Chapter 13

§ 1.

Moreover, the first order itself of their Emanation is indefensible, as we thus prove. There emanated, they say, from The Deep and from His Thought,¹ Mind and The Truth: which point is demonstrable the opposite way. For Mind is that very thing which is originative and chief, and in a manner the principle and fountain of all perception. But Thought, which comes from this, is a movement [thereof] of any kind or on any subject. It holds not therefore for Mind to be an emanation from the Deep and Thought: for it were more like truth, should they say, that of the Great Father and of this Mind, proceeded a daughter, Thought, by way of emanation. For Thought is not the mother of Mind, as they say, but Mind became the Father of Thought.

And how again did Mind emanate from the First Father,² occupying as it does the first and chiefest place of the hidden and invisible affection³ which is within Him? From which capability are produced Sense, and Thought, and Conception, and such things: which are not other and apart from Understanding, but are the movements (such as they are) of that very faculty, as we said before, following each other in thought concerning any thing; receiving names from their continuation and increase, not from any substantial change, and limited for our knowledge’ sake, and all together communicated to the word: Perception abiding within and forming, and administering, and governing, freely and of its own power, and just as it will, the things which have been now mentioned.

§ 2.

For the first motion thereof [i.e. of the Understanding] on any subject, is called a Thought; but when it goes on and spreads, and takes up the whole soul, it is termed an Imagination. But this Imagination dwelling long upon the same point, and being in a manner recognized, is named Reflection. And Reflection far extended becomes a purpose: and the growth of a purpose, and moving thereof far and wide, is mental Deliberation: which though it remain within the Mind is most properly called a Word; and from this proceeds the Emanative Word. Yet all the aforesaid are one and the same thing, receiving their beginning from the Understanding, and acquiring names as they are superadded. Much as the human body, now tender, now manly, now in old age, receives epithets from its growth and continuance, not from any change of substance, or loss of the Body itself: so is it here also. For what a man inwardly discerns, on that he also meditates; and what he meditates on, in that he is also skilled, and in what he is skilled, for that he also takes counsel, and for what he takes counsel, that he also plans in his mind; and what he plans in his mind, that he also speaks. But all these, as we said, are guided by Understanding: itself being invisible, and from itself by the aforesaid means, as by a ray, sending forth the Word, but itself not sent forth of any.

§ 3.

And of men indeed it is allowable to speak thus,⁴ compound as they are in nature, and made up of body and soul. But those who say that Thought emanated from God, and Mind from Thought, and so from them in order, The Word; are first to be refuted as misapplying the notion of emanations; afterwards again as framing their descriptions from human affections and passions and energies, while of God they know nothing. Here for instance, they apply to the Father of all the conditions of human speech; to Him, Who all the while they say is unknown to all; and while they deny that He made the world, lest forsooth He should be thought insignificant, they nevertheless assign to Him the affections and passions of men. But if they had known the Scriptures, and been instructed by the Truth, they would know of course that God is not as men are, neither are His Thoughts as the thoughts of men.⁵ For very distant is the Father of all from these affections and passions, which befall mankind: and He is simple and uncompounded, and of like members, and Himself entirely like and equal to Himself; being as He is all Mind, and all spirit, and all perception and all thought and all reason, and all hearing, and all eye, and all light, and all over the fountain of all good things: such are the expressions concerning God, which suggest themselves to the devout and pious.

§ 4.

Now He is beyond all expression in words, to a degree above all this,⁶ yet also because of all this. Thus He shall be well and rightly termed a Mind apt to receive all objects, but not like the Mind of men; and Very well shall He be called Light, but nothing resembling the light which is with us. So neither in any other respect will the Father of all resemble any weakness of men. And though for Love’s sake He is spoken of in these ways, yet for greatness we feel that He is above all these. If therefore even in men the Mind itself does not emanate, neither is that [faculty] separated from the living person, from which itself other things emanate, only its motions and affections come within observation; much less will God, Who is All Mind, be in any wise separated from Himself, nor will it be in Him as when one thing emanates from another.

§ 5.

For if He in that way sent out Mind;⁷ the sender forth thereof, by their account, is understood to be a compounded and corporeal Person; and so we have a separate existence, on the one hand, of God, from Whom the emanation took place, on the other hand of the Mind which emanated. But if they say, Mind emanated from Mind; they cut in pieces and apportion the Mind of God. And whither, and whence, did it emanate? For that which emanates from any thing, emanates into some subject. But what subject was in existence earlier than the Mind of God, into which they affirm it to have emanated? Yea, and how great was the room, to receive and embrace the Mind of God? But if they say it was as the ray from the Sun: even as among us the air exists as a subject to receive the ray, and must be of elder existence than the ray itself: so in that region let them shew somewhat existing into which the Mind of God emanated; something apt to receive it and elder than it. Moreover it will be necessary, as we see the Sun, less in size than all things, sending out rays to a distance from itself, so to affirm of the First Father that He sent forth a ray without Himself and to a distance. But what can be imagined without God, or far from Him, into which He sent forth His Ray?

§ 6.

