Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 50/82

But if, according to this man's account, the rulers, having devoured the soul, made this body a bond for it, how do they again enclose the devoured soul in a body? For everything that is devoured is consumed, and what is consumed passes into non-existence.

And that which passes into non-existence, and no longer exists, is neither enclosed in any place, nor does there exist, nor will there come to be, a place of confinement for that which does not exist.

And often, forgetting his own line of reasoning, he forgets whatever he may have said, and what he once builds up, the very same thing he unwittingly tears down again.

For at one time he asserts that the devoured soul is confined, defining it as being within existing bodies; but at another time he defines this same soul as having been snatched away by the rulers from above, out of the panoply of the good God, so that it is no longer devoured, but taken captive.

And at another time he speaks of this same soul, taken captive, no longer consistently, but relates the matter concerning her in a different manner, asserting that she was set forth as bait by the power from above, of its own free choice, after the manner of a kid thrown into a pit to catch a wild beast—the beast being provoked and coming down to seize the kid, and thus the beast itself being caught.

And if the power from above sent forth the kid out of its own power—that is, the good God, or the Light, as he himself calls it—then even if it should catch the beast, first the kid will be devoured, and the power from above will rather harm itself, submitting a part of itself as food for the beast, so that by the very part in which it appears to suffer loss, it may catch the beast; and it will no longer, as being strong and supreme and mighty, subdue the beast by word or by will, but contrives in many ways and acts craftily, that it may be able to get the better of the beast.

And even if the beast should altogether be caught, the power has already lost, from its own portion, the kid that was devoured—even supposing it should be able to catch it at all.

For if the power from above sent the soul here, that through the soul it might fetter and hunt down the principalities and the powers, the purpose did not turn out well for her who had so planned.

For even if it sent the soul to hunt, it has itself been hunted; or to set a trap, it has itself been trapped—having come from a pure nature and having fallen first under the bondage of a body of matter, and then also into the many absurdities of sins; and from every side the argument of the deceiver and the teaching of the scoundrel collapses.

Come, then, let us also examine concerning the Mother of Life, whom he says was put forth from the power from above; and that the Mother of Life herself put forth both the First Man and the five elements, which are, as he says—

wind, light, water, fire, and matter.

and that he, having put these on as though for the preparation of war, came down below and made war upon the darkness.

But the rulers of darkness, warring against him, ate from his panoply, which is the soul.

The fruits of an incomparable and ridiculous hypothesis:

From every side he attaches weakness to God, from every side he ascribes ignorance to the God who knows all things.

For he who put forth the Mother of Life, according to his own account, either was ignorant of what would be accomplished by the Mother of Life, or else it brings reproach upon him that, the outcome having turned out contrary to the expectation of his thought, the events were found to be otherwise.

For he would incur a charge of ignorance who thought one set of things would come to pass, but later found other things to have happened, not according to his own will.

For the Mother of Life - called by him a 'power', put forth from him - how shameful it is even to say 'mother of life'!

For it is not admissible, to those possessed of sound reasoning, to conceive of anything female within the Godhead.

And this female, he says, brought forth the First Man; and, to put it plainly, he pictures the nature of 'the First Man' and 'the Mother of Life' after the pattern of things that happen among us.

For 'man' is a name given on earth, and 'mother' likewise - she who bore us from the earth, who was created by God for Adam.

But this brutish man, out of his own imaginings, fancies that in heaven there exist things of the same sort as exist on earth - which is not admissible, as the divine word teaches in every way.

For it says: 'there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies';

but the glory of the heavenly is one thing, and that of the earthly another, and the apostle did not at all discourse concerning the things above the heavens, but concerning these visible bodies - I mean the sun or the moon - or concerning the things on earth and the bodies of the saints, as we, being lowly, understand it.

But if there is also some discourse concerning the things above heaven, on account of the exceedingly deep capacity of knowledge in the apostle himself, we do not entirely determine that this is so.

Nevertheless it has been said that the heavenly things differ greatly from the earthly - how much more, then, the things above the heavens? From where, then, could they possibly be compared with earthly things, O fellow?

As for the First Man, whom you claim in turn fashioned for himself, for the sake of a full suit of armor, the wind, the light, the fire, the water, and matter - so that, if the First Man is indeed from above and came here to construct this armor for himself and put it forth as a breastplate and strengthening for himself, then the things in this world would be stronger than the one who came down from above, from the heavenly places.

For 'water' is this visible water, and 'light' this visible light, and 'matter' that which, according to you, is subject to corruption, and 'wind' that which resounds within us, and this 'fire' which all of us use without hindrance for our needs.

