Excerpts from Theodotus

“Father,” he says, “into your hands I commit my spirit.” What Wisdom put forth as a bit of flesh for the Word, the spiritual seed, this, he says, the Savior put on and came down.

So in his passion he commits Wisdom to the Father, so that he may receive her back from the Father and she may not be held back here by those able to rob her; and so by the words just quoted he commits every spiritual seed, the elect.

We say that the elect seed is both a spark kindled by the Word, and the pupil of the eye, and a grain of mustard seed, and leaven, which unites in faith the kinds that

seemed to be divided. But the followers of Valentinus say that when the psychic body was formed, a male seed was placed by the Word in the elect soul while it was asleep, which is an emanation of the angelic element, so that there might be no deficiency.

And this leavened, uniting the things that seemed divided, the soul and the flesh, which had been brought forth by Wisdom in division. Adam's sleep was the soul's forgetting, which held the spiritual seed together so that it would not be dissolved, the seed that the Savior placed in the soul. The seed was an emanation of the male and angelic. That is why the Savior says, “Save yourself and your soul.”

When the Savior came, then, he awakened the soul and kindled the spark; for the words of the Lord are power. That is why he said, “Let your light shine before men.”

And after the resurrection, breathing the Spirit on the apostles, he blew away the dust like ashes and separated it, but kindled the spark and brought it to life.

Through great humility the Lord appeared not as an angel but as a man. And when he appeared in glory to the apostles on the mountain, he did it not for his own sake, showing himself, but for the church, which is “the chosen race,” so that it might learn its own advancement after its departure from the flesh.

For he himself was light above, and is that which appeared in flesh; and what was seen here is not later than what is above,

nor was he cut off when he moved from above to here, exchanging place for place, so as to take one and leave the other; but he was the one who is everywhere, both with the Father and here; for he was the power of the Father. Besides, that saying of the Savior had to be fulfilled, which he spoke: “There are some of those standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man in glory.” So Peter, James, and John saw and fell asleep.

How then, when they saw the luminous sight, were they not astonished, but when they heard the voice they fell on the ground? Because ears are less believing than eyes, and an unexpected voice astonishes more.

John the Baptist was not afraid when he heard the voice, since he heard it in the Spirit as one accustomed to such a voice; but anyone who is merely a man is astonished on hearing it. That is why the Savior also says to them, “Tell no one what you have seen.”

And yet they had not seen the light with fleshly eyes (for there is nothing akin or proper to that light and this flesh), but as the power and will of the Savior strengthened the flesh to behold it; and besides, what the soul saw it shared with the flesh, its companion,

because it is intertwined with it. “Tell no one,” so that, having understood what the Lord is, they might not refrain from laying hands on the Lord, and the plan be left unfulfilled, and death keep away from the Lord, as trying in vain at an impossible task.

Further, the voice on the mountain came to the elect who already understood, which is why they marveled when the one they believed in was testified to; but the voice at the river came to those who were going to believe. That is why the voice was disregarded by them, since they were preoccupied with the teaching of the teachers of the law.

The followers of Valentinus interpret “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” in this way.

They say that the Beginning is the Only-begotten, who is also called God, as in what follows he plainly shows him to be God, saying, “The only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.”

And by the Word that was in the Beginning, that is, in the Only-begotten, in Mind and Truth, he indicates Christ, the Word and Life; hence he fittingly calls him God too, being in God, in Mind.

“What came into being in him,” the Word, “was life,” his consort; that is why the Lord also says, “I am the life.”

The Father, then, being unknown, wished to be known to the Aeons, and through his own thought, as though knowing himself, a spirit of knowledge existing in knowledge, he put forth the Only-begotten. He who came from knowledge, that is, from the Father's thought, has become knowledge too, that is, the Son,

since “through the Son the Father was known.” And the spirit of love has been mingled with the spirit of knowledge, as Father with Son and Thought with Truth; the spirit of love came forth from Truth, as knowledge from Thought.

And the one who remained, “the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father,” explains the Thought to the Aeons through knowledge, as one put forth from his bosom; but the one who appeared here is no longer called “only-begotten” by the apostle, but “as only-begotten”: “glory as of the only-begotten.” For being one and the same, Jesus is “firstborn” in creation, but only-begotten in the Pleroma; and he is the same, being such in each place as he can be contained.

And the one who came down is never divided from the one who remained. For the apostle says, “For he who ascended is the same as he who descended.”

They say that the Demiurge is an image of the Only-begotten. That is why the works of the image are also perishable; hence the Lord too, making the dead whom he raised an image of the spiritual resurrection, raised them not with incorruptible flesh but as people who would die again.

But we say that the Word in identity is God in God, who is also said to be “in the bosom of the Father,” without separation, without division, one God.

“All things came into being through him,” by the immediate activity of the Word in identity, spiritual, intelligible, and sensible things alike. “This one declared the bosom of the Father”: the Savior, “the firstborn of all creation.”

The Only-begotten in identity, by whose power the Savior works undivided, is “the light” of the church, which was formerly in darkness and ignorance.

