Against Hermogenes 1–15

Against heretics we are accustomed, for the sake of brevity, to lodge the plea of lateness. For in so far as the rule of truth comes first, which also foretold that there would be heresies, to that extent all later doctrines will be prejudged as heresies, since they were foretold by the more ancient rule of truth as things to come. Now the doctrine of Hermogenes is so new … in short, a man living in the world to this day, and a heretic by nature too, and turbulent as well, who takes talkativeness for eloquence, reckons shamelessness as constancy, and judges it the duty of a good conscience to abuse everyone. Besides, he paints what is unlawful, he marries continually; he defends the law of God in the interest of lust, and despises it in the interest of his art; a forger twice over, with the brush and with the pen; an adulterer through and through, both of preaching and of the flesh. If the contagion of names also stinks at all, not even the apostolic Hermogenes persevered in the rule. But let his person look to itself, since my question is with his doctrine. He seems to acknowledge no other God, yet he makes him other in the way he acknowledges him; indeed, he takes away everything that God is, by refusing to have him make all things out of nothing. For having turned from the Christians to the philosophers, from the church to the Academy and the Porch, he took from there the idea of setting matter alongside God: matter which itself always existed, neither born nor made, having no beginning at all nor end, and out of which God afterwards made all things.

This first shadow, plainly without light, that painter coloured with the worst of arguments. He lays down in advance that God made all things either out of himself, or out of nothing, or out of something, so that, when he has shown that he could have made them neither out of himself nor out of nothing, he may then establish what remains, that he made them out of something, and so that this something was matter. He denies that he could have made them out of himself, because whatever God had made out of himself would have been parts of himself; but he does not come apart into parts, being indivisible and unchangeable and always the same, as God. Otherwise, if he had made them out of himself, they would have been something of himself. But everything, both what was being made and what was making, would have to be considered imperfect, since in part it would be made and in part it would make. Or if he, being whole, had made the whole, he would have had both to be and not to be at the same time, since he would have had to be, in order to make himself, and not to be, in order to be made out of himself. And that is most difficult. For if he were, he would not be made, for he would already be; but if he were not, he would not make, because he would be nothing. But he who always is is not made, but is for ages of ages. Therefore he did not make them out of himself, since he was not of such a condition that he could make out of himself.

Next, he argues that he could not have made them out of nothing in this way: he defines God as good and best, who wills to make things good and best just as he himself is; indeed, that he both wills and makes nothing that is not good and best. Therefore all things ought to have been made by him good and best, according to his own condition. Yet evil things too are found to have been made by him, certainly not by his choice or will; for if by his choice and will, he would be doing something unfitting and unworthy of himself. What, then, he did not make by his own choice must be understood to have been made from the fault of some thing: from matter, without doubt.

He adds another point too: that God, always God, was also always Lord, never not Lord. But he could by no means have been held to be always Lord, as he is always God, unless there had always been something formerly of which he was always held to be Lord. So matter always existed with God the Lord. This conjecture of his I shall hasten to destroy at once, since he thought fit to add it for the sake of those who do not understand, so that he may know that his other arguments too are as much understood as they are refuted. We say that the name of God always existed with him and in him, but not that of Lord. For the condition of each is different. God, of course, is the name of the substance itself, that is, of the divinity; but Lord is the name not of the substance but of power. The substance always existed with its own name, which is God; the mention of Lord came afterwards, as of something added. For from the time when those things began to exist over which the power of a lord might act, from then, by the addition of power, he both became and was called Lord. For God is also Father, and God is also Judge; yet he is not therefore always Father and Judge because he is always God. For he could not be Father before the Son, nor Judge before sin. But there was a time when there was neither sin nor Son, the one to make God a Judge and the other a Father. So too he was not Lord God before those things of which he was to be Lord, but only God, to become Lord at some time: as Father through the Son, as Judge through sin, so also Lord through the things he had made to serve him.

Do I seem to you to be quibbling, Hermogenes? Scripture diligently supports us, which has distinguished both names for him and shown each at its own time. For God, which he always was, it names at once: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth”; and afterwards, as long as he was making the things of which he was to be Lord, it sets down only God: “And God said,” and “God made,” and “God saw,” and nowhere as yet Lord. But when he had completed all things, and above all man himself, who was properly to understand God and now also to call him Lord, then it added the name of Lord too: “And the Lord God took the man whom he had formed,” and “The Lord God commanded Adam.” From then on he is Lord who formerly was only God, since he had something whose Lord he might be. For he was God to himself, but to things Lord.

