Against Heresies 2.19.1–2.22.6

What sort of talk is this, too, about their seed: that it was conceived by the Mother after the form of the angels who attend the Savior, shapeless, without form, and imperfect, and deposited in the Demiurge without his knowledge, so that through him it might receive perfection and formation in the soul that was sown by him? The first thing to say is that the angels who attend their Savior are imperfect, without figure, and without form, if indeed such a thing was conceived after their likeness.

Next, their saying that the Fashioner did not know of the depositing of the seed into him, nor again of the sowing done through him into man, is a futile and empty word that can in no way be shown. For how could he have been ignorant of it if the seed itself had any substance and quality of its own? But if it was without substance and without quality, and was nothing, then of course he did not know it. For things that have some motion and quality of their own, whether of heat, or swiftness, or sweetness, or some difference of brightness, do not escape even human beings, since they are among human beings; much less God, the Fashioner of this universe. With good reason, then, their seed was not known to him, since it is without any quality of usefulness, without the substance for any action, and altogether nothing. And for this reason, it seems to me, the Lord also said: “Every idle word that people speak, they will give account for it on the day of judgment.” For all such as put idle words into people's ears will stand at the judgment to give account for what they have vainly conjectured and lied against God, to the point of saying that they themselves, by the substance of the seed, know the spiritual Pleroma, the inner man showing them the true Father (for the soul-endowed nature, they say, needed training through the senses), while the Demiurge, receiving into himself the whole of this seed as the Mother deposited it, was ignorant of absolutely everything and had no perception of the things that belong to the Pleroma.

For if the seed had been deposited in him, he could not have been ignorant of the things that are above him. And they say that they themselves are spiritual, because a particle of the Father of the universe has been deposited in their souls, although they have souls of the same substance as the Demiurge, as they say; but that he, having once received the whole seed from the Mother and having it in himself, remained soul-endowed and perceived nothing at all of the higher things which these people boast that they understand while they are still on earth: how is this not beyond all absurdity? For to think that the very same seed gave knowledge and perfection to their souls but ignorance to the God who made them is truly the mark of madmen, wholly bereft of mind.

It is also utterly empty when they say that in this deposit the seed is formed and grows and is made ready to receive perfect reason. For there will be in it an admixture of matter, which they hold had its substance from ignorance and the fall, and it will be more apt and useful than their Father's light was: if indeed, born according to the contemplation of that light, it was formless and shapeless, but from this admixture it took formation, appearance, growth, and perfection. For if the light that is from the Pleroma was the cause of the spiritual being's having no form, appearance, or size of its own, while its descent here added all these to it and brought it to perfection, then life here, which they also call darkness, will seem far more effective and useful than their Father's light was. And how is it not ridiculous to say that their Mother was endangered in matter, so that she was almost suffocated and very nearly destroyed, had she not then barely stretched herself out and leapt out of herself, receiving help from the Father; but that her seed grows, is formed, and is made fit to receive perfect reason in this same matter, and that while “bubbling up” among things unlike and unfamiliar to it, since, as they themselves say, the earthly is contrary to the spiritual and the spiritual to the earthly? How, then, could a “little emission,” as they say, grow, be formed, and reach perfection among things contrary and unfamiliar to it?

Further, in addition to what has been said, one will ask whether their Mother brought forth the seed all at once when she saw the angels, or bit by bit. If all together and at once, what was then conceived will no longer be infantile now, and its descent into the people who now exist is superfluous. But if bit by bit, then she did not make her conception after the form of the angels she saw; for since she saw them and conceived them together and at once, she ought to have brought forth at once the offspring of those whose forms she had conceived at once.

