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| Specific Points. The Novelty of Marcion's God Fatal to His Pretensions. God is from Everlasting, He Cannot Be in Any Wise New.
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Chapter VIII.—Specific Points. The Novelty of
Marcion’s God Fatal to His Pretensions. God is from Everlasting,
He Cannot Be in Any Wise New.
In the first place, how arrogantly do the
Marcionites build up their stupid system,2410
bringing forward a new god, as if we were ashamed of the old one! So
schoolboys are proud of their new shoes, but their old master beats
their strutting vanity out of them. Now when I hear of a new
god,2411
who, in the old world and in the old time
and under the old god was unknown and unheard of; whom, (accounted
as no one through such long centuries back, and ancient in
men’s very ignorance of him),2412
| 2412 The original of this
obscure passage is: “Novum igitur audiens deum, in vetere mundo
et in vetere ævo et sub vetere deo inauditum quem tantis retro
seculis neminem, et ipsa ignorantia antiquum, quidam Jesus Christus, et
ille in veteribus nominibus novus, revelaverit, nec alius
antehac.” The harsh expression, “quidam Jesus
Christus,” bears, of course, a sarcastic reference to the
capricious and inconsistent novelty which Marcion broached in his
heresy about Christ. [By some slight chance in punctuation and
arrangement, I have endeavoured to make it a little clearer.] | a certain
“Jesus Christ,” and none else revealed; whom Christ
revealed, they say—Christ himself new, according to
them, even, in ancient names—I feel grateful for this
conceit2413
| 2413 Gloriæ.
[Qu. boast?] | of theirs. For by
its help I shall at once be able to prove the heresy of their tenet of
a new deity. It will turn out to be such a novelty2414
| 2414 Hæc erit novitas
quæ. | as has made gods even for the heathen by
some new and yet again and ever new title2415
| 2415 Novo semper ac novo
titulo. |
for each several deification. What new god is there, except a false
one? Not even Saturn will be proved to be a god by all his ancient
fame, because it was a novel pretence which some time or other produced
even him, when it first gave him godship.2416
On
the contrary, living and perfect2417
Deity has its
origin2418
| 2418 Censetur. A
frequent meaning in Tertullian. See Apol. 7 and 12. | neither in novelty
nor in antiquity, but in its own true nature. Eternity has no time. It
is itself all time. It acts; it cannot then suffer. It cannot be born,
therefore it lacks age. God, if old, forfeits the eternity that is to
come; if new, the eternity which is past.2419
| 2419 We cannot preserve the
terseness of the Latin: Deus, si est vetus, non erit; si est novus, non
fuit. |
The newness bears witness to a beginning; the oldness threatens an end.
God, moreover, is as independent of beginning and end as He is of time,
which is only the arbiter and measurer of a beginning and an
end.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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