Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
They say that when the whole seed has been brought to perfection, their mother Achamoth will pass from the middle place and enter within the Pleroma, and receive her spouse, the Savior who was formed out of all the Aeons together, so that a conjunction is made of the Savior and Sophia, who is Achamoth. This, they say, is the bridegroom and the bride, and the whole Pleroma is the bridal chamber. The spiritual ones, stripped of their souls and made into intellectual spirits, will enter the Pleroma imperceptibly and invisibly, and be given as brides to the angels who attend the Savior. The Demiurge himself, they say, will in turn cross over to where his mother Sophia dwells — the intermediate zone; and there too the souls of the righteous will come to rest, since no psychic thing may cross into the Pleroma. Once all this has come to pass, the fire concealed within the world will blaze up, seize hold of everything, consume all matter, and then, being itself consumed along with it, pass into nonexistence. They point out that the Demiurge knew nothing at all of these things before the coming of the Savior.
There are, however, some among them who say that this same being also sent forth Christ as his own son, but an animal one, and that it was of him that the prophets spoke; and that it was this Christ who passed through Mary as water passes through a tube, and that upon him, at the baptism, the Savior descended — he who is composed out of all the Aeons of the Pleroma — in the form of a dove; and that in him also was that spiritual seed from Achamoth. Just as the Demiurge occupies the middle place between the Forefather and the Cosmocrator, they say our Lord was compounded of these four elements: of the animal, which was from the Demiurge; of the spiritual, which was from Achamoth; of that fashioned with indescribable art; and of the Savior, that is, the dove that descended upon him. And this being, they say, remained free from suffering — for it was not possible for him to suffer, since he was incomprehensible and invisible — and for this reason, when he was brought before Pilate, the Christ-spirit that had earlier settled within him withdrew and departed. But not even the seed that came from the mother did they say suffered; for that too was impassible, being spiritual and invisible even to the Demiurge himself. Rather, according to them, it was the animal Christ who suffered, and the one fashioned out of the divine arrangement, in a mystery, so that through him Achamoth might display, in a formation according to substance, that all these things are types of those higher realities.
As for the souls that possessed the seed which comes from Achamoth, they say these were better than the rest, and were therefore more loved by the Demiurge — who did not know the reason, but supposed from himself that they were simply of a superior kind. For this reason, they say, he distributed them among the prophets, the priests, and the kings. And they interpret many sayings uttered by the prophets as referring to this seed, on the ground that it was of a higher nature. They fabricate the birth from the virgin Mary, given in marriage to Joseph, as a mere type, so that redemption, worked out through Horos, that is, the Cross, might be signified concerning the higher realities. They say that the prophets spoke much, some of it uttered by the mother concerning the higher realities, and some through this Christ and through the souls formed from him. And so they further divide the prophecies, teaching that some were spoken by the mother, some by the seed, and some by the Demiurge himself; and likewise that Jesus spoke partly as the Savior, partly as the mother, and partly as the Demiurge — as we shall show as our account proceeds.
The Demiurge, they say, being ignorant of the things above him, was moved indeed by what was spoken through the prophets, yet he despised it, supposing it due to one cause or another — sometimes to the spirit that was prophesying (which itself had a movement of its own), sometimes to mere human perplexity about lower things — and so remained ignorant right up until the coming of the Savior. But when the Savior came, they say, the Demiurge learned everything from him, and received it with joy along with all his power, and that he is the centurion in the Gospel who says to the Savior, "For I too have soldiers and servants under my authority, and what I command they do." He will bring to completion, they say, the creation of the world that is his own work, up to the appointed time — above all on account of his care and concern for the Church, and because of his knowledge of the reward being prepared for him, since he will pass over into the place of his mother. They speak of three kinds of men — spiritual, psychic, and earthly — as typified by Cain, Abel, and Seth, showing by these figures the three natures, no longer in individuals but in whole classes. The earthly, they say, passes away into corruption; the animal, if it chooses the better things, will find rest in the middle place, but if the worse, it too will pass to like things with the earthly. The spiritual seed Achamoth has been sowing from that time until now, on account of which souls are instructed here, while the seeds, though sent forth small, are nourished and afterward, once judged fit for perfection, are given in marriage to the Savior's angels; their souls, of necessity, come to rest with the Demiurge in that middle place. And they say that souls are by nature good or by nature wicked: the good are those capable of receiving the seed, while the others, being by nature worthless, can never receive it at all. Such being the character of their argument — something neither