etimes so
weak and limited that one can no longer look on him as a God.[504] The
Fathers everywhere argue on behalf of the Gnostic Demiurge and against
the Gnostic supreme God. It never occurs to them to proceed in the
opposite way and prove that the supreme God may be the Creator. All
their efforts are rather directed to show that the Creator of the world
is the only and supreme God, and that there can be no other above this
one. This attitude of the Fathers is characteristic; for it proves that
the apologetico-philosophical theology was their fundamental assumption.
The Gnostic (Marcionite) supreme God is the God of religion, the God of
redemption; the Demiurge is the being required to explain the world. The
intervention of the Fathers on his behalf, that is, their assuming him
as the basis of their arguments, reveals what was fundamental and what
was accidental in their religious teaching. At the same time, however,
it shows plainly that they did not understand or did not feel the
fundamental problem that troubled and perplexed the Gnostics and
Marcion, viz., the qualitative distinction between the spheres of
creation and redemption. They think they have sufficiently explained
this distinction by the doctrine of human freedom and its consequences.
Accordingly their whole mode of argument against the Gnostics and
Marcion is, in point of content, of an abstract, philosophico-rational
kind.[505] As a rule they do not here carry on their controversy with
the aid of reasons taken from the deeper views of religion. As soon as
the rational argument fails, however, there is really an entire end to
the refutation from inner grounds, at least in the case of Tertullian;
and the contest is shifted into the sphere of the rule of faith and the
Holy Scriptures. Hence, for example, they have not succeeded in making
much impression on the heretical Christology from dogmatic
considerations, though in this respect Irenaeus was still very much more
successful than Tertullian.[506] Besides, in adv. Marc. II. 27, the
latter betrayed what interest he took in the preexistent Christ as
distinguished from God the Father. It is not expedient to separate the
arguments advanced by the Fathers against the Gnostics from their own
positive teachings, for these are throughout dependent on their peculiar
attitude within the sphere of Scripture and tradition.

Irenaeus and Hippolytus have been rightly named Scripture theologians;
but it is a strange i