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| 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.
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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,2998
| 2998 In
the barbarous Latin version, we here find utrum … an
as the translation of ἤ … ἤ instead of
aut … aut. | 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,2999
| 2999 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. | 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 ideality3000
| 3000
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. | 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 actually formed, is the fruit of
defect, and the production of ignorance, is to be guilty of great
blasphemy. For, according to them, the Father of all will thus be
[regarded as] generating in His breast, according to His own mental
conception, the emanations of defect and the fruits of ignorance, since
the things which He had conceived in His mind have actually been
produced.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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