And how Callistus, mixing the heresy of Cleomenes -- a disciple of Noetus -- with that of Theodotus, put together another, more novel heresy, and what his life was
What the new arrival of the strange demon Elchasai is, and that the appearance of adhering to the law is a cover for his own errors, while in reality he is devoted to gnostic doctrines and to astrological practices and magic arts
9:5.1
Τίνατὰ<παρὰ>Ἰουδαίοιςἔθηκαὶπόσαιτούτων
猶太人中間有哪些習俗，這些習俗又有多少派別
What the customs among the Jews are, and how many sects there are of them
Since, then, much labor concerning all the heresies has been undertaken by us, leaving nothing unrefuted, there now remains the greatest labor: to narrate and refute the heresies that have arisen in our own time, through which certain ignorant and rash men have attempted to scatter the church, casting the greatest disturbance throughout the whole world among all the faithful. For it seems good, setting out against the opinion that has become the source of these evils, to refute it, showing what its origins are, so that its offshoots, once well known to all, may be despised.
There arose a certain man named Noetus, by race a Smyrnaean. This man introduced a heresy out of the doctrines of Heraclitus. His deacon and disciple was one named Epigonus, who, having settled in Rome, sowed the godless opinion. Cleomenes, having become his disciple -- a man alien to the church both in life and character -- strengthened the doctrine, at that time when Zephyrinus, a layman and a man greedy for shameful gain, supposed himself to be administering the church.
He, persuaded by gain, permitted those coming to Cleomenes to become his disciples, and, himself being gradually drawn along by time, was carried toward the same things, having as his counselor and fellow-champion in these evils Callistus, whose life and the heresy he devised I shall set forth not long from now.
Through succession from these, the school remained, being strengthened and growing, because Zephyrinus and Callistus lent their support to them, although we never gave our assent, but many times stood opposed to them and refuted them and forced them, unwilling as they were, to confess the truth -- and they, for the moment ashamed and constrained by the truth, would confess, but not long after would roll back again into the same mire.
But since we have shown the succession of their genealogy, it seems fitting now also to set forth the false teaching of their doctrines, presenting first the opinions held by Heraclitus the Obscure, and then making clear that their portions of doctrine are Heraclitean, since perhaps the present leaders of the heresy do not know that these are the Obscure's, supposing them to be Christ's.
If they should encounter these things, perhaps thus put to shame, they would cease from their godless blasphemy. But even though the opinion of Heraclitus has already been set forth by us earlier in the Philosophumena, it seems good to set it out again now in comparison, so that through this closer refutation those of his school may be clearly taught -- men supposing themselves to be disciples of Christ, though they are not, but of the Obscure.
Heraclitus, then, says that the All is divisible-indivisible, generated-ungenerated, mortal-immortal, word-eternity, father-son, god-just. 'Not having listened to me but to the word, having heard, it is wise to agree that all things are one' -- so Heraclitus says.
And that not all know this, nor agree, he finds fault thus: 'They do not understand how, while differing from itself, it is in agreement with itself: a back-turning harmony, as of the bow and the lyre.'
That the word is always the All, and belonging to everything, he says thus: 'Although this word is forever, men fail to understand it, both before hearing it and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this word, they are like the untried when they try such words and deeds as I set forth, dividing each thing according to its nature and declaring how it is.'
That the All is a child, and eternally, throughout the age, the king of the universe, he says thus: 'Eternity is a child playing, playing draughts; the kingdom is a child's.' That he is the father of all things that have come to be, generated-ungenerated, creation-demiurge, we hear him saying: 'War is father of all, and king of all; and some it has shown to be gods, others men; some it has made slaves, others free.'