foretold by the prophets, nor taught by the Lord, nor handed down by the apostles, and yet something they boast of knowing more abundantly than anyone else, reading what is not written — they attempt, as the saying goes, to weave ropes out of sand, striving to fit what has been said, whether the Lord's parables, or the sayings of the prophets, or the words of the apostles, to their own fabrication, so that they might overreach the Scriptures and, so far as lies in them, tear apart the very frame of the truth. They transfer and refashion things, making one thing out of another, and deceive many by ill-fitting phantasms patched together out of the Lord's own words. It is as if someone had a fine image of a king skillfully wrought out of precious gems by a master craftsman, and then took it apart, removed the gems that made up the man's figure, and rearranged them to form the shape of a dog or a fox, badly put together — and then insisted and declared that this was the beautiful image of the king that the skilled craftsman had made, pointing to the gems, which had indeed been well arranged by the first artist into the image of the king but had been badly rearranged by the second into the form of a fox, and by this display of gems deceived the ignorant, who had no notion of what the king's true likeness looked like, persuading them that this ugly figure of a fox was that fine image of the king. In just the same way, these men stitch together old wives' tales, and then, dragging in sayings, phrases, and parables from here and there, try to fit the words of God to their own fables. As for how much they attempt to draw in this fashion from what pertains to the realm within the Pleroma, and how much from what lies outside it — to attach to their own followers out of the Scriptures — the following is a sample. They say that the Lord came to his passion in the last times of the world for this reason: to show forth, through this passion, the passion that occurred concerning the last of the Aeons, and by this event to reveal the end of the whole arrangement concerning the Aeons. And the twelve-year-old daughter of the ruler of the synagogue, whom the Lord raised from the dead when he came upon her, they take as a figure for the simple among them, and by this act they say he manifested what Achamoth was, and brought to sensible perception what he had left of her when he departed from her — in that he revealed a part of her to her. And they say that Paul spoke of this in his First Letter to the Corinthians, saying, "and last of all he was seen also by me, as by one born out of due time." And the coming of the Savior to Achamoth, together with those of his own age, they say Paul likewise showed in the same letter, saying, "a woman ought to have a covering on her head, because of the angels"; and that because Achamoth, out of shame at the Savior's coming to her, put on a veil — which, they say, Moses made plain by putting a veil over his own face. And they say the Lord signified, by his own sufferings, the passions she suffered: her grief, in this, that he said, "My soul is sorrowful, even unto death"; her fear, in that he said, "Father, if there is a way, take this cup away from me"; and likewise her perplexity (that is, her utter confusion) in that he said, "nor do I know what I should say."
They teach that he showed forth three kinds of men: the hylic (material) kind, in that he answered the one who said, "I will follow you": "The Son of man has nowhere to lay his head." [A portion of the source text here is corrupted beyond recovery.] The psychic (animate) kind, in that he said to the one who said, "I will follow you, but permit me first to go and tell my household": "Whoever sets a hand to the plow and turns to look behind is not suited for the kingdom of heaven." This man, they say, was of the middle sort. And likewise that other man, who confessed he had fulfilled many parts of righteousness, but afterward was unwilling to follow, being overcome by his riches so that he did not become perfect — him too they wish to have been of the psychic kind. But the spiritual (pneumatic) kind, in that he says, "Leave the dead to bury their own dead, but go and proclaim the kingdom of God," and to Zacchaeus the tax collector, saying, "Make haste and come down, for today I must abide in your house," and in the parable of the leaven, which a woman is said to have hidden in three measures of meal — these, they say, signify the three kinds [of men]. [A run of corrupted text, apparently a marginal note on manuscript readings, is untranslatable here.] They teach that the woman is called Sophia; that the three measures of meal are the three kinds of men, spiritual, psychic, and choic (earthy); and that the leaven itself is said to be the Savior. And they say that Paul plainly spoke of the choic, the psychic, and the spiritual: in one place, "As is the man of earth, such also are they that are earthy"; elsewhere, "The psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit"; elsewhere, "The spiritual man judges all things." The saying, "The psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit," they say was spoken of the Demiurge, who, being psychic, knew neither his spiritual mother nor her seed, nor those Aeons who are within the Pleroma. And because the Savior took to himself of those whom he was about to save, they say that Paul said, "If the firstfruit be holy, the lump also is holy" — calling the firstfruit that which is spiritual, and by "the lump" meaning us, that is, the psychic Church, whose substance they say he took upon himself and raised up together with himself, since he himself was the leaven. And because Achamoth erred outside the Pleroma and was given form by Christ and was sought out