Prove It by Your Works

That being how matters stand, these deluded men announce that they rise above the Creator, the Demiurge. They proclaim themselves superior to the God who made and adorned the heavens and the earth and everything in them. They maintain that they themselves are spiritual, when in fact, given the size of their irreverence, they are shamefully fleshly. And they say of the God who makes his angels spirits, who is clothed with light as with a garment, who holds the circle of the earth, as it were, in his hand, and in whose sight the people living on it are counted as grasshoppers — the God who is the Creator and Lord of all spiritual substance — that he is of soul. In saying it they plainly and beyond doubt give away their own madness. Like men struck by lightning, and struck harder than those giants the pagan stories tell of, they lift their opinions up against God, puffed up by an empty presumption and an unsteady glory — men for whose purging all the hellebore on earth would not be enough to rid them of folly as intense as this. [a]

The better man is proved by what he does. In what way, then, can these people show themselves superior to the Creator? (Here I have to come down to the level of their irreverence, since the argument in hand requires it, and set up a comparison between God and foolish men; and by descending to their own line of reasoning I will often be able to refute them out of their own teaching. But in doing this, may God be merciful to me. I venture these statements not in order to compare him with them, but in order to convict their insane opinions and overthrow them.) These are the men so many foolish people admire so greatly, as though, if you please, there were something more precious to be learned from them than the truth itself. There is that saying of Scripture, “Seek, and you will find.” They take it as spoken with this in view: that they should discover themselves to be above the Creator, styling themselves greater and better than God, calling themselves spiritual and the Creator of soul; and that this is why they rise upward above God, since they pass inside the Pleroma while he stays behind in the middle place. Very well: let them prove by their deeds that they are superior to the Creator. For the better man is to be proved not by what is said, but by what actually exists.

What work, then, will they point to as having been accomplished through them by the Savior or by their Mother — greater, or more glorious, or better furnished with wisdom than the works produced by the one who arranged everything around us? What heavens have they set up? What earth have they founded? What stars have they called into being? What lights of heaven have they made to shine? Within what circuits, moreover, have they confined them? What rains, or frosts, or snows, each suited to its season and to its own climate, have they brought upon the earth? And over against these, what heat or dryness have they set? What rivers have they made to run? What springs have they brought up? With what flowers and trees have they decorated this world below the moon? What crowds of animals have they formed, some with reason and some without, but all of them made beautiful? Who could list one by one everything else that the power of God has established and his wisdom governs? Who could search out the greatness of the God who made them? And what is to be said of the beings that are above the sky and never pass away, such as Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions and Powers beyond counting? Against which one of these works, then, do they set themselves? What have they to show like it, made through them or by them, when even they themselves are the handiwork and the creatures of this Creator? For suppose the Savior or their Mother — I use their own expressions, proving them false by the very terms they employ — used this being, as they maintain, to make an image of the things inside the Pleroma and of all the beings she saw waiting upon the Savior. Then she used him, the Demiurge, as being in some sense superior to herself and better fitted to accomplish her purpose through his agency; for she would certainly not form the images of beings that important through an inferior agent, but through a superior one.

For on their own declarations they themselves were in existence at that time as a spiritual conception, resulting from the contemplation of those beings who were ranged around Pandora as her attendants. And they went on being useless, the Mother accomplishing nothing through them: an idle conception, owing their being to the Savior and fit for nothing, since not a single thing appears to have been done by them. But the God who was produced — inferior to them, as they argue, since they maintain that he is of soul — was nevertheless the one at work in everything: effective, and fit for the job to be done, so that by him the images of all things were made. And not only were the things we see formed by him, but everything invisible too — Angels, Archangels, Dominions, Powers and Virtues — by him, I say, as being the superior party, able to serve her wish. But it seems the Mother made nothing whatever through them, as indeed they themselves acknowledge. So one may fairly reckon them a miscarriage brought out by their Mother’s painful labor. No midwives did their office for her, and so they were cast out as a miscarriage: useful for nothing, and formed to accomplish no work of the Mother’s. And yet they describe themselves as superior to the one by whom such vast and admirable works have been accomplished and arranged — when by their own reasoning they turn out to be so wretchedly inferior!

