| Irenaeus (III, 12.12) | Tertullian (Adv. Marc. IV.14) |
|---|---|
| …ex his, quae adhuc apud eos custodiuntur, arguemus eos… “…we will refute them from those things still preserved among them…” | Venio nunc ad ordinarias sententias eius… Beati mendici… “I now come to his ordinary sayings… Blessed are the poor…” |
| …Scripturae ipsae eos arguunt… “…the Scriptures themselves refute them…” | Inclamat psalmus… Item psalmus… Item… Per Esaiam… “The psalm cries out… likewise another psalm… likewise… through Isaiah…” |
| …non alium Deum ostendunt, sed eum qui per legem et prophetas annuntiatus est… “…they do not show another God, but the one proclaimed through the Law and the Prophets…” | ut hanc Christi quasi privatam benignitatem rivulum credas de fontibus salvatoris. “so that you may believe this supposed private kindness of Christ to be a stream flowing from the fountains of the Savior.” |
| …secundum Scripturas demonstrantes… “…demonstrating according to the Scriptures…” | Passim prout incidit res petenda est… Inclamat psalmus… “Everywhere, as the matter occurs, it must be sought… the psalm cries out…” |
| …haeretici Scripturas truncant et pervertunt… “…heretics mutilate and distort the Scriptures…” | Beati mendici… iam hoc ipsum… creatoris est… “Blessed are the poor… already this itself belongs to the Creator…” |
| …prophetarum voces concordant cum evangelio… “…the voices of the prophets agree with the Gospel…” | qui a consolatione pauperum… statim se illum repraesentare gestivit quem demonstraverat per Esaiam… “he who began from consoling the poor… immediately hastened to present himself as the one shown through Isaiah…” |
| …Scripturis demonstrant eum qui praedicatus est… “…they demonstrate from the Scriptures the one who was foretold…” | Haec si statim admissus Christus administravit, aut ipse est qui se ad haec venturum praedica-vit… “If Christ at once carried out these things, either he is the one who foretold that he would come for them…” |
| …ex prophetis probant… “…they prove from the prophets…” | Ne metueritis ignominiam ab hominibus… Quae futura erat propter filium hominis… “Do not fear reproach from men… which was to come because of the Son of Man…” |
| Passage Unit (IV.14.x) | Argument Function (inside Marcion’s Luke) | Structural / Irenaean Method Signals | Redaction & Dependence Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| IV.14.1 | Beatitudes introduced as shared gospel material (“ordinariae sententiae”) forming basis of internal refutation | Refutation from retained sayings; prophetic continuity used as interpretive framework | HIGH — direct execution of Irenaean “refute from retained text” program |
| IV.14.2–4 | Each beatitude linked to prophetic precedents; cumulative chain construction | Prophetic catena; unity-of-economy logic; continuity between prophetic ethos and gospel teaching | HIGH — schematic accumulation of parallels strongly resembles Irenaean compositional method |
| IV.14.5 | Divine concern (“affectus”) toward poor/humble used as continuity argument | Characterological continuity of deity; theological identity through consistent divine ethos | HIGH — distinctly Irenaean theological reasoning pattern |
| IV.14.6 | Dense harvesting of prophetic and psalmic parallels (“tanta frequentia eiusmodi vocum”) | Catalogue-like accumulation suggesting pre-existing proof-text dossier | HIGH — compositional density suggests inherited apologetic material |
| IV.14.7 | Beatitudes framed as continuation rather than innovation of creator ethics | Developmental continuity dissolving Marcionite dualism | HIGH — aligns with Irenaean fulfillment framework |
| IV.14.8 | Promise logic: recipients of kingdom already within creator’s concern | Recapitulation-style reasoning; promise continuity establishes identity | HIGH — strong Irenaean structural parallel |
| IV.14.9–10 | Persecution predictions interpreted through prophetic precedent | History unfolding according to prior revelation | MEDIUM-HIGH — modular prophetic reasoning suggests reuse of established anti-Marcion exegetical units |
“Spiritus domini super me, propter quod unxit me ad evangelizandum pauperibus” (Tert. Adv. Marc. IV.14.13) || “Spiritus Dei super me, quapropter unxit me, evangelisare” (Iren. Adv. Haer. III.18–19 context)
Methodologically, IV.14 is doing exactly what Irenaeus promises for the projected anti-Marcionite book: refutation from the materials Marcion still “keeps”, i.e., from dominical sayings (here the Lukan beatitudes / woes complex) read as already prophetically pre-scripted by the Creator. Irenaeus’s programmatic notice—Marcion “secundum Lucam autem Evangelium et Epistolas Pauli decurtantes… hæc sola legitima esse dicunt … ‘Nos autem etiam ex his quæ adhuc apud eos custodiuntur, arguemus eos…’” —matches Tertullian’s repeated tactic in IV.14: he treats the beatitudes not as “new law” from an alien deity but as the Creator’s own long-foretold dispensation now “recognized” when Marcion’s Gospel is forced to cohere with the prophets and psalms.
