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| An Argument of Hermogenes. The Answer: While God is a Title Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out.
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Chapter III.—An
Argument of Hermogenes. The Answer: While God is a Title
Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only
Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in
the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out.
He adds also another point: that as God was always
God, there was never a time when God was not also Lord.
But6151
it was in no way possible for Him to be
regarded as always Lord, in the same manner as He had been always God,
if there had not been always, in the previous eternity,6152
a something of which He could be regarded as
evermore the Lord. So he concludes6153
that God
always had Matter co-existent with Himself as the Lord thereof. Now,
this tissue6154
of his I shall at
once hasten to pull abroad. I have been willing to set it out in
form to this length, for the information of those who are unacquainted
with the subject, that they may know that his other arguments likewise
need only be6155
understood to be
refuted. We affirm, then, that the name of God always existed
with Himself and in Himself—but not eternally so the
Lord. Because the condition of the one is not the same as
that of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that
is, of the Divinity; but Lord is (the name) not of substance, but of
power. I maintain that the substance existed always with its own
name, which is God; the title Lord was afterwards added, as the
indication indeed6156
of something
accruing. For from the moment when those things began to exist, over
which the power of a Lord was to act, God, by the accession of
that power, both became Lord and received the name thereof. Because God
is in like manner a Father, and He is also a Judge; but He has not
always been Father and Judge, merely on the ground of His having always
been God. For He could not have been the Father previous to the
Son, nor a Judge previous to sin. There was, however, a time when
neither sin existed with Him, nor the Son; the former of which was to
constitute the Lord a Judge, and the latter a Father. In this way He
was not Lord previous to those things of which He was to be the
Lord. But He was only to become Lord at some future time: just as
He became the Father by the Son, and a Judge by sin, so also did He
become Lord by means of those things which He had made, in order that
they might serve Him. Do I seem to you to be weaving
arguments,6157
| 6157 Argumentari: in the
sense of argutari. | Hermogenes? How
neatly does Scripture lend us its aid,6158
| 6158 Naviter nobis
patrocinatur. |
when it applies the two titles to Him with a distinction, and reveals
them each at its proper time! For (the title) God, indeed,
which always belonged
to Him, it names at the very first: “In the beginning God created
the heaven and the earth;”6159
and as long as
He continued making, one after the other, those things of which He was
to be the Lord, it merely mentions God. “And God
said,” “and God made,” “and God
saw;”6160
but nowhere do we
yet find the Lord. But when He completed the whole creation, and
especially man himself, who was destined to understand His sovereignty
in a way of special propriety, He then is designated6161
| 6161 Cognominatur: as
if by way of surname, Deus
Dominus. | Lord. Then also the Scripture added
the name Lord: “And the Lord God, Deus
Dominus, took the man, whom He had formed;”6162
“And the Lord God commanded
Adam.”6163
Thenceforth He, who
was previously God only, is the Lord, from the time of His
having something of which He might be the Lord. For to Himself He
was always God, but to all things was He only then God, when He became
also Lord. Therefore, in as far as (Hermogenes) shall suppose
that Matter was eternal, on the ground that the Lord was eternal, in
so far will it be evident that nothing existed, because it is
plain that the Lord as such did not always exist. Now I mean
also, on my own part,6164
to add a remark for
the sake of ignorant persons, of whom Hermogenes is an extreme
instance,6165
| 6165 Extrema linea.
Rhenanus sees in this phrase a slur against Hermogenes, who was an
artist. Tertullian, I suppose, meant that Hermogenes was
extremely ignorant. | and actually to
retort against him his own arguments.6166
For when he denies that Matter was born or made, I find that, even on
these terms, the title Lord is unsuitable to God in respect of
Matter, because it must have been free,6167
| 6167 Libera: and so
not a possible subject for the Lordship of God. |
when by not having a beginning it had not an author. The fact of its
past existence it owed to no one, so that it could be a subject to no
one. Therefore ever since God exercised His power over it, by
creating (all things) out of Matter, although it had all along
experienced God as its Lord, yet Matter does, after all, demonstrate
that God did not exist in the relation of Lord to it,6168
| 6168 Matter having,
by the hypothesis, been independent of God, and so incapable of
giving Him any title to Lordship. | although all the while He was really
so.6169
| 6169 Fuit hoc utique. In
Hermogenes’ own opinion, which is thus shown to have been
contradictory to itself, and so absurd. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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