Tag: Creation

Matter had no prior existence

Therefore, in as far as it has become evident that Matter had no prior existence (even from this circumstance, that it is impossible for it to have had such an existence as is assigned to it), in so far is it proved that all things were made by God out of nothing. It must be admitted, however, that Hermogenes, by describing for Matter a condition like his own—irregular, confused, turbulent, of a doubtful and precipate and fervid impulse—has displayed a specimen of his own art, and painted his own portrait.

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter XLV

Hermogenes has a low view of matter

Does that which is good never desire, never wish, never feel able to advance, so as to change its good for a better? And in like manner, if Matter had been by nature evil, why might it not have been changed by God as the more powerful Being, as able to convert the nature of stones into children of Abraham? Surely by such means you not only compare the Lord with Matter, but you even put Him below it, since you affirm that the nature of Matter could not possibly be brought under control by Him, and trained to something better.

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter XXXVII

The Holy Spirit created all things and the Scriptures are His

And to such a degree has the Holy Ghost made this the rule of His Scripture, that whenever anything is made out of anything, He mentions both the thing that is made and the thing of which it is made. “Let the earth,” says He, “bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, after its kind.

…if the Holy Ghost took upon Himself so great a concern for our instruction, that we might know from what everything was produced, would He not in like manner have kept us well informed about both the heaven and the earth, by indicating to us what it was that He made them of, if their original consisted of any material substance, so that the more He seemed to have made them of nothing, the less in fact was there as yet made, from which He could appear to have made them?

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter XXII

The Logos is begotten from within God, not outside of him

Indeed, as soon as He perceived It to be necessary for His creation of the world, He immediately creates It, and generates It in Himself. “The Lord,” says the Scripture, “possessed me, the beginning of His ways for the creation of His works. Before the worlds He founded me; before He made the earth, before the mountains were settled in their places; moreover, before the hills He generated me, and prior to the depths was I begotten.” Let Hermogenes then confess that the very Wisdom of God is declared to be born and created, for the especial reason that we should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. For if that, which from its being inherent in the Lord was of Him and in Him, was yet not without a beginning,—I mean His wisdom, which was then born and created, when in the thought of God It began to assume motion for the arrangement of His creative works,—how much more impossible is it that anything should have been without a beginning which was extrinsic to the Lord!

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter XVIII

God created all things out of nothing, not forming them from any existing material

If any material was necessary to God in the creation of the world, as Hermogenes supposed, God had a far nobler and more suitable one in His own wisdom—one which was not to be gauged by the writings of philosophers, but to be learnt from the words or prophets. This alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For “who knoweth the things of God, and the things in God, but the Spirit, which is in Him?” Now His wisdom is that Spirit. This was His counsellor, the very way of His wisdom and knowledge. Of this He made all things, making them through It, and making them with It.

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter XVIII

Hermogenes denies Christ created all things out of nothing

He is a thorough adulterer, both doctrinally and carnally, since he is rank indeed with the contagion of your marriage-hacks, and has also failed in cleaving to the rule of faith as much as the apostle’s own Hermogenes. However, never mind the man, when it is his doctrine which I question. He does not appear to acknowledge any other Christ as Lord, though he holds Him in a different way; but by this difference in his faith he really makes Him another being,—nay, he takes from Him everything which is God, since he will not have it that He made all things of nothing.

Tertullian
Against Hermogenes
Chapter I

God created out of nothing and will restore the flesh at the resurrection

But (once for all) let Marcion know that the principle term of his creed comes from the school of Epicurus, implying that the Lord is stupid and indifferent; wherefore he refuses to say that He is an object to be feared. Moreover, from the porch of the Stoics he brings out matter, and places it on a par with the Divine Creator. He also denies the resurrection of the flesh,—a truth which none of the schools of philosophy agreed together to hold. But how remote is our (Catholic) verity from the artifices of this heretic, when it dreads to arouse the anger of God, and firmly believes that He produced all things out of nothing, and promises to us a restoration from the grave of the same flesh (that died) and holds without a blush that Christ was born of the virgin’s womb!

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XIX

Christ is before all things — eternally begotten

He calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” We in like manner say that the Father of Christ is invisible, for we know that it was the Son who was seen in ancient times (whenever any appearance was vouchsafed to men in the name of God) as the image of (the Father) Himself. He must not be regarded, however, as making any difference between a visible and an invisible God; because long before he wrote this we find a description of our God to this effect: “No man can see the Lord, and live.” If Christ is not “the first-begotten before every creature,” as that “Word of God by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made;” if “all things were” not “in Him created, whether in heaven or on earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or principalities, or powers;” if “all things were” not “created by Him and for Him” (for these truths Marcion ought not to allow concerning Him), then the apostle could not have so positively laid it down, that “He is before all.” For how is He before all, if He is not before all things? How, again, is He before all things, if He is not “the first-born of every creature”—if He is not the Word of the Creator? Now how will he be proved to have been before all things, who appeared after all things?  Who can tell whether he had a prior existence, when he has found no proof that he had any existence at all?

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XIX

Christ is the one who said “Let there be light”

Now who was it that said; “Let there be light?” And who was it that said to Christ concerning giving light to the world: “I have set Thee as a light to the Gentiles”—to them, that is, “who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death?” (None else, surely, than He), to whom the Spirit in the Psalm answers, in His foresight of the future, saying, “The light of Thy countenance, O Lord, hath been displayed upon us.” Now the countenance (or person) of the Lord here is Christ. Wherefore the apostle said above: “Christ, who is the image of God.” Since Christ, then, is the person of the Creator, who said, “Let there be light,” it follows that Christ and the apostles, and the gospel, and the veil, and Moses—nay, the whole of the dispensations—belong to the God who is the Creator of this world, according to the testimony of the clause (above adverted to), and certainly not to him who never said, “Let there be light.”

Tertullian
The Five Books Against Marcion, Book V
Chapter XI