{"collection":"chr","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/browse/chr/ecf/003/0030465.htm","path":"chr/ecf/003/0030465.htm","source_url":"https://sacred-texts.com/chr/ecf/003/0030465.htm","text":"Chapter XIX.\u2014The Epistle to the Colossians. Time the Criterion of Truth and Heresy. Application of the Canon. The Image of the Invisible God Explained. Pre-Existence of Our Christ in the Creator\u2019s Ancient Dispensations. What is Included in the Fulness of Christ. The Epicurean Character of Marcion\u2019s God. The Catholic Truth in Opposition Thereto. The Law is to Christ What the Shadow is to the Substance.\nI am accustomed in my prescription against all heresies, to fix my compendious criterion 6057 (of truth) in the testimony of time; claiming priority therein as our rule, and alleging lateness to be the characteristic of every heresy. This shall now be proved even by the apostle, when he says: \u201cFor the hope which is laid up for you in heaven, whereof ye heard before in the word of the truth of the gospel; which is come unto you, as it is unto all the world.\u201d 6058 For if, even at that time, the tradition of the gospel had spread everywhere, how much more now! Now, if it is our gospel which has spread everywhere, rather than any heretical gospel, much less Marcion\u2019s, which only dates from the reign of Antoninus, 6059 then ours will be the gospel of the apostles. But should Marcion\u2019s gospel succeed in filling the whole world, it would not even in that case be entitled to the character of apostolic. For this quality, it will be evident, can only belong to that gospel which was the first to fill the world; in other words, to the gospel of that God who of old declared this of its promulgation: \u201cTheir sound is gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.\u201d 6060 He calls Christ \u201cthe image of the invisible God.\u201d 6061 We in like manner say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father) Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote this we find a description of our God to this effect: \u201cNo man can see the Lord, and live.\u201d 6062 If Christ is not \u201cthe first-begotten before every creature,\u201d 6063 as that \u201cWord of God by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made;\u201d 6064 if \u201call things were\u201d not \u201cin Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers;\u201d if \u201call things were\u201d not \u201ccreated by Him and for Him\u201d (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it down, that \u201cHe is before all.\u201d 6065 For how is He before all, if He is not before all things? 6066 How, again, is He before all things, if He is not \u201cthe first-born of every creature\u201d\u2014if He is not the Word of the Creator? 6067 Now how will he be proved to have been before all things, who appeared after all things? Who can tell whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he had any existence at all? In what way also could it have \u201cpleased (the Father) that in Him should all fulness dwell?\u201d 6068 For, to begin with, what fulness is that which is not comprised of the constituents which Marcion has removed from it,\u2014even those that were \u201ccreated in Christ, whether in heaven or on earth,\u201d whether angels or men? which is not made of the things that are visible and invisible? which consists not of thrones and dominions and principalities and powers? If, on the other hand, 6069 our false apostles and Judaizing gospellers 6070 have inp. 471 troduced all these things out of their own stores, and Marcion has applied them to constitute the fulness of his own god, (this hypothesis, absurd though it be, alone would justify him;) for how, on any other supposition, 6071 could the rival and the destroyer of the Creator have been willing that His fulness should dwell in his Christ? To whom, again, does He \u201creconcile all things by Himself, making peace by the blood of His cross,\u201d 6072 but to Him whom those very things had altogether 6073 offended, against whom they had rebelled by transgression, (but) to whom they had at last returned? 6074 Conciliated they might have been to a strange god; but reconciled they could not possibly have been to any other than their own God. Accordingly, ourselves \u201cwho were sometime alienated and enemies in our mind by wicked works\u201d 6075 does He reconcile to the Creator, against whom we had committed offence\u2014worshipping the creature to the prejudice of the Creator. As, however, he says elsewhere, 6076 that the Church is the body of Christ, so here also (the apostle) declares that he \u201cfills up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for His body\u2019s sake, which is the Church.\u201d 6077 But you must not on this account suppose that on every mention of His body the term is only a metaphor, instead of meaning real flesh. For he says above that we are \u201creconciled in His body through death;\u201d 6078 meaning, of course, that He died in that body wherein death was possible through the flesh: (therefore he adds,) not through the Church 6079 (per ecclesiam), but expressly for the sake of the Church (proper ecclesiam), exchanging body for body\u2014one of flesh for a spiritual one. When, again, he warns them to \u201cbeware of subtle words and philosophy,\u201d as being \u201ca vain deceit,\u201d such as is \u201cafter the rudiments of the world\u201d (not understanding thereby the mundane fabric of sky and earth, but worldly learning, and \u201cthe tradition of men,\u201d subtle in their speech and their philosophy), 6080 it would be tedious, and the proper subject of a separate work, to show how in this sentence (of the apostle\u2019s) all heresies are condemned, on the ground of their consisting of the resources of subtle speech and the rules of philosophy. But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; 6081 wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator. 6082 He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,\u2014a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold. 6083 But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin\u2019s womb! At this, philosophers, and heretics, and the very heathen, laugh and jeer. For \u201cGod hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise\u201d 6084 \u2014that God, no doubt, who in reference to this very dispensation of His threatened long before that He would \u201cdestroy the wisdom of the wise.