Against Heresies 3.16.1–3.17.4

But there are some who say that Jesus was the receptacle of Christ, upon whom Christ descended from above like a dove, and that, after he had made known the unnameable Father, he entered the Pleroma incomprehensibly and invisibly, for he was not grasped by men, nor even by the powers and virtues in heaven; and that Jesus was the son, but Christ the father, and God the father of Christ. Others say that he suffered only in appearance, being by nature impassible. The Valentinians say that the Jesus of the dispensation is the one who passed through Mary, upon whom the Savior from the higher world descended, who is also called Christ because he bore the names of all who had emitted him; and that he shared with the one of the dispensation his own power and his own name, so that death might be abolished through him, while the Father would be made known through the Savior who had descended from above, whom they also call the receptacle of Christ and of the whole Pleroma. So they confess one Christ Jesus with the tongue but are divided in opinion (for this is their rule, as we said before: that one was Christ, sent forth by the Only-begotten for the correction of the Pleroma; another the Savior, sent for the glorification of the Father; and another the one of the dispensation, whom they say suffered, while the Savior who bore Christ returned to the Pleroma). Therefore we must bring forward the whole teaching of the apostles about our Lord Jesus Christ, and show not only that they held nothing of the kind about him, but further that they indicated through the Holy Spirit those who would begin to teach such things, sent by Satan to overturn the faith of some and draw them away from life.

That John knew one and the same Word of God, and that he is the Only-begotten, and that he became incarnate for our salvation, Jesus Christ our Lord, we have sufficiently shown from John's own words. And Matthew too, knowing one and the same Jesus Christ, and setting out his human generation from the Virgin, as God had promised David that from the fruit of his womb he would raise up an eternal King, having made the same promise to Abraham long before, says, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” Then, to free our minds from suspicion about Joseph, he says, “Now the generation of Christ was in this way. When his mother had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit.” Then, when Joseph was thinking of putting Mary away because she was pregnant, an angel of God stood by him and said, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for what she has in her womb is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a Son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: Behold, a virgin shall conceive in her womb and bear a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which means, God with us.” He plainly shows both that the promise made to the fathers was fulfilled, the Son of God being born of a virgin, and that he himself is the Savior Christ whom the prophets proclaimed; not, as they say, that Jesus is the one born of Mary, but Christ the one who descended from above. Matthew could have said, “Now the generation of Jesus was in this way”; but the Holy Spirit, foreseeing the corrupters and guarding against their fraud, says through Matthew, “Now the generation of Christ was in this way,” and that he is Emmanuel, lest perhaps we should think him only a man — for not by the will of the flesh nor by the will of a man, but by the will of God, the Word became flesh — and lest we should suppose that Jesus was one and Christ another, but know that they are one and the same.

Paul interpreted this very thing when he wrote to the Romans: “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, predestined for the Gospel of God, which he promised through his prophets in the holy Scriptures concerning his Son, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, who was predestined Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord.” And again, writing to the Romans about Israel, he says, “Whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is God over all, blessed for ever.” And again in the letter to the Galatians: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption.” He plainly indicates one God, who made the promise about his Son through the prophets, and one Jesus Christ our Lord, who is of the seed of David according to his generation from Mary; that this Jesus Christ was appointed Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, so as to be the firstborn from the dead, as he is the firstborn of all creation; the Son of God made Son of Man, so that through him we might receive adoption, man bearing, receiving, and embracing the Son of God. For this reason Mark too says, “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets,” knowing one and the same Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was announced by the prophets, who from the fruit of David's womb is Emmanuel, the messenger of the great counsel of the Father; through whom God made the Dayspring and the Righteous One to rise for the house of David, and raised up for him a horn of salvation, and established a testimony in Jacob; as David, discussing the reasons for his generation, says, “And he established a law in Israel, that another generation might know it, sons who will be born of them, and they too will arise and tell it to their sons, so that they may put their hope in God and seek out his commandments.” And again the angel, bringing the good news to Mary, says, “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord will give him the throne of his father David,” confessing that he who is Son of the Most High is likewise the son of David. And David, knowing by the Spirit the dispensation of his coming, through which he is Lord of all the living and the dead, confessed him as Lord, seated at the right hand of the Father Most High.

