Chapter XXX.—Absurdity of their styling themselves spiritual, while the
Demiurge is declared to be animal.
1. Such being the state of the case, these infatuated men declare that they rise above the
Creator (Demiurge); and, inasmuch as they proclaim themselves superior to that God who
made and adorned the heavens, and the earth, and all things that are in them, and maintain
that they themselves are spiritual, while they are in fact shamefully carnal on account of
their so great impiety,—affirming that He, who has made His angels597 spirits, and is clothed
with light as with a garment, and holds the circle598 of the earth, as it were, in His hand, in
whose sight its inhabitants are counted as grasshoppers, and who is the Creator and Lord
of all spiritual substance, is of an animal nature,—they do beyond doubt and verily betray
their own madness; and, as if truly struck with thunder, even more than those giants who
are spoken of in [heathen] fables, they lift up their opinions against God, inflated by a vain
presumption and unstable glory,—men for whose purgation all the hellebore599 on earth
would not suffice, so that they should get rid of their intense folly.
2. The superior person is to be proved by his deeds. In what way, then, can they show
themselves superior to the Creator (that I too, through the necessity of the argument in
hand, may come down to the level of their impiety, instituting a comparison between God
and foolish men, and, by descending to their argument, may often refute them by their own
doctrines; but in thus acting may God be merciful to me, for I venture on these statements,
not with the view of comparing Him to them, but of convicting and overthrowing their insane
opinions)—they, for whom many foolish persons entertain so great an admiration, as if,
forsooth, they could learn from them something more precious than the truth itself! That
expression of Scripture, “Seek, and ye shall find,”600 they interpret as spoken with this view,
that they should discover themselves to be above the Creator, styling themselves greater
and better than God, and calling themselves spiritual, but the Creator animal; and [affirming]
404
that for this reason they rise upwards above God, for that they enter in within the Pleroma,
while He remains in the intermediate place. Let them, then, prove themselves by their deeds
superior to the Creator; for the superior person ought to be proved not by what is said, but
by what has a real existence.
3. What work, then, will they point to as having been accomplished through themselves
by the Saviour, or by their Mother, either greater, or more glorious, or more adorned with
wisdom, than those which have been produced by Him who was the disposer of all around
us? What heavens have they established? what earth have they founded? what stars have
597 Ps. civ. 2, 4.
598 Isa. xl. 12, 22.
599 Irenæus was evidently familiar with Horace; comp. Ars. Poet., 300.
600 Matt. vii. 7.
Chapter XXX.—Absurdity of their styling themselves spiritual, while the Demiurge is declared to be animal.
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Chapter XXX.—Absurdity of their styling themselves spiritual, while the…