Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 5/82

All the others, apart from him, awaited the coming of the great apostles, and through their laying on of hands received the Holy Spirit, since Philip, being a deacon, did not have the authority of the laying on of hands to give the Holy Spirit through it.

But Simon, not having an upright heart nor an upright reasoning, but clinging to a certain shameful greed and love of money, and by no means departing from his wicked practice, offered money to Peter the apostle, so that he might give him the authority, by the laying on of hands, to bestow the Holy Spirit — reckoning that he would give a little, but in return for the little would heap up a great abundance of money by giving the Spirit to others, and thereby profit.

This man, then, having a mind depraved and deluded by the demonic error involved in magic, and always ready to display, through his own sorcery, the barbarous deeds of his own wickedness and the doings of demons, came forward into the midst, and under the pretext of the name of Christ — like one twisting hellebore together with honey — having inserted poison, by means of the dignity of the name of Christ, for those whom he had caught into his evilly contrived error, he wrought death in those who were persuaded.

And being lustful by nature, and being goaded by shame regarding his own promises, the charlatan fabricated a corrupted notion for those deceived by him.

For having found for himself a wandering woman named Helen, coming from the Tyrians, he took her along, without letting it appear that he had a union with her;

but secretly entangled in shameful conduct with the woman, the sorcerer set forth for his own disciples a certain mythical entertainment, claiming that he himself was, forsooth, the great power of God, and he dared to say that his harlot consort was the Holy Spirit, and he claims that it was on her account that he had come down.

'In each heaven,' he says, 'I was transformed according to the form of those in each heaven, so that I might escape the notice of my angelic powers and come down to the Ennoia, who is this same one also called Prunikos and the Holy Spirit, through whom I created the angels, and the angels created the world and mankind.'

And he said that this Helen was that Helen of old, on whose account the Trojans and the Greeks came to war.

And concerning these things he related a certain myth, that the power, descending from above, was transforming herself, and the poets spoke of this allegorically.

that she brought it about that they worked destruction upon themselves, on account of the desire for herself which she had cast into them.

And holding her fast so that she could not go up above, they had intercourse with her, each one in each body of feminine and female condition, she being transfused from female bodies into various bodies of human nature, and of cattle, and of the rest, so that, by the things which they themselves do, killing and being killed, they might work a diminishment of themselves through the shedding of blood, and then that power, gathering itself together, might again be able to ascend once more into heaven.

And this was she who then was present among the Greeks and the Trojans, and, from the very highest realm, before the world came into being and after the world came into being, made the corresponding likenesses through the invisible powers.

And she is the one now with me, and it is on her account that I have come down.

And she was awaiting my coming;

For she is the Ennoia, who in Homer is called Helen.

And for this reason Homer is compelled to depict her as standing upon a tower and, by means of a torch, signaling to the Greeks the plot against the Phrygians.

And by the brightness of the torch, as I said, he was symbolizing the manifestation of the light from above. For which reason also, concerning the wooden horse contrived in Homer, which the Greeks think was made on purpose, the sorcerer said again that it is the ignorance of the nations;

and as the Phrygians, dragging it in, through ignorance drew upon themselves their own destruction, so also the nations — that is, those men who are outside my knowledge — through ignorance drag destruction upon themselves.

But he also again said that Athena was the very same one called by him Ennoia, the deceiver making use, forsooth, of the words of the holy apostle Paul, and transforming the truth into his own falsehood: 'Put on the breastplate of faith and the helmet of salvation,' and greaves, and sword, and shield — turning all these things, which the apostle spoke on account of firm reasoning and faith of pure conduct and the power of the divine and heavenly word, into nothing else than mockery, after the manner of the mime-acting of Philistion.

'For what,' he says, 'are all these things?' — he was mysteriously fashioning them all into figures of Athena.

For this reason he said again, as I said before, hinting at that woman with him who had been taken from Tyre for him, the namesake of the ancient Helen, calling her by all these names — Ennoia and Athena and Helen and the rest — and saying, 'It is on her account that I have come down';

for this is what is written in the gospel as the sheep that had gone astray.

And likewise he handed down to them another image of Helen in the form of Athena, and those deceived by him worship these images.

And he instituted mysteries of shameful conduct and of the bodily flux — to put it more decorously — of men through their emission, and of women through the customary menstrual flow, gathered together for the mysteries by a certain most shameful collection.

