Philosophumena; or, The refutation of all heresies, Volume II

p. 396. 1. These are the contents of the 8th [Book] of the Refutation of all Heresies.

2. What are the opinions of the Docetae,[1] and that they teach things which they say are from the Physicist Philosophy.[2]

3. How Monoimus speaks foolishly, giving heed to poets and geometricians and arithmeticians.

4. How Tatian’s [heresy] sprang from the opinions of Valentinus and Marcion wherefrom he compounded his own. And that Hermogenes has made use of the teachings of Socrates, not of Christ.

5. How those err who contend that Easter should be celebrated on the 14th day [of the month].

6. What is the error of the Phrygians, who think Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla to be prophets.

p. 397. 7. What is the vain doctrine of the Encratites, and that their teachings are compounded not out of the Holy Scriptures, but from their own [views] and from those of the Gymnosophists among the Indians.[3]

1. The Docetae.

8. Since the many, making no use of the Lord’s counsel, while having the beam[4] in their eye, yet give out that they can see, it seems to us that we should not be silent as to their doctrines. So that they, being brought to shame by our forthcoming refutation, shall recognize how the Saviour counselled them to take away the beam from their own eye, and then to see clearly the straw which was in their brother’s eye. Now, therefore, having set forth sufficiently and adequately the opinions of most of the heretics in the seven books before this, we shall not now be silent upon those which follow. Exhibiting the ungrudging grace of the Holy Spirit, we shall also refute those who seem to have p. 398. attained security, They call themselves Docetae and teach thus:—The first God[5] is as it were the seed of a fig, in size altogether of the smallest, but in power boundless, a magnitude unreckoned in quantity, lacking nothing for bringing forth, a refuge for the fearful, a covering for the naked, or veil for shame, a fruit sought for, whereto, he says, the Seeker came thrice and found not.[6] Wherefore, he says, He cursed the fig-tree,[7] so that that sweet fruit was not found on it, [i. e.] the fruit that was sought for. And [the seed] being, so to speak briefly, of such a nature and so old [yet] small and without magnitude, the cosmos came into being from God, as they think, in some such way as this:—The branches of the tree becoming tender, put forth leaves, as is seen, and fruit follows, wherein is preserved the innumerable p. 399. [and] stored-up seed of the fig. We think, therefore, that three things first come into being from the seed of the fig, the stem which is the fig-tree, leaves, and the fruit or fig, as we have before said. Thus, says he, three Aeons came into being as principles from the First Principle of the universals.[8] And on this, he says, Moses was not silent, when he said that the words of God were three: “Darkness, cloud and whirlwind and he added no more.”[9] For, he says, God added nothing to the Three Aeons, but they sufficed and do suffice for all things which come into being. But God Himself abides by Himself and far removed from all the Aeons.[10]

When, therefore, each of these Aeons, he says, had received a principle of generation, as has been said, it little by little increased and grew great and became perfect. Now they think that the perfect number [is] ten.[11] Then the Aeons having come into being equal in number and perfection, as they think, they were thirty Aeons in all,[12] each of them being complete in a decad. But they are divided and the three having equal honour among themselves, differ in position only, because one of them is first, p. 400. another second, and another third. But this position produced a difference of power. For he who is nearest to the First God—to the seed as it were—chances to have a power more fruitful than the others, he who is the Immeasureable One having measured himself ten times in magnitude. And the Incomprehensible One, who has become second in position to the first, comprehended himself six times. And the third in position, becoming removed to an infinite distance by reason of his brethren’s dilatation, conceived[13] himself three times and, as it were, bound himself by a certain eternal bond of unity.[14]

