Let Marcion Produce a Prophet

“The head of every man is Christ.” What Christ, if he is not the one who made man? He has put “head” here for authority, and authority can fall to no one but the author of the thing itself. And whose head is he? Surely the head of the man he speaks of a little further on: “A man ought not to cover his head, since he is the image of God.” Well then: man is the image of the Creator — for it was the Creator who, looking at Christ his Word, who was to become man, said, “Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” How could I possibly have any head but the one whose image I am? If I am the image of the Creator, there is no room in me for a second head. [a]

But why “ought the woman to have authority over her head, because of the angels”? If the reason is that “she was created for the man,” and taken out of the man, by the Creator’s own arrangement, then here too the apostle is upholding the discipline of the God whose institution supplies him the reasons he gives for it. Then he adds: “because of the angels.” Which angels? Or rather, whose angels? If he means the Creator’s angels, the ones who fell, his meaning is perfectly apt: it is right that the face which was a trap to them should carry some mark of a modest covering and a dimmed beauty. But if the angels of the rival god are meant, what is there to be afraid of? Not even Marcion’s followers have any appetite for women — never mind his angels.

I have shown more than once already that the apostle counts heresies as an evil, among the works of the flesh, and that the people he wants thought well of are the ones who keep clear of heresies as an evil thing. In the same way, when I was going through the Gospel, I proved from the sacred sign of the bread and the cup that the Lord’s body and blood are real, against Marcion’s phantom. And through almost the whole of this work I have argued that every mention of judging points straight at the Creator, as a God who judges.

Now for “spiritual gifts.” These too were promised by the Creator through Christ, and I think we may draw a perfectly fair conclusion from that: handing out a gift is not the work of some god other than the one who is shown to have promised it. Here is Isaiah’s prophecy: “A rod will come out of the stem of Jesse, and a flower will spring up from his root, and the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him.” Then he lists the particular gifts of that same Spirit: “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of reverence for God. And the Spirit will fill him with the fear of the Lord.” By the figure of the flower he shows that Christ was to rise out of the rod that sprang from the stem of Jesse — that is, out of the virgin, of the line of David, the son of Jesse.

On this Christ the whole being of the Spirit was to rest — not as some later acquisition coming to him, since he had always been, even before he took flesh, the Spirit of God. So you cannot argue from this that the prophecy refers to some other Christ, a mere man of David’s line and nothing more, who was to receive the Spirit of his God. On the contrary, the prophet says that from the moment the true Christ flowered in the flesh, as was foretold, rising out of the root of Jesse, the entire working of the Spirit of grace would rest on him — and, so far as the Jews were concerned, would stop and come to an end. The facts themselves prove it: from that time the Creator’s Spirit never breathed among them again. Taken away from Judah were “the wise man, the skilled craftsman, the counselor, the prophet,” so that it might come true that “the law and the prophets were until John.”

Now hear how he declared that these spiritual gifts were to be sent by Christ himself, once he had gone back to heaven. “He went up on high” — into heaven; “he led captivity captive” — meaning death, or the slavery of man; “he gave gifts to the sons of men” — the free gifts we call charismata. He says “sons of men” deliberately, and not simply “men” at large, pointing out for us the ones who are children of men in the true sense: picked men, apostles. “I fathered you through the good news,” he says, and, “you are my children, for whom I am in labor all over again.” And now that promise of the Spirit which came through Joel’s word was fulfilled to the letter: “In the last days I will pour out some of my Spirit on all flesh, and their sons and their daughters will prophesy; and on my servants, men and women alike, I will pour out some of my Spirit.” Since, then, the Creator promised the gift of his Spirit for the last days, and since Christ has appeared in these last days handing out spiritual gifts — as the apostle says, “when the fullness of the time had come, God sent his Son,” and again, “I tell you this, brothers: the time is short” — it plainly follows, the prediction being about the last days, that this gift of the Spirit belongs to the Christ whom the prophets foretold.

Now set the Spirit’s particular gifts, as the apostle describes them, beside what the prophet Isaiah promised. “To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom” — there at once is what Isaiah called “the spirit of wisdom.” “To another, the word of knowledge” — that will be the prophet’s “spirit of understanding and counsel.” “To another, faith by the same Spirit” — that will be “the spirit of reverence and the fear of the Lord.” “To another, gifts of healing; to another, the working of miracles” — that will be “the spirit of might.” “To another, prophecy; to another, telling spirits apart; to another, different kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues” — that will be “the spirit of knowledge.” See how the apostle agrees with the prophet, both in distributing the one Spirit and in spelling out his particular gifts.

This much I can say with confidence as well. The man who compared the unity of our body, with all its many different parts, to the fitting together of the Spirit’s various gifts is showing at the same time that the human body and the Holy Spirit have one and the same Lord. And that Spirit did not mean the worth of these gifts to lie in the body; he did not lodge them in human flesh. As for love, which is to be preferred to all these gifts, he taught the apostle that it is the chief command, exactly as Christ showed it to be: “You shall love the Lord with everything inside you and with all your soul, with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.”

When he mentions that “it is written in the law” that the Creator would speak with other tongues and other lips, he is confirming the gift of tongues by the very mention of it — and no one can suppose that, by pointing to something the Creator predicted, he was claiming the gift for another god. It is exactly the same when he orders women to be silent in church, and not to speak even for the sake of learning — though he has already shown that they do have the right to prophesy, since he puts a veil on the woman who prophesies — and then goes to the law for his warrant that a woman should be under obedience. And this law, let me say it once and for all, is a thing he ought to have had no dealings with except to destroy it.

But let us leave the subject of spiritual gifts now. The facts themselves will be enough to show which of us is being reckless in claiming them for his God, and whether they can possibly be turned against our side — even granting the claim that the Creator promised them for his own Christ, who has not yet been revealed, and meant them for the Jews only, to take effect in his own time, in his own Christ, among his own people. Then let Marcion display, as gifts of his god, some prophets: men who have spoken not out of human sense but by the Spirit of God, men who have both foretold what was to come and laid bare the secrets of the heart. Let him produce a psalm, a vision, a prayer — only let it be by the Spirit, in an ecstasy, that is, out of his mind, whenever an interpretation of tongues has come to him. Let him show me one big-talking woman in his community who has ever prophesied, out of those specially holy sisters of his. All these signs come from my side without the least difficulty, and they square with the rules, the arrangements, and the instruction of the Creator. So beyond question the Christ, the Spirit, and the apostle belong to my God, each of them. There is my declaration, for anyone who cares to demand one.