28. And a certain Satornilus who flourished at the same time as Basilides, but passed his life in Antioch of Syria, taught the same things as Menander.[104] He says that one father exists unknown to all, who made Angels, Archangels, Powers [and] Authorities. And that from a certain seven angels the cosmos and all things therein came into being. And that man was [the] creation of angels, there having p. 368. appeared on high from the Absolute One[105] a shining image which they could not detain, says Saturnilus, because of its immediate return on high. [Wherefore] they exhorted one another, saying: “Let us make man according to image and resemblance.”[106] Which, he says, having come to pass, the image could not stand upright by reason of the lack of power among the angels, but grovelled like a worm. Then the Power on high having pity on it, because it had come into being in his likeness, sent forth a spark of life which raised up the man and made him live.[107] Therefore, says he, the spark of life returns at death to its own kindred and the rest of [man’s] compound parts is resolved into its original elements.[108] And he supposed the unknown Father[109] to be unbegotten, bodiless, and formless. But he says that He showed Himself as a phantom in human shape, and that the God of the Jews is one of the angels. And, because the Father wished to depose all the angels, Christ came for the putting-down of the God of the Jews and for the salvation of those who believe on him; and that these [believers] p. 369. have the spark of life within them. For he says that two races of men were formed by the angels, one bad and one good. And that since the demons help the bad, the Saviour came for the destruction of the bad men and demons, but for the salvation of the good. And he says that to marry and beget [children] is from Satan. Many of this man’s adherents abstain from things that have had life, through this pretended abstinence (leading astray many).[110] And they say that the Prophecies were uttered, some by the world-creators, some by Satan whom he supposes to be an angel who works against the world-creators and especially (against) the God of the Jews.[111] Thus then Satornilus.
p. 370. 29. Marcion of Pontus, much madder than these, passing over many opinions of the majority and pressing on to the more shameless, supposed that there were two principles of the All,[113] one good and the other bad. And he, thinking that he was bringing in some new [doctrine], manufactured a school filled with folly and of Cynic life, being himself a lewd one.[114] He thought that the multitude would not notice that he chanced to be a disciple not of Christ, but of Empedocles, who was very much earlier, and he laid down and taught that there were two causes of the All, [i. e.] Strife and Love.[115] For what says Empedocles on the conduct of the cosmos? If we have said it before,[116] yet I will not now keep silence, if only for the sake of comparing p. 371. the heresy of this plagiarist[117] [with the source]. He says that all the elements of which the cosmos was compounded and consists are six, to wit:—two material, [viz.] Air and Water; two instruments, whereby the material elements are arranged[118] and changed about, [viz.] Fire and Air; and two which work with the instruments and fashion matter, [viz.] Strife and Love. He says something like this:—
Zeus is fire and life-bearing Here the earth which bears fruits for the support of life. But Aïdoneus is the air, because while beholding all things through it, it alone we do not see. And Nestis is water, since it is the only vehicle of food, and therefore the becoming cause of all growing things,[120] yet cannot nourish them by itself. For if it could so give nourishment, he says, living things[121] could never die of hunger, for there is always abundance of water in the cosmos.[122] Whence he calls water Nestis, because it is a becoming cause of nourishment, yet cannot itself nourish growing things. These things then are, to sum them up in outline, those which comprise the foundation[123] of the cosmos [i. e.] water and Earth from which all things come, p. 372. Fire and Spirit[124] the tools and agents, and Strife and Love which fashion all things with skill. And Love is a certain peace and even mindedness and natural affection,[125] which determines that the cosmos shall be perfect and complete; but Strife ever rends asunder that which is one and divides it and makes many things out of one. Therefore the cause of the whole creation is Strife, which [cause] he calls baneful, that is deadly.[126] For it takes care that through every aeon, its creation persists. And Strife the deadly is the Demiurge and maker of all things which have come into being by birth; but Love, of their leading-forth from the cosmos and transformation and return to unity.[127] Concerning which, Empedocles [says] that there are two immortal and unbegotten things which have never yet had a source of existence. He speaks, however, somehow like this:—
