[5015] See above: book iii. chap. xv. and xvi. pp. 333, 334.
[5016] The illam here refers to the nominum proprietas, i.e., His title Christ and His name Jesus.
[5017] Transnominaret.
[5018] Proinde.
[5019] Luke xxi. 8.
[5020] Consimilem: of course Marcion's Christ; the Marcionite being challenged in the "you."
[5021] Luke xxi. 9-11.
[5022] Compare, in Luke xxi., verses 9, 22, 28, 31-33, 35, and 36.
[5023] Verses 12, 13.
[5024] Omnipotens: pantokrator (Sept.); of hosts--A.V.
[5025] Zech. ix. 15, 16 (Septuagint).
[5026] Allophylis.
[5027] Eph. ii. 20.
[5028] Luke xxi. 12-14.
[5029] Num. xxii.-xxiv.
[5030] Ex. iv. 10-12.
[5031] Isa. xliv. 5.
[5032] Exserta.
[5033] See Gen. xxxii. 28.
[5034] Isa. l. 4.
[5035] Luke xxi. 16, 17.
[5036] Per tolerantiam: "endurance."
[5037] Comp. Luke xxi. 19 with Matt. xxiv. 13.
[5038] Ps. ix. 18.
[5039] After the Septuagint he makes a plural appellative ("eis qui toleraverint," LXX. tois hupomenonsi) of the Hebrew lchlm, which in A.V. and the Vulgate (and also Gesenius and Fuerst) is the dative of a proper name.
[5040] Luke xxi. 20.
[5041] Luke xxi. 25, 26.
[5042] Luke xxi. 26.
[5043] Joel iii. 30, 31.
[5044] Elata: "fear was raised to its very highest."
[5045] Hab. iii. 9-12 (Septuagint).
[5046] Luke xxi. 27, 28.
[5047] Luke xxi. 31.
[5048] Dan. vii. 13.
[5049] Dan. vii. 14.
[5050] Luke xix. 12, 13, etc.
[5051] Ps. ii. 8.
[5052] Dan. vii. 14.
[5053] Luke xx. 35, 36.
[5054] Hab. iii. 13.
[5055] In Luke xxi. 7.
[5056] Luke xxi. 33.
[5057] Luke xxi. 29-31.
[5058] Arbuscularum.
[5059] Luke xxi. 33.
[5060] Nescio an.
[5061] Isa. xl. 8.
[5062] Luke xxi. 34, 35. [Here follows a rich selection of parallels to Luke xxi. 34-38.]
[5063] Comp. Deut. viii. 12-14.
[5064] Luke xxi. 37.
[5065] Hosea xii. 4. One reading of the LXX. is, en to oiko mou heuresan me.
[5066] Zech. xiv. 4.
[5067] Luke xxi. 38.
[5068] Isa. l. 4.
[5069] Literally, "the prophecies."
Chapter XL.--How the Steps in the Passion of the Saviour Were Predetermined in Prophecy. The Passover. The Treachery of Judas. The Institution of the Lord's Supper. The Docetic Error of Marcion Confuted by the Body and the Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
In like manner does He also know the very time it behoved Him to suffer, since the law prefigures His passion. Accordingly, of all the festal days of the Jews He chose the passover. [5070] In this Moses had declared that there was a sacred mystery: [5071] "It is the Lord's passover." [5072] How earnestly, therefore, does He manifest the bent of His soul: "With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer." [5073] What a destroyer of the law was this, who actually longed to keep its passover! Could it be that He was so fond of Jewish lamb? [5074] But was it not because He had to be "led like a lamb to the slaughter; and because, as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so was He not to open His mouth," [5075] that He so profoundly wished to accomplish the symbol of His own redeeming blood? He might also have been betrayed by any stranger, did I not find that even here too He fulfilled a Psalm: "He who did eat bread with me hath lifted up [5076] his heel against me." [5077] And without a price might He have been betrayed. For what need of a traitor was there in the case of one who offered Himself to the people openly, and might quite as easily have been captured by force as taken by treachery? This might no doubt have been well enough for another Christ, but would not have been suitable in One who was accomplishing prophecies. For it was written, "The righteous one did they sell for silver." [5078] The very amount and the destination [5079] of the money, which on Judas' remorse was recalled from its first purpose of a fee, [5080] and appropriated to the purchase of a potter's field, as narrated in the Gospel of Matthew, were clearly foretold by Jeremiah: [5081] "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of Him who was valued [5082] and gave them for the potter's field." When He so earnestly expressed His desire to eat the passover, He considered it His own feast; for it would have been unworthy of God to desire to partake of what was not His own. Then, having taken the bread and given it to His disciples, He made it His own body, by saying, "This is my body," [5083] that is, the figure of my body. A figure, however, there could not have been, unless there were first a veritable body. [5084] An empty thing, or phantom, is incapable of a figure. If, however, (as Marcion might say,) He pretended the bread was His body, because He lacked the truth of bodily substance, it follows that He must