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Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 24
1 complete historical source paragraphs and 2 editorial footnotes. Author and edition credits are shown for each record; original wording is retained.
English translation and editorial credits: Henry Austin Wilson (translator and notes), Joseph Hirst Lupton (editorial revision assistance), Henry Wace (editor).
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Otherwise Chap. xxiv. The Bodleian ms. of the Latin version has a title corresponding to that of the following chapter in the other mss.:—“Against those who say that matter is co-eternal with God.”
Editorial footnote · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 24, editorial note cite_note-1 · Original source
XXIII. That he who confesses the beginning of the world’s existence must necessarily also agree as to its end.
Reading, with some of Forbes’ mss., ἄποσος, which seems on the whole the better reading so far as sense is concerned. ἄποιος may be the result of a sense of the awkwardness of employing both ἄποσος and ἀμεγέθης: but further on in the section we find ἄποσος where the mss. seem to agree. Further, the connecting particles seem to show a closer connection of sense between ἀποσὸς and ἀμεγέθης than between ἀμεγέθης and ἀσύνθετος
Editorial footnote · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 24, editorial note cite_note-3 · Original source
3. For in that case too, argumentative men might by plausible reasoning upset our faith, so that we should not think that statement true which Holy Scripture delivers concerning the material creation, when it asserts that all existing things have their beginning of being from God. For those who abide by the contrary view maintain that matter is co-eternal with God, and employ in support of their own doctrine some such arguments as these. If God is in His nature simple and immaterial, without quantity, or size, or combination, and removed from the idea of circumscription by way of figure, while all matter is apprehended in extension measured by intervals, and does not escape the apprehension of our senses, but becomes known to us in colour, and figure, and bulk, and size, and resistance, and the other attributes belonging to it, none of which it is possible to conceive in the Divine nature,—what method is there for the production of matter from the immaterial, or of the nature that has dimensions from that which is unextended? for if these things are believed to have their existence from that source, they clearly come into existence after being in Him in some mysterious way; but if material existence was in Him, how can He be immaterial while including matter in Himself? and similarly with all the other marks by which the material nature is differentiated; if quantity exists in God, how is God without quantity? if the compound nature exists in Him, how is He simple, without parts and without combination? so that the argument forces us to think either that He is material, because matter has its existence from Him as a source; or, if one avoids this, it is necessary to suppose that matter was imported by Him ab extra for the making of the universe.
3. For in that case too, argumentative men might by plausible reasoning upset our faith, so that we should not think that statement true which Holy Scripture delivers concerning the material creation, when it asserts that all existing things have their beginning of being from God. For those who abide by the contrary view maintain that matter is co-eternal with God, and employ in support of their own doctrine some such arguments as these. If God is in His nature simple and immaterial, without quantity, or size, or combination, and removed from the idea of circumscription by way of figure, while all matter is apprehended in extension measured by intervals, and does not escape the apprehension of our senses, but becomes known to us in colour, and figure, and bulk, and size, and resistance, and the other attributes belonging to it, none of which it is possible to conceive in the Divine nature,—what method is there for the production of matter from the immaterial, or of the nature that has dimensions from that which is unextended? for if these things are believed to have their existence from that source, they clearly come into existence after being in Him in some mysterious way; but if material existence was in Him, how can He be immaterial while including matter in Himself? and similarly with all the other marks by which the material nature is differentiated; if quantity exists in God, how is God without quantity? if the compound nature exists in Him, how is He simple, without parts and without combination? so that the argument forces us to think either that He is material, because matter has its existence from Him as a source; or, if one avoids this, it is necessary to suppose that matter was imported by Him ab extra for the making of the universe.
Complete source paragraph · The Making of Man, Chapter uncertain; original source section: Chapter 24, source paragraph 4 · Original source