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| 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.
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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
| 2472 This is an ironical
concession from the Marcionite side. | Then is the
Creator not at all a God? By all means He is God.2473
Therefore2474
| 2474 Tertullian’s
rejoinder. | 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
| 2476 They called it
κόσμος. |
not of sordidness, those very professors of wisdom,2477
| 2477 By sapientiæ
professores he means the heathen philosophers; see De
Præscript. Hæret. c. 7. | 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
| 2482 The Greek name of
Jupiter, Ζεύς,
is here derived from ζέω, ferveo, I glow.
Juno’s name, ῞Ηρα,
Tertullian connects with ἀήρ, the air;
παρὰ τὸ
ἀὴρ καθ᾽
ὑπέρθεσιν
῞Ηρα. These names of the two great deities
suggest a connection with fire and air. | 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
| 2484 The
earth’s irrigations, and the washings of the image of Cybele
every year in the river Almo by her priests, are here confusedly
alluded to. For references to the pagan custom, see White and
Riddle’s large Lat. Dict. s. v. Almo. |
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
| 2485 Mithras, the
Persian sun-god, was symbolized by the image of a lion. The sun
entering the zodiacal sign Leo amidst summer heat may be glanced
at. |
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
| 2487 Sordidum. [Well and
nobly said.] | artificer!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