And if it is by means of such things that he makes war against the Archons, tell me, what is the operation of this war?

Who would sound the trumpet for us, becoming the leader of the war?

Shall we divide the battle-lines, shall we array the wings of the battle? Who would cast the first missile, according to the reasoning of this man raving so grievously, against the very substance of the Principalities and Powers? Does wind make war, O fellow? Or does matter, corruptible according to you? Or the fire made by the Lord for our use? Or the light, which withdraws before darkness at the intervals of times appointed by God? Or the water? In what manner? Explain to us this empty talk of yours!

For indeed we see that through these very things both good and evil things come to pass.

For by fire sacrifices are made to idols, and the fire neither refuses this use nor prevents the sin.

With the water of the sea those who worship demons pour out libations, and one who attempts to commit folly has never once been prevented by water.

And how many pirates have committed murders in the waters of the sea? Water is rather not opposed to the rulers of wickedness, as you say, but rather cooperative with them - the water not being the cause, but each man being the cause of his own sin.

O, what abundant nonsense of yours!

The Man was afflicted down there;

and when he prayed, the Father heard, as you said, and sent forth another power, put forth by him, called the Living Spirit.

Take off your mask, O comic playwright Menander!

For being he, you disguise yourself, narrating deeds of adulterers and of drunkenness;

for there is nothing sound established in you.

For by introducing the poems of the Greeks in place of the truth, you lead astray those who have been deceived by you.

For perhaps Hesiod thought more wisely than you when he related his poetic compositions concerning the theogony; perhaps Orpheus did too, perhaps Euripides.

For even though those men related ridiculous things, it is clear that, being poets, they poetically composed things that do not exist;

but you narrate them as though they were real, so that you may work an even greater deception.

You claim that this Living Spirit, having come down, gave a right hand and brought up out of the darkness the one called by you 'the First Man' - who had been endangered below in the lower regions, who had come down to save the devoured soul but had been unable to save it, but had himself come into danger;

having been sent for salvation, he was himself endangered, and again needed another sent for his own salvation.

How much more, then, would the soul have been in danger, for whose sake the first one sent - the Man - came and was endangered? So then a second one was also sent to save.

And this second one, you claim, is the Living Spirit itself.

Did the Father, then, out of a change of mind, send the one still stronger, that he might become the savior of the First Man? Or was he ignorant that the first one was powerless, and, supposing that he would save him, only afterward, having come to know through experience that he had been endangered, does he put forth and send the second? Great indeed is the absurdity here, O Manichaean, and unsound is the babbling nonsense of your entire teaching.

And he says again that the Spirit, having come down, gave its right hand and brought up the First Man who had been in danger.

For this reason he handed down to his own disciples a mystery, namely to give the right hand to one another whenever they meet, as a sign, since they have been saved from darkness.

For he claims that all things are in darkness, except himself alone.

For indeed the blind, in order all the more to avoid the disgrace of it through the mockery of those who see, though seeing little, hear a great deal.

Then again he claims - fabricating for us certain other constructions and contrivances, as though he had been present there, and imagining things that do not exist - that at that time this Living Spirit, he says, created the world.

And this same Spirit, bearing three other powers, having come down, brought up the Archons and crucified them in the firmament, which is their body, the sphere.

And as for the fact that it brought them up, this brutish man does not even perceive how he contradicts himself, censuring the very things he had praised and turning the things he had blamed into praise, in the manner of a drunken man, carried away and babbling one thing instead of another.

For he claims that the Archons, existing below in darkness, are of an evil substance, and that their region is one of corruption.

And if, out of this corruption and out of the region of darkness, the Spirit by force brought the Archons up into the regions above - allegedly for punishment, making a transfer from base regions and dragging them up above as a punishment - then the regions above will no longer be good and of a life-giving substance, but rather of death, and the regions below will no longer be a place of punishment, but of some good substance;

since it is from the very place from which the Spirit, wishing to punish the Archons, moved them - away from what was pleasant and necessary - to the place of punishment, that it might thus punish them.

If the Spirit made the world, how then do you again say that the world was not made by God? And if the firmament happens to be the body of the Archons, then on what sort of cross did it fasten the Archons? For at one time you say they were fastened in the firmament, and at another you define the very firmament as their body.

And great is the incoherence of your words, which has no consistency whatsoever with the truth;

Then again the same man claims that after having crucified the Archons in the sphere, he created the luminaries, which are the remnants of the soul.

