Against Heresies 3.10.1–3.12.1

Luke, the follower and disciple of the apostles, reporting about Zechariah and Elizabeth, from whom John was born according to God's promise, says: “And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.” And again, speaking of Zechariah: “Now it happened, while he was serving as priest before God in the order of his division, according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to offer incense”; and he came to sacrifice, “entering the temple of the Lord.” The angel Gabriel, who stands before the Lord, simply, absolutely, and firmly confessed in his own person as God and Lord him who chose Jerusalem and gave the law of the priesthood, whose angel Gabriel also is. For he knew of no other above him; for if he had had knowledge of any more perfect God and Lord besides him, he would certainly not have confessed absolutely and entirely as Lord and God one whom he knew to be the fruit of a defect, as we have shown before. And speaking of John he says this: “For he will be great in the sight of the Lord, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God; and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to prepare for the Lord a perfect people.” For whom, then, did he prepare a people, and in the sight of which Lord was he made great? Surely of him who said that John had something even more than a prophet, and that among those born of women no one is greater than John the Baptist; who also prepared the people for the Lord's coming, forewarning his fellow servants and preaching repentance to them, so that they might receive forgiveness from the Lord when he was present, having been turned to him from whom they had been estranged because of sins and transgression; as David also says, “Sinners are estranged from the womb; they went astray from the belly.” And for this reason, turning them to their Lord, he prepared for the Lord a perfect people, in the spirit and power of Elijah.

And again, reporting about the angel, he says: “In that time the angel Gabriel was sent from God, who also said to the Virgin, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” And of the Lord he says: “He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Who else is it that reigns over the house of Jacob without interruption for ever, but Christ Jesus our Lord, the Son of the Most High God, who promised through the law and the prophets that he would make his salvation visible to all flesh, so that he would become Son of Man in order that man might also become son of God? For this reason Mary, rejoicing, cried out, prophesying on behalf of the church: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. For he has taken up his servant Israel, remembering his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, … seed …” By these and so many other things, then, the Gospel shows that the God who spoke to the fathers is he who gave the law through Moses, by which law we know that he spoke to the fathers. This same God, in his great goodness, poured out his mercy upon us, in which mercy the Dayspring from on high has looked upon us and appeared to those who sat in darkness and the shadow of death, and has guided our feet into the way of peace; as Zechariah too, ceasing to be mute (which he had suffered because of unbelief), filled with a new spirit, blessed God in a new way. For all things were new, the Word arranging in a new way his coming in the flesh, so that he might enroll for God the man who had gone away from God; and therefore they were taught to worship God in a new way, but not another God, since indeed there is one God, who justifies the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through faith. And Zechariah, prophesying, said: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has visited and wrought redemption for his people, and has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets who have been from of old: salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us; to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath which he swore to Abraham our father, to grant us that, rescued from the hand of our enemies, we might serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.” Then he says to John: “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people for the forgiveness of their sins.” For this is the knowledge of salvation which they lacked, the knowledge of the Son of God, which John gave, saying, “Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me comes a man who was before me, because he was prior to me; and from his fullness we have all received.” This, then, is the knowledge of salvation: not another God, nor another Father, nor Bythus, nor a Pleroma of thirty Aeons, nor a Mother of the Ogdoad; but the knowledge of salvation was the knowledge of the Son of God, who is truly both called and is salvation, Savior, and saving. Salvation, thus: “I have waited for your salvation, O Lord.” Savior, again: “Behold my God, my Savior; I will trust in him.” Saving, thus: “God has made known his saving work in the sight of the nations.” For he is Savior because he is the Son and Word of God; saving, because he is Spirit, for it says, “The Spirit of our face, Christ the Lord”; and salvation, because he is flesh, for “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” This knowledge of salvation, then, John gave to those who repented and believed in the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.