p. 373. But what are these two? Strife and Love. For they had no source of existence, but pre-existed and ever were, being through their unbegotten nature incorruptible. But Fire [and Water] and Earth and Air die and again come to life. For when the things which have come into being through Strife die, Love takes them and leads them and adds and attaches them to the All,[129] so that the All may remain One, being ever marshalled by Love in one fashion and form. Yet when Love creates the One from many things, and arranges the things which have been scattered in the One, Strife again rends them away from the One, and makes them [into] many, that is, Fire, Water, Earth [and] Air, whence are produced animals and plants and whatever parts of the cosmos we perceive. And concerning the form[130] of the cosmos as ordered by Love, he speaks somehow like this:—
Such things [does] Love, and turns out the most beautiful form of the world as One from many; but Strife rends gradually from that One the principle of its arrangement, and again makes it [into] many. This is what Empedocles says of his own birth:—
That is, he calls the One divine, and says that the unity formerly existing in the One was rent asunder by Strife and came into being in these many things, existing according to Strife’s ordering. For, says he, Strife is the furious and troublous and unresting Demiurge of this cosmos, whose p. 375. [fashioner] Empedocles calls it. For this is the judgment and compulsion of the souls which Strife rends away from the One and fashions and works up, which process [Empedocles] describes somehow like this:—
calling the long-lived souls “demons” because they are immortal and live through long ages.
calling “blessed” those whom Love has made from the many into the oneness of the intelligible[136] cosmos. Therefore, says [Empedocles] they wandered
He says that the transmigrations and transmutations of the souls into bodies are “hard ways.” This is what he says:—
For [the souls pass from body to body] being changed about and punished by Strife and are not allowed to remain in the One, but are punished in all punishments by Strife. This is what he says:—
p. 377. This is the punishment wherewith the Demiurge punishes, just as a smith forging iron, taking it from the fire, dips it in water. For Fire is the aether, whence the Demiurge casts the souls into the Sea; and the Earth is the ground. Whence he says, from water to Earth, from Earth to Air. This is what he says:—
Therefore, according to Empedocles, Love gathers the hated and tortured and punished souls together into this world. For [Love] is good and has pity on their wailing and the disorder and wickedness created by furious Strife. And she hastens and toils to lead them forth quickly out of the world and to settle them in the One, so that all things brought together by her may come to oneness. It p. 378. is then by reason of this arrangement of this much-divided[140] world by deadly Strife, that Empedocles exhorts his disciples to abstain from all things which have life. For he says that the bodies of animals which are eaten are the dwellings of punished souls, and he teaches those who hear such [his] words to refrain[141] from companying with women, so that they may not cooperate and help in the deeds which Strife effects, ever undoing and rending asunder the work of Love.
Empedocles says that this is the greatest law of the government of the All, speaking somehow thus:—
thus calling Necessity the change by Strife of the One into many and that by Love of many into the One. He says, indeed, that there are four mortal gods, Fire, Water, Earth and Air; and two immortal unbegotten and enemies one to the other for ever [viz.] Strife and Love; and that Strife is ever unjust and grasping and rends asunder what belongs p. 379. to Love and takes it to itself; and that Love is ever good and anxious for unity and calls back to herself and leads and makes one the things rent asunder from the All and tortured and punished in creation by the Demiurge. In some such way does Empedocles philosophize for us on the genesis of the Cosmos and its destruction and its constitution established from good and evil.
