Against Heresies

Contents

Reading pages: 1.0.1–1.4.5 · 1.5.1–1.8.5 · 1.9.1–1.13.7 · 1.14.1–1.17.2 · 1.18.1–1.23.5 · 1.24.1–1.29.4 · 1.30.1–2.1.5 · 2.2.1–2.6.3 · 2.7.1–2.12.8 · 2.13.1–2.15.3 · 2.16.1–2.18.7 · 2.19.1–2.22.6 · 2.23.1–2.27.3 · 2.28.1–2.29.3 · 2.30.1–2.32.5 · 2.33.1–3.4.3 · 3.5.1–3.9.3 · 3.10.1–3.12.1 · 3.12.2–3.12.14 · 3.12.15–3.15.3 · 3.16.1–3.17.4 · 3.18.1–3.20.4 · 3.21.1–3.23.8 · 3.24.1–4.4.3 · 4.5.1–4.9.3 · 4.10.1–4.14.3 · 4.15.1–4.17.6 · 4.18.1–4.19.3 · 4.20.1–4.22.2 · 4.23.1–4.27.4 · 4.28.1–4.32.2 · 4.33.1–4.34.5 · 4.35.1–4.36.8 · 4.37.1–4.40.3 · 4.41.1–5.5.2 · 5.6.1–5.11.2 · 5.12.1–5.15.4 · 5.16.1–5.21.3 · 5.22.1–5.27.2 · 5.28.1–5.33.4 · 5.34.1–5.36.3

1. 1.0.1Irenaeus introduces the false teachers who, under pretext of knowledge, draw the simple away from the Creator.
2. 1.0.2Irenaeus explains that error disguises itself as truth and that he will expose the teaching of Ptolemy's followers, a branch of the Valentinian school.
3. 1.0.3Irenaeus apologizes for his plain style, written among the Celts, and asks his friend to develop and pass on what he sends.
4. 1.1.1Irenaeus sets out the Valentinian account of the first eight Aeons, the Ogdoad.
5. 1.1.2The Ogdoad emits a further ten and twelve Aeons, ending with Theletos and Sophia.
6. 1.1.3The Valentinians find their thirty Aeons in the Saviour's thirty hidden years and in the hours of the parable of the labourers.
7. 1.2.1Only Nus knows the Father; the other Aeons quietly long to see him.
8. 1.2.2Sophia, the youngest Aeon, rashly seeks to comprehend the Father and is saved from dissolution by Horos.
9. 1.2.3In another version Sophia bears a formless substance, from whose passions matter arises.
10. 1.2.4The Father emits Horos, who restores Sophia and casts her intention and passion outside the Pleroma.
11. 1.2.5Christ and the Holy Spirit are emitted to complete the Aeons; Christ teaches them that the Father is known only through the Monogenes.
12. 1.2.6The Aeons, at rest, together produce Jesus, the perfect fruit of the Pleroma, with angels as his bodyguards.
13. 1.3.1The Valentinians claim their system was revealed in parables and find the Aeons wherever Scripture or the liturgy says “ages”.
14. 1.3.2The Valentinians find the twelve, eighteen, and ten Aeons in the Gospel story and in the letters of Jesus' name.
15. 1.3.3Judas's apostasy and the woman with the flow of blood are made into figures of Sophia's passion and healing.
16. 1.3.4The Valentinians use texts about Christ as “all things” to show that the Saviour is the All.
17. 1.3.5Horos is said to have two powers, strengthening (as Cross) and separating (as Limit), which the Valentinians find in sayings of Jesus, John the Baptist, and Paul.
18. 1.3.6The heretics twist the Gospels, the apostles, and the ambiguous parables of the Law and Prophets to fit their system.
19. 1.4.1Sophia's Intention, called Achamoth, is cast outside the Pleroma, given form by Christ, and left to suffer grief, fear, and bewilderment.
20. 1.4.2From Achamoth's passions, tears, and laughter come the soul and the material elements of the world.
21. 1.4.3Irenaeus mocks the paid secret teaching that the seas came from Achamoth's tears and light from her laughter.
22. 1.4.4Irenaeus parodies the system by suggesting that fresh water came from Achamoth's sweat and hot springs from some other part of her.
23. 1.4.5Christ sends the Saviour, who gives Achamoth knowledge and turns her passions into matter; she then conceives spiritual offspring from the sight of his angels.
24. 1.5.1Achamoth forms from soul-substance the Demiurge, Father of the psychics and maker of the material, who with his angels images the Aeons.
25. 1.5.2The Demiurge makes heaven and earth and the seven heavens, above which he dwells as the Hebdomad beneath Achamoth, the Ogdoad.
26. 1.5.3The Demiurge makes the world in ignorance of his mother Achamoth, who holds the middle place until the end.
27. 1.5.4From fear, grief, and perplexity come the Demiurge, the devil and the demons, and the four elements of the world.
28. 1.5.5The Demiurge makes the earthy man and breathes the psychic man into him; the “garments of skin” are the flesh.
29. 1.5.6Achamoth's spiritual seed is secretly sown in the Demiurge's man; the Valentinians claim to be this spiritual Church.
30. 1.6.1The Valentinians teach that the material perishes, the animate may be saved, and the spiritual, which they claim to be, will be perfected by knowledge.
31. 1.6.2The Valentinians say that church members need good works to be saved, but that they themselves, being spiritual by nature, are saved whatever they do.
32. 1.6.3Irenaeus charges the Valentinian “perfect” with eating idol food, attending games, and seducing or taking other men's wives.
33. 1.6.4The Valentinians call church members simple and claim grace as their own possession, saying that the spiritual must practise the mystery of conjunction and need no works.
34. 1.7.1At the end Achamoth enters the Pleroma as bride of the Saviour, the spiritual become brides of his angels, the righteous rest in the middle, and fire consumes matter.
35. 1.7.2Some Valentinians make the Lord a composite of four elements, of which only the animate Christ and his fashioned body suffered.
36. 1.7.3The Valentinians divide the words of the prophets and of Jesus among the mother, the spiritual seed, and the Demiurge.
37. 1.7.4The Demiurge, ignorant until the Saviour came, then learned from him and is figured by the centurion of the Gospel.
38. 1.7.5The Valentinians make Cain, Abel, and Seth types of the earthy, animate, and spiritual natures, and divide souls into good and evil by nature.
39. 1.8.1Irenaeus compares the heretics' use of Scripture to rearranging the jewels of a king's mosaic into the image of a fox.
40. 1.8.2The Valentinians read Jairus's daughter, Paul's “untimely birth”, the veiled woman, and the cries of Jesus's passion as figures of Achamoth.
41. 1.8.3The Valentinians find their three kinds of men in Jesus's sayings to would-be followers, the parable of the leaven, and Paul's letters.
42. 1.8.4The lost sheep, the lost coin, Simeon, Anna, and texts on wisdom and marriage are made into figures of Achamoth, the Demiurge, and the conjunctions.
43. 1.8.5The Valentinians read the prologue of John's Gospel as a description of their first eight Aeons.
44. 1.9.1Irenaeus argues that if John's prologue really described the Ogdoad, it would have kept its order and named all the consorts.
45. 1.9.2John speaks of one Christ who is the Word made flesh, not of a series of Valentinian Aeons with these names.
46. 1.9.3The one who suffered and dwelt among us is the Word of God himself, made true flesh, so the Valentinian Ogdoad collapses.
47. 1.9.4Like a cento stitched from Homer, the heretics' system reuses scriptural words for a foreign theme, which anyone who holds the rule of truth received in baptism will recognize.
48. 1.9.5Before refuting them, Irenaeus will show how the founders of this system disagree among themselves.
49. 1.10.1The Church's rule of faith confesses the Holy Spirit who foretold Christ's birth, passion, resurrection, ascension and return to judge and to give eternal life.
50. 1.10.2The one faith is kept alike by churches throughout the world, and neither eloquence nor weakness of speech adds to it or takes from it.
51. 1.10.3Greater understanding means explaining God's dispensation within the one faith, not inventing another God or a Pleroma of Aeons.
52. 1.11.1Valentinus's own scheme of Dyads, Ogdoad, two Limits, Christ, the Demiurge and the Spirit differs from his disciples'.
53. 1.11.2Secundus divides the first Ogdoad into a right and a left Tetrad and derives the fallen power from the Aeons' fruits.
54. 1.11.3Another Valentinian teacher names a first Tetrad of Monotes, Henotes, Monad and Hen.
55. 1.11.4Irenaeus parodies the invented names with a mock Tetrad of Gourd, Emptiness, Cucumber and Melon.
56. 1.11.5Other Valentinians put a further Ogdoad of negative names before Bythus, and they disagree whether Bythus has a consort.
57. 1.12.1Ptolemy's followers give Bythus two consorts, Thought and Will, from whose union Nus and Truth came.
58. 1.12.2Their sleepless, deliberating Father is like Homer's Zeus, not the God whose thought and will are one.
59. 1.12.3Others say all the Aeons were emitted at once and reverse the order of Logos and Anthropos.
60. 1.12.4The Valentinians disagree about the origin of the Saviour and about why he is called Son of Man.
61. 1.13.1Marcus, a magician, claims to improve on Valentinus and deceives many as a forerunner of Antichrist.
62. 1.13.2Marcus counterfeits the Eucharist with cups that turn red and overflow, to deceive women.
63. 1.13.3Marcus seduces wealthy women by making them 'prophesy', and they reward him with money and their bodies.
64. 1.13.4Faithful women rejected Marcus, knowing that true prophecy comes when God wills, not when a man commands.
65. 1.13.5Women who returned to the church confessed that Marcus had defiled them, among them the wife of a deacon in Asia.
66. 1.13.6Marcus's disciples call themselves perfect, above fear, and recite a formula by which the Mother makes them invisible to the judge.
67. 1.13.7In the Rhône valley too, Marcus's followers have ruined many women, some of whom confess, some fall away, and some waver.
68. 1.14.1Marcus claims the Tetrad appeared to him as a woman and revealed the Father's name of thirty letters in four syllables.
69. 1.14.2Marcus teaches that the letters of the divine name generate other letters without end, so that each Aeon utters only its own part.
70. 1.14.3Marcus's Tetrad shows him Truth as a naked woman whose limbs are pairs of Greek letters.
71. 1.14.4Truth utters the name Christ Jesus, and the Tetrad explains that its six letters hide a higher name known in the Pleroma.
72. 1.14.5Marcus assigns the mute letters, semivowels and vowels of the Greek alphabet to pairs of Aeons and derives the numbers twenty-four and thirty.
73. 1.14.6Marcus reads the Transfiguration, the dove at the baptism, creation on the sixth day and the crucifixion at the sixth hour as signs of the number six.
74. 1.14.7Marcus's Sige says the seven heavens each sound one of the seven Greek vowels in praise.
75. 1.14.8Marcus claims that newborns' cries and the cry 'O' in distress are praise sounded by the vowels.
76. 1.14.9Irenaeus sums up Marcus's speculations on the name and announces his account of their number-mysticism.
77. 1.15.1Marcus's Sige derives the twenty-four letters from the first Tetrad and counts the letters of the names of the Aeons and of Jesus.
78. 1.15.2Marcus derives the name Jesus (888) and the titles Christ and Son from numbers, and says knowledge of the name freed men from ignorance and death.
79. 1.15.3Marcus explains Jesus' birth from Mary and the descent of the dove at his baptism in terms of the Aeons, separating the man Jesus from the Christ.
80. 1.15.4Irenaeus mocks Marcus's alphabet-body of Truth, since the Greek alphabet itself was assembled late and by stages.
81. 1.15.5Irenaeus protests that Marcus's letter-mysticism divides and measures the unspeakable Father and the Word, leading his followers into blasphemy.
82. 1.15.6Irenaeus quotes an elder's verses against Marcus as an idol-maker and magician empowered by Azazel.
83. 1.16.1The Marcosians make the parables of the lost sheep and lost coin into number-symbols of the Aeons' fall.
84. 1.16.2Further Marcosian letter-arithmetic derives the Ogdoad, the Triacontad and the number ninety-nine from the Greek alphabet.
85. 1.16.3Those who leave the Church for such fables are self-condemned and to be avoided, as Paul and John teach.
86. 1.17.1The Marcosians see the elements, the heavens, the zodiac, the months and hours as images of the Aeons.
87. 1.17.2They say the Demiurge, unable to copy eternity, made time, and so his work will perish.