And why is it that, seeing the angels together with the Savior, she conceived their images but not that of the Savior, who is more beautiful than they? Did he not please her, and is that why she did not conceive after him? And how is it that the Demiurge, whom they call soul-endowed, having according to them his own size and form, was emitted perfect according to his substance, while what is spiritual, which ought to be more effective than what is soul-endowed, was emitted imperfect and needed to descend into a soul in order to be formed in it and so, being perfect, to become ready to receive the perfect word? If, then, it is formed in earthly and soul-endowed human beings, it is no longer after the likeness of the angels, whom they call lights, but after the likeness of the human beings here. For it will have the likeness and appearance not of angels but of the souls in which it is formed: as water poured into a vessel takes the form of the vessel itself, and if it freezes in it, it will have the shape of the vessel in which it froze, since souls themselves have the figure of the body; for they are fitted to the vessel, as we said before. If, then, that seed is solidified and formed here, it will have the figure of a man and not the form of angels. How, then, is that seed after the images of angels, when it is shaped after the likeness of men? And why, since it was spiritual, did it need to descend into flesh? For flesh needs the spiritual, if indeed it is to be saved, so that it may be sanctified and glorified in it, and the mortal may be swallowed up by immortality; but the spiritual has no need at all of things here. For it is not we who make it better, but it that makes us better.

Still more plainly is their talk about the seed shown to be false, as anyone can see, in that they say that the souls which had seed from the Mother become better than the rest, and for that reason were honored by the Demiurge and appointed princes, kings, and priests. For if this were true, the high priest Caiaphas would surely have been first to believe in the Lord, and Annas, and the rest of the high priests, the teachers of the law, and the rulers of the people, running together to their kin; and before that, King Herod too. But since neither he, nor the high priests, nor those in authority, nor the notable among the people ran to him, but on the contrary those who sat begging by the roads, the deaf and the blind, and those trampled on and despised by the rest, just as Paul also says: “For consider your calling, brothers: not many among you are wise, nor noble, nor strong; but God chose what was contemptible in the world”; such souls, then, were not better because of the deposit of seed, nor were they honored by the Demiurge for that reason.

As to their rule being weak and untenable, and empty besides, what has been said is enough. For, as the saying goes, one who wants to learn that the sea's water is salt need not drink up the whole sea. But just as with a statue made of clay and colored on the surface so as to be thought gold when it is clay, whoever takes any small piece from it and, opening it, shows the clay, will free those who seek the truth from a false opinion; so we too, refuting not a small part but the chief heads that hold their rule together, have shown to all who do not wish to be knowingly led astray what is wicked, deceitful, seductive, and ruinous in the school of the Valentinians and of the rest of the heretics who speak evil of the Demiurge, that is, the Fashioner and Maker of this universe, who alone is God, making plain how easily their way is overthrown.

For who that has sense and touches even a little of the truth will bear with those who say that above the Demiurge there is another God, a Father; and that Monogenes is one, and the Word of God another, whom they also say was emitted in a state of diminution; and Christ another, whom they say was made later than the rest of the Aeons together with the Holy Spirit; and the Savior another, whom they say was not from the Father of all but was gathered and heaped together by the Aeons who came to be in diminution, and was emitted of necessity because of the diminution? So that, according to them, had the Aeons not been in ignorance and diminution, neither Christ would have been emitted, nor the Holy Spirit, nor Horos, nor the Savior, nor the angels, nor their Mother, nor her seed, nor the rest of the fashioning of the world; but everything would have been deserted and destitute of so many good things. So they are irreligious not only toward the Fashioner, calling him the fruit of a fall, but also toward Christ and the Holy Spirit, saying that they were emitted because of a fall, and likewise the Savior after the fall. For who will bear the rest of their empty talk, which they cunningly try to fit to the parables, and have turned both themselves and those who believe them to the greatest impiety?

That they bring the parables and the acts of the Lord into their fiction improperly and inconsistently, we show as follows. They try to show that the passion which they say befell the twelfth Aeon is indicated by the fact that the Savior's passion was brought about by the twelfth of the apostles, and happened in the twelfth month; for they hold that he preached for one year after his baptism. And they say that it was plainly shown in the woman who suffered from a flow of blood; for the woman suffered for twelve years, and by touching the fringe of the Savior's garment she obtained healing from that power which went out from the Savior, and which they say existed before. For that power which suffered, stretched out and flowing into immensity so that it was in danger of being dissolved into the whole substance, stopped and ceased from its passion when it touched the first Tetrad, which is signified by the fringe.

As for their saying that the passion of the twelfth Aeon is shown through Judas, how can Judas be compared to it as its likeness, since he was cast out of the number of the twelve and was not restored to his place? For the Aeon, whose type they say Judas is, was restored or recalled once her Enthymesis was separated; but Judas was deposed and cast out, and Matthias was appointed in his place, according to what is written: “Let another take his office of oversight.” They ought therefore to say that the twelfth Aeon was cast out of the Pleroma and another brought forth or emitted in her place, if indeed she is shown in Judas. Further, they say that the Aeon herself suffered, but Judas was the betrayer; and they themselves confess that it was the suffering Christ who came to the passion, not Judas. How, then, could Judas, the betrayer of him who was to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the Aeon who suffered?

