Chapter 18

§ 1.

Again, how is it not futile, their affirming His very Wisdom to have been in ignorance, and degradation, and passion?¹ which things are foreign and contrary to Wisdom: they are no affections of hers. For where is improvidence and ignorance of expediency, there Wisdom is not. Wherefore let them no longer call Wisdom “the Æon which suffered;” either the name or the suffering they must give up. Neither again let them call the whole Pleroma “spiritual,” since this Æon had his station therein, while involved in such eager affections, as not even any courageous soul, much less spiritual substance, may admit.

§ 2.

And how again could any Idea of his, going forth with passion, come to have a separate existence?² For an Idea is understood in relation to some person, but never will come to be apart by itself: the good Idea displacing and swallowing up the bad one, as soundness does indisposition. For what was the Idea which preceded the passion? To search out the Father, and to consider His greatness. And what was it afterwards convinced of, and then recovered? That the Father is incomprehensible and undiscoverable. It was not therefore a good thing, its wishing to know the Father (and therefore also it was liable to suffering): but after it was persuaded that the Father is beyond search, and was recovering. Yea, that very Mind which was seeking the Father ceased by their account to seek any more, upon learning the Father’s incomprehensibility.

§ 3.

How then could an Idea, parted [from the mind], conceive passions,³ which were themselves in their turn affections of it? For an affection takes place towards some person: it cannot be, nor last, by itself apart. Yea, this is not only incongruous, but also contrary to our Lord’s saying, Seek and ye shall find.⁴ For the Lord by searching and finding the Father completes His disciples to perfection: but that Christ of theirs, who is above, made the Æons complete and perfect by directing them not to seek the Father, on the ground that such as they might labour, they would not find Him. And themselves indeed they call perfect in having found (as they say) that Deep of theirs; but their Æons in being convinced that he whom they sought after was unsearchable.

§ 4.

An Idea, then, not being capable of separate existence without an Æon,⁵ they introduce again a yet greater falsehood concerning the Passion of the same, parting this off in its turn with a real separation, and maintaining it to be the substance of Matter. As if God were not Light: as if no Word were at hand with power to expose them and overturn their wickedness. For of course whatever any Æon perceived, by that it was affected, and what it was affected by, that it also perceived: and the Idea of the Æon in their view was nothing else than its affection, as it was devising how to comprehend the Incomprehensible, and such an affection was the Idea of the Æon: occasioned by its perception of impossibilities. How then could the affection be separated by actual division from the Idea, and so vast a substance of Matter be brought into existence, while the Idea and the Passion were in fact identical? Thus neither can the Idea have any separate substance apart from the Æon nor the affections without the Idea: and in this point also again their Canon is made void.

§ 5.

And how again was an Æon either to be dissolved or to suffer?⁶ being of the same substance with the Pleroma and the whole Pleroma of the Father. For nothing is dissolved like and annihilated in a medium of like nature with itself, nor is in risk of perishing, but rather it perseveres and grows: as fire in fire, and spirit in spirit, and water in water; but it is from contrary media that things suffer, and are changed and done away. And so if it were an emanation of light, it would not suffer nor be endangered in a similar light, but would shine out and spread more and more, as the day because of the Sun: since in fact they say that The Deep is a resemblance of their parent. Whatever living creatures are foreign, and strange thereunto⁷, and of an opposite nature, these indeed are endangered, and decay: but those accustomed to the same, and akin to it, run no risk by being conversant therein, but rather acquire therefrom health and life. If therefore this Æon did so emanate from the Deep, as to be of the same substance with the Pleroma in general, he would never undergo any change, his conversation being in things like and accustomed to himself, a spiritual person among spirituals. For Fear and Shuddering, and Passion, and Dissolution, and such like, may perhaps arise, by intrusion of contrary things, in our regions, and among corporeal beings: but where all are spiritual, and have the light poured forth, they no longer incur such calamities. But they seem to me to have invested their Æon with the feeling of him in the play of Menander, who is full of love, yet hated. I say, the devisers of this story had a notion and idea rather of some unlucky lover among men, than of a spiritual and divine substance.

§ 6.

And besides all this, to think much of searching out the perfect Father, and to wish to be brought within Him,⁸ and to have hold of Him;—this could not cause ignorance, nor passion,⁹ and that in a spiritual Æon, but rather perfection, and inviolability, and truth. For neither do they, being men, thinking deeply on Him Who is before them, and just laying hold as it were of Him in His perfection, and established in the knowledge of Him, speak of themselves as being in any feeling of astonishment, but rather in the acknowledgment and attainment of Truth. Yea, and they say that the Saviour did therefore tell His Disciples, Seek and ye shall find, that they might seek out Him whom they have feigned in their fancy, above the Framer of all, the inexpressible Deep. And they will have themselves to be perfect, because by searching they have found Him that is perfect, though they be yet on earth. But him who is within the Pleroma, an Æon, altogether spiritual, sank down, they say, into some calamity, by seeking the First Father, and endeavouring to be brought within His greatness, and desiring to have comprehension of the Father’s Truth: and the calamity was of such a nature, that had he not fallen in with the Virtue which confirms all things, he would have been melted into the general mass of being¹⁰, and utterly done away with.

§ 7.

This is frantic presumption, and belongs to men absolutely wanting in all true understanding.¹¹ That this Æon is better and elder than they are, themselves, by their own rule confess, saying that they are the conception of the Idea of that Æon who suffered: so that this Æon is the father of their mother, i.e., their grandfather. And while to the latter, the grandchildren, by searching out the Father, truth results, and perfection, and assurance, and purification from corruptible¹² matter (so they say) and reconciliation with the Father: to their grandsire on the contrary this very inquiry brought ignorance and passion and shuddering and fear and astonishment: of which also they say proceeded the substance of matter. Accordingly, the search and investigation of the perfect Father, and the desire of communication and unity with Him, is by their account a thing wholesome to themselves, but to the Æon from whom they have their very birth, it was the cause of dissolution and perdition. How is all this other than absurd, and futile, and irrational? and such as assent to it, truly blind,¹³ and using blind guides, justly fall into the deep of ignorance beneath.