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| 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.
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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
strange2448
ones? No one. Well,
I keep to this statement. How could anything be strange2449
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 rival2450
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
| 2451 Plane falsæ
vacabit. | 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 character2452
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
| 2453 Proprii sui mundi, et
hominis et sæculi. | 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 vegetable2455
at least
Marcion’s god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be
preached up as a new Triptolemus.2456
| 2456 [—“uncique
puer monstrator aratri,” Virg. Georg. i. 19, and see
Heyne’s note.] | 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
rule2457
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
| 2459 Falsæ. An
allusion to the Docetism of Marcion. | 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 territory2460
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.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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