88. 1.18.1The heretics read the creation account of Genesis 1 and the human body as encoding the Tetrad, Decad, Duodecad and Triacontad.
89. 1.18.2The heretics find their Tetrad and Ogdoad in the fourth day, the tabernacle, the priest's robe and the days of man's creation.
90. 1.18.3The heretics find the Ogdoad in the ark, David and circumcision, and the Decad in many tens of Scripture.
91. 1.18.4The heretics find their Duodecad in the twelves of Scripture and their Triacontad in its thirties.
92. 1.19.1The heretics twist texts on Israel's ignorance of God and on not seeing God to mean an unknown Father above the Creator.
93. 1.19.2They apply 'No one shall see God' and the angel's words to Daniel to their hidden Bythus, which Irenaeus will refute.
94. 1.20.1The Marcosians use forged writings, such as the story of the boy Jesus asking his teacher what Alpha means.
95. 1.20.2The heretics twist several Gospel sayings to mean that Jesus revealed an unknown Father.
96. 1.20.3Their chief proof-text is Jesus' saying that no one knows the Father except the Son.
97. 1.21.1The heretics' 'redemption' takes as many forms as they have teachers and is a Satanic denial of baptism.
98. 1.21.2They teach that 'redemption' is a second, spiritual rite for perfection, beyond the baptism for remission of sins.
99. 1.21.3Irenaeus describes Gnostic rites of 'redemption': a bridal chamber, baptism with invented formulas, Hebrew-sounding words, and anointing with balsam.
100. 1.21.4Some pour oil and water on the initiate's head, while others reject all material rites and say knowledge alone is redemption.
101. 1.21.5Some 'redeem' the dying with oil and water and give them formulas to escape the powers and the Demiurge after death.
102. 1.22.1The rule of truth confesses one God who made all things by his Word and Spirit, the God of Abraham and Father of Jesus Christ; against it the heresies are easily shown to err.
103. 1.22.2Irenaeus will now trace the heresies to their source and root.
104. 1.23.1Simon of Samaria, the magician of Acts 8, tried to buy the power of the Spirit and later presented himself as the supreme power, Father, Son and Spirit.
105. 1.23.2Simon taught that his companion Helena, a freed prostitute, was his first Thought, imprisoned by the angels she made and reborn in many women, among them Helen of Troy.
106. 1.23.3Simon claimed to have come in apparent human form to free Helena and save men by grace alone, setting his followers free from the prophets and the moral law.
107. 1.23.4Simon's followers practise magic, worship images of Simon and Helena, and are the source of the 'knowledge falsely so called'.
108. 1.23.5Menander, Simon's successor, claimed to be the Saviour and promised his baptized disciples deathless life.
109. 1.24.1Saturninus taught that seven angels made the world and man, whom a heavenly spark of life raised up and to which it returns at death.
110. 1.24.2Saturninus taught a Saviour without real body, two races of men, and that marriage and procreation come from Satan.
111. 1.24.3Basilides derived a chain of powers from the unborn Father and 365 heavens, one for each day of the year.
112. 1.24.4Basilides taught that Christ did not suffer, but Simon of Cyrene was crucified in his place while Jesus laughed, so that one should deny the crucified.
113. 1.24.5Basilides held that only the soul is saved, treated idol-meat and lust as indifferent, and gave names to the 365 heavens.
114. 1.24.6Basilideans claim to know all while remaining unknown, are ready to deny the faith, and keep their mysteries secret.
115. 1.24.7The Basilideans place their 365 heavens as the astrologers do and call their chief Abraxas.
116. 1.25.1Carpocrates taught that Jesus was Joseph's son, whose pure soul remembered the unbegotten God and despised the Jewish customs.
117. 1.25.2Carpocratians claim that a soul which despises the world-rulers equals or surpasses Jesus.
118. 1.25.3Carpocratians practise magic and, sent by Satan, bring the Church's name into disrepute, though true Christians share nothing with them.
119. 1.25.4Carpocratians hold that souls must pass through every kind of action, however vile, before being freed, misreading Jesus' parable of the adversary.
120. 1.25.5Irenaeus doubts the Carpocratians practise what their writings teach: a secret tradition that all but faith and love is morally indifferent.
121. 1.25.6Some Carpocratians brand their disciples, call themselves Gnostics, and honour images of Christ alongside those of the philosophers.
122. 1.26.1Cerinthus taught that the world was made by a lower power and that Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and left him before the passion.
123. 1.26.2The Ebionites hold a low view of Christ, use only Matthew, reject Paul, and keep circumcision and the law.
124. 1.26.3The Nicolaitans, followers of the deacon Nicolas, live licentiously, as the Apocalypse shows.
125. 1.27.1Cerdo, at Rome under Hyginus, taught that the God of the law and prophets is not the Father of Christ.
126. 1.27.2Marcion blasphemed the God of the law, cut down Luke's Gospel and Paul's letters, and taught that Jesus came from a higher Father.
127. 1.27.3Marcion taught that only the soul is saved and that Christ in Hades saved Cain and the Sodomites but not Abel, Noah, Abraham and the prophets.
128. 1.27.4Irenaeus promises a separate refutation of Marcion and says all heretics are heirs of Simon Magus, using Christ's name as a lure.
129. 1.28.1The Encratites, following Saturninus and Marcion, rejected marriage and meat; Tatian, Justin's pupil, after Justin's death added Aeons and denied Adam's salvation.
130. 1.28.2Others, following Basilides and Carpocrates, allowed promiscuity, plural marriage and idol-meat; the heresies are past counting.
131. 1.29.1The Barbelo-Gnostics derive from an unnameable Father and Barbelo a series of Aeons and Christ, the anointed light.
132. 1.29.2The Barbelo-Gnostics add Autogenes and four luminaries with their attendant powers.
133. 1.29.3Autogenes emits Adamas, the perfect man, joined to knowledge, from whom comes the Tree of Gnosis.
134. 1.29.4In the Barbelo-Gnostic myth, Sophia-Prunicus, seeking a consort, produces the ignorant Proarchon, who makes the lower world and boasts that he alone is God.
135. 1.30.1The Ophites teach a First Man, a Second Man (Son of Man), and the Spirit as First Woman, from whom Christ was generated.
136. 1.30.2Christ and his mother are caught up into the incorruptible Aeon, which the Ophites call the true Church.
137. 1.30.3In the Ophite myth, Sophia-Prunicus falls into the waters, takes a body, makes the visible heaven from it, and then casts it off.
138. 1.30.4Sophia's son generates a line of sons, forming a Hebdomad with the mother as the eighth.
139. 1.30.5The Ophites name the seven powers from Ialdabaoth to Astapheus; Ialdabaoth's desire for matter produces the serpent-shaped Nus, source of all evil.
140. 1.30.6Ialdabaoth boasts and is rebuked by his mother; the powers make man, and breathing life into him empties Ialdabaoth of his light.
141. 1.30.7In the Ophite myth the serpent's counsel, prompted by Sophia, leads Adam and Eve to the knowledge of the higher power.
142. 1.30.8Ialdabaoth expels Adam and Eve and casts down the serpent, who with his six sons forms the seven demons hostile to mankind.
143. 1.30.9The Ophites retell the story of Adam and Eve, Cain, Abel, Seth and Norea in terms of their myth.
144. 1.30.10In the Ophite myth Ialdabaoth sends the flood, chooses Abraham and gives the law through Moses.
145. 1.30.11The Ophites assign the prophets to their seven powers and say Sophia spoke through them; she brought about the births of John and Jesus.
146. 1.30.12In the Ophite myth Christ descends through the seven heavens, joins Sophia as bridegroom and bride, and enters Jesus, born of the Virgin.
147. 1.30.13The Ophites say Christ left Jesus before the crucifixion and raised him in a non-worldly body, which the disciples misunderstood.
148. 1.30.14The Ophites say the risen Jesus stayed eighteen months teaching a few disciples, then took his seat to draw holy souls away from Ialdabaoth.
149. 1.30.15Some of these Gnostics say Sophia became the serpent who gave knowledge, and see a serpent shape in the human intestines.
150. 1.31.1The Cainites honour Cain, Esau, Korah and the Sodomites, and say Judas alone knew the truth; they use a 'Gospel of Judas'.
151. 1.31.2The Cainites teach that salvation requires passing through every shameful deed, done in the name of the angel who prompts it.
152. 1.31.3Irenaeus has exposed the Valentinians' ancestry in the hope that some may repent and others be protected, since exposure is itself refutation.
153. 1.31.4Having exposed the 'little fox', Irenaeus promises a full refutation in the next book.
154. 2.0.1In the preface to Book 2, Irenaeus sums up Book 1 and announces that he will now overthrow the heretics' system.
155. 2.1.1Irenaeus begins his refutation with the one God, Creator of all, above whom there is nothing.
156. 2.1.2God must contain all things; if anything were outside him, he would be bounded by something greater, which would then be God.
157. 2.1.3Anything outside the Pleroma leads to an infinite regress of containers, so that the mind never rests in the one God.
158. 2.1.4The same reasoning refutes Marcion's two Gods and leads to endless worlds and gods.
159. 2.1.5Either one God contains all, or there are many limited gods, none of whom is truly God or Almighty.
160. 2.2.1To say angels made the world against the Father's will makes them stronger than God or God careless.
161. 2.2.2If the world was made within God's domain, it cannot have been made against his will or without his knowledge.
162. 2.2.3If the world was made with God's will, he is its true maker, as the craftsman, not the tool, is said to cut.
163. 2.2.4God, needing nothing, made all things by his Word, giving each its fitting nature and order.
164. 2.2.5God made the world by his Word, as John, Genesis, David, Moses and Paul testify, not by angels or other gods.
165. 2.3.1If the Father foresaw the creation in the void, he himself made it; if not, he is not all-knowing.
166. 2.3.2What God conceived he made, so the world as it is is worthy of the Father, not the fruit of ignorance.
167. 2.4.1Irenaeus asks where the heretics' 'void' came from: whether emitted or self-generated, it makes nonsense of their system.
168. 2.4.2If creation is a stain within the Father's domain, he should have prevented or first healed it, and pitied the makers before their work.
169. 2.4.3A void or shadow within the Father's light would accuse that light of failing to fill what is within it.
170. 2.5.1If the world was made within the Father's domain by others, either all within him is light or the Pleroma itself is dark, and their Christ becomes the cause of ignorance.
171. 2.5.2If 'outside the Pleroma' means ignorance, then the Saviour and Christ, who went out to form the Mother, were themselves in ignorance.
172. 2.5.3If creation is a deficiency, its blame falls on the Father who permitted it, who is then either weak or a hypocrite.
173. 2.5.4To make God permit what he does not will is to make him a slave of necessity, like Homer's Zeus.
174. 2.6.1The angels and the world-maker could not be ignorant of the God who made and contains them, since reason implanted in all reveals one God, the Lord of all.
175. 2.6.2Even demons, animals and distant subjects of the Emperor know the supreme ruler; how much more must the angels know the Almighty.
176. 2.6.3It is absurd that the heretics claim to know the supreme God while denying such knowledge to the world-maker.
177. 2.7.1If the world were a passing image made in honour of the Aeons, it would dishonour rather than honour them.
178. 2.7.2If the ignorant Demiurge is an image of the Only-begotten, either the image is bad or the Only-begotten is ignorant too.
179. 2.7.3The countless, conflicting creatures of the world cannot be images of thirty uniform Aeons.
180. 2.7.4Neither Sophia's Enthymesis nor the angels of the Pleroma can account for creation's variety as its images.
181. 2.7.5If creation copies higher patterns, the regress of models never ends; one God made all things from himself.
182. 2.7.6Corruptible, bounded things cannot be images of spiritual, boundless Aeons.
183. 2.7.7Created things cannot be images of the thirty Aeons by number either, since they are countless.
184. 2.8.1If creation were a shadow of the Aeons, they would be bodies, and the shadow would last as long as they do.
185. 2.8.2If creation is shadow because it is far from the Father's light, that light is weak and Bythus is not the fullness of all.
186. 2.8.3Nothing can exist outside the Father, no void or shadow, and no other could make creation within his domain; the heretics' system is empty.
187. 2.9.1All men, from Adam's tradition, the prophets and creation itself, and the whole Church from the apostles, confess one God, maker of the world.
188. 2.9.2The heretics' higher Father has no witness, and their contempt for the Creator makes them worse than the pagans.
189. 2.10.1Obscure parables must be explained by what is clear, not by inventing another God, which only adds a greater riddle.
