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| In the Attribute of Justice, Marcion's God is Hopelessly Weak and Ungodlike. He Dislikes Evil, But Does Not Punish Its Perpetration.
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Chapter XXVI.—In
the Attribute of Justice, Marcion’s God is Hopelessly Weak and
Ungodlike. He Dislikes Evil, But Does Not Punish Its
Perpetration.
But it is here sufficient that the extreme
perversity of their god is proved from the mere exposition of his
lonely goodness, in which they refuse to ascribe to him such emotions
of mind as they censure in the Creator. Now, if he is susceptible
of no feeling of rivalry, or anger, or damage, or injury, as one who
refrains from exercising judicial power, I cannot tell how any system
of discipline—and that, too, a plenary one—can be
consistent in him. For how is it possible that he should issue
commands, if he does not mean to execute them; or forbid sins, if he
intends not to punish them, but rather to decline the functions of the
judge, as being a stranger to all notions of severity and judicial
chastisement? For why does he forbid the commission of that which he
punishes not when perpetrated? It would have been far more right, if he
had not forbidden what he meant not to punish, than that he should
punish what he had not forbidden. Nay, it was his duty even to have
permitted what he was about to prohibit in so unreasonable a way, as to
annex no penalty to the offence.2657
| 2657 Ut non defensurus.
Defendo = vindico. See Oehler’s note for other instances. | For even now
that is tacitly permitted which is forbidden without any infliction of
vengeance. Besides, he only forbids the commission of that which he
does not like to have done. Most listless, therefore, is he,
since he takes no offence at the doing of what he dislikes to be done,
although displeasure ought
to be the companion of his violated will. Now, if he is offended, he
ought to be angry; if angry, he ought to inflict punishment. For such
infliction is the just fruit of anger, and anger is the debt of
displeasure, and displeasure (as I have said) is the companion of a
violated will. However, he inflicts no punishment; therefore he takes
no offence.
He takes no offence, therefore his will is not
wronged, although that is done which he was unwilling to have done; and
the transgression is now committed with the acquiescence of2658
his will, because whatever offends not the
will is not committed against the will. Now, if this is to be the
principle of the divine virtue or goodness, to be unwilling indeed that
a thing be done and to prohibit it, and yet not be moved by its
commission, we then allege that he has been moved already when he
declared his unwillingness; and that it is vain for him not to be moved
by the accomplishment of a thing after being moved at the possibility
thereof, when he willed it not to be done. For he prohibited it by his
not willing it. Did he not therefore do a judicial act, when he
declared his unwillingness, and consequent prohibition of it? For he
judged that it ought not to be done, and he deliberately
declared2659
that it should be
forbidden. Consequently by this time even he performs the part of
a judge. If it is unbecoming for God to discharge a judicial function,
or at least only so far becoming that He may merely declare His
unwillingness, and pronounce His prohibition, then He may not even
punish for an offence when it is committed. Now, nothing is so
unworthy of the Divine Being as not to execute retribution on what He
has disliked and forbidden. First, He owes the infliction of
chastisement to whatever sentence or law He promulges, for the
vindication of His authority and the maintenance of submission to it;
secondly, because hostile opposition is inevitable to what He
has disliked to be done, and by that dislike forbidden. Moreover, it
would be a more unworthy course for God to spare the evil-doer than to
punish him, especially in the most good and holy God, who is not
otherwise fully good than as the enemy of evil, and that to such
a degree as to display His love of good by the hatred of evil, and to
fulfil His defence of the former by the extirpation of the
latter.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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