Impossibility of Acknowledging God Without This External Evidence Of His Existence. Marcion's Rejection of Such Evidence for His God Savours of Impudence and Malignity

But even if we were able to allow that he exists, we should yet be bound to argue that he is without a cause.²⁴⁶² For he who had nothing (to show for himself as proof of his existence), would be without a cause, since (such) proof²⁴⁶³ is the whole cause that there exists some person to whom the proof belongs. Now, in as far as nothing ought to be without a cause, that is, without a proof (because if it be without a cause, it is all one as if it be not, not having the very proof which is the cause of a thing), in so far shall I more worthily believe that God does not exist, than that He exists without a cause. For he is without a cause who has not a cause by reason of not having a proof. God, however, ought not to be without a cause, that is to say, without a proof. Thus, as often as I show that He exists without a cause, although (I allow²⁴⁶⁴ that) He exists, I do really determine this, that He does not exist; because, if He had existed, He could not have existed altogether without a cause.²⁴⁶⁵ So, too, even in regard to faith itself, I say that he²⁴⁶⁶ seeks to obtain it²⁴⁶⁷ without cause from man, who is otherwise accustomed to believe in God from the idea he gets of Him from the testimony of His works:²⁴⁶⁸ (without cause, I repeat,) because he has provided no such proof as that whereby man has acquired the knowledge of God. For although most persons believe in Him, they do not believe at once by unaided reason,²⁴⁶⁹ without having some token of Deity in works worthy of God. And so upon this ground of inactivity and lack of works he²⁴⁷⁰ is guilty both of impudence and malignity: of impudence, in aspiring after a belief which is not due to him, and for which he has provided no foundation;²⁴⁷¹ of malignity, in having brought many persons under the charge of unbelief by furnishing to them no groundwork for their faith.

Chapter XIII.—The Marcionites Depreciate the Creation, Which, However, is a Worthy Witness of God. This Worthiness Illustrated by References to the Heathen Philosophers, Who Were Apt to Invest the Several Parts of Creation with Divine Attributes.

While we are expelling from this rank (of Deity) a god who has no evidence to show for himself which is so proper and God-worthy as the testimony of the Creator, Marcion's most shameless followers with haughty impertinence fall upon the Creator's works to destroy them. To be sure, say they, the world is a grand work, worthy of a God.²⁴⁷² Then is the Creator not at all a God? By all means He is God.²⁴⁷³ Therefore²⁴⁷⁴ the world is not unworthy of God, for God has made nothing unworthy of Himself; although it was for man, and not for Himself, that He made the world, (and) although every work is less than its maker. And yet, if to have been the author of our creation, such as it is, be unworthy of God, how much more unworthy of Him is it to have created absolutely nothing at all!—not even a production which, although unworthy, might yet have encouraged the hope of some better attempt. To say somewhat, then, concerning the alleged²⁴⁷⁵ unworthiness of this world's fabric, to which among the Greeks also is assigned a name of ornament and grace,²⁴⁷⁶ not of sordidness, those very professors of wisdom,²⁴⁷⁷ from whose genius every heresy derives its spirit,²⁴⁷⁸ called the said unworthy elements divine; as Thales did water, Heraclitus fire, Anaximenes air, Anaximander all the heavenly bodies, Strato the sky and earth, Zeno the air and ether, and Plato the stars, which he calls a fiery kind of gods; whilst concerning the world, when they considered indeed its magnitude, and strength, and power, and honour, and glory,—the abundance, too, the regularity, and law of those individual elements which contribute to the production, the nourishment, the ripening, and the reproduction of all things,—the majority of the philosophers hesitated²⁴⁷⁹ to assign a beginning and an end to the said world, lest its constituent elements,²⁴⁸⁰ great as they undoubtedly are, should fail to be regarded as divine,²⁴⁸¹ which are objects of worship with the Persian magi, the Egyptian hierophants, and the Indian gymnosophists. The very superstition of the crowd, inspired by the common idolatry, when ashamed of the names and fables of their ancient dead borne by their idols, has recourse to the interpretation of natural objects, and so with much ingenuity cloaks its own disgrace, figuratively reducing Jupiter to a heated substance, and Juno to an aërial one (according to the literal sense of the Greek words);²⁴⁸² Vesta, in like manner, to fire, and the Muses to waters, and the Great Mother²⁴⁸³ to the earth, mowed as to its crops, ploughed up with lusty arms, and watered with baths.²⁴⁸⁴ Thus Osiris also, whenever he is buried, and looked for to come to life again, and with joy recovered, is an emblem of the regularity wherewith the fruits of the ground return, and the elements recover life, and the year comes round; as also the lions of Mithras²⁴⁸⁵ are philosophical sacraments of arid and scorched nature. It is, indeed, enough for me that natural elements, foremost in site and state, should have been more readily regarded as divine than as unworthy of God. I will, however, come down to²⁴⁸⁶ humbler objects. A single floweret from the hedgerow, I say not from the meadows; a single little shellfish from any sea, I say not from the Red Sea; a single stray wing of a moorfowl, I say nothing of the peacock,—will, I presume, prove to you that the Creator was but a sorry²⁴⁸⁷ artificer!

