The True God and the False God
The True God and the False God
The Gnostic image of God was the first great temptation which Christian thought had to overcome. Pagan polytheism was relatively easy to deal with. But here was an enticing system claiming to incorporate Christianity into its ‘synthesis’. Creation—the greatest intellectual scandal of all—was simply explained away by means of its doctrine of emanation. And its romantic mythology had a special magic. Human beings, longing for redemption, were entranced by this philosophical world of dreams and fairy tales.
Irenaeus sets against this the humble and apparently unadorned image of God given in revelation. With the keenest perception, he sees the real motives behind the opposing system. I shall not here penetrate the tangle of the different Gnostic systems, but content myself with highlighting the main themes of the refutation. The hallmarks of Irenaeus’ doctrine of God are an unrelenting emphasis on God’s freedom with regard to the world and a deep reverence for the unfathomable mystery of His being.
We have no other access to the Trinity of God than salvation history, and every theology is well advised to avoid separating, even for a moment, its statements about the world-transcending ‘immanent’ Trinity from the ‘economic’ Trinity revealed in salvation history. All the Fathers before Nicaea vigorously adhered to this fundamental principle, but they often took it too far: they made the Godhead’s inner Trinitarian life seem dependent on its planning of creation. Then the Logos appears as a ‘means’, a kind of divine pre-planning for creation. Irenaeus does not make this mistake. His thought moves with perfect precision from the economic to the immanent Trinity. The Son is said explicitly to be ‘God’, and, to get as far away as possible from the prying speculations of the Gnostics, Irenaeus plunges His eternal generation into such deep mystery that there is no chance at all of it appearing (as it does in, say, Justin or Tertullian) as the first stage of the creation of the cosmos. He is God’s Word, the Self-Expression of the Father.
The Holy Spirit, too, identified with the ‘Wisdom’ of God, appears as the constant companion of the Father and the Son, preceding all creatures.
In contrast to the Gnostic ‘emanations’, which function as intermediaries between God and the world, Irenaeus, like the other early Fathers, asserts a clear concept of creation. Like St. Paul and St. John, he sees the creation taking place in the Logos, and the plan of creation is directed towards the summing up, in the fulness of time, of all things in the Son made man. That is why Irenaeus, without any subordination of them to the Father, describes the Son and the Spirit in terms of their function of making visible the invisible Father and indwelling creatures (he calls them the ‘hands of the Father’ at creation). Consider, for example, Irenaeus’ assertion that the Father is essentially invisible, and that the Son makes Him visible. The first proposition is just a Scriptural truth, while the second obviously refers to the Son as revealed in salvation history and finally made man (cf III 11, 6, and the Sources Chrétiennes commentary volume for Book III, p. 282f).
Instead of boldly speculating about the processions in God, Irenaeus remains in reverence before the impenetrable mystery of the Godhead and removes the intra-divine high above all confusion with the world. In their speculations about the Logos, later Catholic theologians will try to illuminate the relationship between Father and Son by using the analogy of the relationship of the human word and thought to the mind. Irenaeus, for his part, prefers to emphasize the greater unlikeness in the likeness of this analogy.
A one-sided ‘movement of descent’ (from Father to Son to Spirit) is counterbalanced by the view that the Spirit is not only the One who leads to the Son, as the Son leads the Father, but also the Father’s highest chosen gift to believers, in whom alone we can see the Son. The Holy Spirit is, therefore, all that is innermost, all that is most intimate, in God.
The God of Revelation
The Excellence of God
(10) The Father of all is far removed from the affections and passions proper to human beings. He is simple, non-composite, not made up of different members, altogether like and equal to Himself, because He is wholly intellect, wholly spirit, wholly mind, wholly thought, wholly reason, wholly hearing, wholly seeing, wholly light, and the whole source of all that is good. That is how men of religion and piety speak of God. But He is above all these properties too and therefore indescribable. He is rightly called the all-comprehending intellect, but He is not like the intellect of men. He is most aptly called ‘light’, but He is nothing like the light we know.
II 13, 3
The Trinity in itself and in creation and revelation
(11) Creatures must have the origin of their existence from some great cause. Now the origin of all things is God. He was not created by anyone, but everything was created by Him. The first thing to believe, therefore, is that there is one God, the Father, who created and ordered all things, calling into existence what did not exist. He contains all things, yet cannot Himself be contained. Now ‘all things’ includes this world of ours, with man in it. So this world of ours too was created by God.
So, then, there is one God, the Father, uncreated, invisible, creator of all things. There is no other God above Him and no other God beneath Him. God is rational, and therefore produced creatures by His Reason—Word. God is also spirit, and so He ordered all things through the Spirit, as the prophet says: ‘By the word of the Lord the heavens were established, and all the power of them by His Spirit’ (Ps 32:6).
