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

by Tertullian

Chapter XXXVII.—Christ and Zacchæus. The Salvation of the Body as Denied by Marcion. The Parable of the Ten Servants Entrusted with Ten Pounds.  Christ a Judge, Who is to Administer the Will of the Austere Man, I.e. The Creator.

“Salvation comes to the house” of Zacchæus even.^[1] For what reason? Was it because he also believed that Christ came by Marcion? But the blind man’s cry was still sounding in the ears of all:  “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” And “all the people gave praise unto God”—not Marcion’s, but David’s. Now, although Zacchæus was probably a Gentile,^[2] he yet from his intercourse with Jews had obtained a smattering^[3] of their Scriptures, and, more than this, had, without knowing it, fulfilled the precepts of Isaiah: “Deal thy bread,” said the prophet, “to the hungry, and bring the poor that are cast out into thine house.”^[4] This he did in the best possible way, by receiving the Lord, and entertaining Him in his house. “When thou seest the naked cover him.”^[5] This he promised to do, in an equally satisfactory way, when he offered the half of his goods for all works of mercy.^[6] So also “he loosened the bands of wickedness, undid the heavy burdens, let the oppressed go free, and broke every yoke,”^[7] when he said, “If I have taken anything from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.”^[8] Therefore the Lord said, “This day is salvation come to this house.”^[9] Thus did He give His testimony, that the precepts of the Creator spoken by the prophet tended to salvation.^[10] But when He adds, “For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,”^[11] my present contention is not whether He was come to save what was lost, to whom it had once belonged, and from whom what He came to save had fallen away; but I approach a different question. Man, there can be no doubt of it, is here the subject of consideration. Now, since he consists of two parts,^[12] body and soul, the point to be inquired into is, in which of these two man would seem to have been lost? If in his body, then it is his body, not his soul, which is lost. What, however, is lost, the Son of man saves. The body,^[13] therefore, has the salvation. If, (on the other hand,) it is in his soul that man is lost, salvation is designed for the lost soul; and the body which is not lost is safe. If, (to take the only other supposition,) man is wholly lost, in both his natures, then it necessarily follows that salvation is appointed for the entire man; and then the opinion of the heretics is shivered to pieces,^[14] who say that there is no salvation of the flesh. And this affords a confirmation that Christ belongs to the Creator, who followed the Creator in promising the salvation of the whole man. The parable also of the (ten) servants, who received their several recompenses according to the manner in which they had increased their lord’s money by trading^[15] proves Him to be a God of judgment—even a God who, in strict account,^[16] not only bestows honour, but also takes away what a man seems to have.^[17] Else, if it is the Creator whom He has here delineated as the “austere man,” who “takes up what he laid not down, and reaps what he did not sow,”^[18] my instructor even here is He, (whoever He may be,) to whom belongs the money He teaches me fruitfully to expend.^[19]

Footnotes

1. Luke xix. 9.
2. The older reading, which we here follow, is: “Enimvero Zacchæus etsi allophylus fortasse,” etc.  Oehler, however, points the passage thus: “Enimvero Zacchæus etsi allophylus, fortasse,” etc., removing the doubt, and making Zacchæus “of another race” than the Jewish, for certain. This is probably more than Tertullian meant to say.
3. Aliqua notitia afflatus.
4. Isa. lviii. 7.
5. In the same passage.
6. For the history of Zacchæus, see Luke xix. 1–10.
7. Isa. lviii. 6.
8. Luke xix. 8.
9. Luke xix. 9.
10. Salutaria esse.
11. Luke xix. 10.
12. Substantiis.
13. Caro: “the flesh,” here a synonym with the corpus of the previous clauses.
14. Elisa est.
15. Secundum rationem feneratæ.
16. Ex parte severitatis.
17. This phrase comes not from the present passage, but from Luke viii. 18, where the words are ὅ δοκεῖ ἔχειν; here the expression is ὅ ἔχει only.
18. Luke xix. 22.
19. The original of this obscure sentence is as follows: “Aut si et hic Creatorem finxerit austerum…..hic quoque me ille instruit eujus pecuniam ut fenerem edocet.