9. And this they think is the Saviour’s saying:—“The sower went forth to sow and that which fell upon good and fair ground made some 100, some 60, and some 30.”[15] And hence, says he, He said, “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” because this is not what all understand.[16] All these Aeons [to wit] the Three and all the boundlessly boundless ones [who come] from them, are masculo-feminine ones.[17] Therefore having increased and become great, and all of them being from that one first seed of their concord p. 401. and unity, and all becoming together one Aeon, they all begat from the one Virgin Mary, the begettal common to them all, a Saviour in the midst of them all,[18] of equal power in everything with the seed of the fig, save that He was begotten. But that first seed whence is born the fig is unbegotten. Then those three Aeons having been adorned[19] with all virtue and holiness, as these teachers think, all the conceivable, lacking-nothing, nature of that Only-Begotten[20] Son—for He alone was born to the boundless Aeons by a triple generation; for three immeasureable Aeons with one mind begot Him—was adorned also. But all these conceivable and eternal things were Light; but the Light was not formless and idle, nor did it lack anything superadded to it: but it contained within itself the boundless forms of the various animals here below corresponding in number to the boundlessly boundless after the pattern of the fig-tree. And it shone from on high into p. 402. the underlying chaos. And this [chaos], being at once illuminated and given form from the various forms on high, received consistence[21] and took all the supernal forms from the Third Aeon who had tripled himself.[22] But this Third Aeon, seeing all the types[23] that were his at once intercepted in the underlying darkness beneath, and not being ignorant of the power of the darkness and the simplicity and generosity[24] of the light, would not allow the shining types from on high to be drawn far down by the darkness beneath. But he subjected [the Firmament] to the Aeons. Then, having fixed it below, he divided in twain the darkness and the light.[25] “And he called the light which is above the firmament, Day, and the darkness he called Night.”[26] Therefore, as I have said, when all the boundless forms of the Third Aeon were intercepted in this lowest darkness, and the impress[27] of that same Aeon was stamped upon it along with the rest, a living fire came from the light whence the Great Ruler came into being p. 403. of whom Moses says: “In the beginning God created Heaven and Earth.”[28] Moses says that this fiery God[29] spoke from the bush, that is from the darksome air, for batos [bush] is the whole air which underlies the darkness. But it is batos, says Moses according to him, because all the forms of light go from on high downwards, having the air as a passage.[30] And the word from the bush is no less recognized by us. For a sound significant of speech is reverberating air, without which human speech could not be recognized. And not only does our word from the bush, that is from the air, make laws for and be a fellow-citizen with us, but also odours and colours manifest their powers to us through the air.

10. Then this fiery God—the fire born from the light—made the cosmos, as Moses says, in this manner, he being substanceless,[31] [and] darkness having the substance and being ever silent towards the eternal types of the light which are intercepted below.[32] Therefore, until the Saviour’s manifestation, there was a certain great wandering of souls by reason of the God of the Light, the fiery Demiurge. For the forms are called souls, having been cooled down[33] from the things above and they continue in darkness to change about from body to body under the supervision of p. 404. the Demiurge. And that this is so, we may know from the words of Job: “And I also am a wanderer from place to place and from house to house.”[34] The Saviour also says: “And if you will receive it, this is the Elias who shall come. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.”[35] But by the Saviour, change of bodies has been made to cease; and faith is preached for the putting-away of transgressions.[36] In some such way that Only-Begotten Son beholding from on high the forms of the Aeons changing about in the darksome bodies willed to come down for their deliverance. When He saw that the multitude of Aeons could not bear to behold without ceasing the Pleroma of all the Aeons, but remained as mortals dreading corruption,[37] being held by the greatness and glory of power, He drew Himself together as a very great flash in a very small body, or rather, like the light of the eye drawn together under the eyelids, and goes forth to the p. 405. heaven and the shining stars. And there He again withdraws Himself under the eyelids at His pleasure. Thus does the light of the eye, and although it is everywhere present and is all things to us, it is invisible; but we see only the lids of the eye, the white corners, a broad membrane of many folds and fibres, a horn-like coat, and under this a berry-like pupil, both net-like and disk-like, and if there are any other coats to the light of the eye, it is enwrapped and lies hidden within them.

Thus, he says, the Only-Begotten Son, eternal on high, did on Himself (a form) corresponding to each Aeon of the Three Aeons, and being in the triacontad of Aeons, came into the world of the Decad[38] being of such age and as little as we have said, invisible, unknown, without glory and not believed upon. in order then, say the Docetae,[39] that he might do on also the Outer Darkness which is the flesh, an angel came down with Him from p. 406. on high and made announcement[40] to Mary as it is written, and He was born from her as it is written. And He who came from on high put on that which was born, and did all things as it is written in the Gospels; and was baptized in Jordan. And he was baptized, receiving the type and seal in the water of the body born from the Virgin, in order that when the Ruler should condemn the form which was his to death, to the Cross, that soul which had grown up within the body should strip off that body and affix it to the Tree. And thus (the soul) having triumphed by its means over the Principles and Authorities would not be found naked, but would put on that body reflected in the likeness of that flesh in the water when He was baptized. This he says, is the Saviour’s saying: “Unless a man be born of water and of [the] Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of the heavens; because that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”[41]

