Against Hermogenes

Contents

Reading pages: 1–15 · 16–30 · 31–45

1. 1Tertullian introduces Hermogenes, a painter and recent heretic, whose chief error, borrowed from the philosophers, is that matter is eternal alongside God and that God made the world from it rather than from nothing.
2. 2Hermogenes argues that God could not have made the world from himself, since God is indivisible and unchangeable, nor from nothing, since the evil in the world would then come from God; so it must have come from pre-existing matter.
3. 3Answering the argument that God was always Lord and so always had matter to rule, Tertullian distinguishes God, the name of his substance, from Lord, the name of his power, which Scripture gives him only after creation.
4. 4Tertullian argues that eternity, having no beginning and no end, is the mark proper to God alone, so to make matter eternal is to make it a second god.
5. 5Against the reply that matter shares only some of God's attributes, Tertullian argues that whatever is God's belongs to God alone, and that believers become “gods” only by God's grace, not by any property of their own.
6. 6Tertullian argues that Hermogenes makes God a liar, since God's claims to be alone, first, and unrivalled all apply equally to eternal matter, which is thus set on a level with God.
7. 7Tertullian argues that eternity admits no degrees, so eternal matter cannot be inferior to God, and he imagines matter itself claiming equality with God.
8. 8Tertullian argues that if God needed matter to make the world, matter becomes God's superior and benefactor, and God is no longer almighty, a doctrine known only to Hermogenes and the philosophers.
9. 9If God used eternal matter, he used it either as its lord (and so he permitted its evil), or by leave, or by force, all of which are unworthy of God.
10. 10Positing eternal matter does not clear God of evil: a God who tolerated evil matter for ages and worked with it is either weak or evil.
11. 11If matter is eternal it cannot be evil, and if evil were eternal it could never be overcome; but Scripture promises an end of evil, so evil has a beginning.
12. 12If matter is evil by an eternal nature it cannot change; yet God made good things from it, so on Hermogenes' own principle his theory contradicts itself.
13. 13If evil matter produced good things, it must have held good within it; then good and evil alike belong to matter, and God is merely its servant.
14. 14Making things from matter would make God a slave to necessity; it is worthier of God to create freely from nothing, and even on Hermogenes' terms the good must come from nothing.
15. 15Whether good comes from matter, from God, or from nothing, Hermogenes' scheme breaks down, and God still appears as the author of the evils he made from matter.
16. 16Whether good and evil are assigned to God, to matter, or to both, matter fails to clear God of evil; so the reason for positing it falls, and creation from nothing remains.
17. 17The one God is one because he is alone; as Scripture says, no one counselled him, so nothing co-existed with him from which he made the world.
18. 18If God needed any material, he had his own Wisdom, born within him before creation; but Hermogenes, by making matter unborn, ranks it above the Son, God's Word.
19. 19The “beginning” of Genesis 1:1 is not a substance from which God made the world but the start of his works, or, in the Greek sense of archē, his sovereign power.
20. 20God made heaven and earth “in the beginning”, that is, in his Wisdom; since neither Genesis nor John's Gospel names any material, he made them from nothing.
21. 21Scripture had no need to say that the world was made from nothing, but it would have had to say so if it had been made from matter.
22. 22Where Genesis makes things from other things it says so; since it names no material for heaven and earth, they were made from nothing, and adding to Scripture brings a woe.
23. 23Even if Genesis 1:2 described matter, it never says God made anything from it; the only thing produced from Hermogenes' matter is his heresy.
24. 24Scripture never uses the word “matter”, so Hermogenes cannot claim that its word “earth” means matter.
25. 25Hermogenes' “two earths” fail: what is made from a material takes a new name, as a pot is not called clay, and this good earth cannot share a name with evil matter.
26. 26Genesis first names a thing and then describes it, so “but the earth was invisible” describes the earth God had just made, not a hidden pre-existing matter.
27. 27The word “was” in Genesis 1:2 proves nothing about eternity; it can be said of anything that exists, created or not.
28. 28Matter could not be “invisible” to God, nor “unformed”, since only something made can be unfinished; these words fit the newly made earth.
29. 29God made the earth first and furnished it afterwards; covered by water it was “invisible” until he said “let the dry land be seen”, so the unformed earth of Genesis is our earth, not matter.
30. 30Genesis names darkness, abyss, spirit, and waters distinctly and in their places, which is the opposite of a confused, shapeless mass of matter.
31. 31Naming heaven and earth as made includes their parts (darkness, abyss, spirit, waters), just as the making of man includes his limbs.
32. 32Other Scriptures state that the abyss, darkness, spirit, and waters of Genesis 1:2 were made by God; so either they are not matter, or matter is shown nowhere.
33. 33Hermogenes found his matter in his own imagination, not in Scripture; everything was made from nothing, and even the materials used later were themselves made by God.
34. 34Scripture foretells that heaven and earth will pass away; what ends in nothing began from nothing, and God's promise to raise our flesh shows he makes the greater from the lesser.
35. 35Hermogenes' “right reason” says matter is neither bodily nor incorporeal, but there is no third option and he cannot say what it is.
36. 36Hermogenes makes matter's motion its incorporeal part, but motion is an accident of a body, not a part of its substance.
37. 37Calling matter “neither good nor evil” while arguing both ways contradicts itself; and if God could not change evil matter, Hermogenes subjects God to it.
38. 38If matter lies “beneath” God it is in a place and so bounded, not infinite; and if only part of it was formed, where is the rest?
39. 39If matter is eternal like God, it can no more be divided and changed than God can; and today's ordered world cannot show us what the original matter was like.
40. 40The ordered world cannot mirror a shapeless matter; the Greek word for world, kosmos, means “ornament”.
41. 41Hermogenes calls matter's motion both a turbulent boiling and a balanced poise between good and evil; and by placing good and evil on either side he makes them bodily substances.
42. 42Hermogenes says matter both pursues shapelessness and desires form, and that it shares with God a free and eternal motion, which makes matter divine.
43. 43Hermogenes contradicts himself on matter's motion (violent, then slow) and on its nature (not evil and unchangeable, then changed from evil by God).
44. 44Hermogenes says God formed matter merely by appearing and drawing near, like beauty or a magnet; but then God must have been absent from matter for an eternity before.
45. 45Scripture teaches that God made the world through his Wisdom and Word with his own power, from nothing; Hermogenes' chaotic matter is really a portrait of himself.