Refutation of All Heresies 6 part 2/4

...the Egyptians received these things and taught them onward to the Greeks; and he, though having received them from these, denying that he received them from them, having attempted to establish an opinion of his own, tore apart their doctrines with names and numbers, calling them by his own terms and defining them by measures, so that he might construct a Greek heresy, various indeed, but incoherent and having no relation to Christ.

The origin of the hypothesis, then, in Plato's Timaeus is the wisdom of the Egyptians; for it was from there that Solon taught the Greeks the whole account concerning the generation and destruction of the world, by means of a certain ancient and prophetic account, as Plato says, teaching them who were as children, and who knew no ancient theological teaching.

In order, then, that we may follow the doctrines upon which Valentinus has founded his system, I shall now first set forth what things Pythagoras of Samos philosophizes about, together with that celebrated wisdom among the Greeks; and then, in this way, set forth what Valentinus, having taken from Pythagoras and Plato, attributes to Christ, and, prior to Christ, to the Father of all and to Silence, who is conjoined with the Father.

Pythagoras, then, declared the Monad to be the unbegotten first principle of all things, and the Dyad, and all the other numbers, to be begotten. And he says that the Monad is father of the Dyad, and the Dyad is mother of all things that are begotten, being itself a begotten entity that begets things begotten.

And Zaratas, the teacher of Pythagoras, called the One "father," and the Two "mother." For according to Pythagoras, the Dyad has been begotten from the Monad; and the Monad is male and first, while the Dyad is female. And from the Dyad, in turn, as Pythagoras says, comes the Triad, and the succeeding numbers up to the Decad.

For Pythagoras knows this alone, the Decad, as the perfect number; for the numbers eleven and twelve he holds to be an addition and a repetition of the Decad, the added unit not being the generation of any other number. And the Decad begets all solid bodies out of incorporeal things. For he says that the point, which is without parts, is both the element and first principle common to bodies and incorporeal things alike; and from the point, he says, comes the line, and from the line, the surface, and when the surface has flowed, depth is constituted, that is, body, he says. Whence also there is a certain oath among the Pythagoreans, namely the concord of the four elements. And they swear thus: "Yea, by him who transmitted to our soul the Tetraktys, the source that holds the roots of ever-flowing nature." And the Tetraktys is the first principle of natural and solid bodies, just as the Monad is of intelligible things. And that the Tetraktys also begets, he says, the perfect number -- as the Decad does among intelligible things -- they teach as follows: if one, beginning to count, says "one," and adds "two," then likewise "three," these will amount to six; and in addition to these, again "four," the whole will likewise be ten. For one, two, three, four together make ten, the perfect number. Thus, he says, in every way the Tetraktys has imitated the intelligible Monad, being able to beget the perfect number.

There are, then, according to Pythagoras, two worlds: one intelligible, which has the Monad as its first principle, and one sensible. And of this sensible world there is the Tetraktys, containing the iota, the single stroke, the perfect number; and, according to the Pythagoreans, the letter iota, the single stroke, is the first and most authoritative substance, both of the intelligible and of the sensible, existing intelligibly...

There are nine incorporeal genera of accidents, which cannot exist apart from substance: quality, quantity, relation, place, time, position, possession, action, and passivity. There are, then, nine accidents belonging to substance; and substance, being numbered together with these, makes up the perfect number, ten.

Wherefore, since the universe is divided, as we have said, into the intelligible and the sensible world, we ourselves also possess, from the intelligible world, reason (logos), so that by reason we may contemplate the substance of intelligible, incorporeal, and divine things; and we have, he says, five senses -- smell, sight, hearing, taste, and touch -- by which we come to knowledge of sensible things; and thus, he says, the sensible is divided off from the intelligible, and it shows that we have an organ of knowledge for each of the two...

...so that we might comprehend them. None, he says, of the intelligible things can become known to us through sense-perception; for that, he says, neither has eye seen, nor ear heard, nor has any other of the senses whatsoever perceived.

