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1. In the first book preceding this one, denouncing “false knowledge” (1 Tim. 6:20), I showed you, my beloved, that everything that the followers of Valentine invented in many and opposite ways is a lie; He also outlined the opinion of their predecessors, proving that they disagree with each other, and even before with the truth itself. He also presented with all care the teaching and image of the actions of the sorcerer Mark, who belonged to them, and showed exactly what they select from the Scriptures and try to adapt to their fiction. I described in detail how they boldly try to confirm the truth through numbers and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet. He also showed, as they say, that creation took place in the image of their invisible Completeness, and that they think and teach about the Creator (Demiurge), and discovered the teaching of their ancestor, the Samaritan Simon the Magus and all his followers. He also cited the many Gnostics who appeared from him, noted their differences among themselves, their teaching and the order of their succession, and mentioned all the heresies founded by them.
Further, I showed that all these heretics, having received their origin from Simon, brought into this life their godless and ungodly teachings; presented their “redemption” and the method of consecration of all who became “perfect,” as well as their invocation and sacraments, and showed that there is one God the Creator, and that He is not the fruit of lack, and that there is nothing above Him or below Him.
2. In this book I will present what is convenient for me and what time allows, and I will refute in many chapters all their teaching; for this reason I entitled this work so, since it is a denunciation and refutation of their teaching. For it is necessary to discover and refute their hidden combination and the Depth itself, and prove that it never existed and now does not exist.
That there is one God, and that neither higher nor lower than Him there can be another God, Beginning, Completeness or Power.
1. It is necessary to begin with the very first and most important chapter, with God the Creator, who created heaven and earth and everything that is in them, and whom they blasphemously call the fruit of lack, and show that there is nothing higher or lower than Him: that He, not forced by anyone, but of His own will and freely created everything, since He is one God, one Lord, one Creator, one Father, and one contains everything and gives existence to everything.
2. For how can there be another fullness, principle or power, or another god higher than Him, when it is necessary for God, the Fullness of everything, to contain everything in His immeasurability, and not to be contained by anyone? But if there is something outside of Him, then He is no longer the Fullness of everything, and does not contain everything. For the Plenitude, or the exalted God above all, lacks that which, as they say, is outside Him. But what has a deficiency, and from which something is taken away, is not the Completeness of everything. He will also have a beginning, a middle and an end in relation to those outside Him. But if He has an end in relation to what is below, then He also has a beginning in relation to what is above. Equally necessary, He must experience the same from other sides and be contained, limited and enclosed by those (beings) that are outside of Him, for the limit from below necessarily limits and surrounds the one who ends on it.
Thus, in their opinion, the Father of all - Whom they call the Pre-Existent and the First Principle - with their Plenitude (Pleroma) and the good God of Marcion will be embedded in something, included, and surrounded by another power, which must necessarily be greater than Him, because what contains is greater than what is contained; the greater is stronger and more powerful, and that which is greater, stronger and more powerful will be God.
3. If, in their opinion, there is also something that, according to them, is outside the Completeness, into which the highest lost power has ascended, then it is quite necessary that either the external contains, and the Completeness is contained; - otherwise it would not be outside Completeness, for if there is anything outside Completeness, then Completeness will be inside what, according to them, is outside Completeness, and Completeness will be contained by what is outside; with Fullness is meant the first God, - or Fullness and that which is outside of it would be immeasurably far separated and separated from each other. If they say this last, then there will be a third, which immeasurably separates Completeness and what is outside of it; and this third will limit and surround both; and this third, including, as it were, both in its womb, will be greater than both the Fullness and what is outside it, and such speech about what is contained and about what it contains will extend to infinity.
For if this third begins in the highest and ends in the lowest, then it must necessarily be limited from the sides, either beginning or ending at some other points; and this again, just like the highest and the lowest, must begin on something else, and so on to infinity; so that their thought never stops at God alone, but due to the disposition to seek more than exists, it attacks what does not exist and moves away from the true God.
4. These remarks apply in like manner to the followers of Marcion, for his two gods will also be surrounded and limited by an immeasurable interval separating them from one another. And then it is necessary to admit a multitude of gods on all sides, separated from each other by an immeasurable distance, starting one near the other and ending one in the other. In the same way, the conclusions that they use, teaching that above the Creator of heaven and earth there is some kind of Fullness, or God, someone can use and assert that above the Fullness there is another Fullness, above this again another, and above the Depth another ocean of deity, and that the same thing also takes place on the sides; and thus thought, extending into infinity, will necessarily have to invent new Fullnesses and new Depths, and never stop looking for new gods besides those mentioned.
Moreover, it will be unknown whether the things we imagine exist below or above, and regarding those things of which they say that they are above, whether they are really above or below, and our mind will not have any stability and firmness, but will necessarily be lost in immeasurable worlds and countless gods.
5. And if this is so, then each god will be content with his own and not care about someone else's: otherwise he will be unjust and greedy, and will cease to be what God is. And every creature will glorify its creator, be content with him and not know the other; otherwise, in fairness, it will be convicted by everyone of apostasy and will be subject to deserved punishment. For it must be that there was either one God, who contains everything, and created everything that he created in His kingdom according to His will, or that there were many countless creators and gods, starting on all sides, one near the other and ending one in the other; and it will be necessary to admit that all the others are contained by someone else greater, and each of them is, as it were, contained in its own area, but not one of them is God. For each of them, since he owns only a very small part, will lack much in comparison with all the others; and thus the name of the Almighty is destroyed, and such a view necessarily falls into impiety.
The world was created not by angels, or anyone else, against the will of the Highest Father of all, but by the Father Himself through the Word.
1. Those who say that the world was created against the will of the Most High Father by angels, or by some other creator of the universe, are mistaken, first of all, in that they claim that such and such a great world was created by angels against the will of the first God; as if the angels are more active than God, or as if He is lazy, or inferior to them, or does not care about what happens in His domain - bad or good, so that He could destroy and prohibit one thing, and praise and rejoice over another; but no one attributes this even to a person, no matter how intelligent, much less to God.
2. Then, let them tell us: is it within what He embraces, and in His domain was it created, or in someone else’s and outside His possession? If they say that it is outside, then all the previously mentioned incongruities will meet them, and the first God will be closed in by what is outside of Him and in which He will necessarily have an end. If, on the contrary, they say that this was created in His domain, then it will be very absurd to say that in His domain the world was created against His will by angels who were themselves subordinate to Him, or by anyone else, as if He either did not see everything that was in His domain, or did not know what would be done by the angels.
3. But if the world was created not against the will of God, but according to His will and with His knowledge, as some of them think, then it will no longer be angels or any creator of the universe that will cause this creation, but the will of God. Because if He is the Creator of the world, then He also created the angels, or at least was the cause of their creation; and it will turn out that the world was created by the One who prepared the reasons for its creation. Although they say that the angels in a long series of gradualism, or the creator of the world, as Basilides says, were created by the First Father, nevertheless, the reason for what was created goes back again to the one who was the culprit of such gradualness, just as the success of a war is attributed to the king who prepared what was the cause of victory; the creation of a city, or any business at all - to the one who prepared the reasons for the execution of what was done afterwards. Therefore, we also do not say that an ax chops or a saw saws a tree, but we can quite correctly say that the person who chops and saws is the one who made the ax and the saw for this purpose, and even before that all the tools with which the ax and the saw were made.
So, in accordance with this conclusion, we can rightly say that the Father of all is the Creator of this world, and not the angels and not any other creator of the universe except the One who was its author and was even before the cause of the preparation of this kind of creation.
4. Perhaps this speech will be convincing or respectful for people who do not know God and liken Him to the poor and such people who cannot do anything directly from the material, but need many tools for their work; but it is completely incredible for those who know that God does not need anything, that He created and created everything with His Word, that for creation He did not need the help of angels, nor any power far inferior to Him and not knowing the Father, nor any lack or ignorance in order to form a person who has to know Him; but that He Himself, in an indescribable and inconceivable way for us, predetermined everything, created as He willed, giving consent to everything, assigning order and the beginning of creation, giving spiritual and invisible nature to spiritual beings, heavenly - heavenly, angels - angelic, animals - animal, swimming - adapted to water, living on land - adapted to land, and to all a nature suitable for them, and that everything created By Him, He created with His tireless Word.
5. For this is the superiority of God, that He does not need other instruments to produce what has been created, but His own Word is capable and sufficient to create everything, as John, the disciple of the Lord, says about him (John 1:3) “all things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing began to be.” Our world was in “everything.” Therefore, He created it with the Word, just as the book of Genesis says that God created everything that exists with us with His Word. David says similarly: “He spoke and it was, He commanded and it was created” (Ps. 32:9, 149:5). Who should we believe more regarding the creation of the world - the above-mentioned heretics who chatter such nonsense and absurdity, or the disciples of the Lord and the faithful servant of God and the prophet Moses, who from the very beginning spoke about the creation of the world, saying: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1) and everything else, and not gods and angels?
6. And that this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Apostle Paul said about this: “There is one God the Father, who is above all, and through all, and in us all” (Eph. 4.6). Now I have already shown that there is one God, I will further prove this from the apostles themselves and from the words of the Lord. What business is there, leaving the words of the prophets, the Lord and the apostles, to listen to those who do not say anything sound?
The depth and completeness of the Valentinians, like Marcion's God, are absurd.
1. So their Depth with its Completeness and Marcion’s God are not consistent. For if she had, as they say, something outside herself, which they call emptiness and shadow, then this emptiness turns out to be greater than their Fullness. Nor is their assertion that, while the Depth contains everything within itself, the world was created by someone else, invalid. They must necessarily recognize below the spiritual Fullness something empty and formless, in which this world was produced, and that the First Father intentionally left this formless as it was, either knowing in advance what would be in it, or not knowing. If he did not know, then God will not be foreknowledge of everything, and they cannot give any reason why He left this place empty for such a long time. If He knew this in advance and mentally contemplated the creation that was about to appear in this place, then He Himself produced it, transforming it in Himself.
2. So let them stop saying that the world was created by someone else, because as soon as God conceived something in thought, then what he conceived in thought was already accomplished. For it was impossible for one to have something in mind, and another to carry out what was conceived in thought. But according to the heretics, God intended the world to be either eternal or temporary; – both assumptions cannot be true. If He had thought of it as eternal, spiritual, invisible, then He would have created it that way. But if he is such as he is, then He who conceived him to be such made him such. Or, in the eternal existence of the Father, he had to be, according to His thought, like this - folded, changeable and transitory. If he is what the Father imagined him to be, then he is a worthy creation of the Father. But to call what the Father of all thought and transformed as it was created the fruit of lack and the product of ignorance is great blasphemy.
For, in their opinion, the Father of all, in accordance with his thoughts, must generate in his heart the outflow of lack and the fruits of ignorance; because what he planned happened.
The absurdity of the heretics regarding emptiness and lack is demonstrated.
1. It is necessary in this way to look for the reason for this dispensation of God, and not to attribute the creation of the world to another; it must be said that everything was prepared in advance by God to be as it was created, and not to invent shadow and emptiness. Where, one might ask, does emptiness come from? Is it also produced by the Father they accept and the author of everything, and is it equal and akin to the other eons, and perhaps older than them? If she is produced by the same thing, then she is similar to the producer and those who were produced with her. From this it quite necessarily follows that their Depth, together with Silence, is similar to emptiness, that is, empty; and other eons, like brothers of the void, are empty by nature. If it is not produced, then it appeared of itself and was born of itself and is coequal with the Depth, which, in their opinion, is the Father of all, and thus the void will have the same nature and the same honor with Him Who, in their opinion, is the Father of all. For it is necessary that it either be produced by someone, or be born and occur by itself.
If now emptiness is produced, then its producer Valentin is also empty, and all his followers are also empty. If it is not produced, but appeared from itself, then the void is fraternally related, similar and equal to the Father proclaimed by Valentine, but far older, more ancient and more honorable than the other eons of Ptolemy himself, Heracleon and all others who hold the same opinion.
2. But if, ashamed of this, they admit that the Father of all contains everything, and outside the Plenitude there is nothing - for it is quite necessary that it be limited to something greater - and what they say outside and within refers to knowledge and ignorance, and not to local distance, and that in the Plenitude, or in that which is contained by the Father, everything produced by the Demiurge and the Angels, and of which we know that it was created, was embraced of indescribable size, like a center in a circle, or a spot on clothing; then, firstly, what kind of Depth will it be that allows a spot to be in its depths and allows someone else in its own area to create or produce against its will. For this would bring dishonor to the entire Completeness, since it could first eliminate this deficiency and the outflows resulting from it and prevent the creation from being formed in ignorance, passion or lack. For whoever subsequently corrects a defect and cleanses it like a stain could have taken care much earlier that there was no such stain in his area from the very beginning.
Or if he initially allowed this, since what was created could not be produced otherwise, then it must always be in the same form. For how can something be corrected later that could not be corrected at the beginning? Or can they say that people are called to perfection, if the very causes by which people were produced, the Demiurge himself and the Angels, turn out to be deficient? And if the supreme being, in his goodness, took pity on people in recent times and bestows upon them perfection, then he should first have pity on the creators of men and bestow upon them perfection. Thus, of course, people would also take part in his compassion, being created from perfect to perfect. For, if it took pity on their work, then much earlier it should have taken pity on them themselves, and not allowed them to fall into such blindness.
3. And their talk about the shadow and emptiness, in which, according to them, the creation we are considering took place, will be destroyed if they were created in the region embraced by the Father. For if they consider the light of their Father to be such that He could fill and illuminate everything within him, then how could there be Emptiness or shadow in what was embraced by the Fullness and Fatherly light? They must indicate within the First Father or Completeness a place, unlit and unoccupied by anyone, in which the Demiurge or Angel created whatever they pleased. And the place in which such and such a great creation was produced is not small. Therefore, it is quite necessary for them to invent within the Fullness or within their Father something empty, formless and dark in space, in which the created things were produced. And thus, the light of their Father will be reproached for not being able to illuminate and fill what is inside Him. So, calling this creation the fruit of deficiency and the work of error, through this they introduce deficiency and error into the Completeness and into the very bosom of the Father.
The world was not created by anyone else in the Father's domain.
1. What I said before also goes against those who say that this world was created outside the Completeness, or below the good God, and they, together with their Father, will be closed by what is outside the Pleroma, and in which they must find their boundaries. Those who assert that in what is embraced by the Father, this world was created by other beings, will encounter all the incongruities and contradictions we have cited and will be forced either to recognize everything that is inside the Father as bright, complete and effective, or to blame the light of the Father for not being able to illuminate everything; or we must admit that their entire Fullness, like part of it, is empty, disordered and dark, and all other beings should be accused as if they were temporary, and if they are eternal, they are still material. But they should be alien to such accusations, since they are inside the Pleroma and in the bosom of the Father; or the accusation will also fall on the entire Plenity, and thus their Christ will turn out to be the cause of ignorance. For, according to them, He, having formed His mother in essence, expelled her from Pleroma, that is, excommunicated her from knowledge. This means that He, having separated her from knowledge, created ignorance in her.
How could the same one deliver knowledge to the other eons that came before him, while he is the cause of his mother’s ignorance? For he placed her outside of knowledge when he expelled her from the Completeness.
2. If further the expression within and without Fullness refers to knowledge and ignorance, as some of them say, then, since he who has knowledge is within what he knows, they must confess that the Savior Himself, Whom they all call, was in ignorance. For, they say, having gone outside Pleroma, he formed their mother (Achamoth). If, therefore, they call what is outside ignorance of everything, and the Savior went outside to educate their mother, then he became outside the knowledge of everything, that is, he became ignorant. How could He provide her with knowledge when He Himself was outside of knowledge? Therefore, they say, we, being outside their knowledge, are outside the Pleroma. And one more thing: if the Savior left Pleroma to find the lost sheep - and Pleroma is knowledge - then He was outside of knowledge, that is, in ignorance.
Therefore, either they should understand what is outside the Pleroma spatially, and they will fall into all the indicated contradictions; or if they classify what is inside the Pleroma as knowledge, and what is outside as ignorance, then their Savior, and much earlier Christ, were in ignorance; since for the education of their mother they came out of Pleroma, that is, from knowledge.
3. These arguments are similarly applicable against all who in any way say that the world was created by Angels or by anyone other than the true God. For the accusations that they bring against the Demiurge and against what was created material and temporal fall on the Father, if in fact what was created in the depths of the Pleroma immediately began to be destroyed with the permission and consent of the Father. Thus, it is not the organizer of the world who is the cause of this creation, thinking that he arranges it very well, but the one who allows it and agrees that in his area the work of deficiency and the works of error should appear, and that in the eternal there should be temporary, in the imperishable, perishable, and in the true, false. If this was created without the consent and approval of the Father of all, then the one who created in His property what He did not allow is more powerful, firmer and stronger than Him. If their Father, disagreeing, allowed this, as some say, then He either could have prevented it, but due to some necessity He allowed it, or He could not.
If He could not, then He is weak and powerless; if He could, then He is a seducer, a hypocrite and a slave of necessity, since although He did not approve, He allowed it, as if He approved. And having allowed error to appear and grow at the beginning, He subsequently tries to destroy it, after so many have already miserably perished as a result of the (initial) lack.
4. It is indecent to say that the Most High God, being free and sovereign, was a slave of necessity, so that something happened by His permission, but against His desire, otherwise they recognize a necessity greater and more powerful than God; since somehow that which has greater power is superior to all others. He had to first eliminate the causes of necessity, and not succumb to necessity, allowing something unbecoming to Him. It would be much better, more consistent and more godly to destroy the beginning of such a necessity at the beginning than to later, as if repenting, try to eradicate the consequences of this necessity that have reached such a development. And if the Father of all is a slave of necessity and must yield to fate, reluctantly enduring what happens, and cannot do anything against necessity and fate, just like Homer’s Jupiter, who speaks of necessity: “I will give you willingly, but not even though”; - then, according to this reasoning, their Depth will also turn out to be a slave of necessity and fate.
The Supreme God could not be unknown to the angels or the creator of the universe.
1. But how did the Angels or the Creator of the Universe not know the first God when they were in His domain, were His creatures, and were supported by Him? He could not be visible to them due to His superiority, but in no way could He be unknown to them due to His providence. Even though they were very far removed from Him by the baseness of their nature, as they say, nevertheless, since His dominion extends to everyone, they had to know their Master and precisely know that the One who created them is the Lord of all. For, since His invisible essence is powerful, it provides everyone with deep mental contemplation and perception of His powerful and omnipotent greatness. Therefore, although “no one knows the Father except the Son, nor the Son except the Father and him to whom the Son will reveal it” (Matthew 11:27); however, everyone knows - since the reason implanted in their minds moves them and reveals to them - at least that there is one God, the Lord of all.
2. And therefore, everything is subordinated to the name of the Most High and Almighty, and through invoking Him, people, even before the coming of our Lord, were saved from evil spirits, all kinds of demons and all apostate power. It is not that earthly spirits or demons saw Him, but they knew that there is a Most High God, whose name they tremble, as every creature, authority, power and every power subordinate to Him trembles. If those under Roman rule, although they have never seen the emperor and are very distant from him by sea and land, but by government know the one who holds the supreme power in the state; then is it really true that the Angels above us - or the so-called creator of the universe - do not know the Almighty, when even dumb animals tremble and fall when calling on His name? And just as the name of our sovereign, although he has not been seen, everything is subordinated, in the same way (everything is subordinated to the name) of the One who created and produced everything with a word, and besides Whom there is no other Creator of the world. And therefore, the Jews to this day drive away demons in His name, because everything fears the name of their Creator.
3. Therefore, if they do not want the Angels to be more unreasonable than dumb animals, they will find that, although they have not seen the Most High God, they must nevertheless know His power and authority. For it is truly ridiculous when they claim that they themselves, who are on earth, know the Most High God, whom they have never seen, and on the contrary do not allow that the One who, in their opinion, created the whole world, although He lives on the heights and above the heavens, knew what they themselves know, although they live below. Perhaps they will say that their Depth finds it underground in Tartarus, which is why they recognized Him before the Angels living on high! This is how crazy they reach that they call the Creator of the world unreasonable. And truly they are worthy of regret when they say in such great madness that He (the Creator of the world) did not know either the mother, nor her seed, nor the Pleroma of the aeons, nor the First Father, nor what He created, but that this is the essence of the likeness of what is inside the Pleroma, since the Savior secretly caused them to be created in this way in honor of the heavenly beings.
