Thirty Aeons and One Creator

While the Demiurge knew nothing of any of this, they tell us, the Savior did honor to the Pleroma by the creation he called into being through his Mother, since in it he produced likenesses and images of the things above. But I have already shown that nothing could exist outside the Pleroma — that outer region where they say the images of the things inside were made — and that this world was formed by no one but the supreme God. Still, it is a pleasure to overturn them at every point and to show them up as peddlers of lies. So let this be our answer to them. If these things were made by the Savior to honor the things above, after their likeness, then they ought to last forever, so that what has been honored should go on being honored. But if in fact they pass away, what use is so brief a stretch of honor — an honor that once did not exist and that will come to nothing again? In that case I will prove that the Savior is a man hunting after empty glory rather than one who honors the things above. [a]

For what honor can things that are temporary confer on things that are eternal and last forever? What honor can things that pass away confer on things that remain, or corruptible things on incorruptible ones? Even among men, who are mortal themselves, no value is set on an honor that quickly passes; the honor worth having is the one that lasts as long as it possibly can. But things that come to an end as soon as they are made may fairly be said to have been formed to bring contempt on the very things they are supposed to honor, and what is eternal is insulted when its image is spoiled and falls apart. And what if their Mother had never wept and laughed and sunk into despair? Then the Savior would have had no way at all of honoring the Fullness, since her last state of confusion had no substance of its own out of which to honor the Propator.

So much, then, for an honor of empty glory, which passes away at once and is seen no more. There will be some Aeon in whose case such honor will not be thought to have existed at all, and then the things above will be left without honor — or else another Mother will have to be produced, weeping and in despair, so that the Pleroma may be honored again. What an unlike image, and a blasphemous one at that!

Are you telling me that an image of the only Son was produced by the one who formed the world — the only Son whom you also want taken as the Nous, the mind, of the Father of all — and that this image knew nothing of itself, nothing of creation, nothing of the Mother, nothing of anything that exists or of the things it made itself? Are you not ashamed that, in contradicting yourselves, you fasten ignorance even on the only Son himself? For if the things down here were made by the Savior after the likeness of the things above, and yet the one who was made after that likeness, the Demiurge, was in such deep ignorance, it necessarily follows that ignorance of the same kind exists spiritually around the one after whose likeness this ignorant being was formed, and in keeping with him. Since both were produced spiritually, and were neither fashioned nor put together out of parts, it is not possible that in one of them the likeness was preserved while in the other the likeness of the image was spoiled — the image that was produced down here for the very purpose of being after the image of that production above.

But if it is not like it, then the blame falls on the Savior, who produced an unlike image: he was, so to speak, an incompetent workman. And it is out of their power to say that the Savior lacked the power to produce, since they call him All Things. So if the image is unlike, he is a poor workman, and on their own theory the fault lies with the Savior. If on the other hand it is like, then the same ignorance will be found in the Nous of their Propator — that is, in the only Son. The Father’s Nous, on that showing, knew nothing of himself, nothing of the Father, and nothing of the very things he formed. But if he does have knowledge, then it must follow that the one formed after his likeness by the Savior knows the things that are like him. And so, by their own principles, their monstrous blasphemy is overthrown.

Quite apart from all this, how can the things that belong to creation — varied, many-sided, and past counting as they are — be the images of those thirty Aeons inside the Pleroma, whose names, as these men fix them, I set out in the book before this one? Not only will they be unable to fit the vast variety of creation at large to the smallness of their Pleroma; they cannot do it even for one part of it, whether the creatures of the sky, or of the land, or of the water. They themselves testify that their Pleroma consists of thirty Aeons; but anyone will undertake to show that in a single one of the departments just named they count not thirty but many thousands of species.

