apostolic-tradition

Whatever was formerly done by us against Marcion—from here let it see to itself. We approach a new matter from an old. The first little work, as if hurried, I had afterward cut back by a fuller composition.

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‘Nay,’ say the Marcionites, ‘our god, though not from the beginning, though not through the creation, yet revealed himself through himself in Christ Jesus.’ There will be a book also on Christ for his whole status—subjects must be distinguished so they may be treated more fully and orderly—;

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But if, as one preaching a new god, he wanted to shut out the old god’s law, why does he prescribe nothing about a new god but only about the old law—unless because, faith remaining in the Creator, his law alone had to give way?

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This is most easily proved by a survey of apostolic and heretical churches—namely that a reversal of the rule is to be pronounced there where posterity is found. Which I also wove into the first booklet.

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From here finally I join step: whether he ought to have come so suddenly—first inasmuch as he himself is also his God’s son—for this had been of order, that the Father should profess the Son before the Son the Father and the Father testify about the Son before the Son about the Father—next also inasmuch as sent…

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With these I would have played as if still from a first step and as if from far off. But from here already about to fight to the sure and hand-to-hand, I see some lines even now to be drawn ahead, to which there will be fighting—namely to the Creator’s scriptures.

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If also apostolics, yet not alone but with the apostles—and after-apostolics—because disciples’ preaching could become suspect of glory-seeking if teachers’ authority did not stand by it, or rather Christ’s, which made the teachers apostles.

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But Marcion, having gotten Paul’s letter to the Galatians—also jabbing the apostles themselves as not walking with straight foot toward the gospel’s truth, and at once also accusing certain false apostles as perverting Christ’s gospel—strains to destroy the standing of those gospels which are published as their own…

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So the rope of contention must be drawn with equal strain fluctuating this way and that: I say mine is true, Marcion his; I affirm Marcion’s adulterated, Marcion mine.

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In sum: if it is settled that what is earlier is truer, what is earlier is what is from the beginning, what is from the beginning is what is from the apostles, it will likewise be settled that that was handed down from the apostles which has been sacrosanct in the apostles’ churches.

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Nothing is without origin except God alone; so far as origin precedes in the status of all things, so far must it also precede in examining them, that status can stand—because you cannot discern what kind a thing is unless sure whether it is, when you know whence it is.

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I am used in prescription against heresies to fix a short cut from the witness of times, claiming our rule prior to every heretical posterity. This the apostle will now also prove, saying: concerning the hope laid up in the heavens, which you heard in the word of truth of the gospel, which has come to you just as also…

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For this letter alone its own brevity profited, that it might escape Marcion’s falsifying hands. I wonder yet, when he received letters made to one human, that he refused two to Timothy and one to Titus composed about ecclesiastical status. He affected, I suppose, to interpolate even the number of letters.

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