From the thirty Aeons, then, He did on thirty forms. Wherefore that Eternal One was thirty years on the earth, every Aeon being manifested in his own year. And souls are all the forms which have been intercepted from each of p. 407. the thirty Aeons, and each of them possesses a nature capable of understanding the Jesus who exists according to nature which that Only-Begotten One from the eternal places puts on. But these places are different. Therefore so many heresies contending [with each other] about it, seek Jesus. And He is claimed[42] by them all, but is seen differently by each from the different places. Towards whom, he says, each [soul] is borne and hurries, thinking that she is alone. Who is indeed her kinsman and fellow-citizen. Whom she beholding for the first time recognizes as her own brother and all the rest as bastards. Those then who have their nature from the lower places cannot see the forms of the Saviour above them. But those on high, he say, from the middle Decad and the most excellent Ogdoad[43]—whence, say they, we are—know Jesus the Saviour not in part but wholly, and are alone the Perfect from above, while the others are only partly so.

p. 408. 11. I think then that this is for right-thinking persons sufficient for the knowledge of the complicated and inconsistent heresy of the Docetae—those who attempt to make arguments about inaccessible and incomprehensible matter calling themselves thus. Certain of whom do not only seem[44] to be mad; and we have proved that the beam from such matter has entered their own eye, if they are anyhow able to see clearly; and, if not, they will be unable to blind others. Whose dogma the early sophists of Greece anticipated in many points of sophistry, as our readers will understand. These then are the teachings of the Docetae.[45] It seems right also that we should not keep silence as to the [teachings] of Monoimus.

2. Monoimus.

12. Monoimus the Arab[46] was a long way off[47] the glory of the great-voiced poet; for he thinks that some such man as Oceanus existed, of whom the poet speaks somehow like this:—

Turning this into other words, he says that a Man is the All which is the source of the universals, [being] unbegotten, incorruptible, and eternal; and that there is a Son of the aforesaid Man, who is begotten, and capable of suffering, being born in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way. For such, says he, is the Power of that Man. And when it was so, the son of the Power came into being more quickly than reasoning or counsel. And this is, he says, the saying in the Scriptures: “He was and came into being,”[49] which is: Man was and his son came into being, as if one were to say: Fire was and Light came into being in a timeless, unwilled, and previously undefined way, while being at the same time fire. But this Man is a single monad, uncompounded [and] undifferentiated, [and yet] compounded [and] differentiated, loving and at peace with all things, [and yet] fighting with and at war with all things before him,[50] unlike and like, as it were a certain musical p. 410. harmony which contains whatever one may say or leave unsaid, showing all things and giving birth to all things. “This is Father, this is Mother, Two Immortal names.”[51] But for the sake of an instance, conceive, he says, as the greatest image of the Perfect Man, the one tittle which is one tittle uncompounded, simple, a pure monad having no composition whatever from anything, [yet] compounded of many forms, of many parts. That undivided One, he says, is the many-faced and myriad-eyed and myriad-named one tittle of the Iota,[52] which is an image of that Perfect and Invisible Man.

13. The one tittle, he says, is then the monad and a decad. For by this power of the one tittle of the Iota [are produced] also [the] dyad and triad and tetrad and pentad and hexad and heptad and ogdoad and ennead up to the ten. For these are the diversified numbers dwelling within that simple and uncompounded tittle of the p. 411. Iota. And this is the saying:—“Because it pleased the whole Pleroma to dwell within the Son of Man bodily.”[53] For such compounds of numbers from the simple and uncompounded one tittle of the Iota become he says bodily hypostases. Therefore, he says, the Son of Man was born from the Perfect Man, whom none know. But, he says, every creature who is ignorant of the Son, represents Him as the offspring of a woman. Of which Son some shadowy rays come very close to this world and secure and control change [of bodies and] birth. And the beauty of that Son of Man is till now unrevealed to all men who are misled as to the offspring of a woman. Nothing then of the things here come into being, he says, from that Man, nor will they ever do so; but all things that have come into being have done so not from the whole, but from some part of the Son of Man. For, says he, the Son of Man is one Iota, one tittle flowing from on high, full, and filling full all things, and containing within itself whatever the Man, Father of the Son of Man possesses.[54]