The creatures are not like the eons located in the Pleroma.
1. So, according to them, without the knowledge of the creator of the world, the Savior honored Pleroma by creating through the medium of the mother, producing the likeness and images of the highest. But I have already shown that it is impossible that there was something outside the Pleroma in which, in their opinion, the likeness of what is inside the Pleroma was created, or that this world was created by someone other than the first God. But if it is good to completely refute them and convict them as liars, then I will say against them that if the things (of this world) were created by the Savior in honor of the things above, in His likeness, then they should always remain so that the venerable would constantly be in honor. But if these things pass away, then what is the use of such a short-term honor, which never existed, and which will end again? In this case, the Savior, as I will show, strived more for vain glory than for honoring things above. For what honor is there for the eternal, which always abides, for the temporary, for the unchangeable, the transitory, for the indestructible, perishable?
And among people who are themselves temporary, fleeting honor has no dignity, but only that which lasts as long as possible. Therefore, it can justly be said that things that disappear immediately after their origin are rather created to dishonor those who are thought to be honored by them; and that the eternal suffers dishonor with the damage and destruction of its image. But what if their mother didn't cry, didn't laugh, and didn't despair? Then the Savior would not have had anything to honor the Completeness, because its final mixture did not have its own essence, through which the First Father could be honored.
2. O vain honor, quickly disappearing, and no longer appearing! There will be an eon that will not have such honor at all, and therefore the things above will be without honor; or it will be necessary again to produce another crying and embarrassed mother for the honor of Pleroma. What an inappropriate and at the same time shameful image! The image of the Only Begotten, you will tell me, was produced by the creator of the universe, Whom you also honor as the Mind of the Father of all, and this image does not know itself, does not know either the creatures, or the mother, or everything that exists and was created by him; and do you not blush before yourselves, elevating ignorance to the Only Begotten? For if these things were created by the Savior in the likeness of the things above, and the Demiurge himself, who was made in the likeness, was in such great ignorance, then such ignorance in a spiritual sense must necessarily exist near Him and in Him in Whose likeness the ignorant one was made.
For it is impossible that when they were both produced in a spiritual way, and not formed or composed, the likeness would be retained in one, and the image of the likeness, which was produced for this purpose, to be similar to the image of the heavenly work, was lost in the other. And if it is not similar, then the blame will fall on the Savior, who, like a worthless artist, produced a dissimilar image: for they cannot say that the Savior, whom they call “all,” did not have the power to produce. If, therefore, the image is dissimilar, then the artist is bad, and the blame falls on their Savior. If it is similar, then the same ignorance will appear in the mind of their First Father, that is, in the Only Begotten; and the Mind of the Father did not know Itself, did not know the Father, and did not know what It Himself had produced. If He knew this, then it is necessary that the Savior made in His likeness must know what is similar; and thus, according to their own principles, their blasphemous teaching is destroyed.
3. Moreover, how can creatures, so different, varied and countless, be images of those thirty aeons within the Pleroma, the names of which these people give, I gave in the previous book? And not only the diversity of the whole creation, even the diversity of any one part of it, whether the inhabitants of heaven or earth or water, they cannot bring into agreement with the smallness of their Pleroma. For they themselves testify that their Pleroma consists of thirty aeons, and that in one of the named parts of creation there are not thirty, but many thousands of species - everyone will agree to show this. How then can various creatures, so different in nature, warring against each other and killing each other, be images and likenesses of the thirty aeons of Pleroma, when these, according to them, have the same nature, are identical in their properties and have no difference?
And if these creatures are the likeness of those (eons), then, calling some people by nature good, others by nature evil, they must show the same difference in their eons and say that some of them are produced by nature good, and others by nature evil, so that the images they assume correspond to the eons. Moreover, since in the world some creatures are tame, others are wild, some are harmless, others are harmful, and others are killed, and some live on land, others in water, others in the air, others in the sky, then they must also prove that the eons have the same properties, if some are images of others. Next, they must explain which of the heavenly aeons represents the likeness of “the eternal fire, which the Father prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), because it is also counted among creation.
4. If they say that these things are images of the Thought that has fallen into the passion of the eon, then they act wickedly, firstly, in relation to their mother, declaring her the culprit of evil and transitory images. Secondly, how can many creatures, dissimilar and contrary in nature, be images of the same thing? If they say that there are many angels in Pleroma, and many creatures are their images, then this foundation will not stand. For, firstly, they must show the differences of the angels of Pleroma that are opposite to each other, since their lower images are by their nature opposite to each other. And since even many and countless angels surround the Creator, as all the prophets admit that “those darknesses stand before Him, and many thousands of thousands serve Him” (Dan. 7:10), then, according to their opinion, the angels of Pleroma will have the angels of the Creator as their images, and all creation remains in the image of Pleroma; in such a case, thirty aeons cannot correspond to the manifold diversity of creation.
5. Even further, if things below are formed in the likeness of those above, then in the likeness of what will these last be created again? If the creator of the universe did not create them from himself, but, like an insignificant artist and a boy beginning to learn, borrowed them from other people’s prototypes, where did their Depth receive the model for its first work? It is clear, then, that this one had to take a sample from another, higher than her; and this one is again from someone else. And the conversation about similarities, no less than the conversation about gods, will extend into infinity, if we do not confirm our thought on one artist, and on the One God, Who created by Himself what He created. Or who, admitting in relation to people that they themselves invent something useful for life, will not admit in relation to God, who created the world, that He Himself produced the image of what was created and invented its beautiful structure.
6. Again, how can these things be images of the things above, when they are opposite to them and can have nothing in common with them? But things that are opposite can be destructive to those to whom they are opposite, but not to their likenesses; as, for example, water and fire, light and darkness, and much more, cannot in any way be similar to each other. In the same way, things corporeal, earthly, complex and transitory will not be images of those beings who, in their opinion, are spiritual; unless they admit that these too are complex, limited by space, have a figure and are no longer spiritual, not spread wide and immense. For in order to be true images of them, they must have a form and limitation, and in this case it is clear that they are not spiritual. If they call them spiritual, unlimited and immense, how can things that have a form and are limited by limits be images of something that has no figure and is immense?
7. If they say that these things are similar not in appearance and form, but in number and order of production, then, firstly, they can no longer be called images and similarities of the heavenly aeons. For how can things that have neither form nor appearance be their images? Secondly, they must completely equate the numbers and orders of the higher eons with the numbers and orders of the lower creations. But since they give only thirty aeons and call such a great multitude of creatures images of these thirty, we will rightly accuse them of unreason.
Creatures are not the shadow of Pleroma.
1. If they say that these things are a shadow of the things above, as some of them dare to assert, so that in this respect they are the images of those, then they must accept that the creatures above also have bodies. For celestial bodies make a shadow, but not spiritual beings, since they cannot cast a shadow. But if we agree with them - although this is not possible - that there is a shadow among those spiritual and light beings into which, according to them, their mother entered, then since they are eternal, and the shadow produced by them also continues forever, these things are no longer transitory, but remain together with those producing the shadow. If these things come, then those of which they constitute the shadow are necessarily transitory, and if they constantly remain, then their shadow always remains.
2. But if they say that this shadow exists not because it was cast by heavenly beings, but because the things below are very far from them, then they will accuse the light of their Father of weakness and insignificance, as if it did not reach them and was not able to fill the void and disperse the shadow, and, moreover, when no one interfered with it. For, in their opinion, their fatherly light will turn into darkness, become darkened and destroyed in empty spaces, since it cannot fill everything. So, let them not say that their Depth is the Fullness of everything, if it has not filled and illuminated the emptiness and shadow; or let no shadow or emptiness be allowed, if the light of their Father fills everything.
3. Therefore, outside the first Father, that is, outside the Most High God or Pleroma, there can be nothing into which, as they say, the Thought of the passion-affected aeon would descend, so that Pleroma, or the first God, would not be limited by anything external, would not be isolated or embraced; There cannot be emptiness and shadow when the Father already exists, so that His light does not lose its power and does not disappear into emptiness. It is unreasonable and impious to invent a place where He who, in their opinion, is the First Father, the First Beginning, the Father of everything and of Pleroma itself, is limited and ends. Nor should we, for the reasons given, say that someone else produced such a great creation in the bosom of the Father, whether with His consent or without His consent. It is equally impious and foolish to say that such a creation was produced by angels or any generation who did not know the true God, in His own domain.
It also cannot be that earthly and material things were created within their Pleroma when it is all spiritual; It cannot be that many and different creatures among themselves were produced in the likeness of the eons, when they are, as they say, not numerous, of the same formation and homogeneous. Also, their talk about the shadow of emptiness turns out to be completely false. Their fiction is empty and their teaching is untenable. Those who listen to them and truly cast themselves into the depths of destruction are also empty.
The Creator of the world is God the Father, as the Church has always believed.
1. That God is the Creator of the world is also recognized by those who contradict Him in various ways and yet accept Him, calling Him creator and angel, not to mention the fact that all the Scriptures proclaim Him, and the Lord teaches about this Heavenly Father, and not about another, as I will show in further speech. For the present time, the testimony of those who hold teachings contrary to us is sufficient, since all people agree on this - it was the ancients, mainly according to tradition from the primordial man, who preserved this belief and glorified the One God, the Creator of heaven and earth; others after them received reminders of this from the prophets of God, and the pagans learned from the creation itself. For the creation itself points to the One who created it, the work itself announces the One who made it, and the world preaches the One who made it. The entire Church throughout the world received this tradition from the apostles.
2. If in this way this God, as I mentioned, is recognized and has testimony regarding his existence from everyone, then, without a doubt, the Father invented (by heretics) is unknown and remains without testimony. For Simon, the sorcerer, was the first to pretend to be the Most High God and say that the world was created by his angels; then his followers, as I showed in the first book, through various opinions, spread ungodly and godless teachings against the Creator; and these disciples make those who agree with them worse than the pagans. For the latter “serve the creature rather than the Creator” (Rom. 1:25), and to those “who are not gods” (Gal. 4:8), however, they give the first place of Divinity to God the Creator of this universe. And those call Him the fruit of lack, and say that He has an animal nature and did not know the power that is higher than Him when He said: “I am God and besides Me there is no other” (Is. 46:9).
Imagining that He lies, they themselves lie, attributing all kinds of evil to Him: by their own will, inventing beyond this being one who does not exist, they are convicted of blasphemy against God, Who really exists, and of inventing a non-existent God to their own condemnation. Thus, those who call themselves “perfect” and possess the knowledge of all things turn out to be worse than the pagans and more blasphemous in their teaching against their Creator.
Scripture is misinterpreted by heretics; God created everything from nothing, not from pre-existing matter.
1. So, it is very unreasonable, bypassing the true and attested by all God, to look above Him for another, who does not exist and has never been proclaimed by anyone. For they themselves testify that nothing was clearly said about him, because, incorrectly adapting parables to the creature they have invented, which themselves still require explanation, they are now obviously bringing into the world another (God) who never existed before. Wanting to explain the mutual passages of Scripture - mutual, of course, not in relation to another God, but in relation to the orders of the (true) God - they made another God, twisting, as I said, ropes of sand and weaving a larger question into a smaller question. For one question cannot receive a solution through another, which itself still requires a solution; and among people who have meaning, reciprocity will not be explained through another reciprocity, or a riddle through another most difficult riddle; on the contrary, things of this kind receive their explanation from what is clear and consistent with each other.
2. But these (heretics), trying to explain the passages of Scripture and parables, raise another, greater and at the same time wicked question - is there another God higher than God the Creator of the world - and do not resolve the question - for where from? - but they connect a great question with a small question, and thus tie an insoluble knot. And letting it be known that they also know that the Lord at the age of thirty came to the baptism of truth, but no more wisely than this, they wickedly humiliate God the Creator Himself, who sent Him to save people; and in order to seem that they can explain where the essence of matter comes from - not believing that God called everything created, as He wanted, into being from nothing and used His will and power for this - they composed their absurd speeches and showed only their disbelief in the truth, for, not believing in what exists, they fell (into faith) in what does not exist.
3. For when they say that from the tears of Achamotha came a wet substance, from laughter a bright substance, from sadness a hard substance, and from fear a moving substance, and they exalt themselves with this as if it were high wisdom, is this not worthy of ridicule and is it not truly funny? They do not believe that God, being powerful and rich in everything, created matter itself, not knowing how powerful the spiritual and divine essence is; but they believe that their mother, whom they call wife from wife, produced such great matter of creation from the above-mentioned passions. They ask where the Creator got the substance of creation, but they do not ask where their mother, whom they call Thought and the impulse of the wandering eon, received so many tears, sweat, sadness and other outflows of matter.
4. To attribute the being of created things to the power and will of Him who is the God of all is worthy of faith and acceptable, in accordance with reason and completely approving, for “what is impossible with men is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). While people can make something not from nothing, but from the subject matter, God is especially superior to people in that He Himself called into being the matter of His creation, which previously did not exist. To say that matter was produced by the Thought of a wandering eon, and that this eon separated from its Thought, and that then its passion and feeling again became matter separately from itself, is incredible, absurd, impossible and untenable.
The heretics, not believing the truth, fell into the abyss of error.
1. They do not believe that the Most High God, by His Word, in His own domain, created, as He willed, various and varied beings, being the Creator of all, as a wise artist and the greatest king, but they believe that angels or some power separate from God and not knowing Him created this universe; Thus, not believing the truth, but wandering in a lie, they lost the bread of true life and fell into the emptiness and abyss of the shadow, like Aesop’s dog, which released the bread and, rushing after its shadow, lost real food. It is also easy to prove from the very words of the Lord that He recognizes one Father and Creator of the world and Creator of man, Whom the law and the prophets proclaimed, and knows no other, and that this is the Most High God, and that He teaches that the adoption of sons to the Father, that is, eternal life, is accomplished through Him, who gives it to all the righteous.
2. But since they love to accuse us and, like slanderers, blaspheme the blameless, bringing against us many parables and questions, then I, for my part, decided to first of all present several questions regarding their opinions, to reveal their improbability and crush their insolence; then, I intend to bring the words of the Lord, so that they not only could not attack us, but, being unable to intelligently answer the questions proposed, they would see that their evidence was refuted, and either turned to the truth and, humbled and abandoning their various fantasies, appeased God for their blasphemies against Him and received salvation; or, if they remain in vanity, which has taken possession of their soul, they change their method of proof.
The heretics suffer from both deficiency and excess; Wisdom could not produce anything without connection with her husband. Word and Silence could not be modern.
1. First of all, about their Thirty, I will note that all of it amazingly falls on two sides: on the side of lack and excess. They say that Christ was thirty years old when he came to baptism; This statement of theirs leads to the obvious overthrow of their entire proof. The insufficiency of their Tridecimal is evident from the following: firstly, they also include the First Father among the other eons. For the Father of all should not be counted with other works: the unproduced with the produced, the unbegotten with the begotten, and the immense and therefore incomprehensible with that which is encompassed by Him, and the limitless with those who have limits. For, as being more excellent than others, He should not be counted with them; and especially He is dispassionate and not erring - with an aeon subject to passion and error. And that they count their Tridecimal, starting from Depth to Wisdom, which they call the erring aeon, I showed this in the previous book, with the names of the aeons themselves; if we do not count this eon, then there will be no longer thirty works of eons, as they claim, but twenty-nine.
2. Further, regarding the first product - Thought, also called Silence, from which again they produce Mind and Truth, they sin in a twofold respect. For it is impossible for Thought, or Silence, to be thought separately from anyone, and for it to have its own image outside of him. If they say that Thought was not produced outside, but remains united with the First Father, then why do they classify it among the other eons that are not united with Him and therefore do not know His greatness? If it is united (let us also take this into consideration), then it is quite necessary that from the single and inseparable connection that composes one being, an inseparable and united work should arise, so that it would not be dissimilar from the One who created it. But if this is so, then just like Depth and Silence, Mind and Truth will constitute one being, always connected with each other.
And since one cannot be conceived without the other, just as water without moisture, fire without heat, or stone without hardness, for these are connected to each other, and one cannot be separated from the other, but always exist together; - then in the same way Depth must be united with Thought and Mind with Truth. Likewise, the Word and Life, produced by those who are thus united, must be united with each other and constitute one. Therefore also Man and the Church and all other combinations of the produced eons must be united, and one must always coexist with the other. For, according to their concept, the female eon must be together with the male one, since it is, as it were, its excited state (affectio).
3. And although this is so, and they themselves affirm it, yet again they dare to teach in a shameless manner that the younger eon of the twelve, also called Wisdom, without union with the spouse Who is called the Desired One, underwent passion and separately from him gave birth to a fetus, which they call “wife from wife”: - they have gone so far in madness that they have two apparently opposite opinions about the same subject. For if Depth is united with Silence, Mind with Truth, Word with Life, and so on, how could Wisdom, without being united with her husband, undergo passion or give birth? If she underwent passion without him, then it necessarily follows that other combinations allow separation and separation from each other: and this, as has been said, is impossible. Therefore, it is impossible for Wisdom to undergo passion without the Desired, and again all their evidence is destroyed. For they and the subsequent world, like the composition of a tragedy, again produced from the passion that she (Wisdom), according to them, experienced without union with her husband.
4. If, for the sake of the last combination, so that their idle talk does not collapse, they shamelessly say that the other combinations also suffered separation and separation, then, first of all, they dwell on an impossible thing. For how can they separate the First Father from His Thought, or the Mind from the Truth, the Word from the Life, and likewise others? But how do they say that everyone returns to unity and is one, when the combination within the Pleroma does not maintain unity, but is separated from each other to the point that one (aeon) without union with the other, like hens without roosters, experiences passion and gives birth?
5. Further, their first and original Octome can be destroyed in the following way. In one and the same Pleroma there are separately Depth and Silence, Mind and Truth, Word and Life, Man and Church. But if there is a Word, then there cannot be Silence; if there is Silence, then again there cannot be a Word. For they mutually destroy each other, just as light and darkness cannot be in the same place; but if there is light, then there is no darkness, and where there is darkness, there is no light, for with the appearance of light darkness is driven out. In the same way, where there is Silence, there will be no Word, and where there is Word, there cannot be Silence. But if they call the Word internal (᾿Ενδιάθετον), then Silence will also be internal, and yet it will be destroyed by the Word. And that it is not only internal, this is shown by the very order of the production of eons.
6. Thus, let them no longer say that the first original Octicity consists of the Word and Silence, but let them reject either the Word or the Silence, and then their first and original Octicity is destroyed. For if they call the combination of eons united, then their entire proof is refuted. If they are united, then how could Wisdom give birth to a defect without a spouse? But if they say that during creation, each eon has its own essence, then how can both the Word and Silence end up in the same place? This refers to the fact that Plyroma suffers from a deficiency.
7. On the other hand, regarding excess, their Tridecimal is again destroyed by the following considerations. They represent the Limit, to which they give so many names, - as I showed in the previous book, - produced, like other aeons, by the Only Begotten. But some derive this Limit from the Only Begotten, while others, on the contrary, claim that it is produced from the First Father Himself in His likeness. Moreover, they also say that Christ and the Holy Spirit were produced by the Only Begotten, and They are not counted among the Pleroma, and also the Savior, who is also called the whole. It is clear even to the blind that, in their opinion, there are not only thirty works, but also four more to these thirty. For they count among the Pleroma the First Father Himself and those who were in order produced from each other. Why not include among them those who exist in the same Pleroma and were produced in the same way? And what just reason can they give for why they do not include among the other eons either Christ, who, according to them, was produced by the will of the Only Begotten Father, or the Holy One?
The Spirit, not the Limit, also called the Savior, not even the Savior Himself, who came to help and educate their mother? Is it because these are weaker than the first and therefore unworthy of the name and number of aeons, or because they are better and more excellent? But how will those who were produced to strengthen and correct others be weaker? They also cannot be better than the first and original Quaternary by which they were produced; for she too is counted in the above-mentioned number. Thus, these aeons must also be counted among the Pleroma of aeons, or the honor of such a name must be taken away from them.
8. If thus their Tridecimal, as I have shown, is refuted both in respect of its insufficiency and in respect of its excess; for with such a number, the slightest excess or deficiency undermines the number itself, and even more so such a great deviation, then their fable about their octagon and twelve is not tenable. And all their teaching is also untenable, after their very foundation has collapsed and turned into depth, that is, into nothing. Let them now look for other reasons why the Lord came to baptism at the age of thirty, and for other explanations for the twelve apostles, for the wife who suffered from bleeding, and for other subjects about which they talk in vain.