“And the darkness did not overcome him”: the apostates, and the rest of mankind did not know him, and death did not hold him.

Faith is not one but various. At any rate, the Savior says, “Let it be done according to your faith.” Hence it is said that people of the calling will be led astray at the coming of the Antichrist, but the elect cannot be; that is why he says, “and, if possible, my elect.”

Again, when he says, “Go out from my Father's house,” he is speaking to the called. Again, to the one who came back from abroad and had devoured his property, for whom the father killed the fatted calf, he speaks of the calling; and where the king has called those on the roads to the wedding supper.

All, then, have been called equally (“for he rains on the just and the unjust and makes the sun shine on all”), but those who have believed more are chosen, to whom he says, “No one has seen my Father except the Son”; and, “You are the light of the world”; and, “Holy Father, sanctify them in your name.”

But neither spiritual and intellectual beings, nor the archangels, nor the first-created, nor indeed he himself is without form, shape, figure, and body; but he has a form of his own and a body corresponding to his preeminence over all spiritual beings, as the first-created too have bodies corresponding to their preeminence over the beings below them.

For in general what has come into being is not without substance, but they do not have form and body like the bodies in this world.

For the things here are male and female and differ from one another. But there, the Only-begotten, who is properly intellectual, has his own form and his own substance, supremely pure and most sovereign, and enjoys directly the power of the Father; while the first-created, though they differ in number and each is defined and circumscribed, yet the likeness of their conditions shows unity, equality, and likeness.

For among the seven, more has not been granted to one and less to another.

Nor is any advancement left for them, since from the beginning, together with their first coming into being, they received perfection from God through the Son. And he is called “unapproachable light,” as “only-begotten” and “firstborn,” “what eye has not seen and ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man.” Nor will anyone be such, either of the first-created or of human beings.

But they “always behold the face of the Father,” and the face of the Father is the Son, through whom the Father is made known. What sees and is seen, then, cannot be without figure or without body. They see not with a sensible eye, but with such an eye as the Father has given, an intellectual one.

So when the Lord says, “Do not despise one of these little ones; truly I say to you, their angels always behold the face of the Father,” as is the model, so will the elect be when they have received perfect advancement. “And blessed are the pure in

heart, for they shall see God.” But how could there be a face of what has no figure? At any rate, the apostle knows of heavenly bodies, well-formed and intellectual. And how could different names be given them, if they were not circumscribed by figures, form, and body?

“One glory is of heavenly beings, another of earthly, another of angels, another of archangels.” Compared with bodies here (such as the stars) they are bodiless and formless; but compared with the Son they are measured and perceptible bodies; so too the Son compared with the Father. Each spiritual being has its own power and its own administration.

But insofar as the first-created came into being together and received their completeness, their service is common and undivided.

The first-created, then, see the Son, themselves, and the beings below them, just as the archangels see the first-created. And the Son is the beginning of the vision of the Father, being called the face of the Father.

The angels are intellectual fire and intellectual spirits, purified in substance; and intellectual light is the greatest advancement from intellectual fire completely purified, “into which angels long to look,”

as Peter says. And the Son is purer still than this, “unapproachable light” and “the power of God”; and according to the apostle, “we were redeemed with precious, blameless, and spotless blood.” His “garments shone like light, and his face like the sun,” on which one cannot easily even look.

This is the “heavenly bread” and the “spiritual food” that gives life by eating and by knowledge, “the light of men,” that is, of the church.

Those who ate the heavenly bread died, but the one who eats the true bread of the Spirit will not die.

The living bread given by the Father is the Son, to those who wish to eat.

“The bread that I will give,” he says, “is my flesh,” either that by which the flesh is nourished through the Eucharist, or, which is rather the case, the flesh is his body, “which is the church.”

“Heavenly bread,” a blessed assembly; perhaps too because the elect have come into being from the same substance in respect of their substrate, and because they will reach the same end.

Demons are called “bodiless,” not as having no body (for they have a figure too, which is why they are conscious of punishment), but because, compared with the spiritual bodies of those being saved, they are a shadow and so are called bodiless.

Angels too are bodies; at any rate they are seen. And the soul too is a body. At any rate the apostle says, “It is sown a psychic body, it is raised a spiritual body.”

And how do souls being punished feel it, if they are not bodies? At any rate he says, “Fear him who after death is able to cast both soul and body into Gehenna.” For what is visible is not purified by fire but dissolves into earth.

And from Lazarus and the rich man the soul is plainly shown to be a body, through its bodily members.

“As we have borne the image of the earthy, let us also bear the image of the heavenly,” the spiritual, being perfected by advancement. But again he says “image,” so that there are spiritual bodies.

And again: “Now we see through a mirror in a riddle, but then face to face.” For immediately we begin to know … And where there is a face, there is also form, figure, and body. Figure is seen by figure, face by face, and distinguishing marks are recognized by figures and substances.

The dove too was seen as a body; some say it is the Holy Spirit, the followers of Basilides say it is the minister, and the followers of Valentinus the spirit of the Father's thought, which made its descent upon the flesh of the Word.

