Chapter XI—Proofs in continuation, extracted from St. John’s Gospel. The
Gospels are four in number, neither more nor less. Mystic reasons for this.
1. John, the disciple of the Lord, preaches this faith, and seeks, by the proclamation of
the Gospel, to remove that error which by Cerinthus had been disseminated among men,
and a long time previously by those termed Nicolaitans, who are an offset of that “knowledge”
falsely so called, that he might confound them, and persuade them that there is but one God,
who made all things by His Word; and not, as they allege, that the Creator was one, but the
Father of the Lord another; and that the Son of the Creator was, forsooth, one, but the Christ
from above another, who also continued impassible, descending upon Jesus, the Son of the
Creator, and flew back again into His Pleroma; and that Monogenes was the beginning, but
Logos was the true son of Monogenes; and that this creation to which we belong was not
made by the primary God, but by some power lying far below Him, and shut off from
communion with the things invisible and ineffable. The disciple of the Lord therefore desiring
to put an end to all such doctrines, and to establish the rule of truth in the Church, that
there is one Almighty God, who made all things by His Word, both visible and invisible;
showing at the same time, that by the Word, through whom God made the creation, He
also bestowed salvation on the men included in the creation; thus commenced His teaching
in the Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and
without Him was nothing made.781 What was made was life in Him, and the life was the
light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.”782
“All things,” he says, “were made by Him;” therefore in “all things” this creation of ours is
[included], for we cannot concede to these men that [the words] “all things” are spoken in
reference to those within their Pleroma. For if their Pleroma do indeed contain these, this
creation, as being such, is not outside, as I have demonstrated in the preceding book;783 but
if they are outside the Pleroma, which indeed appeared impossible, it follows, in that case,
that their Pleroma cannot be “all things:” therefore this vast creation is not outside [the
Pleroma].
2. John, however, does himself put this matter beyond all controversy on our part, when
he says, “He was in this world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him
not. He came unto His own [things], and His own [people] received Him not.”784 But ac-
cording to Marcion, and those like him, neither was the world made by Him; nor did He
781 Irenæus frequently quotes this text, and always uses the punctuation here adopted. Tertullian and many
others of the Fathers follow his example.
782 John i. 1, etc.
783 See ii. 1, etc.
784 John i. 10, 11.
Chapter XI—Proofs in continuation, extracted from St. John’s Gospel. The Gospels are four in number, neither more nor less. Mystic reasons for this.
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Chapter XI—Proofs in continuation, extracted from St. John’s Gospel. The…