Against Heresies 1.9.1–1.13.7

You see, then, dearly beloved, the contrivance by which they deceive themselves, abusing the Scriptures and striving to make their fiction consist of them. I have set out their tricks and their very expressions so that from them you may consider the malice of the invention and the wickedness of the error. For first, if John had intended to show that Ogdoad above, he would certainly have kept the order of emission, and would certainly have put the first Tetrad first among the names, since it is, as they say, the more venerable, and then added the second, so that the order of the Ogdoad would be shown by the order of the names; and he would certainly not, after so long an interval, as though he had forgotten and then remembered, have mentioned the first Tetrad last. Then again, if he had wished to signify the conjunctions, he would not have passed over the name of Ecclesia; but either he would have been content with the names of the males in the other conjunctions too, since the others could likewise be understood with them, so as to keep uniformity throughout; or, if he was enumerating the consorts of the rest, he would certainly have made known the consort of Anthropos (that is, Man) as well, and would not have left us to discover her name by divination.

The distortion of their exposition, then, is plain. For John proclaims one God, and announces one Only-begotten, Christ Jesus, through whom he says all things were made: him the Word of God, him the Only-begotten, him the Maker of all things, him the true light that enlightens every man, him the Fashioner of the world, him who came to his own, him the same who was made flesh and dwelt among us. These men, twisting this by a plausible exposition, will have one to be Monogenes by emission, whom they also call Arche (Beginning); another to have been Soter (that is, Saviour); another Logos (that is, Word), son of Monogenes (that is, of the Only-begotten); and another Christ, emitted for the restoring of the Pleroma. Taking each of the things that were said away from the truth and misusing the names, they have transferred them into their own system, so that, according to them, in all these words John made no mention of the Lord Christ Jesus. For if he spoke of Father and Charis and Monogenes and Aletheia and Logos and Zoe and Anthropos and Ecclesia, then according to their system he spoke of the first Ogdoad, in which there was as yet no Jesus and as yet no Christ, John's teacher. But that the Apostle spoke not of their syzygies but of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he also knows to be the Word of God, he himself has made plain. For, summing up concerning the Word of whom he had said that he was in the beginning, he further explains: “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” But according to their system it was not the Word who was made flesh, for he never even came outside the Pleroma, but the Saviour, who was made from all [the Aeons] and is later than the Word.

Learn, then, you foolish men, that Jesus, who suffered for us, who dwelt among us, is himself the Word of God. For if some other of the Aeons had been made flesh for our salvation, it would have been reasonable to think that the Apostle spoke of another. But if the Word of the Father who descended is the same who also ascended, the only-begotten Son of the one God, incarnate for men according to the Father's good pleasure, then John spoke not of some other, nor of the Ogdoad, but of the Lord Jesus Christ. For according to them the Word was not, properly speaking, made flesh at all. For [they say that] the Saviour put on an animal body, fitted out by the dispensation with unspeakable providence, so that he might become visible and palpable. But flesh is that ancient formation made by God from the clay after Adam, and it is this that John declared the Word of God truly became. And so their first and first-begotten Ogdoad is dissolved. For when Logos and Monogenes, Zoe and Phos, Soter and Christ, the Son of God, are shown to be one and the same, and this same one incarnate for us, the framework of their Ogdoad is dissolved. And once this is dissolved, their whole system falls, the system they dream up under a false name, defaming the Scriptures in order to fashion their own scheme.

Then they gather expressions and names scattered here and there and transfer them, as we said before, from what is according to nature to what is against nature. They act like those who set themselves any theme they please and then try to work it out from Homeric verses, so that the unlearned think Homer made the verses on that theme, declaimed on the spur of the moment, and many are led away by the contrived sequence of the verses into thinking that Homer may perhaps have composed it so. So someone wrote of Hercules, sent by Eurystheus to the dog in the underworld, from Homeric verses, as follows (for nothing prevents us from mentioning these too by way of example, since the procedure is similar and the same in both cases): “Hercules the unconquered, not unskilled in great deeds, / Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, of the stock of Perseus, / But he went, like a fierce lion reared on the mountains, / Through the midst of the city; and all his friends went with him, / For he knew how grief was troubling his brother.” Who among the simple would not be carried away by such verses and think that Homer made them so on this theme? But one who knows Homer will recognize the verses, yet will not recognize the theme, knowing that one of them was said of Ulysses, another of Hercules, another of Priam, another of Menelaus and Agamemnon. And if he takes them and gives each back to its own book, he will do away with the present theme. So too whoever holds unshaken within himself the rule of truth which he received through baptism will recognize the names, the expressions and the parables that come from the Scriptures, but will not recognize their blasphemous theme. For he will know the gems, but will not accept a fox in place of the king's image. Restoring each of the sayings to its own order and fitting it to the body of the truth, he will lay bare their fiction and show it to be without substance.