And Simeon, who had received an answer from the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he had first seen Christ Jesus, taking in his hands this firstborn of the Virgin, blessed God and said, “Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word, in peace; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared before the face of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” He confessed that the infant he carried in his hands, Jesus, born of Mary, is himself the Christ, the Son of God, the light of all, the glory of Israel itself, and the peace and refreshment of those who had fallen asleep. For he was already despoiling men, taking away their ignorance and giving them knowledge of himself, and making a distribution of those who knew him, as Isaiah says: “Call his name, Quickly despoil, Swiftly divide.” These are the works of Christ. He, then, was the Christ whom Simeon carried as he blessed the Most High; whom the shepherds glorified God for when they had seen him; whom John, while still in his mother's womb, and he in Mary's womb, recognized as Lord and greeted, leaping for joy; whom the Magi saw and worshipped, bringing the gifts we have mentioned, and prostrating themselves before the eternal King, they went away by another road, no longer returning by the way of the Assyrians. “For before the child knows how to call father or mother, he will receive the power of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria against the king of the Assyrians”: showing in a hidden way, yet powerfully, that the Lord was fighting against Amalek with a hidden hand. For this reason he also snatched away the children who were of the house of David, happy in their lot to be born at that time, so as to send them ahead into his kingdom; while he himself was an infant, he prepared infants as martyrs, killed for the sake of Christ, who was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in the city of David, according to the Scriptures.

For this reason the Lord said to his disciples after the resurrection, “O foolish men, slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” And again he said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, [and thus it was necessary] for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead, and that [repentance for] the forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations.” And this is he who was born of Mary. “For the Son of Man,” he says, “must suffer many things, be rejected, be crucified, and rise on the third day.” The Gospel, then, knows no other Son of Man than him who is from Mary, who also suffered; nor a Christ flying away from Jesus before the passion; but it knows this one who was born, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that this same one suffered and rose again, as John the disciple of the Lord confirms, saying, “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have eternal life in his name”; foreseeing these blasphemous rules which divide the Lord, as far as in them lies, saying that he was made of one substance and another. For this reason he also testified to us thus in his letter: “Little children, it is the last hour; and as you have heard that the Antichrist is coming, now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would surely have remained with us; but they went out so that it might be shown that they are not of us. Know, then, that every lie is foreign and is not of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the Antichrist.”

Since all those mentioned, though they confess one Jesus Christ with the tongue, make fools of themselves, thinking one thing and saying another — for their theories vary, as we have shown: they proclaim that one suffered and was born, and that he belongs to their Demiurge, either the one of the dispensation or the one from Joseph, whom they argue was passible, and that another descended from the invisible and unspeakable regions, whom they declare to be invisible, incomprehensible, and impassible — they stray from the truth, because their opinion departs from him who is truly God. They do not know that his only-begotten Word, who is always present to the human race, united and mingled with his own handiwork according to the Father's good pleasure, and made flesh, is himself Jesus Christ our Lord, who suffered for us and rose for our sake, and will come again in the glory of the Father to raise up all flesh, to show salvation, and to show the rule of just judgment to all who were made under him. There is, then, one God the Father, as we have shown, and one Christ Jesus our Lord, coming through the whole dispensation, and summing up all things in himself. And in all things he is also man, the handiwork of God; and so he recapitulated man in himself, the invisible becoming visible, the incomprehensible comprehensible, the impassible passible, and the Word man, summing up all things in himself, so that, as the Word of God is chief among super-celestial, spiritual, and invisible things, so also among visible and bodily things he may have the preeminence, taking the primacy to himself and setting himself as head of the church, so that he may draw all things to himself at the proper time.