But neither is Christ's passion like the Aeon's passion, nor did it happen in like circumstances. For the Aeon suffered a passion of dissolution and destruction, so that the one who suffered was herself in danger of being destroyed; but our Lord Christ suffered a strong passion, one that did not give way: not only was he himself not in danger of being destroyed, but he also strengthened corrupted man by his own power and called him back to incorruption. And the Aeon suffered her passion while seeking the Father and not being able to find him; but the Lord suffered in order to bring those who had wandered from the Father back to knowledge and close to him. For her, the search into the greatness of the Father became a passion of destruction; but the Lord, having suffered for us, gave us salvation by bestowing the knowledge of the Father. Her passion bore a female fruit, as they say, weak, infirm, formless, and ineffective; but his passion bore strength and power. For the Lord through his passion, “ascending on high, led captivity captive, gave gifts to men,” and granted those who believe in him “to tread on serpents and scorpions and on all the power” of the enemy, that is, of the prince of apostasy. And the Lord by his passion destroyed death, dissolved error, abolished corruption, and destroyed ignorance; but he manifested life, showed the truth, and gave incorruption. But their Aeon, when she had suffered, set up ignorance and gave birth to a formless substance, from which, according to them, all material works were brought forth: death, corruption, error and the like.

Judas, then, the twelfth disciple, was not a type of the suffering Aeon, nor was our Lord's passion; for they have been shown to be in every way unlike and unsuited to each other, not only in what we have said but in the very number. That the traitor Judas is the twelfth is agreed by all, since twelve apostles are named in the Gospel; but this Aeon is not the twelfth but the thirtieth. For according to these people not only twelve Aeons were brought forth by the Father's will, nor was she emitted twelfth in order; they count her as emitted in the thirtieth place. How, then, can Judas, twelfth in order, be the type and image of the Aeon who is in the thirtieth order?

But if they say that Judas in perishing is the image of her Enthymesis, not even so will the image be like the truth that corresponds to it. For the Enthymesis, separated from the Aeon, was afterwards formed by Christ, then made wise by the Savior, and having made all things outside the Pleroma after the image of those who are in the Pleroma, is said at last to have been received into the Pleroma by them and, according to the pairings, united to the Savior who was made from all. But Judas, once cast out, never returns to the number of the disciples; otherwise another would never have been counted in his place. And the Lord said of him: “Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man will be betrayed,” and, “It would have been better for him if he had not been born”; and he was called by him the son of perdition. But if they say that Judas is a type not of the Enthymesis separated from the Aeon but of the passion entwined with her, not even so can the number twelve be a type of the number three. For here Judas was cast out and Matthias appointed in his place; there the Aeon is said to have been in danger of dissolution and destruction, and also the Enthymesis and the passion, for they distinguish the Enthymesis from the passion as well; and they make the Aeon restored, the Enthymesis formed, and the passion, separated from these, matter. So since these are three, the Aeon, the Enthymesis, and the passion, Judas and Matthias, being two, cannot be their type.

But if they say that the twelve apostles are a type only of that emission of twelve Aeons which Anthropos brought forth with Ecclesia, then let them produce ten other apostles as a type of the remaining ten Aeons, who, as they say, were brought forth by Logos and Zoe. For it is unreasonable that the younger Aeons, and therefore the lesser, should be shown by the Savior through the election of the apostles, while their elders, and therefore the better, were not shown in advance; since the Savior (if indeed he chose the apostles in order to show through them the Aeons in the Pleroma) could have chosen ten other apostles, and before these eight others, to show that original and first Ogdoad … nor the second Decad: for after the twelve apostles our Lord is found to have sent seventy others ahead of him; and seventy can be a type neither of the number eight, nor ten, nor thirty. What is the reason, then, that the lesser Aeons, as I said before, are shown through the apostles, while the better, from whom these too were made, are not prefigured? And if the twelve apostles were chosen so that the number of the twelve Aeons might be signified through them, the seventy also ought to have been chosen as a type of seventy Aeons; and then let them say that the Aeons are not thirty in number but eighty-two. For one who makes the choice of apostles after the type of the Aeons in the Pleroma would never do so for some and not for others, but would have tried to keep the image through all the apostles and to show the type of the Aeons in the Pleroma.

