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| Marcion's Cavils Considered. His Objection Refuted, I.e., Man's Fall Showed Failure in God. The Perfection of Man's Being Lay in His Liberty, Which God Purposely Bestowed on Him. The Fall Imputable to Man's Own Choice.
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Chapter V.—Marcion’s Cavils Considered. His Objection
Refuted, I.e., Man’s Fall Showed Failure in God. The Perfection
of Man’s Being Lay in His Liberty, Which God Purposely Bestowed
on Him. The Fall Imputable to Man’s Own Choice.
Now then, ye dogs, whom the apostle puts
outside,2761
and who yelp at the
God of truth, let us come to your various questions. These are the
bones of contention, which you are perpetually gnawing! If God is good,
and prescient of the future, and able to avert evil, why did He permit
man, the very image and likeness of Himself, and, by the origin of his
soul, His own substance too, to be deceived by the devil, and fall from
obedience of the law into death? For if He had been good, and so
unwilling that such a catastrophe should happen, and prescient, so as
not to be ignorant of what was to come to pass, and powerful enough to
hinder its occurrence, that issue would never have come about, which
should be impossible under these three conditions of the divine
greatness. Since, however, it has occurred, the contrary proposition is
most certainly true, that God must be deemed neither good, nor prescient,
nor powerful. For as no such issue could have happened had God
been such as He is reputed—good, and prescient, and
mighty—so has this issue actually happened, because He is
not such a God. In reply, we must first vindicate those attributes in
the Creator which are called in question—namely, His goodness and
foreknowledge, and power. But I shall not linger long over this
point2762
for Christ’s own definition2763
comes to our aid at once. From works must
proofs be obtained. The Creator’s works testify at once to His
goodness, since they are good, as we have shown, and to His power,
since they are mighty, and spring indeed out of nothing. And even if
they were made out of some (previous) matter, as some2764
| 2764 He refers to
Hermogenes; see Adv. Hermog. chap. xxxii. | will have it, they are even thus out of
nothing, because they were not what they are. In short,
both they are great because they are good; and2765
God is likewise mighty, because all things are His own, whence He is
almighty. But what shall I say of His prescience, which has for its
witnesses as many prophets as it inspired? After all,2766
what title to prescience do we look for in
the Author of the universe, since it was by this very attribute that He
foreknew all things when He appointed them their places, and appointed
them their places when He foreknew them? There is sin itself. If He had
not foreknown this, He would not have proclaimed a caution against it
under the penalty of death. Now if there were in God such attributes as
must have rendered it both impossible and improper for any evil to have
happened to man,2767
| 2767 As the Marcionites
alleged. | and yet evil did
occur, let us consider man’s condition also—whether
it were not, in fact, rather the cause why that came to pass
which could not have happened through God. I find, then, that man was
by God constituted free, master of his own will and power; indicating
the presence of God’s image and likeness in him by nothing so
well as by this constitution of his nature. For it was not by his face,
and by the lineaments of his body, though they were so varied in his
human nature, that he expressed his likeness to the form of God; but he
showed his stamp2768
in that essence
which he derived from God Himself (that is, the spiritual,2769
which answered to the form of God), and in
the freedom and power of his will. This his state was confirmed even by
the very law which God then imposed upon him. For a law would not be
imposed upon one who had it not in his power to render that obedience
which is due to law; nor again, would the penalty of death be
threatened against sin, if a contempt of the law were impossible to man
in the liberty of his will. So in the Creator’s subsequent laws
also you will find, when He sets before man good and evil, life and
death, that the entire course of discipline is arranged in precepts by
God’s calling men from sin, and threatening and exhorting them;
and this on no other ground than2770
that man is
free, with a will either for obedience or
resistance.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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