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St. Tertullian of Carthage
c. 155 - 220 AD
taken from Against Marcion
BOOK V, CHAPTER IX. THE DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION. THE BODY WILL RISE AGAIN. CHRIST'S JUDICIAL CHARACTER. JEWISH PERVERSIONS OF PROPHECY EXPOSED AND CONFUTED. MESSIANIC PSALMS VINDICATED. JEWISH AND RATIONALISTIC INTERPRETATIONS ON THIS POINT SIMILAR. JESUS — NOT HEZEKIAH OR SOLOMON — THE SUBJECT OF THESE PROPHECIES IN THE PSALMS. NONE BUT HE IS THE CHRIST OF THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENTS.
When he says, For He must reign, till He has put all enemies under His feet, we can see at once from this statement that he speaks of a God of vengeance, and therefore of Him who made the following promise to Christ: "Sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool. The rod of Your strength shall the Lord send forth from Sion, and He shall rule along with You in the midst of Your enemies". It is necessary for me to lay claim to those Scriptures which the Jews endeavour to deprive us of, and to show that they sustain my view. Now they say that this Psalm was a chant in honour of Hezekiah, because he went up to the house of the Lord, and God turned back and removed his enemies. Therefore, (as they further hold,) those other words, "Before the morning star did I beget you from the womb", are applicable to Hezekiah, and to the birth of Hezekiah.
We on our side have published Gospels (to the credibility of which we have to thank them for having given some confirmation, indeed, already in so great a subject ); and these declare that the Lord was born at night, that so it might be before the morning star, as is evident both from the star especially, and from the testimony of the angel, who at night announced to the shepherds that Christ had at that moment been born, and again from the place of the birth, for it is towards night that persons arrive at the (eastern) inn. Perhaps, too, there was a mystic purpose in Christ's being born at night, destined, as He was, to be the light of the truth amidst the dark shadows of ignorance.
Nor, again, would God have said, "I have begotten You", except to His true Son. For although He says of all the people (Israel), I have begotten children, Isaiah 1:2, yet He added not from the womb. Now, why should He have added so superfluously this phrase from the womb (as if there could be any doubt about any one's having been born from the womb), unless the Holy Ghost had wished the words to be with special care understood of Christ? "I have begotten You from the womb", that is to say, from a womb only, without a man's seed, making it a condition of a fleshly body that it should come out of a womb. What is here added (in the Psalm), "You are a priest for ever", relates to (Christ) Himself. Hezekiah was no priest; and even if he had been one, he would not have been a priest for ever. "After the order", says He, "of Melchizedek". Now what had Hezekiah to do with Melchizedek, the priest of the most high God, and him uncircumcised too, who blessed the circumcised Abraham, after receiving from him the offering of tithes? To Christ, however, the order of Melchizedek will be very suitable; for Christ is the proper and legitimate High Priest of God. He is the Pontiff of the priesthood of the uncircumcision, constituted such, even then, for the Gentiles, by whom He was to be more fully received, although at His last coming He will favour with His acceptance and blessing the circumcision also, even the race of Abraham (the Jews), which by and by is to acknowledge Him.
Well, then, there is also another Psalm, which begins with these words: "Give Your judgments, O God, to the King", that is, to Christ who was to come as King, and "Your righteousness unto the King's son", that is, to Christ's people; for His sons are they who are born again in Him. But it will here be said that this Psalm has reference to Solomon. However, will not those portions of the Psalm which apply to Christ alone, be enough to teach us that all the rest, too, relates to Christ, and not to Solomon? He shall come down, says He, "like rain upon a fleece, and like dropping showers upon the earth", describing His descent from heaven to the flesh as gentle and unobserved. Solomon, however, if he had indeed any descent at all, came not down like a shower, because he descended not from heaven. But I will set before you more literal points. He shall have dominion, says the Psalmist, from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. To Christ alone was this given; while Solomon reigned over only the moderately-sized kingdom of Judah. Yea, all kings shall fall down before Him. Whom, indeed, shall they all thus worship, except Christ? All nations shall serve Him. To whom shall all thus do homage, but Christ? His name shall endure forever. Whose name has this eternity of fame, but Christ's? Longer than the sun shall His name remain, for longer than the sun shall be the Word of God, even Christ. And in Him shall all nations be blessed. In Solomon was no nation blessed; in Christ every nation. And what if the Psalm proves Him to be even God? They shall call Him blessed. (On what ground?) Because blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who only does wonderful things. Blessed also is His glorious name, and with His glory shall all the earth be filled. On the contrary, Solomon (as I make bold to affirm) lost even the glory which he had from God, seduced by his love of women even into idolatry. And thus, the statement which occurs in about the middle of this Psalm, "His enemies shall lick the dust" (of course, as having been, (to use the apostle's phrase,) put under His feet ), will bear upon the very object which I had in view, when I both introduced the Psalm, and insisted on my opinion of its sense — namely, that I might demonstrate both the glory of His kingdom and the subjection of His enemies in pursuance of the Creator's own plans, with the view of laying down this conclusion, that none but He can be believed to be the Christ of the Creator.
Book 5, Chapter 12. The Eternal Home in Heaven. Beautiful Exposition by Tertullian of the Apostle's Consolatory Teaching Against the Fear of Death, So Apt to Arise Under Anti-Christian Oppression. The Judgment-Seat of Christ — The Idea, Anti-Marcionite. Paradise. Judicial Characteristics of Christ Which are Inconsistent with the Heretical Views About Him; The Apostle's Sharpness, or Severity, Shows Him to Be a Fit Preacher of the Creator's Christ.
Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body — and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, while encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as a clothing upon with the vesture which is from heaven.
