men " to break up fresh ground for them- selves," * and thereby taught them even then to put off the old man and put on the new.
CHAP. XX. THE EPISTLE TO THE PHILIPPIANS.
THE VARIANCES AMONGST THE PREACHERS OF CHRIST NO ARGUMENT THAT THERE WAS MORE THAN ONE ONLY CHRIST. ST. PAUL's PHRASES — FORM OF A SERVANT, LIKENESS, AND FASHION OF A MAN — NO SANCTION OF DOCETISM. NO ANTITHESIS (SUCH AS MAR- CION ALLEGED) IN THE GOD OF JUDAISM AND THE GOD OF THE GOSPEL DEDUCIBLE FROM CERTAIN CONTRASTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISTLE. A PARALLEL WITH A PASSAGE IN GENESIS. THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY, AND THE CHANGE THEREOF.
When (the apostle) mentions the several motives of those who were preaching the gospel, how that some, " waxing confident by his bonds, were more fearless in speaking the word," while others " preached Christ even out of envy and strife, and again others out of 4 Initium.
5 Contained in Vol. iii. and iv.
* In the Epistle to the I.aodiceans or Ephesians; see his remarks in the preceding chapter of this book v.
" Jer. iv. 3. This and the passage of Isaiah just quoted are also cited together above, book iv. chap. i. and ii. p. 345.
good-will " many also " out of love," and cer- tain " out of contention," and some " in riv- alry to himself, " ^ he had a favourable opportunity, no doubt, '° of taxing what they preached with a diversity of doctrine, as if it were no less than this which caused so great a variance in their tempers. But while he ex- poses these tempers as the sole cause of the diversity, he avoids inculpating the regular mysteries of the faith," and affirms that there is, notwithstanding, but one Christ and His one God, whatever motives men had in preach- ing Him. Therefore, says he, it matters not to me "whether it be in pretence or in truth that Christ is preached," '^ because one Christ alone was announced, whether in their " pre- tentious "or their " truthful " faith. For it was to the faithfulness of their preaching that he applied the word truth, not to the Tightness of the rule itself, because there was indeed but one rule; whereas the conduct of the preachers varied: in some of them it was true, /. e. single-minded, while in others it was sophisticated with over-much learning. This being the case, it is manifest that that Christ was the subject of their preaching who was always the theme of the prophets. Now, if it were a completely different Christ that was being introduced by the apostle, the novelty of the thing would have produced a diversity (in belief). For there would not have been wanting, in spite of the novel teaching, '^ men to interpret the preached gospel of the Crea- tor's Christ, since the majority of persons everywhere now-a-days are of our way of thinking, rather than on the heretical side. So that the apostle would not in such a pas- sage as the present one have refrained from remarking and censuring the diversity. Since, however, there is no blame of a diversity, there is no proof of a novelty. Of course '♦ the Marcionites suppose that they have the apostle on their side in the following passage in the matter of Christ's substance — that in Him there was nothing but a phantom of flesh. For he says of Christ, that, "being in the form of God, He thought it not robbery to be equal with God; '5 but emptied'* Him- self, and took upon Him the form of a ser- vant," not the reality, " and was made in the likeness of man," not a man, " and was found in fashiofi as a man," '^ fiot /« his substance, that is to say, his flesh; just as if to a sub- 'o Utique.
" Regulas sacramentorum. '3NihiIominus. M Plane.
'S Compare the treatise, De Resur. Carnis, c. vi. (Oehler). '* Exhausit iKtviairt.
CHAP. XXI.]