That it is... a harmony as of the bow and the lyre. That God is unmanifest, invisible, unknown to men, he says in these words: 'A harmony that is unmanifest is stronger than one that is manifest'; he praises and admires beforehand the unknown and invisible part of his power, above the known. That he is visible to men and not undiscoverable, he says in these words: 'Whatever things there is sight, hearing, and learning of, these I honor above' -- that is, the visible above the invisible. From such sayings of his it is easy to understand:
'Men,' he says, 'are deceived with regard to the knowledge of manifest things similarly to Homer, who was wiser than all the Greeks. For even him children, killing lice, deceived, saying: What we saw and caught, these we leave behind, but what we neither saw nor caught, these...'
Thus Heraclitus places the manifest on equal footing with the unmanifest, and honors them, as one thing -- the manifest and the unmanifest being admittedly the same. For, he says, 'a harmony that is unmanifest is stronger than one that is manifest,' and 'whatever things there is sight, hearing, and learning of' -- that is, the organs -- 'these,' he says, 'I honor above,' not preferring the unmanifest things.
Accordingly Heraclitus says that neither darkness nor light, nor evil nor good, are different from one another, but are one and the same. He rebukes Hesiod, indeed, for knowing day and night as distinct, saying: 'day and night are one,' speaking thus: 'The teacher of the majority is Hesiod; they suppose him to know very many things -- him who did not know day and night! For they are one.'
And good and evil are one: 'physicians,' Heraclitus says, 'cutting, burning, torturing the sick badly in every way, though deserving no reward, are yet paid by the sick, since they produce the same things -- the good effects and the treatment of the diseases.' And straight, he says...
...and crooked are the same. 'For the fuller,' he says, 'the road is straight and crooked' -- the turning of the instrument called the screw in the fulling-mill is both straight and crooked, for it goes both upward and around in a circle at once -- 'it is one and the same,' he says. And the up and the down are one and the same: 'the road up and down is one and the same.'
He says also that the polluted and the pure are one and the same, and that the drinkable and the undrinkable are one and the same: 'sea-water,' he says, 'is the purest and the most polluted water -- to fish it is drinkable and life-giving, but to men it is undrinkable and deadly.'
He says explicitly that the immortal is mortal and the mortal immortal, through such words: 'Immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living the death of the other, and dying the life of the other.' He speaks also of a resurrection of this flesh in which we have been born, and knows God to be the cause of this resurrection, speaking thus: 'There, being present, it is appointed to rise up and become guardians, awake, of the living and the dead.'
He speaks also of a judgment of the world, and says that all things in it come to be through fire, speaking thus: 'The thunderbolt steers all things,' that is, guides them, calling the eternal fire 'thunderbolt.' He says that this fire is also intelligent and the cause of the governance of the universe; he calls it 'want' and 'satiety'; 'want' is, according to him, the ordering of the cosmos, and the conflagration is 'satiety.' 'For fire,' he says, 'coming upon all things, will judge and seize them.' In this chapter he set forth his own whole doctrine at once.
-- and at the same time the doctrine of the heresy of Noetus, whom I have shown in a few words to be a disciple not of Christ but of Heraclitus. For concerning the created world becoming its own demiurge and maker, he speaks thus: 'God: day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, satiety-famine' -- all the opposites; this is the mind -- 'but he changes as fire does...'
'...when it is mingled with spices, it is named according to each one's pleasure.' It is manifest to all that the mindless successors of Noetus and of his heresy, even if they should say they were never hearers of Heraclitus, nevertheless, in choosing what seemed good to Noetus, openly confess the same things. For they speak thus: that the same God is both maker and father of all things, and, having been pleased to do so, appeared to the righteous from the beginning, though he is invisible; for when he was not...
...seen he was invisible, but when he is seen, he is visible; uncontainable when he does not wish to be contained, but containable when he is contained. Thus, by the same reasoning, he is both ungraspable and graspable, unbegotten and begotten, immortal and mortal. How will these not be shown to be such disciples, even if the Obscure did not philosophize using exactly this wording beforehand? That he also says the Son and the Father are the same, no one is ignorant.
