Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 13/82

For all these sprang up from the earth at one and the same time, like mushrooms; and, like the ill-formed and foul-smelling shoots of plants, and thorny weeds, and like the den of many scorpions, they all sprang up into life from a single moment, and, as I have said before, they have appeared as deformities of a fungus-like kind under a single sting, as has already been said before concerning them by the most holy Irenaeus.

Having each gathered up the evil pretext from one another, each one, wishing to display something even more excessive than the next, has fashioned for himself a variant of evil invention.

And all of them called themselves Gnostics — I mean Valentinus, and the Gnostics before him, and also Basilides, Satornilus, Colorbasus, Ptolemy, and Secundus, Carpocrates, and several others.

But having named them all here on account of the fact that all of them, in their emergence and evil growth, are related at one and the same time, we shall nevertheless describe separately the evil intent of each one's seed.

For now, then, I shall come to the heresiarch presently before us and tragedy-maker, I mean Valentinus, and his teaching, which proceeds from this great profession of 'Gnosis,' but is in fact a profession of condemnable nonsense, since it is found by the intelligent to be condemned and ridiculous.

This Valentinus, then, succeeds in time those set before him — Basilides, Satornilus, Ebion, Cerinthus, Merinthus, and those around them.

For all of these came forth wickedly into life at one and the same time — though those around Cerinthus, Merinthus, and Ebion arose a little earlier.

For they arose together with those already described by me before them.

Now most people do not know his homeland, or where he was born.

For it has not been an easy matter for any of the writers to indicate his place of origin.

But a certain report has come to us, as it were by an echo.

Therefore we shall not pass this by without at least indicating his place — a matter that is disputed, if the truth must be told — yet we shall not keep silent about the report that has come to us.

For some have said that he was born a Phrebonite, a native of the coastal region of Egypt, and that he was educated in Alexandria in Greek learning.

Whence, in imitation of Hesiod's Theogony and of the thirty gods spoken of in Hesiod himself, he too took the pagan myth-making into his own mind, and having acquired his notions from those, both his contemporaries and predecessors, who had fallen away from the truth, he likewise, remaking Hesiod's very scheme from one set of names into another, wished to dazzle the world.

For he too wishes to introduce thirty gods, aeons, and heavens.

Of these the first is Bythos ('Depth'), as he himself said, being deranged in his thinking — just as, in fact, Hesiod, the projector of his own notion, said that Chaos was 'first of all the gods.'

To whom would it not be plain that 'Chaos' and 'Bythos' possess the same meaning under different names? Behold the tragically embellished myth-making and depraved teaching of this charlatan.

For, as I said, he wishes to present thirty aeons, whom he also calls gods, saying that there are fifteen male and an equal number of female.

He himself and his followers say that each aeon is male-female, a pair.

And they say there are fifteen pairs, which they call conjugal unions (syzygies).

The number is thirty aeons, and each female begets, from the male, the aeons that follow in succession.

These are as listed below, each masculine name being set in contrast directly opposite the feminine name, and they are as follows.

And thus they are arranged as male-female pairs; but in order of succession, they stand thus.

The interpretations of these names are as follows.

Paraclete and Faith; Patrikos ('Fatherly') and Hope; Metrikos ('Motherly') and Love; Aeinous ('Ever-Mind') and Understanding; Theletos ('Willed'), also called Light, and Blessedness; Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom; Bythios ('Deep') and Mixture; Ageratos ('Ageless') and Union; Autophyes ('Self-Grown') and Blending; Monogenes ('Only-Begotten') and Oneness; Akinetos ('Unmoved') and Pleasure.

According to the number of succession and order, from the highest, unnameable Father — called among them 'Bythos' — down to this heaven of ours, the number of the thirty stands thus.

Bythos, Sige, Nous, Aletheia, Logos, Zoe, Anthropos, Ecclesia, Paraclete, Pistis, Patricos, Elpis, Metricos, Agape, Aeinous, Synesis, Theletos (also called Phos), Macariotes, Ecclesiasticus, Sophia, Bythios, Mixis, Ageratos, Henosis, Autophyes, Syncrasis, Monogenes, Henotes, Akinetos, Hedone.