p. 412. 14. Now the cosmos, as Moses says, came into being in six days, that is, in six powers which are in the one tittle of the Iota.[55] [But] the seventh, a rest and a Sabbath, came into being from the Hebdomad which is over Earth and Water and Fire and Air, out of which the cosmos came into being by the one tittle. For the cubes and the octahedrons, and [the] pyramids and all the figures like these of which Fire, Air, Water, [and earth] consist, came into being from the numbers which are comprised in that single tittle of the Iota, which is a Perfect Son of a Perfect Man. When then, says he, Moses says that (the) rod was turned about in different ways for the plagues on Egypt,[56] these [plagues], he says, are symbols allegorizing the Creation. [For] he does not use the rod which is one tittle of the Iota, duplex and varied, as a figure[57] for more plagues than ten. This Creation of the world, he says, is the ten plagues.[58] For p. 413. everything struck produces and bears fruit as, for instance, vine-shoots. Man, he says, has burst forth from Man, and was severed from him by a certain blow,[59] so that he might be born and might declare the Law which Moses laid down after having received it from God. The Law is according to that one tittle, the Decalogue which allegorizes the divine mysteries of the words. For, says he, the Ten Plagues and the Decalogue[60] are the whole knowledge of the universals which none has known who has been misled concerning the offspring of the woman. And if you say that the whole Law is a Pentateuch, it is [still] from the pentad which is comprised in the one tittle. But the whole Law is for those who have not thoroughly crippled their understanding [a] mystery, a new feast not yet grown old, legal and eternal, a Passover of the Lord God kept unto our generations by those who can see [and] beginning on the 14th [day] which is the beginning, he says, of the decad from which they reckon.[61] For the monad up to 14 is the sum total of the one tittle of the perfect number. And p. 414. one + two + three + four become ten, wherefore it is the one tittle. But from fourteen up to twenty-one, a hebdomad subsists in the one tittle, the unleavened creature of the world in all these.[62] For what, says he, should the one tittle want of any substance like leaven for the Passover of the Lord, the eternal feast which is given for generations. For the whole cosmos and all the causes of creation are the Passover Feast of the Lord. For God rejoices in the transmutation of creation which is wrought under the strokes of the one tittle. The which is the rod of Moses given by God, which strikes the Egyptians and changes the bodies, as did the hand of Moses, from water into blood. And the other [plagues] are in nearly the same way [such as that of the] locusts, wherefore change of the elements he calls flesh into grass: “for all flesh is grass,”[63] he says. p. 415. But none the less do these men in some such way receive the whole Law. Following, perhaps, as it seems to me, the Greeks who say that there are Substance and Quality and Quantity and Relation and Position and Action and Possession and Passion.[64]

15. So for example Monoimus himself says distinctly in his letter to Theophrastus:[65] “Leave aside enquiry concerning God and Creation and the like, and enquire about Him from thyself, and learn who it is who simply makes His own all that is within thee, saying ‘My God, my mind, my understanding, my soul, my body.’ Learn also what are grief and rejoicing, and love and hate, and undesired watching and sleep, and undesired anger and love. And if,” says he, “thou dost carefully seek out this, thou wilt find Him in thyself [as both] one and many things after the likeness of that one tittle, he finding the outlet for Himself.”[66] This then is what these [men] say, which we are under no necessity to compare with what has been before excogitated by the Greeks. Since it is plain from p. 416. their statements that they have their origin from the geometrical and arithmetical art, which the disciples of Pythagoras set forth more excellently. As the reader may learn in the passages where we have before explained all the wisdom of the Greeks.

But since we have sufficiently refuted Monoimus,[67] let us see what others have elaborated who wish thereby to raise for themselves an idle name.

3. Tatian.

16. But Tatian, although himself a disciple of Justin Martyr, was not of like mind with his master, but attempted something new. He says that there were certain Aeons [about whom] he fables in the like way with the Valentinians. But in the same way as Marcion he says that marriage is destruction. And he asserts that Adam will not be saved, through his becoming a leader of rebellion. And thus Tatian.[68]