Nor should we keep silent about Paul, but demand of them after the type of which Aeon this apostle was handed down to us; unless perhaps of their composite Savior, who subsists from the contributions of all and whom they also call All Things, because he is from all. Of him the poet Hesiod too gave a splendid sign, naming him Pandora, that is, “gift of all,” because the best gift from all was placed in him. Among these the account runs: Hermes (as it is expressed in Greek) “put wily words and a thievish character” in their minds, to lead foolish men astray so that they believe their fictions. For their Mother, that is, Leto, secretly stirred them up (and from this she was called Leto, according to the meaning of the Greek word, because she secretly stirred people up), without the Demiurge's knowledge, to proclaim deep and unspeakable mysteries to itching ears. And their Mother brought it about that this mystery was told not only by Hesiod but also, very wisely, by the lyric poet Pindar, so as to hide it from the Demiurge, in the story of Pelops, whose flesh was divided in pieces by his father and collected, brought together, and joined again by all the gods: in this way she signified Pandora. And these people, stung by her, saying the same things as those poets according to their own account, are of the same family and spirit as they.

We have shown that their whole number thirty collapses according to their own account, since sometimes too few and sometimes too many Aeons are at once found in the Pleroma. There are not, then, thirty Aeons, nor did the Savior come to baptism at thirty years of age in order to show their thirty silent Aeons; otherwise they will be the first to separate him and cast him out of the Pleroma of all. And they say that he suffered in the twelfth month, so that he preached for one year after his baptism, and they try to confirm this very point from the prophet (for it is written: “To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution”): truly blind, though they say they have found the depths of Bythus, not understanding what Isaiah calls the acceptable year of the Lord, or the day of retribution. For the prophet was not speaking of a day that has the space of twelve hours, nor of a year that has the measure of twelve months. For they themselves confess that the prophets said very many things in parables and allegories, and not according to the sound of the words themselves.

The day of retribution, then, is the day on which the Lord will repay each according to his works, that is, the judgment. And the acceptable year of the Lord is this present time, in which those who believe him are called by him and become acceptable to God: that is, the whole time from his coming to the consummation, in which he gains as fruit those who are saved. For according to the prophet's wording the day of retribution follows the year; and the prophet will have lied if the Lord preached for only a year and the prophet speaks of that. For where is the day of retribution? The year has passed, and the day of retribution is not yet; but he still makes his sun rise on the good and the evil, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. And the just suffer persecution, are afflicted and killed, while sinners live in abundance and drink with harp and psaltery but do not regard the works of the Lord. According to the wording, the two ought to be joined, and the day of retribution ought to follow the year; for it says, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of retribution.” So this time in which people are called and saved by the Lord is rightly understood as the acceptable year of the Lord, and after it follows the day of retribution, that is, the judgment. And this time is called not only a year but also a day, both by the prophet and by Paul; and the apostle, mindful of the Scripture, says in the Epistle to the Romans: “As it is written, For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep for the slaughter.” Here “all the day long” is said of this whole time in which we suffer persecution and are killed like sheep. So just as this day does not mean one that lasts twelve hours but the whole time in which those who believe in Christ suffer and are killed for him, so there too the year is not said of one of twelve months but of the whole time of faith, in which people hear the preaching and believe, and those who join themselves to him become acceptable to the Lord.