And these, he says, are the mysteries of life and of the most perfect knowledge;

which is, above all, in the estimation of one who has obtained understanding from God, to be regarded rather as abomination and death than as life.

And the same man also posits certain names of principalities and authorities, and speaks of various heavens, and for each firmament and heaven he sets forth certain powers, and assigns to these barbarian names;

and he says that no one can otherwise be saved, unless he learn this mystagogy and learn to offer such sacrifices to the Father of all through these principalities and authorities.

And he says that this age has been constructed by principalities and authorities of wickedness, in a state of deficiency.

And thus begins the origin of those called the Gnostics.

And he asserted that the Law is not of God but of a leftward power, and that the prophets do not come from the good God, but from one power and another.

and he assigns a source to each as he pleases;

and he says that all these are from the leftward power and outside the Pleroma, and that everyone who believes the Old Testament incurs death.

But this dogma is overturned by truth itself.

For if he himself is the great power of God, and the little harlot with him is the Holy Spirit, as he himself says, let him declare what the name of that power is, or by what reasoning he devised an epithet for the woman, but none whatsoever for himself;

and how is it that he is found, at a certain point in the course of time, paying the debt of nature in the city of the Romans, when the wretched man fell down in the midst of the city of the Romans and died?

And by what reasoning did Peter declare that he had neither lot nor portion in the matter of true religion?

But how can the world fail to belong to a good God, since it is from this world that all the good were chosen?

And how could the power that spoke in the Law and the Prophets be a power of the left hand, seeing that it foretold the coming of Christ from the good God and forbids all wickedness?

And how could there fail to be one Godhead and the same Spirit of the New and the Old Testament, since the Lord said, 'I have not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it'? And to show that the Law was proclaimed by him and given through Moses, while the grace of the Gospel has been proclaimed through himself and through his incarnate coming, he said to the Jews, 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me also.'

For he wrote concerning me.

And there are many other things that stand in opposition to the sorcerer's nonsensical prattle.

And how could shameful things be life-giving, unless the thinking behind them were of demons, seeing that the Lord himself says in the Gospel to those who said to him, 'If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry'—

he said to them, 'Not all can accept this saying.'

'For there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven'; and thereby he showed that to abstain by nature from conjugal union is the gift belonging to the kingdom of heaven.

And again in another place he speaks in favor of holy marriage, which Simon himself corrupts, shamefully contriving to serve his own lust, saying: 'What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.'

And again, how does the deceiver refute himself, forgetting his own foolish tale, as though he did not know what he had said before? For having claimed that the angels came into being through him by means of his Ennoia, he then said that he transformed himself in each heaven, so that he might pass unnoticed by these same angels as he descended.

So then, was he hiding himself out of fear? And how is it that this prattler feared the very angels he himself had made? And how will the seed-bed of his deceit not be found utterly and plainly refutable by men of understanding, since Scripture says, 'In the beginning God made heaven and earth'? And in agreement with this saying the Lord in the Gospel speaks, addressing God as his own Father: 'Father, Lord of heaven and earth.'

If, then, God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the maker of heaven and earth, then all that has been said by the slanderer Simon is in vain—that the world came into being by angels in a state of deficiency, and all the other things which this deceiver, raving as though possessed by demons, has propounded to the world, thereby producing deception in those he has deceived.

And let these things, said by me in summary against this heresy, suffice for those who read them, as an occasion for truth and healing, and as a refutation of those who, through such beastly corruption, attempt to wrong those who are ignorant.

I shall now proceed again to the refutation of another heresy, having sufficiently crushed the venomous bite of this one.

For there is in him change and vacillation, since he is a deceiver clothed in the outward form of the name of Christ, like the reptilian corruption of aborted offspring bred from the wind-eggs of asps and other vipers, as the prophet says: 'They have hatched asps' eggs,' and 'he who intends to eat of their eggs found a wind-egg, and in it a basilisk.'

But having struck this man down, as I said, by the power of Christ through the words of truth, and having made his pernicious ruin vanish, let us proceed, beloved, to the topics that follow.

Against Menander: the second heresy from the coming of Christ, and the twenty-second in order.

Following next upon this comes a certain Menander, who, coming from among the Samaritans, for a certain time became a disciple of this Simon.

He too likewise said that the world had come into being by angels, and he claimed that he himself had been sent down from above as the power of God.

