Against Heresies 1.5.1–1.8.5

These three things, then, existing according to them, one from the passion, which was matter, another from the turning back, which was the animate (soul), and the third that which she brought forth, which is the spiritual, she turned to their formation. But the spiritual she could not form, because it was of the same substance as herself. Turning to the formation of the animate substance, which had come from her turning back, she brought forth the teachings she had received from the Saviour. And first, they say, she formed from the animate substance God, the Father and King of all, both of those of the same substance as himself, that is, the animate, whom they call the right-hand ones, and of those from the passion and from matter, whom they call the left-hand ones. For they say that he formed all that came after him, being secretly moved by his mother. Hence they call him Metropator (Mother-father), Apator (Fatherless), Demiurge, and Father: Father of the right-hand ones, that is, the psychics, Demiurge of the left-hand ones, that is, the hylics (material ones), and King of all. For this Enthymesis, wishing to make all things in honour of the Aeons, made, they say, images of them, or rather the Saviour made them through her. And she herself, in the image of the invisible Father, remained unknown to the Demiurge; he is in the image of the only-begotten Son; and the angels and archangels made by him are images of the other Aeons.

So they say that the Father and God who came to be of those outside the Pleroma is the maker of all psychic and hylic things. For separating the two confused substances and making bodily things from incorporeal ones, he made the heavenly and the earthly things, and became the maker of the hylic and psychic, of the right and the left, of the light and the heavy, of what flies upward and what sinks downward. He also made seven heavens, above which, they say, the Demiurge is. And for this reason they call him the Hebdomad, and the mother Achamoth the Ogdoad, preserving the number of the primal and first Ogdoad of the Pleroma. The seven heavens they say are intelligent, and they hold them to be angels; the Demiurge too is himself an angel, but like God; and likewise they say that Paradise, which is above the third heaven, is a fourth archangel in power, and that Adam received something from it when he lived in it.

They say that the Demiurge thought he had made all these things wholly of himself, but that Achamoth made them. He made heaven without knowing heaven, formed man without knowing man, brought earth to light without knowing earth; and in everything, they say, he was ignorant of the patterns of what he made, and of the mother herself, and thought that he himself was all. His mother, they say, was the cause of his working in this way, since she wished to bring him forth as head and beginning of his own substance and lord of the whole work. This mother they also call Ogdoad, Sophia, Earth, Jerusalem, Holy Spirit, and, in the masculine, Lord. She holds the place of the middle, being above the Demiurge, but below or outside the Pleroma until the end.

Since they say that the material substance consists of three passions, fear, grief, and perplexity, the animate things took their existence from fear and from the turning back: from the turning back, they hold, the Demiurge had his origin; from fear, all the rest of the animate substance, of irrational animals and of men. And for this reason he, being [unable] to know the spiritual things, thought that he alone was God, and said through the prophets, “I am God, and besides me there is no one.” From grief, they teach, the spiritual forces of wickedness were made: hence the devil, whom they also call Cosmocrator (World-ruler), and the demons, and all the spiritual substance of wickedness had their origin. They say that the Demiurge is the psychic son of his mother, and the Cosmocrator a creature of the Demiurge; and that the Cosmocrator knows the things above him, being a spiritual wickedness, while the Demiurge is ignorant of them, being animate. Their mother dwells in the heavenly [read: supercelestial] place, that is, in the Middle; the Demiurge in the place that is in heaven, that is, in the Hebdomad; the Cosmocrator in our world. From terror and perplexity, as from the more senseless part, came the bodily elements of the world, as we said before: earth according to the fixity of terror, water according to the movement of fear, air according to the congealing of grief; and fire is inherent in them all, as death and corruption, just as ignorance, they teach, is hidden in all three passions.

Having made the world, then, he also made the earthy man, taking him not from this dry land but from the invisible substance, from the fluid and flowing matter; and into him, they declare, he breathed the psychic man. And this is the man made “according to the image and likeness”: according to the image, the hylic, near to God but not of the same substance; according to the likeness, the psychic; hence his substance is also called “the spirit of life”, since it comes from a spiritual outflow. Afterwards, they say, he was clothed with the “garment of skin”; and this they hold to be the perceptible flesh.

