Nothing Above the Creator

In the first book, the one that comes immediately before this, I exposed “knowledge falsely so called,” and showed you, my very dear friend, that the whole system devised in many and contradictory ways by the school of Valentinus is false and groundless. I also set out the teachings of their predecessors, proving that they not only disagreed among themselves but had long since swerved away from the truth itself. I explained with all care both the teaching and the practice of Marcus the magician, since he too belongs to these people, and I pointed out the passages they garble from the Scriptures in order to fit them to their own inventions. I described in detail how, by means of numbers and the twenty-four letters of the alphabet, they boldly try to establish what they take to be the truth.

I related as well how they think and teach that creation at large was formed after the image of their invisible Pleroma, and what they hold about the Demiurge, and at the same time I laid out the teaching of Simon Magus of Samaria, their ancestor, and of all who came after him. I mentioned the crowd of Gnostics who have sprung from him, and noted the points on which they differ, their various doctrines, and the order of their succession, setting out all the heresies they have originated. I showed, further, that all these heretics take their start from Simon and have brought impious and irreligious teachings into this life; and I explained what they mean by their “redemption,” and how they initiate the ones they call “perfect,” along with their invocations and their mysteries. I proved also that there is one God, the Creator, that he is not the fruit of any defect, and that there is nothing either above him or after him.

In the present book I will establish the points that fit my design, so far as time allows, and overthrow their whole system by treating it at length under distinct headings. That is why I have given the work the title it has: it is an exposure and an overturning of their opinions. For the way to put an end to these hidden alliances — and to Bythus himself — is to bring their pairings out plainly into the open and knock them down, and so to demonstrate that he never existed at any earlier time and has no existence now either.

It is right, then, that I should begin with the first and most important subject: God the Creator, who made heaven and earth and everything in them — the God these men blasphemously call the fruit of a defect. I mean to demonstrate that there is nothing either above him or after him; that he was not influenced by anyone else, but made all things of his own free will; and that he is the only God, the only Lord, the only Creator, the only Father, the one who alone contains all things and himself calls all things into existence. [f]

For how can there be any other Pleroma, or Principle, or Power, or God above him? It is a matter of necessity that God, who is himself the Pleroma of all these, contains all things in his immensity and is contained by no one. But if there is anything beyond him, then he is not the Pleroma of all, and he does not contain all. What they declare to lie beyond him will be missing from the Pleroma — that is, from the God who is above all things. And what is missing, and falls short in any way, is not the Pleroma of all things. In that case he would have a beginning, a middle, and an end with respect to whatever lies beyond him. And if he has an end in regard to the things below, he has a beginning as well in regard to the things above. In the same way, he must of necessity undergo the very same thing at every other point, and be held in, bounded, and enclosed by the beings outside him. For whatever is the end downward necessarily circumscribes and surrounds the one who comes to an end in it.

So on their own account the Father of all — the one they call Proon and Proarche — along with their Pleroma, and Marcion’s good God as well, is set inside something else and enclosed by it, surrounded from outside by another mighty being who must of necessity be greater, since what contains is greater than what is contained. But what is greater is also stronger, and more fully lord; and what is greater and stronger and more fully lord must be God.

Now according to them there also exists something else outside the Pleroma, into which, they further hold, that higher power came down who went astray. So one of two things is in every way necessary. Either the Pleroma contains what is beyond it and is itself contained — for otherwise that thing will not be beyond the Pleroma; and if anything is beyond the Pleroma, then there will be a Pleroma inside this very Pleroma which they declare to be outside the Pleroma, and the Pleroma will be contained by what is beyond it, and along with the Pleroma the first God is understood to be contained too. Or else the two must be separated from each other by an infinite distance — the Pleroma, I mean, and what is beyond it.

