Against Hermogenes 16–30

Therefore, laying down this head in advance (it may perhaps be treated again elsewhere), I define that either both the good and the evil which he made from matter must be ascribed to God; or both to matter itself, from which he made them; or both to both, since both are bound up with them, he who made and that from which he made; or one to each; for there is no third besides matter and God. Now if both are God's, God will seem to be the author of evil too; but God, being good, will not be the author of evil. If both are matter's, matter will seem to be the mother even of good; but matter, being wholly evil, will not be the mother of good. If both belong to both, in this too matter will be compared with God and the two will be equal, alike akin to evil and to good; but matter must not be made equal to God, lest it make two gods. If one belongs to each, namely the good to God and the evil to matter, then neither will evil be ascribed to God nor good to matter; and yet God, in making both good and evil from matter, makes them together with it. If these things are so, I do not know by what judgement Hermogenes can escape, who does not think God the author of evil in whatever way he created evil from matter, whether by will, by necessity, or by reason. Further, if he who made it is himself the author of evil, matter being plainly his partner by supplying the substance, then the reason for introducing matter is already excluded. For God is shown to be the author of evil through matter none the less, even though matter was assumed precisely so that God might not seem to be the author of evil. Matter, then, is excluded, since the reason for it is excluded. It remains that God is agreed to have made all things from nothing. We shall see whether he made evil things too, when it has become clear which things are evil, and whether meanwhile the things you think evil are so. For he produced more worthily from his own will, producing even these from nothing, than from another's prior condition, had he produced them from matter. Freedom, not necessity, befits God. I would rather he had willed to create evils of his own accord than that he had been unable not to create them.

The condition of the one God claims this rule: he is not one otherwise than by being alone, and not alone otherwise than by there being nothing with him. So he will also be first, because all things are after him; all things are after him, because all things are from him; they are from him, because from nothing; so that the account of that Scripture too may stand: “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counsellor? Or whom did he consult? Or who showed him the way of understanding and knowledge? Who has given to him, and shall be repaid?” No one, surely; because no power, no matter, no nature of another substance was present with him. Further, if he worked from some matter, he must have received from it both counsel and the plan of his arrangement, as the way of understanding and knowledge. For he would have had to work according to the quality of the thing and according to the bent of the matter, not according to his own will, so that even the evil things he made would be according to the nature, not of himself, but of the substance.

If God needed matter for the works of the world, as Hermogenes thought, God had a matter far worthier and more fitting, one not to be valued by the philosophers but to be understood from the prophets: namely his own Wisdom. She alone, indeed, knew the mind of the Lord. For who knows the things of God and what is in him, except the Spirit who is in him? And Wisdom is spirit. She was his counsellor; she is herself the way of understanding and knowledge. From her he made, making through her and making with her. “When he was preparing the heaven,” she says, “I was present with him; and when he made strong the clouds above over the winds, and when he set firm the fountains of what is under heaven, I was fitting things together with him. I was the one in whom he rejoiced; and daily I delighted in his presence, when he delighted, having completed the world, and he delighted in the sons of men.” Who would not rather commend her as the fountain and origin of all things, the true matter of matters, not subject in place, not different in state, not restless in motion, not shapeless in form, but inborn, his own, ordered and comely, such as God could have needed, needing what was his own rather than what was another's? Indeed, as soon as he perceived her to be necessary for the works of the world, he at once creates and begets her in himself: “The Lord,” she says, “created me as the beginning of his ways for his works; before the ages he founded me, before he made the earth, before the mountains were set in place; and before all the hills he begot me, and I was begotten before the abyss.” Let Hermogenes acknowledge, then, that the Wisdom of God too is proclaimed born and created for this very reason, that we should not believe anything to be unborn and uncreated except God alone. For if (that which was) within the Lord, which was from him and in him, was not without beginning, namely his Wisdom, born and created from the moment when she began to be stirred in God's mind for arranging the works of the world, much less does it allow that anything was without beginning which was outside the Lord. And if this same Wisdom is the Word of God … Wisdom in thought, without whom nothing was made, just as nothing was arranged without Wisdom, how can it be that anything besides the Father was older than the Son of God, the only-begotten and firstborn Word, and in this way certainly nobler, not to say stronger, as unborn, and more powerful, as unmade? For that which needed no author in order to exist will be far loftier than that which had an author in order to exist. So too, if what is evil is (that which) is unborn, … the Word of God (“My heart,” he says, “has uttered a most good Word”), I do not know whether evil can be derived from good, the stronger from the weak, as the unborn from the born. So on this score too Hermogenes puts matter before God, by putting it before the Son; for the Son is the Word, and the Word is God, and “I and the Father are one”; unless the Son is to bear calmly that matter be set above himself, since it is made equal to the Father.

