Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
THAT THE WORLD WAS NOT MADE AMONG THE THINGS CONTAINED BY ANOTHER, BUT THAT HE WHO IS ABOVE ALL IS HIMSELF ITS MAKER, GOD, AND IS HIMSELF THE FATHER OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. 1. Now those who say that the world was fabricated by angels, or by some other maker of the world, apart from the will of him who is the Father over all, err from the very outset in this: they say that the angels made so great and so grand a creation apart from the will of the first God — as though the angels were more capable than God, or else as though God were negligent, or in some way inferior, or took no care over what happens within his own domain, whether it happens well or badly, so as to stop and prevent the one and approve and rejoice in the other. No one would attribute such negligence even to a competent man, much less to God. Let them then tell us: were these things made within the region contained by him, within his own domain, or within what belongs to another and lies outside him? If they say they were made within his own domain, then all the same absurdities already stated will confront them, and the first God will find himself shut in by whatever lies outside him, hemmed by a limit at which he too must terminate. But if these things were made within his own domain, it will be quite absurd to say that, apart from his will, within what belongs to him, the world was fabricated by angels or by powers subject to him, or by someone else — as though he himself did not foresee everything within his own domain, so that he did not know beforehand what the angels would do.
But if it was not without his consent, but rather with him willing and understanding it, as some suppose, then the cause of this fabrication will no longer lie with the angels or the maker of the world, but with what God wills. For if he himself made the maker of the world and the angels, or was even himself the cause of their creation, then he himself will be seen to have made the world, since he prepared the causes of its fabrication. Even if they say that the angels, or the maker of the world, were produced through a long downward succession from the first Father, as Basilides says, nevertheless the responsibility for what was made will still return to the one who set that succession in motion — just as credit for a military victory is referred back to the king who prepared the causes of it, and the founding of a city, or of some work, is credited to the one who prepared the causes for the completion of what was made below him. For this reason we do not say that the axe cuts the wood, or that the saw does the sawing, but rather, and most correctly, that it is the man who cuts and saws — the one who made the axe and the saw for this very purpose, and, prior even to that, fashioned all the tooling that went into producing the axe and saw in the first place. So too, then, by their own reasoning, it is the Father of all who must justly be called the maker of this world — not the angels, nor any other world-fabricator, but rather the one who set that succession going and stood as the prior cause of everything — not as those suppose who, being ignorant of God, liken him to poor men, and to those who cannot make anything at once out of what lies ready to hand, but need many tools for their work. Rather, God himself gave and made all things; he needed no angels to help him in what was made, nor any power far beneath his own and without knowledge of the Father, nor any defect, nor any ignorance, as if someone who was beginning to come to know him had to become man for that reason. Instead, he himself, in himself, according to what is ineffable and inconceivable, foreordaining all things, made them just as he willed, granting to all things their harmony, their own order, and the beginning of their creation — to spiritual beings a spiritual nature, to invisible beings an invisible nature, to what is above the heavens a heavenly nature, to angels an angelic nature, to animals an animal nature, to swimming creatures an aquatic nature, to earthborn creatures an earthly nature — to all things a substance fitted to their proper measure. And all the things that were made, he made by his untiring Word. For this is proper to God's supreme excellence: that he needs no other instruments for the making of what is made, and that his own Word is fit and sufficient for the forming of all things — just as John, the Lord's disciple, says of him: 'All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.' Now among all things is also included this world of ours. This world, then, too was made by his Word, just as the Scripture of Genesis says, that God made through his Word all the things that concern us: at his speaking they came into being, at his command they were brought forth. Whom, then, ought we rather to trust regarding the world's making — these heretics just mentioned, prattling such foolish and self-contradicting notions, or, on the other side, the Lord's own disciples together with Moses, God's faithful servant and prophet? He was the first to narrate the origin of the world, saying: 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth,' and then all the rest that follows — but not gods, nor angels.
This, then, is the very God who fathers our Lord Jesus Christ, and it is of him that the apostle Paul spoke: "one God and Father, ruling over the universe, working through the universe, dwelling within the universe." [The source text here is disturbed by an interleaved editorial apparatus and cannot be fully restored.] ..."At the world's first origin, God fashioned heaven and earth": so we take it that all things exist through the Word's own power. We have already demonstrated that there is a single God; and we shall go on demonstrating it, drawing on the apostles' own witness and the Lord's own sayings. For what sense could there be in forsaking the testimony given by the prophets, given by the Lord himself, given by his apostles too, merely to heed these men, whose talk amounts to nothing sound?