For with him nothing is unordered or untimely, just as nothing is incongruous with the Father. For all these things were foreknown by the Father, and are accomplished by the Son, as is fitting and consistent, at the proper time. For this reason, when Mary was hastening toward the wonderful sign of the wine and wished before the time to share in the cup of the shortened way, the Lord, checking her untimely haste, said, “Woman, what have I to do with you? My hour has not yet come,” awaiting the hour foreknown by the Father. For this reason, when people often wished to seize him, “No one,” it says, “laid hands on him, for the hour of his arrest had not yet come,” nor the time of his passion, which had been foreknown by the Father; as the prophet Habakkuk also says, “When the years draw near you will be known; when the time comes you will be shown; in that my soul is troubled, in wrath you will remember your mercy.” And Paul says, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son.” By this it is plain that our Lord accomplished all things that had been foreknown by the Father, in order, time, and hour, foreknown and fitting, being one and the same, yet rich and manifold. For he serves the rich and manifold will of the Father, since he himself is the Savior of those who are saved, the Lord of those who are under his dominion, the God of the things that have been established, the only-begotten of the Father, the Christ who was proclaimed, and the Word of God incarnate, when the fullness of time had come in which the Son of God was to become Son of Man.

So all are outside the dispensation who under pretext of knowledge understand Jesus as one, Christ as another, the Only-begotten as another, from whom again the Word comes, and the Savior as another, whom those disciples of error say is an emission of the Aeons who came to be in the diminution. Outwardly they are sheep, for by the speech they have on the outside they appear like us, saying the same things we do; but inwardly they are wolves. For their opinion is murderous, inventing many gods and feigning many fathers, while breaking up the Son of God and dividing him into many. The Lord warned us beforehand to beware of them, and his disciple John in the letter we mentioned commanded us to flee them, saying, “Many deceivers have gone out into this world, who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh. This is the deceiver and the Antichrist. Watch out for them, so that you do not lose what you have worked for.” And again he says in the letter, “Many false … Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that dissolves Jesus Christ is not from God, but is from the Antichrist.” These words are like what was said in the Gospel, that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Therefore he cries out again in the letter, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God,” knowing one and the same Jesus Christ, to whom the gates of heaven were opened because of his taking flesh, who will also come in the same flesh in which he suffered, revealing the glory of the Father.

And Paul too, agreeing with them, says to the Romans: “Much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ.” He does not know, then, a Christ who flew away from Jesus, nor does he know the Savior above, whom they call impassible. For if one suffered and the other remained impassible, and one was born and the other descended upon him who was born and left him again, then not one but two are shown. But that the Apostle knew one Christ Jesus, both him who was born and him who suffered, he says again in the same letter: “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death, so that as Christ rose from the dead, so we too might walk in newness of life?” And again, indicating that Christ suffered and that he himself is the Son of God, who died for us and redeemed us by his blood at the appointed time, he says: “For why did Christ, while we were still weak, die at the right time for the ungodly? But God commends his love toward us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more, then, being now justified by his blood, shall we be saved by him from wrath. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” He most plainly proclaims that this same one who was seized and suffered and shed his blood for us is the Christ, the Son of God, who also rose and was taken up into heaven, as he himself says, “At the same time, it is Christ who died, yes, who also rose, who is at the right hand of God”; and again, “Knowing that Christ, rising from the dead, dies no more.” For he too, foreseeing by the Spirit the subdivisions of the evil teachers and wishing to cut off every occasion of dissension for them, said what has been quoted: “If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies.” Does he not all but cry out to those who are willing to hear: Do not err; Christ Jesus the Son of God is one and the same, who by his passion reconciled us to God, rose from the dead, is at the right hand of the Father, and is perfect in all things; who when he was beaten did not strike back; who when he suffered did not threaten; and when he suffered tyranny prayed the Father to forgive those who had crucified him. For he himself truly saved; he himself is the Word of God, he the only-begotten of the Father, Christ Jesus our Lord.

For the apostles could have said that Christ descended into Jesus; or that the higher Saviour descended into the one who belongs to the dispensation; or that the one who is from the invisible beings descended into the one who belongs to the Demiurge. But they neither knew nor said any such thing; for if they had known it, they would certainly also have said it. What was really the case, that they also said: that the Spirit of God descended upon him like a dove; this Spirit, of whom it was said by Isaiah, “And the Spirit of God shall rest upon him,” as we said before. And again: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me.” This is the Spirit of whom the Lord says: “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you.” And again, giving the disciples the power of regeneration into God, he said to them: “Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” For this Spirit he promised through the prophets to pour out in the last times upon his servants and handmaids, that they might prophesy. For this reason he also descended upon the Son of God, who had become the Son of Man, becoming accustomed with him to dwell in the human race, to rest in human beings, and to dwell in God’s handiwork, working the Father’s will in them and renewing them from their oldness into the newness of Christ.

