Tertullian, Against Marcion 25

On the question of goodness, we have traced the argument this far: Marcion's 'goodness' does not measure up to God at all. It is neither innate, nor rational, nor perfect; it is wicked, unjust, and unworthy of the very name of goodness. The logic is inescapable: to the degree this 'goodness' suits God, it disqualifies Him from being God, since He is exalted on the strength of such a counterfeit goodness, and cannot be true or unique in that mode. This forces the further question: should God be defined by goodness alone, once senses and affections — those so-called 'appendages' — are stripped away? The Marcionites shunt those faculties off their God and dump them on the Creator. We, by contrast, recognize those same faculties in the Creator as worthy of God, and on that ground we refuse to call any being 'God' if it lacks the full complement of divine attributes. Suppose some Epicurean tries to baptize a god with the name of Christ, picturing a blessed, incorruptible being who causes no trouble to himself or anyone else — Marcion chewed over this very view and stripped his god of severity and judicial power. He had only two options: conceive a completely inert, stunned deity — but then what has that god to do with Christ, who is an offense to Jews by His teaching and to Marcion by His Jesus? — or admit that God possesses the full range of motion. But then what has he to do with Epicurus, who is necessary to neither him nor Christians? Look at the dilemma: this god, previously at rest, indifferent to making himself known by any act for eons, suddenly takes notice of human salvation. That shift can only come by an act of will. Was he not, then, shaken by a new will, proving himself subject to every other motion as well? What is a will without the goad of desire? [Who wills what he does not desire?] And desire inevitably drags care in its wake: who wills and desires a thing, yet takes no trouble for it? So once this god both willed and desired man's salvation, he created trouble for himself and others, Epicurus — Marcion's adviser — notwithstanding. He manufactured an adversary: the very thing he opposed by willing, desiring, and striving, whether sin or death. First and foremost, that adversary is the Judge and Lord of men, the Creator. Moreover, no contest runs its course without rivalry, and rivalry cannot exist without an opponent. Thus, by willing, desiring, and striving to liberate man, this god is already locked in rivalry — with the one from whom he liberates, against whom he must liberate himself, and with the things from which he liberates, into which he must liberate them. Consequently, the attendants of rivalry — anger, discord, hatred, contempt, indignation, bile, unwillingness, offense — must show up in the very arena where he rivals. If rivalry brings these in its train, and rivalry, by liberating man, achieves the work of goodness, then that goodness cannot exist without its own endowments — that is, without the senses and affections through which it operates against the Creator — lest it be exposed as irrational for lacking the very faculties it owes. We will defend all this far more fully in the case for the Creator, where these charges are also answered.