Thursday, April 25, 2013

Examples of Gospel References to 'the Lord' (Dominus) in Against Marcion Book Four

He called himself Lord of the sabbath (dominum sabbati circumferret Christus), because he was protecting the sabbath as belonging to himself.[Adv Marc 4.12]

If that is so, whom shall we take to have asked, Why callest thou me Lord, Lord? (Si ita est, quis
videbitur dixisse, Quid vocas, Domine, domine?) Shall it be one who had never been so called, because never until now revealed? or shall it be he who was always acknowledged as Lord, as having been known from the beginning—in fact, the God of the Jews? [4.17]

Can any be called upon as Lord of heaven, without being first shown to be the maker of it? For he says, I thank thee, and give praise, O Lord of heaven, (Gratias enim, inquit, ago, et confiteor, domine caeli) because those things which were hidden from the wise and prudent, thou hast revealed unto babes. What things? and whose things? [4.25]

one of his disciples approached him and said, Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples (Domine, inquit, doce nos orare, sicut et Ioannes discipulos suos docuit), because, as you will have it, he thought a different god must needs be prayed to in different terms. [4.26]

So then let heaven and earth pass away, as have the law and the prophets, more quickly than one tittle of the words of the Lord [4.33]

If now the scribes regarded Christ as the son of David, and David himself calls him Lord, what does this mean to Christ? It was not that David was correcting a mistake of the scribes, but that David was paying respect to Christ, when David affirmed that Christ was his Lord even more than his son— and this would not be in character with a destroyer of the Creator. But on my side how very apposite an interpretation. He had recently been called upon by that blind man as son of David: what he then refrained from saying, as he had no scribes present, he now in their presence brings forward without suggestion from them, so as to indicate that he whom the blind man, following the scribes' doctrine, had called merely David's son, was also David's Lord. So he rewards that blind man's faith, by which he had believed him the son of David, but criticizes the tradition of the scribes, by which they failed to know him also as Lord. [4.39]


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