It is as if there were two iron tools, or instruments. One of them was always in the workman’s hands and in constant use; with it he made whatever he pleased and displayed his art and his skill. The other lay idle and useless: it was never called into operation, the workman never appeared to make anything with it, and he made no use of it in any of his labors. And then suppose someone maintained that this useless, idle, unemployed tool was superior in nature and in value to the one the craftsman used in his work and by which he earned his reputation. If any such man were found, he would rightly be judged feeble-minded and out of his senses. And the same judgment should fall on those who speak of themselves as spiritual and superior and of the Creator as having a nature of soul, and who maintain that for this reason they will ascend on high and pass inside the Pleroma to their own husbands — for by their own statements they are themselves feminine — while God the Creator is of an inferior nature and therefore stays behind in the middle place. All the while they bring forward no proofs of any of it. For the better man is shown by his works, and all works have been accomplished by the Creator; but they, having nothing worth mentioning to point to as having been produced by themselves, are laboring under the greatest and most incurable madness.

Suppose, however, they labor to maintain this: that all material things — the sky, and the whole world that exists below it — were indeed formed by the Demiurge, but that everything of a more spiritual nature than these, everything above the heavens, such as Principalities, Powers, Angels, Archangels, Dominions and Virtues, was produced by a spiritual act of birth, which is what they declare themselves to be. Then, first of all, we prove from the Scriptures of the Lord that all the things mentioned, visible and invisible, have been made by one God. These men are not more to be relied on than the Scriptures. We ought not to give up the declarations of the Lord, of Moses and of the rest of the prophets, who have proclaimed the truth, and give our credit instead to people who say nothing sensible but rave about opinions that cannot be held. And in the next place: if the things above the heavens really were made through them, then let them tell us what the nature of invisible things is. Let them recount the number of the Angels and the ranks of the Archangels. Let them reveal the mysteries of the Thrones and teach us the differences between the Dominions, the Principalities, the Powers and the Virtues. But they can say nothing about them; therefore these beings were not made by them. And if, on the other hand, these were made by the Creator, as was really the case, and are spiritual and holy in character, then it follows that the one who produced spiritual beings is not himself of soul, and their dreadful system of blasphemy is overthrown.

That there are spiritual creatures in the heavens, all the Scriptures loudly proclaim; and Paul expressly testifies that there are spiritual things when he declares that he was caught up into the third heaven, and again that he was carried away into paradise and heard words beyond speech which a man is not permitted to utter. But what good did that do him — either his entrance into paradise or his being taken up into the third heaven — if all these are still under the power of the Demiurge, and if, as some venture to maintain, he had already begun to be a spectator and a hearer of those mysteries that are said to be above the Demiurge? For if it is true that he was becoming acquainted with the order of things above the Demiurge, he would certainly not have remained in the Demiurge’s own regions, and remained there without even exploring these thoroughly; for on their manner of speaking a fourth heaven still lay ahead of him, if he were to approach the Demiurge and so look down on the whole seven lying beneath him. He might rather have been admitted, perhaps, into the middle place, into the presence of the Mother, so as to receive instruction from her about the things inside the Pleroma. For that inner man who was in him, and who spoke in him, as they say, though invisible, could have attained not only to the third heaven but as far as the presence of their Mother. For if they maintain that they themselves, that is, their inner man, ascends above the Demiurge at once and departs to the Mother, much more must this have happened to the apostle’s inner man. The Demiurge would not have hindered him, being, as they assert, already subject to the Savior. And if he had tried to hinder him, the effort would have gone for nothing: it is not possible that he should prove stronger than the providence of the Father — and this when the inner man is said to be invisible even to the Demiurge.