TERTULLIAN AGAINST MARCION.
stance there did not accrue both form and likeness and fashion, it is well for us that in another passage (the apostle) calls Christ " the image of the invisible God." ' For will it not follow with equal force from that pas- sage, that Christ is not truly God, because the apostl-e places Him in the image of God, if, (as Marcion contends,) He is not truly man because of His having taken on Him the form or image of a man? For in both cases the true substance will have to be excluded, if image (or " fashion ") and likeness dindfor?n shall be claimed for a phantom. But since he is truly God, as the Son of the Father, in His fashion and image, He has been already by the force of this conclusion determined to be truly man, as the Son of man, " found in the fashion " and image " of a man." For when he propounded- Him as thus ""found" in the manner 3 of a man, he i?i fact affirmed 'Him to be most certainly human. For what is found, manifestly possesses existence. There- fore, as He was found to be God by His mighty power, so was He found to be man by reason of His flesh, because the apostle could not have pronounced Him to have "become obedient unto death," '' if He had not been constituted of a mortal substance. Still more plainly does this appear from the apostle's additional words, "even the death of the cross." 5 For he could hardly mean this to be a climax* to the human suffering, to extol the virtue ' of His obedience, if he had known it all to be the imaginary process of a phan- tom, which rather eluded the cross than ex- perienced it, and which displayed no virtue ^ in the suffering, but only illusion. But " those things which he had once accounted gain," and which he enumerates in the pre- ceding verse — "trust in the flesh," the sign of " circumcision," his origin as "an Hebrew of the Hebrews," his descent from " the tribe of Benjamin," his dignity in the honours of the Pharisee' — he now reckons to be only " loss" to himself;'" (in other words,) it was not the God of the Jews, but their stupid ob- duracy, which he repudiates. These are also the things " which he counts but dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ " " (but by no means for the rejection of God the Creator); "whilst he has not his own right- eousness, which is of the law, but that which 2 Posuit.
3 Inventum ratione.
* Non enim exaggeraret.
7 Virtutem: perhaps the /cw^r.
8 See the preceding note.
9 Candidae pharisaeee: see Phil. uL 4-6.
"Phil.iii. 8.
is through Him," i.e. Christ, "the righteous- ness which is of God." " Then, say you, ac- cording to this distinction the law did not proceed from the God of Christ. Subtle enough! But here is something still more subtle for you. For when (the apostle) says, " Not (the righteousness) which is of the law, but that which is through Him," he would not have used the phrnse tlirough Him of any other tlian Him to whom the law belonged. "Our conversation," says he, "is in heav- en." "3 I here recognise the Creator's ancient promise to Abraham: "I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven." '■* Therefore " one star differeth from another star in glory." '5 If^ again, Christ in His advent from heaven " shall change the body of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body," '* it follows that this body of ours shall rise again, which is now in a state of humiliation in its sufferings and ac- cording to the law of mortality drops into the ground. But how shall it be changed, if it shall have no real existence? If, however, this is only said of those who shall be found in the flesh '^ at the advent of God, and who shall have to be changed,''' what shall they do who will rise first? They will have no substance from which to undergo a change.
But he says (elsewhere), " We shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord (in the air)." '' Then, if we are to be caught up alone with them, surely we shall likewise be changed together with them.
CHAP. XXI. — THE EPISTLE TO PHILEMON. THIS EPISTLE NOT MUTILATED. MARCION's INCON- SISTENCY IN ACCEPTING THIS, AND REJECTING THREE OTHER EPISTLES ADDRESSED TO INDI- VIDUALS. CONCLUSIONS. TERTULLIAN VIN- DICATES THE SYMMETRY AND DELIBERATE PURPOSE OF HIS WORK AGAINST MARCION.
To this epistle alone did its brevity avail to protect it against the falsifying hands of Mar- cion. I wonder, however, when he received (into his Apostolicofi) this letter which was written but to one man, that he rejected the two epistles to Timothy and the one to Titus, which all treat of ecclesiastical discipline. His aim, was, I suppose, to carry out his in- terpolating process even to the number of (St, i3,Phil. iii. 20.
16 Phil. iii. 21. [I have adhered to the original Greek, by a trifling: verbal change, because TertuUian's argument requires it.]
18 Deptitaii, which is an old reading, should certainly be demu- tari, and so say the best authorities. Oehler reads the former, but contends for the latter.