According to the Valentinians, Jesus, the Church, and Wisdom are a total mixture of bodies, such mixture being possible.

At any rate, human union in marriage produces from two mingled seeds the birth of one child; and the body dissolved into earth is mixed with the earth, and water with wine.

Superior and more excellent bodies have an easy mixture; at any rate spirit is mixed with spirit. But it seems to me that this happens by juxtaposition, not by mixture. Is it, then, that the divine power pervading the soul sanctifies it at the final advancement?

“For God is spirit; it blows where it wills.” For the power does not pervade by substance, but by power and strength; and spirit lies beside spirit, as spirit beside soul.

The Savior was seen by the angels as he descended, which is why they announced him as good news. But he was also seen by Abraham and the other righteous who are in the place of rest on the right hand; for he says, “He rejoiced that he might see my day,” that is, the coming in the flesh.

Hence, when he rose, the Lord preached the good news to the righteous who were at rest, and moved and transferred them, and all “will live in his shadow.” For the coming here is a shadow of the Savior's glory that is with the Father; and the shadow of light is not darkness but illumination.

“And the Word became flesh,” not only by becoming man at his coming, but also in the beginning the Word in identity became Son, by circumscription and not by substance.

And again he became flesh by acting through the prophets. And the Savior is called the child of the Word in identity. That is why “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God;

what came into being in him is life”; and the Lord is life. And Paul: “Put on the new man, created according to God,” as if to say, believe in him who was created by God “according to God,” the Word in God.

But “created according to God” may also indicate the end of advancement that man will reach, just like “receive the end for which you were created.” And he says it still more clearly and expressly elsewhere: “who is the image of the invisible God”; then he adds, “firstborn of all creation.” For he calls the Son of the Word in identity “image of the invisible God,” and “firstborn of all creation,” because, begotten without passion, he became the creator and originator of all creation and substance. For in him the Father made all things.

Hence he is also said to have “taken the form of a servant,” not only the flesh at his coming, but also substance from the substrate; and substance is a servant, as passive and subject to the active and most sovereign cause.

For we understand “Before the morning star I begot you” in this way, of the first-created God the Word, and “Before the sun” and moon and before all creation “your name.”

The Valentinians say that “in the image of God he made them, male and female he made them” refers to the finest emanation of Wisdom, of which the male elements are the election, and the female the calling; and they call the male elements angelic, and the female themselves, the superior seed.

So too in the case of Adam, the male remained in him, but all the female seed was taken from him and became Eve, from whom come females, as from him males.

The male elements, then, were drawn together with the Word, but the female, made male, are united to the angels and pass into the Pleroma. That is why the woman is said to be changed into a man, and the church here into angels.

And when the apostle says, “Otherwise, what will those do who are baptized for the dead?” for the angels, he says, of whom we are parts, were baptized for us.

We are the dead, who have been made dead by this present state; the living are the males, who have not shared in this state. “If the dead are not raised, why are we baptized at all?”

So we are raised, made equal to the angels, restored to the males, members to members, into union.

“Those who are baptized for the dead,” they say, are the angels who are baptized for us, so that we too, having the Name, may not be held back and prevented by the Limit and the Cross from passing into the Pleroma.

That is why at the laying on of hands they say at the end, “for angelic redemption,” that is, the redemption the angels too have, so that the one who has received redemption may be baptized in the same name in which his angel was baptized before him.

The angels were baptized in the beginning in the redemption of the Name that came down upon Jesus in the dove and redeemed him.

And even Jesus needed redemption, so that he might not be held back by the Thought of the Deficiency in which he had been placed when he came forth through Wisdom, as Theodotus says.

The followers of Valentinus call Jesus the Paraclete, because he has come full of the Aeons, as having come forth from the whole.

For Christ, leaving Wisdom who had put him forth, entered the Pleroma and asked help for Wisdom, who was left outside; and by the good pleasure of the Aeons Jesus is put forth as Paraclete for the Aeon who had transgressed. And Paul became the apostle of the resurrection in the type of the Paraclete.

Immediately after the Lord's passion he too was sent to preach. That is why he preached the Savior in both ways: as begotten and able to suffer, for the sake of those on the left, because, being able to know him in this character, they are afraid of him; and according to the spiritual, as from the Holy Spirit and a virgin, as the angels on the right know him.

For each knows the Lord in his own way, and not all alike; “their angels behold the face of the Father,” the angels of the little ones, the elect, who will be in the same inheritance and perfection.

Perhaps the face is the Son, and also as much of the Father as is comprehensible, which they contemplate, having been taught by the Son; but the rest of the Father is unknown.

The Valentinians say that the special spirit that each of the prophets had for his ministry has been poured out on all the members of the church; that is why the signs of the Spirit, healings and prophecies, are accomplished through the church.

But they do not know that the Paraclete who now works directly in the church is of the same substance and power as the one who worked directly in the old covenant.

The followers of Valentinus defined an angel as a word bearing a message from the one who is. And they also call the Aeons “words,” with the same name as the Word.

