Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several Quotations from the Prophets.
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Chapter X.—Further Proofs of the Same Truth in the Same Chapter, from the Healing of the Paralytic, and from the Designation Son of Man Which Jesus Gives Himself. Tertullian Sustains His Argument by Several Quotations from the Prophets.
The sick of the palsy is healed, 3761 and that in public, in the sight of the people. For, says Isaiah, “they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of our God.” 3762 What glory, and what excellency? “Be strong, ye weak hands, and ye feeble knees:” 3763 this refers to the palsy. “Be strong; fear not.” 3764 Be strong is not vainly repeated, nor is fear not vainly added; because with the p. 358 renewal of the limbs there was to be, according to the promise, a restoration also of bodily energies: “Arise, and take up thy couch;” and likewise moral courage 3765 not to be afraid of those who should say, “Who can forgive sins, but God alone?” So that you have here not only the fulfilment of the prophecy which promised a particular kind of healing, but also of the symptoms which followed the cure. In like manner, you should also recognise Christ in the same prophet as the forgiver of sins. “For,” he says, “He shall remit to many their sins, and shall Himself take away our sins.” 3766 For in an earlier passage, speaking in the person of the Lord himself, he had said: “Even though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them as white as snow; even though they be like crimson, I will whiten them as wool.” 3767 In the scarlet colour He indicates the blood of the prophets; in the crimson, that of the Lord, as the brighter. Concerning the forgiveness of sins, Micah also says: “Who is a God like unto Thee? pardoning iniquity, and passing by the transgressions of the remnant of Thine heritage. He retaineth not His anger as a testimony against them, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, and will have compassion upon us; He wipeth away our iniquities, and casteth our sins into the depths of the sea.” 3768 Now, if nothing of this sort had been predicted of Christ, I should find in the Creator examples of such a benignity as would hold out to me the promise of similar affections also in the Son of whom He is the Father. I see how the Ninevites obtained forgiveness of their sins from the Creator 3769 —not to say from Christ, even then, because from the beginning He acted in the Father’s name. I read, too, how that, when David acknowledged his sin against Uriah, the prophet Nathan said unto him, “The Lord hath cancelled 3770 thy sin, and thou shalt not die;” 3771 how king Ahab in like manner, the husband of Jezebel, guilty of idolatry and of the blood of Naboth, obtained pardon because of his repentance; 3772 and how Jonathan the son of Saul blotted out by his deprecation the guilt of a violated fast. 3773 Why should I recount the frequent restoration of the nation itself after the forgiveness of their sins?—by that God, indeed, who will have mercy rather than sacrifice, and a sinner’s repentance rather than his death. 3774 You will first have to deny that the Creator ever forgave sins; then you must in reason show 3775 that He never ordained any such prerogative for His Christ; and so you will prove how novel is that boasted 3776 benevolence of the, of course, novel Christ when you shall have proved that it is neither compatible with 3777 the Creator nor predicted by the Creator. But whether to remit sins can appertain to one who is said to be unable to retain them, and whether to absolve can belong to him who is incompetent even to condemn, and whether to forgive is suitable to him against whom no offence can be committed, are questions which we have encountered elsewhere, 3778 when we preferred to drop suggestions 3779 rather than treat them anew. 3780 Concerning the Son of man our rule 3781 is a twofold one: that Christ cannot lie, so as to declare Himself the Son of man, if He be not truly so; nor can He be constituted the Son of man, unless He be born of a human parent, either father or mother. And then the discussion will turn on the point, of which human parent He ought to be accounted the son—of the father or the mother? Since He is (begotten) of God the Father, He is not, of course, (the son) of a human father. If He is not of a human father, it follows that He must be (the son) of a human mother. If of a human mother, it is evident that she must be a virgin. For to whom a human father is not ascribed, to his mother a husband will not be reckoned; and then to what mother a husband is not reckoned, the condition of virginity belongs. 3782 But if His mother be not a virgin, two fathers will have to be reckoned to Him—a divine and a human one. For she must have a husband, not to be a virgin; and by having a husband, she would cause two fathers—one divine, the other human—to accrue to Him, who would thus be Son both of God and of a man. Such a nativity (if one may call it so) 3783 the mythic stories assign to Castor or to Hercules. Now, if this distinction be observed, that is to say, if He be Son of man as born of His mother, because not begotten of a father, and His mother be a virgin, because His father is not human—He will be that Christ whom Isaiah foretold that a virgin should conceive, 3784 on what principle you, Marcion, can admit Him Son of man, I p. 359 cannot possibly see. If through a human father, then you deny him to be Son of God; if through a divine one also, 3785 then you make Christ the Hercules of fable; if through a human mother only, then you concede my point; if not through a human father also, 3786 then He is not the son of any man, 3787 and He must have been guilty of a lie for having declared Himself to be what He was not. One thing alone can help you in your difficulty: boldness on your part either to surname your God as actually the human father of Christ, as Valentinus did 