Chapter II.--Marcion, Aided by Cerdon, Teaches a Duality of Gods; How He Constructed This Heresy of an Evil and a Good God.
The heretic of Pontus introduces two Gods, like the twin Symplegades of his own shipwreck: One whom it was impossible to deny, i.e. our Creator; and one whom he will never be able to prove, i.e. his own god. The unhappy man gained [2348] the first idea [2349] of his conceit from the simple passage of our Lord's saying, which has reference to human beings and not divine ones, wherein He disposes of those examples of a good tree and a corrupt one; [2350] how that "the good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit, neither the corrupt tree good fruit." Which means, that an honest mind and good faith cannot produce evil deeds, any more than an evil disposition can produce good deeds. Now (like many other persons now-a-days, especially those who have an heretical proclivity), while morbidly brooding [2351] over the question of the origin of evil, his perception became blunted by the very irregularity of his researches; and when he found the Creator declaring, "I am He that createth evil," [2352] inasmuch as he had already concluded from other arguments, which are satisfactory to every perverted mind, that God is the author of evil, so he now applied to the Creator the figure of the corrupt tree bringing forth evil fruit, that is, moral evil, [2353] and then presumed that there ought to be another god, after the analogy of the good tree producing its good fruit. Accordingly, finding in Christ a different disposition, as it were--one of a simple and pure benevolence [2354] --differing from the Creator, he readily argued that in his Christ had been revealed a new and strange [2355] divinity; and then with a little leaven he leavened the whole lump of the faith, flavouring it with the acidity of his own heresy.
He had, moreover, in one [2356] Cerdon an abettor of this blasphemy,--a circumstance which made them the more readily think that they saw most clearly their two gods, blind though they were; for, in truth, they had not seen the one God with soundness of faith. [2357] To men of diseased vision even one lamp looks like many. One of his gods, therefore, whom he was obliged to acknowledge, he destroyed by defaming his attributes in the matter of evil; the other, whom he laboured so hard to devise, he constructed, laying his foundation [2358] in the principle of good. In what articles [2359] he arranged these natures, we show by our own refutations of them.
[2348] Passus.
[2349] Instinctum.
[2350] St. Luke vi. 43 sq.
[2351] Languens.
[2352] Isa. xlv. 7.
[2353] Mala.
[2354] [This purely good or goodish divinity is an idea of the Stoics. De Præscript. chap. 7.]
[2355] Hospitam.
[2356] Quendam. [See Irenæus, Vol. I. p. 352, this Series.]
[2357] Integre.
[2358] Præstruendo.
[2359] Or sections.
Chapter III.--The Unity of God. He is the Supreme Being, and There Cannot Be a Second Supreme.
The principal, and indeed [2360] the whole, contention lies in the point of number: whether two Gods may be admitted, by poetic licence (if they must be), [2361] or pictorial fancy, or by the third process, as we must now add, [2362] of heretical pravity. But the Christian verity has distinctly declared this principle, "God is not, if He is not one;" because we more properly believe that that has no existence which is not as it ought to be. In order, however, that you may know that God is one, ask what God is, and you will find Him to be not otherwise than one. So far as a human being can form a definition of God, I adduce one which the conscience of all men will also acknowledge,--that God is the great Supreme existing in eternity, unbegotten, unmade without beginning, without end. For such a condition as this must needs be ascribed to that eternity which makes God to be the great Supreme, because for such a purpose as this is this very attribute [2363] in God; and so on as to the other qualities: so that God is the great Supreme in form and in reason, and in might and in power. [2364] Now, since all are agreed on this point (because nobody will deny that God is in some sense [2365] the great Supreme, except the man who shall be able to pronounce the opposite opinion, that God is but some inferior being, in order that he may deny God by robbing Him of an attribute of God), what must be the condition of the great Supreme Himself? Surely it must be that nothing is equal to Him, i.e. that there is no other great supreme; because, if there were, He would have an equal; and if He had an equal, He would be no longer the great Supreme, now that the condition and (so to say) our law, which permits nothing to be equal to the great Supreme, is subverted. That Being, then, which is the great Supreme, must needs be unique, [2366] by having no equal, and so not ceasing to be the great Supreme. Therefore He will not otherwise exist than by the condition whereby He has His being; that is, by His absolute uniqueness. Since, then, God is the great Supreme, our Christian verity has rightly declared, [2367] "God is not, if He is not one." Not as if we doubted His being God, by saying, He is not, if He is not one; but because we define Him, in whose being we thoroughly believe, to be that without which He is not God; that is to say, the great Supreme. But then [2368] the great Supreme must needs be unique. This Unique Being, therefore, will be God--not otherwise God than as the great Supreme; and not otherwise the great Supreme than as having no equal; and not otherwise having no equal than as being Unique. Whatever other god, then, you may introduce, you will at least be unable to maintain his divinity under any other guise, [2369] than by ascribing to him too the property of Godhead--both eternity and supremacy over all. How, therefore, can two great Supremes co-exist, when this is the attribute of the Supreme Being, to have no equal,--an attribute which belongs to One alone, and can by no means exist in two?
[2360] Et exinde.
[2361] Si Forte.
[2362] Jam.
[2363] Of eternity.
[2364] We subjoin the original of this difficult passage: Hunc enim statum æternitati censendum, quæ summum magnum deum efficiat, dum hoc est in deo ipsa, atque ita et cetera, ut sit deus summum magnum et forma et ratione et vi et potestate.
[2365] Quid.
[2366] Unicus. [Alone of his kind.]
[2367] As its first principle.
[2368] Porro.
[2369] Forma.