Practicing an even greater trickery than his predecessor for the deception of mankind, he said that he had been sent for salvation—ostensibly to gather certain people into his own mystery, so that they might not be dominated by the angels, principalities, and powers that made the world.

Weaving together everything in a manner similar to his own teacher, he did not cease from sorceries and other forms of magic, nor did his teaching differ at all, except only in this: that he claimed to be greater than the one who had previously been his teacher.

And having fallen into the very same defect into which his own teacher fell, he too, having been caught out by these same words of truth's refutation, shall be overturned.

† For this man was overturned, and his heresy has for the most part come to an end.

And I shall pass beyond this and proceed further, advancing again in my exposition to another heresy.

For indeed the ancients relate a legend, how many asps, gathered together in a single earthenware vessel, were placed in the foundations of the four corners of each precinct of the idol-temples built in Egypt; and if one of these was found to be stronger than the others, it would attack and devour the rest.

And remaining alone and having no supply of food, it would turn upon itself and, beginning to eat from its own tail, would devour itself up to a certain part of its body.

And thus it remained no longer whole, but existed as half a reptile.

For this reason they called it the 'asp-gorgon,' so that we may understand that this belongs to antiquity, but is no longer found now, having vanished.

Just as this creature, having utterly perished, receives from us this refutation, while it itself has vanished through the power of Christ.

And having passed beyond this one as well, let us proceed, beloved, to what follows.

Against Saturnilus: the third heresy from the coming of the Lord, and the twenty-third in the sequence.

After him arose a certain Saturnilus, who likewise took his starting-points from that same source—I mean from Menander and those before him.

For these two, Basilides and Saturnilus, were fellow-students.

...proclaimed error, while Saturnilus, dwelling in the aforementioned place, likewise to Menander declared that the world had come into being by angels.

And that there is one unknown Father, who himself made powers, principalities, and authorities.

And that the angels are separate from the power on high, and that seven of them made the world and the things in it.

And that the world has been allotted by division to each angel.

And that these same angels, having come together, conceived the plan and jointly made man according to the form of the luminous image that had appeared from above, looking down; and since they were unable to hold onto it as it looked down, because it immediately sped back up, they wished to imitate it.

And that man was formed by them for no other reason than this occasion.

'For,' he says, 'since that same light, looking down from above, produced a certain excitement in those angels, these, out of longing for the likeness above, undertook to make the formation of man.'

For since they fell in love with the light from above, being seized with longing for it and with pleasure, when it had appeared and then vanished from them, having fallen in love with it and being unable to be satisfied with its loveliness because that same light swiftly flew back up, it was for this reason, he says—this sorcerer stages the drama thus—that the angels spoke, saying, 'Let us make man according to image and according to likeness.'

falsifying what was said in Genesis by the holy God, namely 'according to our image,' while letting stand the phrase 'according to image,' so that his deceit might have some plausibility.

as though, forsooth, others were doing the making, but the image belonged to another—† so as to say, in 'Let us make man according to image and according to likeness.'

But, he says, when man had come into being, because of the angels' feebleness he was unable to be brought to completion, but lay squirming on the ground like a crawling worm, unable either to raise himself up or to do anything else, until the power from above, looking down and being moved with compassion for its own image and form, out of pity sent forth a spark of that same power, and through it raised man up and thus gave him life—calling this spark, forsooth, the human soul.

And for this reason, he says, the spark is altogether saved, but the whole of the man perishes.

In due course of time, that which had descended from above is carried back up above, while everything below that was formed by the angels is left behind here for them.

And the sorcerer claims that Christ, too, came in the form of a man and in appearance only, and that he did everything in mere semblance—that is, his being born, his walking, his being seen, and his suffering.

From this man, the falsely-so-called 'knowledge' begins again to be added to the abyss of the same wickedness, having taken its origin and occasion from Simon, but adding to it still further and more excessive nonsense, as we shall later state in refuting it.

For this man asserts, speaking of the angels, that the God of the Jews is one of them, and that he, together with these same angels, is separate from the power on high; and that the Savior was sent by the Father, against the will of these powers, for the overthrow of the God of the Jews and for the salvation of those who obey him.

And that it is those belonging to this heresy who possess the spark of the Father from above.

For he claims that two men were formed from the beginning, one good and one evil.

From these there are two races of men in the world, the good and the wicked.