It is very much to be wondered at how those who say they have found the depths of God have not searched in the Gospels how many times after his baptism the Lord went up to Jerusalem at the time of the Passover, as was the custom of the Jews from every region every year, to gather in Jerusalem at this time and celebrate the feast of the Passover there. First, when he had made wine from water at Cana of Galilee, he went up to the feast day of the Passover, when it is also written, “Many believed in him, seeing the signs that he did,” as John the Lord's disciple records. Then, withdrawing again, he is found in Samaria, when he also conversed with the Samaritan woman, and from a distance he healed the centurion's son by a word, saying, “Go, your son lives.” And after these things, a second time he went up to the feast of the Passover in Jerusalem, when he healed the paralytic who lay by the pool for thirty-eight years, commanding him to rise, take up his pallet, and go. And withdrawing from there across the sea of Tiberias, where a great crowd had also followed him, he satisfied that whole multitude with five loaves, and twelve baskets of fragments were left over. Then, when he had raised Lazarus from the dead and the Pharisees were plotting against him, he withdrew to the city of Ephraim; and from there, it is written, he came to Bethany six days before the Passover, and going up from Bethany to Jerusalem he ate the Passover and suffered on the following day. That these three Passover seasons are not one year anyone will confess. And that the very month in which the Passover is celebrated, in which the Lord also suffered, is not the twelfth but the first, those who boast that they know all things can learn [from Moses], if they do not know it. Their explanation of both the year and the twelfth month has been shown to be false, then, and they must reject either their explanation or the Gospel: otherwise, how did the Lord preach for only one year?

Being thirty years old when he came to baptism, and then having the full age of a teacher, he came to Jerusalem, so that he might rightly be heard by all as a teacher. For he did not seem one thing and was another, as those say who bring in a merely apparent body; but what he was, that he also seemed. Being a teacher, then, he also had a teacher's age, not rejecting or going beyond humanity, nor setting aside in himself his own law for the human race, but sanctifying every age by the likeness to it that was in him. For he came to save all through himself: all, I say, who through him are born again to God, infants, little children, boys, youths, and older people. Therefore he passed through every age: he became an infant for infants, sanctifying infants; a little one among little ones, sanctifying those of that very age, and at the same time becoming for them an example of piety, righteousness, and obedience; a youth among youths, becoming an example to youths and sanctifying them to the Lord. So too he was an older man among older men, that he might be a perfect teacher in all things, not only in setting forth the truth but also in age, sanctifying the older at the same time and becoming an example to them as well. Then he came even to death, that he might be “the firstborn from the dead, himself holding the first place in all things,” the prince of life, before all and going before all.

But they, to support their fiction from what is written, “to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,” say that he preached for one year and suffered in the twelfth month. They have forgotten themselves to their own harm, undoing his whole work and taking away his more necessary and more honorable age, that more advanced age, I mean, in which as a teacher he presided over all. For how did he have disciples if he did not teach? And how did he teach if he did not have a teacher's age? For he came to baptism not as one who had completed thirty years, but as one beginning to be about thirty (for so Luke, who indicated his years, put it: “Jesus was about thirty years of age, beginning,” when he came to baptism); and [on their view] from his baptism he preached for only one year, and on completing his thirtieth year he suffered, still a young man and not yet of more advanced age. Now that the age of thirty is the first stage of a young man's prime, and that it extends to the fortieth year, everyone will confess; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man already declines toward older age, which our Lord had when he taught, as the Gospel and all the elders testify who met in Asia with John the Lord's disciple, that John handed this very thing down to them. And he remained with them until the times of Trajan. And some of them saw not only John but also other apostles, and heard these same things from them, and bear witness to this account. Whom ought we rather to believe? Such men, or Ptolemy, who never saw the apostles and never followed the trace of an apostle even in his dreams?

And the very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ indicated this most plainly. For when the Lord said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad,” they answered him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” This is fittingly said to one who has already passed forty years, but has not yet reached the fiftieth year, though he is not far from the fiftieth. To one who is thirty years old it would surely be said, “You are not yet forty years old.” For those who wanted to show him a liar would certainly not stretch his years far beyond the age they saw him to have; they named an age near his, whether they truly knew it from the census register or conjectured it from the age they saw him to have, over forty, and certainly not that of a man of thirty. For it is altogether unreasonable that they should lie by twenty years when they wanted to show him younger than the times of Abraham. What they saw, that they also said; and he who was seen was not an appearance but truth. He was not far, then, from fifty years; and therefore they said to him, “You are not yet fifty years old, and have you seen Abraham?” So he did not preach for one year, nor did he suffer in the twelfth month of the year. For the time from the thirtieth to the fiftieth year will never be one year, unless such great years are counted among their Aeons for those who sit in order with Bythus in the Pleroma, of whom the poet Homer also spoke, he too inspired by the Mother of their error: “The gods, sitting beside Zeus, held council on the golden floor.”