The first series of works accepted by heretics cannot be defended in any way.
1. And that the very first series of their works should be rejected, I will prove in this way: from the Depth and its Thoughts they produce Mind and Truth, which obviously contains a contradiction. For Mind is that which is the very first and most important thing, as if the beginning and source of all understanding. A thought is any movement of it (the Mind) produced by something. Therefore, Mind cannot be produced by Depth and Thought; with high probability they should have been told that Thought was produced, like a daughter, by the First Father and this Mind. For it is not Thought, as they say, that is the mother of Mind, but Mind is the father of Thought. For how was Mind produced by the First Father, when it occupies the first and most important place in his innermost and invisible state?
From this state came understanding, and thought, and contemplation, and other things that are not special from the Mind, but are, as previously said, some movements in thinking related to some object; which receive names depending on their continuation and expansion, and not because they completely change; which come into contact with knowledge and are expressed in words, while the mind resides within, creates, controls freely and autocratically disposes and controls those above-mentioned (movements).
2. The first movement of the mind regarding something is called thought; but when it continues, increases and embraces the whole soul, it is called a thought. This thought, if it is engaged in the same thing for a long time and is, as it were, approved, is called a concept. This same concept, extended to many things, is a consideration; the expansion and extension of this consideration to many things is a test of the conceivable (judgment), which, if it resides in the spirit, is quite rightly called reason (Λογος), from which the externally expressed word comes. All the above-mentioned (actions) are one and the same, originate from the mind and are named according to their distribution. Just as the human body, at first young, then courageous and finally senile, receives a name in accordance with its growth and continuation, and not according to a change in essence and not according to the loss of the body, so it is here. For whoever contemplates (mentally) something, he thinks about it; what he thinks about, he has an understanding of, what he has an understanding of, he judges, what he judges, he understands, and what he understands, he speaks about.
All this, as I said, is controlled by the Mind, being itself invisible, and from itself, through the actions shown above, as through a ray, it produces a word; but is not itself produced by others.
3. This, of course, can be said about people, since they are complex by nature and consist of body and soul. Those who say that from God came Thought, from Thought the Mind, and then from them the Word, are first of all worthy of blame for the fact that they do not accurately use these works; because they depict the feelings and passions of people and the action of the mind, but do not know God; since they attribute what is said about people to the Father of all, about whom they say that is unknown to everyone; and so that He does not appear weak, denying that He created the world, they, however, give Him human feelings and passions. If they knew the Scripture and were taught the truth, they would know that “God is not like men, and His thoughts are not like the thoughts of men” (Isa. 55:8). For the Father of all is very far from the feelings and passions that people have; He is simple, uncomplicated, equal, always equal and similar to Himself, being all understanding, all spirit, all thought, all feeling, all reason, all hearing, all eye, all light and all the source of all good, as it is common for God-fearing and pious people to talk about God.
4. But He is above all this and therefore ineffable. It can rightly be called the all-encompassing Mind, but it is not similar to the human mind, and it can very rightly be called light, but a light not at all similar to our light. In the same way, in everything else, the Father of all is in no way similar to the smallness of man, and although He is called by such names out of love, it is felt that He is greater in greatness than these expressions. And if in this way in people the mind itself is no longer produced and, while producing the rest, is not separated from a living person, but only his own excitement and state are revealed - much less the mind of God, Who is the whole Mind, cannot be separated from Himself, nor produced from something else, as something else.
5. For if He produced the mind, then the generated mind, in their view, appears to be a complex and corporeal being, so that the God who created exists separately, and the generated mind also separately. If they say that the mind is produced by the mind, then they are dividing and crushing into parts the mind of God. But where and where did he come from? For what is produced by someone comes out into something that already exists. But what existed before the mind of God, into what, according to them, did it come out? And how large was that place that would receive and contain the mind of God? If they say that He came out like a ray from the sun, then just as there is a receptive air here, which is older than the ray itself, then in this case they must point to something existing where the mind of God went out, which is capable of containing it and is older than it. Further, since we see that the sun, least of all, emits rays far from itself, we must admit that the First Father also emitted a ray outside of Himself and far from Himself. But what can be thought outside or far from God, where He sent out a ray?
6. If they say that the Mind was not produced outside the Father, but in the Father Himself, then, first of all, it is unnecessary to say that it was produced. For how was he produced when he was within the Father? For a work is a manifestation of what is produced outside of the producer. Further, secondly, if it is produced, then the Word proceeding from Him will also be within the Father, as well as other outflows of the Word. They will, therefore, know the Father, being inside Him, and since they are all equally embraced from everywhere by the Father, then none of them will know less about him than the other according to the gradualness of works; and they must all be equally dispassionate, being in the bosom of the Father, and in none of them will there be any diminution.
For in the Father there is no diminution; Perhaps they will say that just as a larger circle contains a smaller one, and inside this again another even smaller circle, or in the likeness of a sphere or a quadrangle, the Father contains within Himself on all sides in the form of a sphere or square the product of other eons, each of them being surrounded by a larger one and again enclosing a smaller one after itself, and therefore the smallest and last of all, located in the middle and far removed from the Father, did not know the First Lamb. But if they accept this, then they will enclose their Depth, as surrounding and surrounded, in a certain form and space, for they will also be forced to recognize something outside Him that surrounds Him. And of course, the talk about the surrounding and surrounded eons will extend to infinity; and all (eons) will turn out to be bodies imprisoned (by others).
7. Further, they must recognize Him either as empty or as containing within Himself everything that exists, for in any case they must participate in the Father. Just as if anyone makes circles or round or quadrangular figures on water, they will all participate in the water, and just as those that are formed in the air must participate in the air, and those in the light must participate in the light, so all those who are within the Father must equally participate in the Father, so that ignorance has no place between them. For where would there be communion with the Father who fills them? And if He filled them, then there will be no ignorance there. In this way the work of (their supposed) reduction will be destroyed, as well as the production of matter and the entire formation of the world, which, in their opinion, arose from passion and ignorance. If they recognize Him as empty, they will fall into the greatest blasphemy and deny His spiritual nature. For how can He be spiritual who cannot fill what is within Him?
8. What has been said about the work of the Mind similarly goes against the followers of Basilides and other Gnostics, from whom the latter (Valentinians) borrowed the doctrine of works, as was shown in the first book. That the product of their Mind, or Reason, is unacceptable and impossible, I showed clearly. Now let us consider the matter regarding the other (eons). They say that from it (Mind) came the Word and Life, the creators of this Pleroma, representing the work of the Logos, that is, the Word, in the likeness of human inclination and boldly making guesses about God, as if they had invented something great, saying that the Word was produced by the Mind. Meanwhile, everyone knows that this is a decent thing to say about people; but in God, Who is above all, Who, as I said above, is all Mind and all Word, Who has in Him nothing ancient or late, nothing different, but remains completely equal, identical and united, there is no place for creation in such gradualism.
Just as he who says that He is all sight and all hearing does not sin - for as he sees, so he hears, and as he hears, so he sees - so he who says that He is all Mind and all Word, and in what respect there is Mind, in that there is also a Word, and His Word is this Mind, although it is not quite decent to think about the Father of all, it is nevertheless more fitting than those who transfer the birth of the spoken word of man to the eternal Word of God, and to Him, like their own the word is credited with the beginning and order of the work. How will the Word of God, or better yet God Himself, Who is this Word, differ from the word of man, if it has the same course and order of origin?
9. They also erred regarding Life, saying that it was produced in sixth place, when it should have been placed before all other things, because God is life, incorruptibility and truth. These and similar properties were not produced in order of gradualness, but they are the name of perfections that always exist in God, as far as it is possible and characteristic for people to hear and talk about God. For the name of God includes mind, word, life, incorruptibility, truth, wisdom, goodness, and the like. And no one can say that Mind is older than Life, for Mind itself is life, nor is Life later than Mind, so that He Who is the Mind of all, that is, God, would never be without life. If they say that life was (originally) in the Father, but was produced in the sixth place so that the Word could live, then it should have been produced much earlier in the fourth place, so that the Mind could live, and even before that, together with the Depth, so that their Depth could live.
For to count Silence with their First Father and assign this to Him as a spouse, and not to count Life among them - does not this exceed all madness?
10. As for the work of Man and the Church that follows from them (from the Word and Life), their fathers themselves (Valentinians), falsely called Gnostics, argue among themselves, each defending his own property and presenting themselves as bad thieves: they say that it is much more consistent with the doctrine of the work, - and in fact it is believed - that the Word should come from Man, and not Man from the Word, and that Man precedes the Word, and He is God over everything. In this way, as I previously noted, by religiously collecting all human feelings and movements of the mind, the generation of aspirations and the production of words, they absurdly lied against God. For what happens to people and what they experience in themselves is attributed to the Divine mind and, in the eyes of those who do not know God, seems to speak the truth. Presenting human passions and confusing the meaning with them, describing, for example, the origin and generation of the Word of God in fifth place, they boast that they teach wondrous mysteries, ineffable and lofty, unknown to anyone else, about which the Lord said, “seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7), i.e.
to explore how Mind and Truth arose from Depth and Silence, or from them the Word and Life again received the beginning, from the Word and Life - Man and the Church.
Valentine and his followers borrowed the principles of their teaching, only with a change in names, from the pagans.
1. One of the ancient comedians Antiphanes said much more likely and more understandably about the origin of all things in his pheogony. He produces Chaos from Night and Silence, then from Night and Chaos Love, from it Light, and from it the rest of the first generation of his gods. Then he speaks of the second kind of gods and the creation of the world; these second gods, he said, created man. The Valentinians adopted this fable for themselves, and as if, by natural reflection, they themselves formed their opinions, changing only the names in it, but representing the same beginning and origin of all things and the order of their production. They put in the place of Night and Silence - Depth and Silence, in the place of Chaos - Mind, in the place of Love - which, as the comedian says, puts everything else in order - the Word, instead of the first major gods they came up with eons, and instead of the second gods they talk about the creation by their mother, which is outside the Pleroma, and call it the second Octomeric.
From it they derive, in the same way as the aforementioned comedian, the structure of the world and the creation of man, and they say that they alone know the ineffable and hidden mysteries. What actors in theaters everywhere tell in brilliant terms, they transfer into their system and convey the same thoughts, changing only the names.
2. But they are exposed not only by presenting as their own thoughts what is in the hands of comedians; but they also collect what is said by people ignorant of God, who are called philosophers; having made, as it were, a veil from many and very bad rags, they, through the subtleties of speech, made for themselves an intricate outfit, they presented as if a new teaching, since it was developed with the help of a new art; but this teaching is, in fact, old and useless, since it is made up of old teachings that smack of ignorance and godlessness. So Thales of Miletus said that water is the beginning and mother of all things. But it makes no difference whether such a beginning is called water or Depth. The poet Homer taught that Ocean with his mother Thetis produced the gods, and they (the Valentinians) transferred this to Depth and Silence. Anaximander, in turn, represented the beginning of all things as the infinite, which contains within itself, in the form of a seed, the beginning of everything and from it produces immeasurable worlds; and this they also transformed into Depth and eons.
Anaxagoras, also called an atheist, taught that animals originated from seeds that fell from heaven to earth; they also applied this teaching to the seed of their mother (Akhamoth) and called themselves this seed, clearly showing to those who understand that they are also the seed of the godless Anaxagoras.
3. They borrowed the doctrine of shadow and emptiness from Democritus and Epicurus and adapted it to themselves, for those teachers spoke a lot about emptiness and about atoms, and of these they called one existing, the other non-existent; so exactly these (Valentinians) call what is contained in the Pleroma really existing, as they taught about atoms, and about what is outside the Pleroma they say that it does not exist, as they taught about emptiness. Thus, they themselves, as being outside the Pleroma, placed themselves in a place in this world that does not exist. And by calling these things images of what exists in the heavenly world, they obviously express the opinion of Democritus and Plato. For Democritus was the first to say that many and various forms from universal space descended into this world. Plato speaks about matter, pattern and God. Following them, the Valentinians called the forms (of Democritus) and the model (of Plato) similarities to what is found in grief, changing only the names, and present themselves as the inventors and creators of this dreamy fiction.
4. And their doctrine that the Creator created the world from pre-existing matter was proclaimed before them by Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato, from which it is clearly seen that they too were enlightened by their mother. And that everything necessarily returns to that from which, according to them, it came, and that God is the slave of this necessity, so that He cannot grant immortality to the mortal and incorruptibility to the corruptible, but everything returns to a substance similar to its nature - this was also affirmed by the Stoics, who received their name from the portico (Stoa), and all poets and writers who do not know God. These (heretics), possessed by the same unbelief, ascribed for spiritual beings their own region, the one inside the Pleroma, for animal beings - the middle, and for corporeal beings - a material region, and claim that God cannot change anything, and that each of the mentioned (kinds of) beings passes back into a homogeneous substance.
5. That they say that the Savior is composed of all the aeons, and that each of them put into Him, as it were, its own color, then here too they do not represent anything new that could not be found in Hesiod’s Pandora. For what Hesiod says about Pandora, they also say the same about the Savior and represent Him as Pandora (gifted by all), as if each of the aeons endowed Him with the best that they had. The opinion about the indifference of eating food and other actions, and that they, due to their noble origin, cannot be defiled at all by anything, no matter what they eat or do, they borrowed from the cynics, with whom they are truly of the same mind. They also try to introduce pettiness and subtlety of questions into the matter of faith, which is characteristic of the school of Aristotle.
6. And that they translate this universe into numbers, they borrowed it from the Pythagoreans. For these first ones made numbers the beginning of all things and laid even and odd numbers as their foundation, from which everything sensible and insensible came into being. The first (even) are the principles of matter, and the latter are the principles of mind and substance, and from these principles, according to their teaching, everything is produced, just as a statue is made of clay and form. The Valentinians applied this to what is outside the Pleroma. The Pythagoreans recognized the principles of reason insofar as reason cognizes what is first perceived and explores until, finally, tired, it comes to the one and indivisible. The beginning and essence of every work is, according to their teaching, one (εν); from it come two, four, five and various products of other numbers.
The Valentinians literally say the same thing about their Plyrome and Depth; from here they tried to introduce combinations that were from a single thing, which Mark passed off as his invention and seemed to have discovered something new compared to others, but in fact he expounded the Pythagorean quaternity as the producer and mother of all things.
7. But I will say against them: did all those I mentioned above, with whom you seem to speak the same, know the truth or not? If they knew it, then the Savior’s descent into this world is unnecessary. For why did He go? Is it to make known to people a truth that they already knew? If they did not know it, then how can you, who preach the same thing as those who did not know the truth, boast that you alone possess the highest knowledge - that which is also possessed by those who do not know God? Thus, heretics, perverting words, call ignorance of the truth knowledge, and Paul rightly speaks of “new words of false knowledge” (1 Tim. 6:20). For their knowledge, truly, turned out to be false. If, moreover, they shamelessly say that although people did not know the truth, their mother, or paternal seed, made, without the knowledge of the Demiurge, the secrets of the truth through such people as through the prophets, then, (I will say) firstly, their words are not of such a kind that not everyone could understand them, for these people themselves, their disciples and followers knew what they were saying.
Secondly, if the mother or seed knew and proclaimed the truth, and the truth is the Father, then, in their opinion, the Savior lied when he said: “No one knows the Father except the Son” (Matthew 11:27). For if the Father is known by the mother or her seed, then this refutes the words: “No one knows the Father except the Son,” unless they call their seed or their mother by the word “no one.”
8. And in this way they, attributing to their eons human passions and speaking in the same way with many philosophers who did not know God, carried away some, leading ordinary speech to reason about everything, explaining the birth of the Word of God, and Life, and Mind, and other outflows of the deity. But they lied all this positively without any probability or evidence. Just as someone, in order to lure and catch an animal, places food familiar to it in front of it and lures it with its usual food until it finally catches it, and when it catches it, it mercilessly ties it and forcibly drags it wherever it wants; so they too, imperceptibly and gradually inclining through plausible speeches to the acceptance of the above-mentioned origin, then exhibit incongruous things and unexpectedly see the remaining works (eons) and directly say that ten eons came from the Word and Life, and twelve from Man and the Church.
They do not present any evidence, no evidence, no probability, nothing at all in support of these positions, but demand an unfounded and blind belief that from the eons of Word and Life came: the Profound and Confusion, the Ageless and Unity, the Self-Generated and Pleasure, the Immobile and the Dissolution, the Only Begotten and the Blessed; and from Man and the Church came: the Comforter and Faith, the Father and Hope, Motherly and Love, Eternal Mind and Reason, Church and Bliss, Desired and Wisdom. The passions and delusion of this Wisdom, as they say, in seeking the Father, were in danger of perishing, as well as her great efforts outside the Pleroma, and from what imperfection, according to their teaching, the Creator of the World arose - this I showed in the previous book, expounding the opinion of the heretics. I have also already spoken about Christ, Who, in their opinion, was born after all the above-mentioned, and the Savior, about Whom they say that he received being from the eons that occurred within the Pleroma.
Now, out of necessity, I have listed their names so that their absurd lies and confusion in their fictitious names become obvious. They generally humiliate their aeons with many such names; while the pagans give their twelve gods probable and decent names - and they call these gods the likenesses of their aeons - it turns out that these likenesses have, relative to etymology, more successful and powerful names to signify their divinity.
No evidence can be given for their system of origin of the eons.
1. Now I will turn again to the above-mentioned analysis of the origin (eons). And, first of all, let them tell us the reason for this origin of the aeons, without touching the objects of creation; for, as they say, it was not the aeons that came into existence for the sake of creation, but the creation for the sake of the aeons, and it is not the aeons that are the likeness of creatures, but the creatures that are the likeness of aeons. And how they give reasons for the similarities, saying that a month has thirty days for the sake of thirty aeons, and a day has twelve hours, and a year has twelve months also for the sake of twelve aeons located in Pleroma, and similar nonsense; So let them explain to me the reason for the origin of the aeons, why it was exactly like this, why the first and ancestral work of all is the osmeric, and not five, trinity, seven, or anything suitable for another number? And why did exactly ten aeons come from the Word and Life, and not more or less, and why did exactly twelve come from Man and the Church, when more or less of them could have happened in exactly the same way?
2. Further, why is the whole Pleroma divided into three parts, into octagon, ten and twelve, and not into any other number besides these? And why is the division made precisely into three, and not into four, five, six or other numbers that have no relationship with the objects of creation, for the aeons, as they say, are older than these subordinate things and must have their own basis, which existed before the universe, and not according to the model of creation, coinciding exactly with it.
3. What we say about creation is in accordance with the correct order (prevailing in the world), for this order is in harmony with the created things themselves; but they cannot indicate their own basis for those (creatures) that are older than creatures and were created by themselves, and therefore must find themselves in an extremely difficult situation. For if they themselves are asked about the Pleroma, just as they ask us, as if they do not know about creation, then they will either begin to enumerate human passions, or they will start talking about harmony in creation, giving answers regarding the secondary, and not what, in their opinion, constitutes the first. For we ask them not about the harmony in creation or about human passions; but since their Pleroma, the likeness of which they call creation, is octal, tenfold and duodecimal, they must admit that the Father created such a Pleroma without any plan or foresight, and therefore admit the absurdity in this Father if He did something unreasonably.
If, on the contrary, they believe that Pleroma was produced in this form for the sake of creation, according to the foresight of the Father, who harmoniously arranged all beings, then it means that Pleroma was created not for its own sake, but for the sake of its likeness, which should have been similar to it, just as a statue is made of clay not for its own sake, but for the sake of that statue, which should then be made of copper, gold or silver; and creation will be much higher than Pleroma, if for its sake the things above are produced.
The Creator of the world either produced from himself the prototypes of things that were about to be created, or Pleroma was created according to some previous image, and that in turn according to another, and so on to infinity.
1. But if they do not want to admit what I accuse them of, namely that they cannot indicate any reason for such an origin of their Pleroma, then they must necessarily admit a higher Pleroma, another more spiritual and stronger order, in the image of which their Pleroma was created. For if the Demiurge gave the real form to creation not from himself, but in the image of the things above, then their Depth, which gave Pleroma exactly such a form, from Whom did it receive the image of what was before it? For it is necessary to assume either that the thought of creation existed in God, who created the world, so that by His power and from Himself He took the model for creating the world, or, if He received this from someone, then it is always necessary to inquire where the one who is higher than Him has the model of created things, how great is the number of generations, and what is the substance of the original image itself? But if the Depth could form Plyroma on its own in this form, then why couldn’t the Demiurge create such a world on its own?
