Tertullian — Against Marcion 1.7
You will try against this to shake the inquiry from the name of God—as if passive and also permitted to others, because it is written: God stood in the assembly of gods; in the midst he will judge gods; and: I said, you are gods. Yet for that reason possession of the supreme great does not belong to them because they are surnamed gods—and so neither does it fail the Creator on that account. I will answer even the fool who has not even thought this through, lest the same can be turned back on Marcion’s god: that he too is called god and yet is not thereby proved the supreme great, just as neither the Creator’s angels nor humans are. If fellowship of names prejudges conditions, how many worthless slaves insult kings’ names—Alexander and Darius and Holofernes? Yet kings are not for that reason stripped of what they are. For even the nations’ idols themselves are commonly gods—but none is God by the mere fact that he is called god.
So I do not defend the supreme great in the Creator by the name of God, nor by its sound, nor by the mark of this name, but by the very substance to which this name has fallen. Finding this alone unborn and unmade, alone eternal and foundress of the universe, I ascribe and vindicate the supreme great not to the name but to the status, not to the appellation but to its condition. And therefore, because the substance to which I ascribe it has already obtained to be called God, you think I ascribe to the name, because I must through a name show to which substance I ascribe—namely that by which he who is called God consists. But the supreme great is counted from substance, not from name.
Finally Marcion too, vindicating this for his god, vindicates it according to status, not according to vocabulary. Therefore that supreme great which we ascribe to God from the law of substance, not from the lot of a name, we contend must be equal in two who consist of that substance which is called God—because insofar as they are called gods, that is supreme greats, by the merit of substance unborn and eternal and thereby great and supreme, to that extent a supreme great cannot be held lesser and worse than another supreme great. If the happiness and sublimity and integrity of the supreme great will stand in Marcion’s god, it will stand equally in ours; if not also in ours, equally not in Marcion’s.
Therefore two supreme greats will neither be equals—because the already set rule of the supreme great forbids a comparison it does not sustain—nor unequals, because another rule of the supreme great also meets us, admitting no diminution. You stick, Marcion, in the middle swell of your Pontus. Waves of truth wrap you from both sides. You can establish neither equal nor unequal gods. For there are not two. As concerns what properly belongs to the inquiry of number—although the whole matter fights about two gods—for now we have shut him within these lines, inside which we will next contend about singular properties.
Latin
Temptabis ad haec de nomine dei concutere retractatum ; ut passiuo et in alios quoque permisso, quia scriptum sit: ! deus deorum stetit in ecclesia deorum, in medio autem deos diiudicabit, et: ego dixi, uos dii estis. nec tamen idcirco eis competat possessio summi magni, quia dii cognominentur; ita nec creatori. respondebo et stulto, qui nec hoc recogitauerit, ne tantundem et in deum Marcionis possit retorqueri, ut et illum deum dictum nec ideo tamen summum magnum probatum, sicut nec angeli aut homines creatoris. si communio nominum condicionibus praeiudicat, quanti nequam serui regum nominibus insultant, Alexandri et Darii et Olofernae? nec tamen ideo regibus id quod sunt detrahetur. nam et ipsa idola gentium dei uulgo, sed deus nemo ea re, qua deus dicitur. ita ego non nomini dei nec sono nec notae nominis huius summum magnum in creatore defendo, sed ipsi substantiae, cui nomen hoc contigit. hanc inueniens solam innatam infectam, solam aeternam et uniuersitatis conditricem, non nomini, sed statui, nec appellationi, sed condicioni eius summum magnum et adscribo et uindico. et ideo. quia deus iam uocari obtinuit substantia cui adscribo, nomini me adscribere putas, quia necesse est per nomen ostendam cui adscribam substantiae, scilicet qua constat qui deus dicitur. at summum magnum ex substantia, non ex nomine, deputatur. denique hoc et Marcion suo deo uindicans, secundum statum, non secundum uocabulum uindicat. id ergo summum magnum, quod deo adscribimus ex substantiae lege, non ex nominis sorte, contendimus ex pari esse debere in duobus, qui ea substantia constant, quae deus dicitur, quia in quantum dii uocantur, id est summa magna, substantiae scilicet mento innatae et aeternae ac per hoc magnae et summae, in tantum non possit summum magnum minus et deterius alio summo magno haberi. si summi magni felicitas et sublimitas et integritas stabit in deo Marcionis, stabit aeque et in nostro, si non et in nostro, aeque nec in Marcionis. ergo nec paria erunt duo summa magna, quia prohibet disposita iam regula summi magni comparationem non sustinens, nec disparia, quia et alia summi magni regula occurrit, diminutionem non admittens. haesisti, Marcion, in medio Ponti tui aestu. utrimque te fluctus ueritatis inuoluunt. nec pares nec dispares deos sistere potes. duo enim non sunt. quod pertineat proprie ad numeri retractatum, quamquam tota materia de duobus deis dimicetur, his interim lineis eum clusimus, intra quas de singularibus iam proprietatibus congrediemur.