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Anti-Marcion
Containing an Argument Against His Opinion that Matter is Eternal.
[Translated by Dr. Holmes.]
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We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument,[6129] to lay down the rule against heretics of the lateness of their date.[6130] For in as far as by our rule, priority is given to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies, in so far must all later opinions be prejudged as heresies, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of truth, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this[6131] taint of novelty. He is, in short,[6132] a man living in the world at the present time; by his very nature a heretic, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good conscience to speak ill of individuals.[6133] Moreover, he despises God’s law in his painting,[6134] maintaining repeated marriages,[6135] alleges the law of God in defence of lust,[6136] and yet despises it in respect of his art.[6137] He falsifies by a twofold process—with his cautery and his pen.[6138] He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks,[6139] and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of faith as much as the apostle’s own Hermogenes.[6140] However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not appear to acknowledge any other Christ as Lord,[6141] though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his faith he really makes Him another being,—nay, he takes from Him everything which is God, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing. For, turning away from Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the Stoics how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had existed ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him,[6142] the Lord afterwards created all things.
Our very bad painter has coloured this his primary shade absolutely without any light, with such arguments as these: He begins with laying down the premiss,[6143] that the Lord made all things either out of Himself, or out of nothing, or out of something; in order that, after he has shown that it was impossible for Him to have made them either out of Himself or out of nothing, he might thence affirm the residuary proposition that He made them out of something, and therefore that that something was Matter. He could not have made all things, he says, of Himself; because whateverthings the Lord made of Himself would have been parts of Himself; but[6144] He is not dissoluble into parts,[6145] because, being the Lord, He is indivisible, and unchangeable, and always the same. Besides, if He had made anything out of Himself, it would have been something of Himself. Everything, however, both which was made and which He made must be accounted imperfect, because it was made of a part, and He made it of a part; or if, again, it was a whole which He made, who is a whole Himself, He must in that case have been at once both a whole, and yet not a whole; because it behoved Him to be a whole, that He might produce Himself,[6146] and yet not a whole, that He might be produced out of Himself.[6147] But this is a most difficult position. For if He were in existence, He could not be made, for He was in existence already; if, however, he were not in existence He could not make, because He was a nonentity. He maintains, moreover, that He who always exists, does not come into existence,[6148] but exists for ever and ever. He accordingly concludes that He made nothing out of Himself, since He never passed into such a condition[6149] as made it possible for Him to make anything out of Himself. In like manner, he contends that He could not have made all things out of nothing—thus: He defines the Lord as a being who is good, nay, very good, who must will to make things as good and excellent as He is Himself; indeed it were impossible for Him either to will or to make anything which was not good, nay, very good itself. Therefore all things ought to have been made good and excellent by Him, after His own condition. Experience shows,[6150] however, that things which are even evil were made by Him: not, of course, of His own will and pleasure; because, if it had been of His own will and pleasure, He would be sure to have made nothing unfitting or unworthy of Himself. That, therefore, which He made not of His own will must be understood to have been made from the fault of something, and that is from Matter, without a doubt.
He adds also another point: that as God was always God, there was never a time when God was not also Lord. But[6151] it was in no way possible for Him to be regarded as always Lord, in the same manner as He had been always God, if there had not been always, in the previous eternity,[6152] a something of which He could be regarded as evermore the Lord. So he concludes[6153] that God always had Matter co-existent with Himself as the Lord thereof. Now, this tissue[6154] of his I shall at once hasten to pull abroad. I have been willing to set it out in form to this length, for the information of those who are unacquainted with the subject, that they may know that his other arguments likewise need only be[6155] understood to be refuted. We affirm, then, that the name of God always existed with Himself and in Himself—but not eternally so the Lord. Because the condition of the one is not the same as that of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that is, of the Divinity; but Lord is (the name) not of substance, but of power. I maintain that the substance existed always with its own name, which is God; the title Lord was afterwards added, as the indication indeed[6156] of something accruing. For from the moment when those things began to exist, over which the power of a Lord was to act, God, by the accession of that power, both became Lord and received the name thereof. Because God is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as He became the Father by the Son, and a Judge by sin, so also did He become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that they might serve Him. Do I seem to you to be weaving arguments,[6157] Hermogenes? How neatly does Scripture lend us its aid,[6158] when it applies the two titles to Him with a distinction, and reveals them each at its proper time! For (the title) God, indeed, which always belonged to Him, it names at the very first: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth;”[6159] and as long as He continued making, one after the other, those things of which He was to be the Lord, it merely mentions God. “And God said,” “and God made,” “and God saw;”[6160] but nowhere do we yet find the Lord. But when He completed the whole creation, and especially man himself, who was destined to understand His sovereignty in a way of special propriety, He then is designated[6161] Lord. Then also the Scripture added the name Lord: “And the Lord God, Deus Dominus, took the man, whom He had formed;”[6162] “And the Lord God commanded Adam.”[6163] Thenceforth He, who was previously God only, is the Lord, from the time of His having something of which He might be the Lord. For to Himself He was always God, but to all things was He only then God, when He became also Lord. Therefore, in as far as (Hermogenes) shall suppose that Matter was eternal, on the ground that the Lord was eternal, in so far will it be evident that nothing existed, because it is plain that the Lord as such did not always exist. Now I mean also, on my own part,[6164] to add a remark for the sake of ignorant persons, of whom Hermogenes is an extreme instance,[6165] and actually to retort against him his own arguments.[6166] For when he denies that Matter was born or made, I find that, even on these terms, the title Lord is unsuitable to God in respect of Matter, because it must have been free,[6167] when by not having a beginning it had not an author. The fact of its past existence it owed to no one, so that it could be a subject to no one. Therefore ever since God exercised His power over it, by creating (all things) out of Matter, although it had all along experienced God as its Lord, yet Matter does, after all, demonstrate that God did not exist in the relation of Lord to it,[6168] although all the while He was really so.[6169]
At this point, then, I shall begin to treat of Matter, how that, (according to Hermogenes,)[6170] God compares it with Himself as equally unborn, equally unmade, equally eternal, set forth as being without a beginning, without an end. For what other estimate[6171] of God is there than eternity? What other condition has eternity than to have ever existed, and to exist yet for evermore by virtue of its privilege of having neither beginning nor end? Now, since this is the property of God, it will belong to God alone, whose property it is—of course[6172] on this ground, that if it can be ascribed to any other being, it will no longer be the property of God, but will belong, along with Him, to that being also to which it is ascribed. For “although there be that are called gods” in name, “whether in heaven or in earth, yet to us there is but one God the Father, of whom are all things;”[6173] whence the greater reason why, in our view,[6174] that which is the property[6175] of God ought to be regarded as pertaining to God alone, and why (as I have already said) that should cease to be such a property, when it is shared by another being. Now, since He is God, it must necessarily be a unique mark of this quality,[6176] that it be confined to One. Else, what will be unique and singular, if that is not which has nothing equal to it? What will be principal, if that is not which is above all things, before all things, and from which all things proceed? By possessing these He is God alone, and by His sole possession of them He is One. If another also shared in the possession, there would then be as many gods as there were possessors of these attributes of God. Hermogenes, therefore, introduces two gods: he introduces Matter as God’s equal. God, however, must be One, because that is God which is supreme; but nothing else can be supreme than that which is unique; and that cannot possibly be unique which has anything equal to it; and Matter will be equal with God when it is held to be[6177] eternal.
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