And again, if creation is a likeness of things above, then why not call these likenesses of still higher beings, and these higher ones again the likeness of others, and thus create countless likenesses of likenesses?
2. This is what happened to Basilides when he missed the truth; Believing that by admitting an infinite succession of things occurring one from the other, he would avoid such difficulty, he recognized three hundred and sixty-five heavens, formed successively from one another and similar to each other - and in proof of this he pointed to the number of days of the year, as I said before, and above them he recognized the Power, which they call the Nameless, and its creative action; however, he did not escape the same difficulty. For when asked where the highest heaven, from which it successively produces other heavens, received its image, he will say that from the order belonging to the Nameless One. And then he will have to say either that the Nameless One created it from himself, or he will have to admit another force from which his Nameless One received such a model for what was created by his action.
3. How much safer and more certain, therefore, is it to recognize the truth from the very beginning, i.e., that God, the Creator, Who created the world, is one God and besides Him there is no other God, and that He received from Himself the pattern and form of created things, than, tired after such great misfortune and wandering, being forced to still stop your mind on something single and attribute to Him the creation of created things.
4. As for the reproach that the Valentinians make to us, that we are in the lower septenary, as if we are unable to rise in spirit to the mountain and understand the higher things, since we do not accept their absurd chatter, the followers of Basilides accuse them of the same thing, saying that they (the Valentinians) also revolve around the lower octagon, going up to the first and second octagon, and foolishly think that right after thirty eons have found the Most High Father, and do not reach with their minds to the Pleroma, which is higher than 365 heavens and surpasses 45 octagons. In the same way, someone who invented 4380 heavens or aeons would have reason to reproach them (the followers of Basilides), since the days of the year contain so many hours.
And if someone were to add more nights to this, doubling the number of hours mentioned, and imagine that he had discovered a great many octets and an innumerable number of aeons, and, contrary to the Most High Father, imagined himself to be the most perfect of all, then he could also put the same thing in mind for all the others - since they do not reach the height of the multitude of heavens or aeons he invented, and due to their weakness they revolve in the lower or middle place.
Analysis of the doctrine of the origin of the eons and proof that it is completely untenable, and that the Mind and Father suffer from ignorance in the teaching of the heretics.
1. Having pointed out so many contradictions and absurdities in the order of their Pleroma and especially the first octome, I will consider the remaining parts (of their teachings). Because of their senselessness, I will have to investigate something that does not exist, but of necessity I must do this, because I have been entrusted with the care of this matter, and I want all people to come to the knowledge of the truth, and also because you yourself asked me to present you with all the means to refute the teachings of these people.
2. So, how, one may ask, were the other eons produced? Together with the one who produced them, like the rays from the sun, or actually and separately, so that each of them has a special existence and its own image, just as man comes from man and one animal from another? Is it through offspring, like the branches of a tree? Do they have the same substance as those who produced them, or did they receive their essence from some other substance? Are they all produced together, so that they are simultaneous with each other, or in some order, so that some of them are older and others are younger? Are they created simple, uniform in everything, similar to each other and equal, like spirit and light, or complex, different and dissimilar to each other in their members?
3. But if each of them is actually and separately produced, following the example of man, then the works of the Father must have the same essence with Him and be similar to the Producer, or, if they are not the same, it must be assumed. that they are formed from some other substance. If the work of the Father is similar to the one who produced them, then those produced in the same way as the one who produced them must be inaccessible to suffering, and if they are from some other substance susceptible to suffering, then where did this different substance come from among the incorruptible Pleroma? Further, each of the aeons, according to such ideas, is assumed to be completely separate from one another, like people, of whom none is connected or connected with the other, but each has a different image, its own outline and size, but this is characteristic only of the body, and not of the spirit, and therefore, they can no longer say that their plyroma is spiritual, and that they themselves are spiritual - if their aeons, like people, sit at the Father’s table, and if He Himself has the same the image that those produced by him exhibit.
4. But if the eons originated from the Word, the Word from the Mind, and the Mind from the Depth, just as light is kindled from light, for example, torches from a torch, then they, by birth and size, can be different from each other, but, as having the same substance with the author of their origin, they must all be not involved in suffering, or their Father must also be involved in suffering. For the lamp, after it is lit, will have the same light as the lamp that was lit before. Therefore, their lights, united into one, will return to their original unity, and one light will be formed, which was in the beginning. But a later and an earlier time cannot have a meaning in relation to either the light itself, for all the light is one, or to the lit lamps, for they are all simultaneous in material substance, and the substance of the lamps is the same - but only in relation to the ignition, since this lamp was lit earlier, and the other only now.
5. So, either their entire Pleroma must be involved in the stain of ignorance and suffering, since all the eons have the same substance, and the First Father Himself must be involved in ignorance, that is, not know Himself, or all the lights in the Pleroma must be equally uninvolved in suffering. But where, then, does the suffering of the younger eon come from, if it is light from the Father, from Whom all lights flow, and Who by nature is not involved in suffering? And how can any aeon be called junior or senior, when the entire Pleroma has one light? And even if someone called them stars, nevertheless they would have to have the same nature. For if “star differs from star in glory” (1 Cor. 15:41), but not in property or essence - on which the participation of something or non-participation in suffering depends - then they or all, as coming from the light of the Father, must be by nature not involved in suffering and unchangeable; or all of them, together with the Father’s light, must be accessible to suffering and subject to change.
6. The same conclusion will come if they say that the aeons came from the Word as branches from a tree, and the Word was produced by their Father; for all (eons) turn out to be of the same essence with the Father, and differ from each other only in size, and not in nature, replenishing the greatness of the Father, like fingers replenishing a hand. So, if the Father is involved in suffering and ignorance, then the aeons he produces are the same. If it is ungodly to attribute ignorance and suffering to the Father of all, then how can they say that He created the eon involved in suffering, and how can they call themselves pious, attributing such an ungodly thing to the very Wisdom of God.
7. If they again admit that their aeons originated similarly, like rays from the sun, then they, as having the same essence and the same origin, must either all be involved in suffering together with the one who produced them, or all must not be involved; for it cannot be assumed that with such a way of origin some were not involved in suffering, while others were involved. Therefore, if they call them all not involved in suffering, then they themselves undermine their teaching. For how did the younger aeon undergo suffering, if all of them were not involved in suffering? If they admit that everyone took part in this suffering - as some of them dare to assert that it began from the Word and then passed into Wisdom - then they will be convicted of transferring its suffering to the Word, the Mind of this First Father, and assert that both the Mind of the First Father and the Father Himself were involved in the suffering. For the Father of all, as I have already shown, is not conceivable without Mind, like some complex animal; but Mind is the Father, and the Father is Mind.
Therefore, the Word that comes from Him, or better yet the Mind itself, since it is the Word, must necessarily be perfect and not involved in suffering, just as the creations that come from it, having the same substance with it, are perfect, not involved in suffering and always remain similar to the one that produced them.
8. Therefore, it cannot be asserted, as the heretics teach, that the Word, as produced in third place, did not know the Father; for this may be considered probable in the birth of men, since they often do not know their parents; in relation to the Word of the Father this is completely impossible. For if it, existing in the Father, knows the One in Whom it is, that is, knows itself, then the generation proceeding from it, which are its powers and are always inherent in it, cannot but know the one who produced them, just as the rays cannot but know the sun. Therefore, it is unacceptable that the Wisdom of God, located in the Pleroma, has such an origin, was subjected to passion and became involved in such ignorance. But it is possible that Valentinov’s wisdom, as the work of the devil, is subject to all passions and gives rise to deep ignorance. For when they themselves testify about their mother and say that she is the product of a wandering eon, then there is no longer any need to inquire why the children of such a mother are always immersed in the depths of ignorance.
9. But I do not understand that they could talk about any other system of generation besides this one, and I know that they themselves never presented any other image of the origin (of the aeons), although I talked with them a lot about such subjects; they only say that each of the aeons was produced separately and knows only the one who produced it, and knows nothing about the one who preceded him. They do not provide an explanation of how the eons are produced, or how this can take place in spiritual beings. For, no matter how they explain this, regarding the truth, having deviated from the straight path, they will be forced to come to the point of saying that the Word produced by the Mind of their First Father occurred with imperfection. For (according to them) the perfect Mind, which came from the perfect Depth, could no longer make the generation that came from it perfect, but made it blind in relation to the knowledge and greatness of the Father; and the Savior allegedly showed the symbol of this mystery on the one born blind, since the aeon was produced from the Only Begotten by also the blind, i.e.
in the dark; thus they attribute ignorance and blindness to the Word of God, which, according to their teaching, was produced by the First Father in the second degree. Amazing sophists, exploring the heights of the unknown Father and retelling the heavenly mysteries, “into which angels desire to penetrate” (1 Pet. 1:12), in order to learn that from the Mind of the Most High Father the Word was generated blind, that is, not knowing the Father who produced it.
10. How, O most empty sophists, did the Mind of the Father, or better yet the Father Himself, since He is the Mind and is perfect in everything, produce His Word as an imperfect and blind eon, then how could it produce with it the knowledge of the Father? You say that Christ, although born after all, was made perfect; Moreover, the Word, which is older than Him in time, should have been generated from the same Mind completely perfect, and not blind; and it also could not give birth to aeons even more blind than itself - until, finally, your constantly blind Wisdom gave birth to such a great multitude of evils. And the cause of this evil is your Father; for you call the greatness and power of the Father the causes of ignorance, likening it to the Depth and giving this name to the nameless Father. If ignorance is evil, and you claim that all evil came from it, and you call the greatness and power of the Father the cause of it, then it means that you represent Him as the author of all evil. For you point out the reason for evil is that (no one) could contemplate the greatness of the Father.
But if it was impossible for the Father from the very beginning to reveal Himself to His creatures, then He is free from criticism, since He could not remove ignorance from those who came after Him. If He could subsequently, when He wanted, eliminate ignorance, which increased during further generations and took root in the eons, how much more could He not allow ignorance before, when it did not yet exist.
11. Therefore, if He, when He wanted, became known not only to the aeons, but also to people who lived in later times, and was not knowable because He did not want to be known from the beginning, then, according to you, the cause of ignorance is the will of the Father. For if He knew in advance that this would happen exactly like this, then why did He not rather eliminate ignorance before it arose, than then, as if out of repentance, heal it through the work of Christ? For the knowledge which He gave to all through Christ, He could have bestowed much earlier through the Word, who was also the firstborn of the Only Begotten. If He knew before and wanted it to be so, then the works of ignorance will always continue and will never pass away. For what is done by the will of your First Father must exist together with the will of him who willed it; if it ceases to exist, then at the same time the will of the one who gave it existence will cease. Why, then, did the aeons calm down and achieve perfect knowledge, learning that the Father is vast and incomprehensible?
They could have had this knowledge before they became involved in suffering; for the greatness of the Father would not have diminished if they had known from the beginning that the Father is vast and incomprehensible. For if He was not known by His immeasurable greatness, then, by His immeasurable love, He should have kept His children uninvolved in suffering; for there was no hindrance, but rather it would have been beneficial if they had known from the very beginning that the Father is vast and incomprehensible.
Wisdom was not in ignorance or suffering; her thoughts cannot be separated from her, much less have special properties.
1. And is it not absurd that they say that His (the Father’s) Wisdom was in ignorance, fall and suffering? For this is alien and incompatible with Wisdom, and cannot be states characteristic of it. For where there is no forethought and knowledge of benefit, there is no Wisdom. So, let them not call the suffering aeon Wisdom: they must either change its name or reject suffering. Let them also not call their entire Pleroma spiritual, if this eon was in it during its great suffering, for even a strong soul, and not just a spiritual substance, would not allow this.
2. And again, how could her Thought, developing along with suffering, acquire a separate existence? For Thought is presupposed only in someone, but by itself it can never exist. For an evil thought is supplanted and destroyed by a good one, just as a disease is destroyed by health. What kind of thought was there before suffering? To examine the nature of the Father and consider His greatness, how then was she subsequently convinced and then healed? The fact that the Father is incomprehensible and immense. This means that it was not good that she wanted to know the Father, and therefore she was subjected to suffering; but when she was convinced that the Father could be investigated, she was healed. And the very Mind, which was looking for the Father, stopped, according to them, exploring Him, having learned that the Father is incomprehensible.
3. So, how could Thought separately suffer suffering, which, moreover, was its own condition? For a state (affect) occurs in someone, but cannot appear and exist by itself. This is not only untenable, but also contradicts the words of our Lord: “seek, and it will be found” (Matthew 7:7). For the Lord leads His disciples to perfection through seeking and finding the Father; and their heavenly Christ made the eons perfect by commanding them not to seek the Father, and instilling in them that no matter how much they worked, they would not find Him. The Valentinians themselves call themselves perfect because they seem to have found their Depth; eons, on the contrary, are perfect for them because they are convinced of the incomprehensibility of the One Whom they were looking for.
4. So, when Thought cannot exist separately from the aeon, they add even greater absurdity regarding its suffering, again separating it and calling it the substance of matter. It is as if God is not light, and as if there is no Word to convict them and destroy their wickedness. For whatever the aeon felt, it endured; and what he suffered, he felt; and their Thought was nothing other than his suffering from trying to comprehend the Incomprehensible, and this suffering was Thought, for it thought about the impossible. So, how could a certain state (affect) and passion be separated from Thought and become the substance of such matter, if Thought itself was passion, and passion was Thought? Therefore, neither Thought can exist separately from the eon, nor certain states without Thought, and thus their teaching again turns out to be untenable in this regard.
5. But how did the eon decay and suffer? He, of course, was of the same substance as Pleroma; Pleroma is all from the Father. For like, meeting with like, will not turn into nothing and will not be in danger of ending it, but rather will continue and increase, as, for example, fire in fire, air in air, and water in water; the opposite suffers from the opposite, is changed and destroyed by it. And thus, if there were an outflow of light, then it would not suffer and would not fall into danger in a light similar to it, but would shine even more and increase, like the day from the sun; for they call the Depth itself the image of their father. All animals alien to each other and by nature opposite are exposed to danger (when meeting each other) and are destroyed; and those who are familiar and related to each other are not exposed to any danger from this, but receive security and life. Consequently, if this aeon had arisen from the Pleroma with such a substance as all of it has, then it would never have undergone change, being among similar and related beings, spiritual among spiritual ones.
For fear, horror, suffering and destruction and the like can occur when opposites meet between earthly, corporeal beings; spiritual beings, gifted with such abundant light, do not experience such misfortunes. It seems to me, however, that they attributed to their eon the passion of one deeply in love and hated man, who is depicted by the comedian Menander. For those who invented such a doctrine had in their minds more some kind of unhappily in love person than a spiritual and divine substance.
6. Moreover, the thought of seeking the perfect Father and the desire to be in Him and understand His greatness - this could not entail, especially for the spiritual eon, ignorance and suffering, but rather perfection, dispassion and truth. For they (the heretics) do not say that they themselves, although people, reflecting on who is before them, and already, as it were, understanding the Perfect One and penetrating into the knowledge of Him, thereby fell into disorder, but rather, they achieved knowledge and comprehension of the truth. And the Savior, they say, said to His disciples: “Seek, and you will find,” so that they would seek the ineffable Depth imagined by them (the Valentinians) above the Creator of all, and they call themselves perfect, because while still living on earth they sought and found the Perfect One; and the aeon in Plerom, which is completely spiritual, according to them, underwent suffering when it sought the First Father, and wished to dwell in His greatness, and sought to understand the truth of the Father, and, moreover, to such suffering that, if it had not encountered an all-strengthening force, it would have decomposed into a universal substance and been destroyed.
7. Such a concept is absurd and, truly, is characteristic only of people who are completely devoid of truth. They themselves admit that this eon is better and more ancient than them, asserting in their teaching that they are the fruit of the Thought of that suffered eon, so that this eon is the father of their mother, that is, their grandfather. And to them, the later grandchildren, the search for the Father brought truth, perfection, strengthening and cleansing from fluid matter, as they say, and reconciliation with the Father; and to their grandfather the same quest brought ignorance, suffering, fear, horror and confusion - from which, according to them, the substance of matter came. So, to say that the search and study of the perfect Father and the desire to unite with him is salutary for them, but for the eon from which they originate was the cause of destruction and destruction - is this not absurd, and stupid, and unreasonable? And those who agree with them are truly blind, having blind leaders, and are rightly cast into the abyss of ignorance that lies before them.
The absurdities of the heretics regarding their seed, and the inconsistency of their opinions about the Demiurge.
1. But what is the doctrine of their seed - that it was conceived by the Mother in the image of the angels surrounding the Savior, formless, formless and imperfect, and implanted in the Dimiurge without his knowledge, so that it, planted through him in the soul that was from him, could acquire perfection and form? Here, firstly, it must be said that the angels surrounding their Savior are imperfect, formless and formless, if in their image they were conceived and born as such.
2. Secondly, that they say that the Creator (Demiurge) did not know about the seeding of the seed into him, or about the communication of the seed through him to man - this is empty and vain chatter, which in no way can be proven. For how could he not know anything about it, if the seed had any substance and special properties? If it was without substance and properties, and was nothing, then, of course, he did not know it. For things that have their own movement and properties, such as warmth, speed, or sweetness and are distinguished by a certain brightness, are not unknown to people if they come across them - and even more so to God, the Creator of this world; it can rightly be said that He did not know their seed, since it did not have any property of general usefulness, nor the essence necessary for any action, and was a complete nothingness. And that is why, it seems to me, the Lord said: “For every idle word that people speak, they will give an answer on the day of judgment” (Matthew 12:36).
For all such (teachers) who pour idle talk into the ears of people will stand in judgment and give an account of what they have in vain invented and lied against God, to such an extent that they say to themselves that by the essence of their seed they have come to know the spiritual Pleroma, since the man living inside them shows them the true Father, for everything spiritual needs sensual understanding; - and the Demiurge, taking into himself all this seed placed by the Mother, seemed to know absolutely nothing and had no concept of Plyrom.
3. And to assert that they are spiritual, on the ground that a particle of the Father of the universe is implanted in their soul - since their souls, according to them, are formed from the same substance as the Demiurge; and the Demiurge, who at once received from the Mother all the seed and had it in himself, remained spiritual and did not have the slightest understanding of the heavenly things, which they boast of knowing while still living on earth - isn’t this the height of possible absurdity? For to think that the same seed brought knowledge and perfection to their souls, and brought ignorance to God, who created them, is truly characteristic of the insane and devoid of any sense.
4. Further, they say, quite absurdly, that the seed thus deposited was formed, grew, and prepared to receive a perfect mind. For the admixture of matter into it, which they produce from ignorance and imperfection, will in this case turn out to be more suitable and useful for it than their Father’s light was, if it, born from the contemplation of that (light), was ugly and formless, and from it (matter) received form, image, spread and perfection. For if the light of Pleroma was for the spiritual being the reason that it had neither form, nor image, nor its own size, while its descent into this world gave it all this and led it to perfection, then its stay here, which they also call darkness, should seem more effective and useful than their Father's light.
And how funny is it to say that their Mother in matter was in danger of perishing and almost destroyed in it if She had not used extreme tension and jumped out of herself, receiving help from the Father; Her seed grows in this very matter, is formed in it and becomes capable of receiving perfect reason, and, moreover, being in unrelated and unusual substances (substances), for according to the words the earthly is opposite to the spiritual, and the spiritual to the earthly? How, therefore, could a seed, produced, as they say, small, be enlarged, take shape and achieve perfection in that which is disgusting and unnatural to it?
5. To the above we must add another question: When their mother saw the angels, did she produce the seed all at once, or in parts? If it was produced at once and at once, then the resulting fruit will no longer have a childish appearance; and therefore his descent to present-day people is unnecessary. If this happened several times, in parts, then this fruit was not conceived in the image of the angels whom she saw; for if she saw and conceived at the same time, then she must give birth at the same time, since their images were perceived at the same time.