The offspring of their mother Achamoth, which she bore by contemplating the angels around the Saviour, being spiritual and of the same substance as its mother, the Demiurge too, they say, did not know; and it was secretly deposited in him without his knowledge, so that, sown through him into the soul that came from him and into this material body, carried in them as in a womb and growing, it might become ready to receive the perfect Word. So, as they say, the spiritual man, sown by Sophia together with his breathing, escaped the Demiurge's notice by unspeakable power and providence. For as he did not know his mother, so he did not know her seed. This seed, they say, is the Church, a copy of the upper Church. And they hold that this is the man within themselves: so that they have the soul from the Demiurge, the body from the slime and the fleshly part from matter, but the spiritual man from the mother Achamoth.

There being, then, three kinds, the material (which they also call the left), they say, must necessarily perish, since it cannot receive any breath of incorruption; the animate (which they also call the right), being midway between the spiritual and the material, passes to whichever side it inclines; and the spiritual was sent forth so that it might be formed here, joined to the animate and trained together with it in this life. And this, they say, is “the salt” and “the light of the world”. For the animate needed perceptible instruction. For this reason, they say, the world was made, and the Saviour came to the animate for this purpose, since it has free will, in order to save it. For they say that he took up the firstfruits of what he was to save: from Achamoth the spiritual; from the Demiurge he put on the psychic (that is, animate) Christ; and from the dispensation he was clothed with a body that has animate substance, prepared with unspeakable art so that it became visible, tangible, and passible. But he took up nothing whatever hylic, for the hylic is not capable of salvation. The consummation will come when everything spiritual has been formed and perfected by knowledge, that is, the men who have perfect knowledge of God and have been initiated into the mysteries by Achamoth; and these, they say, are themselves.

The psychic (that is, animate) things are taught to the psychic (that is, animate) men, who are established by works and bare faith and do not have perfect knowledge. These, they say, are we who belong to the Church. Therefore they reply that good conduct is necessary for us, for otherwise it is impossible to be saved; but they themselves, they say, will be saved in every case, not by works, but because they are spiritual by nature. For just as the earthy cannot receive salvation (for they say it is not capable of salvation), so again the spiritual (which they claim to be) cannot receive corruption, whatever deeds it may be engaged in. For just as gold laid in mud does not lose its beauty but keeps its own nature, since the mud can do the gold no harm, so they say of themselves that, whatever material deeds they are engaged in, they are in no way harmed, nor do they lose their spiritual substance.

For this reason the “perfect” among them do without fear all the forbidden things, of which the Scriptures declare that “those who do them will not inherit the kingdom of God.” They eat food offered to idols without scruple, thinking that they are in no way defiled by it; and they are the first to gather at every pagan festival held for pleasure, so that they do not even abstain from the murderous spectacle of the gladiatorial show, hateful to God and men. Some, serving the pleasures of the flesh insatiably, say that fleshly things are to be rendered to the fleshly and spiritual things to the spiritual. Some of them secretly seduce the women who learn this doctrine from them; many women, often persuaded by them and afterwards converted to the Church of God, have confessed this along with the rest of their error. Others, openly and without even blushing, have taken whatever women they fell in love with away from their husbands and made them their own wives. Others again, very modestly at first, pretending to live with them as with sisters, were exposed as time went on, when the sister was made pregnant by the brother.

And doing many other hateful and irreligious things, they reproach us, who through the fear of God are afraid to sin even in our thoughts and words, as simple people who know nothing; and they exalt themselves, calling themselves perfect and seeds of election. For they say that we receive grace for use, and therefore it will be taken away from us; but that they possess it as their own, having grace that came down from above from the unspeakable and unnameable conjunction, and therefore it will be increased for them. For this reason they must always practise the mystery of conjunction in every way. And they persuade the senseless of this with these words: “Whoever is in the world and does not love a woman so as to be united with her is not of the truth and will not pass into the truth; but whoever is of the world and has intercourse with a woman does not pass into the truth, because he has intercourse with a woman in lust.” Therefore for us, whom they call psychic and say are of the world, continence and good works are necessary, so that by them we may come to the place of the middle; but for themselves, called spiritual and perfect, in no way. For it is not works that bring one into the Pleroma, but the seed sent forth from there in infancy and here brought to perfection.

