Against Marcion 2.6

But since it is already understood from this that we are building up man's free power of choice for this purpose — that what befell him should be laid at his own door and not at God's — lest you too object at this point that he ought not to have been so made, if the freedom and power of choice were going to prove fatal, I shall first defend this too: that he ought to have been so made; so that I may the more strongly commend both that he was so made and that he was made in a manner worthy of God, by showing the higher cause that led to his being made so. God's goodness and his reason will support this arrangement too, being in agreement in everything with our God. For neither is reason reason without goodness, nor goodness goodness without reason — except perhaps with Marcion's god, who is irrationally good, as we have shown. It was necessary that God be known: this surely is good and rational. It was necessary that there be something worthy to know God: what could be provided so worthy as the image and likeness of God? This too is without doubt good and rational. It was necessary, then, that the image and likeness of God be established with free choice and power of its own, so that this very thing — the freedom and power of choice — might be reckoned the image and likeness of God in it. To this end that substance was fitted to man which would be of this state: the breath of God, which is surely free and in its own power. And besides, how could it be that man, possessing the whole world, should not reign first of all in the possession of his own mind — lord of others, slave of himself?

You may recognize, then, God's goodness from his condescension and his reason from his arrangement. Let goodness alone now be credited with bestowing so much on man — that is, freedom of choice; let reason claim for itself the other part — the manner of establishing it. For God alone is good by nature. For he who has what he is without beginning has it not by being established but by nature. But man, who exists wholly by being established and who has a beginning, received with his beginning the form in which he was to exist; and so he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, not having it as his own to be good, since he was disposed to good not by nature but by establishment, according to the good one who established him, namely the maker of good things. So that man might then have the good as his own, emancipated to him by God, and that the good might become man's property and in a way his nature, there was assigned to him at his establishment — as a kind of scale-holder at the emancipation of the good from God — freedom and power of choice. This would cause the good to be performed by man spontaneously, as now his own, since the reason of goodness also required this: that it be exercised voluntarily, that is, out of freedom of choice, not favouring its establishment, not serving it. So man would at last be established as good if he were found good according to his establishment indeed, but now by his own will, as though by a property of nature; and likewise so that against evil too — for God certainly foresaw that as well — man might hold out the stronger, being free and in his own power. For if he lacked this right, so that he did even good not by will but by necessity, he would also be open to seizure by evil through the weakness of servitude, a slave to evil just as to good. So complete freedom of choice in both directions was granted him, so that as master of himself he might steadily meet both, freely keeping the good and freely avoiding the evil; since in any case it was necessary that man, placed under God's judgment, should make that judgment just by the merits of his own choice — a free choice, that is. Otherwise neither the reward of good nor that of evil could justly be weighed out to one who had been found good or evil by necessity and not by will. For this purpose the law too was established, not excluding but proving freedom, through obedience freely rendered or transgression freely committed. So freedom of choice lay open to either outcome.

If, then, both God's goodness and his reason are found in the freedom of choice granted to man, we must not set aside the first definition of goodness and reason, which must be established before any discussion, and prejudge from what happened afterwards that God ought not to have made man so, because things turned out otherwise than befitted God. Rather, having discerned that he ought to have made him so, we must examine the rest with that discernment kept intact. It is easy, however, for those who stumble at once at man's fall, before they have looked into his condition, to charge the author with what happened, because they have not examined the author's reason either. In short, God's goodness, observed from the beginning of his works, will persuade us that no evil could have come from God; and man's freedom, when reconsidered, will show that it is itself guilty of what it committed.