Tertullian — Against Marcion 4.33
Which two masters he denies can be served—because one must needs be offended and the other defended—he himself declares, setting forth God and mammon. Whom he wants understood by mammon you can learn from him if you lack an interpreter: warning us to look out from worldly things the suffrage of friendships after the steward who, removed from office, lightens the lord’s debtors by diminished bonds for his own support, he says, And I say to you, make yourselves friends from the mammon of injustice—from coin, of course, of which that servant also spoke.
We all know coin as author of injustice and dominator of the whole age; seeing the Pharisees’ greed enslaved to it he fastened this sentence: you cannot serve God and mammon. They mocked, greedy for money, because they understood mammon said of coin—lest anyone think the Creator should be understood in mammon and Christ to have called them back from the Creator’s service.
Rather learn from this that Christ showed one God: he named two lords, God and mammon—Creator and coin—you cannot serve God (the one they seemed to serve) and mammon (to which they were more devoted). If he himself were acting as another, he would have demonstrated not two lords but three—for the Creator is also Lord, and more to be observed than mammon; what sort of thing is it that he who called mammon lord and joined it with the true Lord should be silent about the Lord himself, that is God the Creator?
So also: if you have not been faithful in unjust mammon, who will believe you what is true?—in unjust coin, not in the Creator, whom even Marcion makes just; and if you have not been found faithful in another’s, who will give you what is mine?—for what is unjust ought to be alien from God’s servants, yet how was the Creator alien to Pharisees, the proper God of the Jewish nation?
If the Pharisees justifying themselves before men set hope of reward in man, he rebuked them with Jeremiah’s sense—wretched the man who has hope in man—and when he adds God knows your hearts he recalls that God’s force who declared himself a lamp searching reins and hearts; law and prophets until John, from which the kingdom of God is announced, marks John’s limit between old and new—Judaism ceasing, Christianity beginning—yet not as if another power quieted law/prophets and started the gospel: Creator promised old things to pass and new to succeed, John the forerunner preparing the Lord’s ways, so heaven and earth pass sooner than one apex of the Lord’s words.
Latin
Quibus duobus dominis neget posse seruiri, quia alterum offendi sit necesse alterum defendi, ipse declarat, deum proponens et mamonam. proinde mamonam quem intellegi uelit, si interpretem non habes, ab ipso potes discere. admonens enim nos de saecularibus suffragia nobis prospicere amicitiarum secundum serui illius exemplum, qui ab actu summotus dominicos debitores diminutis cautionibus releuat in subsidium sibi: et ego, inquit, dico uobis, facite uobis amicos de mamona iniustitiae, de nummo scilicet, de \' quo et seruus ille. iniustitiae enim auctorem et dominatorem totius saeculi nummum scimus omnes. cui famulatam uidens Pharisaeorum cupiditatem ammentauit hanc sententiam: non potestis deo seruire et mamonae. inridebant denique Pharisaei pecuniae cupidi, quod intellexissent scilicet mamonam de nummo dictum, ne quia existimet in mamona creatorem intellegendum et Christum a creatoris illos seruitute reuocasse.. quid nunc? potius ex hoc disce unum a Christo deum ostensum. duos enim dominos nominauit, deum et mamonam, crea. torem et nummum: denique non potestis deo seruire, utique ei, cui uidebantur seruire, et mamonam, cui magis destinabantur. quodsi ipse alium se ageret, non duos dominos, sed tres demonstrasset — et creator enim dominus, quia deus, et utique magis dominus quam mamonas magisque homini obseruandus, qua magis dominus —; quale est enim, ut qui mamonam dominum dixerat et cum domino iunxerat uero, ipsum dominum taceret, id est deum creatorem? aut numquid tacendo eo concessit seruiendum ei esse, si solummodo sibi et mamonae negauit posse seruiri? ita cum unum deum ponit, nominaturus et creatorem, si alius esset ipse, creatorem nominauit quem [dominum] sine alio [deo non] posuit. et illud itaque relucebit, quomodo dictum sit: (si) in mamona iniusto fideles non extitistis, quod uerum est quis uobis credet? in nummo scilicet iniusto, non in creatore, quem et Marcion iustum facit, et: si in alieno fideles inuenti non estis, meum quis dabit uobis? alienum enim debet esse a semis dei quod iniustum est. creator autem quomodo alienus erat Pharisaeis, proprius deus Iudaicae gentis? si ergo haec non cadunt in creatorem, sed in mamonam, \'quis uobis credet quod uerius est\'? et \'quis uobis dabit quod meum est\'? non potest quasi ali{en)us dixisse de alterius dei gratia. tunc enim uideretur ita dixisse, si eos in creatorem, non in mamonam infideles notando per creatoris mentionem distinctione se fecisset dei alterius, non commissuri suam ueritatem infidelibus creatoris, t quoniam tunc alterius uideri potest, si non ad hoc proponatur, ut a re, de qua agitur, separetur. Si autem et iustificantes se coram hominibus Pharisaei spem mercedis in homine ponebant, illo eos sensu increpabat, quo et propheta Hieremias: miser homo, qui spem habet in homine. si et adicit: scit autem deus corda uestra, illius dei uim commemorabat, (qui) lucernam se pronuntiarat scrutantem renes et corda. si superbiam tangit: quod elatum est apud homines perosum est deo, Esaiam ponit ante oculos: dies enim domini Sabaoth in omnem contumeliosum et superbum, in omnem sublimem et elatum, et humiliabuntur. Possum iam colligere, cur tanto aeuo deus Marcionis fuerit in occulto. expectabat, opinor, donec haec omnia disceret a creatore. didicit igitur usque ad Iohannis tempora atque ita exinde processit adnuntiare regnum dei dicens: lex et prophetae usque ad Iohannem; ex quo regnum dei adnuntiatur. quasi non et nos limitem quendam agnoscamus Iohannem constitutum inter uetera et noua, ad quem desineret Iudaismus et a quo inciperet Christianismus, non tamen, ut ab alia uirtute facta sit sedatio legis et prophetarum et initiatio euangelii, in quo est dei regnum.\' [Christus ipse.] nam id si probauimus, et uetera transitura et noua successura praedicari a creatore, si et Iohannes antecursor et praeparator ostenditur uiarum domini euangelium\', superducturi et regnum dei promulgaturi, et ex hoc iam, quod Iohannes uenit, ipse erit Christus qui Iohannem erit subsecutus ut antecursorem; et, si desierunt uetera et coeperunt ! noua interstite Iohanne, non erit mirum quod ex dispositione est creatoris, ut unde(unde) magis probetur ** quam ex legis et prophetarum in Iohannem occasu et exinde ortu regni dei. transeat igitur caelum et terra citius, sicut et lex et: prophetae, quam unus apexuerborum domini-nerbum enim, inquit Esaias, dei nostri manet in aeuum —: nam quoniam in Esaia iam tunc Christus, sermo scilicet et spiritus creatoris, Iohannem praedicarat — uocem clamantis in deserto: parate uiam domini — in hoc uenturum, ut legis et] prophetarum ordo exinde cessaret, per adimpletionem, non per destructionem, et regnum dei a Christo adnuntiaretur, I ideo subtexuit facilius elementa transitura quam uerba sua,\' confirmans hoc quoque, quod de Iohanne dixerat, non praeterisse.