Against Hermogenes

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.

Therefore, laying down this head in advance (it may perhaps be treated again elsewhere), I define that either both the good and the evil which he made from matter must be ascribed to God; or both to matter itself, from which he made them; or both to both, since both are bound up with them, he who made and that from which he made; or one to each; for there is no third besides matter and God. Now if both are God's, God will seem to be the author of evil too; but God, being good, will not be the author of evil. If both are matter's, matter will seem to be the mother even of good; but matter, being wholly evil, will not be the mother of good. If both belong to both, in this too matter will be compared with God and the two will be equal, alike akin to evil and to good; but matter must not be made equal to God, lest it make two gods. If one belongs to each, namely the good to God and the evil to matter, then neither will evil be ascribed to God nor good to matter; and yet God, in making both good and evil from matter, makes them together with it. If these things are so, I do not know by what judgement Hermogenes can escape, who does not think God the author of evil in whatever way he created evil from matter, whether by will, by necessity, or by reason. Further, if he who made it is himself the author of evil, matter being plainly his partner by supplying the substance, then the reason for introducing matter is already excluded. For God is shown to be the author of evil through matter none the less, even though matter was assumed precisely so that God might not seem to be the author of evil. Matter, then, is excluded, since the reason for it is excluded. It remains that God is agreed to have made all things from nothing. We shall see whether he made evil things too, when it has become clear which things are evil, and whether meanwhile the things you think evil are so. For he produced more worthily from his own will, producing even these from nothing, than from another's prior condition, had he produced them from matter. Freedom, not necessity, befits God. I would rather he had willed to create evils of his own accord than that he had been unable not to create them.

The condition of the one God claims this rule: he is not one otherwise than by being alone, and not alone otherwise than by there being nothing with him. So he will also be first, because all things are after him; all things are after him, because all things are from him; they are from him, because from nothing; so that the account of that Scripture too may stand: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or whom did he consult? Or who showed him the way of understanding and knowledge? Who has given to him, and shall be repaid?” No one, surely; because no power, no matter, no nature of another substance was present with him. Further, if he worked from some matter, he must have received from it both counsel and the plan of his arrangement, as the way of understanding and knowledge. For he would have had to work according to the quality of the thing and according to the bent of the matter, not according to his own will, so that even the evil things he made would be according to the nature, not of himself, but of the substance.

If God needed matter for the works of the world, as Hermogenes thought, God had a matter far worthier and more fitting, one not to be valued by the philosophers but to be understood from the prophets: namely his own Wisdom. She alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For who knows the things of God and what is in him, except the Spirit who is in him? And Wisdom is spirit. She was his counsellor; she is herself the way of understanding and knowledge. From her he made, making through her and making with her. “When he was preparing the heaven,” she says, “I was present with him; and when he made strong the clouds above over the winds, and when he set firm the fountains of what is under heaven, I was fitting things together with him. I was the one in whom he rejoiced; and daily I delighted in his presence, when he delighted, having completed the world, and he delighted in the sons of men.” Who would not rather commend her as the fountain and origin of all things, the true matter of matters, not subject in place, not different in state, not restless in motion, not shapeless in form, but inborn, his own, ordered and comely, such as God could have needed, needing what was his own rather than what was another's? Indeed, as soon as he perceived her to be necessary for the works of the world, he at once creates and begets her in himself: “The Lord,” she says, “created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the ages he founded me, before he made the earth, before the mountains were set in place; and before all the hills he begot me, and I was begotten before the abyss.” Let Hermogenes acknowledge, then, that the Wisdom of God too is proclaimed born and created for this very reason, that we should not believe anything to be unborn and uncreated except God alone. For if (that which was) within the Lord, which was from him and in him, was not without beginning, namely his Wisdom, born and created from the moment when she began to be stirred in God's mind for arranging the works of the world, much less does it allow that anything was without beginning which was outside the Lord. And if this same Wisdom is the Word of God … Wisdom in thought, without whom nothing was made, just as nothing was arranged without Wisdom, how can it be that anything besides the Father was older than the Son of God, the only-begotten and firstborn Word, and in this way certainly nobler, not to say stronger, as unborn, and more powerful, as unmade? For that which needed no author in order to exist will be far loftier than that which had an author in order to exist. So too, if what is evil is (that which) is unborn, … the Word of God (“My heart,” he says, “has uttered a most good Word”), I do not know whether evil can be derived from good, the stronger from the weak, as the unborn from the born. So on this score too Hermogenes puts matter before God, by putting it before the Son; for the Son is the Word, and the Word is God, and “I and the Father are one”; unless the Son is to bear calmly that matter be set above himself, since it is made equal to the Father.

