Out of the Labyrinth

These are the contents of the tenth book of the Refutation of All Heresies.

A summary of all the philosophers. A summary of all the heresies. And, at the close of it all, what the teaching of the truth is.

We have not smashed our way by force through the labyrinth of the heresies. We unraveled its windings simply by refuting them — that is, by the force of truth — and now we come to the demonstration of the truth itself. For the manufactured sophistries of error will be exposed for the incoherent things they are once we have succeeded in establishing where the definition of the truth comes from. [b]

The truth did not take its first principles from the wisdom of the Greeks. It did not borrow its teachings, as though they were secret mysteries, from the doctrines of the Egyptians — doctrines that are silly, and are nevertheless held among them in religious awe as worth trusting. It was not put together out of the fallacies that state the incoherent conclusions the Chaldeans arrived at by their meddling. Nor does the truth owe its existence to astonishment at what demons do, the irrational frenzy of the Babylonians. Its definition is framed the way every true definition is: simple, and with nothing dressed up about it. A definition like that, once it has been made plain, will refute error all by itself.

And although we have very often set out demonstrations, and have explained the rule of the truth fully enough for anyone willing to learn, still, even now, after going through every opinion put forward by the Greeks and by the heretics, we have decided that it is not unreasonable to bring this demonstration in as a sort of finishing stroke to the nine books that come before it, and to do so throughout this tenth book.

So then: we have taken in the doctrines of all the wise men among the Greeks in four books, and the teachings put forward by the founders of the heresies in five. Now we will set out the teaching about the truth in a single book, after first presenting in summary the suppositions that each of them held. For the dogmatists among the Greeks divided philosophy into three parts, and in this way built up their speculative systems one after another: some calling their system Natural, others Moral, and others Dialectical. [d]

The older thinkers who called their science Natural Philosophy are the ones named in Book 1, and the account they furnished ran like this. Some of them derived everything from one thing, others from more things than one. Of those who derived everything from one, some derived it from what had no quality, others from what had quality; and among those who derived everything from what had quality, some derived it from fire, some from air, some from water, and some from earth. Of those who derived the universe from more things than one, some derived it from a countable number of things, others from an infinite number; and among those who derived everything from a countable number, some derived it from two, others from four, others from five, and others from six. Among those who derived the universe from an infinite number, some derived existing things from things like the things produced, others from things unlike them; and among these, some from things that cannot be acted on, others from things that can.

It was from a body with no quality, and one, that the Stoics accounted for the generation of the universe. On their account, matter without quality, and open to change in all its parts, is the originating principle of the universe; for when a change of it takes place, fire, air, water, and earth are generated. The followers of Hippasus and Anaximander and Thales of Miletus, however, think that everything has been generated out of one thing that has quality. Hippasus of Metapontum and Heraclitus of Ephesus said the origin of things was fire, Anaximander air, Thales water, and Xenophanes earth. For he says:

But among those who derive everything from more things than one, and from a countable number, the poet Homer asserts that the universe consists of two substances, earth and water. At one time he puts it this way: [h]

And at another time this way:

And Xenophanes of Colophon seems to agree with him, for he says:

Euripides, though, derives the universe from earth and air, as one can gather from this line of his:

But Empedocles derives the universe from four principles, putting it this way:

Ocellus the Lucanian, however, and Aristotle derive the universe from five principles; for along with the four elements they have assumed a fifth as well, a body that moves in a circle, and they say that the things in the heavens come from it. But the followers of Empedocles supposed the generation of the universe to have proceeded from six principles. Where he says, “Hear first the four roots of all things,” he produces generation out of four principles. But when he adds:

he also hands down six principles of the universe: four of them material — earth, water, fire, and air — and two of them formative, Friendship and Discord. The followers of Anaxagoras of Clazomenae, however, and of Democritus and of Epicurus, and a great many others, have given it as their opinion that the generation of the universe proceeds out of an infinite number of atoms; and we have already mentioned some of these philosophers. But Anaxagoras derives the universe from things like the things being produced, whereas the followers of Democritus and Epicurus derived it from things both unlike the things produced and incapable of being acted on — that is, from atoms. The followers of Heraclides of Pontus and of Asclepiades, on the other hand, derived the universe from things unlike the things produced but capable of being acted on, as though from mismatched little bodies. And the disciples of Plato say that these things come from three principles — God, matter, and the pattern. He divides matter into four principles, though: fire, water, earth, and air. And God, he says, is the maker of this matter, and Mind is its pattern.

