Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Others again say that Cain came from the higher principality, and confess Esau, Korah, the men of Sodom, and all such people to be their own kin; and that, on this account, they were assailed by the maker but that none of them was harmed by it — for Sophia would snatch back to herself whatever belonged properly to her out of them. They say that Judas the traitor knew all this thoroughly, and that he alone, knowing the truth beyond all the rest, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; through which, they say, all things, both earthly and heavenly, were dissolved. And they produce a fabrication of this kind, which they call the Gospel of Judas.
I have also gathered together their own writings, in which they call the maker of heaven and earth — for they hold that people cannot be saved otherwise than by going through everything, just as Carpocrates also taught. And they hold that an angel stands by at each of their sins and shameful acts, and that the one performing the act should dare the deed and commit the impurity, declaring, in the name of the angel to whom that particular act belongs: "O angel, I make use of your work! O such-and-such power, I perform your operation!" And this, they say, is perfect knowledge — to go into such acts, which are not even lawful to name, without trembling. [The text here carries a lengthy modern editorial footnote, comparing this to a passage of Hippolytus, which is not part of Irenaeus's own text and is not translated.] Since it was necessary to expose clearly those who come from Valentinus — given such mothers and such forebears as their own doctrines and rules show them to have — and to bring their teachings out into the open, so that, if any of them should perhaps repent of this and turn to the one sole Founder and God, the Maker of the universe, they might be saved; while the rest might no longer be dragged away by their plausible-seeming, wicked persuasion, thinking they will learn from them some greater or deeper mystery, but rather, having learned well from us what is being badly taught by them, might laugh at their teaching, while pitying those who, still caught up in such wretched and unstable fables, have grown so arrogant as to consider themselves better than everyone else on account of such "knowledge" — or rather ignorance. And this is their delight — as though the mere exposure of their opinion were already a victory over them.
For this reason we have undertaken to bring out into the open, and to make plainly manifest, this whole ill-constructed little body of this fox. There will be no further need of many words to overturn their teaching, now that it has been made plain to everyone. It is like some wild beast hidden in a forest, which springs out from there and ravages many — the man who clears and strips away the forest, bringing the beast itself into full view, no longer has to labor to capture it, once people see that it is indeed a beast: for it is now within reach to watch and guard against its attacks, and to strike it from every side, and wound it, and kill that ravaging beast. So it is with us also: once we have brought their hidden things out into the open, we destroy their opinion. This is a task, then, for you, and for all who are with you, to be trained in what has already been said, and to overturn their worthless and disordered teachings, and to display the doctrines that suit the truth. Since this, then, is how matters stand, we shall, as I have promised, bring forward, according to our ability, their overthrow, refuting them all point by point in the following book (for the account, as you see, goes on at length); and we shall also supply the means for their overthrow, meeting every one of their opinions in the order of their own narrative, so that we may be found not merely exposing, but wounding the beast from every side. [At this point the source carries an editor's note of corrections to earlier pages, followed by a chapter-by-chapter analytical summary (a table of contents) for Book Two, evidently supplied by a modern editor rather than by Irenaeus himself. That summary, translated as it stands, reads as follows.] RECAPITULATION of Book One, and the plan of Book Two, in which the reasoning of "knowledge" (gnosis) is crushed point by point. A) THE FOUNDATION OF THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD THE FATHER IS TORN AWAY FROM THE DEMIURGE (chapters I-XI). The duality of God and the Demiurge is rejected. I. There can be no other principle, independent of him, either above or below God — still less another God. II. The angels, too, could not have been independent of God in the making of the world; still less its principal makers, since God made all things through his own Word. III. Therefore God and the Creator are one, and no Bythus or Pleroma is to be set above him. IV. It is even more absurd to imagine an emptiness or shadow outside God, and most absurd of all within the very fullness of God. B) The emanation of the Demiurge and of creatures from God is likewise overturned. V. This does not square with the perfection of God, from whom nothing imperfect could emanate, whether directly or through angels. VI. It is false, further, that angels could have been ignorant of God, who is known even naturally by human beings. VII. It is false, too, that created things reflect the glory of the Pleroma. VIII. Nor do they reflect the image of the Aeons. C) How great the heretics' error is in these matters. IX. The Gnostics are supported by the authority of no witness, not even a pagan