“The angel of the Lord,” he says, “appeared to the shepherds, announcing joy to them, that a Savior has been born in the house of David, who is Christ the Lord. Then a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.” The falsely named Gnostics say that these angels came from the Ogdoad and made known the descent of the higher Christ. But they fall again when they say that the Christ and Savior who is above was not born, but that after the baptism of the Jesus who belongs to the dispensation he descended upon him like a dove. By their account, then, the angels of the Ogdoad lie when they say, “For today a Savior has been born to you, who is Christ the Lord, in the city of David.” For by their account neither Christ nor the Savior was born then, but the Jesus of the dispensation, who belongs to the maker of the world, upon whom they say the Savior from above descended after the baptism, that is, after thirty years. And why did they add “in the city of David,” unless to announce as fulfilled the promise made by God to David, that from the fruit of his womb there would be an eternal King? For the Fabricator of the whole universe had made the promise to David, as David himself says: “My help is from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” And again: “In his hand are the ends of the earth, and the heights of the mountains are his. For the sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land. Come, let us worship and fall down before him, and weep before the Lord who made us, for he is the Lord our God.” The Holy Spirit plainly declares through David to those who hear him that there will be those who despise him who formed us, who alone is God. Therefore he also spoke the words just quoted, meaning: Do not go astray; besides him or above him there is no other God to whom you should rather attend; making us devout and grateful toward him who made, established, and nourishes us. What, then, will become of those who have devised so much blasphemy against their Maker? The angels too proclaimed this same thing. For in saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace,” they glorified with these words him who is the maker of the highest things, that is, of the things above the heavens, and the founder of all things on earth, who sent from heaven the kindness of salvation to his own handiwork, that is, to men. Therefore, he says, the shepherds returned, “glorifying God for all that they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.” For the Israelite shepherds did not glorify another God, but him who was proclaimed by the law and the prophets, the Maker of all, whom the angels also glorified. But if the angels from the Ogdoad glorified one God and the shepherds another, those angels from the Ogdoad brought them error and not truth.

Further, Luke says of the Lord: “When the days of purification were fulfilled, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord; and to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons” — in his own person most clearly calling him Lord who gave the law. And Simeon, he says, “blessed God and said, Now you dismiss your servant, Lord, 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.” And Anna the prophetess, he says, likewise glorified God when she saw Christ, “and spoke of him to all who were awaiting the redemption of Jerusalem.” By all these things one God is shown, opening to men the new dispensation of freedom, the covenant, through the new coming of his Son.

Therefore Mark too, the interpreter and follower of Peter, began his written Gospel thus: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, as it is written in the prophets: Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way. The voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths before our God.” He plainly says that the beginning of the Gospel is the words of the holy prophets, and points to him whom they confessed as Lord and God as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who also promised him that he would send his messenger before his face; this was John, crying in the wilderness in the spirit and power of Elijah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight paths before our God.” For the prophets did not proclaim one God and another, but one and the same, though under various significations and many titles. For the Father is manifold and rich, as we have shown in the book before this one, and we shall show it from the prophets themselves as our discourse proceeds. And at the end of the Gospel Mark says: “So the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven and sits at the right hand of God,” confirming what was said by the prophet: “The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies the footstool of your feet.” So there is one and the same God and Father, who was proclaimed by the prophets and handed down by the Gospel, whom we Christians worship and love with all our heart, the Maker of heaven and earth and all that is in them.

John, the disciple of the Lord, proclaiming this faith, and wishing through the proclamation of the Gospel to remove the error which had been sown among men by Cerinthus, and much earlier by those called Nicolaitans, who are an offshoot of the knowledge falsely so called, wrote to confound them and persuade them that there is one God, who made all things through his Word; and not, as they say, that the fabricator is one and the Father of the Lord another; and that the fabricator's son is one, but the Christ from above another, who also remained impassible, descending into Jesus the fabricator's son, and flew back again into his Pleroma; and that the Beginning is Monogenes, but the Logos the true son of the Only-begotten; and that the creation to which we belong was made not by the first God but by some power far below and cut off from communion with the things invisible and unnameable. Wishing, then, to rule out all such things, and to establish the rule of truth in the church, that there is one God almighty, who made all things, visible and invisible, through his Word, and signifying also that through the Word by whom God made the creation he also granted salvation to the men who are in the creation, the disciple of the Lord began thus in the teaching of the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. What was made was life in him, and the life was the light of men; and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.” “All things,” he says, “were made through him”; therefore among all things is also this creation to which we belong. For it will not be granted them that “all things” means the things within their Pleroma. For if their Pleroma contains these things too, then this great creation is not outside it, as we have shown in the book before this; but if these things are outside the Pleroma, which has been seen to be impossible, then their Pleroma is no longer “all things”; therefore this great creation is not outside.

John himself took away all disagreements from us when he said, “He was in this world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.” But according to Marcion and those like him, neither was the world made through him, nor did he come to his own, but to what belonged to another. According to some of the Gnostics, this world was made by angels and not through the Word of God. According to the Valentinians, again, it was not made through him but through the Demiurge. For he (the Savior), they say, worked to make such likenesses after the pattern of the things above, while the Demiurge completed the fabrication of the creation. For they say that he was emitted by the Mother as Lord and Demiurge of the dispensation relating to creation, through whom they will have this world made; whereas the Gospel plainly says that all things were made through the Word who was in the beginning with God; which Word, it says, “became flesh and dwelt among us.”