The apostles, he says, were put in place of the twelve signs of the zodiac. For as birth is governed by them, so rebirth is overseen by the apostles.

The visible part of Jesus was Wisdom and the Church of the superior seeds, which he put on through the bit of flesh, as Theodotus says; but the invisible part is the Name, which is the only-begotten Son.

Hence when he says, “I am the door,” he means this: that you who are of the superior seed will come as far as the Limit where I am;

and when he himself enters, the seed too enters with him into the Pleroma, gathered together and brought in through the door.

The priest, entering within the second veil, used to lay aside the plate beside the altar of incense, and himself went in in silence, having the Name engraved on his heart. This showed the laying aside of the body of the soul, as it were, which has become like a plate of pure gold and light because of its purification, on which was engraved the luster of godliness, by which he was known to the principalities and powers as bearing the Name.

This body, the plate that has become weightless, is laid aside within the second veil, in the intelligible world, which is the second, complete veil of the universe, beside the altar of incense, beside the angels who are ministers of the prayers offered up.

And the soul, stripped, in the power of its conscience, having become as it were a body of that power, passes into the spiritual realm, having become truly rational and high-priestly, as if now ensouled, so to speak, directly by the Word, just as the archangels have become high priests of the angels, and the first-created again of them.

Where is there still achievement by Scripture and learning for that soul which has become pure, where it is even counted worthy to see God “face to face”?

At any rate, having passed beyond the teaching of angels and the Name taught in writing, it comes to the knowledge and apprehension of realities. No longer a bride, but having now become word, and lodging with the Bridegroom together with the first-called and first-created: friends through love, sons through teaching and obedience, brothers through their common origin.

So it belonged to the divine plan to wear the plate and to learn for knowledge; but it belongs to power that man becomes God-bearing, acted on directly by the Lord and becoming as it were his body.

“God, who repays to the third and fourth generation those who disobey”: the followers of Basilides say this refers to reincarnations; the followers of Valentinus, that the three places on the left are meant, and the fourth generation is their seeds; but “showing mercy to thousands” refers to those on the right.

Silence, they say, being mother of all that was put forth by the Depth, kept silent about the ineffable, since she could not speak of it; and what she did comprehend, she called incomprehensible.

Then, forgetting the glory of God, they godlessly say that he suffered. For what the Father suffered with, says Theodotus, though he is firm and unyielding by nature, making himself yielding so that Silence might comprehend it, is suffering.

For sympathy is someone's suffering through the suffering of another. Indeed, when the suffering occurred, the whole suffered with it too, for the correction of the one that suffered.

But even if the one who came down was the good pleasure of the whole (“for in him the whole Pleroma was bodily”), and he suffered, it is clear that the seeds in him suffered with him, through which the whole and the all are found suffering.

But also, they say, the whole, instructed by the experience of the twelfth Aeon, suffered with it.

For then they recognized that what they are, they are by the grace of the Father: a name without a name, form, and knowledge. But the Aeon who wished to grasp what is beyond knowledge came to be in ignorance and formlessness.

Hence she produced an emptiness of knowledge, which is a shadow of the Name, which is the Son, the form of the Aeons. So the partial name of the Aeons is the loss of the Name.

In the Pleroma, then, where there is unity, each of the Aeons has its own fullness, the pair. So, they say, whatever proceeds from a pair is a fullness, but whatever from one alone is an image.

Hence Theodotus called Christ, who came forth from the thought of Wisdom, an image of the Pleroma.

And he, leaving his mother, went up into the Pleroma

and was mingled, as with all, so also with the Paraclete. Christ became an adopted son, as chosen for the fullnesses and “firstborn” of the things here.

This teaching, then, is a mishearing of ours, which calls the Savior “firstborn” from the substrate; and he is as it were our root and head, and the church his fruits.

When Christ, they say, fled what was alien and withdrew into the Pleroma, having come from his mother's thought, the mother in turn brought forth the Ruler of the plan, as a type of the one who fled her, out of longing for him, since he was superior; and he was a type of the Father of all.

That is why he is inferior, as constituted from the passion of desire. But she was disgusted, they say, when she saw his severity.

But the powers on the left too, put forth by her first, before those on the right, are not formed by the presence of the light; the left ones were left to be formed by the Place.

When the mother, then, enters the Pleroma with the Son and the seeds, then the Place will receive the mother's authority and rank, which the mother now has.

Jesus is our “light,” as the apostle says,

who “emptied” himself, that is, according to Theodotus, came outside the Limit; since he was the angel of the Pleroma, he brought out with himself the angels of the superior seed. He himself had redemption, as having come forth from the Pleroma, but he led the angels for the correction of the seed.

For they plead and entreat as for a part of themselves, and, held back because of us, eager to enter, they ask forgiveness for us,

so that we may enter with them. For since they almost need us in order to enter, since without us it is not permitted them (for that is why the mother too has not entered without us, they say), they fittingly plead for us.

Our angels, they say, were put forth in unity, being one, as having come from one.