6. Further, why did She, seeing the angels together with the Savior, conceive the likeness of the first, but not the Savior, Who surpasses them in beauty? Or did she not like Him and therefore She did not conceive in His image? But how is it that the Demiurge, whom they call a spiritual being, and who, according to them, has its own magnitude and form, was produced perfect in its substance; and the spiritual, which should be more effective than the spiritual, was produced imperfectly, and had to descend into the soul in order to receive an image in it and, having been perfected, become capable of receiving perfect reason? Therefore, if it receives form in earthly and spiritual people, then it means that it is no longer in the likeness of the angels, whom they call lights, but in the likeness of earthly people. For in this case it will have the image and likeness not of angels, but of the souls in which it is formed, just as water poured into a vessel will have the shape of the vessel. and if it freezes in it, it will retain the appearance of the vessel in which it froze, since the souls themselves have the shape of a body, for they are adapted to the vessel, as I said before.
Therefore, if that seed here condenses and takes shape, then it must have the image of a person, and not of angels. So how can this seed, formed in the likeness of man, be the image of the angels? And what need was there for him, as a spiritual one, to descend into the flesh? For the flesh has need of the spirit if it is to be saved, in order to be sanctified and enlightened in it, and so that the mortal may be swallowed up in immortality; the spiritual has no need for the earthly. For it is not we who make it better, but it who makes us better.
7. The falsity of their interpretations regarding the seed is even more obvious and can be seen by everyone in the fact that they say that those souls who received the seed from the Mother are much more superior than others, which is why they are honored by the Demiurge and made princes, kings and priests. For if this were true, then the high priest Caiaphas and Annas and the other high priests, the teachers of the law and the princes of the people would have believed in the Lord, since they belong to the same class, and before them was King Herod. But since neither he, nor the high priests, nor the rulers and honorable persons in the city joined Him, but, on the contrary, only those who sat along the way, begging for alms, blind and deaf, joined Him, then they were despised and trampled under foot from others; as Paul also says: “Look, brethren, who you are called: you have few wise, noble and mighty, but God has chosen the lowly things of the world” (1 Cor. 1:26-28). Consequently, these souls were not the best through the investment of seed and were not honored by the Demiurge for this.
8. What has been said is already enough to prove the inconsistency, fragility and absurdity of their teaching. For whoever wants to know whether sea water is salty does not need, as they say, to drink up the whole sea. But, like a statue that is made of clay, but covered with paint on the surface so that it, clay, is mistaken for gold, anyone who takes a piece from it and, after testing, sees the clay, will recognize it, and thus free people who seek the truth from the false opinion about it; just like that, I also revealed not only a small part, but the most important chapters of the teachings of the heretics and showed everyone who does not want to be deliberately deceived, the wickedness, deceit, flattery and maliciousness of the school of Valentinians and other heretics, who absurdly teach about the Demiurge, that is, about the Creator and Maker of this universe and the One God, revealing the inconsistency of their path.
9. For who is intelligent and has any understanding of the truth will admit their teaching that besides the Creator God there is another Father, and that another is the Only Begotten, and another is the Word of God, which, according to them, was produced imperfect, and another is Christ, Who, as they say, was produced together with the Holy Spirit later than other aeons, and another is the Savior, Who, according to them, was not produced by the Father of all, but was composed and composed created in imperfection by aeons, and was of necessity generated as a result of this imperfection, so that if the aeons had not been in ignorance and humiliation, then neither Christ, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the Ultimate, nor the Savior, nor the Angels, nor their Mother, nor Her seed, nor the rest of the universe would have been produced, but the universe would have been a desert and deprived of such great blessings? Therefore, they are wicked not only in relation to the Creator, calling Him the fruit of imperfection, but also in relation to Christ and the Holy Spirit, Who, according to their teaching, were generated due to this imperfection, and the Savior was also produced due to (being) imperfection.
And who will allow their other chatter, which they try to cunningly adapt to the Gospel parables, and thus lead themselves and those who believe them into the greatest wickedness?
The proofs of the suffering of the twelfth aeon, given from parables, from the fall of Judas and from the suffering of our Lord, are not consistent.
1. That they apply the parables and works of the Lord to their fiction in a completely improper and incongruous manner, I prove in the following way. They try to prove the suffering to which, according to them, the twelfth aeon was subjected, by the fact that the suffering of the Savior was caused by the twelfth apostle and occurred in the twelfth month. For He, according to them, preached one year after His baptism. And in a woman who suffered from bleeding, this was revealed, according to them, quite clearly; for this woman suffered for twelve years and, touching the hem of the Savior’s robe, received healing from the power that came from the Savior, and which, according to them, previously existed. For that suffering force, which expanded and so spread into infinity that it was in danger of resolving itself into the universal essence, stopped and ceased to suffer when it touched the first Quadruple, signified by the hem of the garment.
2. And what do they say, that the suffering of the twelfth aeon is proven by Judas? How can there be any similarity here with Judas, who fell away from the number twelve and did not return to his place afterward? For the aeon, Whom they call Judas, by separation from his Thought, was restored or called back: Judas was removed and rejected, and Matthias was put in his place, as it is written: “And let another take his bishopric” (Acts 1:20; Ps. 109:8). Therefore, if this aeon is signified by Judas, they should have said that the twelfth aeon was cast out from the Pleroma, and another was produced or generated in its place. In addition, they say that the aeon himself suffered, and Judas is a traitor, and they themselves admit that Christ, and not Judas, came to suffer. How could Judas, the betrayer of Him who had to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the suffering eon?
3. And the suffering of Christ is not like the suffering of an aeon and did not occur under the same circumstances as it. For the aeon was subjected to the suffering of decay and destruction, so that the sufferer was in danger of even being destroyed; Christ, our Lord, suffered strong and not in vain, and not only was He not in danger of destruction, but He also strengthened corruptible man with His power and returned him to incorruption. Further: the eon suffered because he sought the Father and could not find him: the Lord suffered in order to bring those who had turned away from Him to the knowledge and communion of the Father. For an eon, the exploration of the Father's greatness became the cause of destructive suffering; But the suffering Lord brought us the knowledge of the Father and granted salvation. Moreover, the suffering of the aeon brought forth a feminine fruit, as they say, weak, powerless, ugly and ineffective; The suffering of the Lord gave birth to strength and power: “For having ascended on high,” the Lord, through His suffering, “took captivity captive and gave gifts to men” (Ps. 67:19; Eph.
4:8), - and imparted to those who believe in Him “power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and against all the power of the enemy” (Luke 10:19), that is, the prince of the apostasy. Also: The Lord, by His suffering, destroyed death, dispelled error, destroyed corruption and abolished ignorance, but revealed life, showed the truth and granted incorruption. Their eon, through its suffering, introduced ignorance and gave birth to an ugly substance, from which, in their opinion, all material creations arose - death, corruption, delusion, and the like.
4. So, neither the twelfth disciple - Judas, nor the suffering of our Lord was an image of the suffering aeon; for it is obvious that there is no similarity here, not only in relation to what I said above, but even in the number itself. For everyone agrees that the traitor Judas was the twelfth, since twelve apostles are named in the Gospel; this same eon is not the twelfth, but the thirtieth; for by the will of the Father only twelve aeons were produced, and he was not produced twelfth in order, since they themselves consider him produced in thirtieth place. How then can Judas, the twelfth in order, be the type and image of the thirtieth aeon?
5. And what they say, that the lost Judas is the image of his Thoughts, then even here the image will not be similar to the truth that corresponds to it. For the Thought, having separated from the aeon and subsequently received education from Christ and knowledge from the Savior, and created everything outside the Pleroma in the likeness of what is inside the Pleroma, was finally accepted into the Pleroma, and, by virtue of combinations, was united with the Savior, Who was formed from all (eons), Judas, once cast out, never returns to the number of disciples, otherwise another would not have been put in his place. And the Lord said about him: “Woe to the man by whom the Son of man is betrayed” (Matthew 27:24); and again: “It would have been better for him not to have been born” (Mark 14:21), and called him “the son of perdition” (John 17:12). If they say that Judas is an image not of Thought separated from the eon, but of suffering united with it, then even here the number twelve cannot be a type of three.
For in one case Judas was cast out, and Matthias was put in his place, and in the other it is said that the aeon was in danger of decay and destruction, as well as his Thought and passion; for they separate Thought from suffering, and believe that the aeon was restored, Thought received form, and suffering, separated from them, constituted substance. So, if there are three here - aeon, Thought and suffering, then Judas and Matthias, as only two, cannot be their types.
The twelve apostles do not represent aeons.
1. If they say that the twelve apostles serve as an image of the department of those twelve aeons that Man and the Church produced; then they must also for the other ten aeons, which, as they say, come from the Word and Life, indicate, in their image, ten other apostles. For it is not fitting that the younger and therefore lesser eons were designated by the Savior through the election of the apostles, while the older and therefore higher ones did not have such images; for the Savior - if only he chose the apostles in order to signify through them the aeons in Pleroma, he could have chosen ten more apostles, and before that eight others, in order by the number of apostles to express the first and ancestral Octagon, and then the second decad; for we see that our Lord, after the twelve apostles, sent seventy others before Him; seventy cannot be the image of either eight, or ten, or thirty. Why is it that the younger eons, as I have already said, are marked by the apostles, and the higher ones, from whom they originate, have no images at all?
And if the twelve apostles were chosen in order to express by them the number of twelve aeons, then the seventy should have been chosen to represent the seventy aeons; therefore they (the Valentinians) should allow not thirty aeons, but eighty-two. For He who chose the apostles as the image of the aeons in Pleroma would not have made some images (aeons) and others not; but would try, through all the apostles, to preserve and express the type and image of the aeons in the Pleroma.
2. I also cannot remain silent about Paul; but I must ask them, in the image of what eon is this apostle given to us? Is it possible in the image of their complex Savior, composed of a combination of all, whom they, as consisting of all, call “everything”, and to whom the poet Hesiod clearly hints, calling him Pandora, that is, the gift of all, since the best gifts of all are invested in him. The story about this is as follows: Hermes (so called in Greek) (Αιμυλιος τε λογος και επικλοπον ηθος ες αυθος κατθετο) (or in Latin): Fraudulentiae, sive seductionis verba et subinvolantes mores indidit eorum sensibus, “put into them seductive words and deceitful thoughts” in order to entice foolish people to believe their inventions. For the mother, i.e. Leto, secretly prompted them (which is why she is called Leto), according to the meaning of the Greek word, since she secretly encourages people) without the knowledge of the Demiurge, to proclaim deep and ineffable secrets “by having itching ears” (2 Tim. 4:3).
And their mother did that this mystery was expressed not only by Hesiod, but also very subtly by the lyricist Pindar, when he depicts the Demiurge in the person of Pelops, whose body, cut into pieces by his father, was collected and composed by all the gods, and thus expressed Pandora, and these people, having a seared conscience (1 Tim. 4:2), say the same thing and turn out to be of the same kind and spirit with them.
Thirty aeons are not marked by the fact that Christ was baptized in the thirtieth year; and Christ did not suffer twelve months after his baptism.
1. I have already shown that their number thirty is in any case untenable, since in the Pleroma there are sometimes few aeons, sometimes very many. Therefore, there are not thirty aeons, and the Savior did not come to the baptism of thirty years in order to indicate by this the thirty aeons generated from Silence; for otherwise they must first of all single out and eliminate Him (the Savior) from the Pleroma. They also say that the Savior suffered in the twelfth month, so that He preached for one year after baptism, and they try to prove this by prophecy. For it is written: “to proclaim the pleasant year of the Lord and the day of retribution” (Is. 61:2), truly they who consider themselves to have comprehended the abyss of the Depth are blind and do not understand what Isaiah calls the pleasant year of the Lord and the day of retribution. For the prophet does not speak of a day lasting twelve hours, nor of a year measured in twelve months. They themselves agree that the prophets spoke mostly in parables and allegories, and not strictly in the literal sense.
2. The day of retribution is the one when the Lord will reward everyone according to his deeds, that is, judgment. The pleasant year of the Lord is the present time, when those who believe in the Lord are called by Him and become pleasing to God - that is, all the time from His coming until the completion (of everything), during which He gathers for himself, as fruits, those who are saved. For, according to the saying of the prophet, the day of retribution will follow a (pleasant) year, and the prophet would have told a lie if the Lord had preached only one year and if he had spoken about it. For where is the day of retribution? a year has passed, and there is still no day of retribution, but He still commands “his sun to rise on the good and the evil” (Matthew 5:45) and sends rain on the righteous and the unjust.” Even now, the righteous are persecuted, tortured and killed, while sinners live in excess and drink to the sounds of the zither and lyre, not paying attention to the works of the Lord (Is. 5:12). And according to the above-mentioned saying (of the prophet), they should be united with each other and the (pleasant) year should be followed by the day of retribution.
For it is said: “to proclaim the pleasant year of the Lord and the day of retribution”; therefore, it is rightly understood by the “pleasant year of the Lord” to be the time in which the people of God are called and saved by the Lord; and it will be followed by the “day of retribution,” that is, judgment. But the prophet and the apostle Paul call this time not only a year, but also a day; The apostle, remembering the Scripture, says in the Epistle to the Romans: “As it is written: For Your sake we are killed every day; counted as sheep doomed to the slaughter” (Rom. 8:36). Here the word “every day” is said in the sense of all the time during which we suffer persecution and are killed like sheep. Therefore, just as here a day does not mean a day consisting of twelve hours, but the entire time during which believers suffer and undergo death for Christ, so it does not speak of a year consisting of twelve months, but of the entire time of faith, during which people who hear the sermon believe, and those who unite with him become acceptable to the Lord.
3. But it is very surprising that they, speaking about themselves as if they had comprehended the depths of God, did not look in the Gospels for how many times the Lord after baptism came to Jerusalem during Easter, according to the custom of the Jews to gather annually at this time from everywhere to Jerusalem and celebrate Easter there. The first time He came to the Passover holiday, after He created wine from water in Cana of Galilee, as it is written: “Many believed in Him when they saw the signs that He did” (John 2:23), as John, the disciple of the Lord, tells. Having left here, he was in Samaria, where he talked with the Samaritan woman and healed the centurion’s son in absentia with a word, saying to him: “Go, your son lives” (John 4:50). Then, for the second time, He goes to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday, when He healed the paralytic who had been lying for thirty-eight years near the pool, commanded him to get up, take up his bed and walk. After this, He went to the other side of the Sea of Tiberias, where, seeing a multitude of people following Him, He filled all this multitude with five loaves of which twelve more full baskets of pieces remained (Jn.
6:1 et seq.). When He then raised Lazarus from the dead, and when the Pharisees began to plot against Him, He went to the city of Ephraim; and from here, as it is written, six days before the feast of the Passover he came to Bethany (John 11:54; 12:1), and from Bethany, coming to Jerusalem, he tasted the Passover and suffered the next day. And everyone understands that these three Easters were not in the same year. If those who boast of their knowledge of everything do not know that even the month in which Passover is celebrated, and in which the Lord suffered, is not the twelfth, but the first, then they can learn about this from Moses. Therefore their explanation of the year and the twelfth month turns out to be false, and they must reject either their explanation or the Gospel; otherwise, how is it possible that the Lord preached for only one year?
4. Being thirty years old when He was baptized, and having reached the perfect age to be a teacher, He came to Jerusalem, and was rightly known to everyone as a teacher; for He did not seem to be anything other than what He was, as people say who regard Him as something that seems; but what He was, that is what He seemed to be. Therefore, He, being a teacher, also had the age of a teacher, not rejecting man, not placing Himself above him and not violating the law of humanity in Himself, but sanctifying every age with the corresponding period in His life. For He came to save everyone by Himself; all, I say, who through Him are reborn into God - babies 3, children, youths, young men and elders. Therefore, He passed through all ages - He became a baby for babies, and sanctified them; He became small for the little ones, and sanctified those of such age, at the same time giving them an example of piety, righteousness and obedience; He became a young man for young men, being an example for them and sanctifying them for the Lord.
He was also an elder to elders, so that he would be a perfect teacher in everything - not only in explaining the truth, but also in age, sanctifying at the same time adults and serving as a model for them; then He came to death in order to be “the firstborn from the dead and to have primacy in everything” (Col. 1:18) to be “the ruler of life” (Acts 3:15), first of all and prior to all.
5. They, in order to support their fiction regarding the words of the writing: “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” say that He preached only one year and suffered in the twelfth month, thus forgetting itself to their disadvantage, for by this they destroy His entire work and take away from Him a more necessary and more respectable age, that is, a mature age, when He, as a teacher, surpassed everyone. For how would He have disciples if He did not teach? And how would He teach if He did not have teaching age? He was baptized when He was not thirty years old, but was only about thirty years old, as Luke suggests, who mentions His years. “Jesus was about thirty years old” (Luke 3:23) when he came to be baptized, and (according to them) after his baptism he preached only one year; suffered when he was thirty years old, when he was still a young man and had not reached a more mature age.
And everyone will agree that the age of thirty is the beginning of manhood, which continues until the fortieth year; from the forties and fifties, the old age in which our Lord taught began, as the Gospel and all the elders who gathered in Asia around John, the disciple of the Lord, testify, that John himself conveyed this to them; and he was with them until the time of Trajan. Some of them saw not only John, but also the other apostles, and heard the same thing from them and testify to this circumstance. Who should be given more faith? Whether to such people or to Ptolemy, who never saw the apostles and did not even walk in a dream on the path of the Apostle.
6. Moreover, even the Jews, who at that time were arguing with the Lord Jesus Christ, made the same point very clearly. For when the Lord said to them: “Abraham your father rejoiced to see My day; and he saw and rejoiced,” then they answered him: “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham” (John 8:56–57)? These words could be spoken to someone who has already lived forty years, but has not yet reached the fiftieth year, and yet is not far from the fiftieth year. And to someone who is thirty years old, they would say this: You are not yet forty years old. For those who wanted to make Him out to be a liar, of course, would not increase His years beyond the age that they saw Him to have, but designated the years closest to His age, because they either really knew them from the census, or they inferred about them from His age, seeing that He was more than forty, and not thirty years old. For it is completely unreasonable to assume that they, who wanted to make Him younger than the time of Abraham, falsely added twenty years to Him. But what they saw was what they said; and He Whom they saw was not a ghost, but the truth.
Consequently, he was not far from fifty years old, and therefore they said to him: “You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham”? So, He preached for more than one year and did not suffer in the twelfth month. For the time from the thirtieth to the fiftieth year cannot in any way be counted as one year, unless such long years can be assigned to those of the aeons that sit in order near the Depth in the Pleroma; The poet Homer, inspired, of course, by the mother of their error, said about them:
Sitting near Zeus the gods now became
The woman who suffered from bleeding is not an image of the fallen eon.
1. In addition, their ignorance is clearly revealed regarding that woman who, suffering from bleeding, touched the hem of the Lord’s garment and was healed - for they say that this wife represents the twelfth power that suffered and poured out into infinity, that is, the twelfth aeon - firstly because, as I have already shown, this aeon, according to their system, is not the twelfth. Even if we allow them to do this, then still, out of their twelve aeons, eleven, according to them, remained not involved in suffering, and the twelfth was subjected to it; This wife, on the contrary, was healed in the twelfth year, and from this it is clear that she suffered continuously for eleven years, and in the twelfth year she recovered. If they say that eleven aeons were subject to incurable suffering, and the twelfth was healed, then it would be more convenient to call the wife a likeness of those aeons.
And since she suffered for eleven years, and was not healed, but recovered already in the twelfth year, then how can she be the image of the twelfth aeon, while eleven aeons did not suffer at all, and only the twelfth suffered? For the image and type may not be similar to the truth (signified by them) regarding matter and substance, but in form and appearance they must be similar to it and through the present represent what is not in sight.
2. And it is not on the occasion of this woman alone that the years of illness are designated, which they adapt to their fiction, but here is another woman who, having been sick for eighteen years, was also healed, and about whom the Lord says: “This daughter of Abraham, whom Satan had bound for eighteen years, should not she have been released from these bonds on the Sabbath day?” (Luke 13:16) And if that woman was the image of the twelfth suffering aeon, then this one must also be the image of the eighteenth suffering aeon. But they cannot assert this; for otherwise their first and ancestral Octome will be counted among the aeons suffering together. But the Lord healed another man who had suffered for thirty-eight years, and therefore they must allow another thirty-eighth suffering aeon. For if what the Lord did is a similarity to what is in Pleroma, then the similarity must be observed in everything. But they cannot bring under their fictitious system either a wife healed after eighteen years, or a man healed after thirty-eight years.
And to say that the Lord observed the type in one case, but did not observe it in another, is absurd and unfounded. Therefore, it is obvious that a (bleeding) wife cannot fit into their system of aeons.
