Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Pauline Salutation of Grace and Peace Shown to Be Anti-Marcionite. The Cross of Christ Purposed by the Creator. Marcion Only Perpetuates the Offence and Foolishness of Christ's Cross by His Impious Severance of the Gospel from the Creator. Analogies Between the Law and the Gospel in the Matter of Weak Things, and Foolish Things and Base Things.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter V.—The
First Epistle to the Corinthians. The Pauline Salutation of Grace and
Peace Shown to Be Anti-Marcionite. The Cross of Christ Purposed by the
Creator. Marcion Only Perpetuates the Offence and Foolishness of
Christ’s Cross by His Impious Severance of the Gospel from the
Creator. Analogies Between the Law and the Gospel in the Matter of Weak
Things, and Foolish Things and Base Things.
My preliminary remarks5386
on
the preceding epistle called me away from treating of its
superscription,5387
for I was sure that
another opportunity would occur for considering the matter, it being of
constant recurrence, and in the same form too, in every epistle. The
point, then, is, that it is not (the usual) health which the
apostle prescribes for those to whom he writes, but “grace and
peace.”5388
I do not ask,
indeed, what a destroyer of Judaism has to do with a formula which the
Jews still use. For to this day they salute each other5389
with the greeting of “peace,”
and formerly in their Scriptures they did the same. But I understand
him by his practice5390
plainly enough to
have corroborated the declaration of the Creator: “How beautiful
are the feet of them that bring glad tidings of good, who preach the
gospel of peace!”5391
For the herald of
good, that is, of God’s “grace” was well aware
that along with it “peace” also was to be
proclaimed.5392
| 5392 Pacem quam
præferendam. | Now, when he
announces these blessings as “from God the Father and the Lord
Jesus,”5393
he uses titles that
are common to both, and which are also adapted to the mystery of our
faith;5394
| 5394 Competentibus nostro
quoque sacramento. | and I suppose it to
be impossible accurately to determine what God is declared to be the
Father and the Lord Jesus, unless (we consider) which of their accruing
attributes are more suited to them severally.5395
| 5395 Nisi ex accedentibus
cui magis competant. |
First, then, I assert that none other than the Creator and Sustainer of
both man and the universe can be acknowledged as Father and
Lord; next, that to the Father also the title of Lord accrues by reason
of His power, and that the Son too receives the same through the
Father; then that “grace and peace” are not only His who
had them published, but His likewise to whom offence had been given.
For neither does grace exist, except after offence; nor
peace, except after war. Now, both the people (of Israel) by their transgression
of His laws,5396
and the whole race
of mankind by their neglect of natural duty,5397
| 5397 Per naturæ
dissimulationem. This Fr. Junius explains by τὴν φύσεως
ἀφοσίωσιν,
in the sense of “original sin” (ἀφοσιοῦσθαι
seems to point to sin requiring expiation). |
had both sinned and rebelled against the Creator. Marcion’s god,
however, could not have been offended, both because he was unknown to
everybody, and because he is incapable of being irritated. What
grace, therefore, can be had of a god who has not been offended?
What peace from one who has never experienced rebellion?
“The cross of Christ,” he says, “is to them that
perish foolishness; but unto such as shall obtain salvation, it is the
power of God and the wisdom of God.”5398
And then, that we may know from whence this comes, he adds: “For
it is written, ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will
bring to nothing the understanding of the
prudent.’”5399
Now, since these
are the Creator’s words, and since what pertains to the
doctrine5400
of the cross he
accounts as foolishness, therefore both the cross, and also Christ by
reason of the cross, will appertain to the Creator, by whom were
predicted the incidents of the cross. But if5401
| 5401 Aut si: introducing a
Marcionite cavil. | the Creator, as an enemy, took away their
wisdom in order that the cross of Christ, considered as his adversary,
should be accounted foolishness, how by any possibility can the Creator
have foretold anything about the cross of a Christ who is not His own,
and of whom He knew nothing, when He published the prediction? But,
again, how happens it, that in the system of a Lord5402
who is so very good, and so profuse in
mercy, some carry off salvation, when they believe the cross to be the
wisdom and power of God, whilst others incur perdition, to whom the
cross of Christ is accounted folly;—(how happens it, I repeat,)
unless it is in the Creator’s dispensation to have punished both
the people of Israel and the human race, for some great offence
committed against Him, with the loss of wisdom and prudence? What
follows will confirm this suggestion, when he asks, “Hath not God
infatuated the wisdom of this world?”5403
and when he adds the reason why: “For after that, in the wisdom
of God, the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God5404
