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Anti-Marcion
I see now that you are coming back again to that reason, which has been in the habit of declaring to you nothing in the way of certainty. For just as you introduce to our notice Matter as being neither corporeal nor incorporeal, so you allege of it that it is neither good nor evil; and you say, whilst arguing further on it in the same strain: “If it were good, seeing that it had ever been so, it would not require the arrangement of itself by God;[6528] if it were naturally evil, it would not have admitted of a change[6529] for the better, nor would God have ever applied to such a nature any attempt at arrangement of it, for His labour would have been in vain.” Such are your words, which it would have been well if you had remembered in other passages also, so as to have avoided any contradiction of them. As, however, we have already treated to some extent of this ambiguity of good and evil touching Matter, I will now reply to the only proposition and argument of yours which we have before us. I shall not stop to repeat my opinion, that it was your bounden duty to have said for certain that Matter was either good or bad, or in some third condition; but (I must observe) that you have not here even kept to the statement which you chose to make before. Indeed, you retract what you declared—that Matter is neither good nor evil; because you imply that it is evil when you say, “If it were good, it would not require to be set in order by God;” so again, when you add, “If it were naturally evil, it would not admit of any change for the better,” you seem to intimate[6530] that it is good. And so you attribute to it a close relation[6531] to good and evil, although you declared it neither good nor evil. With a view, however, to refute the argument whereby you thought you were going to clinch your proposition, I here contend: If Matter had always been good, why should it not have still wanted a change for the better? Does that which is good never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change its good for a better? And in like manner, if Matter had been by nature evil, why might it not have been changed by God as the more powerful Being, as able to convert the nature of stones into children of Abraham?[6532] Surely by such means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him below[6533] it, since you affirm that[6534] the nature of Matter could notpossibly be brought under control by Him, and trained to something better. But although you are here disinclined to allow that Matter is by nature evil, yet in another passage you will deny having made such an admission.[6535]
My observations touching the site[6536] of Matter, as also concerning its mode[6537] have one and the same object in view—to meet and refute your perverse positions. You put Matter below God, and thus, of course, you assign a place to it below God. Therefore Matter is local.[6538] Now, if it is local, it is within locality; if within locality, it is bounded[6539] by the place within which it is; if it is bounded, it has an outline,[6540] which (painter as you are in your special vocation) you know is the boundary to every object susceptible of outline. Matter, therefore, cannot be infinite, which, since it is in space, is bounded by space; and being thus determinable by space, it is susceptible of an outline. You, however, make it infinite, when you say: “It is on this account infinite, because it is always existent.” And if any of your disciples should choose to meet us by declaring your meaning to be that Matter is infinite in time, not in its corporeal mass,[6541] still what follows will show that (you mean) corporeal infinity to be an attribute of Matter, that it is in respect of bulk immense and uncircumscribed. “Wherefore,” say you, “it is not fabricated as a whole, but in its parts.”[6542] In bulk, therefore, is it infinite, not in time. And you contradict yourself[6543] when you make Matter infinite in bulk, and at the same time ascribe place to it, including it within space and local outline. But yet at the same time I cannot tell why God should not have entirely formed it,[6544] unless it be because He was either impotent or envious. I want therefore to know the moiety of that which was not wholly formed (by God), in order that I may understand what kind of thing the entirety was. It was only right that God should have made it known as a model of antiquity,[6545] to set off the glory of His work.
Well, now, since it seems to you to be the correcter thing,[6546] let Matter be circumscribed[6547] by means of changes and displacements; let it also be capable of comprehension, since (as you say) it is used as material by God,[6548] on the ground of its being convertible, mutable, and separable. For its changes, you say, show it to be inseparable. And here you have swerved from your own lines[6549] which you prescribed respecting the person of God when you laid down the rule that God made it not out of His own self, because it was not possible for Him to become divided[6550] seeing that He is eternal and abiding for ever, and therefore unchangeable and indivisible. Since Matter too is estimated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, it will be unsusceptible of division, of change, for the same reason that God also is. Since it is associated with Him in the joint possession of eternity, it must needs share with Him also the powers, the laws, and the conditions of eternity. In like manner, when you say, “All things simultaneously throughout the universe[6551] possess portions of it,[6552] that so the whole may be ascertained from[6553] its parts,” you of course mean to indicate those parts which were produced out of it, and which are now visible to us. How then is this possession (of Matter) by all things throughout the universe effected—that is, of course, from the very beginning[6554]—when the things which are now visible to us are different in their condition[6555] from what they were in the beginning?
You say that Matter was reformed for the better[6556]—from a worse condition, of course; and thus you would make the better a copy of the worse. Everything was in confusion, but now it is reduced to order; and would you also say, that out of order, disorder is produced? No one thing is the exact mirror[6557] of another thing; that is to say, it is not its co-equal. Nobody ever found himself in a barber’s looking-glass look like an ass[6558] instead of a man; unless it be he who supposes that unformed and shapeless Matter answers to Matter which is now arranged and beautified in the fabric of the world. What is there now that is without form in the world, what was there once that was formed[6559] in Matter, that the world is the mirror of Matter? Since the world is known among the Greeks by a term denoting ornament,[6560] how can it present the image of unadorned[6561] Matter, in such a way that you can say the whole is known by its parts? To that whole will certainly belong even the portion which has not yet become formed; and you have already declared that the whole of Matter was not used as material in the creation.[6562] It follows, then, that this rude, and confused, and unarranged portion cannot be recognized in the polished, and distinct and well-arranged parts of creation, which indeed can hardly with propriety be called parts of Matter, since they have quitted[6563] its condition, by being separated from it in the transformation they have undergone.
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