Chapter X.--The Creator Was Known as the True God from the First by His Creation. Acknowledged by the Soul and Conscience of Man Before He Was Revealed by Moses.
For indeed, as the Creator of all things, He was from the beginning discovered equally with them, they having been themselves manifested that He might become known as God. For although Moses, some long while afterwards, seems to have been the first to introduce the knowledge of [2443] the God of the universe in the temple of his writings, yet the birthday of that knowledge must not on that account be reckoned from the Pentateuch. For the volume of Moses does not at all initiate [2444] the knowledge of the Creator, but from the first gives out that it is to be traced from Paradise and Adam, not from Egypt and Moses. The greater part, therefore, [2445] of the human race, although they knew not even the name of Moses, much less his writings, yet knew the God of Moses; and even when idolatry overshadowed the world with its extreme prevalence, men still spoke of Him separately by His own name as God, and the God of gods, and said, "If God grant," and, "As God pleases," and, "I commend you to God." [2446] Reflect, then, whether they knew Him, of whom they testify that He can do all things. To none of the writings of Moses do they owe this. The soul was before prophecy. [2447] From the beginning the knowledge of God is the dowry of the soul, one and the same amongst the Egyptians, and the Syrians, and the tribes of Pontus. For their souls call the God of the Jews their God. Do not, O barbarian heretic, put Abraham before the world. Even if the Creator had been the God of one family, He was yet not later than your god; even in Pontus was He known before him. Take then your standard from Him who came first: from the Certain (must be judged) the uncertain; from the Known the unknown. Never shall God be hidden, never shall God be wanting. Always shall He be understood, always be heard, nay even seen, in whatsoever way He shall wish. God has for His witnesses this whole being of ours, and this universe wherein we dwell. He is thus, because not unknown, proved to be both God and the only One, although another still tries hard to make out his claim.
[2443] Dedicasse.
[2444] Instituat.
[2445] Denique.
[2446] See also De test, anim. 2, and De anima, 41. [Bp. Kaye refers (p. 166) to Profr. Andrews Norton of Harvard, with great respect: specially to a Note on this usage of the Heathen, in his Evidences, etc. Vol. III.]
[2447] Prophetia, inspired Scripture.
Chapter XI.--The Evidence for God External to Him; But the External Creation Which Yields This Evidence is Really Not Extraneous, for All Things are God's. Marcion's God, Having Nothing to Show for Himself, No God at All. Marcion's Scheme Absurdly Defective, Not Furnishing Evidence for His New God's Existence, Which Should at Least Be Able to Compete with the Full Evidence of the Creator.
And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by his own (inherent) qualities than by strange [2448] ones? No one. Well, I keep to this statement. How could anything be strange [2449] to God, to whom, if He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the attribute of God, that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do with things strange to Him?--a point which will be more fully noticed in its proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to exist to whom nothing is proved to belong. For as the Creator is shown to be God, God without any doubt, from the fact that all things are His, and nothing is strange to Him; so the rival [2450] god is seen to be no god, from the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore strange to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no room for any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by Him. If in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of Deity, the void will be of a false deity clearly. [2451] By falsehood the truth is made clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find room for Marcion's god? This, therefore, I insist upon, from the character [2452] of the Creator, that God must have been known from the works of some world peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and the rest of its organic life; [2453] when even the error of the world has presumed to call gods those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the ground that in every such case something is seen which provides for the uses and advantages of life. [2454] Accordingly, this also was believed from the character of God to be a divine function; namely, to teach or point out what is convenient and needful in human concerns. So completely has the authority which has given influence to a false divinity been borrowed from that source, whence it had previously flowed forth to the true one. One stray vegetable [2455] at least Marcion's god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be preached up as a new Triptolemus. [2456] Or else state some reason which shall be worthy of a God, why he, supposing him to exist, created nothing; because he must, on supposition of his existence, have been a creator, on that very principle on which it is clear to us that our God is no otherwise existent, than as having been the Creator of this universe of ours. For, once for all, the rule [2457] will hold good, that they cannot both acknowledge the Creator to be God, and also prove him divine whom they wish to be equally believed in as God, except they adjust him to the standard of Him whom they and all men hold to be God; which is this, that whereas no one doubts the Creator to be God on the express ground of His having made the universe, so, on the selfsame ground, no one ought to believe that he also is God who has made nothing--except, indeed, some good reason be forthcoming. And this must needs be limited to one of two: he was either unwilling to create, or else unable. There is no third reason. [2458] Now, that he was unable, is a reason unworthy of God. Whether to have been unwilling to be a worthy one, I want to inquire. Tell me, Marcion, did your god wish himself to be recognised at any time or not? With what other purpose did he come down from heaven, and preach, and having suffered rise again from the dead, if it were not that he might be acknowledged? And, doubtless, since he was acknowledged, he willed it. For no circumstance could have happened to him, if he had been unwilling. What indeed tended so greatly to the knowledge of himself, as his appearing in the humiliation of the flesh,--a degradation all the lower indeed if the flesh were only illusory? [2459] For it was all the more shameful if he, who brought on himself the Creator's curse by hanging on a tree, only pretended the assumption of a bodily substance. A far nobler foundation might he have laid for the knowledge of himself in some evidences of a creation of his own, especially when he had to become known in opposition to Him in whose territory [2460] he had remained unknown by any works from the beginning. For how happens it that the Creator, although unaware, as the Marcionites aver, of any god being above Himself, and who used to declare even with an oath that He existed alone, should have guarded by such mighty works the knowledge of Himself, about which, on the assumption of His being alone without a rival, He might have spared Himself all care; while the Superior God, knowing all the while how well furnished in power His inferior rival was, should have made no provision at all towards getting Himself acknowledged? Whereas He ought to have produced works more illustrious and exalted still, in order that He might, after the Creator's standard, both be acknowledged as God from His works, and even by nobler deeds show Himself to be more potent and more gracious than the Creator.
