Tertullian — Against Marcion 3.20

It is enough to have run this far for now through Christ’s order, by which, proved such as he was announced, he ought to be held no other than the one who was announced such — so that already from this agreement of his deeds and the Creator’s scriptures faith also ought to be restored to those points by the prejudice of the greater part which, from a contrary opinion, are either drawn into doubt or denied. Further now we also build on equal things from the Creator’s scriptures that were sung ahead as about to be after Christ. For this arrangement too would not be found discharged if he had not come after whom it was to happen. Look at all the nations rising from then out of the gulf of human error toward God the Creator, toward God Christ. And if you dare, deny it was prophesied. But at once the Father’s promise in the psalms will meet you: You are my son; today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will give you the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession. Nor can you claim David’s son more than Christ, or the ends of the earth promised rather to David — who reigned within the Jews’ single nation — than to Christ, who has already taken the whole world by the faith of his gospel.

So also through Isaiah: Behold, I have given you for an arrangement of the race, for a light of the nations, to open the eyes of the blind — of course of those erring — to loose the bound from chains, that is to free from sins, and those sitting in darkness from the prison-cell, that is of death, of ignorance of course. If these things happen through Christ, they will have been prophesied toward no other than him through whom they happen.

Likewise elsewhere: Behold, I have set him as a testimony to the nations, a prince and commander of nations; nations that do not know you will call on you, and peoples will flee to you. For you will not interpret these into David, because he first said: And I will arrange for you an eternal arrangement, the devout and faithful things of David. But from here rather you ought to understand Christ counted from David by fleshly line because of the virgin Mary’s census. For about this promise it is sworn in the psalm to David: From the fruit of your womb I will set on your throne. Whose womb is that? David’s own? Of course not — for David was not going to give birth. But not his wife’s either. For he would not have said “from the fruit of your womb,” but rather “from the fruit of your wife’s womb.” But by saying the womb itself, it remains that he pointed to someone of his line whose womb’s fruit would be Christ’s flesh, which flowered from Mary’s womb. And so he named only the fruit of the womb, as proper to the womb, as of the womb alone, not also of a man, and referred the womb itself back to David, to the head of the line and father of the family. For because he could not assign a virgin’s womb to a husband, he assigned it to the father. So what is found today as a new arrangement in Christ will be what the Creator then promised, calling Christ’s things the devout and faithful things of David, because Christ is from David. Indeed his flesh itself will be the devout and faithful things of David, so holy by religion and faithful from the resurrection. For Nathan the prophet too in the second of Kingdoms makes a profession to David of his seed: which will be, he says, from his own womb. If you simply expound this into Solomon, you will make me laugh. For David will seem to have given birth to Solomon. Or is Christ here too signified as David’s seed from that womb which would be from David — that is Mary’s? Because also Christ rather than Solomon was going to build God’s house — that is the holy man in whom as a better temple God’s Spirit would dwell — and Christ rather than Solomon, David’s son, would have to be God’s Son. Finally the throne forever and kingdom forever fit Christ more than Solomon, a temporal king of course. But from Christ God’s mercy did not withdraw; to Solomon even God’s anger came after luxury and idolatry. For he raised for him Satan an Idumaean enemy. Since therefore none of these fit Solomon but Christ, the reason of our interpretations will be sure, the very outcome of the things also proving them, which appear preached into Christ. And so in this will be the holy and faithful things of David; this one God set as a testimony to the nations, not David; a prince and commander of nations, not David, who ruled only Israel. Nations that did not know him call on Christ today, and peoples flee today to Christ whom they formerly ignored. What you see happening cannot be called future.