And he says that there is a certain conceivable[143] third power which may be conceived[144] from these, speaking somehow like this:—
30. When therefore Marcion or any of his dogs shall bay against the Demiurge, bringing forward arguments from the comparison of good and evil, they should be told that neither the Apostle Paul nor Mark of the maimed finger[148] reported these things. For none of them is written in the Gospel [according] to Mark; [and] Marcion, having stolen them from Empedocles of Agrigentum, the son of Meto, thought until now to conceal the fact that he had taken the whole arrangement of his heresy from Sicily, [after] having transferred the actual words of Empedocles to the Gospel discourses. For now, O Marcion, since you have p. 381. made antithesis[149] of good and evil, I also to-day, following up the teachings you have secretly borrowed[150] set them over against [the originals]. Thou sayest that the Demiurge of the cosmos is wicked.[151] Dost thou not then feel shame in teaching to the Church the words of Empedocles? Thou sayest that there is a good God who destroys the creations of the Demiurge. Dost thou not then clearly preach as good news[152] to thy hearers the good Love of Empedocles? Thou dost forbid marriage and the begetting of children and [dost order thy hearers] to abstain from the meats which God has created for the participation of the faithful and of those who know the truth,[153] having purposely forgotten that thou art teaching the purifications of Empedocles. For, following him as you truly do throughout, you teach your own disciples[154] to avoid meats, lest they should eat some body covering a soul punished by the Demiurge. You dissolve marriages joined by God, [thus] following the teachings of Empedocles so that you may preserve the work of Love undissevered. For marriage according to Empedocles dissevers the One and creates many as we have shown.[155]
p. 382. 31. The earliest and least altered[156] heresy of Marcion, comprising the mingling of good and evil, has been shown by us to be that of Empedocles. But since in our own time, a certain Prepon the Assyrian,[157] a Marcionite, in a book addressed to Bardesianes the Armenian, has undertaken discourses on this heresy, I will not keep silence about this either. Considering that there is a third principle, just and set between good and evil, Prepon also does not thus succeed in escaping the teaching of Empedocles. For Empedocles says that the cosmos is governed by wicked Strife, and the other conceivable [world] by Love, while between the two opposed[158] principles is a just Logos, by whom the things severed by Strife are brought together and are attached by Love to the One. But this same just Logos, p. 383. who fights on the side of Love, Empedocles proclaims as a Muse and invokes her to fight on his side, speaking somehow thus:—
Following this up, Marcion repudiates altogether our Saviour’s Birth, thinking it out of the question that a creature[160] of destructive Strife should become the Logos fighting on the side of Love, that is of the Good. But he said that without birth, in the 15th year of the reign of Tiberius Cæsar, He came down from on high to teach in the synagogues, being between evil and good. For if He is p. 384. a Mediator,[161] he says, He is freed from all nature of evil, for evil, as he says, is the Demiurge and all his works. But He was freed also, he says, from the nature of good, so that He might be a Mediator, as Paul says,[162] which he himself confessed [in the saying] “Why callest thou me good? there is one Good.”
These then are Marcion’s doctrines, whereby he has caused many to err by making use of the words of Empedocles and transferring the philosophy stolen from that person to his own teaching. [Thus] he has compounded a godless heresy which I think has been sufficiently refuted by us. Nor [do we think] that we have omitted anything of those who, having stolen [opinions] from the Greeks, insolently oppose the disciples of Christ, as if these last had become their teachers of these things. But since it seems to us that the opinions of this [Marcion] have been sufficiently exposed,[163] let us see what Carpocrates says.
32. Carpocrates says that the cosmos and the things which are therein, came into being by angels much below the unbegotten Father, but that Jesus was begotten by Joseph and was born like other men, though more just than the rest. And that His soul having been born strong and pure remembered what it had seen in the sphere of the unbegotten God;[165] and that therefore a power was sent down to it from that [Deity], so that by its means it might escape from the world-making angels. And that this [soul][166] having passed through them all and having been freed from them went on high to the presence of the unbegotten Father, and so will the souls[167] [go] who cleave to similar things. And they say that the soul of Jesus, although lawfully trained in Jewish customs, disdained them and therefore received the powers whereby He made of none effect[168] the passions attached to men for their punishment. p. 386. And that therefore the soul which like that of Christ can disdain the world-making rulers, receives in the same way power to do like things. Whence also they reach such [a pitch of] vanity as to say they are like unto Jesus, and even that they are mightier than man, and some of them more excellent than His disciples, such as Peter and Paul and the rest of the Apostles, and that they are in nothing behind Jesus. But that their souls having come from the Transcendent Authority[169] and therefore similarly disdaining the world-makers, are worthy of the same power [as He] and will go to the same place. But that if anyone should disdain more than He the things below, he might become more excellent than He.
p. 387. They practise, then, magic arts, and incantations and [use] philtres and love-feasts, and familiar spirits and dream-senders and other evil works, thinking that they already have authority to lord it over the rulers and makers of this world, nay even over all created in it. Who have themselves been sent forth by Satan for the dishonour[170] of the divine name of the Church before the Gentiles, so that men hearing in one way or another of their doctrines and thinking that we are all even as they, may turn away their ears from the preaching of the Truth, [or] beholding their deeds, may speak evil of us all.
