Tertullian — Against Marcion 2.25

Already now, to clear all of that kind, I will press on to interpreting and purging the rest of the littlenesses and weaknesses and incongruities, as you think. ‘God cries: Adam, where are you?—clearly not knowing where he was—and, when nakedness’s shame is pleaded, asks whether he had tasted of the tree—clearly uncertain.’ No—neither uncertain of the deed nor ignorant of the place. For indeed it was right that one hiding by conscience of sin be called out and come forth into the Lord’s sight, not by a bare cry of the name but with some branding already then of the deed. Nor is it to be read in a simple way, that is with interrogative sound: Adam, where are you?—but impressed and struck and imputative: Adam, where are you!—that is, you are in ruin, that is, already you are not here—so that the voice may be of both rebuking and grieving outcome.

For the rest, he who holds the whole world in hand like a nest, whose heaven is a throne and earth a footstool—doubtless some portion of paradise had escaped this one’s eyes, so that Adam, wherever he was, would not be seen by him even before the call, as hidden as when taking from the forbidden fruit! A watcher of your vineyard or garden is not hidden from by hare or little thief: and think God, more eyed from higher things, unable to pass over something set under him. Fool, who nose at so great an argument of divine majesty and human instruction! God asks as if uncertain so that, here too proving the human of free choice, he might give him place in the cause of either denial or confession for confessing the delict of his own accord and by this name for being lightened—just as he inquires of Cain where his brother is, as if he had not already heard Abel’s blood crying from the earth—but so that that one too might have power from the same power of choice for denying the delict of his own accord and by this name for being heavied, and so examples would be founded for us of confessing delicts rather than denying them, so that already then the gospel doctrine might be initiated: from your mouth you will be justified and from your mouth you will be damned.

For even if Adam was given to death because of the law’s status, still hope is safe for him, the Lord saying: Behold, Adam has become like one of us—clearly about the future election of the human into divinity. Finally what follows? And now, lest he sometime stretch hand and take of the tree of life and live forever. For by inserting ‘and now,’ a word of present time, he shows he made a temporal and for-the-present delay of life. And therefore he cursed neither Adam himself nor Eve, as candidates of restoration, as lightened by confession; but Cain he both cursed and, though eager to pay for the delict by death, forbade to die for a time, as burdened beyond the deed also by denial of it. This will be our God’s ‘ignorance,’ which will be simulated so that the sinning human may not be ignorant what he must do for himself.

But coming down to Sodom and Gomorrah: I will see, he says, whether they are completed according to the cry reaching me; but if not, that I may know—here too clearly uncertain from ignorance and eager to know. Or is the sound of pronunciation necessary here too—expressing not a doubting but a threatening sense under the pretext of inquiry? And if you also mock God’s descent, as if he could not otherwise finish judgment unless he had descended, see that you do not likewise strike your own god. For he too descended, so that he might accomplish what he willed.