Nor again, on the other hand, is it possible for anyone to arrive at knowledge of sensible things by reason alone, but one must see that a thing is white, and taste that it is sweet, and, having heard, know that something is musical or unmusical; and whether any given odor is fragrant or unpleasant is the task of smell, not of reason.

And likewise it is with matters of touch: for it is not possible, merely by hearing, to know whether a thing is hard or soft, or hot or cold; rather, touch is the judge of such things. These things being thus established, the ordered arrangement of things that have come to be and are coming to be is observed to occur arithmetically.

For just as, beginning from the Monad and proceeding by the addition of units or triads and the numbers successively accumulated, we construct a certain single greatest system of number, so again, from that which has been accumulated by composition, by a certain subtraction and reverse process, we arithmetically effect the dissolution of what has been composed.

So, he says, the world too, being bound by a certain arithmetical and musical bond, is preserved incorruptible forever and throughout all time, by tension and relaxation, by addition and subtraction. Accordingly, the Pythagoreans declare in some such way concerning the permanence of the world: "For it both was before and shall be, nor, I think, shall unbounded time ever be emptied of these two." Of what two? Of Strife and Love.

Love, according to them, produces the world as incorruptible and eternal, as they suppose -- for substance and the world are one -- while Strife, on the other hand, tears apart and disperses, and continually attempts to divide the world into many parts.

Just as if one, working arithmetically, were to cut and break up a myriad into thousands, hundreds, and tens, and drachmas into obols and small quadrantes, so, he says, Strife cuts up the substance of the world into animals, plants, metals, and things similar to these; and, according to them, Strife is the demiurge of the generation of all things that come to be, while Love, on the other hand, presides and takes forethought for the whole, that it may abide; and, gathering together into unity the things that have been divided and torn away from the whole, and leading them out of individual life, it joins and adds them again to the whole, so that it may abide and be one.

Neither, therefore, will Strife ever cease dividing the world, nor Love cease apportioning things to the world... Such is, according to Pythagoras, the distribution of the world. And Pythagoras says that the stars are fragments broken off from the sun, and that the souls of living things are borne from the stars; and that these souls are mortal so long as they are in the body, as it were buried as in a tomb, but rise up and become immortal when we depart from our bodies. Whence Plato, being asked by someone, "What is philosophy?" replied: "The separation of the soul from the body."

Empedocles, being a disciple of Pythagoras and of these teachings, speaks also through riddles and such sayings as this: "If you go abroad from your own house, do not turn back; otherwise, the Furies, Justice's helpers, will come after you" -- calling the body one's "own house," and the Furies the passions.

If, then, he says, you go abroad -- that is, if you go out from the body -- do not lay claim to it again; but if you do lay claim to it, the passions will again confine you within a body. For these men believe in the transmigration of souls, as also Empedocles, philosophizing in the Pythagorean manner, says.

For it is necessary, he says -- as Plato also says -- that souls fond of pleasure, if, having come to be in the human condition, they do not pursue philosophy, must pass through all animals and plants, and again into a human body; and if a soul practices philosophy in the same way three times, it ascends into the nature of its kindred star; but if it does not practice philosophy, it returns again to the same round. He says, then, that the soul can at times even become mortal, if it is mastered by the Furies -- that is, by the passions -- and immortal, if it escapes the Furies, which are the passions.

But since we have begun to speak of the things spoken darkly by Pythagoras to his disciples through hidden symbols, it seems fitting also to recall the rest of these, on account of the fact that the heresiarchs also have attempted to discourse in some such manner through hidden symbols -- and this, not their own, but having appropriated Pythagorean sayings for their own advantage.

Pythagoras, then, teaches his disciples how to journey, saying: "Bind up your bedding-roll." Since those who are about to journey bind their garments into a leather bag in preparation for the road, so, wishing his disciples to be ready at every moment, as if death were always imminent and about to arrive, they should have nothing lacking.