And they consider that [their] souls will change their bodies until they have fulfilled all their transgressions; but that when nothing is left undone, they will be set free to depart to the presence of the God who is above the world-making angels, and that thus all souls will be saved. But if any anticipating matters should combine all transgressions p. 388. in one advent,[171] they will no longer change their bodies, but as having paid all penalties at once, will be freed from further birth in a body. Some of them also brand their disciples in the back part of the lobe of the right ear. And they make [172] images of Christ saying that they were made [in the time] of Pilate.[173]
33. But a certain Cerinthus, having been trained in the schooling of the Egyptians, said that the cosmos did not come into being by the First God, but by a certain Power derived from the Authority set over the universals, which is yet ignorant of the God who is over all. And he supposed Jesus not to have been begotten from a virgin, but to have been born the son of Joseph and Mary like all other men, p. 389. and to have been more wise and just than they. And that, at the Baptism, the Christ in the form of a dove descended upon Him from the Absolute Power[175] which is over the universals. And that then He announced[176] the unknown Father and perfected His own powers; but that in the end the Christ stood away from Jesus, and Jesus suffered and rose again;[177] but that the Christ being spiritual remained impassible.
34. But the Ebionæi admit that the cosmos came into being by the God who is; and concerning Christ they invent[179] the same things as Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They live according to Jewish customs, thinking that they will be justified by the Law and saying that Jesus was justified in practising[180] the Law. Wherefore He was named by God Christ and Jesus, since none of them has fulfilled p. 390. the Law. For if any other had practised the commandments which are in the Law, he would be the Christ. And they say it is possible for them if they do likewise to become Christs; and that He was a man like unto all [men].
35. But a certain Byzantine named Theodotus brought in a new heresy, asserting things about the beginning of the All which partly agree with [the account of] the True Church, since he admits that all things came into being by God. But having taken[182] his [idea of] Christ from the school of the Gnostics and from Cerinthus and Ebion,[183] he considers He appeared in some such fashion as this:—Jesus was a man begotten from a virgin according to the Father’s will, living the common life of all men. And having become most pious,[184] He at length on His baptism in Jordan received the Christ from on high, who descended in the p. 391. form of a dove. Wherefore the powers within Him did not become active, until the Spirit which came down was manifested in Him, which [Spirit] declared Him to be the Christ. But some will have it that He did not become God on the descent of the Spirit; and others that [this took place] on His resurrection from the dead.
36. But while different enquiries were taking place among them[185] a certain man who was also called Theodotus, a money-changer by trade, undertook to say that a certain Melchizedek was the greatest power, and that he was greater than Christ. After the image of whom they allege that Christ happened [to come]. And they like the Theodotians before mentioned say that Jesus was a man, and in the same words [declare] that the Christ descended upon Him.
p. 392. But the opinions[186] of Gnostics are varied, and we do not deem it worth while to recount in detail their foolish doctrines, composed of much absurdity and charged with blasphemy, the most respectable of which those Greeks who philosophized on the Divine have refuted. But one cause of the great conspiracy of these wicked ones was Nicolaus, one of the seven appointed to the diaconate by the Apostles.[187] He, having fallen away from the right doctrine, taught that it was indifferent how men lived and ate: whose disciples having waxed insolent, the Holy Spirit exposed in the Apocalypse as fornicators and eaters of things offered to idols.[188]
37. But a certain Cerdo taking in like manner his starting-point from these [heretics] and from Simon, says that the p. 393. God announced by Moses and [the] Prophets was not the Father of Jesus Christ. For that this God was known, but the Father of the Christ unknowable; and that the first-named was [only] just, but the other, good. The doctrine of this [Cerdo] Marcion confirmed when he took in hand the Antitheses[190] and everything which seemed to him to speak against the Demiurge of all things. And so did Lucian his disciple.