He speaks thus: 'When, then, the Father had not yet been begotten, he was rightly called Father; but when he was pleased to undergo birth, having been begotten, he became the Son of himself, not of another.' For thus he supposes he establishes monarchy, asserting that Father and what is called Son are one and the same, not one from another, but he from himself, called by name Father and Son according to a change of times; and that this is one -- the one who appeared and underwent birth from a virgin and lived among men as a man, confessing himself to those who saw him to be the Son, on account of the birth that had taken place, but not concealing from those able to receive it that he was also the Father.
That this one, having been fastened to the wood in suffering and having delivered up the spirit to himself, having died and yet not died, and having raised himself up on the third day -- the one buried in a tomb and pierced by a lance and fixed fast with nails -- that this one is the God and Father of all: this Cleomenes and his chorus say, introducing Heraclitean darkness to many.
This heresy was strengthened by Callistus, a man skilled in wickedness and versatile toward deceit, hunting for the throne of the episcopate. Zephyrinus, a layman and unlettered man and inexperienced in the boundaries of ecclesiastical doctrine, he led, by persuading him with gifts and forbidden demands, to whatever he wished, Zephyrinus being a taker of bribes; and he kept persuading him always to cast dissensions among the brethren, while he himself, later, by cunning words, contrived friendship toward himself with both parties -- telling some, who held true opinions, privately at times that he held the same opinions, thus deceiving them, and again, in turn, telling those of Sabellius's opinion likewise that he agreed with them -- him whom he also drove out of his senses, though he was able to set him right.
For when he was being exhorted by us, he was not hardened; but whenever he was alone with Callistus, he was stirred up by him to incline toward the doctrine of Cleomenes, Callistus claiming to hold the same opinions as Zephyrinus. Now Sabellius at that time did not perceive his cunning, but later came to know it, as I shall relate not long from now.
He kept leading Zephyrinus himself forward, publicly persuading him to say, 'I know one God, Christ Jesus, and besides him no other, begotten and capable of suffering'; and at another time saying, 'It was not the Father that died, but the Son' -- thus he kept the dissension unceasing among the people. Knowing his intentions, we did not concede, but refuted him and opposed him on behalf of the truth. And he, going into desperation because everyone ran along with his hypocrisy, but we did not, called us 'ditheists,' vomiting forth by violence the venom that lurked hidden within him.
It seems fitting to us to set forth the life of this man with pleasure, since he lived in our own time, so that, through the manner of life of such a man being made manifest, the heresy attempted through him may at once become readily recognizable and evident to those possessing understanding. This man made his confession under Fuscianus, when he was prefect of Rome; and the manner of his confession was as follows:
He happened to be a household slave of a certain Carpophorus, a faithful man from the household of Caesar. To him Carpophorus entrusted no small sum of money, as to one who was faithful, since he had promised to bring in profit through banking business; and he, taking a bank, set up business in the place called the Piscina Publica, and in time not a few deposits were entrusted to him by widows and brethren, under the pretext of acting for Carpophorus; but he, having caused everything to vanish, was at a loss. When he had done these things, there was no lack of someone to report it to Carpophorus.
And Carpophorus said he would demand an account from him. Perceiving this, Callistus, apprehending the danger from his master, fled, making his escape by sea; and having found a ship at Portus ready to put out, wherever it happened to be sailing, he went aboard to sail away. But not even so was he able to escape notice; for there was no lack of someone to report to Carpophorus what had happened.
He, arriving at the harbor, tried to make his way to the ship according to what had been reported; but this ship stood in the middle of the harbor. And while the ferryman delayed, Callistus, seeing his master from a distance while he was on the ship, and realizing that he had been caught, gave up on living, and, reckoning these things as his last resort, threw himself into the sea.
But the sailors, leaping down into the small boats, pulled him up against his will, while those on the shore shouted loudly; and thus, having been handed over to his master, he was brought back to Rome, where his master committed him to the pistrinum.