But since we were divided, Jesus was baptized for this reason: that the undivided should be divided, until he unites us with them in the Pleroma, so that we, the many, having become one, may all be mingled with the One who was divided for our sake.

Of those who came from Adam, according to the Valentinians, the righteous, making their way through the created things, were held back beside the Place, while the others were in the creation of darkness, among those on the left, having consciousness of the fire.

A river of fire goes out from beneath the throne of the Place and flows into the void of what was created, which is Gehenna, never filled, though the fire has been flowing into it since creation; and the Place himself is fiery.

That is why, he says, he has a veil, so that the spirits may not be consumed by the sight of him; only the archangel enters to him, in whose image the high priest too entered the Holy of Holies once a year.

Hence Jesus too, being summoned, sat down with the Place, so that the spirits might remain and not rise before him, and so that he might tame the Place and provide the seed a passage into the Pleroma.

The mother, having put forth Christ whole and been abandoned by him, from then on put forth nothing whole, but kept what she could by her; so that she keeps by her the angelic elements both of the Place and of the called, which she put forth herself, while the angelic elements of the elect had been put forth still earlier by the male.

For the things on the right were brought forth by the mother before her request for the light, and the seeds of the church after her request for the light, when the angelic elements of the seeds were put forth by the male.

He says that the superior seeds came forth neither as passions, in which case, when these were dissolved, the seeds too would have been dissolved, nor as creation, but as children.

For when creation was completed, the seeds too would have been completed with it. That is why they also have kinship with the light that Christ, who made request of the Aeons, first brought forth, that is, Jesus, in whom the seeds too that entered with him into the Pleroma were strained through in power. Therefore the church is fittingly said to have been chosen before the foundation of the world. In the beginning, then, we were reckoned together, they say, and made manifest.

That is why the Savior says, “Let your light shine,” indicating the light that appeared and gave form, about which the apostle says, “which enlightens every man coming into the world,” that is, the man of the superior seed.

For when the man was enlightened, then he came into the world, that is, he set himself in order, separating from himself the passions that darkened him and were mingled with him. And the Demiurge, paying attention to Thought, brought forth Adam at the end of the creation.

The Cross is a sign of the Limit in the Pleroma; for it separates the unbelievers from the believers as that separates the world from the Pleroma.

That is why Jesus, carrying the seeds on his shoulders by means of the sign, brings them into the Pleroma. For Jesus is called the shoulders of the seed, and Christ the head.

Hence it is said, “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not my brother.” So he took up the body of Jesus, which was of the same substance as the church.

They say, then, that the powers on the right knew the names of Jesus and of Christ even before the coming, but did not know the power of the sign.

And when the Father had given all authority, and the Pleroma too had consented, “the angel of counsel” is sent forth.

And he becomes head of all after the Father; “for in him all things were created, visible and invisible, thrones, lordships, kingdoms, divinities, ministries.”

“Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name above every name, so that every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ the Savior is Lord of glory,” “he who ascended and descended.

What does ‘he ascended’ mean, except that he also descended? He who descended is the same who ascended far above the heavens.”

When Wisdom saw him, like the light that had left her, she recognized him, ran to him, rejoiced, and worshiped; but seeing the male angels sent forth with him, she was ashamed and put on a veil.

By this mystery Paul commands women “to wear authority on their head because of the angels.” Immediately, then, the Savior brings her the formation according to knowledge

and the healing of her passions, showing her the things in the Pleroma from the unbegotten Father down to herself; and, removing the passions of the one who had suffered,

he made her free from passion, but he separated the passions and kept them; and they were not scattered like those of the inner Wisdom, but he brought them and those of the second disposition into substance. So through the Savior's appearing Wisdom becomes free from passion, and the things outside are created.

“For all things came into being through him, and without him nothing came into being.” First, then, from bodiless passion and accident into bodiless

matter, still bodiless, he transferred and changed them, and then in this way into compounds and bodies; for it was not possible to make the passions into substance all at once. And he implanted in the bodies a natural fitness.

The Savior, then, becomes the first, universal Demiurge; and “Wisdom,” second, “builds herself a house and set up seven pillars.”

And first of all she puts forth a god as an image of the Father, through whom

she made heaven and earth, that is, “the heavenly things and the earthly,” the right and the left.

He, as image of the Father, becomes a father and first puts forth the psychic Christ, image of the Son; then the archangels, images of the Aeons; then angels of the archangels, from the psychic and luminous substance, of which the prophetic word says, “And the Spirit of God was borne above the waters,” saying that, in the interweaving of the two substances made by him, the pure is “borne above,” while the heavy and material, the muddy and coarse, is borne beneath.

And he hints that this too was bodiless in the beginning by calling it “invisible”; for it was not invisible to man, who did not yet exist, nor to God, for he was fashioning it; but in some such way he expressed its formlessness, shapelessness, and lack of figure.

The Demiurge, having separated the pure from the heavy, as one who perceived the nature of each, made light, that is, manifested it and brought it into light and form; for the light of the sun and heaven he makes much later.

