Excerpts from Theodotus

Contents

1. 1.1The Valentinians read Christ's dying words as committing to the Father the spiritual seed that Wisdom gave him as a covering when he came down.
2. 1.2In this reading, at his passion Christ entrusts Wisdom, and with her all the elect, to the Father.
3. 1.3Clement's own view: the elect seed is a spark, the pupil of the eye, a mustard seed, and leaven,
4. 2.1which unites what seemed divided. The Valentinians say the Word placed a male spiritual seed in the elect soul while Adam slept.
5. 2.2The seed acted as leaven; Adam's sleep was the soul's forgetfulness, which preserved the spiritual seed.
6. 3.1Christ awakened the soul and kindled its spark, since his words are power.
7. 3.2When Christ breathed the Spirit on the apostles, he blew away the earthly dust and rekindled their spark.
8. 4.1Clement: at the Transfiguration Christ revealed his glory for the church's sake, to show its future after death.
9. 4.2Christ was and is the light above, the same that appeared in the flesh,
10. 4.3Christ did not leave the Father to come to earth but was present in both; the Transfiguration fulfilled his saying that some would see the Son of Man in glory before death.
11. 5.1At the Transfiguration the disciples fell down at the voice, not the sight, because an unexpected voice astonishes more.
12. 5.2John the Baptist heard the voice without fear in the Spirit; Christ told the disciples to tell no one what they had seen.
13. 5.3They saw the light not with fleshly eyes but because Christ's power strengthened them, the soul sharing its vision with the body.
14. 5.4Christ commanded silence so that his enemies would not hold back from putting him to death, which would have left the plan of salvation unfulfilled.
15. 5.5The voice at the Transfiguration came to believers, the voice at the Jordan to those not yet believing, who ignored it.
16. 6.1The Valentinian reading of John 1:1 follows.
17. 6.2They identify “the Beginning” with the Only-begotten, called God in John 1:18.
18. 6.3They see in John's prologue their pairs of aeons: Mind and Truth, Word and Life.
19. 6.4They read “life” in John 1:4 as the Word's female consort.
20. 7.1In the Valentinian account, the unknown Father, wishing to be known, put forth the Only-begotten, who is knowledge,
21. 7.2since the Father is known through the Son; love and knowledge are joined as Father and Son, Thought and Truth.
22. 7.3They distinguish the Only-begotten who remained in the Father's bosom from the one who appeared on earth, called “as only-begotten” and “firstborn,” though they say he is the same.
23. 7.4The one who descended is never separated from the one who remained, as Paul says.
24. 7.5The Valentinians call the Creator (Demiurge) an image of the Only-begotten, so his works perish; Christ's raising of the dead was only an image of spiritual resurrection.
25. 8.1Clement's view: the Word is God in God, in the Father's bosom, undivided, one God.
26. 8.2All things were made through the Word; the Savior, firstborn of creation, revealed the Father.
27. 8.3The Only-begotten is the light of the church, once in darkness.
28. 8.4The darkness that did not grasp him is the apostates, the rest of mankind who did not know him, and death, which could not hold him.
29. 9.1Faith differs in degree: the called may be led astray by the Antichrist, but not the elect.
30. 9.2Some sayings are addressed to the called: the prodigal son, and those called from the roads to the wedding feast.
31. 9.3All are called equally, but those who believe more are chosen, to whom Christ speaks as his own.
32. 10.1No spiritual being, not even the Son, is entirely without form or body; each has a form suited to its rank.
33. 10.2Created beings have substance, but not bodies like those in this world.
34. 10.3Above, the Only-begotten has his own pure substance and direct access to the Father's power; the first-created differ in number but are alike and equal.
35. 10.4The seven first-created angels are equal.
36. 10.5The first-created were perfect from the start; the Son is the unapproachable light, beyond what any eye or heart has known.
37. 10.6The angels see the Father's face, which is the Son; what sees and is seen must have some form, though they see with an intellectual eye.
38. 11.1As are the angels who see the Father's face, so will the elect be when perfected; and the pure in heart will see God.