And he does not say 'the soul', but 'remnants of the soul'.

O what an unsound doctrine, and false and disjointed words!

For every remnant happens to be a part of the fullness, and the fullness happens to be greater than the remnant.

If, then, the luminaries are the remnants, let him show us something greater than the luminaries, that we may see the soul.

But if the fullness has been devoured and consumed, and the luminaries are the remnant, then they too, being beneath the crucified Archons, will be devoured, since the Archons possess the higher position.

But if, because they have been crucified, they can no longer hold possession of the soul and of the luminaries, then your nonsensical account has collapsed, O Manichaean.

Then again the same man teaches that after rebuking Omophorus, matter itself, he says, created for itself all the plants; and when these were being plundered by the Archons, the great Archon called together all the Archons and the foremost ones, and took from each of them one power, and fashioned a man according to the form of that First Man, and bound the soul within him.

This is the hypothesis of the mixture.

And when, he says, the Living Father saw the soul afflicted in the body, being compassionate and merciful, he sent his beloved Son for the salvation of the soul.

For it is on this pretext, and also on account of the affair of Omophorus, that he claims he was sent.

And having come, the Son transformed himself into the form of a man, and appeared to men as a man, and men supposed him to have been born.

Having come, then, and having accomplished the work of creation for the salvation of men, he constructed a mechanism having twelve buckets, which, being turned by the sphere, draws up the souls of the dying.

And these the great luminary, receiving with its rays, purifies and transmits to the moon;

and thus the disk of the moon, as it is called among us, is filled up.

And do you see how much nonsensical babble and drunken forgetfulness there is in this deceiver? For the things said by him he consigns to oblivion, and whatever he seems to say he reconstructs and dismantles, undoing his own doctrines, relating them differently at different times; and the later statements undo the earlier ones, and what he had earlier torn down he builds up again, so as to show that he is not consistent of himself, but, driven by an unclean spirit, relates one thing instead of another, just like those who are delirious.

For either he means that the advent of our Lord Jesus Christ came many years after the luminaries came into being, and after that mechanism which he calls 'of the twelve buckets';

for the stars have always been in heaven from the time they came into being;

whether men wish to call them 'elements' or 'intervals and measures of heaven', nevertheless, from the fourth day of the making of the world, all things have been well ordered, not for the harm of those ruled over by God.

But the advent of Christ began its preaching in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar, after the thirtieth year of his own birth, which came to the five thousand five hundred and ninth year of the making of the world, and the thirtieth year of his own age, and the thirty-third up to the cross.

How then have these things - both luminaries and stars - existed in heaven from the beginning? But if he says that, having come before this, he made these things, his babble is incoherent.

For before man existed upon the earth, there came to be the elements so called according to him, and the twelve jars vainly so called, and the machine — which he wishes, by means of pleasing names, to make appear marvelous to those who have been deceived by him.

For it is evident to everyone possessed of understanding, from the Scripture itself and its sequence, that before the first-formed man Adam was fashioned, all the stars and luminaries came into being on the fourth day.

...to make the twelve jars, in the form of a man; and it appeared to men as a man. And being ignorant even of the dispensation that took place from the beginning, he supposes he is saying something, and, like a blind man leading himself, he sets forth to those blinded by him the things that lead on to falsehoods.

But when the truth is present and clearly opens the eyes of the discerning, it brings his nonsense to ridicule.

For to what sort of men did it appear, seeing they did not yet exist? And how did he who had not taken a body appear in the form of a man? And if he fulfilled this in his incarnate coming, appearing to be this and not being it, then the events were mere semblance.

So then he neither appeared nor came.

For if, having come, he did not exist, then he did not come at all from the beginning.

But if he was thought to be a man, yet was not a man, what was the urgency that compelled the Word of God to appear as man when he was not? Unless, like one hounded by creditors, he wished to fashion for himself an appearance, so that he might be able to escape the notice of those seeking him.

But if he both appeared and was not, what sort of truth was this? For in truth there is no falsehood, as the Only-begotten says concerning himself: 'I am the truth and the life.'

But life has no death, and truth could not undergo alteration, lest, by disturbing the truth, it should no longer be truth.

And so his tragedy-making thesis has collapsed on every account.

For neither were the stars created after his coming, nor did men exist before the stars came to be.

And thus from every side the deceiver Manichaeus has been refuted, as I have already shown above.

Concerning the theory of the moon, he says that its disk is filled from souls.