This, then, is the mythologized tragedy of the thirty Aeons among them, and the empty babbling about the so-called spiritual Pleroma arranged in conjugal pairs.

If one should compare this, setting it side by side with what is found in Hesiod, Stesichorus, and the other poets of the Greeks, one would find, upon comparison, that they are the same things and nothing else; and from this one will know that the heresiarchs of these doctrines profess to speak nothing marvelous, although they do so as though it were a mystery.

For they have done nothing else but copy from the Greeks the artificial poetic manner of their pagan mythical error and teaching, altering nothing except the barbaric name-coinage which they have refashioned for themselves.

For thus also say those associated with Hesiod.

And this number, then, according to the succession of the male-female pairs, thus makes up the group of thirty.

But if anyone should wish to see how these fabricators join one thing to another, he would find them joined and paired with one another in this way, as it seemed good to the poets: having joined Bythos with Night and Silence, they made Earth to be born.

But others speak of Heaven, whom they have also called Hyperion, and say that he, being joined to Earth, begot males and females, and likewise those in succession down to the whole of their poetic composition, as the endless, nonsensical drivel of the myth has it.

One would find them thus joined and paired, and capable of being combined in this way.

But if anyone should attend to their fabrication, and should wish to learn how, from the secular and Greek poets — by whom these men were struck as by thunder, vainly enthused about things they ought not to be, unto futile labor and profitless toil — he would find them all the more led astray.

From this same source, they say, a second Ogdoad was also created, along with seven heavens, made in the likeness of the first Ogdoad, he himself being in the Ogdoad and having made seven heavens after it.

And to this 'Deficiency' (Hysterema) they wish to join a certain unmixed and unfemale Aeon, who came here from the Pleroma in search of the soul that came down from above, from the mother Sophia — whose name they also wish to fashion and fabricate as 'Achamoth' — whom indeed they also call Savior, and Horos ('Boundary'), and Cross, and Horothetes ('Boundary-setter'), and Metagogeus ('Conductor'), and Jesus, who passed through Mary as through a channel.

He is called 'Light' on account of the Light above, and 'Christ' on account of the Christ above, and 'Word' on account of the Word above, and likewise 'Mind,' and also 'Savior.'

O, the nonsense of these men, and such great vain babbling!

I shall set forth, then, as I said before, how they themselves have coupled their own nonsensical talk with the poetic and pagan-mythical fabrications.

First Exepaphos, Porphyrion; Clotho, Ryacus; Lachesis, Epiphaon; Atropos, Hyperion; Asterope.

Such, then, is the stage-play of these poets — having also many other names of gods given among them, both male and female, spoken of variously by various people, capable even of amounting to a number of three hundred and sixty-five — dreamed up, moreover, as a pretext for the other heresies which likewise take up this same tragic plot.

For great is their deceptive error arising out of mere conjecture, which, having conceived empty talk in its womb and having devised many myths, played the poet with them.

And this is what seems to bewitch the understanding of those who are thus deceived.

But these things are at once found ridiculous by all those whose mind has been enlightened according to God.

Passing over these things, I will here again make, word for word and in exact wording, the citation drawn in sequence from their own books — I mean, from their own book — of the passage read among them; and it is as follows:

From the prudent, and from the psychic, and from the fleshly, and from the worldly, and from the Greatness — Mind Unimpaired sends greeting to those unimpaired.

I make mention to you of unnameable and ineffable and supracelestial mysteries, which can be comprehended neither by principalities, nor by powers, nor by subordinate powers, nor by any confusion whatsoever, but have been manifested only to the Thought of the Unchangeable One:

for when, in the beginning, the Self-Father himself contained all things within himself, they being within him in a state of unknowing — he whom some call the ageless Aeon, ever young, male-and-female, who always contains all things and is not contained — then the Thought within him willed (that Thought which some called Thought, others Grace);

— [named thus] fittingly, because she supplied the treasures of the Greatness to those who came from the Greatness; while those who spoke the truth called her Silence, because the Greatness perfected all things through inward reflection, without a word. As I said before, then, the incorruptible Thought, wishing to break the eternal bonds, made the Greatness female, out of desire for its own rest.