190. 2.10.2The heretics, not believing that God made all things from nothing by his will, invent vain explanations of matter.
191. 2.10.3It is ridiculous to derive matter from Achamoth's tears and laughter while refusing to believe God created it.
192. 2.10.4God, unlike men, made the very matter of creation from nothing; the heretics' account is incredible.
193. 2.11.1Like Aesop's dog, the heretics have lost the true bread for a shadow; the Lord's words confess one Father and Creator.
194. 2.11.2Irenaeus will first question the heretics about their own doctrines and then bring the Lord's words, hoping for their conversion.
195. 2.12.1The Triacontad fails by defect, since the Father, unlike the emitted Aeons, should not be counted among them.
196. 2.12.2Thought and Silence cannot be separate beings from the Father; if united, all the paired Aeons must be inseparable.
197. 2.12.3If the paired Aeons are inseparable, Sophia could not suffer or generate apart from her consort, and their whole myth falls.
198. 2.12.4Separating the other paired Aeons is impossible and contradicts the Valentinians' own teaching of final unity.
199. 2.12.5Speech (Logos) and Silence (Sige) cannot coexist in one Pleroma, any more than light and darkness.
200. 2.12.6Whether the Aeons are united or separate, the Valentinian Ogdoad cannot stand.
201. 2.12.7The Triacontad fails by excess too, since Horos, Christ, the Holy Spirit and the Saviour are emitted Aeons left uncounted.
202. 2.12.8With the Triacontad overthrown, the Valentinian reading of Gospel numbers (thirty years, twelve apostles, twelve years of bleeding) collapses.
203. 2.13.1Mind (Nus) is the source of thought (Ennoia), not its product, so the Valentinian order of emission is backwards.
204. 2.13.2Thought, reflection, judgement, counsel and word are stages of one mind, not separate beings.
205. 2.13.3The heretics project human mental processes onto God, who is simple, wholly mind and light, and unlike man.
206. 2.13.4God is above all our names for him; even in man the mind is not emitted from itself, much less in God.
207. 2.13.5An emitted mind would make God composite and would require something older than God to receive it.
208. 2.13.6If the Aeons were emitted within the Father, none could be ignorant of him unless God is made a bounded body.
209. 2.13.7All within the Father must share in him, leaving no room for ignorance; otherwise he is a void.
210. 2.13.8God is wholly Mind and wholly Word; to model the Word's generation on human speech gives the eternal Word a beginning.
211. 2.13.9Life cannot come sixth, since God is life; mind, word, life and truth are names of God's eternal perfections, not successive emissions.
212. 2.13.10The Gnostics quarrel over whether Man or Word came first, projecting human processes onto God and misusing 'Seek and you will find'.
213. 2.14.1The Valentinian system copies the theogony of the comic poet Antiphanes, merely changing the names.
214. 2.14.2The Gnostics have stitched their system together from the philosophers: Thales, Homer, Anaximander and Anaxagoras.
215. 2.14.3The Gnostics' void and images come from Democritus, Epicurus and Plato.
216. 2.14.4Creation from pre-existing matter and the rule of necessity over God come from Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato and the Stoics.
217. 2.14.5The Saviour 'made from all the Aeons' copies Hesiod's Pandora; their indifference to conduct comes from the Cynics, their subtlety from Aristotle.
218. 2.14.6Their number-mysticism, and Marcus's Tetrad, come from the Pythagoreans.
219. 2.14.7If the philosophers knew the truth, the Saviour's coming was needless; if not, the Gnostics' 'knowledge' is theirs too, and false.
220. 2.14.8The heretics lure people with plausible talk of the Word's generation, then impose the baseless names of the further Aeons.
221. 2.14.9Irenaeus lists the Aeons' names to show their absurdity; even the pagan gods, supposedly their images, have better names.
222. 2.15.1Irenaeus asks the Valentinians to give a reason for the numbers of their Aeons apart from creation.
223. 2.15.2Why the Pleroma is divided into eight, ten and twelve must be explained from the Pleroma itself, not from creation.
224. 2.15.3If the Pleroma's shape has no reason, the Father acted irrationally; if it was shaped for creation's sake, creation is more honoured than the Pleroma.
225. 2.16.1If the Demiurge copied a higher pattern, the same question arises about Bythus, and the chain of models never ends.
226. 2.16.2Basilides' 365 heavens only push the same question back to his unnameable power.
227. 2.16.3It is safer to confess from the start that the Creator is the only God and took the model of creation from himself.
228. 2.16.4Each sect accuses the one below it of not rising high enough, and anyone could outbid them all with a larger number of heavens.
229. 2.17.1Irenaeus turns to examine how the rest of the Aeons were supposedly emitted.
230. 2.17.2Irenaeus lists the possible ways the Aeons could have been emitted.
231. 2.17.3If the Aeons were begotten like human offspring, they are either impassible like the Father or of a foreign substance, and in any case bodily.
232. 2.17.4If the Aeons were lit like torches from one light, they share one substance and either all are impassible or the Father suffers too.
233. 2.17.5If all the Aeons share the Father's light, the fall of the youngest is inexplicable unless the Father himself can suffer.
234. 2.17.6The branch image fails in the same way: what is true of the Aeons must be true of the Father.
235. 2.17.7If the Aeons came forth like rays from the sun, their passion would reach back to Nous and the Father himself.
236. 2.17.8The Logos and the Aeons from him could not be ignorant of the Father; Valentinus's Wisdom, a devilish emission, is another matter.
237. 2.17.9The Valentinians claim the Word was emitted blind, ignorant of the Father, citing the man born blind as its symbol.
238. 2.17.10If the Father could later remove the Aeons' ignorance, he could have prevented it, so the Valentinians make him the author of evil.
239. 2.17.11On their own account the Father's will is the cause of the Aeons' ignorance, which he could have prevented by teaching them from the start.
240. 2.18.1Ignorance and passion are contrary to wisdom, so the suffering Aeon cannot be called Sophia.
241. 2.18.2A thought cannot exist apart from the one who thinks it, and the Valentinian story makes the desire to know the Father a fault.
242. 2.18.3Their Christ makes the Aeons perfect by forbidding them to seek the Father, contrary to the Lord's command to seek and find.
243. 2.18.4Since the Aeon's thought and her passion were one and the same, neither could be separated off to become matter.
244. 2.18.5Like is not harmed by like, so an Aeon of the Pleroma's own substance could not suffer; the Valentinians have given her the passion of a comic lover.
245. 2.18.6Seeking the Father brings perfection, not passion, as the Valentinians claim for themselves; yet they say it nearly destroyed their Aeon.
246. 2.18.7The same search for the Father is said to save the Valentinians but to have ruined the Aeon who is their ancestor.
247. 2.19.1If the seed was conceived formless after the image of the Savior's angels, those angels must themselves be formless.
248. 2.19.2The claim that the Demiurge did not notice the seed deposited in him either makes the seed nothing or cannot be shown.
249. 2.19.3It is absurd that the same seed made the Valentinians spiritual but left the Demiurge who received all of it ignorant.
250. 2.19.4If the seed grows and takes form only in matter, matter and this world are more useful than the Father's light, which contradicts their system.
251. 2.19.5Whether the Mother brought forth the seed all at once or bit by bit, the Valentinian account fails.
252. 2.19.6A seed formed in human souls would bear a human shape, not an angelic one, and the spiritual has no need to descend into flesh.
253. 2.19.7Those who believed in Christ were the poor and despised, not the priests and kings, so the claim that the seed makes souls rulers is false.
254. 2.19.8Having exposed the main heads of the Valentinian system, Irenaeus considers its falsity shown, as one need not drink the sea to know it is salt.
255. 2.19.9The Valentinians make Christ, the Spirit, and the Savior products of a fall, which is impiety toward all of them.
256. 2.20.1The Valentinians read the twelfth Aeon's passion into Judas, the twelfth month, and the woman with the flow of blood.
257. 2.20.2Judas, cast out and replaced, cannot be a type of an Aeon who was restored, nor the betrayer a type of one who suffered.
258. 2.20.3Christ's saving passion is the opposite of the Aeon's ruinous passion: it gave life, truth, and incorruption.
259. 2.20.4Judas was the twelfth apostle, but the suffering Aeon is the thirtieth, so the type fails even in number.
260. 2.20.5Judas cannot typify the Enthymesis, which was restored, nor can two men typify the three Valentinian entities.
261. 2.21.1If the twelve apostles typify twelve Aeons, the higher Aeons go unrepresented, and the seventy would add seventy more Aeons.
262. 2.21.2Irenaeus mocks the Valentinians' composite Savior by comparing him with Hesiod's Pandora and Pindar's Pelops.
263. 2.22.1The Valentinians wrongly take Isaiah's “acceptable year of the Lord” to mean that Christ preached for only one year.
264. 2.22.2The acceptable year is the whole time from Christ's coming to the end, and the day of retribution is the judgment that follows.
265. 2.22.3John's Gospel records three Passovers in Christ's ministry, so he did not preach for only one year.
266. 2.22.4Christ passed through every stage of life, sanctifying each, and was truly what he seemed.
267. 2.22.5Irenaeus appeals to the Gospel and to the elders of Asia who knew John that Christ taught into older age.
268. 2.22.6The Jews' remark “You are not yet fifty” shows that Christ was then past forty, not thirty.
269. 2.23.1The woman suffered eleven years and was healed in the twelfth, the reverse of eleven impassible Aeons and one suffering Aeon.
270. 2.23.2Other healings, after eighteen and thirty-eight years, cannot be fitted to the Aeons, so the type of the woman proves nothing.
271. 2.24.1Their number games with the name Jesus fail, since the Greek name Soter fits nothing in their Pleroma.
272. 2.24.2Neither the Hebrew name Jesus nor the names of God and Christ fit the Valentinian numbers, which shows their reckonings are forced.
273. 2.24.3The measurements of the tabernacle, ark, lampstand, oil, and incense fit none of their numbers, and any number at all can be found in Scripture.
274. 2.24.4Irenaeus shows that the number five could be ‘proved’ from Scripture and nature just as easily, yet no one builds Aeons on it.
275. 2.24.5The calendar does not match the Pleroma: months and days vary, and the divisions run the wrong way round.
276. 2.24.6By their own finger-counting scheme, ninety-nine, love, and truth all belong to the corruptible left hand.
277. 2.25.1God made all things wisely, but truth is not derived from numbers; numbers must be fitted to the rule of truth.
278. 2.25.2Like the notes of a lyre, the varied and contrary things of creation form one harmony made by one artist.
279. 2.25.3Man, a creature with a beginning, cannot know the causes of all things as the uncreated God does.
280. 2.25.4No one can pass beyond the Creator to find another God above him; to try is folly and madness.
281. 2.26.1It is better to be simple and abide in love than to be puffed up by knowledge into blaspheming the Creator.
282. 2.26.2Counting hairs or sparrows and building a system on the numbers would be as foolish as the heretics' number games.
283. 2.26.3Though God knows the number of all things, a man who tries to count sand and stars and explain the numbers is deluded.
284. 2.27.1Parables must be interpreted by the clear passages of Scripture, or there will be as many conflicting truths as interpreters.
285. 2.27.2Scripture plainly teaches one God who made all things; the heretics admit their Father appears only in secret, obscure teaching.
286. 2.27.3Building doctrine about God on parables rather than on what is certain is building on sand.
287. 2.28.1Holding to the rule of truth, we should explore God's dispensation but never abandon faith in the one Creator and Father.
288. 2.28.2Since we cannot explain many things in nature, it is no wonder that we cannot solve every question in Scripture; such things are left to God.
289. 2.28.3Some questions, such as what God did before creation, must be left to God; Scripture then remains in harmony.
290. 2.28.4Calling the Creator a product of ignorance is blasphemy; the heretics wrongly ascribe human processes of thought and speech to God.
291. 2.28.5God is wholly Mind and Word without parts; those who describe the Word's generation like human speech know neither God nor man.
292. 2.28.6Even the Son left the day of judgment to the Father; the generation of the Son is unspeakable, known only to Father and Son.
293. 2.28.7The origin of matter, the cause of the fall of some creatures, and the nature of transgressors must be left to God, since we know only in part.
294. 2.28.8The Son left the knowledge of the day to the Father to teach us that the Father is above all and that some questions belong to God.
295. 2.28.9Let those who claim complete knowledge first explain the hairs of their heads; until then they cannot be believed about higher things.