But since this stage-play still lacks its final act, so that someone, after unfolding their farce, may bring in the argument that overthrows it, we thought it good to show first in what points the very fathers of this fable disagree among themselves, as men inspired by various spirits of error. For from this too it is possible to recognize accurately, even before the demonstration, that the truth preached by the Church is firm, and that what these men invent is falsehood.

For the Church, sown throughout the whole world to the ends of the earth, received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: in one God, the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth and the sea and all that is in them; and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, made flesh for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the dispensations of God, and the coming, and the birth from the Virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from heaven in the glory of the Father to sum up all things and to raise up all flesh of the whole human race, so that to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Saviour and King, according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess him, and that he should execute just judgement on all: sending the spiritual forces of wickedness, and the angels who transgressed and became apostates, and the ungodly, unjust, lawless and blasphemous among men into eternal fire; but granting life to the just and holy, who keep his commandments and persevere in his love, some from the beginning and others from repentance, he will bestow incorruption on them as a gift and surround them with eternal glory.

Having received this preaching and this faith, as we said before, the Church, although scattered throughout the whole world, carefully guards it as though dwelling in one house; she believes these things alike, as though having one soul and one heart, and preaches, teaches and hands them down in harmony, as though possessing one mouth. For though the languages in the world are unlike, the force of the tradition is one and the same. Neither do the churches founded in Germany believe otherwise, nor among the Celts, nor those in the East, nor those established in Egypt; but as the sun, God's creature, is one and the same in the whole world, so also the preaching of the truth shines everywhere and enlightens all men who wish to come to the knowledge of the truth. And neither will one of those who preside over the churches who is very able in speech say anything other than these things, for no one is above his teacher; nor will one who is weak in speaking diminish the tradition. For since the faith is one and the same, neither does one who can say much about it enlarge it, nor does one who can say less diminish it.

That some know more and others less according to their understanding does not come about by changing the subject matter itself and devising another God besides the Fashioner, Maker and Nourisher of this universe, as though he were not enough for us, or another Christ, or another Only-begotten. It comes about by working out what has been said in parables and fitting it to the substance of the truth; by setting forth the working and dispensation of God made for the human race; by explaining that God showed himself long-suffering both in the apostasy of the transgressing angels and in the disobedience of men; by proclaiming why one and the same God made some things temporal and others eternal, some heavenly and others earthly; why, though invisible, he appeared to the prophets not in one form but differently to different ones; by declaring why many covenants were given to the human race, and teaching what the character of each of the covenants is; by searching out why God has shut up all in unbelief, that he may have mercy on all; by giving thanks for why the Word of God was made flesh and suffered; by proclaiming why the coming of the Son of God appeared in the last times, that is, at the end, and not at the beginning; by unfolding whatever is set down in the Scriptures about the end and about things to come; by not keeping silent about why God made the despaired-of Gentiles fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers with the saints; by proclaiming how this mortal flesh will put on immortality and the corruptible incorruption; by announcing how what was not a people became a people, and she who was not beloved, beloved; and how “more are the children of her who is desolate than of her who has a husband.” For at these and similar things the Apostle exclaimed: “O the depth of the riches and of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements, and his ways past finding out!” But it does not consist in inventing, above the Creator and Fashioner, his mother and theirs, the Enthymesis of an erring Aeon, and so arriving at such great blasphemy; nor in lying about a Pleroma above her again, now of thirty, now of innumerable multitudes of Aeons, as these teachers say who are truly destitute of the divine mind; while the whole Church, as we said before, has one and the same faith throughout the whole world.