But before any man died upon the earth, from what source was the disk being filled? For it was only after nine hundred and thirty years of Adam's life that he became the first to die upon the earth — how then could a single soul have filled the disk? Or how were those nine hundred and thirty years and their intervening times reckoned at all, unless the moon was being filled and waning and completing the course appointed to it — receiving its flood not from souls, but having its ordinance from the wisdom of God? But, he says, it fills all living creatures with the same soul, so as to equate the soul of a man with that of a mouse and a worm and the other ignoble creatures in the fashioning of their bodies.

As for the rest of his nonsense — how the Virgin appears to the Archons, sometimes in the form of a man, sometimes of a woman — perhaps, picturing the hermaphrodite nature of his own demon, he is introducing his own passions of desire.

Then he says that when the great Archon is despoiled by the so-called Virgin, he casts down his clouds and brings about pestilence, and begins to cut the roots, and so death comes about.

And the brutish fellow did not perceive that what he calls death and reviles, he ought rather to call life, because through it souls are set free from bodies.

But if the Archons regard the soul's being in a body as imprisonment altogether, then by his own reasoning the Archon never accomplishes this, so as to release from the prison-house the soul held fast by him.

And how great is the absurdity in this gambler's teaching!

As for the rest, it is full of mockery — such as those they call their 'Elect.'

And indeed they have truly been chosen by the devil unto condemnation, so that what was said might be fulfilled: 'and his foods are choice.'

For those men sit like drones, doing no work at all, but meddling in everything, not even knowing to whom the holy apostle addresses his word, speaking as though he knew by prophecy that certain idle and self-willed men, thunderstruck by the devil into evils, do not come by the teaching of God, but of the devil.

For he alleges, quoting: 'He who does not work, let him not eat either,' so as to falsify the true basis of these idle pursuits of theirs.

So they charge their catechumens to feed them lavishly.

And these bring whatever is necessary to their own Elect, so that, forsooth, the one who feeds these chosen souls may be seen to be pious.

But rather, they almost lay a curse upon them, bearing witness to their wickedness rather than to their goodness.

'I did not sow you, I did not reap you, I did not grind you, I did not cast you into the oven.'

And rather they showed their own providers to be doers of evil.

For it was fitting that the one who denies the God who made all things should not even be fed from the things of God at all, rather than being fed in this ironic manner.

But they themselves do not merely cut the cluster of grapes — they eat the cluster of grapes, so that they may be thoroughly convicted of possessing drunkenness rather than any grasp of truth.

For which is the more grievous? The one who harvests cuts the cluster but once; but the one who eats it, by his molars and by crushing each grain, tortures and cuts it many times over more, and he who has chewed and consumed it can no longer be likened to the one who cut it only once.

But it is only that they may seem to render glory — for as much proof of truth as that carries!

Then again he babbles nonsense about paradise, which he calls 'the world.'

And the plants in it, he says, are such that what to us are praiseworthy, these he himself denies, so that he might be shown to have truly been deceived by the serpent.

Just as that serpent corrupted the hearing of guileless Eve, so also this fierce serpent corrupts his own hearing.

For, he says, the plants spoken of in paradise are the deceits of the desires, which corrupt the reasoning of men.

But the plant in paradise from which they come to know the good — this is Jesus himself, the knowledge that is in the world.

And whoever receives it discerns good and evil.

And you see how he perverts everything that is upright, while the apostle plainly cries out and teaches, saying: 'I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds should be corrupted from the sincerity and simplicity that is toward Christ.'

And see how he declared him to be a deceiver and a knave, one who had beguiled Eve.

And again in another place the same apostle says: 'A man ought not to have long hair, since he is the glory and image of God.'

And you see how he called the hair the glory of God, borne upon the body and not in the soul? And after this he says: 'Adam was not deceived, but the woman, having come into transgression, has sinned.'

'But she shall be saved through childbearing, if they continue in the faith.'

And see how genuinely the true things have been proclaimed in the divine Scripture.

And in vain does this man boast, or rather he incurs mockery among those who possess complete understanding.

Then again here he relates that the world is not God's, but was fashioned from a portion of matter.

But in not being consistent with himself, and instead being carried about against his own words, fabricating now refutations, now constructions, it is clear to everyone that such a mindset belongs to one who is talking nonsense.

And he relates transmigrations of souls from bodies into bodies — a falsehood he is found to have borrowed, perhaps, from Plato, or from Zeno the Stoic, or from some other of those given to fanciful notions.

For how is it possible for the soul to be inserted from body into body? If indeed bodies were already fashioned and ready, and thus received the souls, the mythmaking of this tragedy would have some plausibility.