one. X. They wrongly twist the Scriptures; they do not resolve the questions but entangle them in still greater absurdities. XI. In pursuing lofty things they have abandoned the truth for a shadow. By Irenaeus. II. ON THE AEONS IN PARTICULAR (chapters XII-XXI). Preliminary objections. XII. Their Thirty (the Triacontad) both falls short and overflows. If Sophia produces offspring without a consort, why do not the others? The Ogdoad is made up of incompatible members (Logos-Sige). XIII. Even the order of their processions (e.g., Mind from Thought) is wrongly devised, nor can the psychological stages of understanding, which exist only in man, really be distinguished within the utterly simple God. All the more, then, whence comes the inequality of the Aeons within the one God? By what life do those live who exist before the emission of Life? Why is Man from the Word, and not rather... B) The philosophy of the Greeks is the source and origin of this system. XIV. On the theogony of the comic poet Antiphanes, very similar to that of Valentinus. What Thales, Homer, Anaximander, Democritus and Epicurus, Plato, and Anaxagoras contributed to the errors of the Gnostics. Yet none of these ever knew the truth, or could teach it. Still, they applied their names more fittingly to their own falsehood than the Gnostics have. C) On the emission of the Aeons. XV. Whence do the Aeons come at all, since they are not created? Why a tetrad, an ogdoad, and so on, and not some other number? XVI. Why is the world an image of the Pleroma, and the Pleroma not the image of some other Pleroma, and so on without end? XVII. If the emission of the Aeons is a begetting, what then is the shaping of each one? And if it is an emanation, like light from light, why does the last one suffer while the others are impassible? But if it is a budding-forth, like the branches of a tree, whence comes the imperfection of certain Aeons? And if, finally, it is an emission like a ray from the sun, how is it that they are ignorant of the Father from whom they were sent forth? What is so absurd, after all, in a blind word being sent forth from a most perfect Mind? XVIII. On Sophia in particular: why is she the most foolish of all? How does the passion of a spiritual Aeon become the matter of bodies? And above all: how can the Father's wish to be known become the cause of ignorance and imperfection? XIX. On the Demiurge, finally: is it not utterly unreasonable that he, who received the whole spiritual seed, should himself be merely animal and ignorant of everything, when the Gnostics themselves, who boast of having only a tiny particle of that seed, are spiritual and understand everything? III. ON THE ARGUMENTS BY WHICH THE GNOSTICS [DEFEND THEIR DOCTRINE OF] THE AEONS. Arguments from Scripture. XX. The trouble of the twelfth Aeon has nothing whatever to do with the fall of Judas, still less with the Passion of the Lord. XXI. Nor are the twelve Apostles a type of the twelve Aeons: for what would be set up as corresponding to the ten Aeons that are their elders? What Aeon corresponds to the seventy disciples? What Aeon to Paul? XXII. The thirty Aeons are not signified by the thirty years of Christ's life, for Christ underwent his passion not in the twelfth month following his baptism, but was at least thirty years of age, or older, when he suffered — as he attempts to show. XXIII. It is likewise absurd that the woman with the flow of blood should be a type of the disturbed Aeon; for she did not begin to suffer in her twelfth year, but was healed then, after twelve years of suffering; besides, Christ restored others to health at other ages entirely. B) Arguments from numbers. XXIV. These rest on mere arbitrary choice: what of the number five? Besides, why is attention paid to the Greek letters, and not to the Hebrew ones, which are the original? Why are so many other "types" neglected (for instance, the measurements of the ark of the covenant)? Why that particular fifth number of which the holy Scriptures are full? XXV. Numbers are indeed set within things not without great wisdom, but this must be weighed by the rule of truth. For God is not to be measured by numbers and the other things that were made; rather, these are, and ought to be, subject to human investigation, not the reverse. XXVI. Knowledge puffs up, love builds up; it does no good to know more than is fitting. C) Practical conclusions. XXVII. By the example of the heretics, Irenaeus shows that obscure parables ought not to be used to explain what is already clearly preached. XXVIII. The rule of faith is to be held above all else: matters that exceed the grasp of our minds are to be humbly left to God, not rashly investigated in every direction, as the heretics think proper. XXIX. It is contradictory that some souls should go into the Pleroma, others into the middle region, while bodies have no share at all in salvation. XXX. It is contradictory for souls to be spiritual if the Demiurge himself, from whom they come, is merely animal. XXXI. What has been argued so far against Valentinus is extended to the other heretics; the true fate awaiting all of them is shown. XXXII. The impious and horrifying things they say about the moral indifference of actions, about the supposed necessity of committing every kind of shameful act, and about their claimed likeness to and superiority over Jesus. XXXIII. It is absurd that souls should migrate from bodies into other bodies. XXXIV. Souls will remain unmoving forever after death, retaining the memory of their deeds. XXXV. On the souls of the prophets in particular, and on the origin of prophecy.