| Irenaeus (III, 12.12) | Tertullian (Adv. Marc. IV.15) |
|---|---|
| …ex his, quae adhuc apud eos custodiuntur, arguemus eos… “…we will refute them from those things still preserved among them…” | Secundum haec, inquit, faciebant prophetis patres eorum… “According to these things, he says, their fathers acted toward the prophets…” |
| …Scripturae ipsae eos arguunt… “…the Scriptures themselves refute them…” | Ecce posui ante vos benedictionem et maledictionem… “Behold, I have set before you blessing and curse…” |
| …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 Christum in hac quoque sententia creatoris ostendam. “so that I may show Christ also in this judgment to belong to the Creator.” |
| …prophetarum voces concordant cum evangelio… “…the voices of the prophets agree with the Gospel…” | Sic et per Hieremiam quoque edicit… Sic et in filias Sionis invehitur per Esaiam… “Thus also through Jeremiah he declares… thus also through Isaiah he inveighs against the daughters of Zion…” |
| …haeretici Scripturas truncant et pervertunt… “…heretics mutilate and distort the Scriptures…” | Haec olim creator simul posuit, Christus solummodo distinguendo, non mutando, renovavit. “These things the Creator long ago set together; Christ renewed them by distinguishing, not by changing.” |
| …ex prophetis probant eum qui praedictus est… “…they prove from the prophets the one who was foretold…” | Quis enim dubitaret ab eodem adiectam in divites comminationem per Vae Christi… “For who would doubt that the warning against the rich by Christ’s ‘Woe’ was added by the same one…” |
| …Scripturae testimonio adversus haereticos utuntur… “…they use the testimony of Scripture against heretics…” | Aeque creator benedictionis et laudis humanae sectatores incusat per Esaiam… “Likewise the Creator rebukes seekers of human praise through Isaiah…” |
| Passage Unit (IV.15..) | Argument Function (inside Marcion’s Luke) | Structural / Irenaean Method Signals | Redaction & Dependence Assessment |
|---|---|---|---|
| IV.15.1–3 | Interpretation of blessing/woe polarity within retained gospel sayings | Unity-of-economy logic: blessing and curse belong to same deity; continuity of divine judicial behavior; identity of God inferred from moral pattern | Strong Irenaean profile: theological continuity rather than textual criticism; reads like inherited anti-Marcion doctrinal module |
| IV.15.4–6 | “Woe to the rich” interpreted through prophetic precedent | Catena-style prophetic parallels; creator already condemns wealth; ethical continuity across covenants | Highly schematic construction suggests precompiled prophetic dossier rather than fresh rhetorical composition |
| IV.15.7–9 | Resolution of apparent dualism between mercy and judgment | Classic anti-Marcion syllogism: same God blesses and judges; polarity internal to single economy | Signature Irenaean theological move; structural alignment with AH unity-of-economy argumentation |
| IV.15.10–end | Consolidation of argument from retained sayings | Gospel saying → prophetic parallel → theological conclusion repeated modularly | Modular, repeatable structure; reduction of Tertullianic invective suggests integration of earlier anti-Marcion material |
“Ecce posui ante vos benedictionem et maledictionem” (Tert., Adv. Marc. IV.15.5); “Nos autem etiam ex his quæ adhuc apud eos custodiuntur, arguemus eos… in altera conscriptione” (Iren., Adv. haer. III.12.12: program of refutation “from what they still retain”).
Method. IV.15 proceeds exactly as the Irenaean program statement implies: the adversary is forced to yield doctrinal consequences “from within” the very materials he claims. Tertullian does not attempt to win by importing alien authorities into Marcion’s system; he instead treats Marcion’s moral “signature” (a god who is only benign and never judicial) as testable against the dominical logoi present in the retained Gospel. The pivot is the internal inconsistency of a Christ who begins with beatitudes yet must also pronounce vae: if the Vae is genuinely Christ’s utterance, then the Christ of Marcion necessarily knows indignation, admonition, commination, and vindication (“nemo… comminabitur… nisi qui factum vindicabit”), collapsing the Marcionite dichotomy of “good without judgment.” If, alternatively, the Vae is assigned to the Creator to preserve Marcionite “goodness,” the Creator is thereby confirmed as the proper moral evaluator of wealth and human praise—and the beatitudes already shown to cohere with the Creator’s concern for the humble. The logic is Irenaean in the strict sense: heresy is convicted by the residues of catholic Scripture it cannot eliminate, just as III.12.12 forecasts.
Structure. The chapter’s argumentative sequence is also recognizably “Irenaean” in macro-form: (i) establish that the Christ-voice in the Gospel cannot be split between two gods without contradiction; (ii) show that the same divine subject must be both beneficent and judicial; (iii) anchor this unity by appeal to the Creator’s prior scriptural pattern of paired destinies (blessing/curse; consolation/threat), so that the Gospel’s alternation of beatitudes and woes is not novelty but the same economy disclosed “then” and “now.” Irenaeus repeatedly insists—against Marcion’s reduction—that the one God is simultaneously good and just and that judgment is not foreign to goodness but belongs to the same Father who saves; in Book IV, this is pressed precisely by pairing evangelical sayings with the prophetic and Mosaic pattern and by refusing the premise that justice implies a different deity.
Historical polemic. Tertullian’s handling of Marcion as an “aftercomer” who must explain away the public, scriptural, and ecclesial shape of Christian proclamation matches the Irenaean profile of Marcion as one who dismembers the received Scriptures and then asserts the mutilated remainder as uniquely legitimate—especially Luke and Paul. That description in III.12.12 is not merely biographical; it supplies the polemical warrant for the procedure Tertullian is executing in IV: he can treat Marcion’s Gospel as evidence against Marcion, because (per Irenaeus) it is precisely the retained corpus that will convict him.
Inherited exegetical scaffolding. IV.15 reads less like free-standing Tertullianic invective than like a pre-shaped catena of dominical-logia contrasts designed for anti-Marcionite exploitation: beatitudes versus woes; poverty/hunger/weeping versus wealth/satiety/laughter; human blessing versus prophetic truth; prophets versus pseudoprophets. The chapter’s repeated “either/or” forcing moves (either Christ truly says vae and thus judges, or else the Creator owns the vae and thus the Creator’s moral government is conceded) looks like inherited disputational commonplaces: the goal is not rhetorical flourish but systematic foreclosure of Marcionite exits by exhausting the interpretive options one by one. That is exactly the kind of “refutation from what they still retain” promised by Irenaeus, and the alternation of beatitude/woe functions as a ready-made test-case for the unity of goodness and judgment that Book IV of Irenaeus repeatedly defends against Marcionite division.
Condensed assessment. IV.15 strongly supports dependence on an earlier Irenaean anti-Marcionite framework insofar as its central engine is the Irenaean method announced in III.12.12—convicting Marcion from the retained Gospel by demonstrating that the same Christ-voice must both bless and threaten, thereby reinstating the one Creator as simultaneously beneficent and judicial, a hallmark of Irenaeus’s sustained anti-Marcionite argumentation.