Let us now look at the inconstant opinion of these men too: though there are two or three of them, they do not say the same things about the same matters, but give answers contrary in both names and substance. The first of them, Valentinus, who adapted the old principles of the so-called Gnostic heresy to his own kind of school, defined it thus: that there is a certain unnameable Dyad, one part of which is called the Unspeakable and the other Sige (Silence). Then from this Dyad a second Dyad was emitted, one part of which he calls Father and the other Aletheia (Truth). From this Tetrad, Logos and Zoe, Anthropos and Ecclesia bore fruit; and this is the first Ogdoad. From Logos and Zoe, he says, ten powers were emitted, as we said before, and from Anthropos and Ecclesia twelve, of which one departed and fell into deficiency and produced the rest of the dispensation. He posits two Limits: one between Bythus and the rest of the Pleroma, bounding off the begotten Aeons from the unbegotten Father; the other separating their mother from the Pleroma. And Christ, he says, was not emitted by the Aeons in the Pleroma, but was brought forth by the mother, when she had come to be outside, according to her remembrance of the better things, with a kind of shadow. He, being male, cut the shadow off from himself and hastened back into the Pleroma. The mother, left behind with the shadow and emptied of spiritual substance, emitted another son, and this is the Demiurge, whom he also calls the Almighty of the things subject to him. Together with him, he says, a left-hand ruler was also emitted, as do those falsely called Gnostics of whom we shall speak. And Jesus he says was emitted sometimes by the one who was separated from their mother and united with the others, that is, by Theletos; sometimes by the one who hastened back up into the Pleroma, that is, by Christ; and sometimes by Anthropos and Ecclesia. And the Holy Spirit, he says, was emitted by Aletheia for the testing and fruitfulness of the Aeons, entering invisibly into them, through whom the Aeons bore the fruits of truth. So much for him.

Secundus handed down the first Ogdoad thus, saying that there is a right-hand Tetrad and a left-hand Tetrad, light and darkness; and the power that departed and fell into deficiency, he says, came not from the thirty Aeons but from their fruits.

Another, who is also a famous teacher of theirs, reaching out to something more sublime and, as it were, to a greater knowledge, described the first Tetrad thus: “There is before all things a Proarche, Proanennoetos (before all thought), unspeakable and unnameable, which I call Monotes (Oneness). With this Monotes there is a power, which I also call Henotes (Unity). This Henotes and Monotes, being one, emitted, while not emitting, a beginning of all things, intelligible, unbegotten and invisible, which beginning the account calls Monad. With this Monad there is a power of the same substance with it, which I also call Hen (One). These powers, Monotes, Henotes, Monas and Hen, emitted the remaining emissions of the Aeons.”

“Iu, iu!” and “Pheu, pheu!”: truly one must utter the tragic cry over such a manufacture of names and such audacity, how without a blush he has given names to his lie. For when he says, “There is before all things a Proarche, Proanennoetos, which I call Monotes,” and again, “With this Monotes there is a power, which I also call Henotes,” it is plain that the things he has said are fictions: he has confessed that he himself gave names to his fiction which had been given by no one else; and if he had not dared this, the truth would today, according to him, have had no names. Nothing therefore prevents someone else, on such a subject, from fixing names thus: “There is a certain royal Proarche, Proanennoetos, a power Proanhypostatos (before all substance), Proprokylindomene (rolling forth before all). With it there is a power which I call Gourd; and with this Gourd there is a power which I also call Utter Emptiness. This Gourd and Emptiness, being one, emitted, while not emitting, a fruit, visible on every side, edible and sweet, which fruit the account calls Cucumber. With this Cucumber there is a power of the same potency, which I also call Melon. These powers, Gourd, Emptiness, Cucumber and Melon, emitted the remaining multitude of Valentinus's delirious melons.” For if the account given of all things must be transformed into the first Tetrad, and anyone may set down names as he pleases, who forbids using these names, which are much more credible, in common use, and known to all?

Others again among them named their first and archetypal Ogdoad with these names: first Proarche, then Anennoetos, third Arrhetos, and fourth Aoratos. From the first, Proarche, there was emitted in the first and fifth place Arche; from Anennoetos, in the second and sixth place, Acataleptos; from Arrhetos, in the third and seventh place, Anonomastos; and from Aoratos, in the fourth and eighth place, Agennetos. This is the Pleroma of the first Ogdoad. They will have these powers to be before Bythus and Sige, so that they may appear more perfect than the perfect and more gnostic than the Gnostics. To them one might justly say: “O melons, contemptible sophists, and not men!” For about Bythus himself there are various opinions among them. Some say he is without a consort, neither male nor female, nor anything at all; others say he is both male and female, and give him the nature of a hermaphrodite; and others again add Sige to him as consort, so that the first conjunction may come about.

