Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Anti-Marcion/The Five Books Against Marcion/Book III/XV

by Tertullian

Chapter XV.—The Title Christ Suitable as a Name of the Creator’s Son, But Unsuited to Marcion’s Christ.

Touching then the discussion of His flesh, and (through that) of His nativity, and incidentally^[1] of His name Emmanuel, let this suffice.  Concerning His other names, however, and especially that of Christ, what has the other side to say in reply? If the name of Christ is as common with you as is the name of God—so that as the Son of both Gods may be fitly called Christ, so each of the Fathers may be called Lord—reason will certainly be opposed to this argument. For the name of God, as being the natural designation of Deity, may be ascribed to all those beings for whom a divine nature is claimed,—as, for instance, even to idols. The apostle says: “For there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth.”^[2] The name of Christ, however, does not arise from nature, but from dispensation;^[3] and so becomes the proper name of Him to whom it accrues in consequence of the dispensation. Nor is it subject to be shared in by any other God, especially a rival, and one that has a dispensation of His own, to whom it will be also necessary that He should possess names apart from all others. For how happens it that, after they have devised different dispensations for two Gods they admit into this diversity of dispensation a community of names; whereas no proof could be more useful of two Gods being rival ones, than if there should be found coincident with their (diverse) dispensations a diversity also of names? For that is not a state of diverse qualities, which is not distinctly indicated^[4] in the specific meanings^[5] of their designations. Whenever these are wanting, there occurs what the Greeks call the katachresis^[6]of a term, by its improper application to what does not belong to it.^[7] In God, however, there ought, I suppose, to be no defect, no setting up of His dispensations by katachrestic abuse of words. Who is this god, that claims for his son names from the Creator? I say not names which do not belong to him, but ancient and well-known names, which even in this view of them would be unsuitable for a novel and unknown god.  How is it, again, that he tells us that “a piece of new cloth is not sewed on to an old garment,” or that “new wine is not trusted to old bottles,”^[8] when he is himself patched and clad in an old suit^[9] of names? How is it he has rent off the gospel from the law, when he is wholly invested with the law,—in the name, forsooth, of Christ? What hindered his calling himself by some other name, seeing that he preached another (gospel), came from another source, and refused to take on him a real body, for the very purpose that he might not be supposed to be the Creator’s Christ? Vain, however, was his unwillingness to seem to be He whose name he was willing to assume; since, even if he had been truly corporeal, he would more certainly escape being taken for the Christ of the Creator, if he had not taken on him His name.  But, as it is, he rejects the substantial verity of Him whose name he has assumed, even though he should give a proof of that verity by his name. For Christ means anointed, and to be anointed is certainly an affair^[10] of the body. He who had not a body, could not by any possibility have been anointed; he who could not by any possibility have been anointed, could not in any wise have been called Christ. It is a different thing (quite), if he only assumed the phantom of a name too. But how, he asks, was he to insinuate himself into being believed by the Jews, except through a name which was usual and familiar amongst them? Then ’tis a fickle and tricksty God whom you describe! To promote any plan by deception, is the resource of either distrust or of maliciousness. Much more frank and simple was the conduct of the false prophets against the Creator, when they came in His name as their own God.^[11] But I do not find that any good came of this proceeding,^[12] since they were more apt to suppose either that Christ was their own, or rather was some deceiver, than that He was the Christ of the other god; and this the gospel will show.

Footnotes

1. Interim.
2. 1 Cor. viii. 5.
3. Ex dispositione. This word seems to mean what is implied in the phrases, “Christian dispensation,” “Mosaic dispensation,” etc.
4. Consignatur.
5. Proprietatibus.
6. Quintilian, Inst. viii. 6, defines this as a figure “which lends a name to things which have it not.”
7. De alieno abutendo.
8. Matt. ix. 16, 17.
9. Senio.
10. Passio.
11. Adversus Creatorem, in sui Dei nomine venientes.
12. i.e., to the Marcionite position.