The absurdity of the proofs that heretics borrow from numbers, letters and words.
1. The falsity of their teaching and the inconsistency of their inventions is also proven by the fact that they look for evidence, sometimes in numbers and syllables of names, sometimes in letters and syllables, and sometimes in numbers expressed by letters among the Greeks. Here the confusion and absurdity, the inconsistency and tension of their “knowledge” are clearly revealed. For they, translating the name Jesus, which belongs to a completely different language, into the Greek numeral, they call it a significant number (episimon), since it consists of six letters, or “The Fullness of Octomes,” since it contains the number eight hundred and eighty-eight. But they are silent about His Greek name Sotir, i.e. Savior - since it does not fit their invention either in number or in letters. For if they accept that, according to the foreknowledge of the Father, the names of the Lord with their numbers and letters designate the number in Pleroma, then the Greek name Sotir should express in Greek, both with its numbers and letters, the mystery of Pleroma. But that's not true; for this word (Σωτηρ) consists of five letters, and its number is 1408.
And this does not at all fit their Pleroma, and therefore their rumors regarding the Pleroma are not true.
2. Moreover, the name Jesus in the own language of the Jews, as their teaching says, has only two and a half letters and means the Lord, containing heaven and earth; for the word Jesus in the ancient Hebrew language means Heaven, and the earth is called (sura usser). Therefore the word that includes both heaven and earth is Jesus. Therefore, their (the heretics) application of the significant number is not correct, and their account is obviously refuted. For, in their own language, the Greek word (Σωτηρ) (Savior) has five letters, and in the Hebrew the word Jesus has two and a half letters. Consequently, their number 888 drops completely. And in general, Hebrew letters, which, due to their deeper antiquity and immutability, should hold the number expressed by names, do not at all correspond to Greek numbers. For these ancient and original letters of the Hebrews, also called priestly, number ten, but they are designated by fifteen, by connecting the last letter with the first. And, moreover, they sometimes write in order, like us, and sometimes in the opposite direction from the right side to the left.
And Christ, Who, in their opinion, was generated to strengthen and correct their Pleroma, should have in His name a numerical value similar to the eons of this Pleroma. In the same way, in the name of the Father, the letters and numerical value should have expressed the number of aeons generated by him, as well as the Depth and the First-born, and especially the highest name by which God is called - in Hebrew Baruch 5 - consisting of two and a half letters. So, if in the Hebrew and Greek languages the most important names are not similar to their invention either in the number of letters or in their numerical value, then in relation to other words the tension of the numerical value they shamelessly invented is clearly revealed.
3. For they borrow from the Law everything suitable to the number accepted in their system, and try to extract from it by force a proof in its favor. But if their Mother, or Savior, wanted to present through the Demiurge images of what is in the Pleroma, then They would try to present these images in what is most true and holy, and mainly in the Irk of the Covenant, for the sake of which the entire Tabernacle of the Testimony was built. And this Icon is two and a half cubits long, one and a half cubits wide, and one and a half cubits high (Ex. 25:10); These same numbers of cubits do not in any way fit their invention, whereas they especially should have expressed similarity. The house of atonement also does not fit into their explanations at all, nor does the table for the showbread, which was two cubits long, one cubit wide, and one and a half cubits high (Ex. 25:17.23). This was in front of the Holy of Holies, and not a single number contains an indication of the Quaternary, or the Octomic, or their other Pleroma. But what is a lampstand with seven branches (Ex. 25:31–32) and seven lights?
If it were constructed in the likeness, it should have had eight branches and the same number of luminaries, in the image of the first Osmeritsa, shining between the aeons and illuminating the entire Plyroma. They counted the curtains, ten in number, with special diligence, and called them the image of ten aeons; but they did not count the eleven covers (Ex. 26:1, 7). They also did not measure the size of the curtains, each of which is 28 cubits in length (Ex. 26:2). In the same way, they explain the length of the pillars, ten cubits, by their ten aeons. “The width of each pillar is one and a half cubits” (Exodus 26:16) - they do not explain this, as well as the number of all the pillars and their bolts (Exodus 26:26), since it has nothing to do with their teaching. What about the anointing oil that illuminated the whole tabernacle? Perhaps their Savior did not know anything about it, or the Demiurge, during the Mother’s sleep, himself decided on its weight, which is why it does not agree with their teaching about Plerom, containing five hundred shekels of myrrh, five hundred cassia, two hundred and fifty cinnamon, two hundred and fifty cane, and in addition also oil, so that it consists of five components (Ex. 30 ff.).
In the same way, the incense consisted of stacta, onyx, galbanum, mint and incense (Ex. 30:34), and here, both in components and in weight, again there is nothing suitable for their system. Therefore, it is unreasonable and completely absurd to assert that in the highest and most important objects of the Law the likeness was not observed, but in others, as soon as their number approaches their teaching, they contain images of what is in the Pleroma; for in Scripture each number is repeated several times, so that anyone, anyone, can borrow from Scripture not only the osmeric, ten, or twelve, but also any other number, and pass it off as an image of an error invented by him.
4. That this is true is demonstrated by the frequently occurring number five in Scripture, which has nothing to do with their teaching, does not fit their fiction, and cannot serve as an image of what is in the Pleroma. The name Σωτηρ (Savior) consists of five letters, as well as the word Πατηρ (Father), the word Αγαπη (Love) also contains five letters; and our Lord blessed five loaves of bread and fed them to five thousand people (Matthew 14:19–21); He called five virgins wise, and five foolish (Matthew 25:2). Further, five husbands were with the Lord when He received testimony from the Father, namely: Peter, James, John, Moses and Elijah (Matthew 17:1). With five, the Lord entered the dead maiden and raised her: “He did not allow,” says (Scripture), “to enter anyone except Peter, James and the father of the maiden and mother” (Luke 8:51). The rich man in hell says that he has five brothers, and asks that the one raised from the dead should go to them (Luke 16:28). The pool from which the Lord commanded the paralytic, healed by Him, to go home had five covered passages (John 5:2).
And the very form of the cross has five ends 6, two in length, two in width, and one in the middle, on which the nailed one rests. Each of our hands has five fingers; we also have five senses; our insides can be divided again into five parts: heart, liver, lungs, spleen and kidneys. Moreover, the whole man can be divided into the same number (of parts): head, chest, belly, thigh and legs. The human race goes through five ages; first (a person) is a baby, then a youth, then a youth, a husband, and finally an old man. In five books, Moses gave the law to the people. On each of the tables that he received from God were five commandments. The curtain covering the Holy of Holies had five pillars (Ex. 26:37). The altar of burnt offering was five cubits wide (Ex. 27:1). Five priests were elected in tsustina, namely: Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar and Ithamar (Ex. 28:1). The ephod and other garments of the high priest were composed of five materials (Ex. 28:5); they combined gold, hyacinth, purple, crimson and the finest linen.
Joshua imprisoned the five kings of the Amorites in a cave and commanded the people to trample their heads under their feet (Joshua 10:17). And several thousand other similar things anyone can pick up for this and any number from Scripture or from the surrounding works of nature. However, we do not say on this basis that there are five aeons above the Demiurge, we do not sanctify the pentad as something divine, we do not try to support untenable and absurd opinions with such empty efforts, we do not unjustly force the beautiful creation created by God to be transformed into images of things that do not exist, and we do not strive to introduce godless and ungodly teachings, the denunciation and refutation of which is so accessible to everyone who makes sense.
5. For who will agree with them that a year has three hundred and sixty-five days only because there are twelve months, each of thirty days, in the image of twelve aeons, when in fact the image here does not correspond (to its prototype)? There, each aeon is the thirtieth part of the entire Pleroma, and they themselves call the month the twelfth part of the year. If the year were divided into thirty, and the month into twelve parts, then the type could be considered suitable to their invention. But their Pleroma, on the contrary, is divided into thirty parts, and part of it into twelve parts. Consequently, the Savior foolishly made the month the image of the whole Pleroma, and the year the image of the twelve days existing in the Pleroma; for it would be much more appropriate to divide the year, like the whole Pleroma, into thirty parts, and the month into twelve, as many aeons as there are in their Pleroma. In addition, they divide the entire Pleroma into three parts, that is, into the Octome, Dec and Twelve; the year is divided into four parts, i.e., spring, summer, autumn and winter.
But even the months, which they call the image of the tridecimal, do not exactly have thirty days, but some more, others less, since five days are added to them. And the day does not always have exactly twelve hours, but rises from nine to fifteen, and then decreases from fifteen to nine. So, it is not for the sake of thirteen aeons that months consisting of thirty days are arranged, otherwise they would all have exactly thirty days; just as their days are not arranged in this way in order to designate twelve aeons by the number of twelve hours; otherwise they would always have exactly twelve hours.
6. Further, since they call everything material on the left, and the left is necessarily subject to corruption, and they say that the Savior came to the lost sheep in order to transfer it to the right side, that is, to the ninety-nine saved sheep that were not lost, but remained in the sheepfold, then they must admit that those who make up the number of the left side will not achieve salvation. And everything that does not have this number, they must recognize as belonging to the left side, that is, perishable. For example, the Greek word Αγαπη (love), which, according to the numerical value of the letters, represents the number 93 among the Greeks, also belongs to the left side; and the word Αληθεια (truth), according to the mentioned reckoning, representing the number 64, belongs to material substances; and thus they are forced to call all sacred names that do not reach the number 100, but contain only the numbers of the left side, perishable and material.
God is not explored by letters, syllables and numbers; and one should not investigate such objects that the human mind, which stands far below God, cannot comprehend.
1. If, however, anyone objects to this: what, is the appointment of names, the election of the Apostles, the acts of the Lord and the arrangement of created things accidental and without a purpose? – then I will answer: of course not; but with great wisdom and care all that was created was arranged and adorned by God, both the most ancient, and what His Word did in later times; and this should not be associated with the number thirty, but in accordance with the actual content or meaning of things; One should also not make an investigation about God through numbers, syllables and letters, for this is untenable due to their difference and diversity, and also because every doctrine that anyone would now like to invent in a similar way can extract from them evidence that is inconsistent with the truth, since they can be applied to very many things - on the contrary, it brings the numbers themselves and everything created in agreement with the existing teaching of truth. For the rule (of truth) does not come from numbers, but numbers from the rule, and not God from works, but works from God. For everything is from one and the same God.
2. Created things, no matter how diverse and numerous they are, are in harmonious connection and harmony with the whole universe, but considered each separately, they are mutually opposite and discordant, just as the tone of a zither, consisting of many and opposite sounds, forms, through the distance between each of them, one consonant melody. Therefore, the lover of truth should not be deceived by the distance of each tone, nor imagine that one sound belongs to one artist and creator, and another to another, or that one created high tones, another low, and a third middle ones; but (recognize) only one (the organizer of everything), as proof of the wisdom, justice, goodness and beauty of the whole work.
And those who hear the melody should praise and glorify the artist, be amazed at the tension of some sounds, pay attention to the weakness of others, listen to the average between the first two, consider the character of other sounds and what each of them refers to, and examine the reason for them, but never deviate from the rule, not deviate from the artist, not abandon faith in the one God who created everything, and not blaspheme our Creator.
3. If anyone does not find the causes of all the things being studied, let him think that man is infinitely less than God, that he has only partially received grace, and is not yet equal and not like his Creator, and cannot, like God, have knowledge and comprehension of all things, but insofar as the one who was created today and received the beginning of being is inferior to the One who is not created and is always the same, so, in relation to knowledge and research of the causes of everything, he is inferior to the Creator. For you, O man, are not a created being and have not always coexisted with God as His own Word, but you only, by His special goodness, have now received the beginning of your existence and little by little you learn from the Word to know the orders of your Creator.
4. So, adhere to the order of your knowledge and do not rise, as one who does not know good, above God Himself, for He is unattainable; Do not seek anything higher than the Creator of the world, for you will not find it. Your Creator is infinite, and you cannot imagine another Father besides Him, as if you had completely measured Him, passed through the entire universe and seen all the depth, height and length of Him. For you will not comprehend Him and, thinking unnaturally, you will turn out to be meaningless; and if you continue in the same way, you will fall into madness, considering yourself better and higher than your Creator and imagining that you have penetrated above His kingdom.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
1. Therefore, it is better and more useful to remain simple and know little and approach God through love, rather than considering ourselves knowledgeable and very experienced, to turn out to be blasphemers of our God, inventing for ourselves another God the Father. And that is why Paul exclaims: “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (1 Cor. 8:1); not that he condemned the true knowledge of God - for otherwise he would have been the first to blame himself - but he knew that some, arrogant under the pretext of knowledge, leave the love of God and, considering themselves perfect, introduce an imperfect Creator; and therefore, cutting off their vanity with such knowledge, he says: “knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” But the greatest arrogance is when someone considers himself better and more perfect than the One who created him, gave him the breath of life and called this very thing into being.
So, it is much better, as I said, if someone, without knowing anything, without comprehending a single reason why any of the created things was created, believes in God and remains in love for Him, than, being puffed up with such knowledge, to fall away from the love that gives life to a person; (it is better) if he does not pursue any other knowledge than the knowledge of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, crucified for us, than to fall into wickedness through cunning questions and subtle speeches.
2. For what would happen if someone, being proud of attempts of this kind, wanted, on the basis that the Lord said that “even the hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30), to carefully know the number of hairs of each head and to investigate the reason why one person has so much hair, and another so much - since not everyone has them equally, but many thousands of people are with different numbers (of hair), for some have large heads, others have smaller ones, Some have thick hair, others have sparse hair, and some have very little hair - and then those who imagine that they have found the number of hairs would strive to present this as evidence of their doctrine, which they have invented? Or again, if someone, based on the words in the Gospel: “Are not two small birds sold for an assar? and not one of them will fall to the ground without the will of your Father" (Matt.
10:29), wanted to count the number of sparrows caught every day throughout the whole earth or some region of it and investigate the reason why yesterday so many, and before so many, today so many were caught, and would begin to apply the number of sparrows to his teaching; - is such a person not completely deceived and does not involve those who agree with him into great foolishness, for people are always ready to think about such things that they have discovered something more than their teachers.
3. If someone asked me whether God knows every number of all things created and still being created, and whether each of them, by His Providence, received its characteristic size, and I would confirm and say that nothing of everything that was, is and will be created escapes the knowledge of God, but by His Providence, each thing received and is receiving its own form, order. number and magnitude, and that nothing was and does not happen in vain and by chance, but with great proportionality and excellent knowledge, and that only a wondrous and truly divine mind can recognize and show its own reasons for this order of things; and having received such testimony and consent from me, he would then proceed to count the sand and stones of the earth, the waves of the sea and the stars of heaven and investigate the reasons for the number that he assumes to be found - then would not all sensible people justly call such a person laboring in vain, absurd and unreasonable?
And the more in comparison with others he will deal with such questions and the more he will think of himself as if he had discovered something special, calling other people unskillful, ignorant and spiritual because they do not undertake his such empty work; all the more so will he be unreasonable and stupid, as if stunned by lightning, because he is in no way inferior to God, but even through his knowledge, which he imagines himself to have discovered, he changes God Himself and lifts his thought above the greatness of the Creator.
The proper way to interpret parables and obscure passages of Scripture.
1. A sound mind, trustworthy, devoted to godliness and lover of truth, will willingly meditate on the things which God has given to the power of men and subjected to our knowledge, and will be successful in doing so, making it easier for himself to study them by annual exercise. This includes what is subject to our vision, and what is clearly and not mutually expressed in exact words in the Holy Scriptures. And therefore parables should not be adapted to mutual (things); for in this case, the one who explains them explains them safely, and the parables will receive the same interpretation from everyone, and the body of truth is preserved whole, in a harmonious combination of members and without damaging them. But what is said is not clear and not obvious in itself, this is to be applied to the interpretation of parables, which everyone invents as they please - (reckless). For in this case, no one will have the rule of truth, but there will be so many interpreters of parables, so many truths will turn out to be mutually contradictory and establish teachings that are opposite to each other, which is what we see in the studies of pagan philosophers.
2. With this way of acting, a person will always seek, but never finds, because he has rejected the very way of finding (the truth). And (the parable of the one) who at the time of the coming of the bridegroom has a lamp that is not ready, not burning with the radiance of clear light (Matthew 25 ff.), goes very far to those who seek explanations in parables in the dark, abandoning the One who generously bestows clear preaching on those who come to Him, and is thereby excluded from His palace.
Therefore, when all the Scriptures, and the prophetic books, and the Gospels, 7 which can be heard clearly by everyone without reciprocity and agreement, although not everyone believes them, proclaim that one God, to the exclusion of all others, created with His Word everything - visible and invisible, heavenly and earthly, water and underground, as I have shown, from the words of the Scriptures, and when the very creation in which we live, by means of what we see, the same thing testifies, namely, that the One created it and controls it, then those who, with such a clear revelation, are blinded with their eyes and do not want to see the light of preaching, but bind themselves, and each of them imagines finding his own God through dark interpretations of parables, will turn out to be very unreasonable. And that about the Father, invented by those who hold the opposite opinion, absolutely nothing is said clearly and unquestioningly in any Scripture, they themselves testify when they say that the Savior taught about this in secret not to everyone, but only to a few disciples who could accept, and for those who understood he showed it through teaching, riddles and parables.
And they come to the conclusion that they say that one is the preached God, and the other is the Father, who is designated as the Father by means of parables and riddles.
3. Since parables can admit of many interpretations, what lover of truth would not agree that to assert anything on them in the study of God, leaving aside what is known, undoubted and true, is the work of people who rush into danger and are unreasonable? Doesn't this mean building your house not on a solid, strong and openly lying stone, but on crumbling sand? That is why such a building is easily destroyed.
Perfect knowledge cannot be achieved in the present life; many questions must be humbly left to God.
1. So, having as our rule the truth itself and the open testimony of God, we should not turn in different directions in resolving issues and reject the solid and true knowledge of God; on the contrary, it is much more fitting for us, directing the solution of questions according to this model, to exercise ourselves in the study of the mystery and order of the Existing God and to grow in love for Him who has done and is doing so much for our sake, but we will never deviate from that belief, which very clearly proclaims that He alone is in truth God and Father, Who created this world and created man and gave His creatures the ability to grow, Who calls on His small things to His greater ones, and the child conceived in the womb is brought into the sunny light and the wheat, strengthened in the stalk, is gathered into the granary. One and the same Creator formed the womb and created the sun, and one and the same Lord brought out the stalk and multiplied the wheat and prepared the barn.
2. If we cannot find in the Scriptures an explanation of everything that we seek, yet we will not seek another God except the One who exists. For this is the greatest wickedness. We must leave this to God, who created us, rightly confident that the Scriptures are perfect, since they are spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit, and we, as lower and later in existence than the Word of God and His Spirit, are therefore deprived of knowledge of His sacraments. And it is not surprising if this happens to us in things spiritual, heavenly and requiring Revelation, when from what is at our feet - I mean things belonging to this creation, which we touch, see and with which we constantly handle - we do not know much and leave it to God. For He must be superior to all. What would happen if we tried to explain the origin of the Nile? We can say a lot, maybe true, maybe wrong; what is true, reliable and solid belongs to God.
Further, the location of those birds that fly to us in the spring and immediately move away in the fall, although this happens in this world, eludes our knowledge. What can we say about the ebb and flow of the ocean, although everyone knows that there is a certain reason (for this phenomenon), or about what is beyond the ocean? What can we say about the formation of rain, lightning, thunder, collection of clouds, vapors, winds and the like? Or about the origin of snow, hail and the like? Or how clouds are prepared, what is the property of vapors, for what reason the moon increases and decreases, what is the reason for the difference in waters, metals, stones, and the like. We will talk a lot about all this, looking for the reasons for everything, but only God, who created it, can reveal the truth.
3. If, therefore, of the things of creation, some are subject only to God, and some are accessible to our knowledge, then what is surprising if from what we look for in the Scriptures, which are entirely spiritual, we, by the grace of God, understand some things to ourselves, and leave others to God, and this not only in the present age, but also in the future, so that in this way God always teaches, and man always learns from God. So the Apostle said that while everything else will be destroyed, the following (three) will remain: Faith, Hope and Love (1 Cor. 13:13). For faith in relation to our Teacher remains unchanged, confirming us that there is one true God, and that we must truly love Him always, that He alone is the Father, from whom we must hope to receive something more, and learn that He is good and has immeasurable wealth, an endless kingdom and inexhaustible teaching.