But if they say, It emanated not without the Father, but is in the Father Himself:⁸ first of all the expression will be unmeaning, that it did at all emanate. For how did it emanate, if it was within the Father? For emanation is the manifestation of that which emanates exterior to him who sends it forth. Then again, after such emanation, the Word also which comes thereof will have his existence within the Father, and so too will the other emanations of the Word. Now then they will not be ignorant of the Father, being within Him; nor according to the scale of descending emanations will any one have less knowledge of Him, all being alike on all sides comprehended by the Father. Yea, and they will all alike abide impassible; being in the bowels of the Father, and no one of them will be in a state of deficiency. For the Father is not a Being in deficiency: except perchance, as in a great circle a lesser one is contained, and in this again another still less; or, as by some similitude of a sphere or of a square, they affirm the Father to comprehend within Himself all ways, in the likeness of a sphere, or in a quadrangular form, the rest of the emanating Æons, each one of them being circumscribed by that which is above it, being greater, and circumscribing that which comes after it, being less; and that accordingly the least and last of all being stationed in the centre, and far separated from the Father, knew not the first Father. If however they so speak, they will shut up in figure and outline Him Whom they call The Deep, as both circumscribing and being circumscribed: for they will be also forced to confess that there is somewhat also without Him, which circumscribes Him. And nevertheless their statement will lose itself in infinity concerning the Beings which contain and are contained, and all will evidently appear to be inclosed bodies.

§ 7.

And besides this, they must either confess Him to be void, or whatsoever is within Him,⁹ all those beings will alike be partakers of the Father. As in the water if you make circles, or round or square figures, all these will alike partake of the water: as also what things are framed in the air must needs partake of the air: and those in the light, of the light: so also those who are within the Father, will all alike partake of Him, ignorance having no place among them. For where there is participation of the Father, filling all (if indeed He do fill all) there ignorance may not be¹⁰. Thus will be refuted their work of deterioration, and the emanation of matter, and the rest of their framing of the world; all which things they say had their being from passion and ignorance. If on the other hand they allow Him to be void, falling into exceeding blasphemy, they will deny His Spirituality. For how is he spiritual; who cannot even fill up the spaces¹¹ that are within Himself?

§ 8.

Now this which hath been said of the sending forth of Mind is equally suited for a reply to those who are on Basilides’ side; as also to the other Gnostics from whom these among others received the root of their doctrine of Emanations,¹² as has been proved against them in the first Book.

Now then that the first emanation of their Νοῦς,¹³ i.e., of their Mind, is open to refutation and impossible, we have evidently shewn. But let us consider of the rest also. For from him they say emanated The Word and The Life, framers of this Pleroma: adopting also from what befals man a certain mode of emanation of the Logos, i.e., of the Word, and making conjectures contrary to God; as though there were some great discovery in their statement, that the Word emanates from the Mind. Whereas all of course know, that in regard of men indeed this is properly said, but in Him Who is God over all, being as He is All Mind and All Word, as we have said before, and having in Himself nothing earlier or later, nor any thing belonging to another, but continuing altogether equal and alike and one, no such emanation in that kind of order is conceivable. As he sinneth not who calls Him all sight and all hearing (now wherein He sees, therein also He hears; and wherein He hears, therein also He sees); so likewise whosoever saith that He is all Mind and all Word, and that in Whom Mind is, in Him also is the Word, and that this Mind is His Word:—that man will indeed still have inadequate notions of the Father of all; more becoming however than these, who transfer to the eternal Word of God the mode of production of the uttered word of man, assigning also a beginning and a regular course to that production, even as to his own word. And how will the Word of God, yea rather God Himself, being the Word, differ from the word of men, if it had the same succession and emanation in its mode of being produced?

§ 9.

And they erred also concerning Life, saying that it was sent forth in the sixth place;¹⁴ whereas the should set it before all, because God is Life, and Incorruption, and Truth. And they have undergone processes of emanation, not in the way of actual descent, or any such things; rather they are names given to those Virtues which are always with God, so far as it is possible and meet for men to hear and to speak of God. For together with the term God will be understood Mind, and the Word, and Life, and Incorruption, and Truth, and Wisdom, and Goodness, and all such things. And neither can one say that Mind is more ancient than Life (for Mind itself is Life); nor that Life comes later in comparison of Mind, lest we make Him at some time lifeless, Who is the Mind of all, i.e., God. But if they should say, Life was indeed in the Father, but it was put forth¹⁵ in the sixth place, that the Word might live: much sooner surely ought it to have emanated in the fourth place, that Mind might live: nay yet before this, with The Deep, that their Deep might live. But to count Silence along with their First Father, and to assign her to Him for a wife, and not to include Life in the reckoning, how is it not above all folly?

§ 10.

But concerning that which follows these, the second emanation of the Man and the Church,¹⁶ their very parents, the men of Knowledge falsely so called, contend with each other, claiming each their own rights, and convicting themselves of being bad thieves; saying (as is plausible) that it better suits the idea of emanation, for the Word to proceed from the Man, than the Man from the Word; and that there exists a man before the Word, and that this is He Who is God over all. And thus far, as we said before, all the affections of men, and movements of the mind, and productions of various kinds of thought and utterings of words they have made out by probable conjecture, but without probability have feigned them concerning God. That is, the things which befall men, and which they recognize as experienced by themselves, those they apply to the reason of God, and so appear to those who know not God to speak with propriety; and while by these human passions they pervert their understanding, while they talk of generation and emanation as befalling the Word of God in the fifth degree, they profess to be teaching wonderful mysteries, unspeakable, and high, and known to no one else; of which, they say, our Lord spake the words, Seek and ye shall find: that they might seek forsooth, how Mind and Truth proceeded from the Deep and Silence; whether again of these come the Word and Life; finally from the Word and Life the Man and the Church.