Tertullian — Against Marcion 5.2
We also confess the letter that teaches the Galatians as the chief letter against Judaism. For we embrace that whole removal of the old law, as itself coming from the Creator’s arrangement — as we have often already treated in this order about the renewal preached by our God’s prophets. But if the Creator promised the old things would yield, with new of course about to rise, and Christ marked the time of that departure — the law and the prophets until John — setting the boundary in John between either order of old things ending from then and new beginning, necessarily the apostle also, in Christ revealed after John, weakens the old and confirms the new, and so cares for the faith of no other god than the Creator’s, with whom also the old things were preached as about to depart.
Therefore both the law’s destruction and the gospel’s building work for me in this letter too, bearing on that presumption of the Galatians by which they presumed Christ, as if the Creator’s, had to be believed with the Creator’s law kept — because it still seemed incredible that the law be laid down by its own author. Further, if they had heard from the apostle an altogether other god, they would of course have known of themselves that they must withdraw from that god’s law whom they had left by following another. For who would wait longer to learn that he ought to follow a new discipline who had received a new god? No: because the same divinity was preached in the gospel that had always been known in the law, but not the same discipline, this was the whole state of the question: whether the Creator’s law ought to be shut out from the gospel in the Creator’s Christ.
Take away this state, and the question is empty. And with the question empty — everyone of themselves recognizing they must leave the Creator’s order by faith in another god — no material would have suited the apostle for teaching so tightly what faith itself would have dictated of its own. Therefore this letter’s whole intent teaches nothing other than the law’s departure coming from the Creator’s arrangement, as we will still suggest. If likewise it puts out mention of no new god — which it would nowhere have done more than in this matter, so as to propose the reason for sending the law away by this sole and most sufficient definition of a new divinity — it appears how he writes: I marvel that you are so quickly transferred from him who called you into grace to another gospel — another from way of life, not from religion; from discipline, not from divinity — since indeed Christ’s gospel ought to call from the law to grace, not from the Creator to another god.
Latin
Principalem aduersus Iudaismum epistolam nos quoque confitemur quae Galatas docet. amplectimur etenim omnem illam legis ueteris amolitionem, ut et ipsam de creatoris uenientem dispositione, sicut saepe iam in isto ordine tractauimus de praedicata nouatione a prophetis dei nostri. quodsi creator quidem uetera cessura promisit, nouis scilicet orituris, Christus uero tempus distinx(it decess)ionis istius, — lex et prophetae usque ad Iohannem — terminum in Iohanne statuens inter utrumque ordinem desinentium exinde ueterum et incipientium nouorum, necessarie et apostolus in Christo post Iohannem reuelato uetera infirmat, noua uero confirmat, atque ita non alterius dei fidem curat quam creatoris, apud quem et uetera decessura praedicabantur.
igitur et legis destructio et euangelii aedificatio pro me faciunt in ista quoque epistola ad eam Galatarum praesumptionem pertinentes, qua praesumebant Christum, ut puta creatoris, salua creatoris lege credendum, quod adhuc incredibile uideretur legem a suo auctore deponi. porro, si omnino alium deum ab apostolo audissent, ultro utique scissent abscedendum sibi esse a lege eius dei, quem reliquissent alium secuti. quis enim expectaret diutius discere, quod nonam deberet sectari disciplinam qui nouum deum recepisset? immo quia eadem quidem diuinitas praedicabatur in euangelio, quae semper nota fuerat in lege, disciplina uero non eadem, hic erat totus quaestionis status, an lex creatoris ab euangelio deberet excludi in Christo creatoris.
denique aufer hunc statum, et uacat quaestio. uacante autem quaestione, ultro omnibus agnoscentibus discedendum sibi esse ab ordine creatoris per fidem dei alterius, nulla apostolo materia competisset id tam presse doctadi, quod ultro fides ipsa dictasset. igitur tota intentio epistolae istius nihil aliud docet quam legis decessionem uenientem de creatoris dispositione, ut adhuc suggeremus. si item nullius noui dei exerit mentionem, quod nusquam magis fecisset quam in ista materia, ut rationem scilicet ablegandae legis unica hac et sufficientissima definitione proponeret nouae diuinitatis, apparet quomodo scribat: miror uos tam cito transferri ab eo, qui uos uocauit in gratiam, ad aliud euangelium, ex conuersatione aliud, non ex religione, ex disciplina, non ex diuinitate, quoniam quidem euangelium Christi a lege euocare deberet ad gratiam, non a creatore ad alium deum.