Therefore, in so far as he thinks that matter always existed because he was always Lord, to that extent it will be established that nothing existed, because it is established that he was not always Lord. I too shall add something for the sake of those who do not understand, of whom Hermogenes is the extreme limit, and indeed I shall turn it back against him out of his own store. For since he denies that matter was born or made, I find that in this way too the name of Lord did not belong to God with respect to matter. For matter must have been free, since by having no origin it had no author; what it was, it owed to no one, and so it was subject to no one. So, from the time when God exercised his power over it by making things out of matter, from then matter, having undergone God as Lord, shows that he was not this as long as it was … this.

From here, then, I shall begin to deal with matter, because he makes it equal to God, as likewise unborn, likewise unmade, likewise put forward as without beginning and without end. For what other endowment does God have than eternity? What other state belongs to eternity than always to have been and to be going to be, by the prerogative of no beginning and no end? If this is proper to God, it will belong to God alone, to whom it is proper, since if it is ascribed to another too, it will no longer be proper to God but common to him and to the one to whom it is also ascribed. “For though there are those who are called gods by name, whether in heaven or on earth, yet for us there is one God the Father, from whom are all things”; so much the more, among us, ought what is proper to God to belong to God alone; and, as I said, it would no longer be proper, since it would belong to another. But if he is God, he must be unique, so as to belong to one. Or what will be unique and singular, if not that to which nothing will be made equal? What will be supreme, if not what is above all things, before all things, and that from which all things come? By having these God is God, and by having them alone he is one. If another too has them, there will then be as many gods as there are beings that have the things of God. So Hermogenes brings in two gods, while he brings in matter as equal to God. But God must be one; because what is highest is God; but nothing will be highest unless it is unique; and nothing can be unique if anything is made equal to it; and matter is made equal to God when it is reckoned eternal.

“But God is God, and matter is matter.” As if a difference of names resisted comparison, if the same state is claimed! Let their nature be different, let their form not be the same, provided that the principle of their state is one. God is unborn: is not matter unborn too? God always exists: does not matter always exist too? Both without beginning, both without end, both also authors of the universe, he who made it as much as she out of whom he made it. For matter cannot fail to be reckoned the author of all things too, since the universe consists of it. How will he answer? That matter is not at once compared to God if it has something of God, because, not having the whole, it does not come up to the fullness of comparison? What more did he leave to God, so that he might not seem to have given the whole of God to matter? “Because,” he says, “even when matter has this, both the authority and the substance remain safe to God, by which he alone is reckoned both first and author and Lord of all.”

But the truth, in defending one God, requires that whatever is his belong to him alone. For it will be his only if it belongs to him alone, since from this also another god cannot be admitted, so long as no one is allowed to have anything of God. “Then,” you say, “do we not have anything of God either?” Yes, we have and we shall have, but from him, not from ourselves. For we shall even be gods, if we are found worthy to be those of whom he declared: “I said, You are gods,” and “God stood in the assembly of the gods”; but from his grace, not from any property of our own, because he alone is the one who makes gods. But he makes what matter has in common with God to be matter's own property. Or if it received from God what is God's, I mean the rank of eternity, can it both be believed to have something in common with God and yet not be God? And what sort of thing is it when he confesses that it has something in common with God, and yet wants that which he does not deny matter has to belong to God alone?

He says it remains safe to God that he is both alone and first and author of all and Lord of all and comparable to no one; yet the very things by which this is so he ascribes to matter too. God indeed will call the gods to witness, and will sometimes swear by himself, that there is no other such as he; but Hermogenes will make him a liar. For matter too will be such as God: unmade, unborn, having neither beginning nor end. God will say, “I am the first”; but how first, when matter is of the same age? For among those of the same age and the same time there is no order; or else matter too is first. “I alone,” he says, “stretched out the heaven.” Yet not alone; for he stretched it out with that out of which he also stretched it. When he proposes that matter existed without harm to God's state, see that we do not reply to him in the same way that God existed without harm to the state of matter. Yet the state of both is common. It will therefore be safe to matter too that it also was alone, but with God, since God too is alone, but with it; and that it too is first with God, since God too is first with it; and that it too is incomparable with God, since God too is incomparable with it; and author with God and mistress with God. So to have something and not the whole … so Hermogenes left God nothing that he did not also confer on matter, so that it is not matter that is compared to God, but rather God to matter. And so, since those things which we claim as proper to God (always to have existed, without beginning, without end, and to have been first, and alone, and author of all) belong to matter as well, I ask what matter possessed that is different and foreign to God, and therefore peculiarly its own, by which it would not be compared to God? When all the things proper to God are counted up in it, they sufficiently prejudge the rest of the comparison.