And she, having united with him, brought forth the Father of Truth, whom the perfect fittingly named Man, because he was the antitype of the pre-existent Unbegotten.

After this, Silence brought forth, together with Man, a natural unity of Light — and their union consisted in the act of willing — and thus she brought forth Truth.

She was fittingly named Truth by the perfect, because she was truly like her own mother Silence — Silence having willed that the division of the lights, of the male and the female, should be equal, so that, through themselves, the light within them might also be manifested to those who came from them, divided within it into perceptible lights.

This, then, is the Tetrad from the Father and Truth:

Man, Church, Word, Life.

Then, by the will of the all-containing Depth, Man and Church, mindful of the Father's words, came together with one another, and brought forth a Dodecad of wanton male-female pairs:

Paraclete, Patrikos (Fatherly), Metrikos (Motherly), Aeinous (Ever-Mind), Theletos (Beloved, that is, Light), Ecclesiasticus — and the females:

Faith, Hope, Love, Understanding, Blessed [Makaria], Wisdom [Sophia].

Afterward Word and Life, they too reshaping the gift of union, communed with one another — and their communion consisted in the will — and, having come together, they in turn brought forth a Decad of wanton male-female pairs:

Bythius (Deep), Ageratos (Unaging), Autophyes (Self-Produced), Monogenes (Only-Begotten), Akinetos (Immovable) — these took their surname for the glory of the all-containing Depth; and the females:

Mixis (Union), Henosis (Unity), Synkrasis (Blending), Henotes (Oneness), Hedone (Pleasure) — and these too took their surname for the glory of Silence.

The Triacontad according to the Father and Truth having thus been made complete — a number which the earthly, not understanding it, count off, and whenever they arrive at it and find no further number, they go round in a circle and count it again (and it is: Depth, Silence, Father, Truth, Man, Church, Word, Life, Paraclete, Patrikos, Metrikos, Aeinous, Theletos, Ecclesiasticus, Faith, Hope, Love, Understanding, Blessed, Wisdom, Bythius, Ageratos, Autophyes, Monogenes, Akinetos, Mixis, Henosis, Synkrasis, Henotes, Hedone) — then he who contains all things, having with surpassing understanding decreed that another Ogdoad should be called forth in place of the pre-existent, authentic Ogdoad, so that it might yet remain within the number of the Triacontad (for it was not the disposition of the Greatness to fall into mere number), set up other males in place of the former males:

Monon (Alone), Triton (Third), Pempton (Fifth), Hebdomon (Seventh) — and the females:

This, then, is the Ogdoad which was called forth in place of the pre-existent Ogdoad of Depth, Father, Man, Word, and Silence, Truth, Church, Life; it was united to the lights, and there came into being a completed Triacontad.

And the pre-existent Ogdoad remained at rest.

And Depth went forth, by the support of the Greatness, to be united to the Triacontad;

for he came together with Truth, and the Father of Truth united with the Church, and the Motherly aeon held Life, and the Paraclete held the Unity, and the Unity was united to the Father of Truth, and the Father of Truth was with Silence, while the spiritual Word communed in a spiritual union and an incorruptible blending — the Self-Father thus making his own rest undivided unto the end.

The Triacontad, then, having accomplished its deep mysteries and completed a marriage among the incorruptible, brought forth incorruptible lights, which were named children of the Middle, and were without distinguishing character, since the intellectual faculty was not present in them — resting apart from understanding, without Thought.

For concerning whatever a man does, if he does not understand it as a whole, he does not truly do it.

Then, these lights having come into being — whose great number it is not necessary to state exactly, though it is necessary to reflect on it, for each one has received its own name for the knowledge of ineffable mysteries — Silence, then, wishing to save all things by gathering them into a selection of knowledge, gathered them to the second, opposing Ogdoad, by an incorruptible union and by intellectual will;

And her intellectual will was the Holy Spirit, who is in the midst of the holy churches.