\u201d 6085 Thanks to this simplicity of truth, so opposed to the subtlety and vain deceit of philosophy, we cannot possibly have any relish for such perverse opinions. Then, if God \u201cquickens us together with Christ, forgiving us our trespasses,\u201d 6086 we cannot suppose that sins are forgiven by Him against whom, as having been all along unknown, they could not have been committed. Now tell me, Marcion, what is your opinion of the apostle\u2019s language, when he says, \u201cLet no man judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a holy day, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath, which is a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ?\u201d 6087 We do not now treat of the law, further than (to remark) that the apostle here teaches clearly how it has been abolished, even by passing from shadow to substance\u2014that is, from figurative types to the reality, which is Christ. The shadow, therefore, is His to whom belongs the body also; in other words, the law is His, and so is Christ. If you separate the law and Christ, assigning one to one god and the other to another, it is the same as if you were to atp. 472 tempt to separate the shadow from the body of which it is the shadow. Manifestly Christ has relation to the law, if the body has to its shadow. But when he blames those who alleged visions of angels as their authority for saying that men must abstain from meats\u2014\u201cyou must not touch, you must not taste\u201d\u2014in a voluntary humility, (at the same time) \u201cvainly puffed up in the fleshly mind, and not holding the Head,\u201d 6088 (the apostle) does not in these terms attack the law or Moses, as if it was at the suggestion of superstitious angels that he had enacted his prohibition of sundry aliments. For Moses had evidently received the law from God. When, therefore, he speaks of their \u201cfollowing the commandments and doctrines of men,\u201d 6089 he refers to the conduct of those persons who \u201cheld not the Head,\u201d even Him in whom all things are gathered together; 6090 for they are all recalled to Christ, and concentrated in Him as their initiating principle 6091 \u2014even the meats and drinks which were indifferent in their nature. All the rest of his precepts, 6092 as we have shown sufficiently, when treating of them as they occurred in another epistle, 6093 emanated from the Creator, who, while predicting that \u201cold things were to pass away,\u201d and that He would \u201cmake all things new,\u201d 6094 commanded men \u201cto break up fresh ground for themselves,\u201d 6095 and thereby taught them even then to put off the old man and put on the new.\nAntoniniani Marcionis: see above in book i. chap. xix.\n470:6060 470:6061 470:6062 470:6063\nCol. i. 15. Our author\u2019s \u201cprimogenitus conditionis\u201d is St. Paul\u2019s \u03c0\u03c1\u03c9\u03c4\u03cc\u03c4\u03bf\u03ba\u03bf\u03c2 \u03c0\u03ac\u03c3\u03b7\u03c2 \u03ba\u03c4\u03af\u03c3\u03b5\u03c9\u03c2, for the meaning of which see Bp. Ellicott, in loc.\n470:6064 470:6065 470:6066 470:6067\nCreatoris is our author\u2019s word.\n470:6068 470:6069 470:6070 471:6071 471:6072 471:6073\n\u201cUna ipsa\u201d is Oehler\u2019s reading instead of universa.\n471:6074 471:6075 471:6076 471:6077 471:6078 471:6079\nAs if only in a metaphorical body, in which sense the Church is \u201cHis body.\u201d\n471:6080 471:6081\n\u201cDominum inferens hebetem;\u201d with which may be compared Cicero (De Divin. ii. 50, 103): \u201cVidesne Epicurum quem hebetem et rudem dicere solent Stoici\u2026qui negat, quidquam deos nec alieni curare, nec sui.\u201d The otiose and inert character of the god of Epicurus is referred to by Tertullian not unfrequently; see above, in book iv. chap. xv.; Apolog. 47, and Ad Nationes, ii. 2; whilst in De Anima, 3, he characterizes the philosophy of Epicurus by a similar term: \u201cProut aut Platonis honor, aut Zenonis vigor, aut Aristotelis tenor, aut Epicuri stupor, aut Heracliti m\u00e6ror, aut Empedoclis furor persuaserunt.\u201d\n471:6082\nThe Stoical dogma of the eternity of matter and its equality with God was also held by Hermogenes; see his Adv. Hermogenem, c. 4, \u201cMateriam parem Deo infert.\u201d\n471:6083\nPliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 55, refers to the peculiar opinion of Democritus on this subject (Fr. Junius).\n471:6084 471:6085\nIsa. 29:14, 1 Cor. 1:19, Jer. 8:9, Job 5:12, 13.\n471:6086 471:6087 472:6088 472:6089 472:6090\nRecensentur: Eph. i. 10.\n472:6091 472:6092\nContained in Vol. iii. and iv.\n472:6093\nIn the Epistle to the Laodiceans or Ephesians; see his remarks in the preceding chapter of this book v.\n472:6094\nIsa. 43:18, 19, Isa. 65:17, 2 Cor. 5:17.\n472:6095\nJer. iv. 3. This and the passage of Isaiah just quoted are also cited together above, book iv. chap. i. and ii. p. 345.","title":"Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol III: Tertullian: Part II: The Ep...","type":"page"}