Chapter III.—The Bythus and Pleroma of the Valentinians, as well as the God
of Marcion, shown to be absurd; the world was actually created by the same Being
who had conceived the idea of it, and was not the fruit of defect or ignorance.
1. The Bythus, therefore, whom they conceive of with his Pleroma, and the God of
Marcion, are inconsistent. If indeed, as they affirm, he has something subjacent and beyond
himself, which they style vacuity and shadow, this vacuum is then proved to be greater than
their Pleroma. But it is inconsistent even to make this statement, that while he contains all
things within himself, the creation was formed by some other. For it is absolutely necessary
that they acknowledge a certain void and chaotic kind of existence (below the spiritual
Pleroma) in which this universe was formed, and that the Propator purposely left this chaos
as it was,350 either knowing beforehand what things were to happen in it, or being ignorant
of them. If he was really ignorant, then God will not be prescient of all things. But they will
not even [in that case] be able to assign a reason on what account He thus left this place
void during so long a period of time. If, again, He is prescient, and contemplated mentally
that creation which was about to have a being in that place, then He Himself created it who
also formed it beforehand [ideally] in Himself.
2. Let them cease, therefore, to affirm that the world was made by any other; for as soon
as God formed a conception in His mind, that was also done which He had thus mentally
conceived. For it was not possible that one Being should mentally form the conception, and
another actually produce the things which had been conceived by Him in His mind. But
God, according to these heretics, mentally conceived either an eternal world or a temporal
one, both of which suppositions cannot be true. Yet if He had mentally conceived of it as
eternal, spiritual,351 and visible, it would also have been formed such. But if it was formed
such as it really is, then He made it such who had mentally conceived of it as such; or He
willed it to exist in the ideality352 of the Father, according to the conception of His mind,
such as it now is, compound, mutable, and transient. Since, then, it is just such as the Father
had [ideally] formed in counsel with Himself, it must be worthy of the Father. But to affirm
that what was mentally conceived and pre-created by the Father of all, just as it has been
350 In the barbarous Latin version, we here find utrum … an as the translation of ἤ … ἤ instead of aut …
aut.
351 We have translated the text as it here stands in the mss. Grabe omits spiritalem et; Massuet proposes to
read et invisibilem, and Stieren invisibilem.
352 In præsentia: Grabe proposes in præscientia, but without ms. authority. “The reader,” says Harvey, “will
observe that there are three suppositions advanced by the author: that the world, as some heretics asserted, was
eternal; that it was created in time, with no previous idea of it in the divine mind; or that it existed as a portion
of the divine counsels from all eternity, though with no temporal subsistence until the time of its creation,—and
of this the author now speaks.” The whole passage is most obscurely expressed.
Chapter III.—The Bythus and Pleroma of the Valentinians, as well as the God of Marcion, shown to be absurd; the world was actually created by the same Being who had conceived the idea of it, and was not the fruit of defect or ignorance.
944
Chapter III.—The Bythus and Pleroma of the Valentinians, as well as the…