When all the seed has been perfected, they say, their mother Achamoth will pass from the place of the middle and enter the Pleroma, and receive her bridegroom, the Saviour, who was made from all, so that a conjunction may come about of the Saviour and Sophia, who is Achamoth. And this is the bridegroom and the bride, and the bridal chamber is the whole Pleroma. The spiritual, stripped of their souls and become intelligent spirits, will enter the Pleroma beyond grasp and unseen, and be given as brides to the angels around the Saviour. The Demiurge too will pass into the place of his mother Sophia, that is, into the middle. The souls of the righteous will also find rest in the place of the middle; for nothing psychic passes within the Pleroma. When these things have been done in this way, the fire that lies hidden in the world, blazing up and seizing all matter, will consume it and be consumed together with it and pass into non-existence. They show that the Demiurge knew none of these things before the Saviour's coming.

Some say that he also emitted a Christ, his own son, but animate, and that he spoke about him through the prophets. This is the one who passed through Mary as water passes through a pipe; and on him at his baptism there descended, in the form of a dove, that Saviour from the Pleroma who is from all; and there was in him also the spiritual seed from Achamoth. So they say that our Lord was composed of these four, preserving the type of the primal and first Tetrad: of the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; of the animate, which was from the Demiurge; of the dispensation, which was made with unspeakable art; and of the Saviour, which was the dove that descended on him. This last remained impassible (for he could not suffer, being incomprehensible and invisible), and for this reason the Spirit of Christ that had been placed in him was taken away when he was brought before Pilate. And they say that not even the seed from the mother suffered, for it too was impassible, being spiritual and invisible even to the Demiurge. According to them, the one who suffered was the animate Christ, and the one fashioned from the dispensation in a mystery, so that through him the mother might show a type of the upper Christ, the one who was stretched upon the Cross and gave Achamoth her formation according to substance. For they say that all these things are copies of those.

They say that the souls that had the seed from Achamoth were better than the rest; and that for this reason they were loved more by the Demiurge, who did not know the cause but thought they were such because of himself. For this reason, they say, he distributed them among prophets, priests, and kings. And they expound many things spoken through the prophets as spoken by this seed, since it was of a higher nature. And they say that the mother too spoke many things about the higher realities, but through him and through the souls made by him. And so they divide the prophecies, teaching that some were spoken by the mother, some by the seed, and some by the Demiurge himself; and likewise that Jesus spoke some things from the Saviour, some from the mother, and some from the Demiurge, as we shall show as our account proceeds.

The Demiurge, being ignorant of what was above him, was moved by what was said but despised it, thinking it had one cause or another: either the prophetic spirit, which itself has some motion of its own, or the man, or the intermingling of the worse; and so he remained ignorant until the coming [of the Saviour]. When the Saviour came, they say, he learned everything from him and gladly went over to him with all his power; and he is the centurion in the Gospel who says to the Saviour, “For I too have soldiers and servants under my authority, and what I command they do.” And he will complete the creation of the world that is his to make, until the time required, chiefly because of his care and concern for the Church, and because of his knowledge of the reward prepared for him, namely that he will pass into the place of the mother.

They say there are three kinds of men: spiritual, psychic, earthy, as were Cain, Abel, and Seth, so as to show from these the three natures, no longer in each individual but by kind. The earthy goes to corruption; the animate, if it chooses the better, will find rest in the place of the middle, but if the worse, it too will pass to its like. The spiritual seeds Achamoth has been sowing from that time until now in righteous souls, so that they are trained here and nourished, because they are sent forth in infancy, and afterwards, judged worthy of perfection, they reply, are given as brides to the Saviour's angels, while their souls necessarily rest for ever in the middle with the Demiurge. And subdividing the souls again, they say that some are good by nature and some evil by nature: the good are those that become capable of the seed; the others, worthless by nature, never receive that seed.

