘You have laid all things beneath his feet.’ If from these words we are to infer a different god and a different Christ from the ones acknowledged as belonging to the Creator, then let us go looking for the Creator. [7] Well, I think we have found him, when he speaks of those dead in their trespasses, in which they once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler who wields authority over the air, and who is now active in the sons of disbelief. But not even here can Marcion twist “world” to mean the world's own god. For the created thing is not like its creator, the made thing like its maker, the world like God. Nor, indeed, will he who is prince of the power of the ages be styled prince of the power of the air. [8] For the ruler of higher things is never denoted by lower things, though the lower things too are reckoned as belonging to him. Nor can he be seen as the worker of unbelief, since he himself rather suffers it, from both Jews and nations. It is enough, then, if these things do not fall upon the Creator. But if there is one to whom they apply more fittingly, the apostle certainly knew this better than we do. Who is he? Without doubt the one who has cut off the sons of unbelief from the Creator himself, having taken possession of this very air, just as the prophet reports him as saying: ‘I will set my throne among the clouds, I will be like the Most High.’ [9] This will be the devil, whom elsewhere too — if indeed they wish the apostle to be read that way — we shall recognize as ‘the god of this age.’ For he has filled the whole age with the lie of divinity. But if he plainly had not existed, then these words could have been taken as aimed at the Creator. But the apostle had also lived his former life in Judaism. It is not because he mentioned the trespasses in which we all once lived that the lord and prince of this air should therefore be understood as the Creator, but because in Judaism he himself had once been one of the sons of unbelief, having the devil as his agent, when he was hounding the assembly and its Creator's own Christ, for which reason he likewise states, ‘We were by nature children of wrath’; [10] but “by nature,” lest, because the Creator called the Jews sons, the heretic should claim that wrath has the Creator for its lord. For when he says, ‘We were by nature children of wrath,’ the Jews are not sons of the Creator by nature but by the election of the fathers; he refers the sons of wrath to nature, not to the Creator, and finally adds, ‘even as the rest,’ who certainly are not sons of God. It appears that trespasses and the desires of the flesh and unbelief and wrath are reckoned to the common nature of all men, the devil nonetheless preying upon that nature, which he himself has already infected by sowing the seed of sin. [11] ‘We are his handiwork,’ he says, ‘shaped in Christ.’ To fashion is one thing, to create another. But he gave both to one and the same. Man, however, is the workmanship of the Creator. The same one, then, who made him also created him in Christ. As far as substance goes, he made; as far as grace goes, he created. [12] Look too at the connection of thought. ‘Remember that you, the nations, were once in the flesh, called the uncircumcision by that which is called the circumcision in the flesh made by hand, that at that time you were without Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and outsiders to the covenants and to their promise, holding no hope, godless within the world.’ But without what god were the nations, and without what Christ? Surely without the one to whom the commonwealth of Israel, the covenants, and the promise all belonged. ‘But now,’ he says, ‘in Christ you who were once far off have been made near by his blood.’ Far off from whom, previously? From those very things he named earlier — the Creator's Christ, Israel's commonwealth, the covenants, the promise's hope, God himself. [13] If this is so, then the nations, who were once far from these things, are now brought near to them in Christ. But if we have been made close, in Christ, to the commonwealth of Israel, which consists in the religion of the Creator God, and to the covenants and the promise and to their very God, then it is quite ridiculous to say that the Christ of a different god has drawn us near, from far off, to the Creator. [14] The apostle recalled how it was foretold that the nations would be called from far off: ‘They who were far from me have drawn near to my righteousness.’ For both the righteousness and the peace of the Creator were being announced in Christ, as we have already shown many times. And so, he says, ‘he himself is our peace, who has made the two one’ — that is, the Jewish people and the gentile — ‘the near and the far, breaking down the middle wall of enmity, in his flesh.’ But Marcion removed “his,” so as to give enmity to “the flesh,” as if by some fleshly fault, rather than the flesh being Christ's own rival. So, as I have said elsewhere, and say here too — not a Marrucine but a Pontic — you who confessed the blood above now deny the flesh here. [15] If he emptied the law of the sentences of its precepts, certainly by fulfilling the law (for ‘You shall not commit adultery’ is already emptied out when it is said, ‘Nor shall you look with lust’; ‘You shall not kill’ is emptied out when it is said, ‘Nor shall you speak evil’), you cannot make him the adversary of the law when he is really its ally. ‘That he might create the two in himself’ — the same one who made them, creating them, as already stated before (‘we are indeed his handiwork, shaped in Christ’) — ‘into one new man, making peace’ (if truly new, then truly man too, not a phantom — new indeed, and newly born of a virgin by God's Spirit), ‘that he might reconcile both to God’ — and to the God whom both peoples, Jewish and gentile, had offended — ‘in one body,’ he says, ‘having slain the enmity in himself through the cross.’ So here too the flesh is the body in Christ, which was able to suffer the cross. [16] So then, this one, announcing peace to those who were near and those who were far off, having together gained access to the Father, we are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens of the saints, members of the household of God (of that God, surely, from whom we showed above we had been strangers and set far off), built up on the foundation of the apostles. The heretic removed ‘and of the prophets,’ forgetting that the Lord set both apostles and prophets in the church. He was afraid, no doubt, that our building in Christ might also be shown resting on the foundations of the old prophets, since the apostle himself never ceases anywhere to have us built up out of the prophets. For where else did he get the idea of calling Christ the topmost cornerstone, if not from the sense of the psalm: ‘The very stone the builders threw aside has now become the corner's head’?
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