How then can things that make up so many-shaped a creation — things opposed in nature to each other, at odds among themselves, destroying one another — be the images and likenesses of the thirty Aeons of the Pleroma, if those Aeons, as they declare, have one nature, are equal and alike in their properties, and show no differences among themselves? For if these things are images of those Aeons, then, since they declare that some men are wicked by nature and some naturally good, they were bound to point out such differences among their Aeons too, and to hold that some of them were produced naturally good and others naturally evil, so that the supposed likeness might fit. And again, since there are creatures in the world that are gentle and others that are fierce, some harmless and others harmful and destructive of the rest; since some have their home on the land, others in the water, others in the air, and others in the sky — they are bound in the same way to show that the Aeons have such properties, if the one really are the images of the other. And there is “the eternal fire which the Father has prepared for the devil and his angels”: they ought to show which of the Aeons above that is the image of, since it too is reckoned part of creation.

If, however, they say that these things are the images of the Enthymesis of the Aeon who fell into passion, then, first of all, they do their Mother an outrage by making her the first cause of evil and corruptible images. And then again, how can things that are many, unlike, and contrary in nature be the images of one and the same being? And if they say that the angels of the Pleroma are many, and that these many things are the images of those angels, the account they give will not do that way either. For in the first place they are then bound to point out differences among the angels of the Pleroma, set against one another, just as the images down here are of contrary natures among themselves. And in the next place, since there are many angels, countless angels, around the Creator, as all the prophets acknowledge — “Ten thousand times ten thousand stood beside him, and thousands upon thousands served him” — then on their view the angels of the Pleroma will have as their images the angels of the Creator, and the whole creation stands as an image of the Pleroma, but in such a way that the thirty Aeons no longer answer to the many-sided variety of creation.

Further still: if the things down here were made after the likeness of the things above, then after whose likeness were those made? For if the Creator of the world did not form these things directly out of himself, but copied them from models supplied by others, like an architect with no skill of his own, or a boy taking his first lesson, then where did their Bythus get the forms of the creation he produced first? Plainly he must have received the model from someone else above him, and that one in turn from another. And on this reasoning the talk about images, like talk about gods, will run on without end, unless we fix our minds at once on one Artificer and one God, who formed out of himself the things that have been created. Or is it really so, that in the case of mere men one will grant that they invented for themselves what is useful for living, but will not grant to the God who formed the world that he created out of himself the forms of the things that have been made, and gave creation its orderly arrangement?

But again, how can the things down here be images of the things above, when they are in fact contrary to them and can have no affinity with them at all? Things contrary to each other may well destroy what they are contrary to, but they can never be its image — water and fire, for instance, or light and darkness, and other such pairs, can never be images of one another. In the same way, things that are corruptible and earthly, made of parts, and passing, cannot be the images of what these men call spiritual, unless those spiritual things are themselves allowed to be made of parts, bounded in space, and of a definite shape, and so no longer spiritual and diffused and spread out beyond measure and past comprehension. For they would have to have a definite outline, and be shut within certain limits, if they are to be true images; and then it is settled that they are not spiritual. But if these men insist that they are spiritual, diffused, and past comprehension, how can things that have an outline and are shut within limits be the images of what has no outline and is past comprehension?

If, again, they claim that it is not by shape or by formation but by number and the order of production that the things below are the images of the things above, then, in the first place, the things down here ought not to be spoken of as images and likenesses of the Aeons above at all. How can things that have neither the fashion nor the shape of those above be their images? And in the next place, they would have to make the numbers and the productions of the Aeons above match, one for one, those that belong to the creation below. But as it is, since they refer to only thirty Aeons and declare that the vast multitude of things contained in creation are the images of a mere thirty, we may justly condemn them as people with no sense at all.

If, again, they declare that the things down here are a shadow of the things above, as some of them are bold enough to maintain, so that in that respect they are images, then they will have to allow that the things above have bodies. Bodies up there would cast a shadow; spiritual substances do not, since they cannot darken anything at all. But suppose we grant them even this point, impossible as it is: that there is a shadow belonging to those substances that are spiritual and full of light, and that their Mother descended into it. Since the things above are eternal, and the shadow they cast lasts forever, it follows that the things down here are not passing either, but last as long as the things that throw their shadow over them. If, on the other hand, the things down here are passing, then it must follow that the things above, whose shadow they are, pass away as well; and if those last, their shadow lasts too. [o]