39. 11.2The apostle speaks of heavenly bodies; spiritual beings with different names must have forms.
40. 11.3Heavenly beings are bodiless compared with earthly bodies, but bodily compared with the Son, as the Son is compared with the Father.
41. 11.4The first-created share a common, undivided service.
42. 12.1Each rank sees the one above it; the Son, called the Father's face, is the beginning of the vision of the Father.
43. 12.2Angels are purified intellectual fire; intellectual light is a higher state, into which angels long to look,
44. 12.3The Son is purer still, the unapproachable light, who redeemed us by his precious blood and whose face shone like the sun.
45. 13.1The Son is the heavenly bread and spiritual food that gives life through eating and knowledge.
46. 13.2Those who ate manna died, but those who eat the true bread will not die.
47. 13.3The Son is the living bread given by the Father.
48. 13.4“The bread I will give is my flesh” means either what nourishes the flesh in the Eucharist, or, better, his body the church.
49. 13.5The heavenly bread is also the blessed assembly of the elect, who share one substance and one destiny.
50. 14.1Demons are called bodiless only by comparison with the spiritual bodies of the saved; they have a shape and can feel punishment.
51. 14.2Angels and souls are bodies of a kind, as Paul speaks of a psychic and a spiritual body.
52. 14.3Souls must be bodies of some kind, since they are punished; Christ speaks of casting soul and body into Gehenna.
53. 14.4The parable of Lazarus and the rich man, with its fingers and tongue, shows the soul has a kind of body.
54. 15.1Paul's “image of the heavenly” shows that there are spiritual bodies.
55. 15.2Seeing “face to face” implies form and body, since figure is seen by figure.
56. 16.1The dove at Christ's baptism was seen as a body; the church says it was the Holy Spirit, while the Basilideans and Valentinians gave other interpretations.
57. 17.1The Valentinians hold that Jesus, the Church, and Wisdom are completely blended.
58. 17.2They cite examples of mixture: marriage, burial, water with wine.
59. 17.3Clement objects that spiritual beings are joined by juxtaposition, not mixture; God's power sanctifies the soul by pervading it.
60. 17.4God's Spirit pervades by power, not by substance; spirit lies beside spirit.
61. 18.1The descending Savior was seen by the angels and by Abraham and the righteous at rest, who rejoiced to see his day.
62. 18.2After rising, Christ preached to the righteous at rest and transferred them; his coming on earth was a shadow of his glory, a shadow that illuminates.
63. 19.1The Word became flesh not only at the incarnation, but also, in a sense, when he became Son in the beginning, by limitation, not in substance.
64. 19.2The Word also became flesh by working through the prophets; the Savior is called child of the Word.
65. 19.3The Lord is life; Paul's “new man created according to God” means Christ.
66. 19.4The Son is the image of the invisible God and firstborn of creation, because, begotten without passion, he became the creator of all things.
67. 19.5“The form of a servant” means both his flesh and created substance, which is subject to the sovereign cause.
68. 20.1The Psalms' “before the morning star I begot you” refers to the Word, begotten before all creation.
69. 21.1The Valentinians read Gen 1:27 as the emanation of Wisdom: the male are the angels (the elect), the female themselves (the called).
70. 21.2They say Eve was formed from the female seed taken from Adam.
71. 21.3They teach that the female seed, made male, is united with the angels and enters the Pleroma; so the church becomes angels.
72. 22.1The Valentinians read “baptized for the dead” as the angels' baptism on our behalf.
73. 22.2In their reading, we are the dead, the angels are the living.
74. 22.3They say we rise to be reunited with our angelic counterparts.
75. 22.4They say the angels were baptized for us so that we, bearing the Name, may pass the Limit into the Pleroma.
76. 22.5The Valentinian rite of laying on hands ends with the words “for angelic redemption,” so that the baptized share the redemption of their angels.
77. 22.6They say the angels were baptized in the Name that descended on Jesus as a dove.
78. 22.7Theodotus even says that Jesus himself needed redemption.
79. 23.1The Valentinians call Jesus the Paraclete, full of all the Aeons.