Therefore, if, in accordance with the method (of action) I mentioned, we leave some of the questions to God, then we will keep our faith and remain safe, and every Scripture given to us by God will turn out to be in agreement with us, and the parables will agree with what is said directly, and what is said clearly will serve to explain the parables, and in the diversity of expressions (in the Scriptures) a single consonant melody will be felt, praising with songs the Creator of everything. God. If, for example, someone asks: what did God do before the creation of the world, then we will say that the answer to this question lies with God. That this world was created perfect by God, having received its beginning in time, the Scriptures teach us about this, but no Scripture reveals to us anything about what God did before. Therefore, the answer to this will support God, and we should not come up with stupid, unfounded and blasphemous explanations for this and, imagining, for example, that you have discovered the origin of matter, humiliate God Himself, who created everything.
4. All of you who invent such opinions, consider that when the Father Himself alone is called God, Who, truly, is (God), but Whom you call the Demiurge, when the Scriptures only know Him as God, and the Lord Himself only confesses Him as His Father and does not know another, as I will prove in His own words, and when you call this God Himself a fruit of deficiency and a work of ignorance, ignorant of what is above Him, and You say many other things about Him - think what great blasphemy you commit against Him who truly is God. Apparently, it is important and honest that you say that you believe in God, but then, when you cannot show another God, Himself in whom you believe, you call it a fruit of deficiency and a product of ignorance.
Such blindness and these stupid speeches you have come from the fact that you do not provide anything to God, but want to proclaim the birth and origin of God Himself and His Thought and Word and Life and Christ, forming the concept of this not according to anything else, but according to human passions, and you do not understand that, as I said above, regarding man, who is a complex being, we can talk about the mind of a person and about his thoughts, we can say that from the mind comes a thought, from a thought a thought, from a thought a word - what word? For the Greeks have another λογος, as a thinking principle, another as an instrument through which reason is expressed, and that a person sometimes rests and is silent, sometimes speaks and does. But when God is the whole Mind, the whole Reason, the whole active Spirit, the whole Light, and the One and the Same always exists, just as it is useful for us to philosophize about God and as we learn from the Scriptures, then in relation to Him this kind of (human) states and divisions (of actions) are not appropriate.
Our language, as a bodily one, is not sufficient to serve the speed of the human mind due to its spiritual nature, which is why our word lingers in us and is pronounced not immediately as it is conceived by the mind, but in parts, as long as the tongue can serve it.
5. But God, being all Mind and all Word, says what he thinks, and thinks what he says. For His thought is His Word and the Word is Mind, and the all-inclusive Mind is the Father Himself. Therefore, whoever speaks about the Mind of God and ascribes to It a special origin, declares It to be a complex being, as if something else is God and something else is the primitive Mind. In the same way, the one who ascribes to the Word a third place in descent from the Father - which is why he does not know His greatness - very far separates the Word from God. The Prophet says about Him: “Who will explain His generation” (Is. 53:8)? But you, who talk about His birth from the Father, transfer the work of the human word through the tongue to the Word of God, and thereby expose yourselves that you know neither human nor divine.
6. Foolishly arrogant, you boldly say that you know the ineffable mysteries of God, while the Lord, the Son of God Himself, declared that the Father alone knows the day and hour of judgment, clearly saying: “about that day and hour no one knows, not even the Son, but only the Father” (Mark 13:32). If the Son was not ashamed to attribute the knowledge of that day only to the Father, but spoke the truth; then we should not be ashamed to leave to God the highest questions that we encounter. For no one is greater than the teacher (Matthew 10:24; Luke 11:40). Therefore, if anyone asks us: how was the Son born of the Father, we will tell him that no one knows that work, or birth, or naming, or revelation, or whatever else anyone will call His ineffable birth. Neither Valentine, nor Marcion, nor Saturninus, nor Basilides, nor angels, nor archangels, nor rulers, nor powers (they do not know this), but only the Father who begat and the Son who was begotten. When in this way His birth is inexpressible, then those who strive to explain the birth and work are out of their minds, promising to explain the inexplicable. For all people know that the word comes from thought and mind.
And so it was not something great or a hidden mystery that was discovered by those who invented (the theory of) generation, when they transferred what was generally known to the Only Begotten Word of God; and calling Him ineffable and unnameable, they explain the origin and formation of His first generation, as if they themselves were at birth, likening Him to the spoken word of man.
7. We will not make a mistake if we say the same about the essence of matter, because God produced it. For we know from the Scriptures that God is sovereign over all things. But where or how He produced it, neither Scripture has revealed this anywhere, nor should we indulge in daydreaming, engaging in endless guessing about God according to our own opinions, but we must provide such knowledge to God. Likewise, questions about the reason why, while everything was created by God, some (of His creatures) sinned and fell away from obedience to God, and some, and even the largest part of them, remained and remains in obedience to their Creator; and also what nature those who have sinned, and what nature those who remain, must be left to God and His Word, to Whom alone He said: “Sit thou at My right hand, while I make Thy enemies Thy footstool” (Ps. 19:1). But we are still on earth and are not yet present at His throne. For although the Spirit of the Savior who is in Him “tests all things, even the depths of God” (1 Cor.
2:10), but regarding us there is “a division of gifts, and a division of ministries, and a division of actions” (1 Cor. 12:4-6), and we on earth, as Paul says, “we know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Cor. 13:9). Therefore, if we know in part, then we must leave all questions to Him who gives us grace in part. That eternal fire is prepared for sinners, the Lord clearly spoke about this and other Scriptures testify. And that God foresaw this, since He from the beginning prepared eternal fire for those who sinned, the Scriptures also testify, but neither Scripture revealed the very reason for the nature of those who sinned, nor did the Apostle speak, nor did the Lord teach. So we must provide knowledge about this to God, just as the Lord did about the day and hour (of judgment) - and not go to such an extreme as not to provide anything to God, especially when we have grace only in part.
When we examine what is higher than us, and what we are not given to achieve, then [it is easy] to reach such insolence as to expose God Himself and what has not yet been found by us, as if we had already found it, and, talking idlely about various generations, assert that the Creator of all things, God, received His essence from lack and ignorance, and thus invent an impious doctrine contrary to God.
8. In addition, they do not have any evidence in favor of the system they recently invented in that they try to support their fabulous stories, invented by them, with the help of some numbers, syllables, names, letters contained in letters, parables incorrectly explained, or some assumptions. For if anyone seeks the reasons why the Lord said that the Father, who has fellowship with the Son in everything, alone knows the day and hour (of judgment), then now he will not find another more suitable, decent and safe reason than that we should learn through Him - for the Lord is the only true Teacher - then the Father is above all. For “the Father,” He says, “is greater than I” (John 14:28). And to the Father our Lord has ascribed superiority in regard to knowledge, so that we, since we remain in the form of this world, may present to God perfect knowledge and such questions, and so that, intensifying our investigation of the sublime nature of the Father, we would not somehow be in danger of asking whether there is another God higher than God.
9. If anyone, loving to argue, begins to contradict what I have said and what the Apostle affirms: “we know in part and we prophesy in part” (1 Cor. 13:9), and thinks that he has not fragmentary, but complete knowledge of everything that exists, such as: Valentine, Ptolemy, Basilides, or any of those who boast that they have explored the depths of God - then let him, vaingloriously adorning himself, not boast that he has greater knowledge than others regarding the invisible or not subject to our observation, but let him carefully examine and, having learned from the Father, tell us about the reasons that we do not know about what is in this world: for example, about the number of hairs on his head, about sparrows caught daily, and about other things previously unknown to us, and then we can believe him in more. If those who are “perfect” do not yet know what is in their hands, before their feet, in front of their eyes and on the ground, and especially the arrangement of the hairs on their heads, then how can we believe them regarding spiritual, heavenly things and what, according to their vain conviction, is higher than God?
This is enough to say about numbers, names, syllables, about questions regarding what is above us, and about their incorrect interpretation of parables, since you can say more at length yourself.
Refuting the opinions of heretics about the future fate of the soul and body.
1. Let us turn to the remaining points of their teaching. When they say that, having completed everything, their Mother will again enter Pleroma and receive the Savior as Her spouse, and they themselves, as spiritual ones, will renounce their souls and, having become rational spirits, will be brides of spiritual angels; The Demiurge, who is called soulful, will take the place of the Mother, and the souls of the righteous calm down in the middle place, and, in general, when they say that like will unite with like, the spiritual with the spiritual, the material with the material, they contradict themselves, because souls no longer move in accordance with their substance to the middle place to their own kind (beings), but in accordance with their activity, for, according to them, the souls of the righteous go there, and the souls of the wicked remain in fire. For if all souls, according to their substance, achieve tranquility and belong to the middle place simply because they are souls, since they are all of one substance, then faith is superfluous, and the descent of the Savior is superfluous.
If they (receive such a place) for their righteousness, then it means not because they are in soul, but because they are righteous. And if souls would perish if they were not righteous, then righteousness has the power to save bodies, for why would it not save them when they also participated in righteousness? If nature and substance save, then all souls will be saved, but if righteousness and faith, then why will they not save bodies, which, like souls, can receive incorruptibility? For righteousness in this case will appear either powerless or unjust, if it saves some for participation in it, but does not save others.
2. For it is known that works of righteousness are done in bodies. Therefore, either all souls will necessarily move to the middle place and there will be no judgment for them, or the bodies that participated in righteousness, together with the souls that participated in it, will reach a place of coolness, if only righteousness can bring here those (beings) that were involved in it; and the word about the resurrection of bodies, in which we believe, will turn out to be true and firm, because the Resurrectionist will make our mortal bodies, which maintain righteousness, incorruptible and immortal. For God is above nature; He has will because He is good, He has power because He is powerful, and He has execution because He is rich and perfect.
3. They (the heretics) completely contradict themselves when they say that not all souls, but only the souls of the righteous, move to the middle place. For three kinds (of beings), they say, are naturally and substantially produced by the Mother: the first, arising from confusion, sorrow and fear, is matter; the other is from aspiration, this is spiritual; the third is the one that she produced from the contemplation of the angels surrounding Christ, this is spiritual. If the beings produced by it, by their spirituality, will certainly enter the Pleroma, and the material, as material, will remain below and will be completely destroyed by the ignition of the fire located in it, then why does not everything spiritual go to the middle place, where they send the Demiurge? What will be included in their Pleroma? Souls, they say, will be in the middle place; bodies, since they have a material substance, having decomposed into matter, will burn from the fire located in it. And with the destruction of the body and with the transition of the soul to the middle place, nothing remains of the person to enter the Pleroma.
For the mind of a person - his mind, thought, direction of the mind and the like are not something special from the soul, but the movement and action of the soul itself, which without the soul have no substance. What of them will remain to enter the Pleroma? For they themselves, since they are souls, will remain in the middle place, and since they are bodies, they will burn with the rest of matter.
The absurdity of heretics who call themselves spiritual and the Demiurge spiritual.
1. And in this state of affairs, these fools say that they rise above the Demiurge, and proclaim themselves superior to that God who created and adorned the heavens and the earth and the seas and everything that is in them, and they shamelessly consider themselves spiritual, whereas in fact they are carnal for the sake of such their wickedness, and the One who created his angels with spirits (Ps. 103: 2,4), dressed in light, like a robe, and holding the globe of the earth as if in his hand, and before Whom its inhabitants appear like a dragonfly, the Creator of all spiritual substance and God is called spiritual - by this they undoubtedly and truly expose their madness and, as if truly struck by thunder, even more than the giants mentioned in the fable, raise their thoughts against God, pompous with vain exaltation and futility glory - people for whose purification the hellebore of the whole earth is not enough for them to be freed from their such great stupidity.
2. The best must be based on his deeds. How can they (the heretics) show themselves to be better than the Creator of the world - and I, at the request of speech, fall into wickedness, making a comparison between God and insane people, descending into their evidence and often refuting them with their own teachings; but may God be merciful, for I say this not to compare Him with them, but to expose and refute their madness - they, at whom many foolish people are amazed, as if they could learn from them anything more than the truth itself? They explain the expression in Scripture “seek and you will find” as if it was said so that they would find themselves higher than the Creator, calling themselves greater and better than God, and moreover spiritual, and the Creator spiritual, and asserting on this basis that they ascend higher than God, they are the ones who enter the Pleroma, and God remains in the middle place. Let them prove by their deeds that they are better than the Creator. Not in words, but in what is, the best must show itself.
3. What work will they indicate, accomplished through them by the Savior or their Mother, which would be greater or more glorious or wiser than what was created by the one who arranged all this? What heavens did they establish? What land was founded? What stars did they produce? What lights did they create to shine? What circles were they limited to? What rains or colds and everything corresponding to the time of year and each country were brought on the earth? What heat and dryness opposed them? What rivers did they make flow, what springs did they produce? What flowers and trees were used to decorate the heavenly realm? What multitude of animals did they form, some intelligent, some non-intelligent, but all of them endowed with beauty? And who can count separately everything else that was created by the power of God and governed by His wisdom, or explore the greatness of the wisdom of God who created these things? And what can we say about the most heavenly and imperishable beings, such as angels, archangels, thrones, dominions and countless powers? Which of these creatures can they oppose themselves to?
What similar thing can they imagine that was done through them or by themselves, when they themselves are the work and creation of this (Creator)? And if the Savior or their Mother - let's say in their own words, in order to expose their lies through their own expressions - used this being, as they say, in order to create images of what is in the Pleroma, and of everything that She saw around the Savior, then She used Him (the Creator of the world) as better and more suitable for fulfilling Her will, for She could not in any way produce images of such important beings through the lower (doer), but only through the highest.
4. For they themselves were then, according to their own explanation, spiritually conceived through the contemplation of those beings who, like companions, surrounded Pandora. And they, however, remained ineffective - since their Mother did not do anything through them according to the guidance of the Savior - a useless and useless conception, for nothing was visible through them. But God, who, according to them, was produced, and lower than themselves, according to their explanation - for they ascribe to Him a soulful nature - was nevertheless the doer in everything, active and suitable for the images of all things to be produced through Him; and not only this visible, but also the invisible - angels, archangels, dominions, powers, powers, everything was created through Him, as through a better being and capable of serving the will (of their Mother). But it is not clear that their Mother produced anything through them, as they themselves admit, so it is fair to consider them a miscarriage of their poorly giving birth Mother. For the skilled midwives did not serve during Her birth, and therefore they appeared, like miscarriages, useless for anything, unfit for any work of the Mother.
And yet they call themselves superior to Him by whom such great and beautiful creations were created and structured, whereas, according to their own reasoning, they turn out to be much inferior.
5. As if there were two iron tools or two instruments, of which one would always be in the hands and use of the artist and with it he would do whatever he wanted, and show his art and wisdom, and the other would remain idle and without action, and the artist did absolutely nothing with it and did not use it for any action, and then someone would call this idle and inactive instrument better and more expensive than the one that the artist uses in his work and through which he receives his glory, then such a person would rightly be considered stupid and out of his mind.
Likewise, those who call themselves spiritual and higher, and the Demiurge spiritual, and say that, therefore, they ascend to the Pleroma and enter their husbands - for they, as they themselves claim, are women - God (the Creator) is lower than them and, therefore, remains in the middle place, and they do not present any evidence for this - for the best is revealed from deeds, yet all deeds were accomplished by the Creator of the world, and they cannot show any work of theirs worthy of reason - in truth containing the greatest and incurable madness.
6. If, however, they begin to intensify the assertion that everything material, such as the sky and the entire existing world below it, was created by the Demiurge, and everything more spiritual, above heavenly, namely, principles, powers, angels, archangels, dominions, forces, was produced through the spiritual process of birth, which they call themselves: then firstly, we prove from the authentic Scriptures that all of the above - visible and invisible was created by One By God. For these people are not more knowledgeable than the Scriptures, and we should not, leaving the saying of the Lord, Moses and other prophets who proclaimed the truth, believe those who do not say anything sound, but rave about absurdities. Further, if the heavenly things were really created through them, then let them tell us what the nature of the invisible beings is, tell us the number of angels and the rank of archangels, reveal the mysteries of the thrones and explain the difference in dominions, principles, powers and powers. But they cannot say anything about this; therefore, those (beings) were not created through them.
If they were created by the Creator of the world, as indeed they are, and are spiritual and holy, then it means that He who created the spiritual is not of a spiritual nature, and thus their great blasphemy is overthrown.
7. That there are spiritual creatures in heaven, all Scripture clearly declares, and Paul testifies that there are spiritual beings when he declares that he was “caught up to the third heaven” (2 Cor. 12:2-4), and also that he was taken into paradise and heard unspeakable words that cannot be spoken by man. What benefit is there to him from entering paradise or from ascending to the third heaven, when all this is under the power of the Demiurge, if, as some dare to assert, he had to be a contemplator and listener of the mysteries that are recognized above the Demiurge? If he wanted to know the order of things that is higher than the Demiurge, then he would not have remained in the region of the Demiurge without seeing everything - for he had, according to them, four more heavens to approach the Demiurge and see all the seven heavens in front of him - but, perhaps, he would have been admitted to the middle place, that is, to the Mother, in order to learn from Her about what is inside the Pleroma. For his inner man, who, according to them, spoke in him, existing invisibly, could reach not only the third heaven, but also their Mother.
For if they say that they themselves, that is, their (inner) man, immediately ascends above the Demiurge and goes to the Mother, much more would this be the case with the (inner) man of the Apostle, because the Demiurge would not have prevented him, being Himself subordinate, according to them, to the Savior. Even if he had prevented it, he wouldn’t have had time to do anything. For it is impossible for him to be more powerful than the providence of the Father, even when the inner man, according to them, is invisible even to the Demiurge. Since he (Paul) described his ascension to the third heaven as something great and beautiful, it is impossible for them to ascend higher than the seventh heaven, for they are no better than the Apostle. If they say that they are superior to him, let them show themselves to be so through deeds, for they have presented nothing of the kind. And he added: “Whether in the body or out of the body, God knows” (2 Cor.
13:3) so that the body is not considered to be involved in this vision, as if it could also be involved in what he saw and heard; and lest anyone, because of the heaviness of his body, say that he was not caught up; but he is allowed there even without a body to see the spiritual sacraments, which are the actions of God, who created the heavens and the earth, created man and placed him in paradise in order (to show that) these will be seen by those who, like the Apostle, have achieved high perfection in the love of God.
8. It was He who created the spiritual world, of which, before the third heaven, the apostle became a spectator and heard ineffable verbs that cannot be expressed to man, because they are spiritual, and He Himself, as He pleases, grants this to those worthy, for His is paradise; and, truly, the Creator of the world is the Spirit of God, and not a spiritual being, otherwise He would never have created the spiritual. If He is of a spiritual nature, then let them tell us by whom the spiritual was created. And they cannot provide proof that it was created through the offspring of their Mother, for which they claim to be themselves. For, not to mention the spiritual, these people cannot even create a fly, or a flea, or some other small and insignificant animal, apart from the way in which from the beginning animals were naturally produced and are produced by God through the emission of seed into beings of that kind. But nothing was created by the Mother Alone, for they say that She produced this Demiurge, Who was the author of all creation.
And they call this Creator and Ruler of all created things spiritual, and themselves spiritual, whereas they are not the creators or rulers of any creature, not only of things existing outside of them, but even of their bodies. In addition, they, who call themselves spiritual and better than the Demiurge, often endure, against their will, much suffering in their body.
9. Therefore, we rightly rebuke them that they have strayed too far from the truth. For if the Savior created created things through Him (the Demiurge), then He is not lower than them, but higher, since He is the creator of them themselves, because they also belong to the created. How then does it follow that they are spiritual, and He through Whom they were created is soulful? And if - which is only true, as I have shown with many and very clear evidence - He (the Creator) freely and by His own power created everything and arranged and accomplished everything, and His will is the substance of everything, then He alone, it turns out, is God, who created everything, the one omnipotent and one Father, “By the Word of His power” (Heb. 1:3) creating and creating everything visible and invisible, sensual and insensible, heavenly and earthly.