But I shall also appeal to the original document of Moses, from which the other side too tries, against the grain, to prop up its presumptions, so as not to seem to take its instruction from anywhere other than where it ought. So it has seized its opportunities from certain words, as heretics are generally in the habit of twisting everything simple. For they want even the “beginning” itself, in which God made heaven and earth, to have been something substantial and bodily, which could be interpreted as matter. We, however, claiming for each word its proper sense, say that “beginning” means the start, and that it is properly applied to things that begin to be made. For nothing that is to be made is without a start, and its beginning is precisely the moment when it begins to be made. So “beginning” or “start” is a word for commencing, not the name of some substance. Now then, if heaven and earth are the principal works of God, which God made before all things, so as to be properly the beginning of his works, since they were made first, Scripture rightly opens thus: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth,” just as it would have said, “At the end God made heaven and earth,” if he had made them after everything else. Or if “beginning” is some substance, “end” too will be some matter. Of course something substantial may be the beginning of another thing that is to come from it, as clay is the beginning of a pot, or seed the beginning of a plant. But when we use the word “beginning” in that way, as a term of origin and not of order, we add specific mention of the very thing that we mean to be the beginning of the other. Otherwise, if we put it this way, for example, “In the beginning the potter made a basin or a jar,” “beginning” will no longer signify matter (for I have not named the clay as the beginning) but the order of the work, since the potter made the basin and the jar first before the rest, and was going to make the rest afterwards. I can also interpret “beginning” another way, yet not beside the point; for in Greek too the word for beginning, which is archē, admits not only the sense of order but also that of power and principality, which is why they call princes and magistrates archontes. So in this sense also “beginning” will be taken as principality and power. For in principality and power God made heaven and earth.

But even supposing the Greek word means nothing other than “beginning,” and “beginning” allows nothing other than “start,” we have also to recognize as a start her who says: “The Lord created me (as the start of his ways) for his works.” For if all things were made through the Wisdom of God, then God, when he made heaven and earth in the beginning, that is, in the start, made them in his Wisdom. Indeed, if “beginning” signified matter, Scripture would not have taught us thus, “In the beginning God made,” but “From the beginning”; for he would have made not in matter but from matter. But of Wisdom it could be said, “In the beginning.” For it was in Wisdom that he first made, in whom, by thinking and arranging, he had already made; since, even if he had been going to make from matter, she was beforehand the start of his ways, because thinking and arranging is the first operation of Wisdom, which from thought lays out the way for the works. I also claim the authority of Scripture for myself from this: that while it shows both God who made and the things he made, it does not in the same way testify from what he made. For since in every making there are three principal things, who makes, what is made, and from what it is made, three names must be given in a proper account of a work: the person of the maker, the kind of thing made, and the form of the material. If the material is not stated, where both the works and the worker of the work are stated, it is plain that he worked from nothing. For the “from what” would be stated likewise, if he had worked from something. Finally, I shall bring in the gospel as a supplement to the old document; in it it ought all the more to have been shown that God made all things from some matter, since there even the one through whom he made all things is revealed. “In the beginning was the Word” (in which beginning, that is, God made heaven and earth) “and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Since, then, here too are shown the maker, that is, God, and the things made, that is, all things, and the one through whom, that is, the Word, would not the order of the account have required it also to declare from what all things were made by God through the Word, if they had been made from something? So what did not exist, Scripture could not declare; and by not declaring it, it proved well enough that it did not exist, since it would have declared it if it had existed.

