Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 15/82

In the same manner as if someone, when a fine image of a king has been carefully fashioned by a skilled craftsman out of precious tesserae, should undo the underlying human form and rearrange those tesserae and remake them into the shape of a dog or a fox—and that badly constructed—and then should declare and say that this is that fine image of the king which the skilled craftsman made, pointing to the tesserae which had been well composed by the first craftsman into the king's image, but badly transferred by the latter into the shape of a dog, and by means of the illusion of the tesserae should lead astray the more inexperienced who have no grasp of the royal form, and should persuade them that this rotten shape of the fox is that fine image of the king;

In just the same way, these men too, having patched together old wives' tales, then, tearing words and phrases and parables from here and there, wish to fit the oracles of God to their myths.

Now, as many things as they apply to those within the Pleroma, we have already stated.

But as for the things which they attempt to appropriate from the Scriptures for what is outside their Pleroma, they are as follows:

They say that the Lord came to his passion in the last times of the world for this reason: that he might display the passion which happened concerning the last of the Aeons, and through this end might manifest the conclusion of the whole affair concerning the Aeons.

And that twelve-year-old virgin, the ruler of the synagogue's daughter, whom the Lord came and raised from the dead, they explain to be a type of Achamoth, whom their Christ, having stretched himself out, gave form to, and brought to a perception of the light that had abandoned her.

And that the Savior manifested himself to her, while she was outside the Pleroma in the condition of an untimely birth, they say Paul spoke of in the first letter to the Corinthians: 'And last of all, as to one born out of due time, he appeared also to me.'

And that he likewise revealed the Savior's coming, together with his companions of the same age, to Achamoth, in that same epistle, when he said: 'The woman ought to have a covering on her head because of the angels.'

And that, when the Savior came to her, Achamoth out of modesty put a veil upon her face—this, they say, Moses made manifest by placing a veil upon his own face.

Likewise also in his having said: 'And what I should say, I do not know.'

And they teach that he thus demonstrated three races of men:

The material race, in his answering the one who said:

'I will follow you'—'The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.'

And the psychic race, in his having said to the one who said:

'I will follow you, but permit me first to bid farewell to those of my household'—'No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven'; for they say this man belongs to those of the middle rank.

And likewise also that man who confessed that he had done most of the parts of righteousness, but then was unwilling to follow, but was overcome by his wealth so as not to become perfect—this man too they hold to have belonged to the psychic race.

And the spiritual race, in his saying: 'Let the dead bury their own dead;'

'But go and proclaim the kingdom of God,' and also in what he said concerning Zacchaeus the tax collector: 'Make haste and come down, for today I must stay in your house.'

For they proclaim that these men belonged to the spiritual race.

And they say that the parable of the leaven, which the woman is said to have hidden in three measures of flour, signifies the three races.

For they teach that the woman is called Sophia, and the three measures of flour are the three races of men: spiritual, psychic, and earthly.

And they teach that the leaven itself was said to be the Savior.

And they say that Paul too expressly spoke of the earthly, the psychic, and the spiritual:

In one place: 'As is the earthly one, such also are those who are earthly;' in another: 'But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit;' and in another: 'But the spiritual man judges all things.'

And that the Savior took up the firstfruits of those whom he was about to save, they say Paul stated: 'And if the firstfruit is holy, so also is the lump'—teaching that the firstfruit is said to be the spiritual race, and the lump is us, that is, the psychic church, whose lump they say he took up and raised together with himself, since he himself was the leaven.

And that Achamoth went astray outside the Pleroma, and was given form by Christ, and was sought out by the Savior—this, they say, he indicated when he said that he had come for the lost sheep.

For they explain that the lost sheep refers to their Mother, from whom they hold the Church here on earth to have been sown;

and the 'straying' is her sojourn outside the Pleroma amid all her passions, from which they suppose matter to have come into being.

And they explain that the woman who swept the house and found the drachma refers to the Sophia above, who, having lost her Enthymesis, afterward found it again once all things had been cleansed through the coming of the Savior.

Therefore, according to them, this Enthymesis is also restored within the Pleroma.

And through Anna the prophetess, who is proclaimed in the Gospel, who lived seven years with a husband and remained a widow for all the rest of the time, until, having seen the Savior, she recognized him and spoke of him to all—they declare that Achamoth is most clearly signified: she, having then seen the Savior for a little while together with his companions of the same age, remained for all the rest of the time in the Middle Region awaiting him, wondering when he would come again and restore her to her own consort.