The Word ‘establishes’, that is, produces bodies and bestows permanence on what has come into existence, while the Spirit disposes and shapes the various ‘powers’. The Word is, therefore, rightly called the Son, and the Spirit God’s Wisdom. His apostle Paul puts it well: ‘One God and Father of all, who is above all and with all and in all’ (cf Eph 4:6). The Father is ‘above all’, but the Word is ‘with all’, since it is through Him that everything was made by the Father. And ‘in us all’ is the Spirit, who cries ‘Abba, Father’ (cf Gal 4:6), and forms man into the likeness of God. The Spirit manifests the Word, and so the prophets proclaimed the Son of God. But the Word lets the Spirit blow, and so it is He who speaks in the prophets and leads men back to the Father . . .
Our baptismal rebirth is accomplished through these articles: the Father grants us rebirth through His Son in the Holy Spirit. For those who have received the Spirit and bear Him within are led to the Word, that is to say, to the Son; and the Son presents them to the Father, and the Father makes them partakers of incorruptibility. Thus without the Spirit there is no seeing of the Word of God, and without the Son no one can approach the Father. For the Son is knowledge of the Father, and knowledge of the Son is through the Holy Spirit. But the Son, according to the Father’s good pleasure, administers the Spirit, as the Father wills, to those to whom He wills.
The Father is called, in the Spirit, ‘Most High’ and ‘Almighty’ and ‘Lord of Hosts’, from which we learn what God truly is: creator of heaven and earth and all worlds, the maker of angels and of men, the Lord of all, the origin and giver of all things, merciful, compassionate, full of tenderness, good, just, the God of all, of the Jews as well as of the Gentiles . . . This God is glorified by His Word, who is His eternal Son, and by the Holy Spirit, who is the Wisdom of the Father of all. And their powers, the powers of the Word and of Wisdom, who are called Cherubim and Seraphim, also glorify God in songs of unceasing praise, and every creature in heaven gives glory to God, the Father of all.
D 4-5, 7, 10
(12) Thus the Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God, and the Son is God, for He who is begotten of God is God. And in this way God is shown in His being and in the power of His nature to be one God, but in the administration and accomplishment of our redemption, He is Father and Son. For the Father is invisible and inaccessible to all creatures, and so it needed the Son to lead those who are to reach God into submission to the Father. David, too, speaks clearly and splendidly of Father and Son: ‘Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever; you have loved justice, and hated iniquity, therefore God has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows’ (cf Ps 44:7f). What this means is that the Son, being God, receives the throne of the everlasting kingdom from the Father, and the oil of anointing above His fellows. The oil of anointing is the Spirit, with whom He is anointed. And His ‘fellows’ are the prophets, the just, the apostles, and all who share in His Kingdom, in other words, His disciples.
D 47
The Trinitarian Christ
(13) The name ‘Christ’ implies the Anointer, the Anointed, and the Unction with which He is anointed. Now the Father is the Anointer, the Son is the Anointed, and the Spirit in whom He is anointed is the Unction.
III 18, 3
The Son and the Spirit serve the Father
(14) He is assisted in everything by His Offspring and Figuration, that is to say, the Son and the Spirit, the Word and Wisdom, whom all the angels serve, and to whom they are subject.
IV 7, 4
(15) It was through His tireless Word that [the Father] made all that He created.
II 2, 4
(16) [The Gnostics] say that the Word was emitted by the Intellect. Now we all know this is true of men. But God, who is above all things, is all Intellect and all Word; in Him there is nothing earlier and nothing later; He is wholly equal and identical and one. In such a God there can be no emission of the kind we have described. There is no error in saying that He is all vision and all hearing (in seeing, He hears, and in hearing, He sees), and so it can also be said that He is all ‘Intellect’ and all ‘Word’, that, in being Intellect, He is also Word, that the Word is this Intellect of His. This way of thinking about the Father of all is still inadequate, but it is more becoming than the attempt to apply to God’s eternal Word the generation of the spoken human word, which implies that the former, like the latter, has a beginning and is involved in becoming. But how, then, does the Word of God, or rather, how does God Himself, since the Word is God, differ from the word of men if He follows the same order and mode of generation?1
II 13, 8
The whole Godhead is common to the Divine Persons
(17) God is all Intellect and all Word, and so what He ‘thinks’, He also speaks, and what He ‘speaks’, He also thinks. For His thinking is His Word, and the Word is Mind, and the all-comprehending Mind is the Father.
II 28, 5
(18) It is false to say, as these men teach,2 that the Word holds the third rank in generation and is ignorant of the Father. This may very likely be true of human generation, in the sense that people often do not know their parents, but it is absolutely impossible in the case of the Father’s Word. For if He exists in the Father, He knows the One in whom He exists; in other words, He is not ignorant of Himself.