| 5404 Boni duxit Deus,
εὐδόκησεν ὁ
Θεός. | by the foolishness of preaching to save them
that believe.”5405
But first a word
about the expression “the world;” because in this
passage particularly,5406
the heretics expend
a great deal of their subtlety in showing that by world is meant
the lord of the world. We, however, understand the term to apply
to any person that is in the world, by a simple idiom of human
language, which often substitutes that which contains for that which is
contained. “The circus shouted,” “The forum
spoke,” and “The basilica murmured,” are well-known
expressions, meaning that the people in these places did so. Since then
the man, not the god, of the world5407
| 5407 That is, “man
who lives in the world, not God who made the world.” | in his wisdom
knew not God, whom indeed he ought to have known (both the Jew by his
knowledge of the Scriptures, and all the human race by their knowledge
of God’s works), therefore that God, who was not acknowledged in
His wisdom, resolved to smite men’s knowledge with His
foolishness, by saving all those who believe in the folly of the
preached cross. “Because the Jews require signs,” who
ought to have already made up their minds about God, “and the
Greeks seek after wisdom,”5408
who rely upon
their own wisdom, and not upon God’s. If, however, it was a new
god that was being preached, what sin had the Jews committed, in
seeking after signs to believe; or the Greeks, when they hunted after a
wisdom which they would prefer to accept? Thus the very retribution
which overtook both Jews and Greeks proves that God is both a jealous
God and a Judge, inasmuch as He infatuated the world’s wisdom by
an angry5409
and a judicial
retribution. Since, then, the causes5410
| 5410 Causæ: the
reasons of His retributive providence. | are in the
hands of Him who gave us the Scriptures which we use, it follows that
the apostle, when treating of the Creator, (as Him whom both Jew and
Gentile as yet have) not known, means undoubtedly to teach us, that the
God who is to become known (in Christ) is the Creator. The very
“stumbling-block” which he declares Christ to be “to
the Jews,”5411
points
unmistakeably5412
to the
Creator’s prophecy respecting Him, when by Isaiah He says:
“Behold I lay in Sion a stone of stumbling and a rock of
offence.”5413
This rock or stone
is Christ.5414
This
stumbling-stone Marcion retains still.5415
| 5415 “Etiam Marcion
servat.” These words cannot mean, as they have been translated,
that “Marcion even retains these words” of prophecy; for
whenever Marcion fell in with any traces of this prophecy of Christ, he
seems to have expunged them. In Luke ii. 34 holy Simeon referred to it, but Marcion
rejected this chapter of the evangelist; and although he admitted much
of chap. xx., it is remarkable that he erased the ten verses thereof
from the end of the eighth to the end of the eighteenth. Now in
vers. 17, 18, Marcion found the prophecy again referred to. See
Epiphanius, Adv. Hæres. xlii. Schol.
55. | Now, what is that “foolishness of
God which is wiser than men,” but the cross and death of Christ?
What is that “weakness of God which is stronger than
men,”5416
but the nativity
and incarnation5417
of God? If,
however, Christ was not born of the Virgin, was not constituted of
human flesh, and thereby really suffered neither death nor the cross,
there was nothing in Him either of foolishness or weakness; nor is it
any longer true, that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the
world to confound the wise;” nor, again, hath “God chosen
the weak things of the world to confound the mighty;” nor
“the base things” and the least things “in the world,
and things which are despised, which are even as nothing” (that
is, things which really5418
are not), “to
bring to nothing things which are” (that is, which really
are).5419
For nothing in the dispensation of God is
found to be mean, and ignoble, and contemptible. Such only occurs in
man’s arrangement. The very Old Testament of the Creator5420
| 5420 Apud Creatorem etiam
vetera: (vetera, i.e.) “veteris testamenti
institutiones” (Oehler). | itself, it is possible, no doubt, to charge
with foolishness, and weakness, and dishonour and meanness, and
contempt. What is more foolish and more weak than God’s
requirement of bloody sacrifices and of savoury holocausts? What
is weaker than the cleansing of vessels and of beds?5421
What more dishonourable than the
discoloration of the reddening skin?5422
What so mean
as the statute of retaliation? What so contemptible as the exception in
meats and drinks? The whole of the Old Testament, the heretic, to the
best of my belief, holds in derision. For God has chosen the foolish
things of the world to confound its wisdom. Marcion’s god
has no such discipline, because he does not take after5423
(the Creator) in the process of confusing
opposites by their opposites, so that “no flesh shall glory; but,
as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the
Lord.”5424
In what Lord?
Surely in Him who gave this precept.5425
Unless,
forsooth, the Creator enjoined us to glory in the god of
Marcion.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