80. 23.2In their myth Christ asks the Aeons to help Wisdom, and Jesus is sent forth as her Paraclete; Paul is a type of the Paraclete.
81. 23.3In the Valentinian reading, Paul preached Christ in two ways: as born and suffering, for the lower beings, and as spiritual, born of the Spirit and a virgin, for the higher.
82. 23.4Each knows the Lord in his own way; the angels of the elect see the Father's face.
83. 23.5The Father's “face” is the Son and what the Son reveals; the rest of the Father remains unknown.
84. 24.1The Valentinians say the prophetic Spirit is now poured out on the whole church, which performs healings and prophecies.
85. 24.2Clement answers that the Spirit at work in the church is the same Spirit who worked in the old covenant.
86. 25.1The Valentinians define angels as messages from God and call the Aeons “words.”
87. 25.2Theodotus says the twelve apostles replace the twelve signs of the zodiac, overseeing rebirth as the signs govern birth.
88. 26.1Theodotus says the visible Jesus was Wisdom and the Church of the spiritual seeds, the invisible part the only-begotten Son.
89. 26.2“I am the door” means the spiritual seed will come as far as the boundary where Christ is,
90. 26.3and will enter the Pleroma with him through the door.
91. 27.1The high priest's laying aside of the golden plate before entering the Holy of Holies signifies the purified soul laying aside its body, having the Name engraved within.
92. 27.2The soul's body is laid aside in the intelligible world, beside the angels who offer up prayers.
93. 27.3The stripped soul passes into the spiritual realm and becomes high-priestly, animated directly by the Word, as the archangels are high priests of the angels.
94. 27.4The purified soul, seeing God face to face, no longer needs Scripture and study.
95. 27.5The perfected soul passes beyond written teaching to direct knowledge, dwelling with the Bridegroom among the first-created as friend, son, and brother.
96. 27.6Wearing the body and learning belong to the present plan; the final gift is to become God-bearing, the Lord's own body.
97. 28.1The Basilideans read the punishment “to the third and fourth generation” as reincarnation; the Valentinians as the lower powers and their seeds.
98. 29.1In the Valentinian myth, Silence, mother of all the emanations of the Depth, kept silent about the ineffable.
99. 30.1Clement: forgetting God's glory, they impiously say that the Father suffered, as Theodotus holds.
100. 30.2Theodotus argues that sympathy is suffering, and that the whole Pleroma suffered with the fallen Aeon.
101. 31.1They argue that since the fullness dwelt in the Savior who suffered, the whole suffered with him.
102. 31.2The Pleroma, they say, learned from the fall of the twelfth Aeon.
103. 31.3The Aeons learned that they exist by the Father's grace; Wisdom, grasping beyond knowledge, fell into ignorance.
104. 31.4Wisdom's fall produced an emptiness, a shadow of the Name, the Son.
105. 32.1Each Aeon's fullness is its pair; what comes from a pair is a fullness, from a single Aeon an image.
106. 32.2Theodotus calls Christ, born of Wisdom's thought, an image of the Pleroma.
107. 32.3Christ left his mother Wisdom and ascended to the Pleroma,
108. 33.1where he was joined to the Paraclete; Christ became an adopted son, “firstborn” of the lower world.
109. 33.2Clement: this is a distortion of the church's teaching that the Savior is the firstborn, our root and head, and the church his fruit.
110. 33.3They say Wisdom then produced the Demiurge as a copy of Christ, and a type of the Father.
111. 33.4The Demiurge is inferior, born of desire; Wisdom was disgusted at his harshness.
112. 34.1The lower powers were not formed by the light but left to be formed by the Place.
113. 34.2When Wisdom enters the Pleroma with the spiritual seeds, the Demiurge will take her place.
114. 35.1Jesus is our light,
115. 35.2Theodotus reads Christ's self-emptying as his leaving the Pleroma, bringing with him the angels of the spiritual seed for its correction.
116. 35.3The angels plead for us, their counterparts, being held back until we can enter with them,
117. 35.4since they cannot enter the Pleroma without us.
118. 36.1They say our angels were produced as a unity.
119. 36.2Jesus was baptized, the undivided being divided, to unite divided humanity with the angels in the Pleroma.