But if that which is sown is from a tiny drop, how did the soul find such ample room in so small a body? For it is thus that formed things are formed.

And his argument will no longer hold together.

For souls are not transferred from body into body...

For apart from the union of female with male and of male with female, nothing that is formed comes to be in any of the living creatures.

Does the soul, then, stand thus, so that by the joining of two bodies this tragic tale of the impostor might be accomplished? There is much absurdity even in those who merely conceive of such things.

But we, so as not to defile things of grave dignity, have thought it sufficient merely to give, as it were from a distance, an outline of the subject.

I shall therefore pass over such a corrupting notion.

For indeed all such thoughts are absurd.

Sometimes, they say, a man later becomes a dog — why then is a dog not born from a man, or from an ox? Why is a bird not hatched from them? But if ever, at some time in the boundless age, some monstrous thing should occur, it occurs for the sake of a sign.

And nature knows the limits of itself, and does not change the nature of man, being fashioned otherwise contrary to nature, nor that of any beast; but within each kind, that same kind alone comes to be.

And if altogether one body does not come to be in place of another from a body, how much more will the soul of a man not pass over into another body? And why, he says, does it transmigrate at all? It is so that, if ever in a man it failed to grasp the knowledge of truth, having come to be in a dog or a horse and been tamed and having gained understanding, it might return again into the body of a man, and thus, having known that knowledge, it might be taken up into the disk of the moon.

And it is a marvel to see that, while the soul was in a man — among whom there are schools, grammarians and sophists, and countless multitudes of arts, and speech and hearing and eloquence — it remained in ignorance, yet having come to be in a swine, it understood the more!

So as to show all the more that his promised knowledge belongs to swine, on account of his own error and impiety.

Concerning the forming of Adam, this same man, in his account, weaves one falsehood after another into his error, saying that he who said, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness' also adds, saying, 'Come, let us make' — which is not what is written; rather, what is written is, 'Let us make man according to our image and likeness.'

But the holy apostle refutes him, saying — as does the Lord himself in the Gospel, when the Pharisees said to him that it is not good for a man to be alone, and that Moses said to give a bill of divorce and put away the wife; and the Lord, bringing forward his refutation against the Pharisees, said: 'Moses wrote this because of the hardness of your hearts.'

'But from the beginning it was not so; rather, he who made them made them male and female, and said:'

'For this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be one flesh.'

And straightway he adds, saying: 'What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder' — thereby confessing God, that is, his own Father, to have made Adam and Eve, and that the venerable institution of marriage was established from him.

And in the same sequence the holy apostle also, being a herald of the truth, says: 'This mystery is great.'

'But I speak concerning Christ and the church' — so that from the likeness of Adam and Eve, created by God...

That God created, and Adam said:

'This is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; and for this reason a man will leave [his father and mother]...' and so forth; and that he built for him the rib into a woman.

and he affirms nothing further about it, except that it is 'a great mystery.' Now if the formation took place in a man and a woman, yet according to the higher sense it is conveyed through allegory, how then does this man regard as abominable and alien to the truth of God, and as belonging to an archon, the things created by God—blaspheming and turning the mind aside from the truth? Then he says that, since from the beginning the soul, having been torn away from above, causes affliction to the power on high, for this reason that power sends forth once for all and steals back from the archons its own remnant—which is the soul—through these luminaries.

Great indeed are our hopes, and great our anxious expectation—that the good, living, and powerful God is not able to save (I do not mean his own power that has been drawn out of him, but the very things made and formed by him) unless by some other means than robbery—secretly plundering back from the heavenly realms the power torn away from him, as this charlatan says—he is unable to save us!

...wasting time? Thus the wretch, in his blasphemy, is not ashamed to call 'archon of darkness' the one who spoke in the Law and in the Prophets.

Blessed indeed are our hopes, that Christ, having come, compelled [people] to make offerings to the archon of darkness!

For having cleansed the leper—as it is written in the Law—he commands that the offering be fulfilled, [the very offering] commanded by the one who himself had spoken in the Law:

'Go, offer your gift,' he said to the leper cleansed by him, 'as Moses commanded.'

Now the offering prescribed for leprosy was a bird for sacrifice, and fine flour for a whole burnt offering.

But if he were the archon of darkness, then the Word who came from above, the Son of God—who came, according to Mani's own teaching, to turn man back from the error of the archons—would not, indeed would not, have made the leper healed by him subject to that archon; rather he would have made him flee from him, teaching him not to fulfill this command.