TERTULLIAN AGAINST MARClOs.
[liOOK V- Paul's) epistles. And now, reader/ I beg you to remember that we have here adduced proofs out of the apostle, in support of the subjects which we previously " had to handle, and that we have now brought to a close ^ the topics v/hich we deferred to this (portion of our) work. (This favour I request of you,) that you may not think that any repetition ' Inspector: perhaps critic.
3 Retro: in the former portions of this treatise.
3 Expunxerimus.
here has been superfluous, for we have onlv fulfilled our former engagement to you; nor look with suspicion on any postponement there, where we merely set forth the essential points (of the argument)." If you carefully examine the entire work, you will acquit u» of either having been redundant here, or dif- fident there, in your own honest judgment. 5 4 Qna eruimus ipsa ista.
5 [Elucidation II.]
ELUCIDATIONS.
(Soul and Spirit, cap. xv. and notes i and 2, p. 463.)
Dr. Holmes, in the learned note which follows, affords me a valuable addition to trvy scanty remarks on this subject in former volumes. See (Vol. I. pp. 387, 532,) references to the great work of Professor Delitzsch, in notes on Irenaeus. In Vol. II. p. 102, I have also mentioned M. Heard's work, on the Tripartite Nature of Man. With reference to the disagreement of the learned on this great matter, let me as'k is it not less real than apparent I The dichotomy to which TertuUian objected, and the trichotomy which Dr. Holmes makes a name of " the triple?iature," are terms which rather suggest a process of " dividing asunder of soul and spirit," and which involve an ambiguity that confuses the inquiry. Now, while the gravest objections may be imagined, or even demonstrated, against a process which seems to destroy the unity and individuality of a Man, does not every theologian accept the analytical formula of the apostle and recognize the bodily, the animal and the spiritual \n the life of man? If so is there not fundamental agreement as to I. Thess. v. 23, and difference only, relatively, as to functions and processes, or as to the way in which truth on these three points ought to be stated? On this subject there are good remarks in the Speaker's Commentary on the text aforesaid, but the exhaustive work of Delitzsch deserves study.
Man's whole nature in Christ, seems to be sanctified by the Holy Spirit's suffusion of man's spirit; this rules and governs the psychic nature and through it the body.
II.
(The entire work, cap. xxi. p. 474.)
He who has followed TertuUian through the mazes in which Marcion, in spite of shifts and turnings innumerable, has been hunted down, and defeated, must recognize the great work performed by this author in behalf of Christian Orthodoxy. It seems to have been the plan of Christ's watchful care over His Church, that, in the earliest stages of its existence the enemy should be allowed to display his utmost malice and to bring out all his forces against Truth. Thus, before the meeting of Church-councils the language of faith had grown up, and clear views and precise statements of doctrine had been committed to the idioms of human thought. But, the labours of TertuUian are not confined to these diverse purposes. With all the faults of his acute and forensic mind, how powerfully he illuminates the Script- ures and glorifies them as containing the whole system of the Faith. How rich are his quotations, and how penetrating his conceptions of their uses. Besides all this, what an introduction he gives us to the modes of thought which were becoming familiar in the West, ELUCIDATIONS. 475 and which were converting the Latin tongue to new uses, and making it capable of express- ing Augustine's mind and so of creating new domains of Learning among the nations of Europe.
If I have treated tenderly the reputation of this great Master, in my notes upon his Mar- cion, it is with a twofold purpose, (i.) It seems to me due to truth that his name should be less associated with his deplorable lapse than with his long and faithful services to the Church, and (2.) that the student should thus follow his career with a pleasure and with a confidence the lack of which perpetually annoys us when we give the first place to the Mon- tanist and not to the Catholic. Let this be our spirit in accompanying him into his fresh campaigns against " the grievous wolves" foreseen by St. Paul with tears. Acts xx. 29, 30.