And they say this is also signified by Paul, thus: 'Yet we speak wisdom among those who are perfect.'

And they assert that Paul also spoke of the consort-pairs within the Pleroma, showing it by means of a single example:

For, writing about the union of life, he said: 'This mystery is great; but I speak concerning Christ and the Church.'

Moreover, they teach that John, the disciple of the Lord, indicated the first Ogdoad, speaking in these very words:

John, the disciple of the Lord, wishing to speak of the origin of all things, according to which the Father put forth all things, posits a certain Beginning—the first thing begotten by God—which indeed he has called both Son and Only-begotten God, in whom the Father put forth all things in seed-form.

And by this one, he says, the Word was put forth, and in him the whole substance of the Aeons, which the Word himself afterward gave form to.

Since, then, he is speaking of the first origin, he rightly makes his teaching begin from the Beginning, that is, from the Son and the Word.

And he speaks thus: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'

'The same was in the beginning with God.'

Having first distinguished the three—God, and Beginning, and Word—he then unites them again, in order both to show forth the emanation of each of them, the Son and the Word, and their union with one another and, at the same time, with the Father.

For the Beginning is in the Father and from the Father; and the Word is in the Beginning and from the Beginning.

Rightly, then, did he say: 'In the beginning was the Word;'

'and the Word was with God'—

'and the Word was God,' consistently.

For that which is begotten from God is God.

'The same was in the beginning with God'—this showed the order of the emanation.

'All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made;'

for the Word became the cause of form and origin for all the Aeons after him.

'But that which came to be in him,' he says, 'is life.'

Here also he indicated a consort-pair.

For he said that all things came to be through him, but that Life came to be in him.

This one, then, which came to be in him, is more closely akin to him than those things which came to be through him;

for she is joined with him and bears fruit through him.

For since he further adds, 'and the life was the light of men'—having just named Man, he also indicated the Church, under the same name as Man, so that through the one name he might show the fellowship of the consort-pair;

for from the Word and Life come Man and Church.

And he called Life 'the light of men' because they have been enlightened by her, which indeed means to have been given form and to have been made manifest.

This is also what Paul says: 'For everything that is made manifest is light.'

Since, then, Life manifested and gave birth to both Man and the Church, she is called their light.

Clearly, then, John has shown through these words, among other things, also the second Tetrad:

Word and Life, Man and Church.

But indeed he also indicated the first Tetrad.

For, narrating about the Savior and saying that all things outside the Pleroma were given form through him, he says that he is the fruit of the whole Pleroma.

For indeed he calls him the light which shines in the darkness and was not overcome by it, since, having brought into order all the things that came into being out of the passion, he was not known by them.

And he calls him Son, and Truth, and Life, and the Word that became flesh;

'Whose glory we beheld,' he says, 'and his glory was such as that of the Only-begotten, which was given to him by the Father, full of grace and truth.'

And he speaks thus: 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the Only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.'

Precisely, then, he also indicated the first Tetrad, by naming Father and Grace and the Only-begotten and Truth.

Thus John has spoken concerning the first Ogdoad, the mother of all the Aeons.

For he spoke of Father and Grace and Only-begotten and Truth and Word and Life and Man and Church.

You see, beloved, the method they use to deceive themselves, doing violence to the Scriptures while trying to construct their fabrication out of them.

For this very reason I have set out their own words, so that from them you may perceive the cunning of their method and the wickedness of their error.

For, in the first place, if it had been John's purpose to disclose the Ogdoad above, he would have kept the order of emanation, and, since the first tetrad is (as they say) the most venerable, he would have placed its names first, and then joined the second tetrad to it, so that the order of the names might display the order of the Ogdoad; and he would not, as though he had forgotten it, have recalled the first tetrad only at the very end, after so long an interval.

Moreover, if he wished to indicate the conjugal pairs, he would not have omitted the name of the Church; rather, he would either have been content, in the case of the other pairs too, to name only the males (since the females could equally be understood along with them, so as to preserve consistency throughout), or, if he did list the consorts of the rest, he would also have disclosed the consort of Man, and would not have left us to derive her name by mere guesswork.

Manifest, then, is the falsification of their exegesis.

For while John proclaims one God almighty and one only-begotten Christ Jesus, through whom, he says, all things came into being — calling this one the Son of God, this one the Only-begotten, this one the Maker of all things, this one the true light that enlightens every man, this one the Maker of the world, this one who came unto his own, this one who himself became flesh and dwelt among us — these men, twisting the exegesis to fit their plausible scheme, would have the Only-begotten who comes forth by emanation (whom indeed they also call the Beginning) be one being, the Savior who came to be another, the Word who is son of the Only-begotten yet another, and the Christ put forth for the restoration of the Pleroma still another.

