Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] As for the question of goodness, we have drawn these lines to show that it is by no means equal to God — that it is neither unbegotten nor rational nor perfect, but in fact wicked and unjust and unworthy even of the very name of goodness, since it is precisely to the degree that it fits God that it turns out not to be God who is set above such a goodness — and not merely above a goodness of that kind, but above it alone. [2] For this too now needs to be examined: whether God is to be reckoned by goodness alone, with all other attributes denied him — the senses and affections which the Marcionites indeed banish from their god and dump onto the Creator, while we for our part acknowledge them in the Creator as worthy of a god. And on this ground too we will deny the name of god to any being in whom not everything worthy of god is found together. [3] If someone from the school of Epicurus wanted to hang the name of Christ on some god of his own devising — so that, being blessed and incorruptible, he should cause no trouble to himself or to anyone else (for it is by chewing on this doctrine that Marcion stripped him of severity and judicial power) — then he ought either to have conceived of him as utterly immobile and stupefied (but then what has he to do with Christ, who was a trouble to the Jews through his teaching and to himself through the cross?), or else he ought to have granted him the other emotions too (but then what has he to do with Epicurus, who is of no necessary use either to himself or to Christians?). [4] For look: by the very fact that, having been quiet before — not having troubled even to make himself known by some intervening work — he felt, after so vast an age, a concern for man's salvation, and did so, of course, by an act of will, was he not then shaken by this new act of willing, so that he now appears liable to the other emotions as well? And what act of will is without the goad of desire? Who wills something he does not desire? And on top of willing, care too will come along. [5] For who will both will and desire something and not care about it? Therefore, since he both willed and desired man's salvation, he has now made trouble for himself and for others too — much against Epicurus's wishes, with Marcion as his counselor. For he set up as his own adversary the very thing against which he willed and desired and cared — whether sin or death — and, first of all, their very arbiter and lord, the Creator of man. [6] Furthermore, nothing runs its course without rivalry unless it has no adversary at all. In short, by willing and desiring and caring to set man free, he by that very act already rivals the one from whom he sets man free — meaning to free man against him — and rivals also the things from which he frees man, meaning to free him into other things instead. It follows that rivalry must necessarily be attended by its retinue of officials — anger, discord, hatred, disdain, indignation, bile, refusal, offense. [7] If all these attend upon rivalry, and rivalry is what procures man's liberation, and man's liberation is the operation of goodness, then that goodness cannot exist without its proper endowments — that is, without senses and affections, through which it is administered against the Creator — lest it too, in just this way, be convicted of irrationality, if it lacks the senses and affections that are its due. We shall defend these points much more fully when we deal with the case of the Creator, in which they are also thrown at us as reproaches.
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