Chapter XIV.—All Portions of Creation Attest the Excellence of the Creator, Whom Marcion Vilifies. His Inconsistency Herein Exposed. Marcion's Own God Did Not Hesitate to Use the Creator's Works in Instituting His Own Religion.

Now, when you make merry with those minuter animals, which their glorious Maker has purposely endued with a profusion of instincts and resources,²⁴⁸⁸—thereby teaching us that greatness has its proofs in lowliness, just as (according to the apostle) there is power even in infirmity²⁴⁸⁹—imitate, if you can, the cells of the bee, the hills of the ant, the webs of the spider, and the threads of the silkworm; endure, too, if you know how, those very creatures²⁴⁹⁰ which infest your couch and house, the poisonous ejections of the blister-beetle,²⁴⁹¹ the spikes of the fly, and the gnat's sheath and sting. What of the greater animals, when the small ones so affect you with pleasure or pain, that you cannot even in their case despise their Creator? Finally, take a circuit round your own self; survey man within and without. Even this handiwork of our God will be pleasing to you, inasmuch as your own lord, that better god, loved it so well,²⁴⁹² and for your sake was at the pains²⁴⁹³ of descending from the third heaven to these poverty-stricken²⁴⁹⁴ elements, and for the same reason was actually crucified in this sorry²⁴⁹⁵ apartment of the Creator. Indeed, up to the present time, he has not disdained the water which the Creator made wherewith he washes his people; nor the oil with which he anoints them; nor that union of honey and milk wherewithal he gives them the nourishment²⁴⁹⁶ of children; nor the bread by which he represents his own proper body, thus requiring in his very sacraments the "beggarly²⁴⁹⁷ elements" of the Creator. You, however, are a disciple above his master, and a servant above his lord; you have a higher reach of discernment than his; you destroy what he requires. I wish to examine whether you are at least honest in this, so as to have no longing for those things which you destroy. You are an enemy to the sky, and yet you are glad to catch its freshness in your houses. You disparage the earth, although the elemental parent²⁴⁹⁸ of your own flesh, as if it were your undoubted enemy, and yet you extract from it all its fatness²⁴⁹⁹ for your food. The sea, too, you reprobate, but are continually using its produce, which you account the more sacred diet.²⁵⁰⁰ If I should offer you a rose, you will not disdain its Maker. You hypocrite, however much of abstinence you use to show yourself a Marcionite, that is, a repudiator of your Maker (for if the world displeased you, such abstinence ought to have been affected by you as a martyrdom), you will have to associate yourself with²⁵⁰¹ the Creator's material production, into what element soever you shall be dissolved. How hard is this obstinacy of yours! You vilify the things in which you both live and die.

Chapter XV.—The Lateness of the Revelation of Marcion's God. The Question of the Place Occupied by the Rival Deities. Instead of Two Gods, Marcion Really (Although, as It Would Seem, Unconsciously) Had Nine Gods in His System.

