Nothing Left for the Pleroma

Let us go back, though, to the rest of their system. They tell us that at the end of all things their Mother will re‑enter the Pleroma and take the Savior as her husband; that they themselves, being spiritual, once they have got rid of their souls and become spirits of pure mind, will be the consorts of the spiritual angels; that the Demiurge, since they class him as belonging to soul, will move up into the Mother’s place; and that the souls of the righteous will rest, as souls do, in the middle place. When they say all this — that like will be gathered to like, spiritual things to spiritual, while material things stay on among the material — they are in fact contradicting themselves. For at that point they are no longer saying that souls pass into the middle place because of their nature, joining the substances that are like themselves; they are saying that souls pass there because of what was done. They tell us that the souls of the righteous do go into that place, while the souls of the ungodly stay on in the fire. [a]

Now if it is because of their nature that all souls reach that place of rest, and if they all belong to the middle place simply by being souls, and so share its nature, then faith is entirely unnecessary — and so was the Savior’s coming down here. But if it is because of their righteousness that they reach that rest, then it is no longer because they are souls; it is because they are righteous. And if souls would have perished had they not been righteous, then righteousness must also have the power to save the bodies those souls lived in. Why should it not save them? They too had a share in the righteousness. For if nature and substance are what save, then every soul will be saved; but if righteousness and faith are what save, why should these not save the bodies as well, which will enter immortality along with the souls? On a question of this kind righteousness will turn out to be either powerless or unfair, if it saves some substances that share in it and not others.

For it is plain that the acts we call righteous are done in bodies. So either all souls must pass into the middle place, and there is never any judgment at all; or else bodies too, which have had a share in righteousness, will reach that place of rest along with the souls that shared in it in the same way — if, that is, righteousness is powerful enough to bring there the substances that have had a share in it. And in that case what we believe about the resurrection of bodies comes out of their own system as true and certain: that God, when he raises our mortal bodies which kept righteousness, will make them incorruptible and immortal. For God stands above nature. He has in himself the will to do it, because he is good; the power to do it, because he is mighty; and the means to carry it through completely, because he is rich and perfect.

But these men contradict themselves at every point when they rule that not all souls enter the middle place, but only the souls of the righteous. For they hold that by nature and by substance the Mother produced three kinds of being. The first came out of her bewilderment, her exhaustion and her fear: that is material substance. The second came out of a sudden impulse: that is the substance of soul. And the one she brought forth after she saw the angels who attend Christ is spiritual substance. If, then, the substance she brought forth is bound to enter the Pleroma because it is spiritual, while the material substance is to remain down here because it is material and be consumed entirely by the fire that burns inside it, why should not the whole substance of soul go into the middle place — the very place where they send the Demiurge?

And then what is there left to enter inside their Pleroma? They maintain that souls will stay on in the middle place, and that bodies, since they are made of material substance, will be broken down into matter and consumed by the fire that is in it. But if the body is destroyed in that way and the soul remains in the middle place, no part of a human being is left to go inside the Pleroma at all. For a person’s intellect — his mind, his thinking, his intention and the rest of it — is nothing other than his soul; and the soul’s own feelings and activities have no substance apart from the soul. What part of them, then, is still left to enter the Pleroma? In so far as they are souls, they themselves stay in the middle place; and in so far as they are body, they will be consumed along with the rest of matter.