Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[That in no respect...] Matters standing thus, these fools claim to ascend above the Demiurge, and on this ground proclaim themselves superior to that God who fashioned and beautified the heavens, the earth, the seas, and everything within them. They wish to be reckoned spiritual, though -- so great is their impiety -- they are in fact shamefully carnal; while he who made his angels spirits, who wraps himself in light as though it were a robe, and grasps, so to speak, the circle of the earth within his hand, before whom its inhabitants are reckoned as grasshoppers, and who is Lord and Demiurge of the whole spiritual substance -- him they call merely animal. Beyond doubt they thereby show their own madness clearly, and, as though truly thunderstruck like the Giants told of in the old fables, they raise their voices against God, puffed up with vain presumption and unstable pride -- men for whose cure all the hellebore of the whole earth would not suffice to purge out so great a folly.
[One ought to be shown better by his works.] From what, then, do they show themselves better than the Demiurge? -- that we too may descend, for the necessity of the argument, to comparing God with madmen, stooping to their own reasoning and often refuting them from their own doctrines (though may God be gracious to us in this, since we say these things not to compare him with them, but to refute and overturn their madness) -- a thing at which many of the foolish stand amazed, as though they could learn from these men something greater than the truth itself. And that saying which is written, 'Seek, and you shall find,' they interpret to mean that one should discover oneself to be above the Demiurge, calling themselves greater and better than God, and themselves spiritual while the Demiurge is merely animal; and on this ground they claim to ascend above God, entering the Pleroma themselves while God remains in the middle place. Let them, then, show themselves better than the Demiurge by their works; for a man ought to be shown better not by what he says, but by what he does.
What work, then, will they show accomplished by themselves, or by their Savior, or by their own Mother, that is greater or more splendid or more reasonable than the things made by him who arranged all this? What heavens have they made firm? What earth have they made solid? What stars have they sent forth? What luminaries have they set shining? With what circuits have they bound them? What rains, or colds, or snows, fitted to the season and to each region, have they brought upon the earth? What heat and dryness, in turn, have they set opposite these? What rivers have they made to abound? What springs have they brought forth? Out of what blossoms and timber have they decked the world that lies under heaven? What host of living creatures have they shaped, some endowed with reason and some without it, each given a comely form? And everything else that stands fixed by the power of God and is steered by his wisdom -- who could tally it item by item, or plumb the depth of the wisdom of the God who fashioned it? And what of those realities above the heaven, which never pass away -- how immense are they: Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers past counting? Measured against any single one of these accomplishments, what do they have to display, done by themselves or from themselves, when they themselves are this God's own making and molding? For whether it was the Savior or their own Mother -- to speak in their own terms, refuting them by their own words as liars -- who, as they say, used this Demiurge to make an image of the things within the Pleroma, and of the whole vision she saw concerning the Savior, she used him as being better and more fitted to accomplish her will through him; for she would never have shaped the images of such great things through an inferior being, but through a better one. [...that he is spiritual, and the Demiurge merely animal.] For they themselves too, as they say, existed then only as a spiritual conception, according to the contemplation of those attendants who surrounded Pandora. And these remained empty, the Mother accomplishing nothing through them -- an idle and useless conception, whether through her or through the Savior, fit for nothing, for nothing appears to have been made through them. But he who, according to them, was sent forth as God -- though inferior to them by their own reasoning, since they will have him be merely animal -- proved active, effective, and capable in every work, so that through him the images of all things came to be: not only the visible things but the invisible as well -- Angels, Archangels, Dominions, Powers, and Virtues -- all made through him, evidently as the better one, one able to serve the will. Yet nothing does the Mother appear to have made through these beings, as they themselves confess; so that one may justly judge them to have been the miscarriage of their Mother's failed delivery. For no midwives attended her, and for that reason they were cast forth like an abortion, useless for anything, fit for no work by their Mother. And still they style themselves superior to the one through whom things so great and so many were formed and put in order -- when, by the very logic they themselves employ, they turn out to be far the lesser.