But as our Author invokes a careful examination of his "entire work," let the student recur to Irenjeus (Vol. I. p. 352, etc.) and observe how formidable, from the beginning, was the irreligion of Marcion. His doctrines did truly "eat like a canker," assailing the Script- ures by mutilations and corruptions of the text itself. No marvel that Tertullian shows him no quarter, though we must often regret the forensic violence of his retort. As to the Dualism which, through Marcion, thus threatened the first article of the Creed, consult the valuable remarks of tht Encyc. Bn'tafinica, ("Mithras"). Mithras became known to the Romans circa B.C. 70, and his worship flourished under Trajan and his successors. An able writer remarks that it was natural " Dualism should develop itself out of primitive Zoro- astrianism. The human mind has ever been struck with a certain antagonism of which it has sought to discover the cause. Evil seems most easily accounted for by the supposition of an evil Person; and the continuance of an equal struggle, without advantage to either side, seems to imply the equality of that evil Person with the author of all good. Thus Dualism had its birth. Many came to believe in the existence of two co-eternal and coequal Persons, one good and the other evil, between whom there has been from all eternity a perpetual conflict, and between whom the same conflict must continue to rage through all •oming time."
III. AGAINST HERMOGENES.
CONTAINING AN ARGUMENT AGAINST HIS OPINION THAT MATTER IS ETERNAL.
[TRANSLATED BY DR. HOLMES.]
CHAP. I. — THE OPINIONS OF HERMOGENES, BY THE PRESCRIPTIVE RULE OF ANTIQUITY, SHOWN TO BE HERETICAL. NOT DERIVED FROM CHRISTIANITY, BUT FROM HEATHEN PHILOSOPHY. SOME OF THE TENETS MEN- TIONED.
We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument,' to lay down the rule against heretics of the lateness of their date.^ For in as far as by our rule, priority is given to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies, in so far must all later opinions be prejudged as heresies, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of truth, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this^ taint of novelty. He is, in short,'* a man livmg in the world at the present time; by his very nature a heretic, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good conscience to speak ill of individuals. 5 Moreover, he despises God's law in his painting,* maintain- ing repeated marriages,' alleges the law of God in defence of lust,^ and yet despises it in respect of his art.' He falsifies by a two- fold process — with his cautery and his pen.'° 1 Coinpendii gratia. [The reference here to the De Prascript. forbids us to date this tract earlier than 207 a.d. Of this Hermog- enes, we only know that he was probably a Carthaginian, a painter, and of a versatile and clever mind.]
2 This is the criterion prescribed in \!ae. Py<rscript. Haret. xxxi. xxxiv., and often applied by TertuUian. See our.^ «//- Marcion, pp. 272, 345, ^-jo a.r\(l passim.
3 The tarn novella is a relative phrase, referring to the fore- mentioned rule.
4Denique.
S Maledicere singulis.
6 Probably by painting idols (Rigalt.; and so Neander).
7 It is uncertain whether TertuIIian means to charge Hermog- enes with delending paiy^ajiiy, or only second marriages, in the phrase nuhit assidue. Probably the latter, which was offensive 10 the rigorous TertuIIian; and so Neander puts it.
8 Quoting Gen. i. 28, " Be fruitful and multiply " (Rigalt.).
9 Disregarding the law when it forbids the representation of idols. (Rigalt.)
•'° Et cauterio et stilo. The former instrument was used by the encaustic painters for burning in the wax colours into the ground of their pictures (Westropp's Handbook 0/ Archaeology, p. 219). Tertulliau charges Hermogenes with using his encaustic art to the injury of the Scriptures, by practically violating their pre- cepts in his artistic works; and with usinghis pen (stilus) in cor- rupting the doctrine thereof by his heresy.
He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks," and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of faith as much as the apostle's own Hermogenes. '= However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not ap- pear to acknowledge any other Christ as l.ord,'3 though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his faith he really makes Him another being, — nay, he takes from Him everything which is (iod, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing. For, turning away from Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the Stoics how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had existed ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him,'* the Lord afterwards created all things.
