Chapter 20

§ 1.

Moreover, that they bring into their device the parables and acts of the Lord improperly and incongruously, we proceed to shew.¹ Thus, they try to indicate the affection, which they say befell the twelfth Æon, by the fact that the Saviour’s Passion was brought about by the twelfth Apostle, and in the twelfth month: for they say He preached but for one year from His Baptism. Yea, and they say it was evidently signified in the woman with an issue of blood: since the woman suffered twelve years, and touching the hem of our Saviour’s garment, obtained health by that virtue which went out of the Saviour, and which they say hath the first place. For the virtue which suffered, in that it was drawn out and flowing away into immensity, so as to be in danger of dissolution in its whole being, was staid, and ceased from its suffering, when it had touched the first quaternion [of Æons] which is signified by “the Hem of His Garment.”

§ 2.

Now as to this their assertion, that the passion of the twelfth Æon is indicated by Judas;² how can Judas be adapted to this comparison seeing he was cast out of the twelfth station and not restored to his own place? For the Æon, whereof they say Judas is the type, was restored, or recalled, after its Conception had been parted off from; it but Judas was deposed and cast out, and Matthias ordained in his place,³ as it is written, and his Bishoprick let another take. They ought therefore to say, that the twelfth Æon was cast out of the Pleroma, and another produced or emitted in his place; if he is at all signified by Judas. And again, this same Æon, they say, suffered, but Judas they say is the traitor. Now it was Christ Who by suffering came to His Passion, not Judas; as themselves confess. How could Judas then, the betrayer of Him Who had to suffer for our salvation, be the type and image of the Æon who suffered?

§ 3.

But neither is the passion of Christ like the passion of their Æon,⁴ nor wrought under like circumstances. For the passion which the Æon suffered was one of dissolution and destruction,⁵ so that the sufferer was in danger even of being wasted away. But our Lord Christ’s Passion which He suffered was mighty and unyielding⁶; far from any hazard of corruption on His part, He did on the contrary, when man was corrupt, confirm him by His own strength, and recall him to incorruption. And the Æon’s passion took place by his seeking himself after the Father, and not being able to find Him: but the Lord suffered that He might lead those who wandered from the Father unto Knowledge and nearness to Him. And whereas to him the search after the Father’s greatness proved a passion that caused ruin, to us the Lord by His Passion, bestowing the knowledge of the Father, gave salvation. And while the fruit of his passion was as they say female,—weak, and infirm, and shapeless, and ineffective,—This Man’s Passion bare to us the fruit of courage and virtue. For the Lord by His Passion ascending up on high, led captivity captive,⁷ gave gifts unto men, and granted to such as believe in Him to tread on serpents and scorpions,⁸ and on all the power of the enemy; i.e., of the Prince of the Apostasy. And the Lord indeed by His Passion destroyed death: yea, He did away with error, and drave out corruption, and destroyed ignorance; but life He made manifest, and demonstrated truth, and bestowed incorruption. But their Æon after he had suffered, introduced⁹ ignorance, brought forth a shapeless substance, from which were produced all material works, according to them: death, corruption, error, and the like of these.

§ 4.

Judas therefore, the twelfth disciple, was no type of an Æon who suffered;¹⁰ nor yet was the suffering of our Lord such: for this has been proved throughout incongruous and inconsistent with itself, not only in the aforesaid particulars, but also in the very number: Since all allow that the traitor Judas was the twelfth, twelve Apostles being named in the Gospel: but this Æon is not the twelfth but the thirtieth, for not twelve Æons only, as by this account, were produced by the will of the Father, nor did he emanate the twelfth in order, since they account him to have emanated in the thirtieth place. How then can Judas, being twelfth in order, be type and image of the Æon who is in the thirtieth place?

§ 5.

If again they say that Judas perishing was a type of the Æon’s Conception, neither in this way will the Type resemble the Truth to which it appertains. For the Conception, they say, having been severed from the Æon, was afterwards itself put in form by Christ, and then made wise by the Saviour, and having framed all things without the Pleroma after the pattern of those which are within, was finally received back into the Pleroma, and after the manner of the other pairs united to that Saviour, who was compounded of them all. Whereas Judas, once expelled, never returns into the number of the Disciples, else would not any other be reckoned in his place. And the Lord also said of him,¹¹ Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man shall be betrayed; and, Good were it for that man if he had not been born;¹² and He called him, The son of perdition. But if they say, Judas is not a type of the Conception separated from the Æon, but of the affection connected therewith; neither so can the number twelve be a type of things which in number are three. For in the one case Judas was cast out and Matthias ordained in his place; but in the other case they say the Æon was in danger of dissolution and of perishing, and its Conception, and the aforesaid affection;—for they separate the Conception too, as something entirely distinct from the aforesaid affection; and they make it out that while the Æon is restored, the Conception acquires form, but the Affection, severed from these, becomes Matter. These then being three, the Æon, I mean, the Conception, and the Affection, Judas and Matthias, being but two, cannot be the Type of them.