And of the material things he makes one part from grief, creating in substance “the spiritual forces of wickedness, against which is our struggle”; that is why the apostle also says, “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed.”

Another part, from fear, the wild beasts; another, from consternation and perplexity, the elements of the world.

Fire hovers in the three elements, is sown in them and lurks in them, is kindled by them and dies away in them, having no place assigned to itself as the other elements do; from these the compounds are fashioned.

Since he did not know her who was working through him, thinking that he created by his own power, being by nature fond of work, the apostle said for this reason: “It was subjected to the vanity of the world, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope, that it too will be set free,” when the seeds of God are gathered.

The chief evidence of his unwillingness is his blessing the Sabbath and his warm welcome of rest from labors.

“Taking dust from the earth,” not from the dry land but a part of the manifold and varied matter, he fashioned an earthy and material soul, irrational and of the same substance as that of the beasts. This is the man “according to the image.”

But the man “according to the likeness” of the Demiurge himself is the one he “breathed” into this one and sowed in him, placing in him something of the same substance as himself through angels.

Insofar as he is invisible and bodiless, he called his substance “breath of life”; but when formed it became “a living soul,” which he himself also confesses himself to be in the prophetic Scriptures.

At any rate, there is a man within a man, a psychic man within an earthy one, not part with part, but whole with whole, by the ineffable power of God. Hence he is fashioned in paradise, the fourth heaven;

for earthy flesh does not go up there, but the material soul was like flesh to the divine soul. This is what “This now is bone of my bones” signifies: it hints at the divine soul hidden in the flesh, firm, hard to affect, and stronger; and “flesh of my flesh,” the material soul, which is the body of the divine soul.

About these two the Savior too says that one must fear him “who is able to destroy” this soul and this psychic body “in Gehenna.”

This bit of flesh the Savior called “the adversary,” and Paul “a law warring against the law of my mind”; and he advises us to “bind” it and “plunder the goods as of a strong man,” of the one who wars against the heavenly soul.

The Savior also advises us “to be rid of it on the way, lest we fall into prison” and punishment; and likewise to be “well-disposed” to it, not nourishing it and strengthening it by the license of sins, but putting it to death already from now on and making it fade by abstinence from wickedness, so that in this dissolution it may be dispersed and evaporate unnoticed, and not, taking on some substance of its own, have lasting strength in its passage through fire.

This is called the “tare,” grown together with the soul, the good seed; this is also the seed of the devil, as being of the same substance with him, and the serpent, and the heel-biter, and a robber attacking the head

of a king.

And Adam, without his knowledge, had the spiritual seed sown in his soul by Wisdom; “ordained,” he says, “through angels by the hand of a mediator; but a mediator is not of one; but God is one.” So the seeds put forth by Wisdom for birth are ministered through the male angels, as far as it can happen.

For just as the Demiurge, moved by Wisdom without knowing it, thinks he is self-moved, so too do human beings.

First, then, Wisdom put forth the spiritual seed that was in Adam, so that it might be the bone, the rational and heavenly soul, not empty but full of spiritual marrow. From Adam three natures are born: first the irrational,

to which Cain belonged; second the rational and just, to which Abel belonged; and third the spiritual,

to which Seth belonged. And the earthy is “according to the image,” the psychic “according to the likeness” of God, and the spiritual according to its own nature; about these three, without the other children of Adam, it is said, “This is the book of the generation of men.”

That Seth is spiritual is shown because he neither herds nor farms, but bears a child as fruit, as spiritual beings do; and this child, who “hoped to call on the name of the Lord,” looking upward, whose “citizenship is in heaven,” the world does not contain.

Over the three bodiless natures in Adam, a fourth, the earthy, is put on: the “garments of skin.”

So Adam does not beget from the spirit, nor from what was breathed into him; for both are divine.

Both are put forth through him, but not by him; but his material part is active for seed and generation, as being mingled with the seed and unable to withdraw from this harmony while in life. In this sense Adam is our father: “the first man from the earth, earthy.”

If he had begotten from the psychic and the spiritual, as from the material, all would have become equal and righteous, and the teaching would be in all. That is why the material are many, the psychic not many, and the spiritual rare.

The spiritual is saved by nature; the psychic, having free will, has a capacity both for faith and incorruption and for unbelief and corruption, according to its own choice; but the material perishes by nature.

So when the psychic are “grafted into the good olive tree” for faith and incorruption and share in “the richness of the olive,” and when “the Gentiles come in,” then “so all Israel will be saved.”

Israel is allegorized as the spiritual man who will see God, the true son of faithful Abraham, the one “from the free woman,” not the one “according to the flesh,” from the Egyptian slave woman.

From the three kinds, then, there comes the formation of the spiritual, and the transfer of the psychic from slavery to freedom.

After the reign of death, then, which had made a great and attractive promise but had become no less a ministry of death, when every principality and divinity had given up, Jesus, the great champion, taking up the church into himself in power, the elect and the called, the spiritual from the one who bore it, the psychic from the divine plan, saved and bore up what he had taken up, and through them what is of the same substance with them.