If he contends that matter is lesser and inferior to God, and therefore different from him, and therefore not comparable to him as to one greater and higher, I plead in reply that what is eternal and unborn admits no diminution or abasement, because it is this that makes God as great as he is, less than no one and more subject to no one, indeed greater and higher than all. For just as other things, which are born or made and therefore are not eternal, being once exposed to an end as they are to a beginning, admit what God does not admit, I mean for now diminution and subjection, because they were born and made, so God does not admit these things for the very reason that he was neither born nor made at all. And such is the state of matter too. Therefore, of two eternal beings, unborn and unmade, God and matter, since for the same reason of a common state they have equally that which admits neither diminution nor subjection, namely eternity, we say that neither is less or greater than the other, neither lower or higher than the other, but that both stand equally great, equally exalted, equally possessed of that solid and perfect happiness which is reckoned eternity. For we shall not come close to the opinion of the heathen, who, if ever they are forced to confess God, still want others below him. But divinity has no degrees, since it is unique. And if it is in matter too, as being likewise unborn and unmade and eternal, it will be present whole in both, because nowhere can it be less than itself. How then will Hermogenes dare to distinguish them and so subject matter to God, the eternal to the eternal, the unborn to the unborn, the author to the author, when matter says: “I too am first, I too am before all things, I too am the one from whom all things come. We were equal, we were together, both without beginning, without end, both without author, without lord. Who subjects me to God, who is of my time and my age? If it is because he is called God, I too have my own name. Either I am God or he is matter, because we both are what either of us is.”

So he thinks he has not made matter equal to God, since, of course, he subjects it to him; yet he even puts it above God and rather subjects God to matter, when he holds that God made all things out of matter. For if he drew on it for the works of the world, then matter is found to be superior, since it supplied him with the means of working, and God is seen to be subject to matter, whose substance he needed. For everyone needs that which he draws on; everyone is subject to that which he needs in order to be able to use it; so too no one who uses what belongs to another is not less than the one whose property he uses, and no one who grants the use of his own is not, in this, superior to the one to whom he grants the use. So matter itself did not need God, but it lent itself to God, who needed it: rich and wealthy and generous to one lesser, I suppose, and weak and less able to make out of nothing what he wished. A great benefit indeed it conferred on God, that he should have today something through which God might be known and called almighty; except that he is no longer almighty if he is not able to do this too, to bring forth all things out of nothing. Matter certainly also secured something for itself, that it too might be recognized with God as God's equal, indeed as his helper; except that only Hermogenes has recognized it, and the patriarchs of the heretics, the philosophers. For it has remained hidden from the prophets and the apostles until now, and, I think, from Christ too.

He cannot say that God used matter as its lord for the works of the world, for he could not be lord of a substance coequal with himself. But perhaps he used it on sufferance, and so on sufferance and not by lordship that, although he knew it was evil, he nevertheless put up with using what was evil, evidently from the necessity of his own limitation, since he was not able … from nothing; using it, then, not out of power, since if he had had any lordship at all over matter, which he knew to be evil, he would first have converted it into good, as its lord and as good, so as to use what was good and not what was evil. But because he was good but not lord, he used such matter as he had, and so showed his necessity yielding to the condition of matter, which he would have corrected if he had been its lord. For this is how Hermogenes must be answered when he maintains that God used matter by right of lordship, and yet over a thing not his own, that is, not made by him. So evil now comes from him who, if not its author, since he did not make it, is certainly its permitter, since he is its master. But if matter is not his, since then the evil will not be God's, he used what belonged to another: either on sufferance, as needing it, or even by wrong, as overpowering it. For in these three ways the things of another are taken: by right, by kindness, by assault; that is, by lordship, by sufferance, by force. Since lordship is not available, let Hermogenes choose which befits God: to have made all things from matter on sufferance or by force. Would God not have judged it better that nothing at all be made than that it be made on sufferance or by force, and out of evil at that? Even if matter had been the best, would he not equally have thought it unbecoming to himself to make from what was another's, however good? … Was it for his own glory, then, that he built the world, to show himself a debtor to another's substance, and that not a good one?

