One God, Old and New Testaments
Tertullian, Against Marcion 7
You will try to shake the retracted name of God with these arguments; the move is passive, and you allow others to use it too, because Scripture says: "God takes his stand in the divine council; in the midst of the gods he holds judgment" (Ps 82:1), and again: "I said, 'You are gods'" (Ps 82:6). Yet that does not grant them possession of the Supreme Great One simply because they bear the title "gods"; the same holds for the Creator.
I will answer the fool who has not considered this, lest the same retort be turned against Marcion's God: that he too is called God, yet not thereby proven to be the Supreme Great One, any more than the Creator's angels or humans. If the sharing of names prejudges natures, how many wicked slaves insult kings by usurping the names of Alexander, Darius, and Holofernes? Yet the kings lose nothing of what they are. The nations' idols are commonly called gods, but no one is God by the very fact of being so called.
Therefore I do not defend the Supreme Great One in the Creator by the name of God, nor by its sound, nor by the mere label of this name, but by the substance itself to which this name belongs. Finding that substance alone innate, uncorrupted, alone eternal, and the maker of the universe, I ascribe and vindicate the Supreme Great One not to the name but to the reality, not to the appellation but to the condition.
And because the substance to which I ascribe it already bears the name God, you think I ascribe it to the name, since I must use the name to indicate which substance I mean—namely, the one by which it is consistent that he is called God. But the Supreme Great One is reckoned from the substance, not from the name. Even Marcion, vindicating his God, vindicates according to the reality, not the word.
So we contend that the Supreme Great One, which we ascribe to God from the law of substance, not from the lottery of the name, must be equal in the two who consist of that substance which is called God. Insofar as they are called gods—that is, Supreme Great Ones, the substance innate and eternal, and therefore great and supreme—to that extent one Supreme Great One cannot be less and worse than another.
If the happiness, sublimity, and integrity of the Supreme Great One stand in Marcion's God, they will stand equally in ours; if not in ours either, then equally not in Marcion's. Therefore the two Supreme Great Ones will not be equal, because the already established rule of the Supreme Great One does not sustain comparison, nor unequal, because another rule of the Supreme Great One arises, not admitting diminution.
You have stalled, Marcion, in the middle of your Pontic storm. The waves of truth envelop you on both sides. You cannot establish gods as equal or unequal, for there are not two. What pertains properly to the retracted number—although the whole dispute is fought over two gods—we have enclosed him within these lines, within which we will now engage on the singular properties.
Latin
Temptabis ad haec de nomine dei concutere retractatum ; ut passiuo et in alios quoque permisso, quia scriptum sit: ! deus deorum stetit in ecclesia deorum, in medio autem deos diiudicabit, et: ego dixi, uos dii estis. nec tamen idcirco eis competat possessio summi magni, quia dii cognominentur; ita nec creatori. respondebo et stulto, qui nec hoc recogitauerit, ne tantundem et in deum Marcionis possit retorqueri, ut et illum deum dictum nec ideo tamen summum magnum probatum, sicut nec angeli aut homines creatoris. si communio nominum condicionibus praeiudicat, quanti nequam serui regum nominibus insultant, Alexandri et Darii et Olofernae? nec tamen ideo regibus id quod sunt detrahetur. nam et ipsa idola gentium dei uulgo, sed deus nemo ea re, qua deus dicitur. ita ego non nomini dei nec sono nec notae nominis huius summum magnum in creatore defendo, sed ipsi substantiae, cui nomen hoc contigit. hanc inueniens solam innatam infectam, solam aeternam et uniuersitatis conditricem, non nomini, sed statui, nec appellationi, sed condicioni eius summum magnum et adscribo et uindico. et ideo. quia deus iam uocari obtinuit substantia cui adscribo, nomini me adscribere putas, quia necesse est per nomen ostendam cui adscribam substantiae, scilicet qua constat qui deus dicitur. at summum magnum ex substantia, non ex nomine, deputatur. denique hoc et Marcion suo deo uindicans, secundum statum, non secundum uocabulum uindicat. id ergo summum magnum, quod deo adscribimus ex substantiae lege, non ex nominis sorte, contendimus ex pari esse debere in duobus, qui ea substantia constant, quae deus dicitur, quia in quantum dii uocantur, id est summa magna, substantiae scilicet mento innatae et aeternae ac per hoc magnae et summae, in tantum non possit summum magnum minus et deterius alio summo magno haberi. si summi magni felicitas et sublimitas et integritas stabit in deo Marcionis, stabit aeque et in nostro, si non et in nostro, aeque nec in Marcionis. ergo nec paria erunt duo summa magna, quia prohibet disposita iam regula summi magni comparationem non sustinens, nec disparia, quia et alia summi magni regula occurrit, diminutionem non admittens. haesisti, Marcion, in medio Ponti tui aestu. utrimque te fluctus ueritatis inuoluunt. nec pares nec dispares deos sistere potes. duo enim non sunt. quod pertineat proprie ad numeri retractatum, quamquam tota materia de duobus deis dimicetur, his interim lineis eum clusimus, intra quas de singularibus iam proprietatibus congrediemur.