“For if the firstfruits are holy, so is the lump; if the root is holy, so are the branches.”

First, then, he put on the seed from the one who bore him, not being contained by it but containing it in power;

and it is gradually formed through knowledge. And when he came to the Place, Jesus found Christ to put on, the one proclaimed beforehand, whom the prophets and the law announced, being an image of the Savior.

But this psychic Christ too, whom he put on, was invisible. And the one arriving in the world had to be seen, held, live among people, and bear a sensible body.

So a body is woven for him from the invisible psychic substance, and by the power of divine construction it has come into the sensible world.

So “the Holy Spirit will come upon you” speaks of the origin of the Lord's body, and “the power of the Most High will overshadow you” shows the formation by God, which he impressed on the body in the Virgin. That he himself was other than what he assumed is clear from what he confesses:

“I am the life, I am the truth, I and the Father are one.”

And he shows the spiritual that he assumed, and the psychic, in this way: “And the child grew and advanced in wisdom.” For the spiritual needs wisdom, the psychic size.

And by what flowed from his side he showed that, by the outflowing of the passions, the substances have been saved, having become free of passion instead of passionate.

And when he says, “The Son of Man must be rejected, insulted, crucified,” he appears to speak as of another, that is, of the one subject to passion.

And he says, “I will go before you on the third day into Galilee”; for he goes before all things. And he hinted that he would raise the soul that is invisibly being saved and restore it where he now goes before.

He died when the Spirit that had come down on him at the Jordan withdrew, not separating itself but drawing itself in, so that death too might act; for how, while life was present in him, did the body die? For in that way death would have overpowered the Savior himself, which is absurd.

But death was outgeneraled by a stratagem. For when the body had died and death had taken hold of it, the Savior, drawing back the ray of power that had come upon it, destroyed death, and raised the mortal body, having cast off the passions.

The psychic, then, are raised and saved in this way; but the spiritual who have believed are saved beyond them, having received their souls as “wedding garments.” The psychic Christ, then, sits at the right hand of the Demiurge,

as David also says, “Sit at my right hand,” and what follows.

And he sits until the consummation, “so that they may see him whom they pierced.” But they pierced what appeared, which was the flesh of the psychic. “For not a bone of him shall be broken,” it says; just as in the case of Adam the prophecy allegorized the soul as bone.

For the soul of Christ itself, while the body suffered, committed itself into the hands of the Father. But the spiritual in the bone is no longer committed, but he himself saves it.

The rest of the spiritual, then, is in the Lord's place, in the Ogdoad, which is called the Lord's, with the mother, having their souls as garments, until the consummation. The other faithful souls are with the Demiurge, but at the consummation they too withdraw into the Ogdoad.

Then comes the wedding supper, common to all the saved, until all are made equal and know one another. After that the spiritual, having put off their souls, together with the

mother, who receives the Bridegroom, themselves receiving their bridegrooms, their angels, enter the bridal chamber within the Limit and come to the vision of the Father, having become intellectual Aeons, into the intellectual and eternal marriages of the pair.

And the “master of the feast” of the supper and groomsman of the wedding, “the friend of the Bridegroom, standing before the bridal chamber, hearing the Bridegroom's voice, rejoices greatly.”

This is his “fullness of joy” and of rest.

The Savior taught the apostles, first in types and mysteries, later in parables and riddles, and third clearly and plainly when they were alone.

“When we were in the flesh,” says the apostle, as if already speaking outside the body. He says, then, that by flesh he means that weakness, the emanation from the woman above.

And when the Savior says to Salome that there will be death as long as women bear children, he did not say it condemning birth, which is necessary for the salvation of believers;

for this birth must continue until the seed

that was reckoned beforehand has been brought forth; but he hints at the female above, whose passions became creation, who also put forth the formless substances, because of whom the Lord too came down, to draw us away from the passion and adopt us to himself.

For as long as we were children of the female only, as of a shameful union, incomplete, infants, senseless, weak, and formless, brought forth like miscarriages, we were children of the woman; but formed by the Savior, we have become children of a husband and of a bridal chamber.

Fate is a meeting of many opposing powers; these are invisible and unseen, governing the course of the stars and ruling through them.

For according as each of them has arrived, carried round with the movement of the world, it has obtained dominion over those born at that very moment, as its own children.

Through the fixed and the wandering stars, then, the invisible powers riding on them dispense and oversee births;

but the stars themselves do nothing; they show the activity of the ruling powers, just as the flight of birds signifies something, but does not do it.

The twelve signs of the zodiac, then, and the seven planets that pass through them, now traveling together, now opposing one another, rising and setting … These, moved by the powers, indicate the movement of substance toward the birth of living beings and the change of circumstances.

The stars and the powers are different: beneficent and maleficent, right and left; what is born is common to them; and each thing comes to be through them at its own time, the one in power bringing about what is according to nature, at the beginning or at the end.

From this strife and battle of the powers the Lord rescues us and grants us peace from the battle line of powers and angels, some drawn up for us and some against us.

