The Thirty Aeons

Since certain men have set the truth aside and are bringing in lying words and empty genealogies, which, as the apostle says, “promote speculation rather than the building up from God that is in faith,” and since by their cleverly built plausibilities they draw away the minds of inexperienced people and take them captive, I have felt I had no choice, my dear friend, but to write the book that follows, in order to expose what these men are doing and to work against it. They falsify the words of God and show themselves to be bad interpreters of the good word of revelation. They also wreck the faith of many, drawing them away — under the pretense of a higher knowledge — from the One who founded and furnished the universe, as though they had something finer and loftier to reveal than the God who made heaven and earth and everything in them. With attractive, plausible words they cunningly lure simple people into looking into their system, and then they destroy them clumsily enough, initiating them into their blasphemous and irreverent opinions about the Demiurge; and these simple people cannot tell falsehood from truth even in a matter like that.

Error is never put on display in its own naked ugliness; exposed like that, it would be spotted at once. It is dressed up cleverly in attractive clothing, so that on the outside — ridiculous as it sounds to say so — it looks truer to inexperienced people than the truth itself. A man far better than I am put it well: “A clever imitation in glass throws contempt, so to speak, on the emerald, that precious stone some prize so highly — unless it comes under the eye of someone able to test it and show up the counterfeit. Or again: when brass has been mixed into silver, what inexperienced person can easily detect it?”

So rather than let anyone be carried off through my neglect, the way sheep are carried off by wolves, while they fail to see what sort of men these are — because outwardly they are covered in sheep’s clothing, and the Lord told us to be on our guard against them, and because their language sounds like ours while what they mean by it is very different — I have thought it my duty to unfold to you, my friend, these monstrous and profound mysteries. I have read some of what the followers of Valentinus call their Commentaries, and I have come to know their teachings by talking with some of them in person. Mysteries like these do not fall within the reach of every mind, since not everyone has cleaned out his brains well enough.

I am doing this so that you, once you have some acquaintance with these things, can explain them in turn to everyone you are connected with, and urge them to keep clear of such a pit of madness and blasphemy against Christ. So I intend, as well as I am able, to set out briefly and clearly the opinions of the men who are now spreading this heresy — I mean particularly the followers of Ptolemaeus, whose school may be described as a bud off the school of Valentinus. And I will try, as far as my modest ability goes, to supply the means of overthrowing them, by showing how absurd their statements are and how far from the truth. I am not practiced in writing or in speaking well; but affection moves me to make known to you and all your companions the teachings that have been kept hidden until now, and that at last, by the goodness of God, are being brought to light. “For there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and nothing secret that will not be made known.”

You will not expect any display of rhetoric from me. I live among the Celts and am used to speaking mostly a barbarian tongue. I never learned rhetoric, I have never practiced fine composition, and I make no claim to beauty or persuasiveness of style. But you will take kindly what I write to you in the same kindly spirit: plainly, truthfully, and in my own homely way. You are more capable than I am, so you will expand the ideas I am sending you — I am sending only the seeds of them — and with your broad understanding you will develop to their full extent the points I only touch on, so that you can set before your companions with power what I have said in weakness. In short: you have wanted for a long time to know what these people hold, and to satisfy you I have spared no pains, not only to make their teachings known to you but also to furnish the means of showing them false. In the same way you, by the grace the Lord has given you, will prove an earnest and effective servant to others, so that people are no longer drawn away by the plausible system of these heretics — which I now go on to describe.