Wherefore he taught that, necessarily, as soon as day came, the Pythagoreans should exhort one another to bind up their bedding-roll -- that is, to be ready for death. "Do not stir the fire with a sword" -- meaning: do not provoke a man who is enraged.

For the enraged man resembles fire, and speech (logos) resembles a sword. "Do not step over a broom" -- do not despise a small matter. "Do not plant a palm-tree in your house" -- do not stir up contentiousness in your household; for the palm-tree is a sign of strife and discord. "Do not eat from a stool" -- do not practice a menial trade, lest you should become enslaved to the body, which is corruptible; rather, make your living from reasoned discourse; for it will be possible for you both to nourish the body and to make the soul better.

Do not bite off from a whole loaf -- do not diminish your possessions, but live from your income, and preserve your substance whole, like an entire loaf. Do not eat beans -- do not accept public office in a city; for in those days offices were allotted by means of beans.

Such, then, and things of this kind, are what the Pythagoreans say -- and the heretics, imitating them, are reckoned by some to be saying great things. The Pythagorean doctrine says that the demiurge of all things that have come to be is the great geometer and arithmetician, the Sun, and that this Sun is fixed within the whole world, just as a soul is within bodies, as Plato says.

For the Sun is fire, as it were soul, and the earth is body. Nothing, when separated from body, could ever become visible or tangible without something solid; and nothing is solid apart from earth. Whence God, placing air in the middle between fire and earth, fashioned the body of the universe. And the Sun, he says, numbers and measures the world geometrically in some such manner:

The sensible world is one, and it is concerning this that we now speak. And the Sun, being a certain arithmetician and geometer, has divided it into twelve parts. And these parts have names: Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Goat-horn, Water-pourer, Fishes.

Again, of the twelve parts, he divides each one into thirty parts, which are the days of the month. And again, of the thirty parts, he divides each part into sixty minutes, and of the minutes into further, still finer minutes. And doing this continually without ceasing, but gathering together from these divided parts and composing, and again resolving and dividing what has been composed, he brings about the Great Year of the cosmos.

Such, then, briefly summarized in its main points, is the doctrine of Pythagoras and Plato, from which Valentinus, gathering his own heresy -- not from the Gospels -- as we shall demonstrate, would rightly be reckoned a Pythagorean and a Platonist, not a Christian. Valentinus, then, and Heracleon and Ptolemy, and their entire school, being disciples of Pythagoras and Plato, following their guides, founded their own teaching upon an arithmetical basis.

For to these men also, the first principle of all things is the unbegotten Monad, incorruptible, incomprehensible, inconceivable, generative, and the cause of the generation of all things that have come to be; and this aforesaid Monad is called by them Father.

But a considerable difference is found among them. For some of them, in order that the teaching of Valentinus might be entirely pure Pythagoreanism, hold that the Father is without a female counterpart, without a consort, and alone; while others, holding it to be impossible for the generation of anything at all among begotten things to come from a male alone, of necessity reckon Silence as consort together with the Father of all, so that he may become a father.

But concerning Silence -- whether she is ever a consort or not -- let them themselves have this contest among themselves. For our part, keeping to the Pythagorean first principle, being one, without consort, without a female counterpart, in need of nothing, and recalling what they teach in this matter, we shall say:

...nothing at all begotten; but the Father alone was unbegotten, having no place, no time, no counselor, nor any other substance whatsoever that could be conceived of in any way; but he was alone, at rest, as they say, and reposing by himself, alone within himself. But since he was generative, it seemed good to him at some point to beget and bring forth the most beautiful and most perfect thing that he possessed within himself; for he was not a lover of solitude. For he was, they say, wholly love; and love is not love unless there be something that is loved.

The Father, then, being alone as he was, put forth and begot Mind (Nous) and Truth (Aletheia), that is, a Dyad, which became mistress and first principle and mother of all the aeons that are, by them, reckoned within the Pleroma.