After all, or, if you like,²⁵⁰² before all, since you have said that he has a creation²⁵⁰³ of his own, and his own world, and his own sky; we shall see,²⁵⁰⁴ indeed, about that third heaven, when we come to discuss even your own apostle.²⁵⁰⁵ Meanwhile, whatever is the (created) substance, it ought at any rate to have made its appearance in company with its own god. But now, how happens it that the Lord has been revealed since the twelfth year of Tiberius Cæsar, while no creation of His at all has been discovered up to the fifteenth of the Emperor Severus;²⁵⁰⁶ although, as being more excellent than the paltry works²⁵⁰⁷ of the Creator, it should certainly have ceased to conceal itself, when its lord and author no longer lies hid? I ask, therefore,²⁵⁰⁸ if it was unable to manifest itself in this world, how did its Lord appear in this world? If this world received its Lord, why was it not able to receive the created substance, unless perchance it was greater than its Lord? But now there arises a question about place, having reference both to the world above and to the God thereof. For, behold, if he²⁵⁰⁹ has his own world beneath him, above the Creator, he has certainly fixed it in a position, the space of which was empty between his own feet and the Creator's head. Therefore God both Himself occupied local space, and caused the world to occupy local space; and this local space, too, will be greater than God and the world together. For in no case is that which contains not greater than that which is contained. And indeed we must look well to it that no small patches²⁵¹⁰ be left here and there vacant, in which some third god also may be able with a world of his own to foist himself in.²⁵¹¹ Now, begin to reckon up your gods. There will be local space for a god, not only as being greater than God, but as being also unbegotten and unmade, and therefore eternal, and equal to God, in which God has ever been. Then, inasmuch as He too has fabricated²⁵¹² a world out of some underlying material which is unbegotten, and unmade, and contemporaneous with God, just as Marcion holds of the Creator, you reduce this likewise to the dignity of that local space which has enclosed two gods, both God and matter. For matter also is a god according to the rule of Deity, being (to be sure) unbegotten, and unmade, and eternal. If, however, it was out of nothing that he made his world, this also (our heretic) will be obliged to predicate²⁵¹³ of the Creator, to whom he subordinates²⁵¹⁴ matter in the substance of the world. But it will be only right that he²⁵¹⁵ too should have made his world out of matter, because the same process occurred to him as God which lay before the Creator as equally God. And thus you may, if you please, reckon up so far,²⁵¹⁶ three gods as Marcion's,—the Maker, local space, and matter. Furthermore,²⁵¹⁷ he in like manner makes the Creator a god in local space, which is itself to be appraised on a precisely identical scale of dignity; and to Him as its lord he subordinates matter, which is notwithstanding unbegotten, and unmade, and by reason hereof eternal. With this matter he further associates evil, an unbegotten principle with an unbegotten object, an unmade with an unmade, and an eternal with an eternal; so here he makes a fourth God. Accordingly you have three substances of Deity in the higher instances, and in the lower ones four. When to these are added their Christs—the one which appeared in the time of Tiberius, the other which is promised by the Creator—Marcion suffers a manifest wrong from those persons who assume that he holds two gods, whereas he implies²⁵¹⁸ no less than nine,²⁵¹⁹ though he knows it not.

Chapter XVI.—Marcion Assumes the Existence of Two Gods from the Antithesis Between Things Visible and Things Invisible. This Antithetical Principle in Fact Characteristic of the Works of the Creator, the One God—Maker of All Things Visible and Invisible.

Since, then, that other world does not appear, nor its god either, the only resource left²⁵²⁰ to them is to divide things into the two classes of visible and invisible, with two gods for their authors, and so to claim²⁵²¹ the invisible for their own, (the supreme) God. But who, except an heretical spirit, could ever bring his mind to believe that the invisible part of creation belongs to him who had previously displayed no visible thing, rather than to Him who, by His operation on the visible world, produced a belief in the invisible also, since it is far more reasonable to give one's assent after some samples (of a work) than after none? We shall see to what author even (your favourite) apostle attributes²⁵²² the invisible creation, when we come to examine him. At present (we withhold his testimony), for²⁵²³ we are for the most part engaged in preparing the way, by means of common sense and fair arguments, for a belief in the future support of the Scriptures also. We affirm, then, that this diversity of things visible and invisible must on this ground be attributed to the Creator, even because the whole of His work consists of diversities—of things corporeal and incorporeal; of animate and inanimate; of vocal and mute of moveable and stationary; of productive and sterile; of arid and moist; of hot and cold. Man, too, is himself similarly tempered with diversity, both in his body and in his sensation. Some of his members are strong, others weak; some comely, others uncomely; some twofold, others unique; some like, others unlike. In like manner there is diversity also in his sensation: now joy, then anxiety; now love, then hatred; now anger, then calmness. Since this is the case, inasmuch as the whole of this creation of ours has been fashioned²⁵²⁴ with a reciprocal rivalry amongst its several parts, the invisible ones are due to the visible, and not to be ascribed to any other author than Him to whom their counterparts are imputed, marking as they do diversity in the Creator Himself, who orders what He forbade, and forbids what He ordered; who also strikes and heals. Why do they take Him to be uniform in one class of things alone, as the Creator of visible things, and only them; whereas He ought to be believed to have created both the visible and the invisible, in just the same way as life and death, or as evil things and peace?²⁵²⁵ And verily, if the invisible creatures are greater than the visible, which are in their own sphere great, so also is it fitting that the greater should be His to whom the great belong; because neither the great, nor indeed the greater, can be suitable property for one who seems to possess not even the smallest things.