Here, then, is what they maintain. In invisible heights above, beyond anything words can say, there exists a certain perfect Aeon who was there before all else. They call him Proarche, Propator, and Bythus, and they describe him as invisible and beyond comprehension. Eternal and unbegotten, he remained through countless cycles of ages in deep stillness and rest. Along with him there existed Ennoea, whom they also call Charis and Sige. At last this Bythus decided to send out from himself the beginning of all things, and he placed this offspring — the one he had resolved to bring forth — in Sige, who was there with him, the way seed is placed in a womb. She received the seed, became pregnant, and gave birth to Nous, who was like the one who had produced him and equal to him, and who alone was able to take in his father’s greatness. This Nous they also call Monogenes, and Father, and the Beginning of All Things. Along with him Aletheia was produced as well. [j]

These four made up the first and firstborn Pythagorean Tetrad, which they also call the root of all things: first Bythus and Sige, then Nous and Aletheia. And Monogenes, seeing what he had been produced for, in turn sent out Logos and Zoe, being the father of all who were to come after him and the beginning and shaping of the whole Pleroma. From the pairing of Logos and Zoe came Anthropos and Ecclesia, and so the firstborn Ogdoad was formed, the root and substance of all things, called among them by four names: Bythus, Nous, Logos, and Anthropos. Each of these is male and female at once, in this way: Propator was joined in a pair with his Ennoea; then Monogenes, that is Nous, with Aletheia; Logos with Zoe; and Anthropos with Ecclesia.

These Aeons had been produced for the Father’s glory, and since they wanted to accomplish that by their own efforts, they sent out emanations of their own by pairing. Logos and Zoe, after producing Anthropos and Ecclesia, sent out ten more Aeons, whose names are these: Bythius and Mixis, Ageratos and Henosis, Autophyes and Hedone, Acinetos and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Macaria. Those are the ten Aeons they declare were produced by Logos and Zoe. Then, they add, Anthropos himself, together with Ecclesia, produced twelve Aeons, and they give them these names: Paracletus and Pistis, Patricos and Elpis, Metricos and Agape, Ainos and Synesis, Ecclesiasticus and Macariotes, Theletos and Sophia.

So there are the thirty Aeons of these men’s mistaken system. They are described as being wrapped up, so to speak, in silence, and known to no one but these professing teachers. Further, they declare that this invisible and spiritual Pleroma of theirs has three parts, divided into an Ogdoad, a Decad, and a Dodecad. And this, they say, is the reason the “Savior” — for they do not care to call him “Lord” — did no work in public for the space of thirty years: he was setting out the mystery of these Aeons.

They maintain as well that the thirty Aeons are pointed out as plainly as can be in the parable of the workers sent into the vineyard. For some are sent about the first hour, others about the third, others about the sixth, others about the ninth, and others about the eleventh. Now add up the numbers of the hours named there and the total comes to thirty: one, three, six, nine, and eleven, put together, make thirty. By the hours, they hold, the Aeons were indicated. And these, they maintain, are great and marvelous mysteries, never yet told, which it is their particular business to unfold. That is how they proceed whenever they find anything in the great mass of material contained in the Scriptures that they can take over and fit to their groundless speculations.

They go on to tell us that in their scheme the Propator was known only to Monogenes, who sprang from him — in other words, only to Nous — while to all the rest he was invisible and beyond comprehension. According to them, Nous alone took pleasure in gazing at the Father and delighting in the thought of his immeasurable greatness. Nous also considered how he might pass on to the rest of the Aeons the Father’s greatness, showing them how vast and mighty he was, and how he was without beginning, beyond comprehension, and altogether impossible to see. But Sige held him back, in accordance with the Father’s will, because it was the Father’s design to lead them all to an acquaintance with this Propator, and to create in them a desire to search out his nature. In the same way the rest of the Aeons also, in a quiet sort of way, wished to see the one who had made them, and to gaze on that First Cause which had no beginning. [t]

But one Aeon rushed out ahead of the others: the last of them by far, the youngest of the Dodecad that sprang from Anthropos and Ecclesia — Sophia. She suffered passion apart from the embrace of her partner Theletos. This passion, they say, first arose among those connected with Nous and Aletheia, but it spread as if by contagion to this degenerate Aeon, who acted under a show of love but was in reality driven by recklessness, because she had not, like Nous, had communion with the perfect Father. The passion, according to them, consisted in a desire to search into the Father’s nature; she wanted to take in his greatness.