Mind and Truth, having been put forth by the Father, fecund offspring of a fecund one, themselves in turn put forth Word and Life, imitating the Father; and Word and Life put forth Man and Church. And Mind and Truth, when they saw the Word and Life — their own offspring — having themselves become fecund, gave thanks to the Father of all and offered him a perfect number, ten aeons.

For, he says, Mind and Truth were not able to offer the Father a number more perfect than this. For since the Father is perfect, he had to be glorified with a perfect number; and ten is perfect, because it is the first of the numbers reckoned by multitude that is perfect. But the Father is more perfect still, because, being alone unbegotten, he was able through the first single conjunction of Mind and Truth to put forth with ease, as roots, all the aeons that were to come into being.

So when Word and Life themselves saw that Mind and Truth had glorified the Father of all with a perfect number, Word, together with Life, likewise wished to glorify his own father and mother, Mind and Truth.

But since Mind and Truth were themselves begotten, and did not possess the Father's perfect unbegottenness, Word and Life no longer glorified their father Mind with a perfect number, but with an imperfect one; for Word and Life offer twelve aeons to Mind and Truth.

For, according to Valentinus, these were the first roots of the aeons: Mind and Truth, Word and Life, Man and Church; and those of Mind and Truth number ten, those of Word and Life number twelve, twenty-eight in all.

The ten they call by these names: Bythius and Mixis, Ageratos and Henosis, and Hedone, Akinetos and Syncrasis, Monogenes and Makaria. These are the ten aeons, whom some say were put forth by Mind and Truth, others by Word and Life.

Others say that the twelve were put forth by Man and Church, others by Word and Life, to whom they give these names: Paracletos and Pistis, Patrikos and Elpis, Metrikos and Agape, Aeinous and Synesis, Ecclesiastikos and Makariotes, Theletos and Sophia.

Now since, of the twelve, the twelfth and youngest of all the twenty-eight aeons — a female called Sophia — took note of the multitude and power of the aeons that had generated her, and ran up into the depth of the Father, and understood that all the other aeons, being begotten, beget by conjunction,

whereas the Father alone begot without a consort, she wished to imitate the Father and to beget by herself, apart from her consort, so that she might accomplish a work no less than the Father's — not realizing that the Unbegotten, being the first principle of all things, and root and depth and abyss, has the power to beget alone, but that she, Sophia, being begotten, and moreover after so many aeons, cannot possess the power of the Unbegotten.

For in the Unbegotten, he says, all things are together; but among begotten things, the female is that which puts forth substance, and the male is that which gives form to the substance put forth by the female. Sophia, then, put forth only this much, which alone she was able: a substance without form and unfashioned.

And this, he says, is what Moses means when he says: 'And the earth was invisible and unfashioned.' This, he says, is the seed — the heavenly Jerusalem, into which God promised to bring the sons of Israel, saying: 'I will bring you into a good land flowing with milk and honey.'

So when, within the Pleroma, ignorance arose in respect of Sophia, and formlessness in respect of the offspring of Sophia, there came to be a disturbance in the Pleroma; for the aeons, supposing that in like manner the offspring of the other aeons would also come to be formless and imperfect, and that some corruption would before long overtake the aeons —

all the aeons therefore fled together to entreat the Father, that he might give rest to the grieving Sophia; for she was weeping and lamenting over the miscarriage she had begotten — for so they call it. The Father, having pity on the tears of Sophia and granting the entreaty of the aeons, commands a further emission; for it was not he himself, it says, who put it forth, but Mind and Truth who put forth Christ and Holy Spirit, for the forming and separation of the miscarriage, and for the comfort and cessation of Sophia's groanings.

And so there come to be thirty aeons together with Christ and the Holy Spirit. Some of them therefore hold this to be the Thirty of the aeons; others hold that Sige coexists with the Father and wish her to be reckoned along with them among the aeons.

So when Christ and the Spirit had been further put forth by Mind and Truth, he immediately separates this formless miscarriage of Sophia — begotten apart from a consort — from all the aeons, so that the perfect aeons, seeing it, might not be disturbed by its formlessness.