This Spirit David asked for on behalf of the human race, saying: “Establish me with your governing Spirit.” Luke says that this Spirit descended after the Lord’s ascension upon the disciples at Pentecost, having power over all nations for their entrance into life and for the opening of the new covenant. Hence also, agreeing together in all languages, they sang a hymn to God, the Spirit bringing distant tribes to unity and offering to the Father the firstfruits of all nations. Hence also the Lord promised to send the Paraclete, who would fit us for God. For as one lump of dough cannot be made from dry wheat without moisture, nor one loaf, so neither could we who are many be made one in Christ Jesus without the water that is from heaven. And as dry earth, if it does not receive moisture, bears no fruit, so we too, being at first a dry tree, would never bear fruit unto life without the voluntary rain from above. For our bodies have received through the washing that unity which leads to incorruption, but our souls through the Spirit. Hence both are necessary, since both contribute to the life of God. So our Lord had compassion on that Samaritan woman, the transgressor, who did not remain with one husband but committed sexual immorality in many marriages; he showed and promised her living water, so that she would thirst no more nor be busied with laboriously drawing water, having in herself a drink springing up to eternal life. This the Lord received as a gift from the Father, and he himself also bestowed it on those who partake of him, sending the Holy Spirit into all the earth.

Foreseeing this gift of grace, Gideon, that Israelite whom God chose to save the people of Israel from the power of foreigners, changed his request, and prophesied that there would be dryness on the fleece of wool, on which alone at first there had been dew (which was a type of the people): that is, that they would no longer have the Holy Spirit from God, as Isaiah says, “I will command the clouds not to rain upon it”; but that over all the earth there would be dew, which is the Spirit of God, who descended upon the Lord, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and godliness, the spirit of the fear of God.” This Spirit he in turn gave to the church, sending the Paraclete from heaven into all the earth, from where also, the Lord says, the devil was cast down like lightning. Therefore we need the dew of God, so that we may not be burned up nor made unfruitful, and so that where we have an accuser, there we may also have an Advocate. For the Lord commended to the Holy Spirit his own man, who had fallen among robbers, on whom he had compassion, and whose wounds he bound up, giving two royal denarii; so that we, receiving through the Spirit the image and inscription of the Father and the Son, may make the denarius entrusted to us bear fruit, counting it back to the Lord multiplied.

So the Spirit descended upon the dispensation foretold, and the only-begotten Son of God, who is also the Word of the Father, came in the fullness of time, was made flesh in man for man’s sake, and fulfilled every dispensation that concerns man: Jesus Christ our Lord, being one and the same, as the Lord himself testifies, the apostles confess, and the prophets announce. Thereby all the teachings of those who invented imaginary Ogdoads and Tetrads and devised subdivisions have been shown to be false. They do away with the Spirit; they understand Christ to be one and Jesus another, and teach that there was not one Christ but several; and if they say they were united, they again show that one shared in the suffering while the other remained impassible, that one ascended into the Pleroma while the other remained in the Middle, that one feasts and delights among the invisible and unnameable beings while the other sits beside the Demiurge, emptying him of power. Hence it will be necessary for you, and for all who give attention to this writing and are anxious for their salvation, not to yield readily when you hear their speeches from outside. For while they speak things similar to the faithful, as we said before, they think not only dissimilar things but contrary ones, full of blasphemies in every respect, by which they kill those who, through the likeness of the words, draw into themselves the poison of their dissimilar disposition — as one who gives gypsum mixed with water instead of milk deceives by the likeness of colour. As someone superior to us said concerning all who in any way deprave the things of God and adulterate the truth: “Gypsum is wickedly mixed with God’s milk.”