Tertullian — Against Marcion 33

What the two masters are who, He says, cannot be served, Luke 16:13 on the ground that while one is pleased the other must needs be displeased, He Himself makes clear, when He mentions God and mammon . Then, if you have no interpreter by you, you may learn again from Himself what He would have understood by mammon . For when advising us to provide for ourselves the help of friends in worldly affairs, after the example of that steward who, when removed from his office, relieves his lord's debtors by lessening their debts with a view to their recompensing him with their help, He said, And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that is to say, of money, even as the steward had done. Now we are all of us aware that money is the instigator of unrighteousness, and the lord of the whole world.

Therefore, when he saw the covetousness of the Pharisees doing servile worship to it, He hurled this sentence against them, You cannot serve God and mammon . Luke 16:13 Then the Pharisees , who were covetous of riches, derided Him, when they understood that by mammon He meant money. Let no one think that under the word mammon the Creator was meant, and that Christ called them off from the service of the Creator. What folly ! Rather learn therefrom that one God was pointed out by Christ. For they were two masters whom He named, God and mammon — the Creator and money. You cannot indeed serve God — Him, of course whom they seemed to serve — and mammon to whom they preferred to devote themselves. If, however, he was giving himself out as another god , it would not be two masters, but three, that he had pointed out.

For the Creator was a master, and much more of a master, to be sure, than mammon , and more to be adored, as being more truly our Master. Now, how was it likely that He who had called mammon a master, and had associated him with God , should say nothing of Him who was really the Master of even these, that is, the Creator? Or else, by this silence respecting Him did He concede that service might be rendered to Him , since it was to Himself alone and to mammon that He said service could not be (simultaneously) rendered? When, therefore, He lays down the position that God is one, since He would have been sure to mention the Creator if He were Himself a rival to Him, He did (virtually) name the Creator, when He refrained from insisting that He was Master alone, without a rival god.

Accordingly, this will throw light upon the sense in which it was said, If you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon , who will commit to your trust the true riches? Luke 16:11 In the unrighteous mammon , that is to say, in unrighteous riches, not in the Creator; for even Marcion allows Him to be righteous: And if you have not been faithful in that which is another man's, who will give to you that which is mine? For whatever is unrighteous ought to be foreign to the servants of God . But in what way was the Creator foreign to the Pharisees , seeing that He was the proper God of the Jewish nation? Forasmuch then as the words, Who will entrust to you the truer riches? and, Who will give you that which is mine?