“Then,” he says, “should he have made them from nothing, so that the evils too would be charged to his will?” Great indeed, in good faith, is the blindness of the heretics in arguing this way. For either they want another god, good and most good, to be believed in because they think the Creator the author of evil, or they set matter beside the Creator in order to derive evil from matter and not from the Creator; yet no god at all is freed by this from the question, so as not to seem just as much the author of evil, whoever he is who, even if he did not make evil himself, still allowed it to be made by someone and from somewhere. Let Hermogenes hear, then, while we treat the account of evil elsewhere, that meanwhile he has gained nothing by this objection of his. For see: God is found, if not the author, then the approver of evil, since he endured the evil of matter through so long an age before the world was established, when, being good and the rival of evil, he ought to have corrected it. For either he could correct it but would not, or he would but could not. God is weak … If he could and would not, he too is evil, because he favoured evil; and so he is now held to be its (author), for although he did not institute it, still, since it would not exist had he been unwilling for it to exist, he himself has made to exist what he was not unwilling should exist. This is even more shameful: if he willed that to exist which he was unwilling to have made, he acted against himself, since he both willed to exist what he was unwilling to have made and was unwilling to have made what he willed to exist. As though it were good, he willed it to exist; as though it were evil, he was unwilling to have made it. What by not making it he judged evil, by enduring it he pronounced good. By enduring evil as if it were good, rather than rooting it out, he is found to be its champion: wickedly, if by will; shamefully, if by necessity. God will be either the servant of evil or its friend, having kept company with the evil of matter, not to mention having worked from its evil.

And yet how does Hermogenes persuade us that matter is evil? For he cannot avoid calling evil that to which he ascribes evil. Now we have defined that what is eternal cannot admit diminution and subjection, so as to be counted inferior to another co-eternal being. So now too we say that evil does not befit it either, since for the same reason it cannot be made subject, for what is eternal can in no way be made subject. But since it is otherwise agreed that what is eternal is the highest good (as God, by that very thing by which he alone is God, is eternal, so he is also good, being God), how will evil be in matter, which, being eternal, must be believed to be the highest good? Or if what is eternal can also be capable of evil, this could be believed of God too, and Hermogenes has been eager without cause to shift evil away from God, if it befits even what is eternal by befitting matter. Now if what is eternal can be believed evil, evil will be invincible and insuperable, as being eternal. And then, do we labour in vain to remove evil from ourselves? Then God too commands and prescribes this in vain; indeed God has appointed judgement in vain, meaning to punish with injustice those whom … the end, when its ruler, the devil, has gone away into the fire which God prepared for him and his angels, having first been banished into the pit of the abyss; when the revealing of the sons of God has redeemed creation from evil, creation which was subjected to futility; when, the innocence and wholeness of creation restored, cattle have made peace with wild beasts and little children have played with serpents; when the Father has put the Son's enemies under his feet, that is, the workers of evil. So if an end befits evil, a beginning must (also) have befitted it. Matter will be … having a beginning, by having an end of its evil. For whatever is counted to evil is reckoned according to the condition of evil (and so of matter).

Come now, let us believe matter to be evil, indeed the worst, and that by nature, just as we believe God to be good, indeed the best, likewise by nature. Then nature will have to be held certain and fixed, as persevering in evil in matter as in good in God, unchangeable, that is, and unalterable; because if nature in matter can be changed from evil to good, in God too it could be changed from good to evil. At this point someone will say: “Then will sons of Abraham not be raised up from stones, and will the brood of vipers not bear the fruit of repentance, and will the sons of wrath not become sons of peace, if nature is not changeable?” You look to these examples rashly, O man. Things that were born, stones and vipers and human beings, do not bear on the case of matter, which is unborn; for their nature, by having a beginning, can also have a cessation. But hold matter to be once for all defined as eternal, as unmade, as unborn, and therefore to be believed of an unchangeable and uncorrectable nature, even by the verdict of Hermogenes himself, which he puts forward when he denies that God could have made things from himself, since what is eternal is not changed: it would, he says, lose what it had been while becoming by change what it was not, and so would not be eternal; therefore God, being eternal, cannot be anything other than what he always is. This definition I in turn will rightly throw back at him. I reproach matter in the same way, since from it, evil and even worst as it is, good and even best things are made by God: “And God saw that they were good, and God blessed them,” as best, certainly, not as evil and worst. So matter admitted change, and if so, it lost the state of eternity; in short, its own form has died. But eternity cannot be lost, because unless it cannot be lost it is not eternity. Therefore matter cannot have admitted change either, because if it is eternity it can in no way be changed;