And, taking up each of these sayings and tearing them away from the truth, they have misused the names and transferred them to their own hypothesis, so that, according to them, in all this abundance of words John makes no mention of the Lord Christ Jesus whatever.

For if he has spoken of Father, and Grace, and Only-begotten, and Truth, and Word, and Life, and Man, and Church, then — according to their hypothesis — he has spoken concerning the first Ogdoad, in which there is not yet a Jesus, not yet a Christ: this, they say, being John's teacher.

But that the apostle spoke, not concerning their conjugal pairs, but concerning our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he also knows as the Word of God, he himself makes plain.

For, recapitulating concerning the Word spoken of by him earlier at the beginning, he explains further: 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.'

But according to their hypothesis it was not the Word that became flesh, since he never even came outside the Pleroma, but rather the Savior, who came into being from all the Aeons together and is later in time than the Word.

Learn, then, you senseless men, that Jesus, who suffered for us and tabernacled among us, is himself none other than the Word of God.

For if some other one of the Aeons had become flesh for the sake of our salvation, it would have been reasonable for the apostle to have spoken concerning that other one;

but if the Word of the Father who descended is himself also the one who ascended — the only-begotten Son of the only God, made flesh for the sake of men according to the good pleasure of the Father — then John has made his statement not concerning some other being, nor concerning an Ogdoad, but concerning none other than the Lord Jesus Christ.

For according to them, it was not properly the Word that became flesh in the first instance.

For they say that the Savior put on a psychic body, fashioned by the dispensation through an ineffable providence, so that he might become visible and tangible.

But flesh is the ancient formation, made by God out of the dust according to the pattern of Adam; and it is this very flesh that John declared the Word of God truly became.

And so their first and primordial Ogdoad is dissolved.

Since this very one was made flesh for us, the tabernacling of their Ogdoad has been dissolved.

And once this is dissolved, their whole hypothesis collapses — the hypothesis with which, dreaming up falsehoods, they run down against the Scriptures, having fabricated a theory of their own.

Then, gathering up words and names that lie scattered here and there, they transfer them, as we said before, from what is according to nature to what is contrary to nature, doing just what those do who propose to themselves some chance theme and then try to work it out of the poems of Homer, so that the less experienced suppose that Homer composed his verses with that hastily-devised theme in mind, and many are carried away by the connected sequence of the verses, wondering whether Homer might not indeed have composed them precisely in that way.

As does the one who, using Homeric verses, writes of Heracles being sent by Eurystheus after the hound in Hades, in this manner (for nothing prevents us from recalling this example too, since the undertaking is similar and the same in both cases):

So saying, Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, offspring of Perseus, sent forth from the house, heavily groaning, the man Heracles, well-versed in mighty deeds, to fetch from Erebus the hound of hateful Hades.

He went his way, like a mountain-bred lion trusting in his strength, swiftly through the city; and all his friends followed together — brides and young men and much-enduring old men — piteously lamenting, as though he were going to his death.

And Hermes and gray-eyed Athena sent him on his way;

for in her heart she knew how her brother was toiling.

Who among the guileless would not be carried away by these verses, and suppose that Homer had composed them for this very theme? But the man experienced in the Homeric material will recognize the verses, yet will not recognize the theme, knowing that part of them was spoken concerning Odysseus, part concerning Heracles himself, part concerning Priam, and part concerning Menelaus and Agamemnon;

and by taking them up and restoring each one to its own book, he will make the present [fabricated] theme vanish entirely.

In just the same way, the one who holds fast within himself the unswerving rule of truth, which he received through baptism, will recognize the names and words and parables taken from the Scriptures, but will not recognize this blasphemous hypothesis.

For even if he recognizes the individual tesserae, he will nevertheless not accept a fox in place of the royal image;

rather, by restoring each of the things mentioned to its own proper place, and fitting it to the body of the truth, he will lay bare their fabrication and demonstrate that it has no real substance.

But since this drama of theirs still lacks its 'redemption,' so that, once someone has finished playing out their farce, he may then bring on the refuting argument, we thought it well first to show in what respects the very originators of this myth differ from one another, inasmuch as they are possessed by different spirits of error.

For from this it will be possible to perceive most exactly, even before the formal refutation, both the firmness of the truth proclaimed by the Church, and the falsified, lying rhetoric of these men.

