Tertullian: Against Marcion, Books I–V

Chapter XII.—The Eternal Home in Heaven. Beautiful Exposition by Tertullian of the Apostle’s Consolatory Teaching Against the Fear of Death, So Apt to Arise Under Anti-Christian Oppression. The Judgment-Seat of Christ—The Idea, Anti-Marcionite. Paradise. Judicial Characteristics of Christ Which are Inconsistent with the Heretical Views About Him; The Apostle’s Sharpness, or Severity, Shows Him to Be a Fit Preacher of the Creator’s Christ.

As to the house of this our earthly dwelling-place, when he says that “we have an eternal home in heaven, not made with hands,” ^{Edition note 1} he by no means would imply that, because it was built by the Creator’s hand, it must perish in a perpetual dissolution after death. ^{Edition note 2} He treats of this subject in order to offer consolation against the fear of death and the dread of this very dissolution, as is even more manifest from what follows, when he adds, that “in this tabernacle of our earthly body we do groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with the vesture which is from heaven, ^{Edition note 3} if so be, that having been unclothed, ^{Edition note 4} we shall not be found naked;” in other words, shall regain that of which we have been divested, even our body.

And again he says: “We that are in this tabernacle do groan, not as if we were oppressed ^{Edition note 5} with an unwillingness to be unclothed, but (we wish) to be clothed upon.” ^{Edition note 6} He here says expressly, what he touched but lightly ^{Edition note 7} in his first epistle, where he wrote:) “The dead shall be raised incorruptible (meaning those who had undergone mortality), “and we shall be changed” (whom God shall find to be yet in the flesh). ^{Edition note 8} Both those shall be raised incorruptible, because they shall regain their body—and that a renewed one, from which shall come their incorruptibility; and these also shall, in the crisis of the last moment, and from their instantaneous death, whilst encountering the oppressions of anti-christ, undergo a change, obtaining therein not so much a divestiture of body as “a clothing upon” with the vesture which is from heaven. ^{Edition note 9} So that whilst these shall put on over their (changed) body this, heavenly raiment, the dead also shall for their part ^{Edition note 10} recover their body, over which they too have a supervesture to put on, even the incorruption of heaven; ^{Edition note 11} because of these it was that he said: “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” ^{Edition note 12} The one put on this (heavenly) apparel, ^{Edition note 13} when they recover their bodies; the others put it on as a supervesture, ^{Edition note 14} when they indeed hardly lose them (in the suddenness of their change).

It was accordingly not without good reason that he described them as “not wishing indeed to be unclothed,” but (rather as wanting) “to be clothed upon;” ^{Edition note 15} in other words, as wishing not to undergo death, but to be surprised into life, ^{Edition note 16} “that this moral (body) might be swallowed up of life,” ^{Edition note 17} by being rescued from death in the supervesture of its changed state. This is why he shows us how much better it is for us not to be sorry, if we should be surprised by death, and tells us that we even hold of God “the earnest of His Spirit” ^{Edition note 18} (pledged as it were thereby to have “the clothing upon,” which is the object of our hope), and that “so long as we are in the flesh, we are absent from the Lord;” ^{Edition note 19} moreover, that we ought on this account to prefer ^{Edition note 20} “rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord,” ^{Edition note 21} and so to be ready to meet even death with joy.

In this view it is that he informs us how “we must all appear before the judgement-seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body, according as he hath done either good or bad.” ^{Edition note 22} Since, however, there is then to be a retribution according to men’s merits, how will any be able to reckon with ^{Edition note 23} God? But by mentioning both the judgment-seat and the distinction between works good and bad, he sets before us a Judge who is to award both sentences, ^{Edition note 24} and has thereby affirmed that all will have to be present at the tribunal in their bodies.

For it will be impossible to pass sentence except on the body, for what has been done in the body. God would be unjust, if any one were not punished or else rewarded in that very condition, ^{Edition note 25} wherein the merit was itself achieved. “If therefore any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new;” ^{Edition note 26} and so is accomplished the prophecy of Isaiah. ^{Edition note 27} When also he (in a later passage) enjoins us “to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and blood” ^{Edition note 28} (since this substance enters not the kingdom of God ^{Edition note 29} ); when, again, he “espouses the church as a chaste virgin to Christ,” ^{Edition note 30} a spouse to a spouse in very deed, ^{Edition note 31} an image cannot be combined and compared with what is opposed to the real nature of the thing (with which it is compared).

So when he designates “false apostles, deceitful workers transforming themselves” into likenesses of himself, ^{Edition note 32} of course by their hypocrisy, he charges them with the guilt of disorderly conversation, rather than of false doctrine. ^{Edition note 33} The contrariety, therefore, was one of conduct, not of gods. ^{Edition note 34} If “Satan himself, too, is transformed into an angel of light,” ^{Edition note 35} such an assertion must not be used to the prejudice of the Creator.

The Creator is not an angel, but God. Into a god of light, and not an angel of light, must Satan then have been said to be transformed, if he did not mean to call him “the angel,” which both we and Marcion know him to be. On Paradise is the title of a treatise of ours, in which is discussed all that the subject admits of. ^{Edition note 36} I shall here simply wonder, in connection with this matter, whether a god who has no dispensation of any kind on earth could possibly have a paradise to call his own—without perchance availing himself of the paradise of the Creator, to use it as he does His world—much in the character of a mendicant. ^{Edition note 37} And yet of the removal of a man from earth to heaven we have an instance afforded us by the Creator in Elijah. ^{Edition note 38} But what will excite my surprise still more is the case (next supposed by Marcion), that a God so good and gracious, and so averse to blows and cruelty, should have suborned the angel Satan—not his own either, but the Creator’s—“to buffet” the apostle, ^{Edition note 39} and then to have refused his request, when thrice entreated to liberate him!

It would seem, therefore, that Marcion’s god imitates the Creator’s conduct, who is an enemy to the proud, even “putting down the mighty from their seats.” ^{Edition note 40} Is he then the same God as He who gave Satan power over the person of Job that his “strength might be made perfect in weakness?” ^{Edition note 41} How is it that the censurer of the Galatians ^{Edition note 42} still retains the very formula of the law: “In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established?” ^{Edition note 43} How again is it that he threatens sinners “that he will not spare” them ^{Edition note 44} —he, the preacher of a most gentle god?

Yea, he even declares that “the Lord hath given to him the power of using sharpness in their presence!” ^{Edition note 45} Deny now, O heretic, (at your cost,) that your god is an object to be feared, when his apostle was for making himself so formidable!