As time passed, as usually happens, brethren came to Carpophorus and appealed to him to release the runaway from his punishment, saying that he acknowledged having money on deposit with certain persons.
Carpophorus, being a cautious man, said he cared nothing for his own loss, but was concerned about the deposits — for many wept before him, saying that on the strength of his reputation they had entrusted to Callistus what they had entrusted; and being persuaded, he ordered him brought out.
But he, having nothing to repay and again being unable to run away because he was under guard, devised a scheme of death: pretending on the Sabbath to go off as though to visit debtors, he rushed to the synagogue where the Jews were gathered, and standing there he stirred up a disturbance among them. They, thrown into disorder by him, insulted him and rained blows on him, and dragged him before Fuscianus, who was prefect of the city.
They answered as follows: "The Romans have granted us the right to read our ancestral laws publicly, but this man broke in and hindered us, stirring up disorder against us, claiming to be a Christian." While Fuscianus was on the tribunal and was indignant at what the Jews said against Callistus, the one who informed Carpophorus of what was taking place did not fail to do so.
He hastened to the prefect's tribunal and cried out: "I beg you, lord Fuscianus, do not believe him, for he is not a Christian; rather he seeks a pretext for death, having made away with much of my money, as I shall prove." But the Jews, supposing this to be a put-up job — as though Carpophorus were seeking by this excuse to snatch him away — cried out against the prefect all the more resentfully. He, moved by them, had him scourged and sent him to the mines of Sardinia.
After some time, when other confessors were there, Marcia — who was a God-loving concubine of Commodus — wishing to do some good work, summoned the blessed Victor, who was at that time bishop of the church, and asked him who the confessors in Sardinia were. He gave the names of all of them, but did not give that of Callistus, knowing what sort of man he was.
Marcia, having obtained her request from Commodus, gave the letter of release to a certain eunuch presbyter named Hyacinthus, who took it and sailed to Sardinia; and having delivered it to the man then governing the province, he secured the release of the confessors — except Callistus.
But he, kneeling and weeping, begged that he too might obtain release. Hyacinthus, moved by his entreaty, urged the governor, saying that Callistus was a foster-child of Marcia's, and pledged him that there would be no danger in it; and the governor, persuaded, released Callistus as well.
When he arrived back, Victor was greatly vexed at what had happened, but being a man of tender heart, he kept quiet; yet guarding against the reproach of many — for his reckless deeds were not far in the past — and moreover since Carpophorus still opposed him, he sent him to reside at Antium, appointing him a monthly allowance for food.
After Victor's death, Zephyrinus, having him as a helper in the ordering of the clergy, honored him — to his own harm — and having transferred him from Antium, set him over the cemetery. Being always with him and, as I have already said, attending upon him with hypocrisy, Callistus ruined him, since Zephyrinus was able neither to judge what was said nor to perceive Callistus's scheme, as Callistus discoursed to him always according to what pleased him.
Thus, after the death of Zephyrinus, thinking he had obtained what he had been hunting for, he thrust away Sabellius as one who did not think rightly, fearing me, and thinking that he could thereby wipe away the accusation brought against him before the churches, as though he did not hold heterodox views. He was, then, a sorcerer and a knave, and in time he swept many away with him.
But bearing the venom lodged in his heart, and having no fixed conviction at all, while at the same time being ashamed to speak the truth — both because of his having publicly reproached us, saying, "You are Ditheists," and also because he was repeatedly accused by Sabellius of having transgressed the original faith — he devised the following heresy: saying that the Word itself is the Son, and itself also the Father, called by name differently, but being one indivisible spirit;
that the Father is not one thing and the Son another, but that they are one and the same; and that all things — both those above and those below — are full of the divine Spirit; and that the Spirit which became flesh in the virgin is not other than the Father, but one and the same. And this, he said, is what was meant by the saying, "Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" For the thing that is seen, which is the man,
this is the Son, but the Spirit contained within the Son — this is the Father. "For," he says, "I will not say there are two Gods, Father and Son, but one. For the Father, having come to be within him [the Son], having taken to himself the flesh, deified it, uniting it to himself, and made it one, so that Father and Son are called one God; and this being one person cannot be two; and thus the Father suffered together with the Son."