This, then, she sent to the second Ogdoad, and persuaded it also to be united to her.

And the whole Ogdoad came together with unaging pleasure and incorruptible union, for there was no separation from one another;

and there was a blending accompanied by blameless pleasure, and it brought forth a Pentad of wanton beings without females, whose names are these:

These were named sons of the Middle.

But I want you to know:

Let these things, cited in part from their own books, suffice as said by me up to this point.

This man also carried out his proclamation in Egypt; whence indeed, like the leftover bones of a viper, his sown seed still remains even now in Egypt, in the Athribite, Prosopite, and Arsinoite nomes, and in the Thebaid, and in the lower parts of the coastal region, and in the district of Alexandria.

But he also went up to Rome and preached there.

But having come to Cyprus, having, as it were, suffered a shipwreck in his very bodily nature, he was driven out of the faith and his mind was turned aside.

For before this he was thought to have a share of piety and right faith in the places already mentioned.

But in Cyprus he thereafter pressed on to the utmost extremity of impiety, and sank himself deep into this depravity which he himself proclaimed.

He himself, and his followers, say concerning our Lord Jesus Christ:

as I have said, he is called both Savior and Christ and Word and Cross and Conveyor and Boundary-Setter and Boundary.

And they say that he brought his body down from above, and that he passed through Mary the Virgin as water passes through a pipe, taking nothing at all from the virginal womb, but having his body from above, as I said before.

And that he is neither the first Word, nor the Christ that comes after the Word, who is above and exists among the Aeons above; but they claim that this one was put forth for no other reason than solely to come and save the spiritual race that is from above.

And they deny the resurrection of the dead, asserting some mythical and absurd notion — that it is not this same body that rises, but a different one out of it, which indeed they call the spiritual body;

and that only those among them called spiritual, and the others called psychic, are saved — provided the psychic act righteously; but those called material, fleshly, and earthly perish altogether and are in no way saved at all.

And that each substance goes to its own producers — the material substance being given over to matter, and the fleshly and earthly to earth.

For they hold that there are three classes of men — spiritual, psychic, fleshly — and they call themselves the spiritual class, as also 'gnostics,' needing no toil at all, but only knowledge and the ritual formulas of their own mysteries;

and that each of them may do absolutely anything whatsoever without fear, and take no thought for it at all;

for they say that their class, being spiritual, will in every case be saved.

But the other class of men in the world, which they call psychic, is not able to be saved of itself, unless it should rescue itself by toil and righteous conduct.

But the material class of men in the world, they say, can neither contain nor receive knowledge, even should one who springs from this class desire it, but perishes altogether, together with soul and body.

But their own class, being spiritual, is saved together with another body, a certain more inward one, which they themselves, in their fantasy, call the spiritual body.

Such is their tragedy — and it has indeed even more than this.

But I have set down in dictation only those things which I judged necessarily needful to bring out into the open, to show how this knowledge came to us:

from what occasions it took its pretexts, and what his teaching is, and also to whom in life this evil has sprung; and I have, in part, as I said, made mention of his teaching.

But the rest of his subtle argumentation I did not wish to compose from myself, having found that a treatise against him had already been composed by the most holy Irenaeus of old.

Having thus gone through these few things up to this point, I will henceforth make my citation entirely from the aforementioned man, the servant of God — I mean Irenaeus.

FROM THE WORKS OF SAINT IRENAEUS. Since certain men, setting aside the truth, bring in false accounts and endless genealogies, which — as the Apostle says — promote disputes rather than the building up of God that is in faith; and since, by means of a plausibility craftily put together, they lead astray the minds of the more inexperienced and take them captive, falsifying the oracles of the Lord and becoming evil interpreters of what has been well said, and overturn many, leading them away, under the pretext of knowledge, from him who established and adorned this universe — as though they had something higher and greater to show than the God who made heaven and earth and all things in them — plausibly indeed drawing the guileless, by an artful use of words, into the manner of inquiry, but implausibly destroying them by fashioning in their minds a blasphemous and impious opinion concerning the Demiurge, since they are not even able in any way to distinguish falsehood from truth (for error does not show itself as it is, lest, being laid bare, it be caught in the act; but craftily adorning itself with a plausible outward covering, it makes itself appear to the more inexperienced, through its external show, more true than the truth itself — just as it has been said by one better than us concerning such people, that a base glass insults, through artful imitation, the precious stone that is emerald and highly prized by some, whenever there is no one present who is capable of testing it and exposing the artifice craftily contrived);