120. 37.1The Valentinians say the righteous descendants of Adam are held with the Demiurge, the others in darkness feeling the fire.
121. 38.1A river of fire flows from the Demiurge's throne into Gehenna; the Demiurge himself is fiery.
122. 38.2A veil shields the spirits from him; only the archangel enters, as the high priest entered the Holy of Holies once a year.
123. 38.3Jesus sat beside the Demiurge to restrain the spirits, tame him, and open a way for the seed into the Pleroma.
124. 39.1Wisdom, abandoned by Christ, produced nothing complete thereafter and keeps the angelic elements of the lower beings.
125. 40.1The right-hand powers were produced before Wisdom asked for light, the church's seeds after.
126. 41.1Theodotus says the spiritual seeds came forth as children, not as passions or creatures.
127. 41.2The seeds are akin to the light, Jesus; so the church is said to be chosen before the foundation of the world.
128. 41.3They apply “let your light shine” and “the light that enlightens every man” to the spiritual seed alone.
129. 41.4They read “coming into the world” as the enlightened person ordering himself by casting off the passions.
130. 42.1The Cross is a sign of the Limit: it separates believers from unbelievers.
131. 42.2Jesus carries the spiritual seeds on his shoulders into the Pleroma by the sign of the cross.
132. 42.3They read the saying about taking up the cross as Christ's taking up Jesus' body, which shares the church's substance.
133. 43.1They say the higher powers knew Christ's names but not the power of the cross.
134. 43.2With the Father's authority and the Pleroma's consent, the Savior is sent forth as the “angel of counsel.”
135. 43.3He becomes head of all things after the Father, in whom all things were created.
136. 43.4God exalted him above every name; he is the one who descended and ascended.
137. 43.5The one who descended to the depths is the one who ascended above the heavens.
138. 44.1In the myth, Wisdom recognized the Savior and worshiped him, but veiled herself before his male angels.
139. 44.2They see in Wisdom's veil the reason for Paul's command that women be veiled “because of the angels.”
140. 45.1The Savior healed Wisdom, showing her the Pleroma and removing her passions.
141. 45.2He freed her from passion and turned her passions into the substance of the lower world, which was thus created.
142. 45.3They cite John 1:3 for the Savior's role in creation.
143. 46.1The passions were turned first into matter, then into bodies, gradually.
144. 46.2The Savior is the first creator; Wisdom, second, builds her house on seven pillars.
145. 47.1Wisdom first produces the Demiurge, image of the Father,
146. 47.2through whom she made heaven and earth, the right and the left.
147. 47.3The Demiurge produces the psychic Christ, archangels, and angels; “the Spirit borne above the waters” is read as the pure substance above the material.
148. 47.4“Invisible” in Gen 1:2 is read as describing formless matter.
149. 48.1They read “let there be light” as the Demiurge's separating and revealing the pure substance, the sun's light coming later.
150. 48.2From Wisdom's grief the Demiurge made the evil spiritual forces.
151. 48.3From fear came the beasts, from perplexity the elements of the world.
152. 48.4Fire pervades the other three elements, having no place of its own.
153. 49.1The Demiurge, unaware that Wisdom works through him, thinks he creates by his own power; they apply Rom 8:20–21 to him.
154. 49.2His blessing of the Sabbath shows that he labored unwillingly.
155. 50.1They say the Demiurge formed from matter an earthy, irrational soul, the man “according to the image.”
156. 50.2The man “according to the likeness” is what the Demiurge breathed into him, of his own substance.
157. 50.3The breath of life, once formed, became a living soul.
158. 51.1Within the earthy man is a psychic man, whole within whole, created in paradise, the fourth heaven;
159. 51.2They read “bone of my bones, flesh of my flesh” as the divine soul hidden in the material soul.
160. 51.3Christ's warning about destroying soul and body in Gehenna refers to these two.
161. 52.1The flesh is the “adversary” of the Gospel, Paul's warring law, and the strong man to be bound.
162. 52.2We should make peace with this adversary on the way, not feeding it with sin but putting it to death, so that it dissolves rather than enduring in the fire.
