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| Not Enough, as the Marcionites Pretend, that the Supreme God Should Rescue Man; He Must Also Have Created Him. The Existence of God Proved by His Creation, a Prior Consideration to His Character. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter XVII.—Not
Enough, as the Marcionites Pretend, that the Supreme God Should Rescue
Man; He Must Also Have Created Him. The Existence of God Proved by His
Creation, a Prior Consideration to His Character.
Pressed by these arguments, they exclaim: One work
is sufficient for our god; he has delivered man by his supreme and most
excellent goodness, which is preferable to (the creation of) all the
locusts.2526
2526 To depreciate
the Creator’s work the more, Marcion (and Valentinus too) used to
attribute to Him the formation of all the lower creatures—worms,
locusts, etc.—reserving the mightier things to the good and
supreme God. See St. Jerome’s Proem. in Epist. ad
Philem. [See, Stier, Words of Jesus, Vol. vi. p.
81.] | What superior god
is this, of whom it has not been possible to find any work so great as
the man of the lesser god! Now without doubt the first thing you
have to do is to prove that he exists, after the same manner that the
existence of God must ordinarily be proved—by his works; and only
after that by his good deeds. For the first question is, Whether he
exists? and then, What is his character? The former is to be
tested2527 by his works, the
other by the beneficence of them. It does not simply follow that he
exists, because he is said to have wrought deliverance for man; but
only after it shall have been settled that he exists, will there be
room for saying that he has affected this liberation. And even this
point also must have its own evidence, because it may be quite possible
both that he has existence, and yet has not wrought the alleged
deliverance. Now in that section of our work which concerned the
question of the unknown god, two points were made clear
enough—both that he had created nothing: and that he ought
to have been a creator, in order to be known by his works; because, if
he had existed, he ought to have been known, and that too from the
beginning of things; for it was not fit that God should have lain hid.
It will be necessary that I should revert to the very trunk of that
question of the unknown god, that I may strike off into some of its
other branches also. For it will be first of all proper to inquire, Why
he, who afterwards brought himself into notice, did so—so late,
and not at the very first? From creatures, with which as God he was
indeed so closely connected (and the closer this connection
was,2528 the greater was his goodness), he ought
never to have been hidden. For it cannot be pretended that there was
not either any means of arriving at the knowledge of God, or a good
reason for it, when from the beginning man was in the world, for whom
the deliverance is now come; as was also that malevolence of the
Creator, in opposition to which the good God has wrought the
deliverance. He was therefore either ignorant of the good reason for
and means of his own necessary manifestation, or doubted them; or else
was either unable or unwilling to encounter them. All these
alternatives are unworthy of God, especially the supreme
and best. This
topic,2529 however, we shall
afterwards2530 more fully treat,
with a condemnation of the tardy manifestation; we at present simply
point it out.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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