And when copper is mixed in with silver, who, being inexperienced, will easily be able to test it? In order, then, that some may not, through our fault, be carried off like sheep by wolves, not recognizing them because of their outward covering of sheep's clothing (against whom the Lord has charged us to be on guard — men speaking things like us, but holding opinions unlike us) — I have thought it necessary, having come upon the memoirs of those who, as they themselves say, are disciples of Valentinus, and having also conversed with some of them and grasped their opinion, to disclose to you, beloved, the monstrous and profound mysteries which not all can contain, since not all have had their brains unfolded — so that you also, having learned them, may make them manifest to all who are with you, and exhort them to guard against the abyss of folly and of blasphemy against God.

And, to the best of our ability, we will set forth concisely and clearly the opinion of those who are now teaching a distorted doctrine — I mean the followers of Ptolemy, who are an offshoot of the school of Valentinus — and we will give others, according to our own moderate ability, the means of overturning it, by showing that what is said by them is strange, incoherent, and out of harmony with the truth; though we are neither accustomed to writing nor practiced in the art of rhetoric, but love urges us to disclose to you and to all who are with you the teachings which until now have been hidden but have now, by the grace of God, come out into the open.

For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, and nothing hidden that shall not be known.

Since we are occupied for the most part with a barbarous dialect, you will receive with love what has been written to you with love — neither an art of rhetoric which we have not learned, nor the skill of an author which we have not practiced, nor an elegance of diction, nor a persuasiveness which we do not know, but simply and truthfully and in a plain, unlearned manner; and you yourself, being more capable than we are, will increase these things in yourself, having received, as it were, seeds and starting-points from us, and in the breadth of your understanding you will bear abundant fruit from what has been said briefly by us, and you will powerfully set forth to those with you what has been feebly reported by us.

And just as we have earnestly endeavored — since you have long been seeking to learn their opinion — not only to make it manifest to you, but also to give you provisions for showing it to be false, so also you will earnestly minister to the rest, according to the grace given to you by the Lord, so that men may no longer be swept away by their plausible argumentation, which is as follows:

For they say there is a certain perfect Aeon, pre-existent, in invisible and unnameable heights;

and this one they call Pre-Beginning, and Forefather, and Depth.

And they say that he, being uncontainable and invisible, eternal and unbegotten, existed in great quiet and stillness through infinite ages of time;

and that there coexisted with him also Thought, whom indeed they also call Grace and Silence; and that at some point this Depth conceived the thought of putting forth from himself the beginning of all things, and of depositing this emission, which he thought to put forth, like a seed, as in a womb, in the Silence that coexisted with him;

and that she, having received this seed and having become pregnant, brought forth Mind, both like and equal to him who put it forth;

and alone able to contain the greatness of the Father;

And this Nous they call also Only-begotten, and Father, and the origin of all things,

and that Truth was put forth together with him, and that this is the first and primordial Pythagorean Tetrad, which they also call the root of all things.

For there is Bythos (Depth) and Sige (Silence), then Nous and Aletheia (Truth).

And this Only-begotten, perceiving for what purpose he had been put forth, himself also put forth Logos and Zoe (Life), father of all who would come after him, and the origin and shaping of the whole Pleroma;

and from Logos and Zoe there were put forth, in conjugal pair, Man and Church.

And this is the primordial Ogdoad, the root and substance of all things, called among them by four names: Bythos, Nous, Logos, and Anthropos.