But those around Ptolemy, who are more learned, say that Bythus has two consorts, which they also call dispositions, Ennoea and Thelesis. For first, they say, he conceived in his mind the emitting of something, and afterwards he willed it. Therefore, these two affections and powers, that is, of Ennoea and Thelesis, being as it were mingled with each other, the emission of Monogenes and Aletheia took place by conjunction. These came forth as types and images of the two affections of the Father, visible images of invisible things: Nus of Thelema, and Aletheia of Ennoea. For this reason the image of the supervening Will is male, and that of the innate Ennoea female, since the Will became, as it were, a power of the Ennoea. For Ennoea was always thinking of an emission, yet could not by herself emit what she was thinking; but when the power of the Will came upon her, then she emitted what she had been thinking.

Do not these men seem to you, dearly beloved, to have conceived of the Homeric Jupiter, who could not sleep for anxiety but was concerned how he might honour Achilles and destroy many of the Greeks, rather than of him who is the God of all things? For he, as soon as he has thought, has also accomplished what he thought, and as soon as he has willed, also thinks what he has willed: thinking when he wills and willing when he thinks, since he is all thought, all mind, all eye, all hearing, and the whole fountain of all good things.

But those of them who are thought wiser say that the first Ogdoad was not emitted by degrees, one Aeon from another, but that the emission of the Aeons was made together and at once by the Propator and his Ennoea; and they affirm that they themselves acted as midwives when they were being created. And they say no longer that Anthropos and Ecclesia were generated from Logos and Zoe, but Logos and Zoe from Anthropos and Ecclesia, putting it this way: when the Propator thought of emitting something, in this respect he was called Father; when what he emitted was true, this was called Aletheia; when he wished to show himself, in this respect he was called Anthropos; and when he emitted those whom he had thought of beforehand, this was called Ecclesia. Anthropos spoke Logos: this is the first-born Son. And Zoe follows Logos; and so the first Ogdoad was completed.

There is much strife among them also about the Saviour. For some say he was generated from all, and that he is therefore called Eudocetos (Good Pleasure), because the whole Pleroma was well pleased through him to glorify the Father. Others say he came from the ten Aeons alone that were emitted from Logos and Zoe, and that he is therefore called Logos and Zoe, keeping the names of his parents. Others say he came from the twelve Aeons made by Anthropos and Ecclesia, and that he therefore confesses himself Son of Man, as the offspring of Anthropos. Others say he was made by Christ and the Holy Spirit, who were emitted for the strengthening of the Pleroma, and that he is therefore called Christ, keeping the name of his Father by whom he was emitted. And there are others who say that the Propator of all things himself, Proarche and Proanennoetos, is called Anthropos; and that this is the great and hidden mystery, that the power which is above all things and contains all things is called Anthropos; and that this is why the Saviour calls himself Son of Man.

Another of them, who boasts that he has improved on his teacher (Marcus is his name), most skilled in magical imposture, by it has seduced many men and not a few women and made them turn to him as one most knowing and most perfect, holding the greatest power from the invisible and unspeakable places; he is, as it were, truly a forerunner of Antichrist. For, mixing the tricks of Anaxilaus with the wickedness of those called magi, he is thought by these means to work miracles among those who have no sense and have gone out of their minds.

For, pretending to give thanks over cups mixed with wine, and drawing out the word of invocation at great length, he makes them appear purple and red, so that Charis, from those who are above all things, may be thought to drip her own blood into his cup through his invocation, and those present may long to taste from that cup, so that the Charis called down by this magician may drip into them too. Again, he hands mixed cups to women and bids them give thanks over them in his presence. When this is done, he brings out another cup much larger than the one over which the deluded woman makes the eucharist, and pours from the smaller one, over which the woman has made the eucharist, into the much larger one he has brought, saying at once: “May the Charis who is before all things, beyond thought and unspeakable, fill your inner man and multiply her knowledge in you, sowing the grain of mustard seed in good soil.” And saying such things, and driving that unhappy woman to madness, he appears to work wonders when the larger cup is filled from the smaller cup so that it even overflows. And by doing other things like these he has ruined many and drawn them after him.