She could not reach her end, since what she was reaching for was impossible, and so she fell into an extreme agony of mind. Because of how deep and unsearchable the Father is, and because of the love she bore him, she was forever straining forward, and the danger was that she would at last be swallowed up in his sweetness and dissolved into his very being — had she not met with that Power which supports all things and keeps them outside the unspeakable greatness. That power they call Horos. By him, they say, she was restrained and held up; and then, having with difficulty been brought back to herself, she was convinced that the Father cannot be comprehended, and she laid aside her original design, along with the passion that had risen in her from the overwhelming force of her wonder.

But others of them tell the tale of Sophia’s passion and recovery differently. They say that when she had taken on an impossible and impracticable attempt, she brought forth a shapeless substance — the kind of thing her female nature was able to produce. When she looked at it, her first feeling was grief at how imperfectly it had come out, and then fear that this might mean the end of her own existence. Next she lost all command of herself, so to speak, and was in the greatest perplexity, trying to work out what had caused all this and how she might hide what had happened. Worn down by these passions, she at last changed her mind and tried to return to the Father. But when she made some attempt at it, her strength failed her, and she became a suppliant before him. The other Aeons, and Nous in particular, presented their pleas along with hers. And so, they declare, material substance had its beginning from ignorance and grief and fear and bewilderment.

Afterward the Father produces, in his own image, by means of Monogenes, the Horos already mentioned — produced without a partner, male and female at once. For they maintain that sometimes the Father acts together with Sige, and that at other times he shows himself independent of both male and female. This Horos they call by several names: Stauros, Lytrotes, Carpistes, Horothetes, and Metagoges. And by this Horos, they declare, Sophia was purified and made firm, and she was also restored to her proper pairing. Her enthymesis — the idea born within her — was taken away from her, along with the passion that had come with it, so that she herself certainly remained inside the Pleroma; but her enthymesis, with its passion, was separated from her by Horos, fenced off, and driven outside that circle. This enthymesis was, no doubt, a spiritual substance, having some of the natural tendencies of an Aeon, but at the same time shapeless and without form, because it had received nothing. And for that reason they say it was a feeble and female product.

After this substance had been placed outside the Pleroma of the Aeons, and its mother restored to her proper pairing, they tell us that Monogenes, acting on the Father’s careful forethought, gave rise to another pair — Christ and the Holy Spirit — so that none of the Aeons should fall into a disaster like Sophia’s. The purpose was to fortify and strengthen the Pleroma, and at the same time this pair completed the number of the Aeons. Christ then instructed them about the nature of their pairing, and taught them that those who had grasped the Unbegotten were sufficient to themselves. He also announced among them what has to do with knowing the Father: that he cannot be understood or comprehended, and cannot so much as be seen or heard, except so far as he is made known by Monogenes alone. And the reason the rest of the Aeons have perpetual existence is found in that part of the Father’s nature which cannot be comprehended, while the reason for their origin and their formation lay in what can be comprehended about him — that is, in the Son. This, then, is what Christ, who had only just been produced, accomplished among them.

But the Holy Spirit taught them to give thanks, now that they had all been made equal to one another, and led them into a state of true rest. So, they tell us, the Aeons were made equal to each other in form and in mind, so that all of them became like Nous and Logos and Anthropos and Christus. The female Aeons likewise all became like Aletheia and Zoe and Spiritus and Ecclesia. Everything being settled in this way and brought into a state of perfect rest, they tell us next that these beings sang praises with great joy to the Propator, who himself shared in their overflowing gladness.

Then, out of gratitude for the great benefit that had been done them, the whole Pleroma of the Aeons — of one design and one desire, with Christ and the Holy Spirit agreeing, and their Father setting his seal of approval on what they were doing — brought together whatever each one had in himself of greatest beauty and value. Blending all these contributions skillfully into a whole, they produced, to the honor and glory of Bythus, a being of the most perfect beauty, the very star of the Pleroma and its perfect fruit: Jesus. Him they also speak of under the name Savior, and Christ, and — taking a name from his fathers — Logos, and All, because he was formed from the contributions of all of them. And then, we are told, angels of the same nature as himself were produced at the same time, by way of honor, to serve as his bodyguard.