Since we are satisfied, then, that the starting point of natural science plainly turns out to be full of difficulties for all these philosophers, we ourselves will state without fear what the patterns of the truth are — how they stand, and how we have come to be confident that they stand. But first we will give an explanation, in summary form, of the doctrines of the founders of the heresies, so that by setting out everyone’s doctrines in a way our readers can take in, we may exhibit the truth in a plain and familiar shape. [p]

Since it seems the right place to start, let us begin with the serpent’s ministers. The Naasseni call the first principle of the universe a Man, and say that this same one is also a Son of Man; and they divide this man into three parts. One part of him, they say, is rational, another soulish, and a third earthly. They call him Adamas, and they suppose that the knowledge belonging to him is where the ability to know God begins. And the Naassene says that all these qualities — rational, soulish, and earthly — have gone down into Jesus, and that through him these three substances spoke all at once to the three kinds of thing in the universe. For they claim there are three kinds of existence — angelic, soulish, and earthly — and three churches — angelic, soulish, and earthly — and that the names of these are the chosen, the called, and the captive. These are the chief points of the teaching they put forward, so far as anyone can take them in briefly. They claim that James, the Lord’s brother, handed these doctrines on to Mariamne — a statement that tells lies about them both. [q]

The Peratae — that is, Ademes the Carystian and Euphrates the Peratic — say that there is some one world (this is the word they use), and they hold that it is divided into three parts. Of this threefold division, on their account, there is one first principle, like an immense spring, which reason can divide into an infinite number of segments. The first segment, and the one nearest at hand, is on their account the triad, and it is called a perfect good and a fatherly greatness. The second portion of the triad is a kind of multitude of powers, infinite, as it were. The third part is formal. And the first is unbegotten — which is why they say outright that there are three Gods, three Words, three minds, three men. For once the division has been made, they assign to each part of the world both Gods and Words and men and all the rest. [t]

But from above, from the uncreated realm and the first segment of the world, at a time when the world had already come to its full state, the Peratic says that in the days of Herod a certain man came down with a threefold nature, a threefold body, and a threefold power, named Christ; and that he possesses in himself, from the three parts of the world, all the compounds and capacities of the world. And they are disposed to think that this is what is meant by the words, “in whom the whole fullness of divinity lives bodily.” And they say that from the two worlds situated above — the unbegotten one and the self-begotten one — seeds of every sort of power were carried down into this world of ours. And Christ came down from above out of the uncreated realm, so that by his descent everything divided into three parts might be saved. For the things carried down from above, the Peratic says, will go back up through him; and the things that have plotted against the things carried down are let go and, once they have been punished, are sent away. And the Peratic states that there are two parts that are saved — the parts situated above — by being separated from decay, and that the third is destroyed, the part he calls a formal world. These, then, are the doctrines of the Peratae as well.

But the Sethians hold that there are three principles, precisely defined. And each of the principles is fitted by nature to be able to be generated, in the way that every skill whatever that can be learned is developed in a human soul. It works out the same way as when a child becomes a musician by spending long enough at an instrument, or a geometer by spending it on geometry, or a master of any other art by spending it on that. [y]

The substances of the principles, the Sethians say, are light and darkness. And in the middle of these is pure spirit; the spirit, they say, is what is set between the darkness below and the light above. It is not spirit in the sense of a current of wind, or some gentle breeze you can feel, but rather like the fragrance of a perfumed oil, or of an incense made out of a fine mixture — a power that spreads itself by some driving quality in a fragrance, a thing no one can conceive of and better than anyone can put into words. So since the light is above and the darkness below, and the spirit is in between them, the light shines down from above on the darkness underneath, like a ray of the sun; and the fragrance of the spirit is carried onward, holding the middle place, and goes out from there just as the smell of an incense offering laid on the fire is spread abroad.

Now the power of the things divided in three being of this description, the power of the spirit and of the light together is below, in the darkness that lies beneath. The darkness, they say, is a horrible water, into which the light along with the spirit is drawn down and so carried over into a nature of that kind. The darkness, though, is endowed with intelligence. It knows that when the light has been taken away from it, the darkness is left deserted — with no radiance and no splendor, no power and no effect, and helpless. So with every effort of reflection and reason it works to gather into itself brightness and a spark of light, along with the fragrance of the spirit.

