Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
You will try, on this point, to shake the argument with the word 'god,' treating it as a term applicable in a general sense and granted to others too, since it is written: 'God stands in the assembly of the gods; in the midst he will judge the gods,' and, 'I have said, you are gods'—arguing that this does not entitle those beings to possess the supreme greatness merely because they are termed 'gods'; and so, you say, the same holds for the Creator. I will answer even this folly, which has not stopped to consider that the very same argument can be turned back just as forcefully against Marcion's own god—that he too is called 'god,' and is no more thereby proven to be the supreme greatness than the angels or men are, by being called sons of the Creator. If a shared name prejudges status, then think how many worthless slaves have insolently borne the names of kings—Alexander, Darius, Holofernes—yet kings are not thereby stripped of what they actually are. Even the idols of the nations are commonly called 'god,' yet no one is God merely by being called so. So it is not to the name 'God,' nor to its sound, nor to the mark of that word, that I attach the supreme greatness in the Creator's case, but to the very substance to which this name has fallen—finding this substance, and this alone, unborn, unmade, alone eternal and the founder of the universe; I ascribe and claim the supreme greatness not for a name but for a status, not for an appellation but for a condition. And so, because it has already become customary to call the substance to which I am ascribing this 'god,' you suppose I am fastening my case to the name—when in fact it is necessary, by means of the name, that I show to which substance I am ascribing it: namely, the substance by virtue of which the one so called is truly God, and the supreme greatness is reckoned from substance, not from name. In the end, Marcion too, when claiming this for his own god, claims it on the basis of status, not of the word used. This supreme greatness, then, which we ascribe to God on the ground of the law of substance and not the accident of a name, we maintain must be equal in the two beings who consist of that substance by which one is called God—because to the very degree that they are called gods, that is, supreme greatnesses, by the merit precisely of an unborn and eternal substance, and therefore a great and supreme one, to that very degree a supreme greatness cannot be regarded as lesser and inferior to another supreme greatness. If the felicity, the sublimity, and the integrity of the supreme greatness will stand firm in Marcion's god, it will stand equally firm in ours; and if not in ours, then equally not in Marcion's either. So the two supreme greatnesses will not be equal—since the rule of the supreme greatness, already laid down, forbids it any comparison at all—nor will they be unequal, since another rule of the supreme greatness stands in the way, admitting no diminishment. You are stuck, Marcion, in the middle of the surge of your own sea. Waves of truth close in on you from both sides. You can establish your gods as neither equal nor unequal. For there are not two of them—which is properly a matter belonging to the reckoning of number. Although the whole subject of two gods is fought out at greater length, for the moment we have enclosed it within these lines, within which we shall now come to grips with their individual properties.
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