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| A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes.
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Chapter
XXXI.—A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the
Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes.
But this circumstance, too, will be caught at,
that Scripture meant to indicate of the heaven only, and this earth of
yours,6443
that God made it in
the beginning, while nothing of the kind is said of the
above-mentioned specific parts;6444
and therefore
that these, which are not described as having been made, appertain to
unformed Matter. To this point6445
| 6445 Scrupulo: doubt or
difficulty. | also we must give
an answer. Holy Scripture would be sufficiently explicit, if it had
declared that the heaven and the earth, as the very highest works of
creation, were made by God, possessing of course their own special
appurtenances,6446
| 6446 Suggestus: “Hoc
est, apparatus, ornatus” (Oehler). | which might be
understood to be implied in these highest works themselves. Now the
appurtenances of the heaven and the earth, made then in the beginning,
were the darkness and the deep, and the spirit, and the waters. For the
depth and the darkness underlay the earth. Since
the deep was under the earth,
and the darkness was over the deep, undoubtedly both the darkness and
the deep were under the earth. Below the heaven, too, lay the
spirit6447
| 6447 It will be observed
that Tertullian applies the spiritus to the wind as
a creature. | and the waters. For
since the waters were over the earth, which they covered, whilst the
spirit was over the waters, both the spirit and the waters were alike
over the earth. Now that which is over the earth, is of course under
the heaven. And even as the earth brooded over the deep and the
darkness, so also did the heaven brood over the spirit and the waters,
and embrace them. Nor, indeed, is there any novelty in mentioning
only that which contains, as pertaining to the whole,6448
and understanding that which is contained as
included in it, in its character of a portion.6449
Suppose now I should say the city built a theatre and a circus, but the
stage6450
was of such and such a kind, and the statues
were on the canal, and the obelisk was reared above them all, would it
follow that, because I did not distinctly state that these specific
things6451
were made by the
city, they were therefore not made by it along with the circus and the
theatre? Did I not, indeed, refrain from specially mentioning the
formation of these particular things because they were implied in the
things which I had already said were made, and might be understood to
be inherent in the things in which they were contained? But this
example may be an idle one as being derived from a human circumstance;
I will take another, which has the authority of Scripture itself.
It says that “God made man of the dust of the ground and breathed
into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living
soul.”6452
Now, although it
here mentions the nostrils,6453
| 6453 Both in the quotation
and here, Tertullian read “faciem” where we read
“nostrils.” | it does not say
that they were made by God; so again it speaks of skin6454
| 6454 Cutem: another reading
has “costam,” rib. | and bones, and flesh and eyes, and sweat and
blood, in subsequent passages,6455
| 6455 See Bible:Gen.4.10">Gen. ii. 21, 23; iii. 5, 19; iv.
10. | and yet it never
intimated that they had been created by God. What will Hermogenes have
to answer? That the human limbs must belong to Matter, because they are
not specially mentioned as objects of creation? Or are they included in
the formation of man? In like manner, the deep and the darkness, and
the spirit and the waters, were as members of the heaven and the
earth. For in the bodies the limbs were made, in the bodies the limbs
too were mentioned. No element but what is a member of that element in
which it is contained. But all elements are contained in the heaven and
the earth.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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