“Then,” you say, “if you prejudge that all things were made from nothing because it is not plainly stated that anything was made from pre-existing matter, beware lest the other side contend that all things were made from matter because it is likewise not openly signified that anything was made from nothing.” Some arguments can indeed easily be turned back, but they are not at once admitted on equal terms where the cases differ. For I say that, even if Scripture has not openly declared that all things were made from nothing, just as it has not declared that they were made from matter, there was not so great a need to signify openly that all things were made from nothing as there would have been if they had been made from matter. For what is made from nothing is, by the very fact that it is not shown to have been made from something, made plain as made from nothing; and it runs no risk of being thought made from something, since there is no showing from what it was made. But what is made from something, unless this very fact is openly declared, that it was made from something, by showing from what it was made, will run the risk, first, of seeming to have been made from nothing, since it is not stated from what it was made; and then, even if it is of such a kind that it cannot seem (not to have been made) from something, it will likewise run the risk of seeming to have been made from something far different from that from which it was made, so long as its source is not set out. So if God made all things from nothing, Scripture could have left out the statement that he made them from nothing; but it was bound by every means to declare that he made them from matter, (if, that is,) he had made them from matter; because the former was to be understood entirely even if it were not signified, whereas the latter would be in doubt unless it were signified.

And so the Holy Spirit has established this rule for his Scripture: when something is made from something, it reports both what is made and from what it is made. “Let the earth,” he says, “sprout the grass of the field, yielding seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness. And it was so. And the earth brought forth the grass of the field yielding seed according to its kind, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness.” And again: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth creeping things with living souls, and birds flying above the earth across the firmament of heaven. And it was so. And God made great sea monsters and every soul of creeping animals, which the waters brought forth according to their kind.” Likewise later: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind.” If, then, when God brings forth other things from things already made, he shows through the prophet and says what he brought forth from what (although we could have supposed that they were brought forth from anywhere at all, provided not from nothing, since some things had already been made from which they might seem to have been brought forth); if the Holy Spirit took such care over our instruction that we should know what came from what, would he not likewise have informed us about heaven and earth too, by signifying from what he had made them, if their origin had been from some matter, so that he should not seem to have made them from nothing, all the more since nothing had yet been made from which he might seem to have made them? So, just as for things brought forth from something he shows from what they were brought forth, so for things of which he does not show from what they were brought forth, he confirms that they were brought forth from nothing. So then: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth.” I adore the fullness of Scripture, in which it makes known to me both the maker and the things made; and in the gospel I find besides the minister and arbiter of the maker, the Word. But that all things were made from some underlying matter I have nowhere yet read. Let Hermogenes' workshop show that it is written. If it is not written, let him fear the woe appointed for those who add or take away.

But he (also) argues from what follows, since it is written: “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” For he reduces the name “earth” (to) matter, on the ground that the earth which was made came from it; and he refers “was” to this, as though it had always existed in the past, unborn and unmade; and “invisible and unformed”, because he wants matter to have been shapeless and confused and disordered. These opinions of his I shall refute one by one; but meanwhile I want to answer him thus. Let us suppose that matter is indicated by these phrases: does Scripture for all that signify, because it existed before all things and was of such a kind, that anything was also made from it? Yet it signifies nothing of the kind. Let matter have existed as much as it likes, or rather as much as Hermogenes likes: it could both have existed and yet God have made nothing from it, whether because it was not fitting for God to have needed anything, or certainly because he is not shown to have made anything from matter. “Then it would have existed for no purpose,” you say. Not wholly for no purpose. For even if the world was not made from it, a heresy was; and a heresy all the more shameless in that the heresy was not made from matter, but rather the heresy made matter itself.

I return now to the individual phrases in which he thought matter was signified, and first I shall raise a complaint about the names. Of these we read the one, “earth”, but do not find the other, “matter”. I ask, then, since the name “matter” does not appear in Scripture, how the designation “earth” can be fitted to it, a designation already known for another kind of substance. All the more should the name “matter” also have appeared, accompanied by the designation “earth”, so that I might know that “earth” is a name common to it and to matter, and might not claim the word for that substance alone to which it properly belongs (and) in which it is better known; or so that I might not be able … to share it with any other kind of thing, if I wished. For when the proper term does not appear for the thing to which a common term is ascribed, since it is not clear to what it is ascribed, it can be ascribed to anything else. So Hermogenes, even if he showed that matter was named, would have to prove that it was also called “earth”, in order to claim both terms for it.

