The Painter’s Two Gods

To keep an argument short, we usually meet heretics with the rule that their teaching is late. Our rule gives priority to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies; and to that extent every later opinion has to be judged a heresy in advance, since the older rule of truth predicted that such things would one day happen. Now the teaching of Hermogenes carries exactly this taint of newness. [c]

He is, in short, a man alive in the world right now: a heretic by his very nature, and a troublemaker besides, who mistakes talkativeness for eloquence, takes his own nerve for firmness, and reckons it the duty of a good conscience to speak badly of people. On top of that he despises God’s law in his painting, while he marries again and again — quoting God’s law to excuse his appetite and ignoring it in his art. He falsifies by two methods at once, with his hot iron and with his pen. He is an adulterer through and through, in doctrine and in the flesh, since he reeks of the infection of your serial bridegrooms, and he has failed to hold to the rule of faith as badly as the apostle’s own Hermogenes.

Never mind the man, though; it is his teaching I am putting on trial. He seems to acknowledge no other Christ as Lord, though he holds him in a different way; and by that difference in his faith he actually makes him another being — indeed, he strips from him everything that makes him God, since he will not have it that he made all things out of nothing. For he turned from Christians to the philosophers, from the church to the Academy and the Porch, and there he learned from the Stoics how to set Matter on a level with the Lord: as if it too had always existed, unborn and unmade, with no beginning at all and no end, out of which, according to him, the Lord afterwards created everything.

Our very bad painter has laid on this first dark shade of his with no light in it at all, arguing like this. He begins by laying down that the Lord made all things either out of himself, or out of nothing, or out of something — so that, having shown that it was impossible for him to have made them out of himself or out of nothing, he can then assert what is left: that he made them out of something, and that the something was Matter. [i]

He could not have made all things out of himself, Hermogenes says, because whatever the Lord made out of himself would have been parts of himself; and he cannot be broken down 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. But everything that was made, and that he made, has to be counted imperfect, because it was made out of a part and he made it out of a part. Or if what he made was a whole, being himself a whole, then he would have to be at once a whole and not a whole — a whole, so that he could produce himself; and not a whole, so that he could be produced out of himself. But that is an extremely difficult position. For if he already existed he could not be made, since he was there already; and if he did not exist he could not make, since he was nothing. He maintains, further, that one who always exists does not come into existence, but exists forever and ever. So he concludes that God made nothing out of himself, since he never passed into the condition that would have made it possible for him to make anything out of himself.

In the same way he argues that God could not have made all things out of nothing. His argument runs like this. He defines the Lord as a being who is good — very good indeed — who must want to make things as good and excellent as he is himself; it would be impossible for him either to want or to make anything that was not good, in fact very good. So everything ought to have been made good and excellent by him, matching his own condition. But things that are actually evil are found to have been made by him — not, of course, by his own will and pleasure, because if it had been by his own will and pleasure he would certainly have made nothing unfitting or unworthy of himself. So what he made not by his own will must be understood to have been made out of the fault of something; and that something, beyond doubt, is Matter.

He adds one more point: that since God was always God, there was never a time when he was not also Lord. But there was no way at all for him to count as always Lord, in the same way that he had always been God, unless there had always been, in the eternity behind him, something of which he could count as Lord all along. So he concludes that God always had Matter existing alongside him, with himself as its Lord. Now I will pull this web of his apart at once. I have been willing to set it out at this length for the sake of readers who do not know the subject, so that they may see that his other arguments too need only to be understood to be refuted. [j]

We say, then, that the name God always existed with him and in him — but not, eternally, the name Lord; because the condition of the one is not the condition of the other. God is the designation of the substance itself, that is, of divinity; Lord is not a name of substance but of power. I maintain that the substance always existed with its own name, which is God, and that the title Lord was added later, marking something that had come in. From the moment when those things began to exist over which a Lord’s power was to be exercised, God, by taking on that power, both became Lord and received the name for it.

In the same way God is a Father, and he is also a Judge; but he has not always been Father and Judge merely on the ground that he has always been God. He could not have been Father before the Son, or Judge before sin. And there was a time when neither sin nor the Son existed with him — sin, which was to make the Lord a Judge; the Son, who was to make him a Father. In the same way he was not Lord before the things he was to be Lord of. He was only to become Lord at some later time: as he became Father by the Son and Judge by sin, so he became Lord by means of the things he had made, so that they might serve him.

Do I seem to you to be splitting hairs, Hermogenes? See how briskly Scripture takes our side, applying the two titles to him with a distinction and bringing each one out at its proper time. The title God, which always belonged to him, it names at the very start: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” And for as long as he went on making, one thing after another, the things he was to be Lord of, it mentions only God: “And God said,” “and God made,” “and God saw” — but nowhere yet do we find the Lord. But when he had finished the whole creation, and man in particular, who was going to grasp his rule in a way peculiarly his own, then he is given the further name Lord. Then Scripture added the name Lord: “And the Lord God took the man whom he had formed”; “And the Lord God commanded Adam.” From that point on, the one who had before been God only is Lord, from the time when he had something he could be Lord of. To himself he was always God; but to all things he was God only when he became Lord as well. So in as far as Hermogenes will suppose that Matter was eternal on the ground that the Lord was eternal, so far it will be evident that nothing existed — because it is plain that the Lord as such did not always exist.