38. Now Apelles who [sprang] from among these men, says thus:—There is a certain good God as Marcion supposed; but he who created all things is [only] just; and there is a third [God] who spoke to Moses, and yet a fourth, a cause of evil. And he names these angels and speaks ill of the Law and the Prophets, deeming the Scriptures of human authorship and false. And he picks out of the Gospels and Epistles the things favourable to him. Yet he clings to the discourses of a certain Philumena as the manifestations[192] p. 394. of a prophetess. And he says that the Christ came down from the powers on high, i. e. from the Good One and was the son of that One, and was not begotten from a virgin, nor did He appear bodiless;[193] but that taking parts from every substance[194] of the All, He made a body, that is from hot and cold and wet and dry. And that in this body He lived unnoticed by the cosmic authorities during the time that He spent in the cosmos. And moreover that having been crucified[195] by the Jews He died, and after three days rose again and appeared to the disciples showing the marks of the nails and [the wound] in his side, and thereby convinced them that He existed and was not a phantom but was incarnate. The flesh [Apelles] says, which He showed, He gave back to the earth whence was its substance, and He desired nothing of others, but merely used [the flesh] for a season. He gave back to each its own, having loosed again the bond of the body, i. e. the hot to the hot, the cold to the cold, the wet to the wet and the dry to the dry,[196] and thus passed to the presence of the good Father, leaving the seed of life to the world to those who believe through the disciples.[197]
p. 395. 39. It seems to us that we have set forth sufficiently these things also. But since we have decided to leave unrefuted no doctrines taught by any [heretic], let us see what has been excogitated by the Docetae.
[1] Of the Basilides with whose doctrines this book opens, little is known. While some would on slender grounds make him a Syrian, there is no doubt that he taught in Egypt and especially in Alexandria, where he seems to have steeped himself in Greek philosophy. This must have been during the reign of Hadrian and some time before the appearance of the far greater heresiarch Valentinus. If we could believe the testimony of Epiphanius, Basilides was a fellow-disciple with Satornilus, to be presently mentioned, of Menander, the immediate successor of Simon Magus; and, according to the more trustworthy witness of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., VII, 17), he himself claimed to be the disciple of Glaucias, “the interpreter” of St. Peter. He had a son Isidore who shared his teaching, and he wrote a treatise in twenty-four books on the Gospels which he called Exegetica. The sect that he founded, although never popular, lingered for some time in Egypt; but there is much probability in Matter’s conjecture (Hist. crit. du Gnost., 2nd ed., III, 36), that most of his followers became the hearers of Valentinus.
Our author’s account of Basilides’ doctrine at first sight differs so widely from that given by Irenæus and his copyists that it was for long supposed that the two accounts were irreconcilable. The late Prof. Hort, however, in his lucid article on the subject in the Dictionary of Christian Biography showed with much skill that this was not so, and that the Basilidian doctrine contained in our text is in all probability that of the Exegetica itself, while the teaching attributed to Basilides by Irenæus and others was the same doctrine largely corrupted by the inconsistent and incoherent superstitions which invariably attach themselves to any faith propagated in secret. The immediate source of Basilides’ own teaching cannot, up to the present time, be satisfactorily traced; but, although its coping-stone, the non-existent Deity, shows some likeness to the Buddhistic ideas which were at any rate known in the Alexandria of his time (Clem. Alex., Strom., I, 15), it is probable that among the relics of the ancient Egyptian religion, then almost extinct, something of the same idea might have been found. His obligation to the Stoic philosophy is well brought out by Hort; and he was doubtless versed in the dialectical methods of Aristotle, which, then as later, formed the universal equipment of the student of philosophy. Hippolytus’ theory that the ground-work of the Basilidian edifice is a conscious or unconscious borrowing from Aristotle derives no support from any Aristotelian writings known to us. Unlike other Gnostics, Basilides displays no animus towards the Jews beyond reducing their Deity to the Ruler of the Hebdomad, or lowest spiritual world, and he accepts as fully as possible the Divinity of Jesus and the authority of the New Testament. Of the Docetism attributed to him by Irenæus and others, there is here no trace, and the Bishop of Lyons’ statement on this point can only be explained by supposing that he here confused Basilides with some other heresiarch.
