Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| The Second Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ. The Newness of the New Testament. The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel, Not Reprehensible on Marcion's Principles. The Jews Guilty in Rejecting the Christ of the Creator. Satan, the God of This World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The Creator's Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies.
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XI.—The Second
Epistle to the Corinthians. The Creator the Father of Mercies. Shown to
Be Such in the Old Testament, and Also in Christ. The Newness of
the New Testament. The Veil of Obdurate Blindness Upon Israel,
Not Reprehensible on Marcion’s Principles. The Jews Guilty in
Rejecting the Christ of the Creator. Satan, the God of This
World. The Treasure in Earthen Vessels Explained Against Marcion. The
Creator’s Relation to These Vessels, I.e. Our Bodies.
If, owing to the fault of human error, the word
God has become a common name (since in the world there are said
and believed to be “gods many”5679
),
yet “the blessed God,” (who is “the Father) of our
Lord Jesus Christ,”5680
will be understood
to be no other God than the Creator, who both blessed all things (that
He had made), as you find in Genesis,5681
and is Himself “blessed by all things,” as Daniel tells
us.5682
| 5682 Dan. ii. 19, 20; iii. 28, 29; iv. 34, 37" id="v.iv.vi.xi-p6.1" parsed="|Dan|2|19|2|20;|Dan|3|28|3|29;|Dan|4|34|0|0;|Dan|4|37|0|0" osisRef="Bible:Dan.2.19-Dan.2.20 Bible:Dan.3.28-Dan.3.29 Bible:Dan.4.34 Bible:Dan.4.37">Dan. ii. 19, 20; iii. 28, 29; iv. 34,
37. | Now, if the title of Father may be
claimed for (Marcion’s) sterile god, how much more for the
Creator? To none other than Him is it suitable, who is also “the
Father of mercies,”5683
and (in the
prophets) has been described as “full of compassion, and
gracious, and plenteous in mercy.”5684
| 5684 Ps. lxxxvi. 15; cxii. 4; cxlv. 8; Jonah
iv. 2. | In
Jonah you find the signal act of His mercy, which He showed to the
praying Ninevites.5685
How inflexible was
He at the tears of Hezekiah!5686
How ready to
forgive Ahab, the husband of Jezebel, the blood of Naboth, when he
deprecated His anger.5687
How prompt in
pardoning David on his confession of his sin5688
—preferring, indeed, the sinner’s
repentance to his death, of course because of His gracious attribute of
mercy.5689
Now, if
Marcion’s god has exhibited or proclaimed any such thing as this,
I will allow him to be “the Father of mercies.” Since,
however, he ascribes to him this title only from the time he has been
revealed, as if he were the father of mercies from the time only when
he began to liberate the human race, then we on our side, too,5690
adopt the same precise date of his alleged
revelation; but it is that we may deny him! It is then not competent to
him to ascribe any quality to his god, whom indeed he only promulged by
the fact of such an ascription; for only if it were previously evident
that his god had an existence, could he be permitted to ascribe an
attribute to him. The ascribed attribute is only an accident; but
accidents5691
| 5691 The
Contingent qualities in logic. | are preceded by the
statement of the thing itself of which they are predicated, especially
when another claims the attribute which is ascribed to him who has not
been previously shown to exist. Our denial of his existence will be all
the more peremptory, because of the fact that the attribute which is
alleged in proof of it belongs to that God who has been already
revealed. Therefore “the New Testament” will appertain to
none other than Him who promised it—if not “its letter, yet
its spirit;”5692
and herein will lie
its newness. Indeed, He who had engraved its letter in stones is
the same as He who had said of its spirit, “I will pour out of my
Spirit upon all flesh.”5693
Even if “the
letter killeth, yet the Spirit giveth life;”5694
and both belong to Him who says: “I
kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal.”5695
We have already made good the
Creator’s claim to this twofold character of judgment and
goodness5696
| 5696 See above in book ii.