Now I mean, on my own part, to add a remark for the sake of the ignorant, of whom Hermogenes is the last line, and actually to turn his own arguments back against him. When he denies that Matter was born or made, I find that even on those terms the title Lord does not fit God where Matter is concerned; because Matter must have been free, since by having no beginning it had no author. It owed its past existence to no one, so it could be subject to no one. Therefore, ever since God exercised his power over it by creating all things out of Matter, even though it had all along had God for its Lord, Matter does after all demonstrate that God did not stand in the relation of Lord to it — although all the while he really did.

At this point, then, I will begin to treat of Matter, and of how, on Hermogenes’ account, God has it as his equal — equally unborn, equally unmade, equally eternal, set forth as being without a beginning and without an end. For what other reckoning of God is there than eternity? What other condition does eternity have than to have always existed and to exist forever more, by virtue of its privilege of having neither beginning nor end? Now, since this is God’s own property, it will belong to God alone, whose property it is — for the obvious reason that if it can be ascribed to any other being, it stops being God’s property and belongs, along with him, to that other being as well. For “although there are those who are called gods” in name, “whether in heaven or on earth, yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom all things come.” All the more reason, then, in our view, that what is God’s property should be regarded as pertaining to God alone, and that (as I have already said) it should cease to be such a property once it is shared with another being. [o]

Now, since he is God, this quality must necessarily be unique — that is, confined to One. Otherwise, what will be unique and single, if not the one that has nothing equal to it? What will be first, if not the one that is above all things, before all things, and from whom all things proceed? By possessing these things he is God alone, and by possessing them alone he is One. If another shared in possessing them, there would then be as many gods as there were owners of these attributes of God. So Hermogenes brings in two gods: he brings in Matter as God’s equal. But God has to be One, because what is God is what is supreme; and nothing can be supreme except what is unique; and nothing can possibly be unique that has anything equal to it — and Matter will be God’s equal as soon as it is reckoned eternal.

But God is God, and Matter is Matter — as if a mere difference of names prevented equality, when an identical condition is claimed for them both! Grant that their nature is different; grant too that their form is not the same. What does that matter, so long as their absolute state runs on one and the same principle? God is unborn; is not Matter unborn too? God always exists; does not Matter always exist too? Both are without beginning; both are without end; both are the authors of the universe — both the one who created it and the Matter he made it out of. For it is impossible not to regard Matter as the author of all things, when the universe is composed of it. [q]

What answer will he give? Will he say that Matter is not comparable with God as soon as it has something belonging to God, since, by not having the whole of divinity, it cannot match the comparison at its full extent? But what more has he kept back for God, so as not to look as though he had handed Matter the whole amount of deity? He answers that even if this is Matter’s prerogative, both the authority and the substance of God remain intact, and by virtue of them he is regarded as the sole and first Author, as well as the Lord of all things.

Truth, however, maintains God’s unity in such a way as to insist that whatever belongs to God himself belongs to him alone. It will only belong to himself if it belongs to him alone; and so it will be impossible for a second god to be admitted, when no other being is permitted to possess anything of God’s. “Well then, at that rate we ourselves possess nothing of God.” But indeed we do, and we shall go on doing so — only we receive it from him, not from ourselves. For we shall even be gods, if we deserve to be among those of whom he declared, “I have said, You are gods.” And: “God stands in the assembly of the gods.” But this comes of his own grace, not of any property in us, because he alone can make gods.

The property Hermogenes gives to Matter, however, is one it holds in common with God. If instead it had received from God the property that belongs to God — I mean its standing as eternal — one might then even suppose that it both possesses something in common with God and yet at the same time is not God. But what sort of inconsistency is it for him to allow that an attribute is possessed jointly with God, and at the same time to wish that what he does not deny to Matter should be, after all, God’s exclusive privilege?

He declares that God’s attribute is still safe to him — of being the only God, and the First, and the Author of all things, and the Lord of all things, and beyond comparison with anything — qualities which he straightaway goes and ascribes to Matter as well. He is God, to be sure, and God himself will attest the same; but he has also sworn at times by himself that there is no other God like him. Hermogenes, however, will make him a liar. For Matter will be just such a God as he is: unmade, unborn, without beginning, and without end. [r]

God will say, “I am the first!” Yet how is he the first, when Matter is co-eternal with him? Between things that are co-eternal and contemporary there is no order of rank. Is Matter, then, the first as well? The Lord says, “I have stretched out the heavens alone.” But he was not alone, since the thing out of which he made the expanse stretched them out along with him.

When he lays down the position that Matter was eternal without any encroachment on the condition of God, he had better watch out that we do not turn the tables on him in ridicule and say that God was likewise eternal without any encroachment on the condition of Matter — the condition of both still being held in common. The position therefore stands unchallenged on either side: that Matter did itself exist, only along with God; and that God existed alone, but with Matter. It too was first with God, as God too was first with it. It, however, is not comparable with God, as God too is not to be compared with it. With God it too was the Author of all things, and with God their Sovereign.

In this way he proposes that God has something, and yet not the whole, of Matter. Accordingly, Hermogenes has reserved nothing for God that he has not equally conferred on Matter, so that it is not Matter that is compared with God, but rather God who is compared with Matter. Now, since the qualities we claim as peculiar to God — to have always existed, without a beginning, without an end, and to have been the First, and Alone, and the Author of all things — belong to Matter as well, I want to know what property Matter possesses that is different and foreign to God’s, and so special to itself, by reason of which it is incapable of being compared with God. A being in which all the properties of God are found is sufficiently settled in advance, without any further comparison.