and it will be asked how good things were made from it, when they were in no way made by change: whence came the seed of good and best into what is evil and worst? Certainly a good tree does not bear bad fruit, since there is no God who is not good, nor a bad tree good fruit, since matter too is nothing (but) the worst. Or if we grant it some seed of good as well, its nature will no longer be uniform, that is, evil wholly and only, but double, that is, of an evil and a good nature; and it will be asked again whether good and evil, light and darkness, sweet and bitter, could come together in (the same thing). Or if the opposites, good and evil, could meet, and the nature of matter was double, bearing the fruits of both, then neither will the good things themselves be credited to God, just as the evil things are not charged to him; both kinds, being taken from the property of matter, will belong to matter. On these terms we shall owe God neither thanks for good things nor blame for evil, since he worked nothing from his own ability. And by this it will be plainly proved that he was a servant to matter.

For even if it is said that, although he took the occasion from matter, he brought forth good things by his own will, as if he had found the good in matter (though even this would be shameful), certainly when he brings forth evil things from the same matter, in these at least he serves matter by not bringing them forth of his own will, having no other course than to bring forth from evil: unwillingly, surely, since he is good; (and) from necessity, as being unwilling; and from servitude, as acting from necessity. Which then is worthier, that he created evil things from necessity or from will? For he created from necessity if from matter, from will if from nothing. You now labour without cause to keep God from being made the author of evils; for even if he made them from matter they will be charged to him who made them, inasmuch as he made them just as though he had made them from nothing, and it makes no difference from what he made them. Rather, it does make a difference from what he made them, in this sense: that he made them from that source which most befitted him. And it befitted him more to have made from will than from necessity, that is, from nothing rather than from matter. It is worthier to believe God free, even as the author of evils, than a slave. Power of any kind befits him rather than pettiness. So too, if we agree that matter indeed had nothing good, but that God, if he produced anything good, produced it by his own power, other questions will arise just the same. First, if there was no good at all in matter, the good was not made from matter, since matter evidently did not have it. Next, if not from matter, then it was made from God. If not from God either, then it was made from nothing. For this is what remains according to Hermogenes' arrangement.

Further, if the good was made neither from matter, since it was not in matter, evil as matter is, nor from God, since nothing could be made from God, as Hermogenes defines, then the good is found to have been made from nothing, as made from no source, neither from matter nor from God. And if the good came from nothing, why not the evil too? Indeed, why not all things from nothing, if anything from nothing? Unless the divine power was insufficient to produce all things, although it produced something from nothing. Or if the good came forth from evil matter, since not from nothing nor from God, it will follow that it came from a conversion of matter, contrary to the denial that what is eternal can be converted. So wherever the good came from, Hermogenes will deny that it could have come from there; and yet it must have come from one of the sources from which he denied it could come. Further, if evil did not come from nothing, lest it become God's, by whose will it would then seem to have been made, but from matter, so that it may be matter's, from whose substance it will have been made, here too, as I said, God will be held the author of evil. For with the same power and will he ought to have produced all things good from matter, or only good things; yet he did not produce all things good, but evil things too: either because he willed evils to exist, if he was able to prevent their existing, or because he was unable to make all things good, if he willed it and did not do it … since it makes no difference whether the Lord became the author of evil through weakness or through will. Or what reason was there that, having made good things as being good, he should also have produced evil things as though not good? Why did he not issue only what befitted himself? What need was there, after producing his own work, to attend to matter's business too, by producing evil as well? So that he alone might be known as good from the good, but matter might not be known as evil from the evil? The good would have flourished more without the breath of evil upon it. For Hermogenes too attacks the arguments of some who say that evils were necessary to shed light on good things, which are understood from their opposites. Therefore either there was no reason for producing evil on that account, or, if some other reason required it to be brought in, why could it not also have been brought in from nothing, that same reason excusing the Lord from being thought the author of evil which now, when he works evil things from matter, excuses him, if it does excuse him? So everywhere and from every side the question is driven to the point where these men do not want it to go, who, by not examining and not distinguishing the very account of evil, how they are to ascribe it to God or to separate it from God, expose God to more and more unworthy demolitions.