Such, then, is their system, which neither the prophets proclaimed, nor the Lord taught, nor the apostles handed down, but which they boast of knowing more abundantly than others. Reading from things that are not written, and, as the saying goes, trying to weave ropes from sand, they try to fit to their claims, plausibly, things that have been said, whether the Lord's parables, or the prophets' sayings, or the apostles' words, so that their fiction may not seem to be without witness. They disregard the order and connection of the Scriptures and, as far as in them lies, dismember the truth. They transfer and refashion, and making one thing out of another they deceive many by the badly assembled fantasy they fit together from the Lord's words. It is as if someone, taking a fine image of a king carefully made by a skilful artist out of precious stones, were to break up the underlying figure of the man, rearrange the stones, and refashion them into the shape of a dog or a fox, and that badly put together; and then were to insist that this is the fine image of the king which the skilful artist made, pointing to the stones, which were well arranged by the first artist into the king's image but badly transferred by the second into the shape of a dog; and by the show of the stones were to deceive the simple who have no conception of the king's form, and persuade them that this ugly figure of a fox is the fine image of the king. In the same way these people stitch together old wives' fables, and then, snatching words, sayings, and parables from here and there, try to fit the words of God to their fables. We have said how much they fit to the things within the Pleroma.

The things they try to suggest to their followers from the Scriptures concerning what is outside their Pleroma are such as these. They say that the Lord came to his passion in the last times of the world for this reason: to show the passion that happened to the last of the Aeons, and by this end to reveal the end of the dispensation concerning the Aeons. The twelve-year-old girl, the daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, whom the Lord stood over and raised from the dead, they say is a type of Achamoth, whom their Christ, stretched out, formed and brought to perception of the light that had left her. And since the Saviour appeared to her when she was outside the Pleroma, in the state of an untimely birth, they say that Paul said in the first letter to the Corinthians, “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” And the coming of the Saviour with his companions to Achamoth, they say, he likewise showed in the same letter when he said, “A woman ought to have a veil on her head because of the angels.” And because, when the Saviour came to her, Achamoth put a veil on her face out of modesty. And they say that the Lord signified the passions she suffered: that she was abandoned by the light, when he says on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He showed by this that Sophia was abandoned by the light and prevented by Horos from rushing forward. Her grief, when he said, “How sorrowful is my soul”; her fear, when he said, “Father, if it is possible, let the cup pass from me”; and her perplexity (that is, bewilderment) likewise, when he said, “And what shall I say, I do not know.”

They teach that he showed the three kinds of men: the hylic, when he replied to the one who said, “I will follow you”: “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head”; the animate, when he said to the one who said, “I will follow you, but let me first go and take leave of my household”: “No one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the kingdom of heaven.” This one, they say, is of the middle kind. And likewise that man who professed to have done many parts of righteousness, but afterwards was unwilling to follow, being overcome by riches so as not to become perfect, they hold to have been of the psychic kind. The spiritual, when he says, “Let the dead bury their dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God”; and when he said to Zacchaeus the tax collector, “Make haste and come down, for today I must stay in your house.” And the parable of the leaven, which a woman is said to have hidden in three measures of flour, they say shows the three kinds: the woman, they teach, means Sophia; the three measures of flour, the three kinds of men, spiritual, animate, earthy; and the leaven, they say, means the Saviour himself. And they say Paul plainly spoke of the earthy, the animate, and the spiritual: in one place, “As was the earthy, so are those who are earthy”; in another, “The animate man does not receive the things of the Spirit”; in another, “The spiritual man judges all things.” And the saying “The animate man does not receive the things of the Spirit” they say was spoken of the Demiurge, who, being psychic, knew neither the mother, who is spiritual, nor her seed, nor the Aeons in the Pleroma. And since the Saviour took up the firstfruits of those he was to save, Paul said, “If the firstfruits are holy, so is the lump”; teaching that the firstfruits means the spiritual, and the lump means us, that is, the psychic Church, whose substance, they say, he assumed and raised up with himself, since he himself was the leaven.