4. Hermogenes.

p. 417. 17. A certain Hermogenes[69] thinking also to devise something new, says that God created all things from co-existent and ungenerated matter. For he held it impossible that God should create the things that are from those that are not. And that God is ever Lord and Maker, but Matter ever a slave and [in process of] becoming. But yet not all [matter], for, as it was being borne about violently and disorderly, He set it in order in this manner. Beholding it boiling like a pot on the fire, He divided it into parts; and that part which he took from the All He reclaimed, and the other He allowed to be borne about disorderly. And the reclaimed part, he says, is the cosmos; and that the other remains waste and is called acosmic[70] matter. He says that this is the essence[71] of all things, as if he were introducing p. 418. a new doctrine to his disciples; but he does not consider that this fable happens to be Socratic, and is better worked out by Plato than by Hermogenes. But he confesses that Christ is the Son of the God who created all things, and that He was begotten of the Virgin and of Spirit according to the [common] voice of the Gospels. Who after He had suffered rose again in a body and appeared to His disciples, and ascending to the heavens, left His body in the Sun, but Himself went on into the presence of the Father. And in witness of this,[72] he thinks he is corroborated by the word which David the Psalmist spake: “In the Sun he set up his tent, and like a bridegroom coming forth from his bridal chamber, he will rejoice like a giant to run his course.”[73] This then is what Hermogenes attempts.[74]

5. About the Quartodecimans.[75]

18. But certain others, lovers of strife by nature, unskilled p. 419. in knowledge, very quarrelsome by habit, maintain that the Passover ought to be kept on the 14th day of the First Month, according to the ordinance of the Law, on whatever day [of the week] it may fall. They have regard [merely] to that which has been written in the Law: [that is] that he will be accursed who does not keep it as it is laid down. They pay no attention to the fact that it was enacted for the Jews, who were to kill the True Passover. Which [Law] has spread to the Gentiles and is understood by faith, not kept strictly in the letter. They pay attention to this one commandment, but do not regard the saying of the Apostle: “For I bear witness to every man who is circumcised that he is a debtor to do the whole Law.”[76] In other matters they agree concerning all things handed down to the Church by the Apostles.

6. Phrygians.[77]

19. But there are others also very heretical by nature, Phrygians by race, who have fallen away after being deceived p. 420. by certain women, Priscilla and Maximilla by name, whom they imagine to be prophetesses. Into these they say the Spirit Paraclete has entered and they likewise glorify [even] above these one Montanus as a prophet. Having endless books of their own, they are not judging what is said in them according to reason, nor giving heed to those capable of judgment; but, carried along heedlessly by the faith that they have in them, imagine that they learn more through them than from the Law, the Prophets, and the Gospels. They glorify these wenches[78] above Apostles and every grace,[79] since some of them dare to say that there are those among them who have become greater than Christ. They confess that God is the Father of the universals, and the creator of all things in the same way as [does] the Church, and also [confess] whatever the Gospel testifies concerning Christ. But they innovate in the matter of feasts and fasts and the eating of vegetable food and roots,[80] thinking that they have learned this from the women. And some of them, agreeing with the heresy of the Noetians, say that the Father is the Son, and that He by being born, underwent p. 421. both suffering and death. Concerning these, I shall later explain more minutely; for to many their heresy has become the starting-point of evils. We judge then that what has been said is sufficient, we having proved briefly to all that their many absurd books and attempts are feeble and not worth consideration, whereto those of sound mind need pay no heed.[81]

7. Encratites.

20. But others calling themselves Encratites[82] confess the [facts] about God and Christ in like manner with the Church. But with regard to the way of life, they having become puffed up,[83] have reverted [to earlier opinions]. They think themselves glorified through food by abstaining from things which have had life, drinking water, and forbidding marriage, and in the other things of life are austerely careful. Such as they are judged to be rather Cynics than Christians, seeing that they pay no heed to what was said to them aforetime through the Apostle Paul, who prophesied the innovations that would come by the folly of some, saying p. 422. thus:—“The Spirit says expressly: In the last times some will fall away from the wholesome teaching,[84] giving heed to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons, through the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, branded in their own consciences as with a hot iron, forbidding to marry and (commanding) to abstain from meats, which God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be rejected which is received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified through the words of God and prayer....”[85] This saying then of the Blessed Paul is sufficient for the refutation of those who live thus and honour themselves as righteous men, and to show that this also is a heresy.[86]

But although some other heresies are named [to wit those] of the Cainites, Ophites or Noachites[87] and others such as they, I do not think it necessary to set forth their sayings and doings, lest they should thereby think themselves somebody or worthy of argument.[88] But since what p. 423. has been said about them seems to be sufficient, we will come to the source of all evils, the heresy of the Noetians, and having disclosed its root and proved plainly the poison lurking within it, we will hold back from such error those who have been swept away by a violent spirit as by a torrent.

FOOTNOTES