And since the demons were helping the wicked, for this reason, in the last days, as I said before, the Savior came for the help of the good men and for the destruction of the wicked and of the demons.

This same charlatan says that marrying and begetting children are of Satan; hence most of them abstain from animate food as well, so that through this feigned way of life they might, forsooth, draw certain people into their own deception.

This sorcerer says that some of the prophecies were uttered by the world-making angels, and others by Satan.

For he claims that Satan himself is also an angel, acting in opposition to the world-making angels, and especially to the God of the Jews.

But whenever this brutish man asserts these things, he will surely somewhere be shown himself to confess one God and to trace everything back to a single unity of monarchic rule.

For if the angels made man, and the angels in turn had the cause of their own existence from the power above, then it is not they who are the cause of the formation of man, but rather the power from above that made the angels, from whom the formation of man also came to be.

For indeed the tool is not the cause of the things done by means of it, but rather the one who performs the action through the tool by which the work is done, as it is also written: 'Shall the saw glorify itself apart from him who wields it?' and so forth.

Thus we see likewise that the sword is not the cause of the murder, but the one who attempts the murder by the sword; nor can the wax-mold produce by itself the things that are molded, but rather the one who fashions both the mold and the shaped figure.

Therefore neither are the angels the cause, but rather the one who made the angels, even if he had not commanded them not to make man.

For either this convicts the power from above of ignorance and lack of knowledge of things that were going to happen, being accomplished contrary to its will; or else, by its own good pleasure, it made the angels for the useful purpose of the construction of man, whom it wished to be constructed, having made the angels and not having commanded them not to carry out the undertaking—that is, the fashioning of man—as his mythical fabrication would have it.

Or then again, we must once more question this fabricator of myths.

Did the power on high know what they were about to do? 'Yes,' he says.

Then, if it knew, it itself made man, and not they.

But if it knew but did not will it, and they undertook the undertaking against its judgment, for what reason did it not prevent them? And if it was unable to prevent them, this is a first absurdity, that it prepared, against itself, the angels made by it, for opposition and provocation against itself; and a second, that being able, it did not prevent it, but instead cooperated in the evil work brought about by the angels.

But if it did not cooperate, and though willing was unable to prevent it, then there is great weakness in the one who willed but was unable, and the host of angels made by it would be stronger than it, though it itself is the cause of the angels made by it.

Thus, in every way, the hypothesis of this heresy is caught out, falling rather into incoherence than into truth.

But if it knew, yet made them by necessity to do what they were about to do against its will—which is not even lawful to say—it will again fall into another deficiency, and according to his own account there would not even be found a single fullness in the power on high.

And let us further add to our questioning of him.

Tell us, you fellow who peered through windows, so that I may thus mock your foolish prattle—you who, in peering through, observed how the angels were created, and then spied out the craftsmanship they exercised concerning the human creature, and tracked out the contrivance of the power from above: did these angels know what they were fashioning, or were they ignorant? And if ignorant, by whom were they compelled to perform in ignorance what they did? 'No,' he says, 'they were not ignorant.'

For they knew what they were about to do.

Did the power from above, then, know that these angels were about to undertake this, or was it ignorant? It was not ignorant.

Did it, then, make them so that they should do this, or not? 'No,' he says.

For it only made them; but they, apart from the power above, undertook to make the creature.

So then, these knew, but that power above was ignorant, according to your account, O most foolish of all men!

But this would be nonsensical and foolish—that the work should be more perfect than the craftsman, and the craftsman weaker than the angels made by him, who were the causes of the human constitution.

So then, by every necessity you would be compelled to confess that everything must be referred to the same one Maker and to the one sole sovereignty.

For indeed God the Father made man and all things according to his own good pleasure, and not the angels; nor did anything come to be according to the counsel of the angels.

For in saying, 'Let us make man,' God said 'according to our image,' and not 'according to my image' only.

For he called together into his own act of creation his own Word and Only-begotten as fellow-creator, as the understanding of the faithful, proceeding from truth, holds, and as the very precision of truth itself attests—as we have also made our confession about this clearly and at length in many other places—namely that the Father calls together the Son to be fellow-creator of man, through whom he also made all other things.

And I would say that he called together not only the Son, but also the Holy Spirit.

'For by the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.'

