Irenaeus of Lyons · a new plain-English translation from the original language
By exposing this bit of sophistry of theirs, it has now been made plain that neither prophets nor Apostles ever spoke of a second god, nor acknowledged any lord apart from the one true God. Still less did the Lord himself, who directed that Caesar's due be rendered to Caesar and God's due to God — thereby naming Caesar simply Caesar, and acknowledging God simply as God. That same statement of his, that no one can be enslaved to two masters, he glosses in like fashion by saying that one cannot serve both God and mammon — acknowledging God as God, and calling mammon by its proper name. He is not styling mammon "lord" when he says a person cannot be enslaved to two masters; he is instead teaching his followers that, in giving themselves to God's service, they must not fall under mammon's yoke or be governed by it. Everyone, he says elsewhere, who commits sin has become sin's bondservant. Just as he can call those who serve sin its slaves without thereby making sin itself into a god, so too he calls those who serve mammon its slaves without making mammon a god. Now the word "mammon," in the speech of the Jews — which the Samaritans likewise use, with a slight change in form — is rendered "Mamuel," and means gluttonous: that is, a person unable to restrain himself from the gullet. So then, the strong man is not first tied up and only afterward has his goods carried off. His furnishings and his household were ourselves, back when we lived in rebellion: he made use of us as suited him, and a foul spirit had taken up residence in us. Yet he held no strength against the one who bound him and stripped his house, but only against those men who lay under his control, since he had turned their judgment away from God — men whom the Lord then set free. As Jeremiah likewise states, the Lord bought back Jacob and delivered him out of the grip of one mightier than himself. Now if the text meant something other than the one who binds him and carries off his possessions — if it merely called him "strong" and nothing further — he would stand as an unbeaten strong man. But he also added the one who prevails; for the one who binds holds fast, while the one bound is held. And this comparison holds no real parity, so that the runaway slave is not set on equal footing with the Lord: for neither he nor anything whatsoever among created and subordinate things can be set beside the Word of God, through whom everything came into being, who is our Lord Jesus Christ.
That Angels, Archangels, Thrones, and Dominions — whatever their rank — were established and fashioned alike through the Word of him who is God over all, John made plain in his own way. Having spoken of God's Word, that this Word existed within the Father, he went on to state that through him everything came to be, and apart from him nothing came into being at all. David likewise, once he had catalogued the works deserving praise — naming precisely the things already mentioned, the heavens together with their entire host — went on to add that he gave the order and they were brought into existence, he spoke and they took shape. To whom, then, was the order given? Plainly to the Word — through whom, as he says, the heavens were set firm, and all their host by the breath issuing from his mouth. And that he fashioned everything freely, exactly as he chose, David says again elsewhere that our God dwells in the heights of heaven, and has accomplished on earth whatsoever pleased him. There is, then, a real distinction between what was established by the establisher and what was fashioned by the fashioner. He himself is unmade, without origin, without end, wanting nothing, complete in himself, and moreover bestowing on everything else this very gift — that it should exist; whereas whatever he fashioned has taken on a beginning. And anything that has taken on a beginning, and is liable to dissolve, and stands in dependence upon and need of its maker, must of necessity — even by the reckoning of those with only modest skill in drawing such distinctions — carry a separate designation: so that he who fashioned all things, together with his own Word, alone rightly bears the title God and Lord; while the things fashioned are not entitled to share that same name, nor may they properly lay claim to the title belonging to their Maker.