Thursday, April 14, 2005 AD
Trespassers will be prosecuted
Cracking quote, Gromit:
The notes point out that the comments about particular heretics are very specifically chosen: Marcion the "wood-hewer" excised from Scripture (Tertullian says he "used the knife, not the pen", while Valentinus perverted the meaning of Scripture ("diverting my streams").
And Tertullian's complaint about the heretics trespassing on Scriptures that properly belong to the Christian Church is reminiscent of the following passage from Dr Hermann Sasse, which I have quoted before:
Thus, not being Christians, they have acquired no right to the Christian Scriptures; and it may be very fairly said to them, "Who are you? When and whence do you come? As you are none of mine, what are you doing on my property? Indeed, Marcion, by what right do you hew my wood? By whose permission, Valentinus, are you diverting my streams? By what power, Apelles, are you removing my landmarks? This is my property.Great stuff. "Tell it like it is, brother!" (and, for these purposes, let's not hold it against Tertullian that he later skidded off the road a bit himself).
"Why are you, the rest, sowing and pasturing here at your own pleasure? This is my property. I have long possessed it; I possessed it before you. I hold sure title-deeds from the original owners themselves, to whom the estate belonged. I am the heir of the apostles. Just as they disposed of it by their will, and committed it to a trust, and adjured the trustees, even so do I hold it. As for you, they have, it is certain, always held you as disinherited, and rejected you as outsiders, as enemies."
- Tertullian, De Praescriptione Haereticorum, 37, quoted in A New Eusebius, p.169.
The notes point out that the comments about particular heretics are very specifically chosen: Marcion the "wood-hewer" excised from Scripture (Tertullian says he "used the knife, not the pen", while Valentinus perverted the meaning of Scripture ("diverting my streams").
And Tertullian's complaint about the heretics trespassing on Scriptures that properly belong to the Christian Church is reminiscent of the following passage from Dr Hermann Sasse, which I have quoted before:
[T]here is no denying that in this sinful world Scripture can also be misunderstood and misused ... As soon as there was a New Testament it was commandeered by all the heretics. Today we share the same Bible with the worst of the sects. The true church is gathered not around Scripture but around the rightly understood, the purely and correctly interpreted Bible.