For each of them is male-female, as follows:

first, the Forefather is united in conjugal pair with his own Ennoia (Thought); the Only-begotten, that is, Nous, with Aletheia; Logos with Zoe; and Anthropos with Ekklesia.

And these Aeons, having been put forth for the glory of the Father, and themselves wishing to glorify the Father through what was their own, put forth further emanations in conjugal pairs:

Logos and Zoe, after putting forth Anthropos and Ekklesia, put forth ten other Aeons, whose names they give as follows:

Bythius and Mixis, Agerastos and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Akinetos and Synkrasis, Monogenes and Makaria.

These are the ten Aeons which they say were put forth from Logos and Zoe.

And Anthropos himself, together with Ekklesia, put forth twelve Aeons, to which they give the following names:

Paraclete and Pistis, Patrikos and Elpis, Metrikos and Agape, Aeinous and Synesis, Ekklesiastikos and Makariotes, Theletos and Sophia.

These are the thirty Aeons of their error, kept in silence and not known.

This, according to them, is the invisible and spiritual Pleroma, divided in three ways into an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Dodecad.

And for this reason they say the Savior — for they do not wish to call him Lord — did nothing openly for thirty years, thereby displaying the mystery of these Aeons.

that these thirty Aeons were thereby signified.

For some are sent about the first hour, others about the third, others about the sixth, others about the ninth, and others about the eleventh;

so the aforesaid hours, when added together, complete the number thirty.

For one and three and six and nine and eleven make thirty.

and they wish it to mean that the Aeons are signified through the hours.

And these are the great and wondrous and ineffable mysteries which they bring forth as fruit, together with whatever else, among the many things said in the Scriptures, they are able to fit and liken to their own fabrication.

They say that their Forefather is known only to the Only-begotten who came forth from him, that is, to Nous, while to all the rest he is invisible and incomprehensible.

And, according to them, Nous alone delighted in beholding the Father and contemplating his immeasurable greatness. He exulted,

and he intended also to communicate to the rest of the Aeons the greatness of the Father — how great and how vast he was — and how he was without beginning, uncontainable, and not to be comprehended by sight;

but Sige restrained him, by the will of the Father, because the Father wished to lead them all into the thought and desire of seeking after their aforesaid Forefather.

And the rest of the Aeons likewise, in a quiet manner, longed to see the one who had put forth the seed of their being, and to inquire into the beginningless root.

Now the Aeon far the last and youngest of the Dodecad put forth by Anthropos and Ekklesia — that is, Sophia — sprang forward and suffered a passion apart from union with her consort Theletos; a passion which had begun among those around Nous and Aletheia but broke out upon this one who had gone astray, under the pretext of love, but [in truth] of presumption, because she had not been in communion with the Father who alone is perfect, as Nous had been.

And this passion was a seeking after the Father;

for she wished, as they say, to comprehend his greatness.

Then, being unable [to attain this], because she had set herself against an impossible thing, and having fallen into a very great struggle on account of the greatness of the depth and the untraceable nature of the Father and her affection toward him, ever stretching forward under [the influence of] his sweetness, she would in the end have been swallowed up and dissolved into the whole substance, had she not met with the power which strengthens and guards all things, keeping them outside the unspeakable greatness.

And this power they call Horos (Limit), by whom she was restrained and strengthened, and having with difficulty turned back into herself and been persuaded that the Father is incomprehensible, she laid aside her former intention together with the passion that had arisen from that astonishing wonder.

But some of them relate the myth of Sophia's passion and her conversion in this way:

that she, having attempted an impossible and incomprehensible thing, brought forth a formless substance, such as a female by nature was able to bring forth;

and when she considered this, she first grieved because of the incompleteness of the offspring, and then feared lest even her own existence should come to an end;

then she was thrown into confusion and perplexity, seeking the cause, and by what means she might hide what had happened.

And having become involved in these passions, she took a turn and attempted to run back to the Father; and having ventured so far, she grew faint and became a suppliant of the Father.

And the rest of the Aeons joined her in supplication, especially Nous.

From this, they say, the substance of matter first took its origin — from ignorance, and grief, and fear, and bewilderment.