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| To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the Divine Being. He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of Evil.
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Chapter X.—To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the
Divine Being. He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of
Evil.
Even if Matter had been the perfection of
good,6219
would it not have been equally indecorous in
Him to have thought of the property of another, however good, (to
effect His purpose by the help of it)? It was, therefore, absurd enough
for Him, in the interest of His own glory, to have created the world in
such a way as to betray His own obligation to a substance which
belonged to another—and that even not good. Was He then, asks
(Hermogenes), to make all things out of nothing, that so evil things
themselves might be attributed to His will? Great, in all
conscience,6220
must be the
blindness of our heretics which leaves them to argue in such a way that
they either insist on the belief of another God supremely good, on the
ground of their thinking the Creator to be the author of evil, or else
they set up Matter with the Creator, in order that they may derive evil
from Matter, not from the Creator. And yet there is absolutely no god
at all that is free from such a doubtful plight, so as to be able to
avoid the appearance even of being the author of evil, whosoever he is
that—I will not say, indeed, has made, but still—has
permitted evil to be made by some author or other, and from some source
or other. Hermogenes, therefore, ought to be told6221
at once, although we postpone to another
place our distinction concerning the mode of evil,6222
that even he has effected no result by this
device of his.6223
| 6223 Hac sua
injectione. See our Anti-Marcion, iv. i., for this word,
p. 345. | For observe how God
is found to be, if not the Author of, yet at any rate the conniver
at,6224
| 6224 Assentator. Fr. Junius
suggests “adsectator” of the stronger meaning
“promoter;” nor does Oehler object. | evil, inasmuch as He, with all His extreme
goodness, endured evil in Matter before He created the world, although, as
being good, and the enemy of evil, He ought to have corrected it. For
He either was able to correct it, but was unwilling; or else was
willing, but being a weak God, was not able. If He was able and yet
unwilling, He was Himself evil, as having favoured evil; and thus He
now opens Himself to the charge of evil, because even if He did not
create it yet still, since it would not be existing if He had been
against its existence, He must Himself have then caused it to exist,
when He refused to will its non-existence. And what is more shameful
than this? When He willed that to be which He was Himself unwilling to
create, He acted in fact against His very self,6225
| 6225 Adversum
semetipsum. |
inasmuch as He was both willing that that should exist which He was
unwilling to make, and unwilling to make that which He was willing
should exist. As if what He willed was good, and at the same time what
he refused to be the Maker of was evil. What He judged to be evil by
not creating it, He also proclaimed to be good by permitting it to
exist. By bearing with evil as a good instead of rather extirpating it,
He proved Himself to be the promoter thereof; criminally,6226
| 6226 Male: in
reference to His alleged complicity with evil. | if through His own will—disgracefully,
if through necessity. God must either be the servant of evil or the
friend thereof, since He held converse with evil in Matter—nay,
more, effected His works out of the evil thereof.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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