But if they say that, then there will be a third kind of existence, separating the Pleroma and what is beyond it by an immensity. This third kind of existence will therefore bound and contain both the others, and will be greater than the Pleroma and greater than what is beyond it, since it holds both in its lap. In this way the talk about what contains and what is contained could go on forever. For if this third existence has its beginning above and its end below, of necessity it is bounded at the sides as well, either beginning or ceasing at certain other points, where new existences begin. These again, and others above and below them, will have their beginnings at still other points, and so on without end — so that their thoughts would never come to rest in one God, but, from looking for more than exists, would wander off into what has no existence at all, and depart from the true God.

The same remarks apply against the followers of Marcion. His two gods too will be contained and circumscribed by the immense interval that separates them from one another. And then there is no avoiding a multitude of gods, separated by an immense distance from each other on every side, each beginning where another leaves off and ending where another begins. So by the very reasoning they rely on to teach that there is some Pleroma or God above the Maker of heaven and earth, anyone who cares to use it may maintain that there is another Pleroma above that Pleroma, and above that yet another, and above Bythus another ocean of Deity — with the same successions running out at the sides as well. Their teaching flows out into immensity, and there will always be another Pleroma to conceive of, and other Bythi, so that one never stops at any point but keeps on looking for still more beyond those already named. And it will be uncertain whether the ones we conceive of are below, or are in fact the very ones that are said to be above; and it will be just as doubtful, about the ones they call above, whether they really are above or below. So our opinions will reach no fixed conclusion and no certainty, but will of necessity wander off after worlds without limit and gods that cannot be counted.

This being so, each deity will be content with his own possessions and will not be stirred by any curiosity about another’s affairs; otherwise he would be unjust and grasping, and would stop being what God is. Each creation, too, will glorify its own maker and be content with him, knowing no other; otherwise all the rest would most justly count it a deserter, and it would receive a richly deserved punishment. For it must be one or the other: either there is one Being who contains all things and who formed in his own territory everything that has been made, according to his own will; or else there are numberless unlimited creators and gods, beginning from one another and ending in one another on every side — and then we must allow that all the rest are contained from outside by someone greater, and that each of them is shut up within his own territory and stays there. In that case not one of them all is God. For every one of them will lack a great deal, possessing only a very small part compared with all the rest. The name Almighty is thus brought to an end, and an opinion like that must fall into impiety.

Those who say that the world was formed by angels, or by any other maker, against the will of the Supreme Father, go wrong first of all at this very point: they maintain that angels made so great a creation against the will of the Most High God. That would mean either that the angels were more powerful than God, or, if not, that he was careless, or inferior, or paid no regard to what went on among his own possessions, whether it turned out badly or well — so as to drive off and prevent the one, and praise and take pleasure in the other. But if no one would credit conduct like that even to a man of any ability, how much less to God. [j]

Next let them tell us whether these things were made inside the limits he contains, in his own proper territory, or in regions belonging to others and lying beyond him. If they say it was done beyond him, then all the absurdities already mentioned confront them: the Supreme God will be enclosed by what is beyond him, and there too he will have to find his end. If, on the other hand, it was done inside his own proper territory, then it is quite pointless to say that the world was formed there against his will by angels who are themselves under his power, or by any other being — as though he did not see everything that goes on among his own possessions, or did not know what the angels were going to do.

If, however, these things were done not against his will but with his agreement and knowledge, as some of them think, then the angels — or the Maker of the world, whoever he may have been — will no longer be the cause of that formation; the will of God will be. For if God is the Maker of the world, then he also made the angels, or at least was the cause of their creation; and the one who prepared the causes of a thing’s formation will be reckoned as having made it. They may maintain that the angels were produced by a long succession of descents, or that the Maker of the world sprang from the Supreme Father, as Basilides asserts. Even so, whatever is the cause of the things that have been made will still be traced back to the one who set that succession going.

It is like success in war, which is credited to the king who prepared the things that caused the victory; and in the same way the founding of a city, or the making of any work at all, is credited to the man who prepared the materials by which the result was afterward brought about. That is why we do not say that the axe cut the wood, or that the saw divided it. The proper thing to say is that the man cut it and divided it who made the axe and the saw for that purpose — and who at a much earlier date made all the tools by which the axe and the saw themselves were made. So on the same line of reasoning it is right to declare that the Father of all is the Maker of this world, and not the angels, nor any other so-called maker of the world, but the one who was its Author and had earlier prepared the way for a creation of this kind.

