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

by Tertullian

Chapter XLI.—The Woe Pronounced on the Traitor a Judicial Act, Which Disproves Christ to Be Such as Marcion Would Have Him to Be. Christ’s Conduct Before the Council Explained. Christ Even Then Directs the Minds of His Judges to the Prophetic Evidences of His Own Mission. The Moral Responsibility of These Men Asserted.

“Woe,” says He, “to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!”^[1] Now it is certain that in this woe must be understood the imprecation and threat of an angry and incensed Master, unless Judas was to escape with impunity after so vast a sin. If he were meant to escape with impunity, the “woe” was an idle word; if not, he was of course to be punished by Him against whom he had committed the sin of treachery.  Now, if He knowingly permitted the man, whom He^[2] deliberately elected to be one of His companions, to plunge into so great a crime, you must no longer use an argument against the Creator in Adam’s case, which may now recoil on your own God:^[3] either that he was ignorant, and had no foresight to hinder the future sinner;^[4] or that he was unable to hinder him, even if he was ignorant;^[5] or else that he was unwilling, even if he had the foreknowledge and the ability; and so deserved the stigma of maliciousness, in having permitted the man of his own choice to perish in his sin. I advise you therefore (willingly) to acknowledge the Creator in that god of yours, rather than against your will to be assimilating your excellent god to Him.  For in the case of Peter,^[6] too, he gives you proof that he is a jealous God, when he destined the apostle, after his presumptuous protestations of zeal, to a flat denial of him, rather than prevent his fall.^[7] The Christ of the prophets was destined, moreover, to be betrayed with a kiss,^[8] for He was the Son indeed of Him who was “honoured with the lips” by the people.^[9] When led before the council, He is asked whether He is the Christ.^[10] Of what Christ could the Jews have inquired^[11] but their own? Why, therefore, did He not, even at that moment, declare to them the rival (Christ)? You reply, In order that He might be able to suffer. In other words, that this most excellent god might plunge men into crime, whom he was still keeping in ignorance. But even if he had told them, he would yet have to suffer. For he said, “If I tell you, ye will not believe.”^[12] And refusing to believe, they would have continued to insist on his death. And would he not even more probably still have had to suffer, if had announced himself as sent by the rival god, and as being, therefore, the enemy of the Creator? It was not, then, in order that He might suffer, that He at that critical moment refrained from proclaiming^[13] Himself the other Christ, but because they wanted to extort a confession from His mouth, which they did not mean to believe even if He had given it to them, whereas it was their bounden duty to have acknowledged Him in consequence of His works, which were fulfilling their Scriptures. It was thus plainly His course to keep Himself at that moment unrevealed,^[14] because a spontaneous recognition was due to Him. But yet for all this, He with a solemn gesture^[15] says, “Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God.”^[16] For it was on the authority of the prophecy of Daniel that He intimated to them that He was “the Son of man,”^[17] and of David’s Psalm, that He would “sit at the right hand of God.”^[18] Accordingly, after He had said this, and so suggested a comparison of the Scripture, a ray of light did seem to show them whom He would have them understand Him to be; for they say: “Art thou then the Son of God?”^[19] Of what God, but of Him whom alone they knew? Of what God but of Him whom they remembered in the Psalm as having said to His Son, “Sit Thou on my right hand?” Then He answered, “Ye say that I am;”^[20] as if He meant: It is ye who say this—not I. But at the same time He allowed Himself to be all that they had said, in this their second question.^[21] By what means, however, are you going to prove to us that they pronounced the sentence “Ergo tu filius Dei es” interrogatively, and not affirmatively?^[22] Just as, (on the one hand,) because He had shown them in an indirect manner,^[23] by passages of Scripture, that they ought to regard Him as the Son of God, they therefore meant their own words, “Thou art then the Son of God,” to be taken in a like (indirect) sense,^[24] as much as to say, “You do not wish to say this of yourself plainly,”^[25] so, (on the other hand,) He likewise answered them, “Ye say that I am,” in a sense equally free from doubt, even affirmatively;^[26] and so completely was His statement to this effect, that they insisted on accepting that sense which His statement indicated.^[27]

Footnotes

1. Luke xxii. 22.
2. Ipse.
3. This is an argumentum ad hominem against Marcion for his cavil, which was considered above in book ii. chap. v.–viii. p. 300.
4. Obstitit peccaturo.
5. Si ignorabat. One would have expected “si non ignorabat,” like the “si sciebat” of the next step in the argument.
6. The original of this not very clear sentence is: “Nam et Petrum præsumptorie aliquid elocutum negationi potius destinando zeloten deum tibi ostendit.”
7. Luke xxii. 34 and 54–62.
8. Luke xxii. 47–49.
9. Isa. xxix. 13.
10. Luke xxii. 66, 67.
11. Oehler’s admirable edition is also carefully printed for the most part, but surely his quæsisset must here be quæsissent.
12. Luke xxii. 67.
13. Supersedit ostendere.
14. i.e., not to answer that question of theirs. This seems to be the force of the perfect tense, “occultasse se.”
15. He makes Jesus stretch forth His hand, porrigens manum inquit.
16. Luke xxii. 69.
17. Dan. vii. 13.
18. Ps. cx. 1.
19. Luke xxii. 70.
20. Luke xxii. 70.
21. Or does he suppose that they repeated this same question twice? His words are, “dum rursus interrogant.”
22. Either, “Art thou,” or, “Thou art, then, the Son of God.”
23. Oblique.
24. Ut, quia…sic senserunt.
25. Aperte.
26. Æque ita et ille confirmative respondit.
27. Ut perseveraverint in eo quod pronuntiatio sapiebat.…See Luke xxii. 71.