But since Paul has described that taking up of himself to the third heaven as something great and outstanding, it cannot be that these men ascend above the seventh heaven, for they are certainly not superior to the apostle. If they do maintain that they are more excellent than he was, let them prove themselves so by their works, since they have never pretended to anything like what he describes as happening to himself. And this is why he added, “Whether in the body or out of the body, God knows” — so that the body might not be thought a partner in that vision, as if it could have shared in the things it had seen and heard; and again, so that no one should say he was not carried higher because of the weight of the body. Rather, it is permitted even without the body to see this far into the spiritual mysteries which are the workings of God, who made the heavens and the earth, and formed man, and placed him in paradise — so that those who, like the apostle, have reached a high degree of perfection in the love of God may be spectators of them.

This Being, therefore, also made spiritual things — the ones the apostle was made a spectator of as far as the third heaven, when he heard words beyond speech which a man cannot utter, because they are spiritual. And he himself grants them to the worthy as inclination prompts him, for paradise is his. He truly is the Spirit of God, and not a Demiurge of soul; otherwise he would never have created spiritual things. But if he really is of a nature of soul, then let them inform us by whom the spiritual things were made. They have no proof they can give that this was done by the travail of their Mother, which is what they declare themselves to be. For, leaving spiritual things aside, these men cannot create so much as a fly, or a gnat, or any other small and insignificant animal, apart from the law by which from the beginning animals have been and still are naturally produced by God — through the depositing of seed in creatures of the same kind. Nor was anything formed by the Mother alone; they say themselves that this Demiurge was produced by her, and that he was the lord and author of all creation. And they maintain that the one who is the Creator and Lord of everything that has been made is of soul, while they assert that they themselves are spiritual — they who are neither the authors nor the lords of a single work, not of the things outside them, and not even of their own bodies! What is more, these men who call themselves spiritual and superior to the Creator often suffer a great deal of bodily pain, sorely against their will.

Justly, therefore, do we convict them of having departed far and wide from the truth. For if the Savior formed the things that have been made by means of him, the Demiurge, then in that case the Demiurge is proved to be not inferior to them but superior, since he turns out to have formed the men themselves as well; they too have a place among created things. How, then, can it be argued that these men are spiritual, but that the one by whom they were created is of soul? Or again: if — and this is the only true supposition, as I have shown by numerous arguments of the very clearest kind — the Creator made all things freely and by his own power, and arranged them and finished them, and his will is the substance of them all, then he is discovered to be the one and only God who created all things; who alone is Almighty; who alone is Father, founding and forming all things, visible and invisible, such as our senses can take in and such as they cannot, heavenly and earthly, “by the word of his power”; and he has fitted and arranged all things by his wisdom, and contains all things, while he himself can be contained by no one. He is the Fashioner, he the Maker, he the Deviser, he the Founder, he the Lord of all.

And there is no one besides him or above him. He has no mother, as they falsely ascribe to him. There is no second God, as Marcion imagined. There is no Pleroma of thirty Aeons — that has been shown to be an empty supposition. There is no such being as Bythus or Proarche. There is no series of heavens. There is no virginal light, no unnameable Aeon; there is, in fact, none of the things these people and all the heretics dream up in their madness. But there is one God only, the Creator, the one who is above every Principality and Power and Dominion and Virtue. He is Father, he is God, he the Founder, he the Maker, he the Fashioner, who made those things by himself — that is, through his Word and his Wisdom — heaven and earth and the seas and everything in them. He is just; he is good. He it is who formed man, who planted paradise, who made the world, who brought on the flood, who saved Noah. He is the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, the God of the living. He it is whom the law proclaims, whom the prophets preach, whom Christ reveals, whom the apostles hand down to us, and in whom the church believes. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Through his Word, who is his Son, through him he is revealed and made known to all to whom he is revealed; for only those know him to whom the Son has revealed him. But the Son, always existing together with the Father, from of old — yes, from the beginning — always reveals the Father to Angels, Archangels, Powers, Virtues, and all to whom he wills that God should be revealed.