have given bread for us. It would contribute very well to the support of Marcion's theory of a phantom body, [5085] that bread should have been crucified! But why call His body bread, and not rather (some other edible thing, say) a melon, [5086] which Marcion must have had in lieu of a heart! He did not understand how ancient was this figure of the body of Christ, who said Himself by Jeremiah: "I was like a lamb or an ox that is brought to the slaughter, and I knew not that [5087] they devised a device against me, saying, Let us cast the tree upon His bread," [5088] which means, of course, the cross upon His body. And thus, casting light, as He always did, upon the ancient prophecies, [5089] He declared plainly enough what He meant by the bread, when He called the bread His own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new testament to be sealed "in His blood," [5090] affirms the reality of His body. For no blood can belong to a body which is not a body of flesh. If any sort of body were presented to our view, which is not one of flesh, not being fleshly, it would not possess blood. Thus, from the evidence of the flesh, we get a proof of the body, and a proof of the flesh from the evidence of the blood. In order, however, that you may discover how anciently wine is used as a figure for blood, turn to Isaiah, who asks, "Who is this that cometh from Edom, from Bosor with garments dyed in red, so glorious in His apparel, in the greatness of his might? Why are thy garments red, and thy raiment as his who cometh from the treading of the full winepress?" [5091] The prophetic Spirit contemplates the Lord as if He were already on His way to His passion, clad in His fleshly nature; and as He was to suffer therein, He represents the bleeding condition of His flesh under the metaphor of garments dyed in red, as if reddened in the treading and crushing process of the wine-press, from which the labourers descend reddened with the wine-juice, like men stained in blood. Much more clearly still does the book of Genesis foretell this, when (in the blessing of Judah, out of whose tribe Christ was to come according to the flesh) it even then delineated Christ in the person of that patriarch, [5092] saying, "He washed His garments in wine, and His clothes in the blood of grapes" [5093] --in His garments and clothes the prophecy pointed out his flesh, and His blood in the wine. Thus did He now consecrate His blood in wine, who then (by the patriarch) used the figure of wine to describe His blood.
[5070] Luke xxii. i.
[5071] Sacramentum.
[5072] Lev. xxiii. 5.
[5073] Luke xxii. 15.
[5074] Vervecina Judaica. In this rough sarcasm we have of course our author's contempt of Marcionism.
[5075] Isa. liii. 7.
[5076] Levabit: literally, "shall lift up," etc.
[5077] Ps. xli. 9.
[5078] Amos ii. 6.
[5079] Exitum.
[5080] Revocati.
[5081] This passage more nearly resembles Zech. xi. 12 and 13 than anything in Jeremiah, although the transaction in Jer. xxxii. 7-15 is noted by the commentators, as referred to. Tertullian had good reason for mentioning Jeremiah and not Zechariah, because the apostle whom he refers to (Matt. xxvii. 3-10) had distinctly attributed the prophecy to Jeremiah ("Jeremy the prophet," ver. 9). This is not the place to do more than merely refer to the voluminous controversy which has arisen from the apostle's mention of Jeremiah instead of Zechariah. It is enough to remark that Tertullian's argument is unaffected by the discrepancy in the name of the particular prophet. On all hands the prophecy is admitted, and this at once satisfies our author's argument. For the ms. evidence in favour of the unquestionably correct reading, tote eplerothe to rhethen dia Ieremiou tou prophetou, k.t.l., the reader is referred to Dr. Tregelles' Critical Greek Testament, in loc.; only to the convincing amount of evidence collected by the very learned editor must now be added the subsequently obtained authority of Tischendorf's Codex Sinaiticus.
[5082] Appretiati vel honorati. There is nothing in the original or the Septuagint to meet the second word honorati, which may refer to the "honorarium," or "fee paid on admission to a post of honour,"--a term of Roman law, and referred to by Tertullian himself.
[5083] Luke xxii. 19. [See Jewell's Challenge, p. 266, supra.]
[5084] Corpus veritatis: meant as a thrust against Marcion's Docetism.
[5085] Ad vanitatem Marcionis. [Note 9, p. 289.]
[5086] Peponem. In his De Anima, c. xxxii., he uses this word in strong irony: "Cur non magis et pepo, tam insulsus."
[5087] [This text, imperfectly quoted in the original, is filled out by Dr. Holmes.]