163. 53.1This flesh is the tare sown among the good seed, the devil's seed, the serpent that strikes the heel,
164. 53.2attacking the king's head.
165. 53.3Wisdom secretly sowed the spiritual seed in Adam, through angels, as Paul says of the law.
166. 53.4Like the Demiurge, human beings think they act on their own, unaware of Wisdom's moving them.
167. 53.5The spiritual seed in Adam is the bone full of marrow; from Adam come three kinds of people: first the irrational,
168. 54.1represented by Cain; second the rational and just, Abel; third the spiritual,
169. 54.2Seth; the three correspond to image, likeness, and spirit, and “the book of the generation of men” refers to them.
170. 54.3Seth, neither shepherd nor farmer, is spiritual; his son Enosh, who called on the Lord's name, belongs to heaven.
171. 55.1The earthy body is the fourth nature, the “garments of skin.”
172. 55.2Adam does not transmit the divine spirit or breath by begetting,
173. 55.3but only his material part; in this sense he is our father, the earthy first man.
174. 56.2Hence the material people are many, the psychic fewer, and the spiritual rare.
175. 56.3The Valentinian doctrine of three natures: the spiritual saved by nature, the psychic free to choose, the material lost by nature.
176. 56.4When the psychic are grafted into the olive tree and the Gentiles come in, all Israel will be saved.
177. 56.5Israel means the spiritual man who sees God, son of the free woman, not of Hagar.
178. 57.1The spiritual are formed; the psychic are transferred from slavery to freedom.
179. 58.1After the reign of death, Jesus the great champion took up the church, both spiritual and psychic, and saved them and all like them.
180. 58.2If the firstfruits are holy, so is the whole.
181. 59.1The Savior first put on the spiritual seed from Wisdom, containing it by his power,
182. 59.2At the Demiurge's realm he put on the psychic Christ foretold by the prophets and the law.
183. 59.3The psychic Christ was invisible, but the one coming into the world had to be seen, touched, and have a perceptible body.
184. 59.4So a body was woven for him from psychic substance, made perceptible by divine power.
185. 60.1They read Luke 1:35 as the Spirit forming Christ's body and God's power shaping it; and they hold the Savior was distinct from what he assumed.
186. 61.1Christ's own claims about himself are cited.
187. 61.2Christ's growth in wisdom and stature refers to the spiritual and psychic elements he assumed.
188. 61.3The blood and water from Christ's side signify the saved substances freed from passion.
189. 61.4They read Christ's predictions of his passion as referring to another, the passible element.
190. 61.5“I will go before you into Galilee” hints at the raising of the soul.
191. 61.6They say Christ's body died when the Spirit from his baptism withdrew; otherwise death would have overpowered the Savior.
192. 61.7Death was tricked: when it seized the body, the Savior destroyed death and raised the body, freed from passions.
193. 61.8The psychic are raised; the believing spiritual are saved beyond them, their souls being wedding garments. The psychic Christ sits at the Demiurge's right hand,
194. 62.1as Ps 110 says.
195. 62.2He sits until the end, when they will look on him whom they pierced; they pierced only the psychic flesh, and his “bone,” the soul, was not broken.
196. 62.3Christ's soul committed itself to the Father at his death; the spiritual element he saves himself.
197. 63.1The spiritual rest with Wisdom in the Ogdoad; other faithful souls are with the Demiurge until the end, when they too enter the Ogdoad.
198. 63.2Then all the saved share the wedding feast; afterward the spiritual put off their souls,
199. 64.1and, with Wisdom and their angel bridegrooms, enter the bridal chamber and see the Father, becoming Aeons in eternal union.
200. 65.1The Demiurge is like the friend of the bridegroom who stands outside and rejoices at his voice.
201. 65.2That is his fullness of joy.
202. 66.1Christ taught the apostles first through types, then parables, and finally plainly in private.
203. 67.1They read Paul's “when we were in the flesh” as referring to the weakness produced by Wisdom.