Whether he wishes it or not—I mean Saturninus, the founder of this heresy—he will be compelled by every necessity to confess one God, God and Lord, who is the creator and maker of the universe, and likewise of man.

And he will be put to shame in every way, as a false accuser, both regarding his account of the prophets and regarding his base accusation against holy marriage.

For our Lord Jesus Christ himself proclaims expressly in the Gospel, and speaks in harmony with the prophet, that 'I who spoke in the prophets, behold I am present,' and again, 'My Father works until now, and I work.'

And to show what his Father works, and what he himself works, he declared, saying to those who asked him whether it is lawful to divorce one's wife for every cause: 'How is it written? When God made man, he made them male and female,' and again, further on, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh,' and immediately he added, saying, 'What God has joined together, let not man separate.'

So that the Savior thereby teaches altogether that the Maker of mankind is the God of all things, and is his own Father.

And that marriage is not from Satan, but is from God, the Lord himself first says:

'What God,' he says, 'has joined together, let not man separate.'

Then the holy apostle: 'Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled.'

And likewise he instructs those who have become widows by nature, saying through Timothy, 'Refuse younger widows.'

'For when they have grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry,' and further on, 'Let them marry, bear children, manage the household,' laying down an inviolable law, one that is from God and graciously given to men according to propriety.

But concerning the suspicions falsely alleged by him against the prophecies of God, as though they were not from God, countless things could be said, as the Only-begotten himself says—from which, proclaiming his good news to the world, he says, first, that 'Abraham our father desired to see my day, and he saw it and rejoiced,' and again he says, 'If you believed Moses, you would believe me;

for he wrote concerning me.'

And there is nothing whatsoever discordant between Christ's coming in the flesh and the prophecies of the prophets.

But let this suffice concerning the heresy of Saturninus, so that I may not spend my time entangled in his foolish speculations and their refutations.

Passing on from this, I shall next set forth the heresy of Basilides, this man's fellow-student, who was likewise deceived along with him.

For these men share the same things, having borrowed venom from one another, according to the vivid proverb, as an asp borrows venom from a viper.

For they belong to the same school and assembly as one another, yet each stands apart on his own, having set up his own heresy; and while they collected their wickedness from one another, they established discord between themselves.

Whether, then, this man, having partaken in the manner of a viper from those above, passed it on to Basilides, or the latter to him, nevertheless, their venom being deadly and issuing from such reptiles, let it—having been rendered harmless and destroyed by us through the teaching of the Lord as though by an antidote—be left behind.

But let us, calling upon God, proceed to what follows, O beloved.

Against Basilides: number 4; but in the sequence, 24.

Basilides, then, as has been shown above, having directed his journey to the land of the Egyptians, made his sojourn there; then he comes to the districts of Prosopis and Athribis, and moreover also around the Saite district, and Alexandria, and the region, or nome, of Alexandriopolis.

For the Egyptians call 'nome' the surrounding territory, or district, of each city.

And you, O lover of learning, may find this also useful for yourself, for love of learning and for clarity, for the pious grasp and interpretation of what is set down in divine Scripture—of things which, through inexperience, cast some into perplexity.

For wherever you find it written in the holy prophet Isaiah concerning the 'nomes' of Egyptian cities, such as Tanis, or Memphis, or the nome of Bubastis, it signifies the surrounding territory of that particular city.

And let this be explained for the sake of love of learning.

The aforementioned charlatan, then, had his dwelling in these places, from which it appears that his heresy, still flourishing to this day, took its origin from his teaching.

And he begins to preach an excess surpassing that of his fellow-student, the impostor left behind in Syria, so that, ostensibly narrating things beyond what that man taught, he might seem to dazzle his hearers all the more, and might please them and gather together a greater multitude than his companion Saturninus.

And thereafter, propounding certain fantastical myth-makings, he begins thus—yet, to speak the truth, he did not originate for us these terrible and destructive things from his own invention, but took his starting-points from Saturninus and from Simon, already refuted above.

'For,' he says, 'there was one Unbegotten, who alone is the Father of all things.'

And from these powers and angels there came to be the uppermost first heaven, and other angels came to be from them; and the angels made by them in turn made a second heaven, and these again made angels.

And those who came from them made a third heaven in turn; and thus, the angels belonging to each single heaven, constructing yet another and yet others, have driven the number up to three hundred and sixty-five heavens, from the uppermost down to this heaven of ours.