This way of talking may perhaps sound plausible or persuasive to people who do not know God, and who liken him to needy human beings — to those who cannot make anything at once and unaided, but need many instruments to produce what they intend. But it will not seem at all probable to people who know that God stands in need of nothing, and that he created and made all things by his Word. He did not require angels to help him produce what was made, nor any power far inferior to himself and ignorant of the Father, nor any defect or ignorance, in order that the one who was to know him might become man. Rather, he himself, in himself, in a way we can neither describe nor conceive, determined all things beforehand and formed them as he pleased. He bestowed harmony on all things, assigning each its own place and the beginning of its existence. In this way he gave spiritual things a spiritual and invisible nature; things above the heavens a heavenly one; angels an angelic one; animals an animal one; creatures that swim a nature suited to water; creatures that live on land one fitted for land — in short, to all a nature suited to the kind of life assigned them. And he formed everything that was made by his Word, which never grows weary.

For this is what marks God’s pre-eminence: he does not need other instruments to create the things he summons into existence. His own Word is both fit and sufficient for the forming of all things — as John, the Lord’s disciple, says of him: “All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made.” Now our world is included among the “all things.” It too, then, was made by his Word, just as Scripture tells us in the book of Genesis that he made everything belonging to our world by his Word. David says the same thing: “For he spoke, and they were made; he commanded, and they were created.” Whom, then, are we to believe about the creation of the world — these heretics I have mentioned, who prattle so foolishly and inconsistently about it, or the Lord’s disciples, and Moses, who was both a faithful servant of God and a prophet? Moses first narrated the formation of the world in these words: “In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth” — and then all the rest in order; but neither gods nor angels had any share in the work.

That this God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the apostle Paul has declared as well: “There is one God, the Father, who is above all, and through all things, and in us all.” I have indeed proved already that there is only one God; but I will demonstrate it further from the apostles themselves and from the Lord’s own words. For what sort of behavior would it be to abandon what the prophets, the Lord, and the apostles said, in order to give our attention to these people, who do not speak a word of sense?

The Bythus, then, whom they conceive of with his Pleroma, and the God of Marcion, do not hold together. If, as they say, he has something lying below him and beyond himself, which they call vacancy and shadow, then this vacancy is proved to be greater than their Pleroma. But it is inconsistent even to make the statement, that while he contains all things within himself the creation was formed by someone else. For they are absolutely obliged to acknowledge a certain empty and chaotic kind of existence below the spiritual Pleroma, in which this universe was formed, and to say that the Propator deliberately left that chaos as it was — either knowing beforehand what was going to happen in it, or not knowing. If he really did not know, then God does not know all things beforehand. And even then they will not be able to give a reason why he left this place empty for so long a stretch of time. If, on the other hand, he did know beforehand, and had in mind that creation which was going to come into being in that place, then he himself created it, since he was the one who had already formed it in himself. [r]

Let them stop saying, then, that the world was made by anyone else. As soon as God formed a conception in his mind, the thing he had conceived was done. It was not possible for one being to form the conception in his mind and another actually to produce what that one had conceived. But according to these heretics, God conceived in his mind either an eternal world or a world in time — and both of these cannot be true. If he had conceived of it as eternal, spiritual, and visible, it would have been formed that way too. But if it was formed as it actually is, then the one who made it is the one who had conceived of it as it is; or else he willed it to exist in the Father’s presence, according to the conception of his mind, just as it now is — compound, changeable, and passing away.

Since, then, it is just such as the Father had formed in counsel with himself, it must be worthy of the Father. But to say that what was conceived and created beforehand by the Father of all, exactly as it has in fact been formed, is the fruit of a defect and the product of ignorance, is to be guilty of great blasphemy. For on their account the Father of all will be generating in his own breast, according to his own mental conception, the emanations of defect and the fruits of ignorance — since the things he conceived in his mind have actually been produced.