II 17, 8
The world is not the work of intermediaries
(19) This would imply that the angels were more powerful than God, or that He was negligent or inferior, or that He could not care less what happened in His own domain . . . If one would not dream of ascribing such conduct to a scrupulous man, how much less to God!
II 2, 1
(20) If it did not happen against His will,3 but with His will and knowledge, as some of these men think, then the cause of creation will not be the angels or the Demiurge but the will of God. If He Himself made the Demiurge or the angels, or even if He was just the cause of their creation, He is to be seen as the maker of the world, because it was He who prepared the causes by which it was made. They maintain that the angels were produced by a long succession of intermediaries, or, according to Basilides, in the case of the Demiurge, by the ‘primal Father’. Nevertheless, the cause of the things created must be attributed to the originator of the whole succession, just as the winning of a war is attributed to the king who prepared the causes of victory, or the founding of a city, indeed the carrying out of any project, is referred to the person who prepared the causes of success. We do not say that the axe cut the wood, nor that the saw divided it, but that the man . . . who produced the axe and the saw for that purpose did it.
II 2, 3
(21) This idea [that subordinate beings were responsible for the material world] may well entice and seduce those who know nothing of God and imagine Him to be like needy human beings; they, after all, are incapable of making anything immediately and without assistance, but need all manner of instruments to produce what they want. It seems absolutely improbable to those who know that God, who needs nothing, created all things through His Word.
II 2, 4
The creation is not a ‘fall’ into the void
In the beginning the world was perfect and created for perfection
(22) If things cannot be made better at the beginning,4 how is improvement possible later on? Then again, how can they say that men are called to perfection, when the causes which allegedly made them (the Demiurge himself or the angels) are themselves said to be defective beings? And if, as they maintain, God in His goodness did at last take pity on men and bestowed perfection on them, He should surely first have pitied those who were the makers of man, and conferred perfection on them!
II 4, 2
In God there can be no ‘void’
(23) Where does this ‘void’ come from?5 Was it produced by the One they call the Father and Producer of all things? Is it equal in honour with the other Aeons, a kinsman of theirs? Is it perhaps even more ancient than they are? Now if it comes from the same Producer, it must be similar to the Producer and to the Producer’s other products. And this makes it absolutely necessary that their ‘Groundless One’ (By thus), along with ‘Silence’ (Sige), is similar to a void; in fact, it means he is a void. As for the other Aeons, they are the brothers of the void and so devoid of substance.
If, on the other hand, the void was not produced, it must have been born and generated from itself. But then it will be equal in time with the ‘Groundless One’, who, according to them, is the Father of All, Thus the void will be of the same nature and honour as the One they call the Father of All.
II 4, 1
In God’s fulness it is impossible for anyone to create against His will
(24) Faced with these questions, they may well feel driven to despair. They may then confess that the Father of All contains all things, and that outside the Pleroma there is nothing (because, if there were, it would necessarily be bounded and circumscribed by something greater than itself). They may also argue that, when they speak of ‘without’ and ‘within’, they are referring to knowledge and ignorance, not spatial distance . . . But then the question arises: what is this ‘Groundless One’? What sort of being would tolerate a stain within His own bosom, and permit someone else to create or produce within His own domain and against His will?. . . They maintain that the light of this Father of theirs can fill and illuminate all that is within Him. If that is so, how can there be a ‘void’ or ‘shadow’ within the ‘Pleroma’ and ‘Light of the Father’? They ought to be able to show us some unlighted and unoccupied place within the primal Father, or within the Pleroma, where the angels and the Demiurge were able to do what they wanted to do. And such a place cannot be just a hole in the corner, if it is to be the site on which creation in all its power and glory took place!. . . It would be a disgrace for the ‘Light of the Father’ to be incapable of illuminating and filling what is within Him. So when they claim that the world is a ‘mistake’, the result of a ‘blunder’, they are introducing mistakes and blunders into the Pleroma, into the bosom of the Father.
II 4, 2-3
Intermediaries are an insult to God
(25) It is impossible to think of someone’s ‘thought’ or ‘silence’ having a separate existence, produced outside himself with a form of its own.
II 12, 2
(26) There cannot be ‘word’ where there is ‘silence’ [in the Gnostic sense], nor can there be ‘silence’ where there is ‘word’.6
II 12, 5
(27) They apply to God things which happen to men, but then say that He is ‘unknown’ to all! For fear of belittling Him, they deny that He created the world, but then endow Him with human affections and passions. If they knew the Scriptures and had been instructed by the truth, they would surely realize that God is not as men are, and ‘His thoughts are not like the thoughts of men’ (cf Is 55:8).