The distinctive features of Basilides’ teaching as disclosed in our text are, however, plain enough. Rejecting all idea of a pre-existing matter, he derives everything from the Supreme Being, whom he considers to be so unspeakably and inconceivably great that he will not even say of Him that He exists. He it is who from the first decreed not only the foundation of the universe but also the means and agency by which this is to be brought about. Nor do the apparent defects in its constitution involve in Basilides’ system any thwarting of the Divine Will by intermediate agents, or any lapse from duty on their part. All things subsequent to the Supreme Being are in effect His children, and from the Panspermia or Seed-Mass originally let fall by Him emerges the First Sonhood, or purest part of the Sonhood, which, rising from the heap by its own lightness and tenuity, springs upward into the presence of the First Cause, where it remains for the purpose of giving light when needed to the lower parts of creation. This is quickly followed by the Second Sonhood (or Second Part of the Sonhood), which, emerging in like manner, rises not from its own unaided power, but with the assistance of the Boundary Spirit, who must have its origin in the Seed-Mass, and who is left as the Boundary between the visible and the invisible part of the universe when the Second Sonhood passes to the Ogdoad or Eighth Heaven. This Eighth Heaven is under the sway of the Great Ruler, a functionary emitted by the Seed-Mass for the purpose of governing this abode of perfection, from which it may be inferred that the Second Sonhood like the First ultimately returns to the presence of the Supreme Being. In his organization of this Eighth Heaven, the Great Ruler is much helped by the Son whom he calls forth from the Seed-Mass, who is expressly stated to be greater and wiser than his own Father.
There remains in the Seed-Mass two other world-creating powers. The first of these is the maker of the Seven Heavens or Hebdomad, which can here hardly be the planets, because they are expressly said to be sublunary. He, too, produces from the Seed-Mass a Son greater and wiser than himself, who again, it may be supposed, assists his father in the organization of this Hebdomad. What form this organization took we are not told, although there is some talk of 365 beings who are all “Dominions and Powers and Authorities” with a ruler called Habrasax. Below this Hebdomad, however, comes this world of ours called the “Formlessness,” which has, it is said, “no leader nor guardian nor demiurge” (i. e. architect), everything happening in it as decreed by the Supreme Being from the first. Yet this Formlessness contains within it the Third Sonhood (or third part of the Sonhood) whose mission is apparently to guide the souls of men to the place for which they are predestined, which it does by imparting to them some of its own nature. Then, when the time came for the Coming of the Saviour, a light shining from the highest heavens was transmitted through the intermediate places to the Son of the Hebdomad and fell upon “Jesus the son of Mary,” and He after the Passion ascended like the two first parts of the Sonhood to the Divine Presence. In due time the third part of the Sonhood will, it is said, follow Him. When this happens, the soul predestined to the Seven Heavens will pass thither, those more enlightened will be admitted to the Eighth Heaven, and those entitled to the most glorious destiny of all will probably ascend with the third part of the Sonhood to the Highest. On the two inferior classes, there will then fall the “Great Ignorance,” a merciful oblivion which will prevent them from remembering or otherwise being troubled in their beatitude by the knowledge of the still better things above them.
How the salvation of these souls is to be effected there is no indication in Hippolytus, and he leaves us in entire doubt as to whether Basilides allowed any free-will to man in the matter. It is probable that he taught the doctrine of transmigration as a means of purification from sins or faults committed in ignorance. But it is several times asserted that he looked on suffering as a cleansing process for the soul, and that he did not admit the existence of evil (see Hort’s article on Basilides in D.C.B., I, pp. 274, 275 for references). About some of his teaching there was deliberate concealment (ibid., p. 279), and Irenæus (I, xxiv. 6), tells us that his followers were taught to declare that while they were “no longer Jews” they were “not yet” (or perhaps “more than”) Christians. In this we may perhaps see the influence of the rubrics of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and the beginning of that secret propagation of religion which was to find its ripest fruit in Manichæism. For the rest, although Irenæus (I, xxiv. 5) tells us that Basilides, like Simon, Valentinus, and other Gnostics, taught that the body of Jesus was a phantasm, and even that Simon of Cyrene had been crucified in His stead, there appears no trace of this in our text, and it is possible that the Bishop of Lyons is here again confusing Basilides’ doctrines with those of his successors.