Tertullian — Against Marcion 11

And justly so, they say. For who is there that is less well known by his own (inherent) qualities than by strange ones? No one. Well, I keep to this statement. How could anything be strange to God , to whom, if He were personally existent, nothing would be strange? For this is the attribute of God , that all things are His, and all things belong to Him; or else this question would not so readily be heard from us: What has He to do with things strange to Him?— a point which will be more fully noticed in its proper place. It is now sufficient to observe, that no one is proved to exist to whom nothing is proved to belong.

For as the Creator is shown to be God , God without any doubt , from the fact that all things are His, and nothing is strange to Him; so the rival god is seen to be no god, from the circumstance that nothing is his, and all things are therefore strange to him. Since, then, the universe belongs to the Creator, I see no room for any other god. All things are full of their Author, and occupied by Him. If in created beings there be any portion of space anywhere void of Deity, the void will be of a false deity clearly. By falsehood the truth is made clear. Why cannot the vast crowd of false gods somewhere find room for Marcion's god?

This, therefore, I insist upon, from the character of the Creator, that God must have been known from the works of some world peculiarly His own, both in its human constituents, and the rest of its organic life; when even the error of the world has presumed to call gods those men whom it sometimes acknowledges, on the ground that in every such case something is seen which provides for the uses and advantages of life. Accordingly, this also was believed from the character of God to be a divine function; namely, to teach or point out what is convenient and needful in human concerns. So completely has the authority which has given influence to a false divinity been borrowed from that source, whence it had previously flowed forth to the true one.

One stray vegetable at least Marcion's god ought to have produced as his own; so might he be preached up as a new Triptolemus. Or else state some reason which shall be worthy of a God , why he, supposing him to exist, created nothing; because he must, on supposition of his existence , have been a creator, on that very principle on which it is clear to us that our God is no otherwise existent, than as having been the Creator of this universe of ours.