And just as with two tools of a craft, or two instruments, of which the craftsman always keeps one in hand and in use, doing with it whatever he wishes and displaying his art and wisdom, while the other remains empty, idle, and unused, through which the craftsman is seen to accomplish nothing at all and which he employs in no action -- if someone should then say that this useless, empty, idle instrument is better and worth more than the one he actually uses in his work, the one through which the craftsman himself is glorified -- such a person would rightly be judged dull and out of his mind. So too these men, calling themselves spiritual and better, and the Demiurge merely animal, and for this reason claiming to ascend above him and enter the Pleroma to their consorts (for, as they themselves confess, they are female), while God is inferior and therefore remains in the middle place -- yet they have no proof of this to offer. For the works were made by the Demiurge, while they themselves can show nothing worthy of reason made by themselves; they are mad with the utmost, incurable madness. But if they should contend and say that whatever is material -- for instance the heaven, and the whole world contained beneath it -- was made by the Demiurge, while whatever is more spiritual than these, the things above the heaven, such as the Principalities, Powers, Angels, Archangels, Dominions, and Virtues, were made through the spiritual offspring which they claim to be themselves: we have already shown, first, from the Scriptures of the Lord, that all these things, visible and invisible, were the work of one God. As for these men, they merit no more credence than the Scriptures do; nor ought we to forsake the sayings of the Lord, and of Moses, and of the rest of the prophets who announced the truth, and believe these men instead, who assert nothing sound but babble unstable fantasies. Further, even granting that the things above the heavens were made through them, let them explain to us what sort of nature the invisible beings have; let them tally the multitude of the Angels and set forth the ranking of the Archangels; let them unfold the mysteries of the Thrones, and teach the distinctions among the Dominions, Principalities, Powers, and Virtues. But they cannot say. Therefore these things were not made through them. But if these things were made by the Demiurge, as indeed they were, and are spiritual and holy, then he who accomplished spiritual things is not merely animal, and their great blasphemy is dissolved. [...outside the body.] For that there are spiritual orders in the heavens, all the Scriptures proclaim, and Paul too testifies that they are spiritual, when he indicates that he was snatched up as far as the third heaven, and once more that he was borne into paradise and heard sayings that cannot be spoken, words no human being is permitted to voice. And what would it have profited him, either his entry into paradise or his being taken up to the third heaven, since all these lie under the Demiurge's power, if he were only there beginning to witness and hear mysteries said to lie above the Demiurge, as some are bold enough to claim? For had he gone there to be instructed in the order above the Demiurge, he would in no way have stayed confined within what belongs to the Demiurge, nor would he have surveyed only part of it and not the whole (for there still remained, by their own account, a fourth heaven, so that he might draw near to the Demiurge and see the sevenfold order subject to him) -- but rather he would have been received, perhaps, even as far as the middle place, that is, to the Mother, so as to learn from her the things within the Pleroma. For the inner man within him, who indeed spoke in him, being invisible, as they say, could have arrived not merely at the third heaven but at their Mother herself. For if they claim that their own 'man' -- that is, the inner man -- immediately outstrips the Demiurge and passes to the Mother, this ought all the more to have taken place for the inward man of the Apostle; since the Demiurge would not have stood in his way, being already, on their own account, himself made subject to the Savior. And even if he had hindered him, it would have availed nothing, for it is not possible for him to be stronger than the providence of the Father -- especially since this inner, invisible man is said by them to be from the Demiurge as well. Given, then, that Paul related this as a matter of great weight, these men assuredly do not rise above the seventh heaven, since they are no better than the Apostle. Should they claim to outdo him, their own deeds will refute them, for nothing comparable has ever been claimed on their behalf. And it was for this reason that he went on to say: 'Whether in the body or apart from the body, God knows' -- lest the body be supposed to have had no part in that vision, since it too was to share in what he had seen and heard; nor again should anyone say, because of the weight of the body, that