For some are like soldiers, fighting on our side as God's servants; others like robbers; for the evil one did not gird himself with a sword received from the king, but seized it for himself in his madness.

Because of the adversaries, who through the body and external things mount upon the soul and seize it as a pledge for slavery, those on the right are not able, as they follow along, to save and guard us.

For they are not perfectly provident like the good shepherd, but each is like a hireling, who sees the wolf coming and flees and is not eager to give his life for his own sheep.

And besides, man, for whom the battle is fought, being a weak creature, is easily inclined to the worse and takes the side of those who hate him; hence the evils that befall him are more.

That is why the Lord came down, to make peace from heaven for those on earth, as the apostle says:

“Peace on earth and glory in the highest.” That is why a strange and new star rose, abolishing the old arrangement of the stars, shining with a new light, not of this world, turning to new and saving paths, as the Lord himself, the guide of men, who came down to earth to transfer those who believed in Christ from Fate to his providence.

That Fate exists for the others, they say, is shown by the predictions that come true; and the study of astrology is a clear proof.

For instance, the Magi not only saw the Lord's star but recognized the truth, that a king was born, and of whom he was king: of the God-fearing. At that time the Jews alone were renowned for piety.

That is why the Savior, coming down to the God-fearing, came first to those who at that time had the reputation for piety.

As, then, the birth of the Savior cast us out of birth and Fate, so too his baptism took us out of fire, and his passion out of passion, so that we might follow him in all things.

For the one baptized into God has gone into God and has received “authority to walk on scorpions and snakes,” the evil powers.

And he commands the apostles: “Go about and preach, and baptize those who believe in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,”

into whom we are reborn, becoming high above all the other powers.

In this way baptism is called death and the end of the old life, as we renounce the evil principalities, and life according to Christ, of which he alone is Lord.

The power of the change in the one baptized does not concern the body (for the same person comes up), but the soul.

At once, as he comes up from baptism, he is called a servant of God and lord of the unclean spirits, and the one in whom they were active a little before they now “tremble” at.

Until baptism, then, Fate is real, they say; but after it the astrologers no longer speak the truth.

But it is not only the washing that sets free, but also the knowledge: who we were, what we have become; where we were, or where we have been thrown; where we are hastening, from what we are redeemed; what birth is, and what rebirth. As long, then, as the seed is still unformed, they say, it is a child of the female;

but when formed, it has been changed into a man and becomes a son of the bridegroom, no longer weak and subject to the cosmic powers, visible and invisible, but, made a man, it becomes male fruit.

The one whom the mother bears is led to death and into the world; but the one whom Christ bears again is transferred to life, into the Ogdoad.

And they die to the world but live to God, so that death may be undone by death, and corruption by resurrection.

For the one sealed through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is beyond the reach of every other power, and through three names he has been set free from the whole triad in corruption. “Having borne the image of the earthy, he then bears the image of the heavenly.”

Of fire, the bodily kind touches all bodies, but the pure and bodiless kind, they say, touches bodiless things, such as demons, angels of wickedness, and the devil himself. So the heavenly and earthly fire is twofold in nature, the one intelligible, the other sensible.

And baptism is correspondingly double: the sensible, through water, quenching the sensible fire; and the intelligible, through the Spirit, a defense against the intelligible fire.

And bodily air, when little, becomes food and kindling for the sensible fire, but when there is more of it, its nature is to extinguish it; but the Spirit given us from above, being bodiless, rules not only the elements but also the powers and evil principalities.

And the bread and the oil are sanctified by the power of God's name; they are the same in appearance as when they were taken, but by power they have been changed into spiritual power.

So too the water, both that which is exorcised and that which becomes baptism, not only separates what is worse but also takes on sanctification.

It is fitting to come to baptism rejoicing; but since unclean spirits often go down with some people, which, following along and obtaining the seal together with the person, become incurable from then on, fear is mingled with joy, so that one may go down alone and pure.

That is why there are fasts, supplications, prayers, raising of hands, and kneeling: because a soul is being rescued from the world and “from the mouth of lions.” That is why temptations come at once too, as those from whom it was taken away are angry; and even if one bears them knowing in advance, they at least shake the outward things.

At once after baptism the Lord was shaken, as a type for us, and was first “with the wild beasts” in the desert; then, having overcome them and their ruler, as now a true king, he is at once served by angels.

For the one who in the flesh overcame angels is fittingly served by angels.

So we must be armed with the Lord's weapons, keeping body and soul unwounded, with “weapons able to quench the darts of the devil,” as the apostle says.

About the coin that was brought, the Lord said not “Whose property is it?” but “Whose image and inscription? Caesar's,” so that it might be given to the one to whom it belongs.

So too the believer: through Christ he has the name of God as an inscription, and the Spirit as an image. Even irrational animals show by a seal whose each one is, and are claimed by the seal; so too the faithful soul, having received the seal of truth, carries “the marks of Christ.”

These are “the children already resting together in bed” and “the wise virgins,” with whom the others, who delayed, did not enter into “the good things prepared, into which angels long to look.”