II 13, 3
(28) You [Gnostics] are insufferable! You force the Word of God, the Creator, the Author and Maker of all things, into categories and numbers (sometimes thirty, sometimes twenty-four, at other times only six). You cut Him up into four syllables and thirty elements. You reduce the Lord of all, the One who founded the heavens, to the number eight hundred and eighty-eight. You treat Him like the alphabet. You subdivide the Father, who contains all but is contained by nothing, into a group of four, of eight, of ten, of twelve, hoping that these multiplications will help you to expound the nature of the Father, which, as you say yourself, is inexpressible and inconceivable.
I 15, 5
(29) I am well aware that, when you read through all this, dear friend, you will have a good laugh at such pretentious nonsense. But really we should feel sorry for people who, with their alphabet and their numbers, coldly and perversely mock a religion so noble, power so immense, so truly inexpressible, dispositions of God so striking.
I 16, 3
God is not the image of the world
(30) Why is the division made into three rather than four, five, six, or some other number? [Their answer is, of course, that the divine numbers are derived from the things in the world] . . . But we are not asking them about the harmony of creation or human emotions, but about why this ‘Pleroma’, of which creation is said to be the image, is divided into groups of eight, ten, and twelve [Perhaps they reply that the Father made the Pleroma as a ‘schema’ for the world]. . . But this would mean that the Pleroma was not made for its own sake, but for the sake of the world to be created as its image and in its likeness . . . but then the creature would be more honourable than the Pleroma!7
II 15, 3
(31) The Aeons are supposed to be derived from the ‘Word’, the ‘Word’ from the ‘Intellect’, and the ‘Intellect’ from the ‘Groundless One’, just as lights are kindled from a light (for example, torches from a torch). If that is so, then presumably the Aeons differ from one another in generation and size. However, since they are of the same substance with the Author who produced them, then either they remain impassible, or their Father participates in passions. After all, a torch once kindled cannot later have a different kind of light from the one which preceded it. That is why their lights, when blended into one, return to the original unity; the single light then formed is the one which existed from the beginning. But it makes no sense to speak of some part of the light itself being ‘younger’ or ‘older’, because it is all one light.8
II 17, 4
Only the one True God can be the creator of the world
The Creator must be unlimited and omnipotent
(32) If man fails to grasp the fulness and greatness of His hand [in creation], how can anyone understand or know in his heart so great a God? Yet, as if they had measured and examined Him, scrutinized Him from every angle, they pretend that there is another pleroma of Aeons beyond Him, and another Father. Far from looking up to heavenly things, they truly descend into the profound abyss of madness. They say that their Father ends at the boundary of the Pleroma, while the Demiurge does not reach as far as the Pleroma. In other words, neither of them is perfect and all-encompassing. The Father lacks the whole of creation outside the Pleroma, and the Demiurge lacks the creation within the Pleroma. Neither of them can be the Lord of all.
It is clear to all that no one can fully show forth the grandeur of God from the things He has made. And anyone who thinks worthily of God will agree that His grandeur knows no defect, but contains all things, and extends even to us, and is with us.
IV 19, 3
(33) Does their Father fail to bestow life when he could, or because he cannot? If he cannot, then this God allegedly superior to the Demiurge is neither omnipotent nor perfect. For the Demiurge clearly does bestow what this other being cannot. If, on the other hand, he could bestow life but just does not do it, then he is proved to be not a good Father but an envious and negligent one . . . If, therefore, by necessity or for some other reason, bodies capable of sharing in life are not vivified, their Father will be the slave of necessity and of that reason, no longer free and master of his own decisions.9
V 4, 1-2
(34) It is unseemly to say of Him who is God over all that, though He is free and independent, He is a slave to necessity, that there are things which He has had to endure against His will. By speaking thus, they make necessity greater and more lordly than God.
II 5, 4
The unity of God’s planning and creation of the world
(35) If He knew in advance and contemplated in His mind the creation which was one day to arise in that place, then He is the One who created it; the One who created it is the One who formed it beforehand in Himself. So they should stop talking about the world being created by someone else. As soon as God’s mind conceived it, the thing His mind conceived was made. For it was impossible for one being to conceive it in his mind and another to make the thing which the first one had in his mind conceived.
II 3, 1-2
(36) It is one and the same Lord who inflicts blindness on those who do not believe but set Him at naught (the sun, His creature, has much the same effect on those who, because of some infirmity of the eyes, cannot look upon its light), and bestows a fuller and greater illumination of the mind on those who believe and follow Him.
IV 29, 1
The unity of love and justice in God
(37) They claim that there is one God who judges and another who saves, thereby unwittingly robbing both deities of intelligence and justice. For if the judicial one is not also good, bestowing favours on the deserving and reproofs on those who ought to have them, then He will appear neither a just nor a wise judge. On the other hand, if the good God is only good and does not test the beneficiaries of His goodness, He will be outside of both justice and goodness; His goodness, if unaccompanied by judgement, will look like weakness, an inability to save all men.
III 25, 2