Chapter VI.--The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator.
He declares that God's attribute is still safe to Him, of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and being incomparable to any--qualities which he straightway ascribes to Matter also. He is God, to be sure. God shall also attest the same; but He has also sworn sometimes by Himself, that there is no other God like Him. [6188] Hermogenes, however, will make Him a liar. For Matter will be such a God as He--being unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. God will say, "I am the first!" [6189] Yet how is He the first, when Matter is co-eternal with Him? Between co-eternals and contemporaries there is no sequence of rank. [6190] Is then, Matter also the first? "I," says the Lord, "have stretched out the heavens alone." [6191] But indeed He was not alone, when that likewise stretched them out, of which He made the expanse. When he asserts the position that Matter was eternal, without any encroachment on the condition of God, let him see to it that we do not in ridicule turn the tables on him, that God similarly was eternal without any encroachment on the condition of Matter--the condition of Both being still common to Them. The position, therefore, remains unimpugned [6192] both in the case of Matter, that it did itself exist, only along with God; and that God existed alone, but with Matter. It also was first with God, as God, too, was first with it; it, however, is not comparable with God, as God, too, is not to be compared with it; with God also it was the Author (of all things), and with God their Sovereign. In this way he proposes that God has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. For Him, accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing which he had not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter which is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, inasmuch as those qualities which we claim as peculiar to God--to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things--are also compatible to Matter, I want to know what property Matter possesses different and alien from God, and hereby special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God? That Being, in which occur [6193] all the properties of God, is sufficiently predetermined without any further comparison.
[6188] Isa. xlv. 23.
[6189] Isa. xli. 4; xliv. 6; xlviii. 12.
[6190] Ordo.
[6191] Isa. xliv. 24.
[6192] Salvum ergo erit.
[6193] Recensentur.
Chapter VII.--Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles.
When he contends that matter is less than God, and inferior to Him, and therefore diverse from Him, and for the same reason not a fit subject of comparison with Him, who is a greater and superior Being, I meet him with this prescription, that what is eternal and unborn is incapable of any diminution and inferiority, because it is simply this which makes even God to be as great as He is, inferior and subject to none--nay, greater and higher than all. For, just as all things which are born, or which come to an end, and are therefore not eternal, do, by reason of their exposure at once to an end and a beginning, admit of qualities which are repugnant to God--I mean diminution and inferiority, because they are born and made--so likewise God, for this very reason, is unsusceptible of these accidents, because He is absolutely unborn, [6194] and also unmade. And yet such also is the condition of Matter. [6195] Therefore, of the two Beings which are eternal, as being unborn and unmade--God and Matter--by reason of the identical mode of their common condition (both of them equally possessing that which admits neither of diminution nor subjection--that is, the attribute of eternity), we affirm that neither of them is less or greater than the other, neither of them is inferior or superior to the other; but that they both stand on a par in greatness, on a par in sublimity, and on the same level of that complete and perfect felicity of which eternity is reckoned to consist. Now we must not resemble the heathen in our opinions; for they, when constrained to acknowledge God, insist on having other deities below Him. The Divinity, however, has no degrees, because it is unique; and if it shall be found in Matter--as being equally unborn and unmade and eternal--it must be resident in both alike, [6196] because in no case can it be inferior to itself. In what way, then, will Hermogenes have the courage to draw distinctions; and thus to subject matter to God, an eternal to the Eternal, an unborn to the Unborn, an author to the Author? seeing that it dares to say, I also am the first; I too am before all things; and I am that from which all things proceed; equal we have been, together we have been--both alike without beginning, without end; both alike without an Author, without a God. [6197] What God, then, is He who subjects me to a contemporaneous, co-eternal power? If it be He who is called God, then I myself, too, have my own (divine) name. Either I am God, or He is Matter, because we both are that which neither of us is. Do you suppose, therefore, that he [6198] has not made Matter equal with God, although, forsooth, he pretends it to be inferior to Him?
[6194] Nec natus omnino.
[6195] Of course, according to Hermogenes, whom Tertullian refutes with an argumentum ad hominem.
[6196] Aderit utrobique.
[6197] That is, having no God superior to themselves.
[6198] Hermogenes.