That every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, and every tongue confess to him, and that he should execute righteous judgment upon all — sending the spiritual [powers] of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and fell into apostasy, and the ungodly, unrighteous, lawless, and blasphemous among men, into the eternal fire; but, granting life to the righteous and holy, who have kept his commandments and have continued in his love — some from the beginning, others from repentance — bestowing incorruptibility upon them as a gift, and procuring for them eternal glory.

This preaching and this faith the Church has received, as we said before, and, though scattered throughout the whole world, guards it carefully, as though dwelling in a single house; she believes these things alike, as having one soul and the same heart, and proclaims, teaches, and hands them down harmoniously, as though possessing but a single mouth.

For even though the languages throughout the world differ, yet the force of the tradition is one and the same; nor do the churches established in the Germanies believe or hand down anything different, nor those among the Iberians, nor among the Celts, nor throughout the East, nor in Egypt, nor in Libya, nor those established in the central regions of the world;

but just as the sun, God's creation, is one and the same throughout the whole world, so also the light — the preaching of the truth — shines everywhere and enlightens all men who are willing to come to the knowledge of the truth. And neither will he who is exceedingly powerful in speech among those set over the churches say anything different from these things (for no one is above the Teacher), nor will he who is weak in speech diminish the tradition;

for since the faith is one and the same, he who is able to say much about it has not thereby added to it, nor has he who can say only little thereby diminished it.

That some know more and some less, according to their own understanding, does not consist in altering the underlying hypothesis itself and devising, besides the Creator and Maker and Nourisher of this universe, some other god (as though not content with him), or some other Christ, or some other Only-begotten; rather, it consists in further working out the things spoken in parables, and fitting them together with the underlying subject-matter of the faith, and in expounding the activity and dispensation of God carried out for the sake of humanity, and in making clear that God was longsuffering both toward the apostasy of the transgressing angels and toward the disobedience of men;

and in declaring why the one and the same God made some things temporary and others eternal, some heavenly and others earthly;

and in understanding why God, though invisible, appeared to the prophets not in a single form, but in different ways to different ones;

and in explaining why several covenants were made known to humanity, and in teaching what the distinctive character of each covenant is;

and in searching out why God shut up all things unto disobedience, that he might have mercy upon all;

and in giving thanks why the Word of God became flesh and suffered;

and in declaring why the coming of the Son of God took place in the last times — that is, why the Beginning appeared at the end;

and in unfolding all that is set down in the Scriptures concerning the end and the things that are to come;

and in not remaining silent as to why God has made the Gentiles, once given up for lost, fellow-heirs, of the same body, and fellow-partakers with the saints;

and in proclaiming how this mortal flesh shall put on immortality, and the corruptible, incorruption;

and how he who was not a people shall be called a people, and she who was not beloved shall be called beloved; and in proclaiming how the children of the desolate woman are more than those of her who has a husband — concerning these things and things like them the apostle indeed cried out, 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and how untraceable his ways!' — but not in the sense of devising, above the Creator and Maker, some 'Mother' of him and of the Aeons — an 'Enthymesis' (Thought) of some erring Aeon — and coming to such a pitch of blasphemy;

nor, above her again, in falsely fabricating a Pleroma — at one time of thirty, but now of a countless throng of Aeons — as these teachers say, who are in truth utterly destitute of divine understanding, whereas the Church throughout the whole world has one and the same faith, as we have said before.

Let us now also observe the instability of their opinions — how, though they be perhaps only two or three, they do not say the same things about the same matters, but declare things contrary to one another, both in substance and in the names they use.

For the first of them, Valentinus, having adapted the first principles of the so-called Gnostic heresy to the particular character of his own school, set them forth in the following way: he posited a certain unnamable Dyad, one part of which is called Unspeakable, and the other, Silence;

then, from this Dyad, a second Dyad was put forth, one part of which he names Father, the other Truth;

and from this Tetrad were brought forth as fruit Word and Life, Man and Church;

and that this is the first Ogdoad.

And from Word and Life, he says, ten powers were put forth, as we have said before;

and from Man and Church, twelve, one of which fell away and was left behind, thereby bringing about the whole remaining drama of the myth.

He also posited two Boundaries: one between the Deep (Bythos) and the rest of the Pleroma, which marks off the begotten Aeons from the unbegotten Father; and another, which marks off their Mother from the Pleroma.