[2448] Extraneous.
[2449] Extraneum.
[2450] Alius.
[2451] Plane falsæ vacabit.
[2452] Forma.
[2453] Proprii sui mundi, et hominis et sæculi.
[2454] [Kaye, p. 206.]
[2455] Cicerculam.
[2456] [--"uncique puer monstrator aratri," Virg. Georg. i. 19, and see Heyne's note.]
[2457] Præscriptio.
[2458] Tertium cessat.
[2459] Falsæ. An allusion to the Docetism of Marcion.
[2460] Apud quem.
Chapter XII.--Impossibility of Acknowledging God Without This External Evidence [2461] Of His Existence. Marcion's Rejection of Such Evidence for His God Savours of Impudence and Malignity.
But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be bound to argue that he is without a cause. [2462] For he who had nothing (to show for himself as proof of his existence), would be without a cause, since (such) proof [2463] is the whole cause that there exists some person to whom the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a cause, that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all one as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a thing), in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist, than that He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a cause by reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without a cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He exists without a cause, although (I allow [2464] that) He exists, I do really determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed, He could not have existed altogether without a cause. [2465] So, too, even in regard to faith itself, I say that he [2466] seeks to obtain it [2467] without cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe in God from the idea he gets of Him from the testimony of His works: [2468] (without cause, I repeat,) because he has provided no such proof as that whereby man has acquired the knowledge of God. For although most persons believe in Him, they do not believe at once by unaided reason, [2469] without having some token of Deity in works worthy of God. And so upon this ground of inactivity and lack of works he [2470] is guilty both of impudence and malignity: of impudence, in aspiring after a belief which is not due to him, and for which he has provided no foundation; [2471] of malignity, in having brought many persons under the charge of unbelief by furnishing to them no groundwork for their faith.
[2461] The word cause throughout this chapter is used in the popular, inaccurate sense, which almost confounds it with effect, the "causa cognoscendi," as distinguished from the "causa essendi," the strict cause.
[2462] The word cause throughout this chapter is used in the popular, inaccurate sense, which almost confounds it with effect, the "causa cognoscendi," as distinguished from the "causa essendi," the strict cause.
[2463] The word "res" is throughout this argument used strictly by Tertullian; it refers to "the thing" made by God--that product of His creative energy which affords to us evidence of His existence. We have translated it "proof" for want of a better word.
[2464] The "tanquam sit," in its subjunctive form, seems to refer to the concession indicated at the outset of the chapter.
[2465] Omnino sine causa.
[2466] Illum, i.e., Marcion's god.
[2467] Captare.
[2468] Deum ex operum auctoritate formatum.
[2469] Non statim ratione, on a priori grounds.
[2470] i.e., Marcion's god.
[2471] Compare Rom. i. 20, a passage which is quite subversive of Marcion's theory.
Chapter XIII.--The Marcionites Depreciate the Creation, Which, However, is a Worthy Witness of God. This Worthiness Illustrated by References to the Heathen Philosophers, Who Were Apt to Invest the Several Parts of Creation with Divine Attributes.
While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no evidence to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the testimony of the Creator, Marcion's most shameless followers with haughty impertinence fall upon the Creator's works to destroy them. To be sure, say they, the world is a grand work, worthy of a God. [2472] Then is the Creator not at all a God? By all means He is God. [2473] Therefore [2474] the world is not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself; although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and) although every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the author of our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more unworthy of Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!--not even a production which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of some better attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged [2475] unworthiness of this world's fabric, to which among the Greeks also is assigned a name of ornament and grace, [2476] not of sordidness, those very professors of wisdom, [2477] from whose genius every heresy derives its spirit, [2478] called the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales did water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato the sky and earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the stars, which he calls a fiery kind of gods; whilst concerning the world, when they considered indeed its magnitude, and strength, and power, and honour, and glory,--the abundance, too, the regularity, and law of those individual elements which contribute to the production, the nourishment, the ripening, and the reproduction of all things,--the majority of the philosophers hesitated [2479] to assign a beginning and an end to the said world, lest its constituent elements, [2480] great as they undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine, [2481] which are objects of worship with the Persian magi, the Egyptian hierophants, and the Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the crowd, inspired by the common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and fables of their ancient dead borne by their idols, has recourse to the interpretation of natural objects, and so with much ingenuity cloaks its own disgrace, figuratively reducing Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno to an aërial one (according to the literal sense of the Greek words); [2482] Vesta, in like manner, to fire, and the Muses to waters, and the Great Mother [2483] to the earth, mowed as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty arms, and watered with baths. [2484] Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried, and looked for to come to life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem of the regularity wherewith the fruits of the ground return, and the elements recover life, and the year comes round; as also the lions of Mithras [2485] are philosophical sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is, indeed, enough for me that natural elements, foremost in site and state, should have been more readily regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I will, however, come down to [2486] humbler objects. A single floweret from the hedgerow, I say not from the meadows; a single little shellfish from any sea, I say not from the Red Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say nothing of the peacock,--will, I presume, prove to you that the Creator was but a sorry [2487] artificer!