This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God the earnest of His Spirit (2 Corinthians 5:5) (pledged as it were thereby to have the clothing upon, which is the object of our hope), and that so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;
(2 Corinthians 5:6) moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord, (2 Corinthians 5:8) and so to be ready to meet even death with joy. In this view it is that he informs us how we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he has done either good or bad. (2 Corinthians 5:10) Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men's merits, how will any be able to reckon with God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences (2 Corinthians 5:10) and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies.
bOOK 5, CHAPTER 16. THE Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. An Absurd Erasure of Marcion; Its Object Transparent. The Final Judgment on the Heathen as Well as the Jews Could Not Be Administered by Marcion's Christ. The Man of Sin — What? Inconsistency of Marcion's View. The Antichrist. The Great Events of the Last Apostasy Within the Providence and Intention of the Creator, Whose are All Things from the Beginning. Similarity of the Pauline Precepts with Those of the Creator.
We are obliged from time to time to recur to certain topics in order to affirm truths which are connected with them. We repeat then here, that as the Lord is by the apostle proclaimed as the awarder of both good and woe, He must be either the Creator, or (as Marcion would be loth to admit) One like the Creator — "with whom it is a righteous thing to recompense tribulation to them who afflict us, and to ourselves, who are afflicted, rest, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed as coming from heaven with the angels of His might and in flaming fire" (2 Thessalonians 1:6-8). The heretic, however, has erased "the flaming fire", no doubt that he might extinguish all traces herein of our own God.
But, the folly of the obliteration is clearly seen. For as the apostle declares that the Lord will "come to take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel, who, he says, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power" (2 Thessalonians 1:8-9) — it follows that, as He comes to inflict punishment, He must require the flaming fire.
Thus on this consideration too we must, notwithstanding Marcion's opposition, conclude that Christ belongs to a God who kindles the flames (of vengeance), and therefore to the Creator, inasmuch as He takes vengeance on such as know not the Lord, that is, on the heathen. For he has mentioned separately those "who obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ" (2 Thessalonians 1:8) whether they be sinners among Christians or among Jews.
Now, to inflict punishment on the heathen, who very likely have never heard of the Gospel, is not the function of that God who is naturally unknown, and who is revealed nowhere else than in the Gospel, and therefore cannot be known by all men. The Creator, however, ought to be known even by (the light of) nature, for He may be understood from His works, and may thereby become the object of a more widely spread knowledge. To Him, therefore, does it appertain to punish such as know not God, for none ought to be ignorant of Him. In the (apostle's) phrase, "From the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power" (2 Thessalonians 1:9) he uses the words of Isaiah who for the express reason makes the self-same Lord arise to "shake terribly the earth".
Well, but who is the man of sin, the son of perdition, who must first be revealed before the Lord comes; "who opposes and exalts himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; who is to sit in the temple of God, and boast himself as being God"? (2 Thessalonians 2:3-4).
According indeed to our view, he is Antichrist; as it is taught us in both the ancient and the new prophecies, and especially by the Apostle John, who says that already many false prophets are gone out into the world, the fore-runners of Antichrist, who deny that Christ has come in the flesh, (1 John 4:1-3) and do not acknowledge Jesus (to be the Christ), meaning in God the Creator.
According, however, to Marcion's view, it is really hard to know whether He might not be (after all) the Creator's Christ; because according to him He is not yet come. But whichsoever of the two it is, I want to know why he comes "in all power, and with lying signs and wonders"? (2 Thessalonians 2:9). Because, he says, they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved; for which cause God shall send them "an instinct of delusion (to believe a lie), that they all might be judged who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness" (2 Thessalonians 2:10-12).
If therefore he be Antichrist, (as we hold), and comes according to the Creator's purpose, it must be God the Creator who sends him to fasten in their error those who did not believe the truth, that they might be saved; His likewise must be the truth and the salvation, who avenges (the contempt of) them by sending error as their substitute — that is, the Creator, to whom that very wrath is a fitting attribute, which deceives with a lie those who are not captivated with truth.
If, however, he is not Antichrist, as we suppose (him to be), then He is the Christ of the Creator, as Marcion will have it. In this case how happens it that he can suborn the Creator's Christ to avenge his truth? But should he after all agree with us, that Antichrist is here meant, I must then likewise ask how it is that he finds Satan, an angel of the Creator, necessary to his purpose? Why, too, should Antichrist be slain by Him, while commissioned by the Creator to execute the function of inspiring men with their love of untruth? In short, it is incontestable that the emissary, and the truth, and the salvation belong to Him to whom also appertain the wrath, and the jealousy, and the sending of the "strong delusion" (2 Thessalonians 2:11), on those who despise and mock, as well as upon those who are ignorant of Him; and therefore even Marcion will now have to come down a step, and concede to us that his god is a jealous god.
This being then an unquestionable position, I ask, which God has the greater right to be angry? He, as I suppose, who from the beginning of all things has given to man, as primary witnesses for the knowledge of Himself, nature in her (manifold) works, kindly providences, plagues, and indications (of His divinity), but who in spite of all this evidence has not been acknowledged; or he who has been brought out to view once for all in one only copy of the gospel — and even that without any sure authority — which actually makes no secret of proclaiming another god? Now He who has the right of inflicting the vengeance, has also sole claim to that which occasions the vengeance, I mean the Gospel; (in other words,) both the truth and (its accompanying) salvation. The charge, that "if any would not work, neither should he eat" (2 Thessalonians 3:10), is in strict accordance with the precept of Him who ordered that "the mouth of the ox that treads out the grain should not be muzzled" (Deuteronomy 25:4).
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