He wants, then, two earths to be set forth in this Scripture: one which God made in the beginning, the other from which he made it, of which it was said, “But the earth was invisible and unformed.” Of course, if I ask which of the two ought to have given the name “earth” to the other, it will be said that this one, which was made, derived its name from that one from which it was made, since it is likelier that offspring are named from their origin than the origin from its offspring. If so, another question is wrapped up for us: whether it is fitting that this earth which God made derived its name from that from which he made it. For I hear from Hermogenes and the other matter-heretics that that earth was shapeless and invisible and unformed; but I see that this earth of ours has received from God form and visibility and cultivation, and so was made something other than that from which it was made. And having been made something other, it could not share a name with that from whose condition it had departed. If “earth” was the proper name of that matter, then this earth, which is not matter, having been made something other, does not admit the name “earth” either, since the name is foreign to it and alien to its state. “But matter once made, that is, this earth, shared its name with its origin, as it shared its kind.” Not so. For a pot, though made of clay, I shall no longer call clay but a pot; and electrum, though alloyed from gold and silver, I shall call neither silver nor gold but electrum. Whatever departs from the character of a thing departs likewise from its name, in the propriety of naming as in condition. How far this earth has passed from the state of that earth is plain from this alone: this earth received in Genesis the testimony of goodness, “And God saw that it was good,” while that one is reckoned by Hermogenes as the origin and cause of evils. Finally, if this is “earth” because that was, why is this not also “matter”, because that was? Indeed heaven too and all things, if they consist of matter, ought to have been called both “earth” and “matter”. Enough on the name “earth”, in which he wanted matter to be understood. Everyone knows it as the name of a single element, taught first by nature and then by Scripture; unless we are also to believe the Silenus who, on the authority of Theopompus, insisted to King Midas that there was another world. But the same writer also reports many gods.

But for us there is one God and one earth, which God made in the beginning. Scripture, beginning to run through its order, first declares that it was made, then sets out its quality; just as, having first declared that heaven was made, “In the beginning God made heaven,” it then adds its arrangement: “and he separated the water which was below the firmament from that which was above the firmament, and God called the firmament heaven,” that very heaven which he had made at the beginning. So too with man: “And God made man; in the image of God he made him”; then it relates how he made him: “And God formed man from the clay of the earth and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” And surely this is the fitting way to begin a narrative: first to announce, then to proceed; to name, then to describe. Otherwise it would be absurd if, of a thing of which it had made no previous mention, that is, matter, not even of its name, it suddenly proclaimed its form and condition, related what it was like before it showed that it existed, sketched its figure and hid its name. But how much more credible it is, on our view, that Scripture added the arrangement of the thing whose making and naming it had set down first! In short, how complete the sense is: “In the beginning God made heaven and earth; but the earth was invisible and unformed,” the earth, that is, which God made, of which Scripture had only just spoken. For the very word “but” is set there like a clasp, a connecting particle, to link the narrative: “but the earth.” By this word it returns to the earth of which it had spoken above, and binds the sense together. Take “but” away, and the joint is loosened, so that “the earth was invisible and unformed” might then seem to be said of another earth.

But you, raising your eyebrows high, with a nod of the head and a finger to match, and as it were tossing them back, say: “Was”, as though it had always existed, that is, unborn and unmade, and must therefore be believed to be matter. But I, without any flourish of delivery, shall simply answer that “was” can be said of anything, even of what has been made, what has been born, what once did not exist, and what is not matter. For everything that has being, from wherever it has it, whether with a beginning or without one, will by the very fact that it is also be said to have been. The first form of the verb serves for definition; its inflection runs on into narrative. “Is” is the head of a definition; “was” makes a narrative. These are the quibbles and subtleties of heretics, twisting the simplicity of common words into a question. A great question indeed, whether the earth that was made “was”! What must certainly be discussed is whether being invisible and unformed belongs to the earth that was made or to that from which it was made, so that the “was” belongs to the same thing as what it was.

