All references to 'Marcion's Antitheses' in Tertullian

Against Marcion 1:1. To prove next that this is a fact, I shall take up the rest from my opponents themselves. The separation of Law and Gospel is the primary and principal exploit of Marcion. His disciples cannot deny this, which stands at the head of their document, that document by which they are inducted, into and confirmed in this heresy. For such are Marcion's Antitheses, or Contrary Oppositions, which are designed to show the conflict and disagreement of the Gospel and the Law, so that from the diversity of principles between those two documents they may argue further for a diversity of gods. Therefore, as it is precisely this separation of Law and Gospel which has suggested a god of the Gospel, other than and in opposition to the God of the Law, it is evident that before that separation was made, god was still unknown who has just come into notice in consequence of the argument for separation: and so he was not revealed by Christ, who came before the separation, but was invented by Marcion, who set up the separation in opposition to that peace between Gospel and Law which previously, from the appearance of Christ until the impudence of Marcion, had been kept unimpaired and unshaken by virtue of that reasoning which refused to contemplate any other god of the Law and the Gospel than that Creator against whom after so long a time, by a man of Pontus, separation has been let loose.
1:20. This short and sharp argument calls for justification on our part against the clatter and clamour of the opposite party. They allege that in separating the Law and the Gospel Marcion did not so much invent a new rule as refurbish a rule previously debased. So then Christ, our most patient Lord (Jesus), has through all these years borne with a perversion of the preaching about himself, until, if you please, Marcion should come to his rescue.
1:29. Now if my plea that the Creator combines goodness with judgement had called for a more elaborate demolition of Marcion's Antitheses, I should have gone on to overthrow them one by one, on the principle that the instances cited of both aspects are, as I have already proved, jointly in keeping with (a sound
idea of) God. Both aspects, the goodness and the judgement, combine to produce a complete and worthy conception of a divinity to which nothing is impossible: and so I am for the time being content to have rebutted in summary fashion those antitheses which, by criticism of the moral value of the Creator's works,
his laws, and his miracles, indicate anxiety to establish a division, making Christ a stranger to the Creator—as it were the supremely good a stranger to the judge, the kind to the cruel, the bringer of salvation a stranger to the author of destruction. Instead of dividing, those antitheses do rather combine into unity the two whom they place in such oppositions as, when combined together, give a complete conception of God. Take away Marcion's title, take away the intention and purpose of his work, and this book will provide neither more nor less than a description of one and the same God, in his supreme goodness and in his judgement— for these two conceptions are conjoined in God and in him alone. In fact Marcion's very anxiety, by means of the instances cited, to set Christ in opposition to the Creator, does rather envisage
their unity. For the one and only real and objective divinity showed itself, in these very instances and these very deductions from them, to be both kind and stern: for his purpose was to give evidence of his kindness, particularly in those against whom he had previously shown severity. The change which time brought
about is nothing to be wondered at: God subsequently became more gentle, in proportion as things had become subdued, having been at first more strict when they were unsubdued. So Marcion's antitheses make it easier to explain how the Creator's mode of action was by Christ rather refashioned than repudiated, re-
stored rather than rejected: especially so when you make your good god exempt from every bitterness of feeling, and, in that case, from hostility to the Creator. If that is the case how can the antitheses prove he has been in opposition to one or another aspect of the Creator's character? To sum up: I shall by means of these antitheses recognize in Christ my own jealous God. He did in the beginning by his own right, by a hostility which was rational and therefore good, provide beforehand for the maturity and fuller ripeness of the things which were his. His antitheses are in conformity with his own world: for it is composed and regulated by elements contrary to each other, yet in perfect proportion. Therefore, most thoughtless Marcion, you ought rather to have shown that there is one god of light and another of darkness: after
that you would have found it easier to persuade us that there is one god of kindness and another of severity. In any case, the antithesis, or opposition, will belong to that God in whose world it is to be found.
