Tertullian: Against Marcion, Books I–V

Chapter XXXIII.—The Marcionite Interpretation of God and Mammon Refuted. The Prophets Justify Christ’s Admonition Against Covetousness and Pride. John Baptist the Link Between the Old and the New Dispensations of the Creator. So Said Christ—But So Also Had Isaiah Said Long Before. One Only God, the Creator, by His Own Will Changed the Dispensations. No New God Had a Hand in the Change.

What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served, ^{Edition note 1} on the ground that while one is pleased ^{Edition note 2} the other must needs be displeased, ^{Edition note 3} He Himself makes clear, when He mentions God and mammon. Then, if you have no interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have understood by mammon. ^{Edition note 4} For when advising us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs, after the example of that steward who, when removed from his office, ^{Edition note 5} relieves his lord’s debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their recompensing him with their help, He said, “And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness,” that is to say, of money, even as the steward had done.

Now we are all of us aware that money is the instigator ^{Edition note 6} of unrighteousness, and the lord of the whole world. Therefore, when he saw the covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship ^{Edition note 7} to it, He hurled ^{Edition note 8} this sentence against them, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” ^{Edition note 9} Then the Pharisees, who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by mammon He meant money.

Let no one think that under the word mammon the Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of the Creator. What folly! Rather learn therefrom that one God was pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and mammon—the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve God—Him, of course whom they seemed to serve—and mammon to whom they preferred to devote themselves. ^{Edition note 10} If, however, he was giving himself out as another god, it would not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out.

For the Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure, ^{Edition note 11} than mammon, and more to be adored, as being more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called mammon a master, and had associated him with God, should say nothing of Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might be rendered to Him, since it was to Himself alone and to mammon that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered?

When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He would have been sure to mention ^{Edition note 12} the Creator if He were Himself a rival ^{Edition note 13} to Him, He did (virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from insisting” ^{Edition note 14} that He was Master alone, without a rival god. Accordingly, this will throw light upon the sense in which it was said, “If ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?” ^{Edition note 15} “In the unrighteous mammon,” that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: “And if ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give to you that which is mine?” ^{Edition note 16} For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God.

But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees, seeing that He was the proper God of the Jewish nation? Forasmuch then as the words, “Who will entrust to you the truer riches?” and, “Who will give you that which is mine?” are only suitable to the Creator and not to mammon, He could not have uttered them as alien to the Creator, and in the interest of the rival god. He could only seem to have spoken them in this sense, if, when remarking ^{Edition note 17} their unfaithfulness to the Creator and not to mammon, He had drawn some distinctions between the Creator (in his manner of mentioning Him) and the rival god—how that the latter would not commit his own truth to those who were unfaithful to the Creator.

How then can he possibly seem to belong to another god, if He be not set forth, with the express intention of being separated ^{Edition note 18} from the very thing which is in question. But when the Pharisees “justified themselves before men,” ^{Edition note 19} and placed their hope of reward in man, He censured them in the sense in which the prophet Jeremiah said, “Cursed is the man that trusteth in man.” ^{Edition note 20} Since the prophet went on to say, “But the Lord knoweth your hearts,” ^{Edition note 21} he magnified the power of that God who declared Himself to be as a lamp, “searching the reins and the heart.” ^{Edition note 22} When He strikes at pride in the words: “That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God,” ^{Edition note 23} He recalls Isaiah: “For the day of the Lord of hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is arrogant and lifted up, and they shall be brought low.” ^{Edition note 24} I can now make out why Marcion’s god was for so long an age concealed.

He was, I suppose, waiting until he had learnt all these things from the Creator. He continued his pupillage up to the time of John, and then proceeded forthwith to announce the kingdom of God, saying: “The law and the prophets were until John; since that time the kingdom of God is proclaimed.” ^{Edition note 25} Just as if we also did not recognise in John a certain limit placed between the old dispensation and the new, at which Judaism ceased and Christianity began—without, however, supposing that it was by the power of another god that there came about a cessation ^{Edition note 26} of the law and the prophets and the commencement of that gospel in which is the kingdom of God, Christ Himself.

For although, as we have shown, the Creator foretold that the old state of things would pass away and a new state would succeed, yet, inasmuch as John is shown to be both the forerunner and the preparer of the ways of that Lord who was to introduce the gospel and publish the kingdom of God, it follows from the very fact that John has come, that Christ must be that very Being who was to follow His harbinger John. So that, if the old course has ceased and the new has begun, with John intervening between them, there will be nothing wonderful in it, because it happens according to the purpose of the Creator; so that you may get a better proof for the kingdom of God from any quarter, however anomalous, ^{Edition note 27} than from the conceit that the law and the prophets ended in John, and a new state of things began after him.

“More easily, therefore, may heaven and earth pass away—as also the law and the prophets—than that one tittle of the Lord’s words should fail.” ^{Edition note 28} “For,” as says Isaiah: “the word of our God shall stand for ever.” ^{Edition note 29} Since even then by Isaiah it was Christ, the Word and Spirit ^{Edition note 30} of the Creator, who prophetically described John as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord,” ^{Edition note 31} and as about to come for the purpose of terminating thenceforth the course of the law and the prophets; by their fulfilment and not their extinction, and in order that the kingdom of God might be announced by Christ, He therefore purposely added the assurance that the elements would more easily pass away than His words fail; affirming, as He did, the further fact, that what He had said concerning John had not fallen to the ground.