He arranged and arranged everything by His wisdom, and, embracing everything, He alone cannot be embraced by anyone; The Creator Himself, the Organizer Himself, the Inventor Himself, the Creator Himself, the Lord Himself of all, and besides and above Him there is neither the Mother Whom they call upon, nor another God Whom Marcion invented, nor the Pleroma with thirty Aeons, which turned out to be empty, nor the Depth, nor the First Principle, nor the heavens, nor the virgin light, nor the unnameable Aeon, nor anyone else from what these and all heretics. But there is only one God the Creator, Who is above all beginning, power, dominion and strength: He is the Father, He is God, He is the Creator, He is the Creator, He is the Organizer, Who created by Himself, that is, through His Word and His Wisdom, heaven, and earth, and the sea, and everything that is in them; He is righteous, He is good, He formed man. He planted paradise, He created the world, He brought the flood, He saved Noah; He is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of the living; He is proclaimed by the law, the prophets preach, Christ reveals him, the apostles declare him to us, and the Church believes in him.
He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; through His Word, which is His Son, through Him He revealed Himself and declared Him to all to whom He reveals Himself, for they only know Him to whom the Son reveals Him; but the Son, eternally existing with the Father, from ancient times and even from time immemorial always reveals the Father to angels, archangels, authorities, powers and everyone to whom God wants to reveal himself.
Brief repetition of the previous refutation.
1. With the refutation of the followers of Valentinus, the entire multitude of heretics was deposed. For everything that I said is against their Pleroma and what is outside it, showing how the Father of all is limited and enclosed by what is outside Him - if indeed there is anything outside Him - and how it is necessary to be on every side of many Fathers, many Pleromas and many universes, which begin with some and end with others, how all (the described beings) abide in their own regions, not caring about others, with whom they have no participation, no communication, and just as there is no other God of all, but only the name of the Almighty, all this will similarly go against the followers of Marcion, Simon and Menander and all others, like them, who separate the creation around us from the Father.
What then I said against those who assert that the Father of all embraces of course everything, but the creation surrounding us was created not by Him, but by some other power or by angels who do not know the First Father, Who, as a center, is surrounded by the immeasurable space of the universe, like a spot on a cloak, and showed that it is incredible that our creation was created by anyone other than the Father of all - the same can be said against the followers of Saturninus, Basilides, Carpocrates and other Gnostics who affirm similar opinions. What is also said about origins, about the aeons and their fall and about the impermanence of their Mother, this also overthrows Basilides and all those falsely called “knowledgeable” (Gnostics), who under different names say the same thing, but more than the first, they introduce something alien to the truth into the nature of their teaching. And what I said about numbers can also apply against everyone who distorts the truth in the same way. And everything that is said about the Creator (Demiurge) as proof that He alone is God and Father of all, and what will be said in subsequent books, I speak against all heretics.
The more moderate and reasonable among them you will reject and shame, so that they do not blaspheme against their Creator, Creator, and Nourisher, and Lord, and do not imagine His origin from imperfection and ignorance; and keep the more wild, terrible and unreasonable ones away from you, so that you no longer tolerate their chatter.
2. Next, the followers of Simon and Carpocrates and others will be exposed who are reputed to perform miracles, who do their deeds not by the power of God, truly and not for the benefit of people, but for destruction and error, and with their magical seductions and all kinds of deception they harm more than they benefit people who believe in them, because they entice them. For they cannot give sight to the blind, nor hearing to the deaf, nor to drive away all demons - except those that they themselves send, if indeed they do this - nor to heal the infirm, or lame, or paralytic, or suffering from any other part of the body, as is often the case due to bodily weakness, nor to restore proper health after illnesses that occur from outside.
They not only do not raise the dead, as the Lord and the apostles raised through prayer, and as often happened in the brotherhood of need, when the entire local Church prayed with great fasting and supplication, and the spirit of the deceased returned, and the person was given to the prayers of the saints, but they also do not believe at all in the possibility of this, considering the resurrection from the dead to be the knowledge of the truth they proclaim.
3. When in this way delusion, deception and magical seduction are wickedly committed in front of people, and in the Church compassion, mercy, firmness and truth are shown to help people, not only freely and freely, but we ourselves use from our property for the benefit of people, and very often the healed poor receive from us what they need - then, truly, through this they are convicted of being completely alien to the divine essence, goodness God's and spiritual power. They, on the contrary, are filled with all kinds of deception, apostate inspiration, demonic action and idolatrous dreams, and, truly, they are the forerunners of that dragon (Rev. 12:4), which, through this kind of deception, carried away a third of the stars with its tail and threw them to the ground. And these people, just like him, we must avoid, and the more charm they act with, the more carefully we must observe them, as having received a greater spirit of wickedness. If anyone examines that prophecy and their daily actions, he will find that their mode of action is the same as that of demons.
A further denunciation of the wicked teachings of the heretics.
1. And their wicked teaching regarding actions, namely, that they should experience all kinds of actions, even the worst, is refuted by the teaching of the Lord, from Whom not only the fornicator is driven out, but also the one who desires to commit fornication, not only the murderer is guilty of killing another to his own condemnation, but also he who is angry without cause with his brother; Who commanded not only not to hate people, but also to love enemies, not only not to swear falsely, but simply not to swear, not only not to speak bad things about your neighbors, but also not to call anyone a fool or a fool, otherwise such people will be guilty of fiery hell, not only not to hit, but to turn the other cheek to those who are struck, not only not to take away someone else’s property, but also not to demand if your own is taken away, not only not to destroy our neighbors and not to do them any harm, but also to be generous to those who are offended and show favor to those who offend and pray for them, so that, having repented, they can be saved - and he commanded us not to imitate in any way the contempt, lust and pride of others.
Therefore, if He, in whom they boast as their teacher, and say that He had a soul much better and more glorious than others, with great diligence commanded to do something as good and beautiful, and to abstain from others - not only deeds, but also thoughts leading to deeds, as from bad, destructive and wicked - then how can they avoid shame when they call such a Teacher better and stronger than others, and then clearly give rules completely contrary to His teaching. And if there were nothing good or bad, but only, in human opinion, one was considered unjust and the other just, then He would not say so decisively: “The righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 12:43), and He will send the unrighteous and those who do not do the works of righteousness “into eternal fire, where their worm will not die, and the fire will not be quenched” (Matt. 15:41; Mark 9:44).
2. If they further say that they need to experience all kinds of actions and behavior in order, if possible, to accomplish everything in one period of this life and achieve perfection, then it is by no means clear that they tried to do what relates to virtue, what is worthy of achievement, glory and art, and what is recognized by everyone as good.
For, if it is necessary to go through all kinds of affairs and behavior, then they should, firstly, study all the arts, whether they are expressed in words or in deeds, whether they are acquired by abstinence, or learned through work, meditation and constant exercise, such as, for example, all kinds of music, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and everything that has to do with verbal revelation; then, all medicine and knowledge of plants and others developed for human health: painting and all kinds of arts in copper and marble and the like, in addition to every kind of agriculture, cattle breeding and healing of animals, and handicraft arts, which, as they say, pass through all the arts, and navigation, gymnastics, the art of hunting, military, government and many others, which a tenth, even a thousandth part cannot be studied in their entire life.
And they do not try to study any of these arts, although they say that they should learn every kind of action, but, indulging in pleasures, lust and vile deeds, they themselves are condemned when judged by their teaching. For if they do not have the above-mentioned (virtues), then they will be devoured by fire. They follow the philosophy of Epicurus and the indifference of the Cynics, and present as their teacher Jesus, who turns His disciples not only from evil deeds, but also from words and thoughts, as I have already shown.
3. They also say that they have souls from the same region as Jesus, and are similar to Him, sometimes (they say) that they are better than Him, and that they were produced for the works that He did for the good and establishment of people, but meanwhile it turns out that they did not do anything like that or similar, or that could be compared in any way (with the works of Jesus). If they do anything, then, as I said, they do it through magic and try to deceive foolish people, for they do not bring any good or benefit to those on whom, as they say, they perform powers, but by attracting boys and deceiving the eyes, they produce a phenomenon that instantly disappears and does not last even a minute, and thus they turn out to be similar not to our Lord Jesus, but to Simon the Magus. And from the fact that the Lord rose from the dead on the third day and revealed Himself to His disciples and was taken into heaven in their sight, it is clearly seen that they, since they die and do not rise and did not appear to anyone, have souls in no way similar to the soul of Jesus.
4. If, however, they say that the Lord also performed (His deeds) in a ghostly manner, then I will refer them to the prophetic (scriptures) and from them I will prove that everything about Him was predicted and exactly fulfilled, and that He alone is the Son of God. Therefore, His true disciples, receiving grace from Him, perform (miracles) in His name for the benefit of other people, in accordance with how each of them received a gift from Him. For some truly and undoubtedly cast out demons, so that those liberated from evil spirits often become believers (in Christ) and turn to the Church. Others have foresight of the future, vision and prophetic speech. Others heal the sick through the laying on of hands and restore them to health. Even, as I already said, the dead were resurrected and stayed with us for quite a few years. And what else? It is impossible to list the gifts that the Church (scattered) throughout the world received from God in the name of Jesus Christ, crucified under Pontius Pilate, and every day shows for the benefit of nations, without deceiving anyone, without demanding money from anyone.
For just as she received them freely from God, she also gives them freely.
5. And she does this not by invoking angels or enchantments, or other evil art, but purely, sincerely and openly turning prayers to the Lord, who created everything, and, calling on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, works miracles for the benefit of people, and not for their deception. So, if even now the name of our Lord Jesus Christ does good and truly and undoubtedly heals all those who believe in Him everywhere, and not the name of Simon, or Menander, or Carpocrates, or anyone else, then it is obvious that, having become a man, He dealt with His creation and truly did everything by the power of God, according to the will of the Father of all, as the prophets foretold. What this was will be stated along with evidence from the prophetic (scriptures).
The absurdity of the doctrine of the transmigration of souls.
1. We can refute their teaching about the transmigration (of souls) from body to body by the fact that souls do not remember anything that happened to them before. For, if they were produced in order to experience any kind of activity, they would have to remember what was done before, in order to make up for what was missing and so as not to continuously engage in the same thing and not bear miserable labor - for the connection with the body could not completely destroy the memory and clear idea of what happened before, especially when they came (to this world) for this. Just as now the soul of a sleeping person, during the rest of the body, remembers and reports to the body much of what it sees by itself and does in a dream, even sometimes after a long time has passed: someone in reality tells what he saw in a dream, so it must also remember what it did before arriving in this body.
For if what was seen in a dream for a short time or imagined in the imagination and, moreover, only by the soul, it remembers after being united with the body and distributed in every member, all the more should it remember what it did for a long time and during the whole period of the past life.
2. In view of this, Plato, that ancient Athenian who first introduced this opinion, when he could not defend it, invented the cup of oblivion, thinking that through this he would avoid this kind of difficulty, but he did not present any evidence for this, but only dogmatically answered that souls, upon entering this life, are drunk by the demon at the exit with oblivion before they enter bodies. But unbeknownst to himself, he found himself in another great difficulty. For if the cup of oblivion, after drinking from it, can blot out the memory of everything done, then how, Plato, do you know this, when your soul is now in the body - namely, that before entering the body it tasted the drink of oblivion from the demon? If you remember about the demon, about the cup and about the entrance (to this life), then you should know the rest; and if you don’t know this, then there is no truth in the story about the demon and the artificially created cup of oblivion.
3. Against those who say that the body itself causes oblivion, the following remark may be made. How then does the soul remember and communicate it to its loved ones what it sees by itself in dreams and during reflection during mental stress, when the body is at rest? And if the body itself were the cause of oblivion, then the soul, existing in the body, would not remember what it had long ago known through sight or hearing, but as soon as the eye turned away from visible objects, the memory of them would disappear. For, existing in the very (instrument of) oblivion, she could not know anything other than what she sees at the present moment. And how could she know the divine and remember it, existing in the body, when the body itself, as they say, is the cause of oblivion?
Even the prophets, during their stay on earth, remembered, returning to the ordinary state of their souls, what they spiritually saw or heard in a vision of heavenly things, and proclaimed to others; and the body does not cause oblivion in the soul of what it has seen spiritually, but the soul teaches the body and informs it of the spiritual vision that has happened to it.
4. For the body is not stronger than the soul when it receives breath, life, growth and dismemberment from us, but the soul controls and controls the body. She certainly slows down in her speed as the body participates in her movement, but does not lose her knowledge. For the body is like a tool, and the soul takes the place of the artist. Just as the artist himself quickly creates the idea of a work, but executes it more slowly with the help of an instrument, due to the immobility of the material, and the speed of his mind, bound by the slowness of the tool, produces a moderate effect, so the soul, being in connection with the body, is to some extent delayed due to the fact that its speed is bound by the slowness of the body, but does not completely lose its strength and, imparting life to the body, does not itself cease to live. In the same way, she informs the body and so on, but does not lose knowledge of this, nor the memory of the things she has seen.
5. Therefore, if the soul does not remember anything about its previous state, but here receives knowledge of what exists, then it means that it was not once in other bodies, did not do something about which it does not know and did not know, which (mentally) it does not see now. But just as each of us receives his body through the art of God, so he also receives his soul. For God is not so poor and meager that he could not give each body its own special soul, as well as a special character. And, therefore, after the fulfillment of the number that He himself predetermined, all those lives written in (the book) will rise with their own bodies, with their own souls and spirits, in which they pleased God. Those worthy of punishment will also be subjected to it with their souls and bodies in which they have departed from the goodness of God. Both will stop giving birth and being born, marrying and being given in marriage, so that the human race, in accordance with God’s predestination, will be completed and preserve the harmony of the Father.
Souls remember what they did in the body and are immortal.
1. That souls not only continue to exist without passing from body to body, but also retain the same character of the body that they had in union with it, and remember the deeds that they did here and which they have now ceased to do, the Lord explained this very fully in the story of the rich man and Lazarus, who rested in the bosom of Abraham. Here he says that the rich man knew Lazarus after death, as well as Abraham, and each of them is in his own place, and the rich man asks that Lazarus, to whom he did not even give even a grain from his table, be sent to him at last. (He speaks) also of Abraham's answer; who knew not only his own condition, but also the condition of the rich man, and commanded those who did not want to go to the place of torment to listen to Moses and the prophets and accept the preaching of the One who had to rise from the dead.
Through this it is very clearly shown that souls continue to exist and do not pass from body to body, that they retain the image of a person, so that they can be recognized and remember what is here (in this world) that Abraham had the gift of prophecy, and that each class of souls receives a worthy home even before judgment.
2. If they say here that souls, having not long ago begun to exist, cannot remain for a long time, but either must be unborn in order to be immortal, or if they have received the beginning of birth, must die along with the body, then let them know that only God, the Lord of all, has neither beginning nor end, truly and always the same and unchangeable. But all that came from Him (creatures), which were created and are being created, receive the beginning of their birth and for this reason are lower than their Creator, since they are not without beginning, but remain and continue their existence for a long series of centuries according to the will of the Creator God, so that He grants them both that they originate in the beginning and that they exist after.
3. For just as the sky is above us, the firmament, the sun, the moon and other stars and all their adornment, although they did not exist before, received their existence and remain for a long time by the will of God, so whoever thinks the same about souls and spirits and about all created beings will not sin at all, because everything created has a beginning of its origin, but continues to exist as long as God wills it to be and continue. The prophetic spirit testifies in favor of these thoughts, saying: “For He spoke and it became, He commanded and it was created, He established it forever and ever”! (Ps. 149:5-6) And he also says this about the salvation of man: “he asked You for life, and You gave him long days for the ages of ages” (Ps. 20:2), showing that the Father of all things gives and that those who are saved may endure forever. For life is not from us and not from our nature, but is given by the grace of God. And therefore, whoever preserves the gift of life and thanks the Giver will receive long days for ever and ever. And whoever rejects it and appears ungrateful to the Creator for the fact that he was created, and does not know the Giver, deprives himself of remaining in the age of the century.
The Lord declared to those ungrateful to Him: “If you have not been faithful in small things, who will give you great things?” - showing that those who appeared in this temporary life ungrateful to the One who gave it will not rightly receive from Him the length of days in the age of ages.
4. But just as the spiritual body is not the soul itself, but participates in the soul as long as it pleases God, so the soul itself is not life, but participates in the life given to it by God. Therefore, the prophetic word about the primordial says: “he became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7), teaching us that the soul, through the participation of life, became living, so that the soul and especially the life that it has are especially understood. When, in this way, God grants life and its continuous continuation, it is possible that souls that previously did not exist will continue to exist when God wants them to exist and continue. For in everything the will of God must dominate and govern, and everything else must yield to Him, obey and be in His service. Enough has been said so far about the origin and abiding of souls.
A refutation of Basilides and the opinion that the prophets predicted by the inspiration of various gods.
1. After what has been said, Basilides himself will be forced, in accordance with his principles, to assert that not only three hundred and sixty-five heavens successively originated from each other, but an immense and countless multitude of heavens has always been formed, is being formed and will be formed, and this kind of factory of heavens never ceases. For if from the outflow of the first heaven the second was formed in its image, in the image of the second - the third, and so on in succession all the others, then from the outflow of our heaven, which he calls the last, another must necessarily be formed, similar to it, and from it a third, and neither the outflow of heavens already formed nor the formation of new ones should ever cease, and so it must continue indefinitely, to an infinite number of heavens.
2. And others falsely called Gnostics, who say that the prophets spoke their prophecies under the inspiration of various gods, can be easily refuted by the fact that all the prophets preached one God and Lord, who is the Creator of heaven and earth and everything that is in them, and announced the coming of His Son, as I will prove from their very writings in the following books.
3. If anyone objects that in the Hebrew scriptures there are various names (of God), such as Hosts, Eloe, Adonai and others like that, trying to show from this that there are different powers and gods, then let them know that all such expressions are the designation and name of the One and the Same (Being). For the word Eloe in the Hebrew language means God, and Eloe means the true God, and Eloeuth in the Hebrew language means the Almighty. The word Adonai sometimes means unnameable and wondrous, and sometimes with doubling of the delta and with aspiration, for example. Adonai means the One who predetermines and separates the earth from the waters, so that the waters cannot float upon it. Likewise, Hosts, through the Greek ω (omega) in the last syllable, means free, and through the Greek ο (omicron), for example, Hosts, expresses “the first heaven.” Also, the word Joaf, when the last syllable in it is long and aspirated, means a certain measure, and when written briefly through the Greek o (omicron), namely Joaf, means “the one who drives away evil.”
And all other expressions constitute the name of the One and the Same (Being), as in Latin - the Lord of hosts, the Father of all, the Almighty God, the Most High, the Lord of heaven, the Creator, the Maker and the like are the names not of different beings, but of the One and the Same, through which One God and Father is indicated, containing everything and giving existence to everything.
4. That the preaching of the apostles, the teaching of the Lord, the proclamation of the prophets, the saying of the apostles and the ministry of the law agree with my words, which glorify the One and the same Father of all God, and not different gods, and (which testify) that He has substance not from different gods or powers, but that everything is from the One and the same Father, who orders everything according to the nature and purpose of the subject things, and not from angels, not from any other power, but from one God the Father, the visible and invisible and everything created came into being - this, I think, is sufficiently proven, just as it is proven that there is one God the Father and Creator of everything. But lest it should seem that I avoid the proofs of the authentic Scriptures, when in fact they much more clearly and openly proclaim this very thing, for the sake of well-meaning people I will devote a special book to those scriptures and for all friends of truth I will present the proofs from the divine Scriptures.
From this it is clear that infant baptism was a custom of the ancient Church. The words "reborn into God" indicate baptism, as the following passage in Irenaeus clearly reveals. See Book III XVII, I.
Iliad, IV, 1. Here we have omitted the Greek verses and the Latin translation.
"Baruch" meaning. blessed is one of the common names for God; in euros In language, it consists of two letters that have a vowel sound, and the last one, which does not have such a sound, is considered half. (Harvey). Obviously, these words are contrary to the position of Jehovah's Witnesses that early Christians used the name Jehovah in their prayers. This is not confirmed by the New Testament, for it is not found in any manuscript or scroll. We also do not find this in the writings of early Christians.
"Fines et summitates". See the description of the type of cross in Justin Martyr. in a conversation with Tryphon. Ch. 91.
An interesting division characteristic of early Christianity. Please note that by the word “Scripture” Irenaeus understands only the Old Testament; he lists the Gospels separately. All this shows one thing: for the early Christians, it was not the Scriptures of the New and Old Testaments that were the main thing, but the apostolic tradition and the Church, which Irenaeus will set out in more detail in the 3rd book “Against Heresies” Christians and modern Protestant movements about early Christianity diverge greatly.
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