The Five Books Against Marcion — Book 1, Chapter 23

Opening the library…

Notes

Atquin.

Familiaritatis.

This is the sense of the passage as read by Oehler: “Antecedit autem debita indebitam, ut principalis, ut dignior ministra et comite sua, id est indebita.” Fr. Junius, however, added the word “prior” which begins the next sentence to these words, making the last clause run thus: “ut dignior ministra, et comite sua, id est indebita, prior”—“as being more worthy of an attendant, and as being prior to its companion, that is, the undue benevolence.” It is difficult to find any good use of the “prior” in the next sentence, “Prior igitur cum prima bonitatis ratio sit,” etc., as Oehler and others point it.

In rem suam.

Redundavit.

Ratio ipsa, i.e., rationality, or the character of reasonableness, which he is now vindicating.

Alio modo destructus.

Cujus est res.

Justitia, right as opposed to the wrong (injuria) of the preceding sentence.

Pro domestico, opposed to the pro extraneo, the alien or stranger of the preceding and succeeding context.

Assertor.

Nedum.

Plagiator.

i.e., the Creator.

Oro te.

Alii Deo. The strength of this phrase is remarkable by the side of the oft-repeated aliena.

Therefore Christians used to lift their hands and arms towards heaven in prayer. Compare The Apology, chap. 30, (where the manibus expansis betokens the open hand, not merely as the heathen tendens ad sidera palmas). See also De Orat. c. 13, and other passages from different writers referred to in the “Tertullian” of the Oxford Library of the Fathers, p. 70. [See the figures in the Catacombs as represented by Parker, Marriott and others.]

To the same effect Irenæus had said: “How will it be consistent in them to hold that the bread on which thanks are given is the body of their Lord, and that the cup is His blood, if they do not acknowledge that He is the Son of the Creator of the world, that is, the Word of God?” (Rigalt.) [The consecrated bread is still bread, in Patristic theology.]

Operatur, a not unfrequent use of the word. Thus Prudentius (Psychom. 572) opposes operatio to avaritia.

Book 1 · Chapter 23

Chapter XXIII.—God’s Attribute of Goodness Considered as Rational. Marcion’s God Defective Here Also; His Goodness Irrational and Misapplied.

Notes