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Tertullian
Against Hermogenes

Against Hermogenes

By Tertullian

Table of Contents

Title Page
Chapter I.--The Opinions of Hermogenes, by the Prescriptive Rule of Antiquity Shown to Be Heretical
Chapter II.--Hermogenes, After a Perverse Induction from Mere Heretical Assumptions, Concludes that God Created All Things Out of Pre-Existing Matter.
Chapter III.--An Argument of Hermogenes The Answer: While God is a Title Eternally Applicable to the Divine Being, Lord and Father are Only Relative Appellations, Not Eternally Applicable. An Inconsistency in the Argument of Hermogenes Pointed Out.
Chapter IV.--Hermogenes Gives Divine Attributes to Matter, and So Makes Two Gods.
Chapter V.--Hermogenes Coquets with His Own Argument, as If Rather Afraid of It After Investing Matter with Divine Qualities, He Tries to Make It Somehow Inferior to God.
Chapter VI.--The Shifts to Which Hermogenes is Reduced, Who Deifies Matter, and Yet is Unwilling to Hold Him Equal with the Divine Creator.
Chapter VII.--Hermogenes Held to His Theory in Order that Its Absurdity May Be Exposed on His Own Principles.
Chapter VIII.--On His Own Principles, Hermogenes Makes Matter, on the Whole, Superior to God.
Chapter IX.--Sundry Inevitable But Intolerable Conclusions from the Principles of Hermogenes.
Chapter X.--To What Straits Hermogenes Absurdly Reduces the Divine Being He Does Nothing Short of Making Him the Author of Evil.
Chapter XI.--Hermogenes Makes Great Efforts to Remove Evil from God to Matter How He Fails to Do This Consistently with His Own Argument.
Chapter XII.--The Mode of Controversy Changed The Premisses of Hermogenes Accepted, in Order to Show into What Confusion They Lead Him.
Chapter XIII.--Another Ground of Hermogenes that Matter Has Some Good in It Its Absurdity.
Chapter XIV.--Tertullian Pushes His Opponent into a Dilemma.
Chapter XV.--The Truth, that God Made All Things from Nothing, Rescued from the Opponent's Flounderings.
Chapter XVI.--A Series of Dilemmas They Show that Hermogenes Cannot Escape from the Orthodox Conclusion.
Chapter XVII.--The Truth of God's Work in Creation You Cannot Depart in the Least from It, Without Landing Yourself in an Absurdity.
Chapter XVIII.--An Eulogy on the Wisdom and Word of God, by Which God Made All Things of Nothing.
Chapter XIX.--An Appeal to the History of Creation True Meaning of the Term Beginning, Which the Heretic Curiously Wrests to an Absurd Sense.
Chapter XX.--Meaning of the Phrase--In the Beginning Tertullian Connects It with the Wisdom of God, and Elicits from It the Truth that the Creation Was Not Out of Pre-Existent Matter.
Chapter XXI.--A Retort of Heresy Answered That Scripture Should in So Many Words Tell Us that the World Was Made of Nothing is Superfluous.
Chapter XXII.--This Conclusion Confirmed by the Usage of Holy Scripture in Its History of the Creation. Hermogenes in Danger of the Woe Pronounced Against Adding to Scripture.
Chapter XXIII.--Hermogenes Pursued to Another Passage of Scripture The Absurdity of His Interpretation Exposed.
Chapter XXIV.--Earth Does Not Mean Matter as Hermogenes Would Have It.
Chapter XXV.--The Assumption that There are Two Earths Mentioned in the History of the Creation, Refuted.
Chapter XXVI.--The Method Observed in the History of the Creation, in Reply to the Perverse Interpretation of Hermogenes.
Chapter XXVII.--Some Hair-Splitting Use of Words in Which His Opponent Had Indulged.
Chapter XXVIII.--A Curious Inconsistency in Hermogenes Exposed Certain Expressions in The History of Creation Vindicated in The True Sense.
Chapter XXIX.--The Gradual Development of Cosmical Order Out of Chaos in the Creation, Beautifully Stated.
Chapter XXX.--Another Passage in the Sacred History of the Creation, Released from the Mishandling of Hermogenes.
Chapter XXXI.--A Further Vindication of the Scripture Narrative of the Creation, Against a Futile View of Hermogenes.
Chapter XXXII.--The Account of the Creation in Genesis a General One, Corroborated, However, by Many Other Passages of the Old Testament, Which Give Account of Specific Creations. Further Cavillings Confuted.
Chapter XXXIII.--Statement of the True Doctrine Concerning Matter Its Relation to God's Creation of the World.
Chapter XXXIV.--A Presumption that All Things Were Created by God Out of Nothing Afforded by the Ultimate Reduction of All Things to Nothing. Scriptures Proving This Reduction Vindicated from Hermogenes' Charge of Being Merely Figurative.
Chapter XXXV.--Contradictory Propositions Advanced by Hermogenes Respecting Matter and Its Qualities.
Chapter XXXVI.--Other Absurd Theories Respecting Matter and Its Incidents Exposed in an Ironical Strain. Motion in Matter. Hermogenes' Conceits Respecting It.
Chapter XXXVII.--Ironical Dilemmas Respecting Matter, and Sundry Moral Qualities Fancifully Attributed to It.
Chapter XXXIII.--Other Speculations of Hermogenes, About Matter and Some of Its Adjuncts, Shown to Be Absurd. For Instance, Its Alleged Infinity.
Chapter XXXIX.--These Latter Speculations Shown to Be Contradictory to the First Principles Respecting Matter, Formerly Laid Down by Hermogenes.
Chapter XL.--Shapeless Matter an Incongruous Origin for God's Beautiful Cosmos Hermogenes Does Not Mend His Argument by Supposing that Only a Portion of Matter Was Used in the Creation.
Chapter XLI.--Sundry Quotations from Hermogenes Now Uncertain and Vague are His Speculations Respecting Motion in Matter, and the Material Qualities of Good and Evil.
Chapter XLII.--Further Exposure of Inconsistencies in the Opinions of Hermogenes Respecting the Divine Qualities of Matter.
Chapter XLIII.--Other Discrepancies Exposed and Refuted Respecting the Evil in Matter Being Changed to Good.
Chapter XLIV.--Curious Views Respecting God's Method of Working with Matter Exposed Discrepancies in the Heretic's Opinion About God's Local Relation to Matter.
Chapter XLV.--Conclusion Contrast Between the Statements of Hermogenes and the Testimony of Holy Scripture Respecting the Creation. Creation Out of Nothing, Not Out of Matter.