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Irenæus
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Introductory Note to Irenæus Against Heresies
[2712] The reader will observe that light and fulness are the exact correlatives of the darkness and vacuity which have just been mentioned.
[2713] As above stated (ii. 3), the Gnostics held that form and figure were due to the male, substance to the female parent.
[2714] The Valentinian Stauros was the boundary fence of the Pleroma beyond which Christ extended himself to assist the enthymesis of Sophia.
[2715] The peculiar gnosis which Nous received from his father, and communicated to the other Æons.
[2716] Probably corresponding to the Hebrew יהוה, Jehovah.
[2717] This sentence is very elliptical in the original, but the sense is as given above. Sophia fell from Gnosis by degradation; Achamoth never possessed this knowledge, her nature being from the first opposed to it.
[2718] “The Demiurge derived from Enthymesis an animal, and not a spiritual nature.”— Harvey.
[2720] “Jesus, or Soter, was also called the Paraclete in the sense of Advocate, or one acting as the representative of others.”—Harvey.
[2721] Both the Father and the other Æons constituting Soter an impersonation of the entire Pleroma.
[2723] That is, as in the case of her mother Sophia, who is sometimes called “the Sophia above,” Achamoth being “the Sophia below,” or “the second Sophia.”
[2724] Thus Harvey renders ἀσώματον ὕλην: so Baur, Chr. Gnos., as quoted by Stieren. Billius proposes to read ἐνσώματον, corporeal.
[2725] Though not actually, for that was the work of the Demiurge. See next chapter.
[2726] “In order that,” says Grabe, “this formation might not be merely according to essence, but also according to knowledge, as the formation of the mother Achamoth was characterized above.”
[2727] Metropator, as proceeding only from his mother Achamoth: Apator, as having no male progenitor.
[2728] Harvey remarks, “The Valentinian Saviour being an aggregation of all the æonic perfections, the images of them were reproduced by the spiritual conception of Achamoth beholding the glory of Σωτήρ. The reader will not fail to observe that every successive development is the reflex of a more divine antecedent.”
[2729] The relation indicated seems to be as follows: Achamoth, after being formed “according to knowledge,” was outside of the Pleroma as the image of Propator, the Demiurge was as Nous, and the mundane angels which he formed corresponded to the other Æons of the Pleroma.
[2730] “Achamoth by these names must be understood to have an intermediate position between the divine prototypal idea and creation: she was the reflex of the one, and therefore masculo-feminine; she was the pattern to be realized in the latter, and therefore was named Earth and Jerusalem.” —Harvey.
[2731] But after the consummation here referred to, Achamoth regained the Pleroma: see below, chap. vii. 1.
[2732] Isa. xlv. 5, 6, Isa. xlvi. 9.
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