But I shall also appeal to the original document of Moses, from which the other side too tries, against the grain, to prop up its presumptions, so as not to seem to take its instruction from anywhere other than where it ought. So it has seized its opportunities from certain words, as heretics are generally in the habit of twisting everything simple. For they want even the “beginning” itself, in which God made heaven and earth, to have been something substantial and bodily, which could be interpreted as matter. We, however, claiming for each word its proper sense, say that “beginning” means the start, and that it is properly applied to things that begin to be made. For nothing that is to be made is without a start, and its beginning is precisely the moment when it begins to be made. So “beginning” or “start” is a word for commencing, not the name of some substance. Now then, if heaven and earth are the principal works of God, which God made before all things, so as to be properly the beginning of his works, since they were made first, Scripture rightly opens thus: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” just as it would have said, “At the end God made heaven and earth,” if he had made them after everything else. Or if “beginning” is some substance, “end” too will be some matter. Of course something substantial may be the beginning of another thing that is to come from it, as clay is the beginning of a pot, or seed the beginning of a plant. But when we use the word “beginning” in that way, as a term of origin and not of order, we add specific mention of the very thing that we mean to be the beginning of the other. Otherwise, if we put it this way, for example, “In the beginning the potter made a basin or a jar,” “beginning” will no longer signify matter (for I have not named the clay as the beginning) but the order of the work, since the potter made the basin and the jar first before the rest, and was going to make the rest afterwards. I can also interpret “beginning” another way, yet not beside the point; for in Greek too the word for beginning, which is archē, admits not only the sense of order but also that of power and principality, which is why they call princes and magistrates archontes. So in this sense also “beginning” will be taken as principality and power. For in principality and power God made heaven and earth.

But even supposing the Greek word means nothing other than “beginning,” and “beginning” allows nothing other than “start,” we have also to recognize as a start her who says: “The Lord created me (as the start of his ways) for his works.” For if all things were made through the Wisdom of God, then God, when he made heaven and earth in the beginning, that is, in the start, made them in his Wisdom. Indeed, if “beginning” signified matter, Scripture would not have taught us thus, “In the beginning God made,” but “From the beginning”; for he would have made not in matter but from matter. But of Wisdom it could be said, “In the beginning.” For it was in Wisdom that he first made, in whom, by thinking and arranging, he had already made; since, even if he had been going to make from matter, she was beforehand the start of his ways, because thinking and arranging is the first operation of Wisdom, which from thought lays out the way for the works. I also claim the authority of Scripture for myself from this: that while it shows both God who made and the things he made, it does not in the same way testify from what he made. For since in every making there are three principal things, who makes, what is made, and from what it is made, three names must be given in a proper account of a work: the person of the maker, the kind of thing made, and the form of the material. If the material is not stated, where both the works and the worker of the work are stated, it is plain that he worked from nothing. For the “from what” would be stated likewise, if he had worked from something. Finally, I shall bring in the gospel as a supplement to the old document; in it it ought all the more to have been shown that God made all things from some matter, since there even the one through whom he made all things is revealed. “In the beginning was the Word” (in which beginning, that is, God made heaven and earth) “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Since, then, here too are shown the maker, that is, God, and the things made, that is, all things, and the one through whom, that is, the Word, would not the order of the account have required it also to declare from what all things were made by God through the Word, if they had been made from something? So what did not exist, Scripture could not declare; and by not declaring it, it proved well enough that it did not exist, since it would have declared it if it had existed.

“Then,” you say, “if you prejudge that all things were made from nothing because it is not plainly stated that anything was made from pre-existing matter, beware lest the other side contend that all things were made from matter because it is likewise not openly signified that anything was made from nothing.” Some arguments can indeed easily be turned back, but they are not at once admitted on equal terms where the cases differ. For I say that, even if Scripture has not openly declared that all things were made from nothing, just as it has not declared that they were made from matter, there was not so great a need to signify openly that all things were made from nothing as there would have been if they had been made from matter. For what is made from nothing is, by the very fact that it is not shown to have been made from something, made plain as made from nothing; and it runs no risk of being thought made from something, since there is no showing from what it was made. But what is made from something, unless this very fact is openly declared, that it was made from something, by showing from what it was made, will run the risk, first, of seeming to have been made from nothing, since it is not stated from what it was made; and then, even if it is of such a kind that it cannot seem (not to have been made) from something, it will likewise run the risk of seeming to have been made from something far different from that from which it was made, so long as its source is not set out. So if God made all things from nothing, Scripture could have left out the statement that he made them from nothing; but it was bound by every means to declare that he made them from matter, (if, that is,) he had made them from matter; because the former was to be understood entirely even if it were not signified, whereas the latter would be in doubt unless it were signified.

And so the Holy Spirit has established this rule for his Scripture: when something is made from something, it reports both what is made and from what it is made. “Let the earth,” he says, “sprout the grass of the field, yielding seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness. And it was so. And the earth brought forth the grass of the field yielding seed according to its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness.” And again: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls, and birds flying above the earth across the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God made great sea monsters and every soul of creeping animals, which the waters brought forth according to their kind.” Likewise later: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind.” If, then, when God brings forth other things from things already made, he shows through the prophet and says what he brought forth from what (although we could have supposed that they were brought forth from anywhere at all, provided not from nothing, since some things had already been made from which they might seem to have been brought forth); if the Holy Spirit took such care over our instruction that we should know what came from what, would he not likewise have informed us about heaven and earth too, by signifying from what he had made them, if their origin had been from some matter, so that he should not seem to have made them from nothing, all the more since nothing had yet been made from which he might seem to have made them? So, just as for things brought forth from something he shows from what they were brought forth, so for things of which he does not show from what they were brought forth, he confirms that they were brought forth from nothing. So then: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” I adore the fullness of Scripture, in which it makes known to me both the maker and the things made; and in the gospel I find besides the minister and arbiter of the maker, the Word. But that all things were made from some underlying matter I have nowhere yet read. Let Hermogenes' workshop show that it is written. If it is not written, let him fear the woe appointed for those who add or take away.