And they bring in a picture of this, putting it this way: just as the pupil of the eye looks dark under the fluids that lie beneath it, and yet is lit up by the spirit, so the darkness strains after the spirit, and holds within itself all the powers that want to draw back and return. Now these are indefinitely infinite in number, and out of them, when they are mingled, all things are figured and generated like seals. For just as a seal, when it is brought into contact with wax, produces a figure — and yet the seal itself stays what it was — so the powers too, by coming into partnership one with another, form all the infinite kinds of animals. The Sethians assert, therefore, that from the first meeting of the three principles there was generated an image of the great seal, namely heaven and earth, which has a form like a womb with a navel in the middle. And in the same way the rest of the figures of all things were shaped, like heaven and earth, in the likeness of a womb.

And the Sethians say that out of the water there was produced a firstborn principle: a violent and roaring wind, and that it is the cause of all generation, since out of the motion of the waters it creates a kind of heat and motion in the world. And they maintain that this wind is shaped into a perfect image, like the hissing of a serpent. And the world gazes at it and hurries into generation, inflamed like a womb; and from there they are disposed to think the generation of the universe has arisen. And they say that this wind constitutes a spirit, and that a perfect God has arisen out of the fragrance of the waters, and of the spirit, and out of the brilliant light.

And they say that mind exists after the manner of generation from a female — by mind they mean the spark from above — and that, having been mingled below with the compounds of the body, it strains to flee away and, having escaped, to go on its way; but it does not find its release, because of its binding in the waters. That is why, they say, it cried aloud out of the mixture of the waters, in the words of the Psalmist. So the whole concern of the light above is to rescue the spark below from the Father below — that is, from the wind.

And the Father creates heat and disturbance, and produces for himself a Son, namely mind, which, as they allege, is not his own peculiar offspring. And these heretics say that the Son, when he beheld the perfect Word of the light above, underwent a transformation, and in the shape of a serpent entered a womb, so that he might be able to recover that Mind which is the spark from the light. And this, they say, is what is meant by the words, “who, being in the form of God, did not count it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself and took the form of a slave.” And the wretched and baneful Sethians are disposed to think that this is the slave’s form the Apostle is speaking of. These, then, are the assertions that these Sethians too put forward.

But Simon, that great sage, makes his statement this way: that there is an indefinite power, and that this is the root of the universe. And this indefinite power, he says, which is fire, is not in itself anything simple — not the way the crowd of speculators maintain, when they assert that there are four uncompounded elements and suppose fire, as one of them, to be uncompounded. Simon, on the other hand, alleges that the nature of fire is twofold; and one portion of this twofold nature he calls something secret, and the other something manifest. And he asserts that the secret is hidden in the manifest parts of the fire, and that the manifest parts of the fire have been produced out of the secret. And he says that all the parts of the fire, visible and invisible, are supposed to possess a capacity for perceiving. [ab]

So the world that is begotten, he says, has been produced out of the unbegotten fire. And it began to exist, he says, in this way. The begotten world took six primary roots of the principle of generation from the principle of that fire. For he maintains that these roots have been generated in pairs out of the fire; and these he calls Mind and Intelligence, Voice and Name, Reasoning and Reflection. And he asserts that in these six roots the indefinite power resides all at once — the power he affirms to be him who stood, stands, and will stand.

And when this one has been formed into a figure, then, on this man’s account, he will exist in the six powers both in substance and in potential; and he will be one and the same, in greatness and in perfection, with that unbegotten and indefinite power, lacking nothing in any respect that the unbegotten and unalterable and indefinite power has. But if he who stood, stands, and will stand goes on existing only potentially in the six powers, and has taken on no definite figure, then, Simon says, he vanishes away altogether and perishes. And this happens the same way the capacity for grammar or for geometry does: though it has been planted in a man’s soul, it is snuffed out if it does not get the help of a master of one of those arts, someone to teach that soul its first principles. Now Simon affirms that he himself is the one who stood, stands, and will stand, and that he is a power above all things. So much, then, for the opinions of Simon as well.