[5088] So the Septuagint in Jer. xi. 19, Xulon eis ton arton autou (A.V. "Let us destroy the tree with the fruit"). See above, book iii. chap. xix. p. 337.
[5089] Illuminator antiquitatum. This general phrase includes typical ordinances under the law, as well as the sayings of the prophets.
[5090] Luke xxii. 20.
[5091] Isa. lxiii. 1 (Sept. slightly altered).
[5092] In Juda.
[5093] Gen. xlix. 11.
Chapter XLI.--The Woe Pronounced on the Traitor a Judicial Act, Which Disproves Christ to Be Such as Marcion Would Have Him to Be. Christ's Conduct Before the Council Explained. Christ Even Then Directs the Minds of His Judges to the Prophetic Evidences of His Own Mission. The Moral Responsibility of These Men Asserted.
"Woe," says He, "to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed!" [5094] Now it is certain that in this woe must be understood the imprecation and threat of an angry and incensed Master, unless Judas was to escape with impunity after so vast a sin. If he were meant to escape with impunity, the "woe" was an idle word; if not, he was of course to be punished by Him against whom he had committed the sin of treachery. Now, if He knowingly permitted the man, whom He [5095] deliberately elected to be one of His companions, to plunge into so great a crime, you must no longer use an argument against the Creator in Adam's case, which may now recoil on your own God: [5096] either that he was ignorant, and had no foresight to hinder the future sinner; [5097] or that he was unable to hinder him, even if he was ignorant; [5098] or else that he was unwilling, even if he had the foreknowledge and the ability; and so deserved the stigma of maliciousness, in having permitted the man of his own choice to perish in his sin. I advise you therefore (willingly) to acknowledge the Creator in that god of yours, rather than against your will to be assimilating your excellent god to Him. For in the case of Peter, [5099] too, he gives you proof that he is a jealous God, when he destined the apostle, after his presumptuous protestations of zeal, to a flat denial of him, rather than prevent his fall. [5100] The Christ of the prophets was destined, moreover, to be betrayed with a kiss, [5101] for He was the Son indeed of Him who was "honoured with the lips" by the people. [5102] When led before the council, He is asked whether He is the Christ. [5103] Of what Christ could the Jews have inquired [5104] but their own? Why, therefore, did He not, even at that moment, declare to them the rival (Christ)? You reply, In order that He might be able to suffer. In other words, that this most excellent god might plunge men into crime, whom he was still keeping in ignorance. But even if he had told them, he would yet have to suffer. For he said, "If I tell you, ye will not believe." [5105] And refusing to believe, they would have continued to insist on his death. And would he not even more probably still have had to suffer, if had announced himself as sent by the rival god, and as being, therefore, the enemy of the Creator? It was not, then, in order that He might suffer, that He at that critical moment refrained from proclaiming [5106] Himself the other Christ, but because they wanted to extort a confession from His mouth, which they did not mean to believe even if He had given it to them, whereas it was their bounden duty to have acknowledged Him in consequence of His works, which were fulfilling their Scriptures. It was thus plainly His course to keep Himself at that moment unrevealed, [5107] because a spontaneous recognition was due to Him. But yet for all this, He with a solemn gesture [5108] says, "Hereafter shall the Son of man sit on the right hand of the power of God." [5109] For it was on the authority of the prophecy of Daniel that He intimated to them that He was "the Son of man," [5110] and of David's Psalm, that He would "sit at the right hand of God." [5111] Accordingly, after He had said this, and so suggested a comparison of the Scripture, a ray of light did seem to show them whom He would have them understand Him to be; for they say: "Art thou then the Son of God?" [5112] Of what God, but of Him whom alone they knew? Of what God but of Him whom they remembered in the Psalm as having said to His Son, "Sit Thou on my right hand?" Then He answered, "Ye say that I am;" [5113] as if He meant: It is ye who say this--not I. But at the same time He allowed Himself to be all that they had said, in this their second question. [5114] By what means, however, are you going to prove to us that they pronounced the sentence "Ergo tu filius Dei es" interrogatively, and not affirmatively? [5115] Just as, (on the one hand,) because He had shown them in an indirect manner, [5116] by passages of Scripture, that they ought to regard Him as the Son of God, they therefore meant their own words, "Thou art then the Son of God," to be taken in a like (indirect) sense, [5117] as much as to say, "You do not wish to say this of yourself plainly," [5118] so, (on the other hand,) He likewise answered them, "Ye say that I am," in a sense equally free from doubt, even affirmatively; [5119] and so completely was His statement to this effect, that they insisted on accepting that sense which His statement indicated. [5120]