204. 67.2Christ's saying to Salome, that death lasts as long as women bear children, does not condemn birth,
205. 67.3which must go on until the seed
206. 67.4is complete; they say it refers to Wisdom, whose passions became creation, and from whose passion the Lord came to rescue us.
207. 68.1Children of Wisdom alone, we were formless, like miscarriages; formed by the Savior, we have become children of the bridal chamber.
208. 69.1Fate is the combined action of invisible, conflicting powers that govern the stars.
209. 69.2Each power rules those born when it is ascendant.
210. 70.1The powers riding on the stars control births;
211. 70.2the stars themselves only signify their activity, as birds' flight signifies without causing.
212. 71.1The zodiac and planets, moved by the powers, indicate births and changes of fortune.
213. 71.2The powers differ, good and evil, right and left, and each birth falls under them at its own time.
214. 72.1The Lord rescues us from the war of the powers, some for us and some against us, and gives us peace.
215. 72.2Good powers are like the king's soldiers; evil ones like robbers who seized their swords.
216. 73.1Because of the hostile powers, the good ones cannot fully protect us.
217. 73.2They are like hirelings, not like the good shepherd who lays down his life.
218. 73.3Man, weak and inclined to evil, sides with his enemies, and so suffers more.
219. 74.1The Lord came down to bring heavenly peace to those on earth,
220. 74.2The new star at Christ's birth abolished the old order of the stars; Christ moves believers from Fate to his providence.
221. 75.1They say Fate is real for others, as fulfilled predictions and astronomy show.
222. 75.2The Magi recognized from the star that a king of the God-fearing was born; then only the Jews were famous for piety.
223. 75.3So the Savior came first to the Jews, then renowned for piety.
224. 76.1Christ's birth frees us from Fate, his baptism from fire, his passion from passion, so that we may follow him in everything.
225. 76.2The baptized have gone into God and received authority over the evil powers.
226. 76.3Christ commands the apostles to preach and to baptize believers in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
227. 76.4into whom we are reborn, raised above all the powers.
228. 77.1Baptism is death to the old life, in which we renounce the evil powers, and life in Christ.
229. 77.2Baptism changes the soul, not the body.
230. 77.3The newly baptized is God's servant and master of the unclean spirits, who now tremble before him.
231. 78.1They say Fate holds until baptism; after it astrology is no longer true.
232. 78.2Not only the washing frees, but the knowledge of who we were and have become, where we came from and where we go, what birth and rebirth are.
233. 79.1Once formed, the seed becomes a son of the bridegroom, freed from the cosmic powers.
234. 80.1The one born of the mother goes to death; the one reborn by Christ passes to life.
235. 80.2The reborn die to the world and live to God; death is undone by death and corruption by resurrection.
236. 80.3Sealed in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the baptized is beyond all hostile powers and bears the heavenly image.
237. 81.1Fire is of two kinds: bodily fire for bodies, and a pure, bodiless fire that touches demons and the devil.
238. 81.2Baptism is double: water quenches the visible fire, the Spirit protects against the spiritual fire.
239. 81.3Air feeds or quenches fire, but the Spirit from above rules even the evil powers.
240. 82.1The bread and the oil are sanctified by God's name: outwardly unchanged, they are changed in power into spiritual power.
241. 82.2Likewise the exorcised baptismal water both drives away evil and receives holiness.
242. 83.1One should come to baptism with joy, but also fear, since unclean spirits may go down with the candidate and receive the seal with him.
243. 84.1Hence the fasts, prayers, raised hands, and kneeling before baptism: a soul is rescued from the lions' mouth, and temptations follow from the angry powers.
244. 85.1After his baptism Christ was tempted among the wild beasts, as a pattern for us; having overcome, he was served by angels.
245. 85.2Having conquered the evil angels in the flesh, he is served by angels.
246. 85.3We must put on the Lord's armor, which quenches the devil's darts.
247. 86.1Christ asked whose image was on the coin, so that each should be given to its owner.
248. 86.2The believer bears God's name as inscription and the Spirit as image; sealed like marked livestock, the faithful soul bears the marks of Christ.
249. 86.3The sealed are the children already in bed and the wise virgins who enter the prepared good things, while the others are shut out.