Against Hermogenes

Tertullian

  1. 1. The Opinions of Hermogenes, by the Prescriptive Rule of Antiquity Shown to Be Heretical. Not Derived from Christianity, But from Heathen Philosophy. Some of the Tenets Mentioned
  2. 2. Hermogenes, After a Perverse Induction from Mere Heretical Assumptions, Concludes that God Created All Things Out of Pre-Existing Matter
  3. 3. An Argument of Hermogenes. The Answer: While God is a Title Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out
  4. 4. Hermogenes Gives Divine Attributes to Matter, and So Makes Two Gods
  5. 5. Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid of It. After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make It Somehow Inferior to God
  6. 6. The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator
  7. 7. Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles
  8. 8. On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God
  9. 9. Sundry Inevitable But Intolerable Conclusions from the Principles of Hermogenes
  10. 10. To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the Divine Being. He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of Evil
  11. 11. Hermogenes Makes Great Efforts to Remove Evil from God to Matter. How He Fails to Do This Consistently with His Own Argument
  12. 12. The Mode of Controversy Changed. The Premisses of Hermogenes Accepted, in Order to Show into What Confusion They Lead Him
  13. 13. Another Ground of Hermogenes that Matter Has Some Good in It. Its Absurdity
  14. 14. Tertullian Pushes His Opponent into a Dilemma
  15. 15. The Truth, that God Made All Things from Nothing, Rescued from the Opponent's Flounderings
  16. 16. A Series of Dilemmas. They Show that Hermogenes Cannot Escape from the Orthodox Conclusion
  17. 17. The Truth of God's Work in Creation. You Cannot Depart in the Least from It, Without Landing Yourself in an Absurdity
  18. 18. An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing
  19. 19. An Appeal to the History of Creation. True Meaning of the Term Beginning, Which the Heretic Curiously Wrests to an Absurd Sense
  20. 20. Meaning of the Phrase — In the Beginning. Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter
  21. 21. A Retort of Heresy Answered. That Scripture Should in So Many Words Tell Us that the World Was Made of Nothing is Superfluous
  22. 22. This Conclusion Confirmed by the Usage of Holy Scripture in Its History of the Creation. Hermogenes in Danger of the Woe Pronounced Against Adding to Scripture
  23. 23. Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of Scripture. The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed
  24. 24. Earth Does Not Mean Matter as Hermogenes Would Have It
  25. 25. The Assumption that There are Two Earths Mentioned in the History of the Creation, Refuted
  26. 26. The Method Observed in the History of the Creation, in Reply to the Perverse Interpretation of Hermogenes
  27. 27. Some Hair-Splitting Use of Words in Which His Opponent Had Indulged
  28. 28. A Curious Inconsistency in Hermogenes Exposed. Certain Expressions in The History of Creation Vindicated in The True Sense
  29. 29. The Gradual Development of Cosmical Order Out of Chaos in the Creation, Beautifully Stated
  30. 30. Another Passage in the Sacred History of the Creation, Released from the Mishandling of Hermogenes
  31. 31. A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes
  32. 32. The Account of the Creation in Genesis a General One, Corroborated, However, by Many Other Passages of the Old Testament, Which Give Account of Specific Creations. Further Cavillings Confuted
  33. 33. Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter. Its Relation to God's Creation of the World
  34. 34. A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes' Charge of Being Merely Figurative
  35. 35. Contradictory Propositions Advanced by Hermogenes Respecting Matter and Its Qualities
  36. 36. Other Absurd Theories Respecting Matter and Its Incidents Exposed in an Ironical Strain. Motion in Matter. Hermogenes' Conceits Respecting It
  37. 37. Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It
  38. 38. Other Speculations of Hermogenes, About Matter and Some of Its Adjuncts, Shown to Be Absurd. For Instance, Its Alleged Infinity
  39. 39. These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes
  40. 40. Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos. Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation
  41. 41. Sundry Quotations from Hermogenes. Now Uncertain and Vague are His Speculations Respecting Motion in Matter, and the Material Qualities of Good and Evil
  42. 42. Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of Matter
  43. 43. Other Discrepancies Exposed and Refuted Respecting the Evil in Matter Being Changed to Good
  44. 44. Curious Views Respecting God's Method of Working with Matter Exposed. Discrepancies in the Heretic's Opinion About God's Local Relation to Matter
  45. 45. Conclusion. Contrast Between the Statements of Hermogenes and the Testimony of Holy Scripture Respecting the Creation. Creation Out of Nothing, Not Out of Matter

We are accustomed, for the purpose of shortening argument, to lay down the rule against heretics of the lateness of their date. For in as far as by our rule, priority is given to the truth, which also foretold that there would be heresies, in so far must all later opinions be prejudged as heresies, being such as were, by the more ancient rule of truth, predicted as (one day) to happen. Now, the doctrine of Hermogenes has this taint of novelty. He is, in short, a man living in the world at the present time; by his very nature a heretic, and turbulent withal, who mistakes loquacity for eloquence, and supposes impudence to be firmness, and judges it to be the duty of a good conscience to speak ill of individuals. Moreover, he despises God's law in his painting, maintaining repeated marriages, alleges the law of God in defense of lust, and yet despises it in respect of his art. He falsifies by a twofold process — with his cautery and his pen. 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. [[2 Timothy 1.15]] 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. For, turning away from Christians to the philosophers, from the Church to the Academy and the Porch, he learned there from the Stoics how to place Matter (on the same level) with the Lord, just as if it too had existed ever both unborn and unmade, having no beginning at all nor end, out of which, according to him, the Lord afterwards created all things.