So that the formlessness of the miscarriage might not be visible at all to the perfect aeons, the Father again puts forth yet one more aeon, the Cross, which, having been begotten great — as befits a great and perfect father — was put forth as a guard and rampart for the aeons, and becomes a boundary of the Pleroma, holding within itself all thirty aeons; for these are the ones that had been put forth.

It is called Horos ('Boundary') because it marks off the deficiency from the Pleroma, keeping it outside; and Metocheus ('Partaker') because it also partakes of the deficiency; and Cross, because it stands fixed unswervingly and immovably, so that nothing of the deficiency can come near the aeons within the Pleroma.

Outside the Horos, the Cross, the Metocheus, is what they call the Ogdoad, which is the Sophia outside the Pleroma, whom Christ — having been further put forth by Mind and Truth — formed and fashioned into a perfect aeon, able to become inferior to none of those within the Pleroma.

But since Sophia had been formed outside, and it was not possible for Christ and the Holy Spirit, having been put forth by Mind and Truth, to remain outside the Pleroma on equal terms with those within, Christ and the Holy Spirit ran back up from the now-formed Sophia to Mind and Truth, within the Horos, there together with the other aeons glorifying the Father.

Since, then, there was a single peace and harmony among all the aeons within the Pleroma, it seemed good to them not only to have glorified the Son through conjunction, but also to glorify the Father through an offering of fruit. All thirty aeons, then, were pleased to put forth, in common, one aeon as fruit of the Pleroma, so that it might be a token of their unity, likemindedness, and peace.

And he alone, put forth by all the aeons for the Father, is the one they call the common Fruit of the Pleroma. These things, then, were thus within the Pleroma. And there was put forth the common Fruit of the Pleroma — Jesus, for that is his name — the great High Priest. But the Sophia outside the Pleroma, seeking after the Christ who had formed her, and the Holy Spirit, fell into great fear, because she would perish now that the one who had formed and established her was separated from her.

And she grieved and fell into great perplexity, reasoning who it was that had formed her, what the Holy Spirit was, where it had gone, who it was that prevented them from being present with her, who begrudged her that beautiful and blessed vision. Being in the grip of these passions, she turned to entreaty and supplication of the one who had left her.

As she entreated, then, Christ, who is within the Pleroma, together with all the other aeons, had pity on her, and they send forth, outside the Pleroma, the common Fruit of the Pleroma, as consort of the Sophia outside, and as corrector of the passions which she suffered while seeking after Christ.

So he who is the common Fruit of the Pleroma, having come outside the Pleroma and found her afflicted by the aforesaid four passions — fear, grief, perplexity, and supplication — corrected her passions; and in correcting them he perceived that it was not good for these things, being eternal, to perish along with Sophia, nor for Sophia to remain in such passions — in fear and grief, supplication, perplexity.

So he, being so great an aeon, offspring of the whole Pleroma, caused the passions to depart from her, and made them into substantial hypostases: fear he made into a psychic substance, grief into a material substance, perplexity into the substance of the demons; and the turning-back, entreaty, and supplication he made into repentance and a power of the soul which is called the Right.

The Demiurge came from fear; this is what, he says, Scripture means when it says: 'The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.' For this was the beginning of Sophia's passions: she was afraid, then she grieved, then she was perplexed, and thus she fled to entreaty and supplication. And the psychic substance, he says, is fiery, and is also called by them the place of the mean — Hebdomad and Ancient of Days; and whatever such things are said concerning this, these belong to the psychic substance, which he says is the Demiurge of the world.

It is fiery: Moses also says, he says: 'The Lord your God is a consuming and devouring fire' — for this too he wishes to have written thus. There is, he says, a twofold power of fire: for there is an all-devouring fire which cannot be quenched … [lacuna] … in this respect, then, the soul is in a certain sense mortal, being a kind of mean; for it is Hebdomad and rest.