But he (also) argues from what follows, since it is written: “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” For he reduces the name “earth” (to) matter, on the ground that the earth which was made came from it; and he refers “was” to this, as though it had always existed in the past, unborn and unmade; and “invisible and unformed”, because he wants matter to have been shapeless and confused and disordered. These opinions of his I shall refute one by one; but meanwhile I want to answer him thus. Let us suppose that matter is indicated by these phrases: does Scripture for all that signify, because it existed before all things and was of such a kind, that anything was also made from it? Yet it signifies nothing of the kind. Let matter have existed as much as it likes, or rather as much as Hermogenes likes: it could both have existed and yet God have made nothing from it, whether because it was not fitting for God to have needed anything, or certainly because he is not shown to have made anything from matter. “Then it would have existed for no purpose,” you say. Not wholly for no purpose. For even if the world was not made from it, a heresy was; and a heresy all the more shameless in that the heresy was not made from matter, but rather the heresy made matter itself.

I return now to the individual phrases in which he thought matter was signified, and first I shall raise a complaint about the names. Of these we read the one, “earth”, but do not find the other, “matter”. I ask, then, since the name “matter” does not appear in Scripture, how the designation “earth” can be fitted to it, a designation already known for another kind of substance. All the more should the name “matter” also have appeared, accompanied by the designation “earth”, so that I might know that “earth” is a name common to it and to matter, and might not claim the word for that substance alone to which it properly belongs (and) in which it is better known; or so that I might not be able … to share it with any other kind of thing, if I wished. For when the proper term does not appear for the thing to which a common term is ascribed, since it is not clear to what it is ascribed, it can be ascribed to anything else. So Hermogenes, even if he showed that matter was named, would have to prove that it was also called “earth”, in order to claim both terms for it.

He wants, then, two earths to be set forth in this Scripture: one which God made in the beginning, the other from which he made it, of which it was said, “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” Of course, if I ask which of the two ought to have given the name “earth” to the other, it will be said that this one, which was made, derived its name from that one from which it was made, since it is likelier that offspring are named from their origin than the origin from its offspring. If so, another question is wrapped up for us: whether it is fitting that this earth which God made derived its name from that from which he made it. For I hear from Hermogenes and the other matter-heretics that that earth was shapeless and invisible and unformed; but I see that this earth of ours has received from God form and visibility and cultivation, and so was made something other than that from which it was made. And having been made something other, it could not share a name with that from whose condition it had departed. If “earth” was the proper name of that matter, then this earth, which is not matter, having been made something other, does not admit the name “earth” either, since the name is foreign to it and alien to its state. “But matter once made, that is, this earth, shared its name with its origin, as it shared its kind.” Not so. For a pot, though made of clay, I shall no longer call clay but a pot; and electrum, though alloyed from gold and silver, I shall call neither silver nor gold but electrum. Whatever departs from the character of a thing departs likewise from its name, in the propriety of naming as in condition. How far this earth has passed from the state of that earth is plain from this alone: this earth received in Genesis the testimony of goodness, “And God saw that it was good,” while that one is reckoned by Hermogenes as the origin and cause of evils. Finally, if this is “earth” because that was, why is this not also “matter”, because that was? Indeed heaven too and all things, if they consist of matter, ought to have been called both “earth” and “matter”. Enough on the name “earth”, in which he wanted matter to be understood. Everyone knows it as the name of a single element, taught first by nature and then by Scripture; unless we are also to believe the Silenus who, on the authority of Theopompus, insisted to King Midas that there was another world. But the same writer also reports many gods.

But for us there is one God and one earth, which God made in the beginning. Scripture, beginning to run through its order, first declares that it was made, then sets out its quality; just as, having first declared that heaven was made, “In the beginning God made heaven,” it then adds its arrangement: “and he separated the water which was below the firmament from that which was above the firmament, and God called the firmament heaven,” that very heaven which he had made at the beginning. So too with man: “And God made man; in the image of God he made him”; then it relates how he made him: “And God formed man from the clay of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” And surely this is the fitting way to begin a narrative: first to announce, then to proceed; to name, then to describe. Otherwise it would be absurd if, of a thing of which it had made no previous mention, that is, matter, not even of its name, it suddenly proclaimed its form and condition, related what it was like before it showed that it existed, sketched its figure and hid its name. But how much more credible it is, on our view, that Scripture added the arrangement of the thing whose making and naming it had set down first! In short, how complete the sense is: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unformed,” the earth, that is, which God made, of which Scripture had only just spoken. For the very word “but” is set there like a clasp, a connecting particle, to link the narrative: “but the earth.” By this word it returns to the earth of which it had spoken above, and binds the sense together. Take “but” away, and the joint is loosened, so that “the earth was invisible and unformed” might then seem to be said of another earth.