[cap. xi. p. 306.] | —“killing in the letter”
through the law, and “quickening in the Spirit” through the
Gospel. Now these attributes, however different they be, cannot
possibly make two gods; for they have already (in the prevenient
dispensation of the Old Testament) been found to meet in One.5697
| 5697 Apud unum recenseri
prævenerunt. | He alludes to Moses’ veil, covered
with which “his face could not be stedfastly seen by the children
of Israel.”5698
Since he did this
to maintain the superiority of the glory of the New Testament, which is
permanent in its glory, over that of the Old, “which was to be
done away,”5699
this fact gives
support to my belief which exalts the Gospel above the law and you must
look well to it that it does not even more than this. For only
there is superiority possible where was previously the thing
over which superiority can be affirmed. But then he says, “But
their minds were blinded”5700
—of the
world; certainly not the Creator’s mind, but the minds of the
people which are in the world.5701
| 5701 He seems to have
read the clause as applying to the world, but St. Paul certainly
refers only to the obdurate Jews. The text is: “Sed
obtunsi sunt sensus mundi. | Of Israel he says,
Even unto this day the same veil is upon their heart;”5702
showing that the veil which was on the face
of Moses was a figure of the veil which is on the heart of the nation
still; because even now Moses is not seen by them in heart, just as he
was not then seen by them in eye. But what concern has Paul with the
veil which still obscures Moses from their view, if the Christ of the
Creator, whom Moses predicted, is not yet come? How are the hearts of
the Jews represented as still covered and veiled, if the predictions of
Moses relating to Christ, in whom it was their duty to believe through
him, are as yet unfulfilled? What had the apostle of a strange Christ
to complain of, if the Jews failed in understanding the mysterious
announcements of their own God, unless the veil which was upon their
hearts had reference to that blindness which concealed from their eyes
the Christ of Moses? Then, again, the words which follow, But when it
shall turn to the Lord, the evil shall be taken away,”5703
properly refer to the Jew, over whose gaze
Moses’ veil is spread, to the effect that, when he is turned to
the faith of Christ, he will understand how Moses spoke of Christ. But
how shall the veil of the Creator be taken away by the Christ of
another god, whose mysteries the Creator could not possibly have
veiled—unknown mysteries, as they were of an unknown god? So he
says that “we now with open face” (meaning the
candour of the heart, which in the Jews had been covered with a
veil), “beholding Christ, are changed into the same image, from
that glory” (wherewith Moses was transfigured as by the glory of
the Lord) “to another glory.”5704
By
thus setting forth the glory which illumined the person of Moses from
his interview with God, and the veil which concealed the same from the
infirmity of the people, and by superinducing thereupon the revelation
and the glory of the Spirit in the person of Christ—“even
as,” to use his words, “by the Spirit of the
Lord”5705
| 5705 2 Cor. iii. 18, but T.’s reading is
“tanquam a domino spirituum” (“even as by the Lord of
the Spirits,” probably the sevenfold Spirit.). The original is,
καθάπερ
ἀπὸ Κυρίου
Πνεύματος,
“by the Lord the Spirit.” | —he testifies
that the whole Mosaic system5706
| 5706 Moysi ordinem
totum. | was a figure of
Christ, of whom the Jews indeed were ignorant, but who is known to us
Christians. We are quite aware that some passages are open to
ambiguity, from the way in which they are read, or else from their
punctuation, when there is room for these two causes of ambiguity. The
latter method has been adopted by Marcion, by reading the passage which
follows, “in whom the God of this world,”5707
as if it described the Creator as the God of
this world, in order that he may, by these words, imply that there is
another God for the other world. We, however, say that the passage
ought to be punctuated with a comma after God, to this effect:
“In whom God hath blinded the eyes of the unbelievers of this
world.”5708
| 5708 He would stop off the
phrase τοῦ
αἰῶνος
τούτου from ὁ Θεὸς, and remove it to the end of the
sentence as a qualification of τῶν
ἀπίστων. He adds
another interpretation just afterwards, which, we need not say, is both
more consistent with the sense of the passage and with the
consensus of Christian writers of all ages, although “it
is historically curious” (as Dean Alford has remarked)
“that Irenæus [Hæres. iv. 48, Origen,
Tertullian (v. 11, contra Marcion)], Chrysostom, Œcumenius,
Theodoret, Theophylact, all repudiate, in their zeal against the
Manichæans, the grammatical rendering, and take τῶν
ἀπίστων τοῦ
αἰῶνος
τούτου together”
(Greek Testament, in loc.). [I have corrected Alford’s
reference to Tertullian which he makes B. iv. 11.] | “In
whom” means the Jewish unbelievers, from some of whom the gospel
is still hidden under Moses’ veil. Now it is these whom God had
threatened for “loving Him indeed with the lip, whilst their
heart was far from Him,”5709
in these angry
words: “Ye shall hear with your ears, and not understand; and see
with your eyes, but not perceive;”5710
and, “If ye will not believe, ye shall not
understand;”5711
and again, “I
will take away the wisdom of their wise men, and bring to nought5712
| 5712 Sept. κρὐψω, “will
hide.” | the understanding of their prudent
ones.” But these words, of course, He did not pronounce
against them for concealing the gospel of the unknown God. At any
rate, if there is a God of this world,5713
| 5713 Said concessively, in
reference to M.’s position above mentioned. | He
blinds the heart of the unbelievers of this world, because they have
not of their own accord recognised His Christ, who ought to be
understood from His Scriptures.5714
| 5714 Marcion’s
“God of this world” being the God of the Old Testament. | Content with
my advantage, I can willingly refrain from noticing to any greater
length5715
| 5715 Hactenus: pro
non amplius (Oehler) tractasse. | this point of
ambiguous punctuation, so as not to give my adversary any
advantage,5716
| 5716 “A fuller
criticism on this slight matter might give his opponent the advantage,
as apparently betraying a penury of weightier and more certain
arguments” (Oehler). | indeed, I might
have wholly omitted the discussion. A simpler answer I shall find ready
to hand in interpreting “the god of this world” of the
devil, who once said, as the prophet describes him: “I will be
like the Most High; I will exalt my throne in the
clouds.”5717
The whole
superstition, indeed, of this world has got into his hands,5718
so that he blinds effectually the hearts of
unbelievers, and of none more than the apostate Marcion’s. Now he
did not observe how much this clause of the sentence made against him:
“For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath
shined in our hearts, to (give) the light of the knowledge (of His
glory) in the face of (Jesus) Christ.”5719
Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?”5720
And who was it that said to Christ
concerning giving light to the world: “I have set Thee as a light
to the Gentiles”5721
—to them, that
is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of
death?”5722
| 5722 Isa.