For it is below the Ogdoad, where the formed Sophia and the common Fruit of the Pleroma are, but above matter, of which he — the Demiurge — is the craftsman. If, then, it — the soul — is made like the things above, the Ogdoad, it becomes immortal and comes into the Ogdoad, which is, he says, the heavenly Jerusalem; but if it is made like matter, that is, like the material passions, it will be corruptible, and it perishes.

So just as the first and greatest power of the psychic substance became … an image, the devil, the ruler of this world; and of the substance of the demons, which is from perplexity, came Beelzebul … while Sophia, from above, from the Ogdoad, works effectively as far down as the Hebdomad. The Demiurge, they say, knows nothing at all, but is, according to them, mindless and foolish, and does not know what he does or accomplishes. And while he remains ignorant of what he is indeed doing, Sophia works and empowers all things; and while she is working, he supposes himself to be making the creation of the world of his own accord. Hence he began to say: 'I am God, and besides me there is no other.'

So the Tetrad according to Valentinus is a source possessing the roots of the ever-flowing nature, together with Sophia. From this the psychic and material creation now subsists. And Sophia is called Spirit, the Demiurge Soul, the devil the ruler of the world, and Beelzebul the ruler of the demons.

These are the things they say. Moreover, making their entire teaching a matter of arithmetic, as I said before, they say that the thirty aeons within the Pleroma have again, by analogy, further put forth aeons for themselves upon aeons, so that the Pleroma might be gathered together in a perfect number.

For just as the Pythagoreans divided into twelve and thirty and sixty, and minute fractions of minute fractions belonging to those, so these people subdivide the things within the Pleroma. And the things within the Ogdoad have likewise been subdivided; and Sophia — who according to them is mother of all the living — and the common Fruit of the Pleroma have put forth Logoi, who are angels who dwell as citizens in the Jerusalem above, that is, in the heavens.

For this is Jerusalem — the Sophia outside — and her bridegroom is the common Fruit of the Pleroma. The Demiurge also put forth souls; for this is the substance of souls; he is, according to them, Abraham, and these souls are the children of Abraham. From the material and diabolical substance, then, the Demiurge made bodies for the souls.

This is what is said: 'And God formed man, taking dust from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life; and man became a living soul.' This is, according to them, the inner man, the psychic one, dwelling in the material body, which body is material, corruptible, entirely fashioned from the diabolical substance.

This material man is, as it were, in their view, an inn or dwelling-place — sometimes of soul alone, sometimes of soul and demons, sometimes of soul and Logoi, which are logoi sown from above, from the common Fruit of the Pleroma and from Sophia, into this world, dwelling in an earthy body together with the soul whenever demons do not dwell together with the soul.

This is, he says, what is written in Scripture: 'For this cause I bow my knees to God and Father, and Lord of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God may grant you that Christ dwell in the inner man' — that is, the psychic man, not the bodily one — 'that you may have strength to comprehend what is the depth,' which is the Father of all, 'and what is the breadth,' which is the Cross, the Horos of the Pleroma, 'or what is the fullness of the aeons.'

For this reason, he says, the psychic man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. Foolishness, he says, is the power of the Demiurge; for he was foolish and mindless, and thought that he himself was creating the world, not knowing that Sophia — the mother, the Ogdoad — works all things in him toward the creation of the world, without his knowing it.

So all the prophets and the Law spoke from the Demiurge, a foolish god, he says, fools knowing nothing. For this reason, he says, the Savior says: 'All who came before me are thieves and robbers.' And the Apostle: 'The mystery which was not made known to former generations.'

For none of the prophets, he says, spoke anything at all concerning these matters of which we speak; for all was unknown, since it had been spoken solely by the Demiurge. So when the creation reached its appointed end, and it was time at last for the revelation of the sons of God — that is, of the Demiurge — the revelation that had been veiled, by which, he says, the psychic man had been veiled and had a veil upon his heart —