296. 2.29.1If souls are saved by righteousness rather than by nature, the bodies that shared in righteousness must be saved too.
297. 2.29.2Since righteousness is done in the body, the body will share in the reward; God will raise our mortal bodies incorrupt.
298. 2.29.3On their own scheme, once body perishes and soul stays in the Middle, nothing of a man is left to enter the Pleroma.
299. 2.30.1Those who call the Creator of heaven and earth merely animal and themselves spiritual show their own madness.
300. 2.30.2Let the heretics who claim to be better than the Creator prove it by their works, not by words.
301. 2.30.3The heretics can point to no work of their own to compare with the Creator's heavens, earth, and creatures.
302. 2.30.4The spiritual seed the heretics claim to be made nothing; the Creator they despise made all things, so by their own logic he is the greater.
303. 2.30.5Preferring an idle tool to the one the artist uses is folly; so is preferring the heretics to the Creator who made all things.
304. 2.30.6Scripture teaches that one God made things visible and invisible; the heretics cannot even describe the heavenly powers they claim to have made.
305. 2.30.7Paul's rapture only to the third heaven shows that the heretics, who claim to rise above the seventh, are boasting falsely.
306. 2.30.8The Creator made the spiritual things Paul saw; the heretics, who cannot make even a gnat, are no spiritual makers.
307. 2.30.9There is one God, Creator and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, revealed through his Son, and no Pleroma or second God.
308. 2.31.1The arguments against Valentinus overthrow all the other heresies too, from Marcion and Simon to Basilides and the Gnostics.
309. 2.31.2The heretics' wonders are magical deceptions; they cannot heal or raise the dead, as the Lord, the apostles, and the church have done.
310. 2.31.3Unlike the church's free and compassionate healing, the heretics' deceptions mark them as forerunners of the dragon.
311. 2.32.1The Lord's commands, which forbid even evil thoughts, refute the heretics' claim that they must experience every kind of deed.
312. 2.32.2If they had to experience every work, they should learn every art; instead they pursue only pleasure and stand self-condemned.
313. 2.32.3The heretics who claim souls like Jesus' do nothing like his works and do not rise from the dead; they resemble Simon the magician.
314. 2.32.4Christ's true disciples work real miracles in his name, and the church freely exercises countless gifts throughout the world.
315. 2.32.5The church heals by prayer in Jesus' name, not by incantations, which shows that Christ truly worked by the power of God.
316. 2.33.1Transmigration is refuted by the fact that souls remember nothing of previous lives, though they remember even dreams.
317. 2.33.2Plato's cup of forgetfulness cannot explain why souls forget former lives, since he could not then know of the cup himself.
318. 2.33.3The body is not forgetfulness, for the soul remembers dreams and visions, and the prophets reported what they saw in the spirit.
319. 2.33.4The soul rules the body like an artist using an instrument; slowed by it, it does not lose its powers or memory.
320. 2.33.5Each person has his own soul as his own body, and at the resurrection all will rise with their own body, soul, and spirit.
321. 2.34.1The story of the rich man and Lazarus shows that souls persist, keep their form, remember this life, and await judgment in fitting places.
322. 2.34.2Souls had a beginning, but like all creatures they continue to exist as long as God wills.
323. 2.34.3Created things endure by God's will; eternal life is God's gift to the grateful, which the ungrateful forfeit.
324. 2.34.4The soul is not life itself but receives life from God, and continues because God wills it.
325. 2.35.1On Basilides' own principle the making of heavens could never stop, producing an infinite number.
326. 2.35.2All the prophets proclaimed one God, the Maker, and foretold the coming of his Son.
327. 2.35.3The various Hebrew names of God, such as Sabaoth, Eloe, and Adonai, are titles of the one God, not of different gods.
328. 2.35.4Irenaeus has shown that apostles, Lord, prophets, and law all proclaim one God; the next book will give the proofs from Scripture.
329. 3.0.1Book 3 will prove from the Scriptures the faith the church received from the apostles, to whom the Lord gave the Gospel.
330. 3.1.1The apostles, filled with the Spirit, preached and then wrote the Gospel: Matthew, Mark from Peter, Luke from Paul, and John at Ephesus.
331. 3.1.2The evangelists handed down one God the Creator and one Christ his Son; to reject them is to reject Christ and the Father.
332. 3.2.1When refuted from Scripture, the heretics appeal to a secret oral tradition, which turns out to be each one's own invention.
333. 3.2.2Confronted with the tradition kept by the successions of presbyters, the heretics claim to be wiser than the presbyters and even the apostles.
334. 3.2.3The heretics slip away like serpents, so they must be opposed on every side in hope of their conversion.
335. 3.3.1The apostles' tradition is visible in every church through the bishops they appointed and their successors, who knew no secret doctrine.
336. 3.3.2Irenaeus points to the church of Rome, founded by Peter and Paul, whose apostolic tradition and succession of bishops confound the heretics.
337. 3.3.3Irenaeus lists the bishops of Rome from Linus to Eleutherius and cites Clement's letter as witness to the apostolic faith.
338. 3.3.4Polycarp, taught by apostles and martyred at Smyrna, and the church of Ephesus witness to the apostolic tradition against the heretics.
339. 3.4.1The apostles deposited the whole truth in the church; even in a minor dispute, or without Scriptures, one should follow the tradition of the apostolic churches.
340. 3.4.2Barbarian nations who cannot read keep the apostles' faith written on their hearts and reject the heretics' inventions.
341. 3.4.3Valentinus, Cerdon, Marcion, and the Gnostics appeared only in the second century, long after the apostolic churches.
342. 3.5.1Christ is the truth and could not have called a defective god his Father; the apostles did not adapt their teaching hypocritically to their hearers.
343. 3.5.2Like a true physician, the Lord and his apostles taught saving truth rather than flattering their hearers' errors.
344. 3.5.3Christ revealed himself to the Jews, and the apostles taught the Gentiles the true God; in Christ both are united.
345. 3.6.1Scripture calls only the true God, the Father and the Son, God and Lord in the proper sense; others called gods are the adopted children.
346. 3.6.2Only the God who said “I am who I am”, and his Son who makes believers God's children, are called God and Lord.
347. 3.6.3When Scripture calls idols gods, it adds words showing that they are not gods, as David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Elijah do.
348. 3.6.4Irenaeus prays to the God of Abraham, Father of Jesus Christ, that every reader may know him as the only God and avoid heresy.
349. 3.6.5Paul too distinguishes the so-called gods from the one God the Father and one Lord Jesus Christ.
350. 3.7.1In 2 Cor 4:4 “of this age” belongs with “unbelievers”: God has blinded the unbelievers of this age; there is no separate god of this age.
351. 3.7.2Paul often transposes words, as in Gal 3:19 and 2 Thess 2:8–9; read correctly, 2 Cor 4:4 speaks of the true God.
352. 3.8.1Christ called only God God; Caesar and Mammon he named for what they are, not as gods or lords.
353. 3.8.2The devil is strong only compared with us; Christ bound him and rescued us, his former vessels.
354. 3.8.3All creatures, including the angelic powers, were made by God through his Word; only the Creator with his Word is properly called God and Lord.
355. 3.9.1Matthew shows that John the Baptist preached the God of Abraham, who sent his Word incarnate to be seen by all flesh.
356. 3.9.2The angel, the prophecies of Emmanuel, Balaam's star, and the Magi's gifts all point to the one God and his Son, born of the Virgin.
357. 3.9.3At the baptism the Spirit anointed the Word made flesh; Christ and Jesus are not two but one, as Isaiah foretold.
358. 3.10.1Luke's account of Zechariah, Gabriel, and John shows that the God of the temple and the law is the Lord for whom John prepared the people.
359. 3.10.2Gabriel's announcement, Mary's Magnificat, and Zechariah's Benedictus proclaim the God of the fathers, whose Son became man that man might become son of God.
360. 3.10.3The angels at the Nativity announced the birth of the Savior in David's city and glorified the one Creator, refuting the Gnostic account.
361. 3.10.4The presentation in the temple, Simeon, and Anna show that the Lord of the law is the God who opened the new covenant through his Son.
362. 3.10.5Mark begins his Gospel with the prophets and ends with Christ at God's right hand, showing the one God of prophets and Gospel.
363. 3.11.1John wrote against Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans: one God made all things through his Word, including our creation.
364. 3.11.2John says the world was made through the Word who became flesh, against Marcion, other Gnostics, and the Valentinians.
365. 3.11.3In none of the heretical systems does the Word of God become flesh; John refutes them all with “the Word became flesh.”
366. 3.11.4John the Baptist, sent by the Creator whose prophet Elijah was, bore witness to the light; he was both prophet and apostle.
367. 3.11.5At Cana and the feeding of the crowds Christ used created things, showing that the Creator gives his gifts through his Son.
368. 3.11.6The invisible Father is made known by the Son; so Nathanael and Peter came to know Christ as Son of God.
369. 3.11.7Even the heretics use the Gospels: Ebionites Matthew, Marcion Luke, separators of Jesus and Christ Mark, Valentinians John, and each is refuted by his own Gospel.
370. 3.11.8There must be four Gospels, matching the four winds, the four living creatures, and the four covenants: John the lion, Luke the calf, Matthew the man, Mark the eagle.
371. 3.11.9Those who add Gospels, like the Valentinians' “Gospel of Truth,” or reject them, like Marcion and the opponents of John's Gospel, destroy the Gospel's fourfold form.
372. 3.12.1Peter's words at the choice of Matthias and at Pentecost show that the God of the prophets sent the promised Spirit.
373. 3.12.2Peter's Pentecost sermon proclaims one God and one Christ who suffered, rose, and was exalted, calling hearers to repentance and baptism.
374. 3.12.3At the healing of the lame man, Peter proclaimed that the God of Abraham glorified his Son Jesus and fulfilled the prophets.
375. 3.12.4Before the Sanhedrin Peter proclaimed salvation only in the name of Jesus, raised by the God who sent the prophets.
376. 3.12.5The first church's prayer and preaching invoked the Creator and his anointed Son Jesus; this is the voice from which every church began.
377. 3.12.6The apostles did not adapt their teaching to the Jews' existing beliefs; had they known a higher God, they would have proclaimed him as boldly as they denounced idols.
378. 3.12.7Peter's preaching to Cornelius proclaimed the Son of God, anointed with the Spirit and Judge of all, without any other God; the church keeps this one faith worldwide.
379. 3.12.8Philip preached to the Ethiopian eunuch that Isaiah's suffering servant is Jesus, the Son of the God of the prophets.
380. 3.12.9Paul's preaching at Damascus, Athens, and Lystra proclaimed the Creator of heaven and earth and Jesus the Son of God.
381. 3.12.10Stephen, the first deacon and martyr, proclaimed the God of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses.
382. 3.12.11The apostles' words and acts all proclaim one God of Abraham, Moses, and the New Testament; to allegorize them away is a sickness of questioning.
383. 3.12.12The heretics, offended by the law of Moses, invented another God; Marcion mutilated the Scriptures, and the Valentinians made the Creator a product of defect.
384. 3.12.13Stephen's vision and martyrdom show that the apostles and their disciples taught the one God boldly, even to death, not adapting to their hearers.
385. 3.12.14The Jerusalem council's letter to the Gentile believers shows that the apostles knew no other God, only the new covenant of freedom.
386. 3.12.15The apostles' careful observance of the law, and Peter's hesitation with Cornelius, show that they knew the law came from the same God.
387. 3.13.1Against those who say only Paul knew the truth, Paul himself names Peter and the other apostles as preaching the same Gospel.
388. 3.13.2The apostles to whom the Lord revealed the Father, and Peter to whom the Father revealed the Son, knew the truth as Paul did.
389. 3.13.3Paul's visit to Jerusalem in Galatians matches Luke's account in Acts, showing that Paul and the apostles agreed.
390. 3.14.1Luke, Paul's constant companion as the “we” passages of Acts and Paul's letters show, learned no secret doctrine from him.
391. 3.14.2Paul at Miletus declared the whole counsel of God to the bishops and presbyters; the apostles and Luke handed on everything openly.
392. 3.14.3Much of the Gospel, used even by Marcion and Valentinus, is known only through Luke, so those who reject Luke reject the Gospel.
393. 3.14.4Marcion and the Valentinians must accept all of Luke or none; accepting all would lead them to repentance.
394. 3.15.1Those who reject Paul must also reject Luke's Gospel, for Luke testifies that Christ chose Paul as an apostle.