But you, raising your eyebrows high, with a nod of the head and a finger to match, and as it were tossing them back, say: “Was”, as though it had always existed, that is, unborn and unmade, and must therefore be believed to be matter. But I, without any flourish of delivery, shall simply answer that “was” can be said of anything, even of what has been made, what has been born, what once did not exist, and what is not matter. For everything that has being, from wherever it has it, whether with a beginning or without one, will by the very fact that it is also be said to have been. The first form of the verb serves for definition; its inflection runs on into narrative. “Is” is the head of a definition; “was” makes a narrative. These are the quibbles and subtleties of heretics, twisting the simplicity of common words into a question. A great question indeed, whether the earth that was made “was”! What must certainly be discussed is whether being invisible and unformed belongs to the earth that was made or to that from which it was made, so that the “was” belongs to the same thing as what it was.

Yet we shall prove not only that this condition belonged to this earth, but also that it did not belong to that other. For if bare matter lay before God, with no element obstructing it, since there was as yet nothing besides itself and God, it certainly could not have been invisible. For even if he wants darkness to have been in the substance of matter (a point we shall have to answer in its place), darkness is visible even to a human being (for the very fact that it is darkness is seen), much more to God. And certainly, if it were invisible, its quality could in no way be known. How then did Hermogenes discover that it was shapeless and confused and restless, when as invisible it lay hidden? Or if this was revealed by God, he must prove it. So too I demand whether it could be called unformed. For certainly what is unformed is imperfect. Certainly nothing can be imperfect except what has been made; for what has been made incompletely (is) imperfect. “Certainly,” you say. Then matter, which had not been made at all, could not be imperfect; and what was not imperfect was not unformed either. Having no beginning, since it was not made, it also lacked a rudimentary state; for being rudimentary is an accident of a beginning. But the earth, which was made, deserved to be called unformed too. For as soon as it was made, it held the place of the imperfect, before its perfection,

since God brought all his works to completion by first, as it were, staking out the world with raw elements and then, as it were, dedicating it once adorned. For he did not at once fill the light with the splendour of the sun, nor at once temper the darkness with the comfort of the moon, nor at once mark the heaven with constellations and stars, nor at once people the seas with monsters, nor at once endow the earth itself with varied fruitfulness; but first he gave it being, then he filled it so that it should not exist in vain. For so Isaiah too says: “He did not make it in vain, but to be inhabited.” So after it was made, destined also to be perfected, it was meanwhile invisible and unformed: unformed in this very respect, that it was invisible, as not yet perfected to sight, and also as not yet furnished with the rest; and invisible, as still covered by the waters, as by a protective wrapping of generative moisture, the form in which our flesh too, its kin, is brought forth. For David too sings thus: “The earth is the Lord's and its fullness, the world and all who dwell in it; he founded it upon the seas and prepared it upon the rivers.” For when the waters were separated into a deeper hollow, the dry land, which until then had been covered by the waters, stood out more clearly. Thereafter it is made visible too, as God says: “Let the water be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land be seen.” (“Let it be seen,”) he says, not “let it be made.” For it had already been made, but, invisible until then, it waited to be seen. “Dry”, because it was to become so by the separation of the moisture; but already “earth”: “And God called the dry land earth,” not matter. So too, having afterwards attained perfection, it ceases to be regarded as unformed, when God pronounces: “Let the earth sprout the grass of the field, yielding seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness.” Likewise: “Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, and four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind.” So divine Scripture completed its order. To the earth it had first called invisible and unformed it gave both visibility and perfection. And matter was not invisible and unformed in any other sense; therefore matter (too) will afterwards be visible and perfect. So I want to see matter, for it has been made visible. I want also to recognize it perfected, so that from it I may pluck the grass of the field, and from it the fruit-bearing tree, and from it make animals serve my use. But matter is nowhere, whereas the earth, this earth, is before my eyes. This I see, this I enjoy, ever since it ceased to be invisible and unformed. Of it Isaiah speaks most plainly: “Thus says the Lord who made heaven, he is God, who showed the earth and made it.” Certainly he showed the same earth that he made. How did he show it? By saying, of course, “Let the dry land be seen.” Why does he command it to be seen, unless it was not seen before, so that in this way too he might have made it not in vain, by making it visible and so habitable? And so it is proved to us at every point that this earth which we inhabit is the same that was both made and shown by God, and that no other earth was unformed and invisible than that which was both made and shown. And so “But the earth was invisible and unformed” refers to the earth which God prepared together with heaven.

So too what follows will seem to support Hermogenes' conjecture: “And darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters,” as though these too pointed to that lumpy mass of confused substance. Yet by defining one by one darkness, abyss, Spirit of God, and waters, so divided an account of definite and distinct elements does not allow anything to be thought confused, or uncertain through confusion. More than that: when it assigns them their proper places, darkness over the abyss, the Spirit over the waters, it denied any confusion of the substances, and by showing their arrangement it showed their distinction as well. It is utterly absurd, in short, that matter, which is presented as shapeless, should be asserted to be shapeless on the strength of the names of so many forms, without stating what that body of confusion is, which must surely be believed to be single, if it is shapeless. For what is shapeless is uniform; and what is shapeless through being confused out of variety must necessarily have a single appearance, since it lacks a distinct appearance so long as out of many it has (only) one. Besides, either matter had in itself these forms from whose names it was to be understood, I mean darkness and abyss and spirit and waters, or it did not. If it had them, how is it presented as having no forms? If it did not, (from what) is it recognized?