For he does not wish to say outright that the Father suffered and that they are one person, but this foolish and shifty man, improvising blasphemies now this way, now that, escapes into blasphemy in order that he alone may seem to speak against the truth — falling now into the doctrine of Sabellius, now, without shame, into that of Theodotus.
Having dared such things, this sorcerer set up a school against the church, teaching in this way; and he was the first to devise granting men license for their pleasures, saying that sins are forgiven by him to all. He who is gathered with someone else and called a Christian, they say, if he should sin at all, his sin is not reckoned to him, provided he betakes himself to
the school of Callistus. Many, pleased with this ruling, being smitten in conscience — and at the same time having been expelled by many heresies, while some had also been cast out of the church by us for condemnation — went over to them and swelled his school. He also decreed that if a bishop should commit some sin, even one deserving death, he ought not to be deposed.
In his time, bishops, presbyters, and deacons who had been married twice or thrice began to be appointed to the clergy; and if anyone already in the clergy should marry, such a one might remain in the clergy as though he had not sinned — claiming for this that the apostle's saying applies here: "Who are you that judge another's servant?" But he also said that the parable of the tares was spoken with reference to this: "Let the tares grow together with the wheat" — that is, let the sinners remain in the church.
He also said that Noah's ark was made as a likeness of the church, in which there were dogs and wolves and ravens and all clean and unclean creatures, saying that the church ought likewise to be so; and, so far as he was able to muster support, he interpreted it in this way. His hearers, delighted with these doctrines, remain scoffing at both themselves and at many others — crowds flock together to his school.
Therefore they multiply, glorying in the crowds, over the pleasures which Christ did not permit; and despising him, they in no way prevent men from sinning, saying that he forgives those who consent to it. Indeed, he also permitted women, if they were unmarried and were inflamed with passion at an unbecoming age, and were of rank, and did not wish to lower their rank by being legally married for this reason, to have as a bedfellow whomever they might choose — whether a slave or a free man — and to regard him as a husband, even though not lawfully married.
From this, women called "faithful" began to resort to drugs for sterility, and to bind themselves so as to expel what had been conceived, because they did not wish to have a child by a slave nor by a person of low condition, for the sake of their family and their excessive wealth. See to what impiety this lawless man proceeded, teaching adultery and murder in one breath; and beyond these audacious deeds, those who have lost all shame attempt to call themselves the "Catholic Church," and some, thinking they do well, run together with them.
In his time, for the first time, a second baptism was dared among them. These things, then, the most admirable Callistus established, whose school continues to this day, preserving its customs and tradition, not distinguishing with whom one ought to have communion, but offering communion to all; from which they also came to share in the name and be called, after Callistus who first stood at the head of such works, "Callistians."
When Callistus's teaching had been noised abroad throughout the whole world, a certain deceitful man, full of recklessness, called Alcibiades, dwelling in Apamea of Syria, having observed this undertaking and judging himself sharper and more skilled in trickery than Callistus, came to Rome bearing a certain book, claiming that a certain righteous man, Elchasai, had received it from the Seres of Parthia,
which he delivered to a certain man called Sobiai — the book having been communicated by an angel whose height was twenty-four schoinoi (which comes to a certain number of miles), whose breadth was four schoinoi, and from shoulder to shoulder six schoinoi; while the footprints of his feet extended three and a half schoinoi in length (which comes to fourteen miles), a schoinos and a half in breadth, and half a schoinos in depth.