395. 3.15.2The Valentinians imitate church language to lure the simple, then privately teach their Pleroma, and their initiates grow proud.
396. 3.15.3The apostles and their disciples confessed only the true God, the Creator who gave the law, and his Word.
397. 3.16.1Against Gnostic theories that divide Jesus from Christ, Irenaeus will set out the apostles' teaching that Jesus Christ is one.
398. 3.16.2Matthew's account of the virgin birth of “Christ,” Emmanuel, shows that Jesus and Christ are one and the same Son of God.
399. 3.16.3Paul, Mark, the prophets, and the angel all proclaim one Jesus Christ, Son of God and son of David.
400. 3.16.4Simeon, the shepherds, John in the womb, and the Magi all recognized the infant Jesus as Christ; the slain children of Bethlehem became his first martyrs.
401. 3.16.5The risen Lord, the Gospels, and John's letter teach one Christ who was born, suffered, and rose; those who divide him are antichrists.
402. 3.16.6The one Word of God became flesh as Jesus Christ, recapitulating man in himself, to be head over all things visible and invisible.
403. 3.16.7Christ accomplished everything at the hour the Father foreknew, as at Cana and in his passion; he is one, yet rich and manifold.
404. 3.16.8Those who divide Jesus, Christ, the Word, and the Savior are wolves in sheep's clothing; John condemns all who deny that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.
405. 3.16.9Paul in Romans knows one Christ Jesus who was born, died for us, and rose, not a Christ separate from Jesus.
406. 3.17.1The apostles taught that the Holy Spirit, not a higher Christ, descended on Jesus, the same Spirit promised by the prophets and given to the church.
407. 3.17.2The Spirit given at Pentecost unites the nations, as water makes one loaf from many grains; baptism gives the body unity and the Spirit gives it to the soul.
408. 3.17.3Gideon’s fleece foreshadows the Spirit passing from Israel to the whole earth; the Good Samaritan’s two denarii signify the image of the Father and the Son received through the Spirit.
409. 3.17.4Since Christ is one and the same, the Gnostic division of Christ and Jesus is false; their words sound like the faith but carry poison, like gypsum passed off as milk.
410. 3.18.1The Son existed always with the Father; at the incarnation he summed up humanity in himself so that we might recover in Christ the image lost in Adam.
411. 3.18.2The Son, becoming man and dying, did what fallen man could not; Paul proclaims this same Christ crucified and risen.
412. 3.18.3Paul knows only one Christ, the one born, crucified, buried and risen; the very name Christ implies the Father who anoints, the Son anointed, and the Spirit who is the anointing.
413. 3.18.4The one Peter confessed as Christ is the one who said he must suffer and be crucified, and who called his followers to take up the cross.
414. 3.18.5Christ’s call to take up the cross and his warnings of persecution show that he truly suffered; those who despise the martyrs will be put to shame, and Christ’s prayer for his killers shows his goodness.
415. 3.18.6If Christ only seemed to suffer, he would be a deceiver urging us to endure what he never endured; in truth he fought as a man and conquered.
416. 3.18.7Only a true man united to God could justly conquer the enemy and give man incorruption; as many were made sinners through Adam’s disobedience, so many are justified through the obedience of the one born of a virgin.
417. 3.19.1Those who make Christ a mere son of Joseph stay under death; the Son of God became Son of Man so that man might become a son of God.
418. 3.19.2Scripture calls no mere son of Adam God, but testifies of Christ both as lowly man and as mighty God and Judge, because he has two generations, from the Father and from the virgin.
419. 3.19.3The Word rested so that the man could suffer, and the man was taken up into the Word in victory; Christ, born of the virgin, rose as head so that his whole body may rise.
420. 3.20.1As God let Jonah be swallowed in order to save him, so he let man be swallowed by the serpent, so that man, rescued beyond hope, would glorify God and not think his incorruption his own by nature.
421. 3.20.2God allowed man’s fall so that man, delivered by experience, might be grateful, know his weakness and God’s power, and grow into the likeness of Christ, who accustomed God and man to each other.
422. 3.20.3Emmanuel is the sign that salvation comes from God, not from ourselves, as Paul and Isaiah testify.
423. 3.20.4The prophets foretold that the Lord himself, neither a mere man nor a fleshless angel, would come in the flesh from Bethlehem to save.
424. 3.21.1Against Theodotion, Aquila and the Ebionites, who read “young woman” in Isaiah 7:14, Irenaeus defends “virgin,” noting that the Jews themselves translated it before Christ’s coming.
425. 3.21.2Irenaeus tells how the seventy elders, translating separately for Ptolemy, produced identical versions, as Ezra had once restored the Scriptures by inspiration.
426. 3.21.3The Septuagint, made before Christ, preserves the true Scriptures, and those who now make new translations to evade the proof of Christ are shameless; the apostles agree with it.
427. 3.21.4The same Spirit spoke through the prophets, the Septuagint translators and the apostles; Isaiah 7 shows Emmanuel to be both God and man, born of a virgin.
428. 3.21.5God promised David a king “from the fruit of his womb,” not “of his loins,” pointing to the birth from a virgin, as Elizabeth confirmed.
429. 3.21.6A young woman bearing a child by a man would be no sign; the unexpected birth from a virgin, given by God, matches the unexpected salvation.
430. 3.21.7Daniel’s stone cut without hands and Isaiah’s cornerstone show that Christ was born of Mary without Joseph’s part, by God’s will.
431. 3.21.8Moses’ rod that became a serpent, and Christ’s superiority to Solomon, Jonah and David, show that he was not Joseph’s son.
432. 3.21.9Joseph descends from the disinherited Jeconiah, so a Christ born of Joseph could be neither king nor heir; he comes from David by God’s promise.
433. 3.21.10As Adam was formed from virgin earth by the Word, Christ the Word was born of the virgin Mary to recapitulate the same Adam.
434. 3.22.1Those who say Christ took nothing from the virgin destroy his likeness to Adam; Scripture says he was made of a woman and of David’s seed according to the flesh.
435. 3.22.2Christ’s hunger, weariness, tears, bloody sweat, sorrow, and the blood and water from his side prove he took real flesh from Mary.
436. 3.22.3Luke’s seventy-two generations from Christ back to Adam show Christ summing up all nations in himself; Adam was a type of the one to come.
437. 3.22.4Mary’s obedience undid Eve’s disobedience: as the virgin Eve bound the knot by unbelief, the virgin Mary loosed it by faith.
438. 3.23.1Christ had to save Adam himself, or the serpent would have defeated God; the captor was taken captive and man was set free.
439. 3.23.2Adam, the first-formed man, must be saved along with his descendants, as a just liberator would free the captives themselves and not only their children.
440. 3.23.3God cursed the ground and the serpent, not Adam; the eternal fire was prepared for the devil and his angels, though the unrepentant share it.
441. 3.23.4Cain, unlike Adam, ignored God’s warning, killed his brother, and answered God insolently, and so was himself cursed.
442. 3.23.5Adam, unlike Cain, feared God and showed repentance by his rough covering of fig leaves, and God had mercy on him.
443. 3.23.6God expelled Adam from Paradise and the tree of life out of mercy, so that death would put an end to sin.
444. 3.23.7The seed of the woman, Mary’s son, treads on the serpent; when Adam receives life again, death, the last enemy, is abolished.
445. 3.23.8Tatian, who first denied Adam’s salvation, is a liar; those who follow him make themselves advocates of the serpent and of death.
446. 3.24.1The Church’s preaching is everywhere constant; the Spirit is given to the Church, and those outside it cut themselves off from life.
447. 3.24.2Cut off from the truth, the heretics are always seeking and never finding, and invent a remote god like the god of Epicurus who exercises no providence.
448. 3.25.1God exercises providence over all, and even some pagans, moved by it, called the maker of the universe the provident Father.
449. 3.25.2To split God into a judge and a saviour destroys both: a judge without goodness is unjust, and goodness without judgment is weak.
450. 3.25.3Marcion’s division of God into a good God and a just God destroys both; the one God is good, just, and wise together.
451. 3.25.4God who sends sun and rain on all will judge those who abuse his kindness.
452. 3.25.5Even Plato confessed one God who is both just and good and made the world out of goodness, not from a fallen Aeon.
453. 3.25.6The Valentinian Mother, outside the Pleroma and born without a father, is an image of their own empty and darkened doctrine.
454. 3.25.7Irenaeus prays that the heretics may return to the Church and promises to bring forward the Lord’s own words in the next book.
455. 4.0.1Irenaeus sends the fourth book, promising to confirm his case from the Lord’s own words so that his friend can refute and convert the heretics.
456. 4.0.2To convert the heretics one must know their system exactly; refuting the Valentinians refutes every heresy.
457. 4.0.3The Valentinian system blasphemes the Creator and divides Christ; Book 3 showed that the apostles taught nothing of the kind.
458. 4.0.4Like the serpent with Eve, the heretics promise secret knowledge and lead people into death, blaspheming the Creator and denying the salvation of the flesh.
459. 4.1.1Scripture and Christ himself name only the one God as Father, so the Valentinian claim that the Creator is God in name only is false.
460. 4.1.2If Christ had known many gods he would not have taught his disciples to call one alone Father; the heretics make him and the apostles transgressors.
461. 4.2.1Moses, David, and Isaiah all speak of the God who made heaven and earth.
462. 4.2.2The Father whom Christ confesses as Lord of heaven and earth is the Creator, not Bythus or the Gnostic Mother.
463. 4.2.3Christ said that Moses wrote of him, so the writings of Moses and the prophets are Christ’s own words.
464. 4.2.4The parable of the rich man and Lazarus first teaches that no one should live in luxury and forget God.
465. 4.2.5The parable shows that Abraham, Moses, the prophets, and the risen Lord belong together, against those who separate the impassible Christ from the suffering Jesus.
466. 4.2.6Christ calls heaven God’s throne and Jerusalem the city of the great King, words that refer to the Creator, above whom there is no other God.
467. 4.2.7Christ cleansed the temple as his Father’s house, rebuking not the law but those who broke it.
468. 4.2.8Those who feared God and his law came to Christ; the law did not forbid faith in the Son of God but pointed to him, lifted up like the bronze serpent.
469. 4.3.1God is not contained by heaven and earth; when they pass away he and his servants endure, as David and Isaiah say.
470. 4.4.1Jerusalem, like the stalk after harvest, was abandoned once its fruit, Christ and the apostles, had been gathered and sown throughout the world.
471. 4.4.2The law ran from Moses to John and Jerusalem’s legislation ended with the new covenant, for God does all things by measure; the Son is the Father’s measure.
472. 4.4.3The one Lord who makes both wheat and chaff will separate them; man, being free, is himself the cause of becoming wheat or chaff.
473. 4.5.1The one God who made temporal things and gives eternal ones is the God of the law and the prophets, whom Christ called Father; God is known only through his Word.
474. 4.5.2Christ’s answer to the Sadducees shows that the God who spoke from the bush is the God of the living, and that Christ with the Father is that God.
475. 4.5.3Abraham believed the one Creator God and his promise, left his kindred, and followed the Word.
476. 4.5.4The apostles and we, sharing Abraham’s faith, follow the Word; Abraham’s offering of Isaac foreshadowed God’s offering of his Son.
477. 4.5.5Abraham, a prophet, saw Christ’s day and knew both the Lord and his Father; the heretics overturn all this on the strength of one misunderstood saying.
478. 4.6.1The heretics alter the saying “No one knows the Father except the Son” into the past tense to claim that the true God was unknown before Christ.
479. 4.6.2If God provided for mankind only from the time of Tiberius, that would show neglect, not another God; Justin said he would not have believed the Lord had he preached a God other than the Creator.
480. 4.6.3The Father is known only through the Son, whose manifestation is the knowledge of the Father, so no Father other than the one he reveals may be accepted.
481. 4.6.4The Father Christ reveals is the Creator, not the unknown God of the Gnostics; God is known only when God teaches, and he wills to be known.
482. 4.6.5The Father revealed himself to all by making the Word visible; God’s judgment is just on those who saw but did not believe.
483. 4.6.6Creation, the law and the prophets, and the incarnate Word all reveal the Father; even demons named the Son, but not all believe.
484. 4.6.7All, friend and foe, testify that Christ is truly man and truly God; the Son has revealed the Father from the beginning, not only since his birth from Mary.
485. 4.7.1Abraham longed to see Christ’s day and rejoiced; his joy passed to Simeon, the shepherds, and Mary, and returned from them to him.