But this too will surely be seized on: that Scripture signified only of heaven and of this earth that God made them in the beginning, but said nothing of the kind about the forms named above, and that therefore these, not being signified as made, belong to unmade matter. We shall answer this scruple as well. Divine Scripture would have said enough if it commended the sum totals of things as made by God, heaven and earth, which of course had their own furnishings, which could be understood within those totals. Now the furnishings of heaven and earth at that first time were darkness and abyss, spirit and waters. For the abyss and the darkness lay under the earth: if the abyss was below the earth, and darkness over the abyss, then without doubt both darkness and abyss were below the earth. But the spirit and the waters lay beneath heaven: if the waters that had covered the earth were over the earth, and the spirit over the waters, then spirit and waters alike were over the earth; and what is over the earth is surely below heaven. And as the earth lay upon the abyss and darkness, so heaven brooded over the spirit and the waters and embraced them. So it is nothing new that only what contains should be named, as the whole, and that in it what is contained should also be understood, as the part. See, if I say: “The city built a theatre and a circus; but the stage was of such and such a kind, and statues stood over the channel, and an obelisk towered over all”; because I have not declared that these features too were made by the city, will they not have been made by it together with the circus and the theatre? Did I not leave out that these features too were made precisely because they were part of the things I had said were made, and could be understood to be in the things of which they were part? But let this example go, as merely human; I shall seize another from the authority of Scripture itself. “God,” it says, “made man from the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Here it names his face, yet it did not say that even this was made by God; and it speaks later of skin and bones and flesh and eyes and sweat and blood, which it did not signify were made by God at that time. What will Hermogenes answer? Will the members of man also belong to matter, because they are not reported by name as made? Or are they too counted in the making of man? In the same way, the abyss and darkness, spirit and waters were members of heaven and earth. For in bodies the members were made; in bodies the members are also named. There is no element that is not a member of the element by which it is contained; and all elements are contained by heaven or by earth.

This is my answer as regards the present Scripture, insofar as it seems here to commend the making only of the bodies of heaven and earth. It knew there would be those who would readily recognize the members within the bodies, and so it used brevity; yet it also foresaw the dull and the insidious, who, disregarding the tacit understanding, would demand for the members themselves as well a word signifying their making. So, because of these people too, it teaches in other places that the individual forms were made. You have Wisdom saying, “I was begotten before the abyss,” so that you may believe that the abyss too was begotten, that is, made, since we too “make” sons, though we beget them. It makes no difference whether the abyss was made or born, provided a beginning is granted to it, which would not be granted if it were of matter. Of darkness the Lord himself says through Isaiah: “I who built the light and made the darkness.” Of the spirit likewise Amos: “who strengthens the thunder and creates the spirit, and announces to men his Christ,” showing that the spirit was created which was reckoned together with the created earth, which was borne over the waters, the balancer and breather and animator of the universe; not, as some think, that God himself is signified by “spirit” because God is spirit; for the waters would not have been able to bear their Lord. But he means that spirit of which the winds too consist, as he says through Isaiah: “For the spirit went forth from me, and every breath I made.” Likewise of the waters the same Wisdom says: “And when he set firm the fountains of what is under heaven, I was keeping measure with him.” But when we prove that these forms too were made by God, even though in Genesis they are only named, without mention of their making, the other side will perhaps answer that they were indeed made, but from matter; so that Moses' wording, “And darkness was over the abyss and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters,” speaks of matter (itself), while the other Scriptures show here and there the forms that were made from matter. So then, just as earth came from earth, did the abyss likewise consist of abyss, darkness of darkness, and spirit and waters of spirit and waters? But, as we said above, matter could not have been shapeless (if) it had forms; … so that other things should also be made from them; unless they were not other things but the same things made from themselves, since things given the same names cannot have been different; in which case the divine work might now seem idle, if he made things that already existed, when it would be nobler (to make) things that did not exist. So, to conclude: either Moses signified matter when he wrote, “And darkness was over the abyss and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters”; but then, since these forms are afterwards shown elsewhere to have been made by God, they ought equally to have been shown to be made from the matter which Moses had set down first; or, if Moses signified these forms and not matter, I ask where matter has been shown.

But since Hermogenes found matter among his own paints (for he could not have found it among the Scriptures of God), it is enough that all things are agreed to have been made by God and are not agreed to have been made from matter. Even if matter had existed, we would have believed that it too was made by God, since we would hold to our rule that nothing is unborn except God. Up to this point there is room for discussion, until the production of matter, when challenged to appeal to the Scriptures, fails. The sum is settled: I find nothing made except from nothing, because what I find made I know did not exist before. Even when something is made from something, it takes its rating from a thing that was made, as from the earth come grass and fruit and cattle and the form of man himself, and from the waters the swimming and flying creatures. Such origins I may call “matters”, but they too were made by God.