3788 with his Æon; or else to deny that the Virgin was human, which even Valentinus did not do. What now, if Christ be described 3789 in Daniel by this very title of “Son of man?” Is not this enough to prove that He is the Christ of prophecy? For if He gives Himself that appellation which was provided in the prophecy for the Christ of the Creator, He undoubtedly offers Himself to be understood as Him to whom (the appellation) was assigned by the prophet. But perhaps 3790 it can be regarded as a simple identity of names; 3791 and yet we have maintained 3792 that neither Christ nor Jesus ought to have been called by these names, if they possessed any condition of diversity. But as regards the appellation “Son of man,” in as far as it occurs by accident, 3793 in so far there is a difficulty in its occurrence along with 3794 a casual identity of names. For it is of pure 3795 accident, especially when the same cause does not appear 3796 whereby the identity may be occasioned. And therefore, if Marcion’s Christ be also said to be born of man, then he too would receive an identical appellation, and there would be two Sons of man, as also two Christs and two Jesuses. Therefore, since the appellation is the sole right of Him in whom it has a suitable reason, 3797 if it be claimed for another in whom there is an identity of name, but not of appellation, 3798 then the identity of name even looks suspicious in him for whom is claimed without reason the identity of appellation. And it follows that He must be believed to be One and the Same, who is found to be the more fit to receive both the name and the appellation; while the other is excluded, who has no right to the appellation, because he has no reason to show for it. Nor will any other be better entitled to both than He who is the earlier, and has had allotted to Him the name of Christ and the appellation of Son of man, even the Jesus of the Creator. It was He who was seen by the king of Babylon in the furnace with His martyrs: “the fourth, who was like the Son of man.” 3799 He also was revealed to Daniel himself expressly as “the Son of man, coming in the clouds of heaven” as a Judge, as also the Scripture shows. 3800 What I have advanced might have been sufficient concerning the designation in prophecy of the Son of man. But the Scripture offers me further information, even in the interpretation of the Lord Himself. For when the Jews, who looked at Him as merely man, and were not yet sure that He was God also, as being likewise the Son of God, rightly enough said that a man could not forgive sins, but God alone, why did He not, following up their point 3801 about man, answer them, that He 3802 had power to remit sins; inasmuch as, when He mentioned the Son of man, He also named a human being? except it were because He wanted, by help of the very designation “Son of man” from the book of Daniel, so to induce them to reflect 3803 as to show them that He who remitted sins was God and man—that only Son of man, indeed, in the prophecy of Daniel, who had obtained the power of judging, and thereby, of course, of forgiving sins likewise (for He who judges also absolves); so that, when once that objection of theirs 3804 was shattered to pieces by their recollection of Scripture, they might the more easily acknowledge Him to be the Son of man Himself by His own actual forgiveness of sins. I make one more observation, 3805 how that He has nowhere as yet professed Himself to be the Son of God—but for the first time in this passage, in which for the first time He has remitted sins; that is, in which for the first time He has used His function of judgment, by the absolution. All that the opposite side has to allege in argument against these things, (I beg you) carefully weigh 3806 what it amounts to. For it must needs strain itself to such a pitch of infatuation as, on the one hand, to maintain that (their Christ) is also Son of man, in order to save Him from the charge of falsehood; and, on the other hand, to deny that He was born of woman, lest they grant p. 360 that He was the Virgin’s son. Since, however, the divine authority and the nature of the case, and common sense, do not admit this insane position of the heretics, we have here the opportunity of putting in a veto 3807 in the briefest possible terms, on the substance of Christ’s body, against Marcion’s phantoms. Since He is born of man, being the Son of man. He is body derived from body. 3808 You may, I assure you, 3809 more easily find a man born without a heart or without brains, like Marcion himself, than without a body, like Marcion’s Christ. And let this be the limit to your examination of the heart, or, at any rate, the brains of the heretic of Pontus. 3810
Footnotes
357:3761 357:3762 357:3763Isa. xxxv. 3 in an altered form.
357:3764 358:3765 358:3766This seems to be Isa. liii. 12, last clause.
358:3767 358:3768 358:3769 358:3770 358:3771 358:3772 358:3773Resignati jejunii. See 1 Sam. xiv. 43-45.
358:3774 358:3775 358:3776 358:3777 358:3778See book i. chap. xxvi.–xxviii.
358:3779 358:3780Retractare: give a set treatise about them.
358:3781 358:3782To secure terseness in the premisses, we are obliged to lengthen out the brief terms of the conclusion, virgo est.
358:3783 358:3784 359:3785 359:3786 359:3787On Marcion’s principles, it must be remembered.
359:3788Compare T.’s treatise, Adversus Valentinianos, chap. xii.
359:3789 359:3790 359:3791 359:3792Defendimus. See above, book iii. chap. xv. xvi.
359:3793 359:3794 359:3795 359:3796 359:3797 359:3798The context explains the difference between nomen and appellatio. The former refers to the name Jesus or Christ, the latter to the designation Son of man.
359:3799 359:3800 359:3801 359:3802 359:3803 359:3804 359:3805 359:3806 360:3807 360:3808 360:3809Plane: introducing the sharp irony.
360:3810This is perhaps the best sense of T.’s sarcasm: “Atque adeo (thus far) inspice cor Pontici aut (or else) cerebrum.”
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