Yet we shall prove not only that this condition belonged to this earth, but also that it did not belong to that other. For if bare matter lay before God, with no element obstructing it, since there was as yet nothing besides itself and God, it certainly could not have been invisible. For even if he wants darkness to have been in the substance of matter (a point we shall have to answer in its place), darkness is visible even to a human being (for the very fact that it is darkness is seen), much more to God. And certainly, if it were invisible, its quality could in no way be known. How then did Hermogenes discover that it was shapeless and confused and restless, when as invisible it lay hidden? Or if this was revealed by God, he must prove it. So too I demand whether it could be called unformed. For certainly what is unformed is imperfect. Certainly nothing can be imperfect except what has been made; for what has been made incompletely (is) imperfect. “Certainly,” you say. Then matter, which had not been made at all, could not be imperfect; and what was not imperfect was not unformed either. Having no beginning, since it was not made, it also lacked a rudimentary state; for being rudimentary is an accident of a beginning. But the earth, which was made, deserved to be called unformed too. For as soon as it was made, it held the place of the imperfect, before its perfection,

since God brought all his works to completion by first, as it were, staking out the world with raw elements and then, as it were, dedicating it once adorned. For he did not at once fill the light with the splendour of the sun, nor at once temper the darkness with the comfort of the moon, nor at once mark the heaven with constellations and stars, nor at once people the seas with monsters, nor at once endow the earth itself with varied fruitfulness; but first he gave it being, then he filled it so that it should not exist in vain. For so Isaiah too says: “He did not make it in vain, but to be inhabited.” So after it was made, destined also to be perfected, it was meanwhile invisible and unformed: unformed in this very respect, that it was invisible, as not yet perfected to sight, and also as not yet furnished with the rest; and invisible, as still covered by the waters, as by a protective wrapping of generative moisture, the form in which our flesh too, its kin, is brought forth. For David too sings thus: “The earth is the Lord's and its fullness, the world and all who dwell in it; he founded it upon the seas and prepared it upon the rivers.” For when the waters were separated into a deeper hollow, the dry land, which until then had been covered by the waters, stood out more clearly. Thereafter it is made visible too, as God says: “Let the water be gathered into one gathering, and let the dry land be seen.” (“Let it be seen,”) he says, not “let it be made.” For it had already been made, but, invisible until then, it waited to be seen. “Dry”, because it was to become so by the separation of the moisture; but already “earth”: “And God called the dry land earth,” not matter. So too, having afterwards attained perfection, it ceases to be regarded as unformed, when God pronounces: “Let the earth sprout the grass of the field, yielding seed according to its kind and according to its likeness, and the fruit-bearing tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself according to its likeness.” Likewise: “Let the earth bring forth the living soul according to its kind, and four-footed beasts and creeping things and wild beasts of the earth according to their kind.” So divine Scripture completed its order. To the earth it had first called invisible and unformed it gave both visibility and perfection. And matter was not invisible and unformed in any other sense; therefore matter (too) will afterwards be visible and perfect. So I want to see matter, for it has been made visible. I want also to recognize it perfected, so that from it I may pluck the grass of the field, and from it the fruit-bearing tree, and from it make animals serve my use. But matter is nowhere, whereas the earth, this earth, is before my eyes. This I see, this I enjoy, ever since it ceased to be invisible and unformed. Of it Isaiah speaks most plainly: “Thus says the Lord who made heaven, he is God, who showed the earth and made it.” Certainly he showed the same earth that he made. How did he show it? By saying, of course, “Let the dry land be seen.” Why does he command it to be seen, unless it was not seen before, so that in this way too he might have made it not in vain, by making it visible and so habitable? And so it is proved to us at every point that this earth which we inhabit is the same that was both made and shown by God, and that no other earth was unformed and invisible than that which was both made and shown. And so “But the earth was invisible and unformed” refers to the earth which God prepared together with heaven.

So too what follows will seem to support Hermogenes' conjecture: “And darkness was over the abyss, and the Spirit of God was borne over the waters,” as though these too pointed to that lumpy mass of confused substance. Yet by defining one by one darkness, abyss, Spirit of God, and waters, so divided an account of definite and distinct elements does not allow anything to be thought confused, or uncertain through confusion. More than that: when it assigns them their proper places, darkness over the abyss, the Spirit over the waters, it denied any confusion of the substances, and by showing their arrangement it showed their distinction as well. It is utterly absurd, in short, that matter, which is presented as shapeless, should be asserted to be shapeless on the strength of the names of so many forms, without stating what that body of confusion is, which must surely be believed to be single, if it is shapeless. For what is shapeless is uniform; and what is shapeless through being confused out of variety must necessarily have a single appearance, since it lacks a distinct appearance so long as out of many it has (only) one. Besides, either matter had in itself these forms from whose names it was to be understood, I mean darkness and abyss and spirit and waters, or it did not. If it had them, how is it presented as having no forms? If it did not, (from what) is it recognized?