If, however, they maintain that the shadow they speak of is not produced by anything up there casting shade, but exists only in this sense, that the things below are far separated from the things above, then they will be charging their Father’s light with weakness and inadequacy, as though it cannot reach so far, but fails to fill what is empty and to drive off the shadow, and that with no one standing in its way. On their account their Father’s light will be turned into darkness and buried in obscurity, and will come to an end in those regions that are marked by emptiness, since it cannot reach through and fill all things. Let them stop saying, then, that their Bythus is the fullness of all things, if he has neither filled nor lit up what is empty and shadowed; or else let them stop talking about emptiness and shadow, if their Father’s light does in truth fill all things.

Beyond the primary Father, then — that is, the God who is over all — there can be no Pleroma into which, as they say, the Enthymesis of the Aeon who suffered passion descended; otherwise the Pleroma itself, or the primary God, would be limited and hemmed in by what lies beyond it, and would in fact be contained by it. Nor can emptiness or shadow exist at all, since the Father exists beforehand, so that his light cannot fail and find its end in an empty space. It is irrational, too, and irreverent, to imagine a place where the one who is, on their account, Propator and Proarche and Father of all and of this Pleroma stops and comes to an end.

Nor is it allowable, for the reasons already given, to allege that some other being formed so vast a creation inside the Father’s own bosom, either with his consent or without it. For it is just as irreverent and just as senseless to say that so great a creation was formed by angels, or by some particular production that knew nothing of the true God, in territory that belongs to God himself. Nor is it possible that things earthly and material could have been formed inside their Pleroma, since it is wholly spiritual. And it is not even possible that the things belonging to a many-shaped creation, formed with qualities set against one another, were made after the image of the things above, since those — the Aeons — are said to be few, alike in formation, and all of one kind. Their talk, too, about the shadow of kenoma, that is, of emptiness, has turned out false at every point. Their invention, then, however you look at it, has been proved empty, and their teachings untenable. Empty too are those who listen to them, and they are truly going down into the pit of ruin.

That God is the Creator of the world is accepted even by the very people who in many ways speak against him, and who acknowledge him all the same when they style him the Creator, and an angel — to say nothing of the fact that all the Scriptures cry out to the same effect, and that the Lord teaches us of this Father who is in heaven, and of no other, as I will show as this work goes on. For the present, though, the proof drawn from those who hold teachings opposite to ours is enough by itself. All men, in fact, agree in this truth. The ancients kept it with particular care, out of the tradition handed down from the first-formed man, while they sang the praises of one God, the Maker of heaven and earth. Those who came after them were reminded of the same thing by the prophets of God. And the nations themselves learned it from creation itself. For creation reveals the one who formed it, the thing made suggests the one who made it, and the world declares the one who set it in order. And the universal church, through the whole world, has received this tradition from the apostles. [s]

This God, then, being acknowledged, as I have said, and receiving testimony from everyone to the fact that he exists, that other Father whom they conjure into existence is beyond doubt untenable, and has no witnesses at all. Simon Magus was the first to say that he himself was God over all and that the world was formed by his angels. Then those who came after him, as I have shown in the first book, corrupted his teaching still further, each by his own opinions, with irreverent and godless doctrines against the Creator. The men now in question, being the disciples of those others, make anyone who agrees with them worse than the nations. For the nations “serve the creature rather than the Creator” and serve “those which are not gods”; yet even so they give the first place in godhood to the God who was the Maker of this universe. But these men maintain that he, the Creator of this world, is the fruit of a defect, and describe him as being of soul-substance and as not knowing the Power that is above him, while he for his part cries out, “I am God, and besides me there is no other God.” Saying that he lies, they are liars themselves, fastening every kind of wickedness on him; and while they conceive of one who is not above this Being as really existing, they stand convicted by their own views of blasphemy against the God who really does exist, and they conjure into existence a god who does not exist, to their own condemnation. And so those who declare themselves “perfect,” and in possession of the knowledge of all things, are found to be worse than the nations, and to hold more blasphemous opinions even against their own Creator.