Structurally, the chapter advances by a stable sequence that is highly compatible with an inherited anti-Marcionite dossier rather than a merely occasional Tertullianic flourish: (i) the “edictum Christi” is introduced as a definitional block (“Beati…”), (ii) each dominical saying is then anchored in a chain of scriptural testimonia (Psalms, Isaiah, etc.), and (iii) the whole is closed by a programmatic identification of Christ with Isaiah 61 (“Spiritus domini super me… ad evangelizandum pauperibus”), i.e. a “fulfillment key” that retro-reads the beatitudes as the execution of the Creator’s prophetic plan. That exact Isaian anchor is not a random prooftext: in Irenaeus the Isa 61 “unction” formula is used to explain what “Christus” means (the anointer, the anointed, the unction-Spirit), i.e. a compact anti-gnostic/anti-Marcionite doctrinal gloss that naturally serves as scaffolding for a “refutation from the Gospel” project.
Historically/polemically, IV.14’s posture corresponds to Irenaeus’s habitual anti-Marcion frame: Marcion’s “new” beatitude-ethic is treated as a theft from the Creator’s prior promises, and the Christian present (“nomen Christianorum… odium… hodie”) is made an evidentiary bridge tying prophecy to the church’s experience—precisely the sort of “ecclesial reality as confirmation of prophecy” move that pervades Irenaeus’s argumentation when he insists that the apostolic proclamation and the prophets converge in one economy rather than two gods. Even where IV.14 is not explicitly rehearsing succession lists, it is operating with the same recensio-logic: the catholic reading is the “received” coherence of prophets + dominical logoi; the Marcionite reading is an excisionary, posterior dislocation.
Most importantly for dependence, Irenaeus’s corpus preserves a strikingly adjacent conceptual nexus: in the very section where he describes Marcion’s mutilation of Luke, Irenaeus immediately cites the Lukan “woe to the rich” theme as something Marcion cannot tolerate—“Væ vobis divitibus, quia habetis consolationem vestram… Væ… qui saturati estis… qui ridetis…” etc. That sits on the same beatitudes/woes axis that dominates Tertullian IV.14, and it functions in Irenaeus as a diagnostic for Marcion’s textual and theological strategy (cutting what contradicts his “good” god). The simplest historical model is that a pre-Tertullian anti-Marcionite dossier already paired (a) the beatitudes/woes material with (b) the Creator’s preferential concern for the poor and (c) Isaiah 61 as the interpretive “key”; Tertullian’s IV.14 then looks like an expanded, rhetorically amplified version of that prior frame.
Signs of inherited exegetical scaffolding are therefore strong: the pericope is handled as a continuous scholion-chain on dominical logoi, each lemma generating a pre-fabricated testimonia cluster, with Isaiah 61 functioning as a capstone “identity proof” (Christ = the prophetic speaker’s fulfillment). That is exactly the sort of portable, harmony-compatible commentary structure that can be (and in Irenaeus already is) weaponized against Marcion “from what he still retains.”
Condensed result: IV.14 materially supports dependence upon an earlier Irenaean anti-Marcionite framework insofar as its controlling procedure—refutation from retained dominical sayings by testimonia-chains, climaxing in Isa 61 as the Christological key—coincides with Irenaeus’s announced method (“ex his… quae adhuc custodiuntur”) and with Irenaeus’s own immediate deployment of the beatitudes/woes complex as a Marcionite pressure-point.