It may be gathered that he also has a familiar demon, through whom he himself seems to prophesy, and through whom he makes as many prophesy as he thinks worthy to share his Charis. For he busies himself most of all with women, and especially with those who are well-born, clothed in purple and very rich, whom he often tries to lead astray, saying to them flatteringly: “I wish you to share in my Charis, since the Father of all always sees your angel before his face. The place of your greatness is in us: we must come together into one. Receive first from me and through me Charis. Prepare yourself as a bride awaiting her bridegroom, so that you may be what I am, and I what you are. Set the seed of light in your bridal chamber. Receive from me a bridegroom, and contain him, and be contained in him. See, Charis has come down upon you; open your mouth and prophesy.” When the woman answers, “I have never prophesied, and I do not know how to prophesy,” he makes further invocations, to the amazement of the one being deceived, and says to her: “Open your mouth and say anything at all, and you will prophesy.” And she, deceived and elated by what has been said, her soul heated by the expectation that she is beginning to prophesy, her heart beating far more than it should, ventures and speaks nonsense, whatever comes to her, all emptily and boldly, since she has been heated by the spirit (as one better than we has said of such prophets, that the soul is bold and shameless when heated by empty air). From then on she thinks herself a prophetess, and gives thanks to Marcus, who shared his Charis with her, and is eager to repay him, not only by giving her property (by which he has gathered great wealth) but also by bodily union, and she desires to be united with him in every way, so that with him she may come down into one.

But some of the most faithful women, who have the fear of God and are not to be led astray, whom he likewise tried to seduce like the rest by bidding them prophesy, blew at him and cursed him and separated themselves from such a madman, who pretended to breathe out the divine. For they knew for certain that prophecy is not given to men by Marcus the magician, but that those on whom God sends his grace from above have prophecy given by God, and then they speak where and when God wills, not when Marcus commands. For what commands is greater and more authoritative than what is commanded, since the one rules and the other is subject. If, then, Marcus commands, or anyone else, as all these people are accustomed at their dinners to play at lots and order one another to prophesy, and to prophesy to themselves according to their own desires, then the one who commands, though he is a man, will be greater and more authoritative than the prophetic spirit, which is impossible. But such spirits as are commanded by them and speak when these men wish are earthly and weak, bold and shameless, sent by Satan to lead astray and destroy those who do not keep the firm faith which they received from the beginning through the church.

Moreover, this same Marcus also prepares love-potions and enticing charms, in order to dishonour the bodies of some of these women, though not of all. These women, having very often turned back to the church of God, have confessed that they were defiled in body by him and that they loved him passionately, as if inflamed with desire; so that even a certain deacon of ours in Asia, who received him into his house, fell into such a calamity. For his wife, who was beautiful, was corrupted in mind and body by this magician and followed him for a long time; afterwards, when the brethren had with great labour converted her, she spent all her time in public confession, weeping and lamenting over the defilement she had suffered from this magician.

Some of his disciples too, going about in the same practices, have led astray and corrupted many silly women, calling themselves perfect, as though no one could equal the greatness of their knowledge, not even if you named Paul or Peter or any other of the apostles; they say they know more than all, and that they alone have drunk in the greatness of the knowledge of the unspeakable power. They say they are on a height above every power, and that therefore they do everything freely, having no fear of anyone in anything. For because of the redemption, they say, they become impossible to seize and invisible [to the judge]. And if he should lay hold of them, they would stand before him with the redemption and say: “O you who sit beside God and the mystical Sige who is before the ages, through whom the Greatnesses, who always see the face of the Father, using you as guide and leader, draw up their forms above, which she, in her great daring, led by a phantasm, emitted us, their images, on account of the goodness of the Propator, having then the intention of those above as in a dream: see, the judge is at hand, and the herald bids me make my defence. But you, as one who knows the case of us both, present it to the judge as one cause.” And the Mother, hearing this quickly, put the Homeric helmet of Hades on them, so that they might escape the judge invisibly, and at once snatched them up, led them into the bridal chamber, and gave them back to their bridegrooms.

By saying and doing such things they have led astray many women in our own region of the Rhône as well. These women, having their consciences seared, some even make public confession; others, ashamed of this, quietly withdraw little by little, despairing of the life of God; some have fallen away altogether, and others waver between the two and suffer what the proverb says, being neither inside nor outside, having this as the fruit of the seed of the children of knowledge.