Besides, that final dispensation of God, which will bring all things back to nothing, will persuade us that everything came into being from nothing. For heaven too will be rolled up like a book; indeed it will be nowhere, together with the earth itself, with which it was made in the beginning. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” he says; “the first heaven and the first earth have passed away, and no place was found for them,” because, evidently, what ends also loses its place. So David too: “The heavens are the works of your hands, and they will perish.” And though he will change them like a covering, and they will be changed, to be changed is to perish from their former state, which they lose in being changed. And the stars will fall from heaven, as a fig tree shaken by a strong wind loses its unripe figs; and the mountains will melt like wax before the face of the Lord, when he rises, that is, to shatter the earth. “And I will dry up the pools,” he says, “and they will seek water and not find it”; and the sea too will be no more. Although someone may think all these things are to be interpreted otherwise, he will not be able to take away the truth of their coming to pass just as they are written. For if there are figures here, they must be made from things that exist, not from empty ones, because nothing can furnish a likeness from itself unless it is itself something that can furnish such a likeness. I return, then, to the case, and define that all things brought forth from nothing (are) to come to nothing. For from what is eternal, that is, from matter, God would have made nothing perishable. Nor would he have created lesser things from greater, he to whom it is more fitting to produce greater things from lesser, that is, the eternal from the perishable. This he also promises to our flesh; and he has willed to place in us already this pledge of his power and might, so that we may believe that he also raised up the universe from nothing, as though from death, since it did not exist, in order that it might exist.

As to the further condition of matter, although it need not be discussed (for the first thing was to establish that it exists), nevertheless, as though that had been established, the sequence must be followed, so that it may be all the more established that matter does not exist, since even its further condition does not hold together, and at the same time so that Hermogenes may recognize his own contradictions. “At first sight,” he says, “matter seems to us to be bodily; but when examined by right reason it is found to be neither bodily nor incorporeal.” What is this right reason that reports nothing right, that is, nothing certain? For unless I am mistaken, every thing must be either bodily or incorporeal, granting for the moment that something incorporeal exists, at least among substances, since substance itself is the body of each thing. Certainly after bodily and incorporeal there is no third. Come now, let there be a third, which that right reason of Hermogenes has discovered, which makes matter neither bodily nor incorporeal: where is it? what is it like? what is it called? how is it described? how is it understood? (Or) has reason reported only this, that matter is neither bodily nor incorporeal?

But see, he puts forward the contrary, or perhaps another reason occurred to him, reporting matter to be partly bodily and partly incorporeal. So then, lest it be neither, must matter be reckoned both? It will be bodily and incorporeal, against the report of that right reason, which plainly gives no reason for its opinion, as it gives none for anything else. For he wants the bodily element of matter to be that from which bodies are produced, and the incorporeal element its disordered motion. “For if,” he says, “it were only body, nothing incorporeal would appear in it, that is, motion; but if it had been wholly incorporeal, no body would be made from it.” How much straighter this reason is! Except that, Hermogenes, if you draw lines as straight as you reason, no painter is duller than you. For who grants you to count motion as a second part of the substance, when it is not a substantial thing, since it is not bodily either, but an accident, if anything, of substance and body? Like action and impulse, like slipping and falling, so also motion. For whether a thing is moved (by another or) by itself, its motion is its action, certainly not a part of its substance, as you make motion the incorporeal substance of matter. In short, all things are moved either by themselves, like living creatures, or by others, like lifeless things; yet we shall not call a man or a stone both bodily and incorporeal because it has both body and motion, but we give to all one form, of bodiliness alone, which is the property of substance. If any incorporeal things belong to them, their actions or passions or functions or desires, we count them not as portions. How then does he come to assign a portion of matter to motion, which belongs not to substance but to the condition of substance? What if you had chosen to present matter as motionless? Would immobility seem a second part of its form? No more, then, is motion. But of motion there will be room to speak elsewhere too.

For now I see you returning to that reason which usually reports nothing certain to you. For just as you bring in matter as neither bodily nor incorporeal, so you allege it to be neither good nor evil, and you argue further in the same way: “For if it were good,” you say, “being what it always was, it would not desire God's ordering; if it were evil by nature, it would not have admitted a change for the better, nor would God have applied any of his ordering to it, since it was of such a nature; for he would have laboured in vain.” These are your words, which you ought to have remembered elsewhere too, so as not to put forward anything contrary to them. But since we have already discussed the ambiguity of evil and good in matter, I shall now answer only your present proposition and argument. I shall not say here too that you ought to have pronounced something certain, whether good or evil or some third thing, but that here you did not even keep to what you chose to pronounce. For you rescind what you pronounced, “neither good nor evil”: when you say, “If it were good, it would not desire to be ordered by God,” you suggest that it is evil; and when you add, “If it were evil by nature, it would not admit a change for the better,” you hint that it is good. And so you have made akin both to good and to evil the matter which you pronounced neither good nor evil. And to blunt the argument by which you thought you would confirm your proposition, I set this too against it: if matter had always been good, why would it not have desired to be reformed for the better? What is good does not desire progress only if it either does not wish for it or cannot receive it, so as to become better from good. Likewise, if it had been evil by nature, why could it not have been converted by God, as by one more powerful, by one able to convert even the nature of stones into sons of Abraham? Surely, then, you not only compare God with matter but even subject him to it, if by him the nature of matter could not be overcome and tamed (into) something better. And you will have to deny that elsewhere you confessed to be evil by nature the matter that here you will not have so.