According to them, neither the Word, nor Christ, nor the Savior who was made from all the Aeons became flesh. For they will have it that the Word and Christ did not even come into this world, and that the Savior was neither incarnate nor suffered, but descended like a dove upon that Jesus who came from the dispensation, and after proclaiming the unknown Father ascended again into the Pleroma. Some say that the one who became incarnate and suffered was the Jesus of the dispensation, who they say passed through Mary like water through a tube; others, the son of the Demiurge, upon whom the Jesus of the dispensation descended; others again say that Jesus was born of Joseph and Mary, and that the Christ from above descended upon him, being without flesh and impassible. But according to no opinion of the heretics did the Word of God become flesh. For if anyone examines all their rules, he will find that the Word of God, and the Christ who is in the higher regions, is brought in by all of them as without flesh and impassible. Some think that he was manifested like a man transfigured, but say that he was neither born nor made flesh; others, that he did not even take the form of a man, but descended like a dove upon that Jesus who was born of Mary. Showing all of them to be false witnesses, then, the disciple of the Lord says, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

And so that we may not ask of which God the Word became flesh, he teaches us besides, saying, “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony, to bear witness to the light. He was not the light, but came to bear witness to the light.” By which God, then, was the forerunner John, who bears witness to the light, sent? Surely by him whose angel is Gabriel, who also announced his birth; who also promised through the prophets that he would send his messenger before the face of his Son to prepare his way, that is, to bear witness to the light, in the spirit and power of Elijah. And whose servant and prophet, in turn, was Elijah? Of him who made heaven and earth, as he himself confesses. How, then, could John, sent by the founder and fabricator of this world, bear witness to that light which came down from the unnameable and invisible things? For all the heretics have decreed that the Demiurge is ignorant of the power above him, of which John is found to be the witness and herald. This is why the Lord said that he had something more than a prophet. For all the other prophets announced the coming of the Father's light and longed to be worthy to see him whom they preached; but John both foretold him as the others did, and saw him when he came, and pointed him out, and persuaded many to believe in him, so that he held the place of both prophet and apostle. This is what “more than a prophet” means: for first apostles, second prophets; but all things from one and the same God.

For good also was the wine which was made by God in the vineyard through the creation and was drunk first. None of those who drank it found fault with it, and the Lord too accepted some of it. But better was the wine which was made through the Word, briefly and simply, out of water, for the use of those who had been invited to the wedding. For though the Lord could have provided wine for the guests and filled the hungry with food without using any of the things of creation, he did not do so; but taking loaves that came from the earth and giving thanks, and again making water into wine, he satisfied those who were reclining and gave drink to those invited to the wedding. He showed that the God who made the earth and commanded it to bear fruit, who established the waters and brought forth the springs, he it is who in the last times grants to the human race through his Son the blessing of food and the grace of drink: the Incomprehensible through the comprehensible, and the Invisible through the visible, since the Son is not outside him but exists in the bosom of the Father.

“For no one,” he says, “has ever seen God, except the only-begotten Son of God, who is in the bosom of the Father; he has made him known.” For the Son who is in his bosom makes known to all the Father, who is invisible. Therefore those know him to whom the Son has revealed him; and again the Father, through the Son, gives knowledge of his Son to those who love him. From him Nathanael too learned and knew, to whom the Lord bore witness that he was a true Israelite, in whom there is no deceit. The Israelite knew his King, and so said to him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel.” Taught by him, Peter too knew Christ, the Son of the living God, as the Father says: “Behold my most beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim judgment to the nations. He will not quarrel nor cry out, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets; a bruised reed he will not break, and a smoking wick he will not quench, until he brings forth judgment to victory; and in his name the nations will hope.”

These, then, are the first principles of the Gospel: they proclaim one God, the fabricator of this universe, who was announced through the prophets and who made the dispensation of the law through Moses, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they know no other God and no other Father besides him. So firm is the ground of these Gospels that even the heretics themselves bear witness to them, and each of them, starting from them, tries to confirm his own doctrine. For the Ebionites, who use only the Gospel according to Matthew, are refuted from that very Gospel, as holding wrong views about the Lord. Marcion, mutilating the Gospel according to Luke, is shown to be a blasphemer of the only existing God from what is still preserved in his copy. Those who separate Jesus from Christ and say that Christ remained impassible while Jesus suffered, preferring the Gospel according to Mark, can be corrected if they read it with love of the truth. And the Valentinians, who make the fullest use of the Gospel according to John to display their pairings, will be exposed from it as saying nothing rightly, as we have shown in the first book. Since, then, those who contradict us bear witness for us and use these Gospels, our proof from them is firm and true.

