Note 504 — Chapter V
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 504:
(return)
Tertullian in particular argued in great detail (adv. Marc. I. 9-19) that every God must, above all, have revealed himself as a creator. In opposition to Marcion's rejection of all natural theology, he represents this science as the foundation of all religious belief. In this connection he eulogised the created world (I. 13) and at the same time (see also the 2nd Book) argued in favour of the Demiurge, i.e., of the one true God. Irenæus urged a series of acute and weighty objections to the cosmogony of the Valentinians (see II. 1-5), and showed how untenable was the idea of the Demiurge as an intermediate being. The doctrines that the Supreme Being is unknown (II. 6), that the Demiurge is the blind instrument of higher æons, that the world was created against the will of the Supreme God, and, lastly, that our world is the imperfect copy of a higher one were also opposed by him with rational arguments. His refutation of the last conception is specially remarkable (II. 7). On the idea that God did not create the world from eternal matter see Tertull., adv. Hermog.