On the position of matter I raise this point, which will also expose your perversity about its extent. You make matter lie beneath God, and so you give it a place, one below God. Matter, then, is in a place. If in a place, then within a place; if within a place, then bounded by the place within which it is; if bounded, it has an outermost line, and you, being a painter by trade, recognize that every thing that has an outermost line has an end. Matter, then, will not be infinite, since, being in a place, it is bounded by the place, and being bounded by it, it receives from it an outermost line. But you make it infinite, saying: “But it is infinite in that it always exists.” And if any of your disciples wants to argue that you mean it to be understood as infinite in time, not in the measure of its body, yet what follows shows that you mean it to be infinite bodily, as bodily immeasurable and uncircumscribed. “Hence,” you say, “it is not wrought as a whole, but parts of it.” So it is infinite in body, not in time, and you are convicted of making it infinite in body, when, by ascribing a place to it, you shut it within a place and the outermost line of that place. Yet why God did not form the whole of it I do not know, unless because he was either weak or envious. So I look for the remainder of it, which was not formed, so that I may learn what the whole was like. For God ought to have displayed it openly, as a specimen of antiquity, to the glory of his work.

Let matter now be definable, as seems more correct to you, through its changes and transformations; let it also be comprehensible, “as being wrought,” you say, “by God”; and divisible, since it is also convertible and changeable (“for its changes,” you say, “show it to be divisible”). Here too you have fallen away from the lines you drew concerning the person of God, when you laid down that God did not make matter from himself because he who is eternal and abides for ever, and is therefore immutable and indivisible, could not come into parts. If matter is rated by the same eternity, having neither beginning nor end, by the same reasoning it cannot undergo division and change, any more than God can. Placed in partnership with him in eternity, it must share with him the powers and laws and conditions of eternity. Likewise, when you say, “But its parts have all things together from all, so that the whole may be discerned from the parts,” surely you want us to understand those parts which were brought forth from it, which are seen by us today. How then do they have all things from all, from the original things, that is, when the things seen today are otherwise than the original ones were?

You say that matter was reformed for the better, from (the) worse, surely; and do you want the better to reproduce the pattern of the worse? It was a confused thing, but now it is ordered; and do you want the unordered to be displayed by the ordered? Nothing is a mirror of another thing, that is, of a thing not its equal; no one at the barber's has seen himself in the glass as a mule instead of a man; unless someone thinks that in this construction of the world, now arranged and trimmed, the shapeless and unkempt matter is reflected. What is shapeless in the world today, what beauty was once seen in matter, that the world should be a mirror of matter? Since among the Greeks the world is named from ornament, how does it show the image of unadorned matter, so that you can say its whole is known from its parts? Certainly to that whole will belong also the part which did not come to be formed; and above you stated that it was not wrought as a whole. So this raw, confused, and disordered matter cannot be recognized in things polished, distinct, and ordered, which it is not even fitting to call parts of matter, since, divided from it by change, they have withdrawn from its form.

I return to motion, to show you slippery everywhere. The motion of matter was disordered and confused and turbulent; for so you set against it the likeness of a pot boiling over on every side. And how is a different motion affirmed by you elsewhere? For when you want to present matter as neither good nor evil, you say: “So the underlying matter, having a motion of equal balance, did not turn much either toward good or toward evil.” If of equal balance, then the (motion) is no longer turbulent nor pot-like, but ordered and tempered: a motion that, moved by its own choice between good and evil, yet leaning and rushing toward neither side, was borne with balanced impulse, keeping, as they say, to the middle of the beam. This is not restlessness, this is not turbulence and passivity, but the moderation and modesty and justice of a movement inclining (to) neither side. Plainly, if it inclined this way and that, or more to one side, then it would deserve to be branded as awkward and unequal and turbulent. Further, if the motion was inclined neither to good nor to evil, it was surely moved between good and evil; so that from this too matter appears to be bounded, since its motion, inclined neither to evil nor to good, was, by turning toward neither, placed between both and measured by both, and on this score bounded by both. But you also put good and evil in a place, when you say the motion of matter was inclined toward neither of them. For matter, which was in a place, by inclining neither this way nor that, did not incline toward the places in which good and evil were. And by giving a place to good and evil you make them bodily by making them local, since what has a place must first be bodily. In short, incorporeal things have no place of their own, except in a body, when they befall a body. … So you are wrong if you do (not) want good and evil to be substances. For you make those things substances to which you assign places; and you assign places when you hold the motion of matter suspended between the two regions.