Nor can the Gospels be more in number than they are, nor again fewer. For since there are four regions of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, and the church is scattered over all the earth, and the pillar and support of the church is the Gospel and the Spirit of life, it follows that she has four pillars, breathing out incorruption on every side and giving life to men. From this it is plain that the Word, the Artificer of all, who sits upon the cherubim and holds all things together, having been manifested to men, gave us the Gospel in fourfold form, held together by one Spirit. As David too, asking for his coming, says, “You who sit upon the cherubim, shine forth.” For the cherubim too are fourfold, and their forms are images of the dispensation of the Son of God. For the first living creature, it says, is like a lion, signifying his effective, sovereign, and royal character; the second like a calf, signifying his sacrificial and priestly order; the third has a face like a man's, clearly describing his coming as a man; and the fourth is like a flying eagle, showing the grace of the Spirit flying down upon the church. And the Gospels, then, are in harmony with these, among which Christ Jesus is seated. For one of them, the Gospel according to John, relates his sovereign, effective, and glorious generation from the Father, saying, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,” and, “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” For this reason this Gospel is full of all confidence, for such is his person. The Gospel according to Luke, since it is of priestly character, began with the priest Zechariah offering sacrifice to God. For already the fatted calf was being made ready, which was to be slain for the finding of the younger son. Matthew relates his generation as man, saying, “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham,” and again, “Now the generation of Christ was in this way.” This, then, is the Gospel of his human form; and so throughout this Gospel he is kept as a man of humble mind and meek. Mark began from the prophetic Spirit coming from on high to men, saying, “The beginning of the Gospel, as it is written in Isaiah the prophet,” showing the winged image of the Gospel; and for this reason he gave a concise and swift-running account, for this is the prophetic character. And the Word of God himself gave the patriarchs before Moses converse according to his divinity and glory; for those under the law he provided a priestly and liturgical service; afterwards, having become man for us, he sent the gift of the heavenly Spirit into all the earth, sheltering us with his wings. As, then, is the dispensation of the Son of God, so is the form of the living creatures; and as is the form of the living creatures, so is the character of the Gospel. The living creatures are fourfold, the Gospel is fourfold, and the dispensation of the Lord is fourfold. And for this reason four covenants were given to the human race: one before the flood, under Adam; the second after the flood, under Noah; the third, the giving of the law, under Moses; and the fourth, which renews man and recapitulates all things in itself, the one through the Gospel, raising and bearing men on wings into the heavenly kingdom.

This being so, all are empty, ignorant, and audacious besides who destroy the form of the Gospel and bring in either more aspects of the Gospel than have been named, or fewer: some, that they may seem to have discovered more than the truth; others, that they may set aside the dispensations of God. For Marcion, rejecting the whole Gospel, or rather cutting himself off from the Gospel, boasts that he has a part of the Gospel. Others, to set at nought the gift of the Spirit, which in the last times was poured out on the human race according to the Father's good pleasure, do not admit the aspect that is according to John's Gospel, in which the Lord promised that he would send the Paraclete; but they reject at once both the Gospel and the prophetic Spirit. Unhappy men indeed, who wish to be false prophets, yet drive the grace of prophecy away from the church; suffering like those who, because of people who come in hypocrisy, keep themselves even from communion with the brothers. It is to be understood that such people do not accept the Apostle Paul either. For in the letter to the Corinthians he spoke carefully about prophetic gifts, and he knows men and women prophesying in the church. Sinning, therefore, in all these things against the Spirit of God, they fall into the unforgivable sin. And the Valentinians, again, being beyond all fear, bring forward their own compositions and boast of having more than the Gospels themselves. Indeed they have gone so far in audacity as to entitle a book written by them not long ago “the Gospel of Truth,” though it agrees in nothing with the Gospels of the apostles, so that among them not even the Gospel is without blasphemy. For if what they bring forward is the Gospel of Truth, and it is unlike those handed down to us by the apostles, those who wish can learn, as is shown from the Scriptures themselves, that what was handed down by the apostles is no longer the Gospel of Truth. But that these alone are true and firm, and that there cannot be more or fewer Gospels than those named, we have shown by so many and such great arguments. For since God made all things ordered and fitted, the form of the Gospel too had to be well ordered and well joined together. Having examined, then, the teaching of those who handed down the Gospel to us from their very beginnings, let us come also to the other apostles and inquire into their teaching about God; and afterwards let us hear the Lord's own words.

The Apostle Peter, then, after the resurrection of the Lord and his being taken up into heaven, wishing to complete the number of the twelve apostles and to choose another in place of Judas, one chosen by God, said to those present: “Brothers, this Scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who became a guide to those who arrested Jesus, because he was numbered among us: Let his dwelling be deserted, and let there be no one to live in it; and, Let another take his office.” So he completed the apostles from what was said by David. Again, when the Holy Spirit had come down upon the disciples, so that they all prophesied and spoke in tongues, and some mocked them as drunk with new wine, Peter said that they were not drunk, since it was the third hour of the day, but that this was what was spoken through the prophet: “It shall be in the last days, says the Lord, that I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh, and they shall prophesy.” God, then, who promised through the prophet that he would send his Spirit upon the human race, himself sent him; and God himself is proclaimed by Peter as having fulfilled his promise.