Page:Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature (1911).djvu/473

 of this limitation in Tertullian's treatise, which shews all through a dislike of the pictorial art, and Tertullian seems to have considered the representation of the human form absolutely forbidden by the 2nd commandment. As for the charge of frequent marriages, if Hermogenes, who in 207 would be advanced in life, was then married to a third wife, a writer so fond of rhetorical exaggeration as Tertullian might describe him as one who had formed a practice of marrying (nubit assidue), or who had "married more women than he had painted." Tertullian's language may imply that Hermogenes had also endeavoured to prove from Scripture that a second marriage was not unlawful.

With regard to the doctrines of Hermogenes, the language of Hippolytus suggests that he denied the physical possibility of creation from nothing; but in the representation of Tertullian no stress is laid on the philosophic maxim, "Nihil ex nihilo," and the eternal existence of matter seems only assumed to account for the origin of evil. The argument of Hermogenes was, either God made the world out of His own substance, or out of nothing, or out of previously existing matter. The first or emanation hypothesis is rejected, since He Who is indivisible and immutable could not separate Himself into parts, or make Himself other than He had ever been. The second is disproved by the existence of evil, for if God made all things out of nothing unrestrained by any condition, His work would have been all good and perfect like Himself. It remained, therefore, that God must have formed the world out of previously existent matter, through the fault of which evil was possible. Further, God must have been always God and Lord, therefore there must always have existed something of which He was God and Lord. Tertullian replies that God was always God but not always Lord, and appeals to Genesis, where the title God is given to the Creator from the first, but the title Lord not till after the creation of man. Concerning Tertullian's assertion that God was not always Father, see Bull, ''Del. Fid. Nic.'' iii. 10. From the assertion of Hermogenes that God was always Lord of matter, Neander inferred that he must have denied any creation in time, and held that God had been from eternity operating in a formative manner on matter. Tertullian does not appear to have drawn this consequence, and (c. 44) assumes as undisputed some definite epoch of creation. But the account of Hippolytus shews Neander to have been right. With regard to the general argument, Tertullian shews that the hypothesis of the eternity of matter relieves none of the difficulties of reconciling the existence of evil with the attributes of God. If God exercised lordship over matter, why did He not clear it of evil before He employed it in the work of creation? Or why did He employ in His work that which He knew to be evil? It would really, he says, be more honourable to God to make Him the free and voluntary author of evil than to make him the slave of matter, compelled to use it in His work, though knowing it to be evil. He contends that the hypothesis of Hermogenes amounts to Ditheism, since, though he does not give to matter the name of God, he ascribes to it God's essential attribute of eternity. He asks what just claim of lordship God could have over matter as eternal as Himself; nay, which might claim to be the superior; for matter could do without God, but God, it would seem, could not carry out His work without coming to matter for assistance. In the discussion every word in the Mosaic account of creation receives minute examination and there is a good deal of strained verbal interpretation on both sides. But the authority, and apparently the canon, of Scripture were subjects on which both were agreed. Tertullian holds Scripture so exclusive an authority that its mere silence is decisive, and, since it does not mention pre-existent matter, that those who assert its existence incur the woe denounced against those who add to that which is written.

Though the word "materialist" is first heard of in this controversy, the views of Hermogenes were very unlike those now known by that name, and it is doubtful whether our word matter exactly corresponds to the hyle of Hermogenes. This apparently included the ideas of shapelessness and disorderly motion, so that all the sensible world could not, as in our modern language, be described as material. That which became κόσμος ceased to be hyle, and, in fact, Tertullian does not admit the existence of matter in the sense of Hermogenes. Hermogenes held matter to be infinite and refused to apply to it any predicate. It is without form, and is described as in a perpetual state of turbulent restless motion, like water boiling in a pot. It is not to be called good, since it needed the Deity to fashion it; nor bad, since it was capable of being reduced to order. It is not to be called corporeal, because motion, one of its essential attributes, is incorporeal, nor incorporeal because out of it bodies are made. Hermogenes repudiated the Stoic notion that God pervades matter, or is in it like honey in a honeycomb; his idea was that the Deity, without intermixing with matter, operated on it by His mere approach and by shewing Himself, just as beauty affects the mind by the mere sight of it (a very appropriate illustration for a painter) or as a magnet causes motion without contact merely on being brought near. By this approach part of matter was reduced to order and became the κόσμος, but part remains unsubdued; and this, it is to be supposed, was in the theory of Hermogenes the source of evil. Tertullian acutely remarks that this language about God's drawing near to matter as well as the use of the words above and below with reference to the relative position of God and matter cannot be reconciled with the doctrine of Hermogenes as to the infinity of matter.

The lost tract of Tertullian against Hermogenes discussed the origin of the soul, which Hermogenes ascribed to matter, Tertullian to the breath of life inspired by God at the formation of man (Gen. ii. 7). Tertullian accuses his opponent of mistranslation in substituting "Spirit" for "breath," apparently in order to exclude the possibility of interpreting this part of the verse of the communication of the soul, since the Divine