he was not taken up any further -- but rather that he was allowed, even apart from the body, to gaze upon spiritual mysteries -- the works of that God who established heaven and earth, shaped man, and set him within paradise, and who furnishes such witnesses among those who, like the Apostle, have been brought to perfection in the love of God. [Showing that the Demiurge is not merely animal.] He, then, made the spiritual things too, which the Apostle came to witness as far as the third heaven; and the sayings that cannot be told, which no human tongue is allowed to voice because they are spiritual, he likewise grants to those found worthy, as he chooses -- for paradise belongs to him, and he is in truth God's own Spirit, no merely animal Demiurge; otherwise he would never have accomplished spiritual things. But if he is merely animal, the one through whom spiritual things were made, let them tell us so. But they cannot even show that anything was made by the offspring of their Mother, which they claim to be themselves. For these men cannot make so much as a fly, or a gnat, or any such contemptible little creature, apart from the process which God ordained from the beginning through the emission of seed among creatures of the same kind, by which such living things naturally are and continue to be made -- let alone anything spiritual. But not even by the Mother alone, they say, was anything made; rather, they say this Demiurge who was sent forth is lord of the whole operation. And yet, while insisting that the body too will share in the reward, just as it shares in righteousness -- if the difficulty is removed for those who think one cannot be taken up together with the body to these realities -- who then will grant that we, even without the body, might sometime behold those spiritual mysteries, which are the works of this same Demiurge who made all things, and who is Demiurge and lord of the whole operation? -- him they call merely animal, while calling themselves spiritual, though they are craftsmen and lords of no operation whatsoever, not even of what lies outside themselves, let alone of their own bodies. Indeed, they themselves often suffer many things in the body against their will, even while calling themselves spiritual and better than the Demiurge.
So they will be justly refuted by us and shown to have strayed far indeed from the truth. For either the Savior made the things that were made through this being — in which case he is shown to be not inferior to those things but superior, since he turns out to be the maker of these very beings, for they themselves are among the things that were made. How, then, does it follow that these beings are spiritual while the one through whom they themselves were made is merely animal? Or else — and this is the only view that is true, as we have shown through very many arguments, with the clearest possible demonstrations — it was he, unaided, who fashioned every existing thing out of his own free choice and by the strength that belongs to him, on his own initiative, shaping and bringing to completion the whole of it, and his purpose stands as the very foundation of everything that is. He alone is found to be the God who made all things, alone omnipotent, and alone the Father who founded and made all things, both visible and invisible, both things with sense and things without it, both the heavens and the earth, through the Word who is his power; and he fitted and arranged everything by his wisdom, and comprehends all things while himself being comprehended by none. He is the fabricator, he the founder, he the discoverer, he the maker, he the Lord of all. There is nothing besides him, nothing above him, no mother such as they invent, no unnameable Aeon, nothing at all of what these people and all the other heretics rave about. There is only the one God the fabricator, exalted over every rank and dominion, sovereignty and might: this is the Father, this is God, this is the founder, this is the maker, this is the fabricator, who made these things through himself — that is, through his Word and through his Wisdom — the heaven and the earth and the seas and everything that is in them. This one is just, this one is good; this is he who formed man, who planted paradise, who fashioned the world, who brought on the flood, who saved Noah; here is the God of Abraham, likewise of Isaac, and of Jacob too, God of those still living, whom the Law proclaims, whom the prophets announce, whom Christ reveals, whom the apostles hand down, whom the Church believes. Such is the Father belonging to our Lord Jesus Christ, and through his own Word — namely his Son — he stands disclosed and shown openly to every one granted such disclosure; since it is those to whom the Son has unveiled him who truly come to know him. And the Son, always coexisting with the Father, has from of old and from the beginning always revealed the Father, both to angels and archangels and powers and virtues, and to all to whom God wills to reveal him.