You have scattered everything, so that its self-contradiction might not shine out at close quarters. But I shall collect the pieces one by one and compare them. You assert that the motion of matter is disordered, and you add that it pursues shapelessness; then elsewhere, that it desires to be ordered by God. Does what pursues shapelessness desire formation? Or does what desires formation pursue shapelessness? You do not want to seem to make God equal to matter, and yet you add that it has communion with God: “For it is impossible,” you say, “that it should be adorned by him if it had nothing in common with God.” Yet if it had something in common with God, it did not need to be adorned by him, being, of course, a part of God through that communion; or else God too could be adorned by matter, since he too had something in common with it. In this too you subject God to necessity, if there was something in matter on account of which he formed it. And what you make common to them is that they are moved by themselves and are always moved. What less do you ascribe to matter than to God? This will be the whole partnership in divinity: freedom and eternity of motion. “But God moves in an ordered way, matter in a disordered way.” Yet (both) are equally divine, with motion equally free and eternal. Indeed you give more to matter, which was permitted to move in a way that God was not.

About motion I would note this too. Following the likeness of the pot, you say: “Such was the motion of matter before it was arranged: thick, restless, ungraspable through the excess of its struggle.” Then you add: “But it stood still for God's ordering, and had its disordered motion graspable because of the slowness of the disordered motion.” Above you ascribe struggle to the motion, here slowness. Now hear how often you fall over the nature of matter. Above you say: “But if matter were evil by nature, it would not have admitted a change for the better, nor would God have fitted any ordering to it; for he would have laboured in vain.” You laid down, then, two propositions: that matter was not evil by nature, and that its nature could not have been converted by God. Forgetting these, you afterwards bring in: “But when it received ordering from God and was adorned, it ceased from its nature.” If it was reformed into good, it was certainly reformed from evil; and if through God's ordering it ceased from its nature, it ceased from a nature of evil. Therefore it was both evil by nature before its ordering, and could depart from its nature after its reformation.

But it follows that I should also show how you make God work. Plainly you part company with the philosophers, but with the prophets as well. For the Stoics want God to have run through matter as honey runs through the combs. But you say: “He makes the world not by passing through matter, but only by appearing and drawing near to it, as beauty does something merely by appearing, and the magnet stone merely by drawing near.” What likeness is there between God fashioning the world and beauty wounding the mind, or a magnet attracting iron? For even if God appeared to matter, he did not wound it as beauty wounds the mind; even if he drew near, he did not cling to it as the magnet to iron. Suppose now that your examples fit: surely, if God made the world from matter by appearing and drawing near to it, he made it from the moment he appeared and drew near. So before, when he had not yet made it, he had neither appeared to it nor drawn near to it. And who can believe that God had not appeared to matter, even as a thing consubstantial with himself through eternity? That he was far from it, he whom we believe to be everywhere and to appear everywhere, to whom even lifeless and incorporeal things sing praises in Daniel? How great was this space, in which God was so far from matter that he neither appeared to it nor drew near before the building of the world? I suppose he travelled to it from afar when he first chose to appear and draw near to it.

But the prophets and apostles do not teach that the world was made by God in this way, by his merely appearing and drawing near to matter, for they named no matter at all; but that first Wisdom was created, the beginning of his ways for his works, and then the Word was brought forth, through whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made. Indeed, “By his Word the heavens were made firm, and by his Spirit all their powers.” This is God's right hand, and both his hands, through which he worked and built: “For the heavens,” it says, “are the works of your hands”; with them he also measured: “he measured … the heaven, and the earth with his span.” Do not flatter God by wanting him to have brought forth so many and such great substances by mere sight and mere approach, and not to have established them by his own powers. For so Jeremiah too commends him: “God, making the earth in his strength, preparing the world in his understanding; and by his mind he stretched out the heavens.” These are his powers, by exerting which he founded this whole. His glory is the greater if he laboured. At last on the seventh day he rested from his works: both after his own fashion. Or if he made this world merely by appearing and drawing near, did he, once he had made it, cease again to appear, and stop drawing near? On the contrary, from the time the world was made God began all the more to appear and to be met everywhere. You see, then, how all things consist by the working of God: by the strength of him who makes the earth, the understanding of him who prepares the world, and the mind of him who stretches out heaven; of one not merely appearing or drawing near, but applying such great exertions of his mind, wisdom, strength, mind, Word, spirit, power, which would not have been necessary for him if he had accomplished it merely by appearing and drawing near. These things, not some sensible properties of matter but his own, are his invisible things, which, according to the apostle, are seen from the creation of the world through the things he made. For “who has known the mind of the Lord?” Of which he exclaims: “O the depth of the riches and of the wisdom! How unsearchable are his judgements and inscrutable his ways!” What do these words savour of more than that all things were made from nothing? These things cannot be found or searched out except by God alone; otherwise, if they were from matter, they would be searchable. So, to the extent that it has been established that no matter existed (from this too, that it could not have been such as it is presented), to that extent it is proved that all things were made by God from nothing. … Except that Hermogenes, in describing a condition of matter just like his own, disordered, confused, turbulent, of uncertain, headlong, and feverish motion, has, while displaying a specimen of his art, painted (his own) portrait.