ix. 2 and Matt. iv. 16. | (None else, surely,
than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of
the future, saying, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath
been displayed upon us.”5723
Now the countenance
(or person5724
| 5724 Persona: the
πρόσωπον of the
Septuagint. | ) of the Lord here
is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the
image of God.”5725
Since Christ, then,
is the person of the Creator, who said, “Let there be
light,” it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel,
and the veil, and Moses—nay, the whole of the
dispensations—belong to the God who is the Creator of this world,
according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and
certainly not to him who never said, “Let there be light.”
I here pass over discussion about another epistle, which we hold to
have been written to the Ephesians, but the heretics to the Laodiceans.
In it he tells5726
them to remember,
that at the time when they were Gentiles they were without Christ,
aliens from (the commonwealth of) Israel, without intercourse, without
the covenants and any hope of promise, nay, without God, even in his
own world,5727
as the Creator
thereof. Since therefore he said, that the Gentiles were without God,
whilst their god was the devil, not the Creator, it is clear that he
must be understood to be the lord of this world, whom the Gentiles
received as their god—not the Creator, of whom they were in
ignorance. But how does it happen, that “the treasure which we
have in these earthen vessels of ours”5728
should not be regarded as belonging to the God who owns the vessels?
Now since God’s glory is, that so great a treasure is contained
in earthen vessels, and since these earthen vessels are of the
Creator’s make, it follows that the glory is the Creator’s;
nay, since these vessels of His smack so much of the excellency of the
power of God, that power itself must be His also! Indeed, all these
things have been consigned to the said “earthen vessels”
for the very purpose that His excellence might be manifested forth.
Henceforth, then, the rival god will have no claim to the glory, and
consequently none to the power. Rather, dishonour and weakness will
accrue to him, because the earthen vessels with which he had nothing to
do have received all the excellency! Well, then, if it be in these very
earthen vessels that he tells us we have to endure so great
sufferings,5729
in which we bear
about with us the very dying of God,5730
| 5730 Oehler, after Fr.
Junius, defends the reading “mortificationem
dei,” instead of Domini, in reference to Marcion,
who seems to have so corrupted the reading. |
(Marcion’s) god is really ungrateful and unjust, if he does not
mean to restore this same substance of ours at the resurrection,
wherein so much has been endured in loyalty to him, in which
Christ’s very death is borne about, wherein too the excellency of
his power is treasured.5731
For he gives
prominence to the statement, “That the life also of Christ may be
manifested in our body,”5732
as a contrast to
the preceding, that His death is borne about in our body. Now of
what life of Christ does he here speak? Of that which we
are now living? Then how is it, that in the words which follow he
exhorts us not to the things which are seen and are temporal, but to
those which are not seen and are eternal5733
—in other words, not to the present,
but to the future? But if it be of the future life of Christ that he
speaks, intimating that it is to be made manifest in our body,5734
then he has clearly predicted the
resurrection of the flesh.5735
He says, too, that
“our outward man perishes,”5736
not meaning by an eternal perdition after death, but by labours and
sufferings, in reference to which he previously said, “For which
cause we will not faint.”5737
Now, when he
adds of “the inward man” also, that it “is renewed
day by day,” he demonstrates both issues here—the wasting
away of the body by the wear and tear5738
of
its trials, and the renewal of the soul5739
by
its contemplation of the promises.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