486. 4.7.2All who knew God from the beginning received revelation from the Son, who raised up children to Abraham from the stones by giving the Gentiles Abraham’s faith.
487. 4.7.3The God who called Abraham is the Creator, known only through the Son, the way to the Father.
488. 4.7.4The Jews erred in seeking the Father without the Word, who spoke to Abraham and Moses; the Son and the Spirit, not angels, serve the Father in creation.
489. 4.8.1Marcion wrongly excludes Abraham from salvation; Christ himself places Abraham in the kingdom with his seed, the Church.
490. 4.8.2Christ’s healing on the sabbath fulfilled the law, which forbade servile work and greed, not works of mercy.
491. 4.8.3The disciples plucking grain on the sabbath acted lawfully as priests, for all the righteous are priests and the apostles have the Levites’ portion.
492. 4.9.1The householder who brings out things new and old is Christ, author of both the old and the new covenants.
493. 4.9.2“Greater than the temple” implies the same kind of thing, not a different God; the fuller gifts of the new covenant come from the same Father, Christ, and Spirit.
494. 4.9.3God gives more grace through successive covenants without changing; those who keep inventing new Fathers never find God, while Christ confirmed the law’s command as the word of his Father.
495. 4.10.1The Scriptures of Moses testify to Christ, who appears throughout them, and Moses foretold the day, place, and hour of his passion in the Passover.
496. 4.10.2Jacob’s blessing of Judah foretold Christ, and Moses foretold the Word hanging on the tree and the people’s unbelief.
497. 4.11.1The prophets longed to see Christ because the Word had given them foreknowledge; God formed man for growth toward perfection.
498. 4.11.2God, who makes, is always the same, while man, who is made, grows toward God and keeps receiving his gifts.
499. 4.11.3Those who saw the King present received greater grace than those who only heard of his coming, as the crowds at the entry into Jerusalem showed.
500. 4.11.4The same Father who was announced by the prophets gave freedom through Christ to those who serve him, and perdition to hypocrites.
501. 4.12.1The Pharisees’ tradition watered down and contradicted the law of Moses, and they lacked its chief command, love of God.
502. 4.12.2Christ took the great commandment of love from the law rather than bringing a new one, which shows he came from the God of the law.
503. 4.12.3The same great commandments of love in law and gospel show one author of both covenants.
504. 4.12.4Christ upheld the law of Moses while rebuking those who taught it without love; he is the end of the law because he is also its beginning.
505. 4.12.5Christ set the commandments of the law before the rich young man as steps into life and called him to give to the poor and follow him, as Zacchaeus did.
506. 4.13.1Christ’s sayings in the Sermon on the Mount extend and fulfil the natural precepts of the law rather than abolishing them, against Marcion.
507. 4.13.2The law trained slaves through external things; the Word freed the soul, removing the chains but increasing the free person’s devotion.
508. 4.13.3Christ deepened the law’s commands (no lust, no anger, giving all, loving enemies) so that freedom brings greater love and glory, not separation from God.
509. 4.13.4The natural precepts common to both covenants show one God; the Word first made men servants through the law and then friends, as Abraham became God’s friend.
510. 4.14.1God made man not out of need but to bestow his benefits; serving God profits man, not God, and is man’s glory.
511. 4.14.2God, needing nothing, formed man, chose the patriarchs, gave the law and the prophets, and welcomed the repentant, in many ways leading mankind to salvation.
512. 4.14.3God, who needs nothing, gave Israel the tabernacle, temple, and sacrifices to train them through types to the true, heavenly realities.
513. 4.15.1God first gave only the Decalogue; after the golden calf he added a law of servitude suited to Israel’s hardness, as Ezekiel and Stephen testify.
514. 4.15.2Moses permitted divorce because of Israel’s hardness, as Paul also made concessions for the weak; the same God gave both covenants and respects human freedom.
515. 4.16.1Circumcision and the sabbath were given as signs pointing to the circumcision of the heart, constant service of God, and the rest of the kingdom.
516. 4.16.2Abraham, Lot, Noah, Enoch, and the other righteous before Moses were justified without circumcision, sabbath, or the law of Moses.
517. 4.16.3The righteous fathers had the Decalogue written in their hearts; when it was forgotten in Egypt, God gave it by voice and fed Israel with manna to train them again.
518. 4.16.4The Decalogue made man glorious by giving him God’s friendship; spoken by the Lord himself, it remains, extended but not abolished by Christ’s coming.
519. 4.16.5Christ cancelled the laws of servitude but widened the natural precepts, so that the free must answer even for words and thoughts.
520. 4.17.1The prophets show that God needs no sacrifices but wants obedience, a contrite heart, praise, and justice.
521. 4.17.2God rejected Israel’s sacrifices out of pity for their blindness, not anger, pointing them to the true sacrifice of a contrite heart.
522. 4.17.3Jeremiah, Isaiah, Zechariah, and David show that God wanted obedience, mercy, and justice rather than sacrifices.
523. 4.17.4God sought faith, obedience, and justice rather than sacrifices, as Hosea said and Christ repeated.
524. 4.17.5Christ gave thanks over bread and cup as his body and blood and taught the new offering of the new covenant, which the Church offers everywhere, as Malachi foretold.
525. 4.17.6The name glorified among the nations is Christ’s, which the Father calls his own; through Christ the Church offers the pure sacrifice and the incense of prayer.
526. 4.18.1The Church’s offering is a pure sacrifice, not because God needs it, but because the grateful offerer is honoured; it must be offered with a reconciled heart.
527. 4.18.2Offerings continue in the Church, but as the free gifts of sons, who give all they have rather than a tenth.
528. 4.18.3God accepted Abel’s offering and not Cain’s because sacrifice does not sanctify; a pure conscience sanctifies the sacrifice.
529. 4.18.4The Church alone offers the pure sacrifice from God’s creation; the heretics cannot consistently call the eucharistic bread and cup the Lord’s body and blood while denying that he is the Creator’s Son.
530. 4.18.5As the bread that receives God’s invocation becomes the Eucharist, earthly and heavenly, so our bodies that receive it have the hope of resurrection.
531. 4.18.6We offer to God not because he needs it but to give thanks and for our own sake; our offerings are directed to the altar in heaven.
532. 4.19.1Earthly offerings are types of heavenly things, but to make heavenly things types of a higher Pleroma leads to endless images and away from the true God.
533. 4.19.2No one can measure God, who holds heaven and earth in his hand and is near to each of us; the heretics vainly place another God above him.
534. 4.19.3No one can comprehend God, yet the heretics divide him into a Father and a Demiurge, neither of whom is the God of all.
535. 4.20.1God cannot be known in his greatness but is known through his love; he made man with his own hands, the Son and the Spirit, not through angels.
536. 4.20.2Scripture teaches one God who made all things; the Father gave all things to the Son, the Lamb who alone opens the book and through whose flesh the Father’s light reaches us.
537. 4.20.3The Son and Wisdom, that is, the Spirit, were with the Father before all creation, as Proverbs testifies.
538. 4.20.4The one Creator, unknown in his greatness, is known in his love through his Word, who became man to join man to God, as the prophets foretold.
539. 4.20.5God, invisible in his greatness, is seen through his love: prophetically through the Spirit, adoptively through the Son, and paternally in the kingdom; to see God is life.
540. 4.20.6The prophets saw God in figures, through the Spirit’s gifts, the Lord’s coming, and the Father’s glories; God is invisible in his nature but known through his Word.
541. 4.20.7The Word reveals the Father in due order, keeping the Father’s invisibility yet showing God to men; the glory of God is a living man, and man’s life is the vision of God.
542. 4.20.8The prophets saw God and foretold Christ by visions, words, and actions; Moses showed God as fire to transgressors and as merciful to those who fear him.
543. 4.20.9Moses was told he could not see God’s face and live, a sign that man would see God only in Christ’s coming as man, fulfilled at the Transfiguration.
544. 4.20.10The prophets saw not God’s face but figures of his dispensations: Elijah’s gentle breeze foretold Christ’s gentle coming, and Ezekiel saw only the likeness of God’s glory.
545. 4.20.11The Father is invisible; the Word showed his glory in many forms: in the furnace, as the stone, as the Son of Man, and in John’s visions of the glorified Christ and the Lamb.
546. 4.20.12The prophets foretold Christ by actions: Hosea’s marriage, Moses’ Ethiopian wife, and Rahab, figures of the Church gathered from sinners and gentiles.
547. 4.21.1Abraham is the prophet and father of our faith, which is one and the same as his, as Paul teaches in Galatians.
548. 4.21.2Rebecca’s twins prophesied two peoples, one enslaved and one free, under the one God who loved Jacob and hated Esau.
549. 4.21.3Jacob’s life prefigured Christ and the Church: the heel, the birthright, the blessing, the spotted sheep, the two wives, and Rachel, a figure of the Church.
550. 4.22.1Christ washed the disciples’ feet and roused them from sleep, signs that he came to cleanse and raise the dead, descending to the righteous who had died before him.
551. 4.22.2Christ came for all who from the beginning feared God and longed to see him; at his second coming he will raise them first.
552. 4.23.1The patriarchs and prophets sowed what the apostles reaped; Joseph was persuaded by Isaiah’s prophecy, and Christ showed himself foretold by Isaiah.
553. 4.23.2The Ethiopian eunuch, already taught by the prophets, needed only to learn of the Son’s coming; likewise the apostles easily persuaded Jews who feared God.
554. 4.24.1Paul laboured more than the other apostles because the Gentiles, unlike the Jews, had first to be taught to leave idols and to learn the moral law.
555. 4.24.2The apostle to the Gentiles laboured more because they lacked the Scriptures; their faith, following the word without them, was the more noble.
556. 4.25.1Abraham, justified by faith before circumcision, is father of believers from both circumcision and uncircumcision; faith in uncircumcision is both first and last.
557. 4.25.2Tamar’s twins, Zerah with the scarlet thread and Perez, prefigure the faith of uncircumcision, first shown in the patriarchs, then withdrawn, and restored in the Church.
558. 4.25.3The patriarchs and prophets sowed the word about Christ and the Church reaped it, so that both rejoice together in Christ’s kingdom.
559. 4.26.1Christ is the treasure hidden in the Scriptures, which remain riddles until his cross explains them; read by Christians, the law is a treasure, but to the Jews it is like a fable.
560. 4.26.2One must obey the presbyters who have the succession from the apostles and the gift of truth, and avoid heretics and schismatics.
561. 4.26.3Presbyters who live for pleasure, despise others, and sin in secret will be judged like the wicked elders in Daniel and the wicked servant in the Gospel.
562. 4.26.4We must hold to presbyters who keep the apostles’ teaching with sound speech and blameless life, like Moses, Samuel, and Paul.
563. 4.26.5The truth is to be learned in the Church from those who have the apostolic succession and a sound life and teaching.
564. 4.27.1An elder taught that the Scriptures’ own rebukes suffice for the sins of the ancients, such as David’s with Bathsheba and Solomon’s idolatry in old age.
565. 4.27.2Christ descended to the dead and forgave the righteous of old; we must not judge them but fear for ourselves, since Christ will not die again for those who sin now.
566. 4.27.3The sins of Israel in the desert were written as warnings to Christians, who sin against the same God.
567. 4.27.4The same God who punished Israel’s sinners judges Christians: the sexually immoral, idolaters, and the unjust will not inherit the kingdom, and he will avenge his elect.
568. 4.28.1God’s justice is the same in both covenants but more severe in the new; those who set Christ’s mercy against the Old Testament ignore his warnings of judgment.
569. 4.28.2In the new covenant both faith and the demands of conduct are greater, and the punishment of unbelief is eternal, not temporal.
570. 4.28.3The heretics’ objections to the God of the Old Testament would equally condemn Christ; as Israel was saved through Egypt’s blindness, so the Gentiles through the Jews’ unbelief.
571. 4.29.1God blinds those who reject him, as the sun dazzles weak eyes, but gives fuller light to believers, as the Gospel and Paul show.
572. 4.29.2As God hands over to unbelief those he foreknows will not believe, so he hardened Pharaoh, who would never have believed.
573. 4.30.1Israel’s taking of the Egyptians’ goods was just and a type; Christians too live on goods acquired from pagans, who owe them far less than Egypt owed Israel.
574. 4.30.2Israel took only a small wage for long, cruel slavery; the heretics who blame them carry Caesar’s coin earned by others’ labour.
