Tertullian — Against Marcion 18

On the subject of His death, I suppose, you endeavour to introduce a diversity of opinion, simply because you deny that the suffering of the cross was predicted of the Christ of the Creator, and because you contend, moreover, that it is not to be believed that the Creator would expose His Son to that kind of death on which He had Himself pronounced a curse. Cursed, says He, is every one who hangs on a tree. But what is meant by this curse, worthy as it is of the simple prediction of the cross , of which we are now mainly inquiring, I defer to consider, because in another passage we have given the reason of the thing preceded by proof . First, I shall offer a full explanation of the types.

And no doubt it was proper that this mystery should be prophetically set forth by types, and indeed chiefly by that method: for in proportion to its incredibility would it be a stumbling-block, if it were set forth in bare prophecy ; and in proportion too, to its grandeur, was the need of obscuring it in shadow, that the difficulty of understanding it might lead to prayer for the grace of God . First, then, Isaac, when he was given up by his father as an offering, himself carried the wood for his own death. By this act he even then was setting forth the death of Christ , who was destined by His Father as a sacrifice , and carried the cross whereon He suffered.

Joseph likewise was a type of Christ , not indeed on this ground (that I may not delay my course ), that he suffered persecution for the cause of God from his brethren, as Christ did from His brethren after the flesh, the Jews ; but when he is blessed by his father in these words: His glory is that of a bullock; his horns are the horns of a unicorn; with them shall he push the nations to the very ends of the earth, Deuteronomy 33:17 — he was not, of course, designated as a mere unicorn with its one horn, or a minotaur with two; but Christ was indicated in him — a bullock in respect of both His characteristics: to some as severe as a Judge, to others gentle as a Saviour, whose horns were the extremities of His cross.

For of the antenna, which is a part of a cross, the ends are called horns ; while the midway stake of the whole frame is the unicorn . By this virtue , then, of His cross, and in this manner horned, He is both now pushing all nations through faith , bearing them away from earth to heaven; and will then push them through judgment, casting them down from heaven to earth. He will also, according to another passage in the same scripture, be a bullock, when He is spiritually interpreted to be Jacob against Simeon and Levi, which means against the scribes and the Pharisees ; for it was from them that these last derived their origin. Like Simeon and Levi, they consummated their wickedness by their heresy , with which they persecuted Christ.