And with him, he says, there was also a female, whose measurements were according to what has been said; and he says that the male is the Son of God, while the female is called Holy Spirit. Telling such marvels, he thinks to trouble the foolish, speaking this saying:
that a new remission of sins had been proclaimed to men in the third year of the reign of Trajan; and he prescribes a baptism, which I shall also relate, saying that those who have been mired in every kind of licentiousness, pollution, and lawless deeds — even one who is already a believer — upon converting, hearing this book, and believing, are, he prescribes, to receive remission of sins through baptism. These knaveries this man dared to contrive, taking his occasion from the aforesaid teaching which Callistus had set forth.
For having observed that many were pleased at such a promise, he thought it a fitting moment to make the attempt. But we, having withstood him, did not allow many to be led astray for long, having proven that this was the working of a spurious spirit and the contrivance of a puffed-up heart, and that this man had risen up like a wolf against many wandering sheep — sheep whom, leading them astray,
Callistus had scattered. But since we have begun, we shall not pass over this man's doctrines in silence either; but having first brought his manner of life into the open and shown that his professed asceticism is merely a pretense, I shall again set forth the chief points of his sayings, so that whoever reads and closely examines his own writings may recognize what sort of heresy has been dared by this man, and how great it is.
This man puts forward observance of the Law as a bait, saying that believers must be circumcised and live according to the Law — thereby drawing some away from the heresies mentioned above. He says that Christ is a man born in common to all, and that he was not now for the first time born of a virgin, but also before, and again, having been born often and being ever born, he has appeared and comes into being, changing births and being transmigrated into different bodies, employing that Pythagorean doctrine.
And they are so puffed up that they even call themselves possessed of foreknowledge, employing as their starting-points the measures and numbers of the aforesaid Pythagorean art. These men also give heed to astrologers' calculations, to astrology, and to magic, as though these were things true, and by using them they confound the foolish into thinking that they themselves partake of a powerful reasoning;
they also teach certain incantations and charms for those bitten by dogs, and for those possessed by demons, and for those afflicted by other diseases — of these things too we shall not be silent. Having then sufficiently related their origins and the causes of their audacious deeds, I shall proceed to relate their writings in detail, through which those who read will come to know both their nonsense and their godless undertakings.
Now this is how he hands down baptism to those who are deceived by him, saying such things to those he deceives: "If anyone, children, has approached any animal whatsoever, or a male, or a sister, or a daughter, or has committed adultery, or has fornicated, and wishes to receive remission of sins, from the moment he hears this book let him be baptized a second time, in the name of the great and highest God and in the name of his Son, the"
"...king. And let him purify himself and be chaste, and let him call to witness for himself the seven witnesses written in this book: heaven, and water, and the holy spirits, and the angels of prayer, and oil, and salt, and earth." These are the wondrous mysteries of Elchasai, the secret and great ones which he hands down to worthy disciples; and the lawless man, not content with these, seals up his own evils on the testimony of two or three witnesses, again speaking thus:
"Again I say to you, O adulterers and adulteresses and false prophets, if you wish to turn back, your sins shall be forgiven you, and there shall be peace and a portion with the righteous for you, from the moment you hear this book and are baptized a second time together with your garments."
But since we have said that these people use incantations for those bitten by dogs and others, we shall now show it; he speaks thus: "If then a mad, raging dog, in which is a spirit of destruction, should bite or tear or so much as touch a man or a woman, a youth or a maiden, let him at that very hour run — together with all his clothing — and go down into a river or a spring, wherever there is a deep place,"
"...let him be baptized, together with all his clothing, and let him pray to the great and highest God with faith of heart; and then let him call to witness the seven witnesses written in this book: 'Behold, I call to witness heaven, and water, and the holy spirits, and the angels of prayer, and oil, and salt, and earth —'"
"'...I call these seven witnesses to witness that I will no longer sin: I will not commit adultery, I will not steal, I will not do wrong, I will not be covetous, I will not hate, I will not break faith, nor will I take delight in any evil deed.' Having said this, let him be baptized, together with all his clothing, in the name of the great and highest God."