575. 4.30.3Christians enjoy the peace and goods of the Roman world; using what came from pagans for almsgiving builds God’s tabernacle in us.
576. 4.30.4The exodus was a type of the Church’s departure from the Gentiles to the inheritance Jesus gives; the end-time plagues will repeat Egypt’s on all nations.
577. 4.31.1The presbyter taught not to reproach the ancients for sins Scripture rebukes, and to seek types where it does not, as in Lot and his daughters, a figure of the two synagogues.
578. 4.31.2Lot’s daughters, who acted in innocence, signify the two synagogues that receive the life-giving Spirit from the Word, the true Father of mankind.
579. 4.31.3Lot’s wife, a lasting pillar of salt, signifies the Church, the salt of the earth, which endures through suffering and sends her children to the Father.
580. 4.32.1The elder taught that both covenants come from the one Creator; whoever believes this and reads the Scriptures with the Church’s presbyters will find them consistent.
581. 4.32.2The apostles taught two covenants for two peoples from one God; the first covenant served Israel, foreshadowed the Church, and prophesied the future.
582. 4.33.1The spiritual disciple judges Gentiles and Jews alike, for the prophets foretold Christ’s two comings, one in weakness and one in glory.
583. 4.33.2The spiritual disciple will refute Marcion’s two gods: Christ’s Eucharist, title Son of Man, forgiveness of sins, and real death and resurrection all imply the one Creator.
584. 4.33.3The spiritual man will judge the Valentinians, who confess one God and one Christ with the tongue but divide them in doctrine, and the Gnostics as disciples of Simon Magus.
585. 4.33.4The Ebionites cannot be saved, for unless God became man through the virgin birth, man could not pass into God or be freed from the strong one.
586. 4.33.5Those who say Christ only appeared to be man make their own salvation and teaching mere appearance.
587. 4.33.6The spiritual man will judge false prophets who prophesy for glory or gain.
588. 4.33.7The spiritual man will judge schismatics who divide Christ’s body and all outside the Church; his own faith in Father, Son, and Spirit is consistent throughout.
589. 4.33.8True knowledge is the apostles’ teaching, kept in the Church through the succession of bishops with faithful reading of Scripture, and above all love.
590. 4.33.9The Church alone sends a multitude of martyrs to the Father, enduring persecution as the prophets did, while the heretics deny that martyrdom is necessary.
591. 4.33.10The prophets, as members of Christ, each foreshadowed part of his work and suffered persecution, as will all on whom the Spirit rests.
592. 4.33.11The prophets each foretold part of Christ’s work: his glory, his second coming and judgment, his kingdom, his birth from the virgin as Emmanuel, his coming in Judea and Bethlehem, and his healings.
593. 4.33.12Other prophets foretold Christ’s humble entry, passion, and death, his descent to the dead, the darkness at the crucifixion, and the fall of Jerusalem.
594. 4.33.13The prophets foretold Christ’s resurrection and ascension, the persecution of the Church, the shaking of the earth at his return, and his final exaltation over all his enemies.
595. 4.33.14The prophets’ promises of a new covenant, a new heart, and rivers in the desert announced the freedom of the new covenant and the gift of the Spirit.
596. 4.33.15The truly spiritual man interprets all the prophecies by the one dispensation of the one God, Word, and Spirit, judging all and judged by none.
597. 4.34.1The prophets foretold the whole life of Christ, and what was new in his coming was that he brought himself, as a king fulfils what his heralds announced.
598. 4.34.2Christ fulfilled what the prophets announced and still fulfils in the Church the new covenant foretold by the law.
599. 4.34.3The prophecies cannot have been about anyone else, because the signs of the passion and resurrection were fulfilled in no one but the Lord.
600. 4.34.4The new covenant is not the rebuilding of the temple under Zerubbabel but the word of God that went out from Jerusalem and turned swords into ploughshares, fulfilled in Christ.
601. 4.34.5These Scriptural proofs are offered to turn those who invent another God and another Father away from blasphemy.
602. 4.35.1It is absurd to claim, as the Valentinians do, that the Father had to speak through the Demiurge’s prophets rather than through messengers of his own.
603. 4.35.2If the Saviour used his own apostles, he would have used his own prophets too; the same Word spoke through both, so the prophets cannot be half from the Pleroma and half from the Demiurge.
604. 4.35.3The Gnostic mother and her seed, being outside the Pleroma and in ignorance, could not know its mysteries, and the details of the passion have no counterpart in their upper Christ.
605. 4.35.4The Valentinians disagree among themselves about which Aeon any Scripture refers to, whereas the Church, holding the rule of truth, says the same things about the same words.
606. 4.36.1The parable of the wicked tenants shows one householder, the Father, who sent first the prophets as servants and then his Son.
607. 4.36.2Irenaeus interprets the vineyard parable as the history of God’s dealings with Israel and its handing over to the Church spread through all nations.
608. 4.36.3The Lord’s warnings to watch, recalling Noah, Lot, and Capernaum, show one Lord who judged in the past and will bring the final judgment.
609. 4.36.4The same Word who gives eternal life to believers also judged the generation of the flood and Sodom, and will judge more severely those who rejected his greater grace.
610. 4.36.5The parable of the wedding feast shows one King and Father who invited Israel through the prophets and the nations through the apostles.
611. 4.36.6The wedding garment is the righteousness on which the Spirit rests; the same God calls the unworthy in kindness and judges those who despise his gift, and all men, even rulers, are his.
612. 4.36.7The parables of the prodigal son and of the workers in the vineyard teach one Father and one Lord calling people in every age, whose single wage is the knowledge of the Son of God.
613. 4.36.8The parables of the publican, the two sons, and the barren fig tree, and the lament over Jerusalem, all point to one God who visited his people through the prophets and calls the nations.
614. 4.37.1God made men and angels free to choose; those who keep the good he gave are rewarded, and those who despise it are justly judged.
615. 4.37.2Since all share the same nature and can choose good or evil, praise and blame are just, and God gave counsel through the prophets.
616. 4.37.3The Lord’s many exhortations to watchfulness and obedience show that man is free, and that God counsels but does not compel.
617. 4.37.4Paul’s “all things are lawful, but not all are expedient” and the apostolic exhortations presuppose free will, given to man in the likeness of a free God.
618. 4.37.5Faith too is a free act, as the Lord’s words about believing and his lament over Jerusalem show.
619. 4.37.6A goodness imposed by nature without choice would be neither prized nor enjoyed, and would win no crown.
620. 4.37.7The kingdom is won through struggle, and God permitted man’s apostasy so that man, schooled by contrast and contest, might grow to maturity and see God.
621. 4.38.1Man could not be made perfect at once because created things are childlike; so the Lord came to us as milk, in the flesh, to accustom us to the bread of immortality.
622. 4.38.2As Paul gave the Corinthians milk, the Word became an infant with man because newly made man could not receive perfection at once.
623. 4.38.3Created man grows by stages toward the uncreated God, the Father planning, the Son forming, the Spirit nourishing, until he sees God and receives incorruption.
624. 4.38.4Those who resent not being made gods from the start are ungrateful; God made men first, to make them gods in time, overcoming mortality by immortality.
625. 4.39.1Man learned good and evil by experience, so that, knowing the bitterness of disobedience, he might choose obedience to God with firm judgment.
626. 4.39.2Man must first be man before sharing God’s glory, and must stay soft clay in the Maker’s hands to be perfected by him.
627. 4.39.3Those who refuse God’s work are the cause of their own imperfection, as the blind are of their darkness, since God compels no one.
628. 4.39.4God prepared light for those who seek it and darkness for those who flee it, so that the lost are the cause of their own punishment.
629. 4.40.1The same Father prepares good things for those who seek him and eternal fire for the devil and the impenitent.
630. 4.40.2The separation of sheep and goats and the parable of the weeds show one Father who prepared both the kingdom and the fire.
631. 4.40.3The enemy who sowed the weeds is the apostate angel; God pitied deceived man and turned the enmity back on the serpent, which Christ, born of a woman, crushed.
632. 4.41.1The devil’s angels and sons are not his creation by nature, for God made all things, the devil included.
633. 4.41.2People are sons of God by creation, but only believers are his sons by obedience; the disobedient are called sons of the devil because they do his works.
634. 4.41.3As disobedient sons are disinherited, so those who disobey God cease to be his sons and are called by the names of beasts, of Sodom, and of the devil, though they could repent.
635. 4.41.4Irenaeus closes Book 4 by announcing that the next book will take up the Lord’s plain sayings and Paul’s letters, completing the five books against the heretics.
636. 5.0.1In the preface to Book 5 Irenaeus reviews the first four books and announces proofs from the Lord’s teaching and Paul’s letters, ending with the Word who became what we are to make us what he is.
637. 5.1.1Only the Word made man could teach and redeem us; he redeemed his own from the apostasy by just persuasion, not force, giving his blood, soul, and flesh for ours and uniting God and man.
638. 5.1.2Against the Docetists and Valentinians, Christ was truly man, having received flesh from Mary and recapitulated Adam’s formation.
639. 5.1.3Against the Ebionites, the virgin birth by the Holy Spirit is the new birth that brings life, as the Word and the Spirit, God’s hands, perfect Adam’s formation.
640. 5.2.1Christ did not come to what belonged to another, but justly and kindly redeemed his own handiwork by his blood.
641. 5.2.2If the flesh were not saved, the cup and bread of the Eucharist would not be the communion of Christ’s blood and body, which nourish our flesh and blood.
642. 5.2.3As the cup and bread receive the Word and become the Eucharist of Christ’s body and blood, so our bodies, nourished by it and laid in the earth, will rise by the Word of God.
643. 5.3.1Paul’s thorn in the flesh shows that God’s power is perfected in weakness, so that man learns by experience his own mortality and God’s power.
644. 5.3.2The God who formed man from clay can much more easily raise the dissolved body, and the flesh that received his wise craftsmanship can receive his power.
645. 5.3.3The heretics, who live in the flesh while denying that flesh can share in life, refute themselves; the God who now gives the flesh life can give it eternal life.
646. 5.4.1A “good” father who gave life only to soul and spirit and abandoned the body would be either powerless or spiteful, and inferior to the Creator who gives life to the whole man.
647. 5.4.2If some cause prevents the heretics’ father from giving life to bodies, he is subject to that cause and not free.
648. 5.5.1The long lives of the patriarchs and the translation of Enoch and Elijah in the body show that God can preserve bodies; the translated remain in paradise until the end.
649. 5.5.2Jonah and the three young men in the furnace show that nothing in nature can resist God’s will, so he can give raised bodies everlasting life.
650. 5.6.1The perfect man is body and soul receiving the Spirit of God; Paul prays that spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless, because all three are to be saved together.
651. 5.6.2The body is the temple of God and the members of Christ, so to deny its salvation is blasphemy; God will raise it by his power.
652. 5.7.1As Christ rose with the marks of the nails in his flesh, so our mortal bodies, which alone die and decay, are what God will raise.
653. 5.7.2Paul’s “sown in weakness, raised in power” speaks of dead bodies, which rise as spiritual bodies through the Spirit and will see the Lord face to face.
654. 5.8.1The Spirit we now receive is a pledge that already makes us cry “Abba, Father”; the full grace of the Spirit at the resurrection will make man in God’s image and likeness.
655. 5.8.2The spiritual are those whose body and soul receive the Spirit and live by him; the fleshly are those who serve their desires.
656. 5.8.3The prophets compare those who live irrationally to horses and beasts.
657. 5.8.4The law’s clean and unclean animals figure the faithful, the Gentiles, the Jews, and the heretics, according to whether they walk firmly in faith and meditate on God’s words.
658. 5.9.1“Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom” refers to those who lack the Spirit; man is flesh, soul, and Spirit, and without the Spirit he is mere flesh and blood.
659. 5.9.2Those who receive the Spirit are truly spiritual; the willing Spirit overcomes the weak flesh, as in the martyrs, making a living man.
660. 5.9.3Flesh without the Spirit is dead and cannot inherit the kingdom, but flesh possessed by the Spirit bears the heavenly image.
661. 5.9.4The flesh does not inherit but is inherited by the Spirit, as a bride is taken by the bridegroom; without the Spirit, mere flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom.
662. 5.10.1The grafted wild olive shows that men who receive the Spirit by faith bear fruit and enter God’s paradise, while those who reject him remain mere flesh and blood.
