Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[Heading, badly damaged in the source: a demonstration concerning the Demiurge and the Only-begotten.] Since, then, the Demiurge is ignorant of all these things, they say that the Savior honored the Pleroma in the act of creation through the mother, sending forth likenesses and images of the things that are above. But that it was impossible for anything to exist outside the Pleroma — in which they say images were made of the things within the Pleroma — or for this world to have been fashioned by anyone other than the first God, we have already shown. But since it is worthwhile to overturn them from every side and convict them of falsehood, we say further against them: if these things were made after the image of the things above, in honor of the things above, by the Savior, then they ought always to endure, so that what has been honored may remain forever in honor. But if they pass away, what use is there in so brief a span of honor, an honor which once did not exist and again will not exist? [Some words are illegible here in the source, evidently disputing the notion of receiving God in this manner and comparing it to a supposedly superior wisdom.] Further, what keeps the beings above, who live in perpetual leisure, from understanding — a thing no one but a madman would grant? The Savior, then, will be shown by us to be more a seeker of glory than a true honorer of the things above. For what honor is it to things that are eternal, when the things offering the honor are themselves temporal? There is no worth in an honor that quickly passes away, but only in one that endures as long as possible. Things that are destroyed as soon as they are made will rather be judged to have been made in insult to those supposed to be honored by them; and it is an insult to treat what is eternal in such a way, corrupting and dissolving its image. Yet suppose their mother had never wept, never laughed, and never sunk into perplexity? The Savior would have had nothing with which to honor the Pleroma — nothing but that extreme confusion, which has no substance of its own, by which to honor the Forefather.
O honor of vainglory, which passes at once and no longer appears! There will come some Aeon in which such an honor will be reckoned never to have existed at all, and the things above will then stand dishonored — or else the Mother must again be sent forth weeping and in perplexity, for the honor of the Pleroma. O image both unlike its original and blasphemous at once! You tell me that an image was sent forth by the Maker of the world — O Only-begotten, whom you also wish to be the Mind of the Father of all — and that this image is ignorant even of itself; ignorant also of its own condition; ignorant also of the Mother, and of everything belonging to the things that exist and to the things made by him. Are you not ashamed to carry ignorance in this manner all the way up to the Only-begotten in person? Supposing these things were fashioned by the Savior in the likeness of the things above, and the being fashioned after that likeness is ignorant to such a degree, then a corresponding ignorance (taken spiritually) must of necessity be found surrounding him as well — surrounding the very one whose likeness the ignorant being bears. There is simply no way, given that both were emitted in spiritual fashion, neither molded nor put together, for the likeness to have been kept intact in some respects while the image of that likeness sent forth here was defaced in others, if it must truly answer to the likeness of that emission above. But if it is not alike, the charge falls on the Savior, who sent forth an unlike image, as though he were a defective craftsman — nor can they say the Savior lacked the power of emission, since they call him 'the All.' [A phrase is illegible here.] In vain, then, does anyone try to correct the unlikeness of the images. If the image is unlike, the craftsman is at fault, and according to them the blame falls on the Savior. But if it is alike, then that identical ignorance will turn up surrounding the Mind of their Forefather also, that is, the Only-begotten: the Mind of the Father was ignorant of himself, ignorant also of the Father, and ignorant also of the things made by him. But if that one does know both himself and the being made after his likeness by the Savior, then he must also know the things like to it — and their whole argument thereby collapses. HOW THEIR ACCOUNT OF THE IMAGES RUNS OFF INTO THE IMMEASURABLE. Apart from this, how can the things of creation — so various, so many, and so innumerable — be images of those thirty Aeons within the Pleroma, whose names, as they give them, we set out in the book before this one? They will not be able to fit not only the whole variety of creation, but not even the variety of any single part of it — whether heavenly, earthly, or aquatic — to the smallness of their Pleroma. For that their Pleroma consists of thirty Aeons, they themselves testify; but that within a single part of what has been mentioned there are to be counted, not thirty, but many thousands of species, anyone willing to admit the truth can show. How then can things so numerous in kind, so contrary to one another, and so destructive of one another be images and likenesses of thirty Aeons — unless the Aeons themselves also exist in mutual opposition, and are not all equal and alike, with no difference among themselves? For if these are truly their images, then just as men say some persons are by nature wicked and some by nature good, so it would be necessary to show such differences existing also among the Aeons, saying that some were emitted good by their very nature and others evil by their very nature, so that the invention of the image might correspond to the Aeons. Further, since in the world some creatures are tame and others wild, some harmless and others harmful and destructive of the rest; and some belong to the earth, some to the water, some fly, and some belong to the heavens — the Aeons too must be shown to have such dispositions, if indeed these things are their images. And the eternal fire, which the Father prepared for the devil and his angels — of which Aeon, in turn, is this the image? For it too is numbered among the things of creation. And if they say these are images of the passion of the Aeon who suffered, then, first, they act impiously toward their own mother, calling her the originator of evil and corruptible images. And further, how can things so many, so unlike, and so contrary in nature belong to one and the same image? And if they say the Pleroma has many angels, and that the many things here below are images of these, even so their reasoning will not hold together. For first they must show contrary differences among the angels of the Pleroma, corresponding to the contrary natures of the images that lie beneath them. Then again, since the angels attending the Maker are many and innumerable, as all the prophets confess — ten thousand times ten thousand standing beside him, and thousands upon thousands ministering to him — then, by their own logic, the angels of the Maker will have as their images the angels of the Pleroma, and creation will remain intact as an image of the Pleroma without any further need of the thirty Aeons to account for its manifold variety. Further still, if these things were made according to a likeness, after the likeness of what, in turn, were those other things made? For if the Maker of the world did not make these things of himself but merely copied them, as they idly claim, whence did their Bythos derive the pattern for the arrangement he himself first sent forth? It follows, then, that he received the pattern from some other being above him, and that other again from yet another. And in this way the account of images will run off endlessly into the immeasurable — just as happens also with their gods — unless we fix our understanding on one Craftsman and one God, who made the things that were made of himself. Will someone allow that men have devised something useful for life by themselves, and yet not allow that God, who completed the world, fashioned of himself the pattern of the things made, and the design of their ordered arrangement?
But how, moreover, can these things be their images, when they are contrary to them and can have nothing in common with them? Things that are contrary to one another can indeed be destructive of one another, but cannot be images of one another — just as water is not an image of fire, nor light of darkness, and so with all such pairs; they will never be images of each other. So too the things that are corruptible, earthly, composite, and passing away cannot be images of things that, according to them, are spiritual — unless those spiritual things themselves are also confessed to be composite, circumscribed, and possessed of shape, and no longer spiritual, diffuse, abundant, and incomprehensible. For it is necessary that a thing possess shape and circumscription in order to be a true image, and it is settled that those other things are not of that kind. But if they say that those things are spiritual, diffuse, and incomprehensible, how can things that exist in a shape and within circumscription be images of things that are without shape and incomprehensible?
But if they say that these things are images not according to shape, nor according to form, but according to the number and order of their emission, then, in the first place, these things ought not to be called images and likenesses of the Aeons above at all. For things that have neither the appearance nor the shape of those Aeons — how are they images of them? And besides, they ought then to match the numbers and emissions of the higher Aeons as the same and similar to those belonging to the created order. But as it stands, while displaying thirty Aeons, and yet claiming that so vast a multitude of things existing in creation are images of these thirty, they will justly be convicted by us as senseless.