have produced Æons still blinder than himself, until at last your Sophia, always utterly
blinded, gave birth to so vast a body of evils. And your Father is the cause of all this mischief;
for ye declare the magnitude and power of your Father to be the causes of ignorance, assim-
ilating Him to Bythus, and assigning this as a name to Him who is the unnameable Father.
But if ignorance is an evil, and ye declare all evils to have derived their strength from it,
while ye maintain that the greatness and power of the Father is the cause of this ignorance,
ye do thus set Him forth as the author of [all] evils. For ye state as the cause of evil this fact,
that [no one] could contemplate His greatness. But if it was really impossible for the Father
to make Himself known from the beginning to those [beings] that were formed by Him, He
must in that case be held free from blame, inasmuch as He could not remove the ignorance
of those who came after Him. But if, at a subsequent period, when He so willed it, He could
take away that ignorance which had increased with the successive productions as they fol-
lowed each other, and thus become deeply seated in the Æons, much more, had He so willed
it might He formerly have prevented that ignorance, which as yet was not, from coming
into existence.
11. Since therefore, as soon as He so pleased, He did become known not only to the
Æons, but also to these men who lived in these latter times; but, as He did not so please to
be known from the beginning, He remained unknown—the cause of ignorance is, according
to you, the will of the Father. For if He foreknew that these things would in future happen
in such a manner, why then did He not guard against the ignorance of these beings before
it had obtained a place among them, rather than afterwards, as if under the influence of re-
pentance, deal with it through the production of Christ? For the knowledge which through
Christ He conveyed to all, He might long before have imparted through Logos, who was
also the first-begotten of Monogenes. Or if, knowing them beforehand, He willed that these
things should happen [as they have done], then the works of ignorance must endure for
ever, and never pass away. For the things which have been made in accordance with the will
of your Propator must continue along with the will of Him who willed them; or if they pass
away, the will of Him also who decreed that they should have a being will pass away along
with them. And why did the Æons find rest and attain perfect knowledge through learning
[at last] that the Father is altogether434 incomprehensible? They might surely have possessed
this knowledge before they became involved in passion; for the greatness of the Father did
not suffer diminution from the beginning, so that these might435 know that He was altogether
incomprehensible. For if, on account of His infinite greatness, He remained unknown, He
ought also on account of His infinite love to have preserved those impassible who were
434 “Incapabilis et incomprehensibilis,” corresponding to ἀχώρητος καὶ ἀκατάληπτος in the Greek.
435 Literally, “to these knowing,” “his scientibus.”
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Chapter XVII.—Inquiry into the production of the Æons: whatever its supposed…