4.1 Besides that, to work up credence for it he has contrived a sort of dowry, a work entitled
Antitheses because of its juxtaposition of opposites, a work strained into making such a division between the Law and the Gospel as thereby to make two separate gods, opposite to each other, one belonging to one instrument (or, as it is more usual to say, testament), one to the other, and thus lend its patronage to faith in another gospel, that according to the Antitheses. Now I might have demolished those antitheses by a specially directed hand-to-hand attack, taking each of the statements of the man of Pontus one by one, except that it was much more convenient to refute them both in and along with that gospel which they serve: although it is perfectly easy to take action against them by counter-claim,1 even accepting them as admissible, accounting them valid, and alleging that they support my argument, that so they may be put to shame for the blindness of their author, having now become my antitheses against Marcion. So then I do admit that there was a different course followed in the old dispensation under the Creator, from that in the new dispensation under Christ.

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Why need you explain a difference of facts as an opposition of authorities? Why need you distort against the Creator those antitheses in the evidences, which you can recognize also in his own thoughts and affections? I will smite, he says, and I will heal:k I will slay, he says, and also make alive, by establishing evil things and making peace:l because of which it is your custom even to censure him on account of fickleness and inconstancy, in forbidding what he commands and commanding what he forbids. Why then have you not also thought out some antitheses for the essential attributes of a Creator always at variance with himself? Not even among your men of Pontus, if I mistake not, have you been able to realize that the world is constructed out of the diversities of substances in mutual hostility. And so you ought first to have laid it down that there was one god of light and another of darkness: then you could have affirmed
that there was one god of the law and another of the gospel. For all that, judgement is already given, and that by manifest proofs, that he whose works and ways are consistently antithetic, has
also his mysteries consistently of that same pattern.
2. You have there my short and sharp answer to the Antitheses. I pass on next to show how his gospel—certainly not Judaic but Pontic—is in places adulterated: and this shall form the basis of my order of approach.
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What now, if the Marcionites are going to deny that his faith at first was with us—even against the evidence of his own letter? What if they refuse to acknowledge that letter? Certainly Marcion's
own Antitheses not only admit this, but even make a show of it. Proof taken from them is good enough for me. If that gospel which among us is ascribed to Luke—we shall see whether it is Marcion—if that is the same that Marcion by his Antitheses accuses of having been falsified by the upholders of Judaism with a view to its being so combined in one body with the law and the prophets that they might also pretend that Christ had that origin, evidently he could only have brought accusation
against something he had found there already.
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6. I now advance a step further, while I call to account, as I have promised, Marcion's gospel in his own version of it, with the design, even so, of proving it adulterated. Certainly the whole of the work he has done, including the prefixing of his Antitheses, he directs to the one purpose of setting up opposition between the Old Testament and the New, and thereby putting his Christ in separation from the Creator, as belonging to another god, and having no connection with the law and the prophets.
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But see, , Christ loves the little ones, and teaches that all who ever wish to be the greater, need to be as they; whereas the Creator sent bears against some boys, to avenge Elisha the prophet for mockery he
had suffered from them. A fairly reckless antithesis, when it sets together such diverse things, little children and boys, an age as yet innocent, and an age now capable of judgement, which knew how to mock, not to say, blaspheme.
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24. [Luke 10: 1-20.] He chooses other seventy apostles also, over above the twelve: for to what purpose twelve, after that number of wells in Elim, without adding seventy, after that number of palm-trees?a Antitheses for the most part are produced by diversity of purposes, not of authorities, though he who has not kept in view the diversity of purposes has easily been led to take it for diversity of authorities.
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So also our Lord told them into whatsoever house they entered, to speak peace to it. He follows the same precedent: for this too was the order Elisha gave, that when he came into the Shunamite's house, he was to
say to her, Peace to thy husband, peace to thy son.d These shall be the antitheses we prefer, such as bring Christ into line , not such as make him separate.