by the Savior, they say he showed this forth in saying that he himself had come to the sheep that had gone astray; for they take the straying sheep to signify their mother, from whom they hold that the Church here below was sown as seed. And they hand down that her error was her sojourn outside the Pleroma amid all the passions out of which they say matter was made. [A further corrupted fragment intervenes.] And they say that the woman who sweeps the house and finds the drachma signifies the higher Sophia, who, having lost her purpose, afterward, when all things had been cleansed by the Savior's coming, found it again — since this too, according to them, is restored within the Pleroma. And they say that Symeon, who took Christ into his hands and gave thanks to God, saying, "Now you release your servant, O Lord, according to your word, in peace," is a type of the Demiurge, who at the Savior's coming learned of his own transposition and gave thanks to Bythos. And through Anna, who is said to have lived seven years with her husband and to have remained a widow all the rest of her time, until she saw the Savior and recognized him and spoke of him to all — most plainly, they say, Achamoth is signified: [A corrupted note on manuscript variants follows, untranslatable.] she who, having seen the Savior only for a little while together with those of her own age, thereafter persevered for the whole time in the middle state, waiting for him until his return, when he would bring her back to her own consort. And they say his name too is signified by the Savior, in that he said, "Wisdom is justified by her children," and by Paul thus: "We speak wisdom among the perfect." And they say Paul spoke of the conjunctions (syzygies) that are within the Pleroma when, in one place showing this, he writes of that conjunction which pertains to this present life: "This is a profound mystery, and my words concern Christ and the Church." Furthermore they teach that John, the Lord's disciple, indicated the first Ogdoad, calling it the mother of all things that are engendered. [Here follows a badly corrupted passage of Greek text and apparatus notes, untranslatable.] For he laid down a certain Beginning, which was first brought forth by God — this he also calls Mind and Son; and he calls it the Only-begotten of the Lord, in whom the Father sent forth all things as seeds. From this, he says, the Word was sent forth, and in the Word all the substance of the Aeons, which the Word itself afterward gave form. Since, then, he speaks of the first generation, he does well to make his teaching begin "in the Beginning" — that is, from the Son and the Word. He speaks thus: having first distinguished God, and the Beginning, and the Word into three, he then unites them again, so as to display both their emission and how they are joined to each other and to the Father alike. For the Beginning subsists within the Father and issues from the Father; likewise the Word subsists within the Beginning and issues from the Beginning. Fittingly, then, he stated, "The Word existed at the Beginning" — because he dwelt within the Son. "And the Word was present with God" — because the Beginning dwelt with God. "And the Word was God" — appropriately, since what is born of God is itself divine. "This one existed at the beginning with God": this points to the sequence of generation. "Everything came into being through him, and apart from him nothing came into being": for the Word became the source of shaping and generation for all the Aeons who followed after him. But "what came into being within him," he says, "was life": here he reveals a pairing, for he stated that all things came into being through him, yet that life resides within him. This, then, which arose within him, stands nearer to him than those things brought into being through him; for it subsists with him and bears fruit by means of him. Hence he continues, "And that life was the light of mankind." And here by "mankind" he also means "the Church" under a shared name, so that one word might point to both together: man begets the Church. And he called that light "of men" — that is, life — because they were illuminated by it, which is Anthropos, formed and made manifest. This too Paul says: "For everything that is made manifest is light." Since, then, life manifested and begot Anthropos and the Church, it is called their light. Plainly, therefore, did John reveal [several lines are corrupted Greek and cannot be translated]. In a like exegesis the Macedonians later interpreted the "Life" as the Holy Spirit, through these and other sayings — and thereby a second foursome, the Word and the Life, Anthropos and the Church. But he also signified the first tetrad. For in narrating concerning the Savior, and teaching that all things outside the Pleroma were formed through him, he says that he too is a fruit within the Pleroma. And indeed he called him the light that shines in the darkness and is not comprehended by it, since he, forming all things that had come to be out of passion, was unknown to them. And he calls him Son, and Truth, and Life, and the Word become flesh — "whose splendor we gazed upon," he says, "a splendor fitting the Only-begotten, granted him by the Father, replete with grace and truth." (His words run thus: "And the Word took on flesh and made his home among us, and we gazed upon his splendor, a splendor as of the Only-begotten from the Father, replete with grace and truth.") With care, therefore, he has displayed the first foursome, naming the Father, and Grace, and the Only-begotten, and Truth. Thus John spoke of the first — and of Grace, and the Only-begotten, and Truth, and the Word, and Life, and Anthropos, and the Church. Such, then, is the teaching of Ptolemy.