And since Achamoth wandered outside the Pleroma, was formed by Christ, and was sought by the Saviour, he showed this, they say, when he said that he had come to the sheep that had gone astray. For they say that the wandering sheep means their mother, from whom they hold that the Church here was sown; and the wandering means her lingering in all the passions outside the Pleroma, from which they teach that matter came to be. The woman who sweeps the house and finds the drachma they say means the upper Sophia, who, having lost her Intention, afterwards found it when all things had been cleansed by the Saviour's coming; for this too, according to them, is restored within the Pleroma. Simeon, who took Christ in his arms and gave thanks to God and said, “Now you let your servant depart, Lord, according to your word, in peace,” they say is a type of the Demiurge, who, when the Saviour came, learned of his change of place and gave thanks to Bythus. And by Anna, who in the Gospel is said to have lived seven years with her husband and to have remained a widow all the rest of her time, until she saw the Saviour and recognized him and spoke of him to all, they say Achamoth is most plainly signified, who, having seen the Saviour for a short time with his companions, remained all the following time in the middle, waiting for him to come again and restore her to her conjunction. And her name, they say, was indicated by the Saviour when he said, “Wisdom is justified by her children”, and by Paul thus: “We speak wisdom among the perfect.” And they say that Paul spoke of the conjunctions within the Pleroma, showing them in one instance; for writing of the conjunction that belongs to this life he says, “This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the Church.”

Further, they teach that John, the disciple of the Lord, signified the first Ogdoad and the generation of all things in these very words. He posited a certain Beginning, which was first made by God, which he also calls Nus and Son, and calls the Only-begotten [God], in whom the Father emitted all things as seed. From him, they say, the Word was emitted, and in him the whole substance of the Aeons, which the Word himself afterwards formed. Since, then, he speaks of the first generation, he rightly begins his teaching from the Beginning, that is, from the Son, and from the Word. He speaks thus: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God.” First distinguishing three, God, the Beginning, and the Word, he again unites them, to show both the emission of each of the two, that is, of the Son and of the Word, and their union with each other and with the Father. For the Beginning is in the Father and from the Father, and the Word in the Beginning and from the Beginning. He rightly said, then, “In the beginning was the Word”, for he was in the Son; “and the Word was with God”, for so was the Beginning; “and the Word was God”, consequently, for what is born of God is God. “He was in the beginning with God”: this shows the order of emission. “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made”: for to all the Aeons that come after him the Word was the cause of formation and generation. “But what was made in him,” he says, “is life”: here he revealed a conjunction. For “all things,” he says, “were made through him,” but life “in him”. This, then, which came to be in him, is closer than what was made through him; for it is with him, and bears fruit through him. For he adds, “And the life was the light of men.” By saying “men” he now signified Anthropos and Ecclesia by one name, to show by one name the communion of the conjunction; for from Logos and Zoe are generated Anthropos and Ecclesia. He called life the light of men because they are enlightened by it, that is, formed and made manifest; and Paul says this too: “For everything that is made manifest is light.” Since, then, life manifested and generated Anthropos and Ecclesia, it was called their light. John, then, by these words and others plainly showed the second Tetrad, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia. But he also signified the first Tetrad. For speaking of the Saviour, and teaching that all things outside the Pleroma were formed through him, he also says he is the fruit of the Pleroma. For he calls him the light that shines in the darkness and is not grasped by it, since, forming all things that came from the passion, he was unknown to them. And he calls him Son, Truth, Life, and the Word made flesh, “whose glory we have seen,” he says; and his glory was such as was that of the Only-begotten, given him by the Father, “full of grace and truth.” [He speaks] thus: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only-begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.” So he carefully showed the first Tetrad, naming the Father, Grace, the Only-begotten, and Truth. Thus John spoke of the first Ogdoad, the mother of all the Aeons. For he named the Father, Grace, the Only-begotten, Truth, the Word, Life, Man, and Church.