Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But since from this point we are already understood to be building up man's free power of choice in such a way that whatever befell him must be reckoned to his own account rather than to God's, lest you object right away that he should never have been fashioned that way, if freedom and power of choice were bound to end in ruin — I will defend this point too, first of all: that he needed to be fashioned that way, so that I may the more forcefully commend the fact both that he was so constituted and that he was worthily constituted so by God, once the better reason is shown for why he was made so. The goodness of God and his rationality will both stand as advocates for this institution too, agreeing together in everything, as they do in our God. [2] For reason without goodness is no reason, nor is goodness without reason any goodness — unless perhaps, in Marcion's god, goodness runs irrationally, as we have shown. God had to be known. This surely is good, and rational. There had to be something worthy that would know God. What could be conceived so worthy of that as the image and likeness of God? [3] And this too is beyond doubt good, and rational. It was necessary, then, that the image and likeness of God be instituted with freedom of choice and its own power, this very thing being reckoned the image and likeness of God — namely the freedom and power of choice — and for this purpose that substance was fitted to man which belonged to this condition, the breath of God being, of course, free and its own master. But besides, what sort of thing would it be for man, possessing the whole world, not to reign first of all in the possession of his own mind — lord over others, slave to himself? [4] You have, then, both to acknowledge the goodness of God from the honor bestowed, and his reason from the arrangement made. Let goodness alone, for the moment, be credited with having granted man so great a gift, namely freedom of choice; let reason claim for itself the other side of this institution. For God alone is good by nature. He who has what he is without beginning has it not by institution but by nature. Man, however, who owes his whole being to institution, having a beginning, received along with that beginning the form by which he exists, and so was disposed toward good not by nature but by institution — not having his goodness as his own, because he was disposed toward good not by nature but by institution, but rather in accordance with his institutor's goodness, namely the Founder of all good things. [5] So then, that man might now have goodness as his very own, emancipated to him by God, and that it might become a property of goodness in man, and in a certain sense his nature, there was assigned to him out of that institution, as a kind of counterweight for the goodness emancipated from God, freedom and power of choice — which would make goodness, as something now his own, be rendered by man of his own accord, since this too the very nature of goodness required, that it be exercised voluntarily, out of freedom of choice, favoring the institution but not enslaved to it — so that man might at last stand as truly good only if, in keeping with his institution, yet out of his own will, he were found good, as it were out of a property of his own nature; and likewise, so that against evil too (for God foresaw that as well) man might set himself the more strongly, being free, that is, and his own master — because if he lacked this right, so that he would meet even good not by will but by necessity, he would then be liable to be seized by evil as well, out of the very weakness of his servitude, being a slave equally to evil as to good. [6] The whole freedom of choice, then, was granted to him on both sides, so that as his own master he might stand firm, keeping to the good of his own accord and shunning evil of his own accord — since besides, man, set under the judgment of God, had to render that judgment just on the basis of the merits of his own choice, a choice that was free. [7] For otherwise neither the reward for good nor the penalty for evil could rightly be weighed out to one who had been found good or evil by necessity rather than by will. On this point the law too was established — not excluding freedom but proving it, in obedience rendered of one's own accord or transgression committed of one's own accord; thus freedom of choice lay open toward either outcome. If, then, both the goodness and the reason of God are found bound up with the freedom of choice granted to man, one ought not, having set aside that first definition of goodness and reason — which must be established before any discussion — pass judgment afterward, on the basis of the outcome, that God ought not to have instituted man so, simply because he turned out otherwise than would befit God, but rather, once it has been discerned that he had to institute him so, to leave that point settled and go on to examine the rest. [8] For the rest, it is easy for men, stumbling at once upon man's ruin before they have examined his condition, to charge the Author with what happened, simply because the Author's reasoning has not been examined. In sum, the goodness of God, once seen from the very beginning of his works, will persuade us that no evil could have come from God; and man's freedom, upon reconsideration, will show itself the more likely defendant for what it itself committed.
7.