And [he holds] that Christ was not put forth by the Aeons within the Pleroma, but was brought forth, together with a certain shadow, by the Mother after she had come to be outside, in remembrance of the better things.

And, put forth together with him, a left-hand Ruler was posited by him, in the same way as by those falsely-named 'Gnostics' whom we shall describe.

And he says that Jesus was put forth, at one time, from the being who had been withdrawn from their Mother and afterward poured together with the totality — that is, from the Willed One (Theletos); at another time, from the one who ran back up into the Pleroma — that is, from Christ; and at another time, from Man and Church.

And he says that the Holy Spirit was put forth by Truth for the examination and fruit-bearing of the Aeons, entering into them invisibly;

through whom the Aeons bear as fruit the plants of truth.

Here ends the material of Irenaeus against the Valentinians.

These things, then, and others like them, the aforementioned elder Irenaeus — a man adorned in every respect by the Holy Spirit, put forward by the Lord as a noble athlete and anointed with the heavenly gifts belonging to the true faith and knowledge — set forth, having wrestled down and utterly overcome the whole of their absurd system, going minutely through their vain, empty prattlings.

And in his following second treatise, and in the others, he refuted them most thoroughly and to an even greater degree, wishing, as it were, to drag along the man who had been thrown to the ground and put to rout, to lead him in triumph openly before all, and to expose, in that very fallen man, the shameless and feeble bravado of his empty-headed folly.

The overthrow wrought by their own words will be made manifest against them.

First, because their opinions among themselves are diverse, and one of them undertakes to overturn the doctrines of another;

second, because their mythical fabrications rest on no foundation, since nowhere has Scripture said any such thing, nor the Law of Moses, nor any of the prophets after Moses; nor, indeed, the Savior, nor his evangelists, nor even the apostles.

For if these things were true, the Lord who came to enlighten the world, and the prophets before him, and afterward the apostles too — who denounced idolatry and every unlawful practice, and did not shrink from writing against every unlawful teaching and every contrary doctrine — would surely have plainly proclaimed such things to us, especially since the Savior himself said that to those outside he spoke in parables, but that for you it is necessary to explain the parables, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven.

As many parables as he spoke in the Gospels, he clearly explained at once.

Indeed, he says, what the grain of mustard seed is, and what the leaven is, and who the woman is who put the leaven into the three measures of meal, what the vineyard is, what the fig tree is, who the sower is, what the good soil is.

And in vain these men are inspired with false enthusiasm, driven on by demons, of whom the most holy apostle Paul says: 'In later times some will depart from the teaching, giving heed to fables and to the teachings of demons.'

And again holy James, speaking of such teaching, says that this wisdom is not one coming down from above, but earthly, unspiritual, demonic.

But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, and so on—of which not a single fruit is found among those aforesaid.

For among them is disorder and every lawless deed, broods of demons and hissings of serpents, each of them speaking now one thing, now another, and each something different from the rest.

Among them neither mercy nor pity is found, but divisions and discords, and nowhere purity, nowhere peace, nowhere gentleness.

But I wish, once again compelled by the argument, even though I had promised to stop, to call to mind a few of the things said among them and refute them.

For I am not concerned with artful rhetoric, but with the benefit of my readers.

They say, then, that the twelfth Aeon, having come to be in Deficiency, fell away entirely from the number of the twelve, and the twelfth number is lost.

And they say this came about because Judas, being the twelfth, fell away, and thus the twelfth number was made to vanish.

And likewise concerning the woman with the flow of blood, and the woman who lost the one drachma out of the ten drachmas.

But it is shown that the twelfth Aeon cannot bear the role of Judas, as has already been stated by the most holy Irenaeus—for Judas indeed perished utterly, but the so-called twelfth Aeon, according to their own fiction, was not emptied out;

for, as they themselves say, the Metagogeus (the Conductor) or the Horothetes (the Boundary-Fixer) stood before it and said to it, 'Iao,' and so it was made firm—nor will the woman who had the flow of blood for twelve years be like their drama;

for she was healed after twelve years, during which she had been carried along by the flow of blood.

For she did not remain unaffected through the first eleven years and then flow in the twelfth, but rather she flowed during the eleven years and was healed in the twelfth—nor did the woman who possessed the ten drachmas lose the one permanently, that they might fabricate the myth of the Aeon of matter as utterly lost;

for she lit the lamp and found the drachma.

From these two or three arguments, then, all their theatrical fictions, once refuted, will at once be perceived as feeble and stale by the sons of good sense and the children of God's holy catholic Church.