Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
A demonstration that the Lord acknowledged one only God and Father.
Since, then, it is a fixed and settled point that no other God and Lord was preached by the Spirit except him who governs all things as God, together with his Word — that is, together with all who receive that Spirit of adoption which marks out those who believe in the one true God and in Christ Jesus the Son of God; and that likewise the apostles called no one else God besides these, nor named any other Lord; and much more, that our Lord himself, who also taught us to confess no Father but the one dwelling in heaven, sole God and sole Father — it is thereby plainly shown that the things said by these deceivers and most perverse sophists are false, when they say that he whom they themselves have invented is God and Father by nature, while the Demiurge is by nature neither God nor Father, but is only called so in a manner of speaking, because he rules over the created order, as these perverse grammarians say, 'as if a God.' And, setting aside the teaching of Christ, and divining false things out of themselves, they argue against the whole dispensation of God. For indeed they say that their Aeons are also called father-gods and lords, and further even heavens, together with their Mother, whom they also call earth and Jerusalem, and by many other names besides.
To whom is it not plain that, had the Lord been aware of numerous fathers and deities, he would never have instructed his disciples to acknowledge a single God, naming that one alone as Father? Instead, he set apart those called gods merely in name from him who alone truly is God, lest they be misled by his teaching, or confuse the one with the other. Yet if he truly directed us to name a single being as both Father and God, while at other moments he himself acknowledged additional fathers and deities in similar fashion, he would seem to instruct his disciples in one manner while acting otherwise himself. This is not the mark of a good teacher, but of a deceiver and one who begrudges the truth. And the apostles, according to their own view, are shown to be transgressors of this precept, since they confess the Demiurge as God and Lord and Father, as we have shown — unless he alone is God and Father. Jesus, then, will be for them the author and teacher of transgression, since he taught that one alone should be called Father, yet laid upon them the necessity of confessing the Demiurge as their Father, as has been shown.