CHAP. II. — HERMOGENES, AFTER A PERVERSE INDUCTION FROM MERE HERETICAL ASSUMP- TIONS, CONCLUDES THAT GOD CREATED ALL THINGS OUT OF PRE-EXISTING MATTER.
Our very bad painter has coloured this his primary shade absolutely without any light, with such arguments as these: He begins with laying down the premiss, '^ that the Lord made all things either out of Himself, or out of nothing, or out of something; in order that, after he has shown that it was impossible for Him to have made them either out of Himself or out of nothing, he might thence affirm the residuary proposition that He made them out of something, and therefore that that some- thing was Matter. He could not have made all things, he says, of Himself; because whatever " By the nubentiuni coniagiutn, TertuUian, in his Montanist rigour, censures those who married more than once.
'3 Thus differing from Marcion. '•) The force of the subjunctive, ex quit /ecrrii. '5 Pra;struens.
AGAINST HERMOGENES.
[chap. III.
things the Lord made of Himself would have been parts of Himself; but' He is not dis- soluble into parts, ^ because, being the Lord, He is indivisible, and unchangeable, and always the same. Besides, if He had made anything out of Himself, it would have been something of Himself. Everything, however, both which was made and which He made must be ac- counted imperfect, because it was made of a part, and He made it of a part; or if, again, it was a whole which He made, who is a whole Himself, He must in that case have been at once both a whole, and yet not a whole; because it behoved Him to be a whole, that He might produce Himself,^ and yet not a whole, that He might be produced out of Himself.* But this is a most difificult position. For if He were in existence. He could not be made, for He was in existence already; if, however, he were not in existence, He could not make, because He was a nonen- tity. He maintains, moreover, that He who always exists, does not come into existence, ^ but exists for ever and ever. He accordingly concludes that He made nothing out of Him- self, since He never passed into such a con- dition^ as made it possible for Him to make anything out of Himself. In like manner, he contends that He could not have made all things out of nothing — thus: He defines the Lord as a being who is good, nay, very good, who must will to make things as good and excellent as He is Himself; indeed it were impossible for Him either to will or to make anything which was not good, nay, very good itself. Therefore all things ought to have been made good and excellent by Him, after His own condition. Experience shows, ^ how- ever, that things which are even evil were made by Him: not, of course, of His own will and pleasure; because, if it had been of His own will and pleasure. He would be sure to have made nothing unfitting or unworthy of Himself. That, therefore, which He made not of His own will must be understood to have been made from the fault of something, and that is from Matter, without a doubt.
CHAP. III. — AN ARGUMENT OF HERMOGENES.
THE answer: while god is a title eter- nally APPLICABLE TO THE DIVINE BEING, LORD AND FATHER ARE ONLY RELATIVE AP- PELLATIONS, NOT ETERNALLY APPLICABLE. AN INCONSISTENCY IN THE ARGUMENT OF HERMOGENES POINTED OUT He adds also another point: that as God - ' Porro.
* In partes non devenire. 3Ut faceret semetipsum.
* Ut fieret de semetipso. 5 Non fieri.
was always God, there was never a time when God was not also Lord. But ^ it was in no way possible for Him to be regarded as al- ways Lord, in the same manner as He had been always God, if there had not been al- ways, in the previous eternity,' a something of which He could be regarded as evermore the Lord. So he concludes " that God always had Matter co-existent with Himself as the Lord thereof. Now, this tissue " 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 be '^ understood to be refuted. We affirm, then, that the name of God always ex- isted 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 sub- stance 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 indi- cation indeed '^ 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 be- come 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,'* Hermogenes? How neatly does Scripture lend us its aid,'^ 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 * Non ejus fieret conditionis.
7 Inveniri.
8 Porro.
9 Retro. ''^ Itaque.
" Conjecturam.
«3 Scilicet.
U Argumentari: in the sense of arput»ri, 'S Naviter nobis patrocinatur.
CHAP, v.]
AGAINST HERMOGENES.