663. 5.10.2As grafting changes the fruit but not the wood, the Spirit changes man’s works but not his flesh; Paul rejects the lusts of the flesh, not its substance.
664. 5.11.1Paul names the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit, showing that “flesh and blood” means those who live by the flesh, while the name of Christ and the Spirit save.
665. 5.11.2Bearing the earthly image means doing the works of the flesh; bearing the heavenly means being washed in Christ’s name and receiving his Spirit, which changes conduct, not the body.
666. 5.12.1Flesh capable of death is also capable of life; as death drove out life, so the life of the Spirit drives out death.
667. 5.12.2The breath of life given to all is temporary, but the life-giving Spirit given to those who tread down earthly desires is everlasting; the natural comes first, then the spiritual.
668. 5.12.3The same flesh that died is what Christ came to give life to; Paul bids us put to death not our bodies but the lusts of the flesh.
669. 5.12.4Paul, born of a womb, counted life in the flesh the fruit of his work; to strip off the old man is to put away former conduct, while knowledge of God renews the same man.
670. 5.12.5The same Paul who was born of the womb was renewed by the revelation of Christ, as the healed blind men received sight in their own eyes.
671. 5.12.6The Word who healed bodies member by member would have no reason to do so unless the flesh were to be saved; who gives healing gives life and incorruption.
672. 5.13.1Jairus’s daughter, the widow’s son, and Lazarus rose in the same bodies in which they died, a pledge that at the last trumpet the dead will rise in their bodies.
673. 5.13.2The heretics cling to Paul’s words about flesh and blood like unskilled wrestlers who fall holding one limb, ignoring the apostle’s meaning.
674. 5.13.3Paul himself says the corruptible and mortal must put on incorruption and immortality and that Christ will transform our lowly body, so “flesh and blood” cannot mean the substance of the body.
675. 5.13.4Paul’s words about the life of Jesus made manifest in our mortal flesh, and his argument for the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, concern the body of flesh.
676. 5.13.5The heretics must either make Paul contradict himself or twist every passage in which he plainly teaches the resurrection of the flesh.
677. 5.14.1Christ had real flesh and blood, recapitulating the blood of the righteous from Abel onward, which would be pointless unless flesh and blood were to be saved.
678. 5.14.2Christ’s flesh was of the same substance as Adam’s, for only so could he recapitulate and reconcile the flesh that had perished.
679. 5.14.3Christ’s flesh differed from ours only in being sinless; had it been of another substance, it could not have reconciled our flesh to God.
680. 5.14.4“Flesh and blood” in Paul means the works of the flesh; the members once used for sin are to serve righteousness, and the reader, redeemed by Christ’s flesh and blood, can overturn the heretics.
681. 5.15.1Isaiah and Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones promise the resurrection of the body by the same God who formed man.
682. 5.15.2By making clay to give sight to the man born blind, Christ showed himself to be the hand of God that formed man from the earth and seeks out the lost.
683. 5.15.3The Word who forms us in the womb formed the blind man’s sight and sent him to wash in Siloam, restoring both his formation and the regeneration of the washing.
684. 5.15.4Against the Valentinians, the clay used to heal the blind man shows man was formed from this earth by the same Word who sought Adam in the garden.
685. 5.16.1Since our bodies return to this earth, they were formed from it, and the same hand of God forms and perfects us from beginning to end.
686. 5.16.2The incarnate Word showed the true image of God and restored the lost likeness by making man like the invisible Father.
687. 5.16.3On the tree of the cross Christ’s obedience undid the disobedience at the tree in Eden, reconciling us to the same God we offended in Adam.
688. 5.17.1The Creator is the Father against whom we sinned, and only he can forgive; so the Word who said “Your sins are forgiven” is his Word and mediator.
689. 5.17.2The crowds who saw the paralytic healed glorified the God of the law and prophets, showing that Christ, who forgave sins, came from him.
690. 5.17.3Christ’s forgiving of sins shows he is the Word of God made man, who cancelled our debt on the tree of the cross.
691. 5.17.4The axe-head that floated when Elisha threw in wood prefigures the word of God recovered through the tree of the cross, whose outstretched arms gather two peoples to one God.
692. 5.18.1Since creation bore the crucified Word, it must be God’s own work, not a product of ignorance, of angels, or of something outside the Pleroma.
693. 5.18.2The Father over all, the Word through all, and the Spirit in us all show one God; John’s prologue proves the world was made by the Word, not by angels or a Gnostic power.
694. 5.18.3The Word who made the world and contains it invisibly became flesh and hung on the tree; those who reject him reject life, and he will come openly to judge.
695. 5.19.1As the virgin Eve disobeyed and brought death, the Virgin Mary obeyed and became Eve’s advocate, so that humanity, bound to death through a virgin, is saved through a virgin.
696. 5.19.2Irenaeus lists the heretics’ contradictory errors about the Creator, the incarnation, the virgin birth, and the salvation of the body.
697. 5.20.1The heretics are later than the bishops appointed by the apostles; the Church throughout the world holds one faith, order, and hope, and carries the light of Christ.
698. 5.20.2The faithful should flee the heretics and be nourished in the Church, planted as a paradise, eating from every Scripture of the Lord but not from the forbidden tree of heretical knowledge.
699. 5.21.1Christ, born of a woman, recapitulated Adam and crushed the serpent’s head, so that as death conquered through a man, life conquers through a man.
700. 5.21.2In the temptation in the desert Christ conquered the devil three times with the words of the law, undoing Adam’s transgression by his obedience.
701. 5.21.3The God of the law is the one Christ served; through the Man who kept the law the devil was bound as he had bound man, and his captives were set free by God’s mercy.
702. 5.22.1Christ conquered Satan with the words of the law, so the God of the law is the one God and Father; ignorance could not have overcome ignorance.
703. 5.22.2Christ’s answers in the temptation teach humility and trust in God’s gifts; the devil’s promise of the kingdoms was a lie, since all is ruled by God.
704. 5.23.1The devil lied from the beginning, telling Eve she would not die; but God proved true, and disobedient Adam and Eve became debtors to death.
705. 5.23.2Adam died on the day he ate, in several senses: the sixth day, on which Christ also died to give man a second formation, or within the first thousand-year “day”.
706. 5.24.1The kingdoms of the world are appointed by God, not the devil, as Proverbs and Paul teach of earthly rulers and as Christ showed by paying the tax.
707. 5.24.2God established human government and the fear of the sword to restrain violence among fallen men; rulers who act justly are blameless, but unjust ones will perish.
708. 5.24.3Since authorities are ordained by God, who gives good or bad rulers as the people deserve, the devil can only deceive men into forgetting the true God.
709. 5.24.4The devil, an angel who fell through envy of man, usurps rule like a rebel; but the Word, conquering him as man, has made him subject to man.
710. 5.25.1The Antichrist, gathering up all the devil’s apostasy, will set himself up as the one idol and claim to be God, as Paul foretold of the man of sin.
711. 5.25.2Paul calls the Jerusalem temple the temple of God, showing it was built by the true God; the Antichrist will sit in it, as Jesus foretold.
712. 5.25.3Daniel’s little horn among the ten horns and Paul’s lawless one describe the Antichrist, who will reign three and a half years before the Lord destroys him.
713. 5.25.4The Antichrist is the “other” who comes in his own name and the unjust judge of the parable; Daniel foretells his desolation of the temple for half a week, three and a half years.
714. 5.25.5Because Christ confirmed Daniel’s prophecy and the same Gabriel spoke to Daniel and to Mary, the God of the prophets is the Father of Christ.
715. 5.26.1John’s ten horns and Daniel’s ten toes signify ten kings among whom the present empire will be divided before Christ, the stone cut without hands, destroys them and sets up an eternal kingdom.
716. 5.26.2Since Christ, the stone of Daniel, fulfilled what the Creator foretold, those who blaspheme the Creator, like Marcion and the Valentinians, are instruments of Satan, who, as Justin said, began to blaspheme only after learning his condemnation.
717. 5.27.1If the Father did not judge, Christ’s coming would be pointless; Christ divides believers from unbelievers, who choose freely, while the Father provides for all.
718. 5.27.2Communion with God is life and light; those who choose separation from him lose all good, and since God’s goods are eternal, so is their loss.
719. 5.28.1The Word gives each a fitting dwelling: the kingdom for those in the light, the eternal fire for those who have deprived themselves of all good.
720. 5.28.2The Antichrist, sent at God’s foreknown time as judgment on those who refused the truth, is John’s beast with its false prophet and the number 666, summing up six thousand years of apostasy.
721. 5.28.3As the world was made in six days and a day of the Lord is a thousand years, the world will come to its end in the six-thousandth year.
722. 5.28.4Tribulation grinds and bakes the faithful into bread fit for the King’s banquet, as Ignatius said when condemned to the beasts.
723. 5.29.1Creation exists for the sake of man; the unbelieving nations are like chaff serving the wheat, and when the Church is taken up the final tribulation will come.
724. 5.29.2The number 666 sums up the wickedness before the flood (Noah’s six hundred years) and the idolatry after it (Nebuchadnezzar’s image, sixty by six cubits), all gathered in the Antichrist.
725. 5.30.1The true number is 666, attested by the ancient copies and by those who saw John; those who adopt the corrupt reading 616 and invent names for the Antichrist risk being deceived by him.
726. 5.30.2Believers should wait for the tenfold division of the kingdom and then recognize the Antichrist, who, according to Jeremiah, will come from the tribe of Dan.
727. 5.30.3Irenaeus notes that Euanthas, Lateinos, and especially Teitan add up to 666 but declines to name the Antichrist, since John, who saw the vision late in Domitian’s reign, did not.
728. 5.30.4The Antichrist will reign three and a half years until the Lord comes from heaven, casts him into the lake of fire, and brings the just the kingdom, the hallowed seventh day of rest.
729. 5.31.1Against those who say the soul rises to heaven at death, Christ himself remained three days among the dead before rising and ascending.
730. 5.31.2As Christ stayed among the dead until the third day and then rose bodily, so the souls of the faithful wait in an invisible place until the resurrection of their bodies.
731. 5.32.1The just will rise first and reign in this renewed creation, in which they suffered, before the final judgment, as Paul says creation awaits its liberation.
732. 5.32.2God promised the land to Abraham, who never possessed it; he and his seed, the Church of believers, will receive it at the resurrection of the just.
733. 5.33.1At the Last Supper Christ promised to drink the fruit of the vine new with his disciples in the kingdom, which shows a renewed earth and a bodily resurrection.
734. 5.33.2The rewards promised for feeding the poor and leaving all for Christ will be given in the kingdom, the hallowed seventh day, the true sabbath of the just.
735. 5.33.3Isaac’s blessing of Jacob was never fulfilled in Jacob’s life and so refers to the kingdom, when, as the elders heard from John, the earth will bear marvellous abundance.
736. 5.33.4Papias, hearer of John, records the same teaching, and Isaiah’s peaceable animals are to be taken literally of the renewed creation, not only allegorically of converted nations.
737. 5.34.1Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah foretell the resurrection of the just and the gathering of God’s people, the Church as Abraham’s seed, to dwell in their land.
738. 5.34.2Isaiah’s fruitful earth and healed wound, Christ’s promise to serve his watchful servants, John’s first resurrection, and Daniel’s kingdom of the saints all point to the kingdom of the just.
739. 5.34.3Jeremiah’s promises to the islands, the churches of the nations, of plenty and joy on Mount Zion signify the feast of the renewed creation in the kingdom of the just.
740. 5.34.4Isaiah foretells a righteous king in Jerusalem, rebuilt with precious stones, where the people will live long, build, and plant in peace.
741. 5.35.1The prophecies cannot be allegorized away; they will be fulfilled after the Antichrist in the resurrection of the just, when they reign in a restored Jerusalem, as the prophet (Baruch) foretells.
742. 5.35.2These promises concern the earth in the times of the kingdom; afterwards come the general judgment and the new heaven and earth, with the new Jerusalem descending, all to be taken literally, not allegorically.
743. 5.36.1Creation is not annihilated but renewed; in the new heaven and earth the saved will dwell in heaven, in paradise, or in the city, according to their worth, and everywhere see God.
744. 5.36.2The elders teach that the saved receive different dwellings according to their fruitfulness and ascend through the Spirit to the Son and through the Son to the Father, until God is all in all.
745. 5.36.3John, the prophets, the Lord, and Paul agree on the resurrection of the just and the kingdom, in which one God brings his handiwork, united to the Son, to the image and likeness of God.