Throughout Part 1 of Against Heresies, Irenaeus gives long, detailed, and extremely confusing explanations of all the teachings of the various Gnostic heretical schools that were around at the time. I gave a truncated “Reader’s Digest” overview of the basics of many of the Gnostic systems in Part 1 of this blog series. What I want to do here in Part 4 is to focus on Irenaeus’ sarcastic side as he makes fun of and mocks these ridiculous teachings. In addition, as you’ll see, it’s not that hard to see the same kind of teachings and charlatans are still around today, albeit in slightly different forms.
Valentinus’ Melons
One of the early Gnostic schools Irenaeus covers is the one founded by a certain teacher named Valentinus. In Valentinus’ “system,” there originally was an inexpressible two-fold being (Dyad). One part was called Arrhetus (unspeakable) and the other part is called Sige (silence). Then there was a second Dyad—one part was called Pater (Father) and the other was called Aletheia (truth). Then there came a four-fold being (Tetrad), with the four parts named Logos (word), Zoe (life), Anthropos, (man), and Ecclesia (church). Put all that together and you get the primary Ogdoad.
Then, from Logos and Zoe came ten powers; and from Anthropos and Ecclesia came twelve powers. One of those twelve powers fell and separated itself from that original condition. There are also two beings named Horos, and they dwell between Bythus and the rest of the Pleroma. The created Aeons are separate from the uncreated Father, while their mother is separated from the Pleroma. Now, Christ didn’t come from the Aeons in the Pleroma, but from the mother who was excluded from the Pleroma. Christ, though, separated himself from his shadow and returned to the Pleroma, while his mother was left with his shadow. So, she brought forth another son, the Demiurge.
As for Jesus, sometimes Valentinus says he was produced from Christ, and sometimes he says he came from Anthropos and Ecclesia. Valentinus also says the Holy Spirit was produced by Aletheia in order to maintain the Aeons and make them fruitful so they could bring forth plants of truth.
And one of Valentinus’ disciples came up with the idea that there was yet another being called the Proarche who existed even before the primary Tetrad and was beyond all thought and speech.
…and so on and so on.
Now, if you are a rational person, you might be thinking, “What???” If you think it sounds like utter nonsense, congratulations. You still have a working brain. What I particularly appreciate about Irenaeus is how mercilessly mocks such nonsense. In 1.11.4-5, he writes the following:
4How can anyone take any of this seriously? This guy is just making things up. If this Proarche was beyond all thought, how can this “teacher” possibly know anything at all about him? But since we can just make stuff up, let me try!
Since this Proarche is beyond all thought, and since it existed before everything else, it must have filled space in every direction. But actually, there was another power—I’m going to name it Gourd! In addition to Gourd, there is yet another power—Utter Emptiness! So, Gourd and Utter-Emptiness produced a fruit that can be seen everywhere, can be eaten, and is just so tasty and delicious. In their special “fruit language,” he’s called Cucumber. And along with Cucumber, there exists another power of the same essence called Melon! These powers of Gourd, Utter-Emptiness, Cucumber, and Melon were the ones who brought forth all the delicious, fruity melons of Valentinus! I think that is a pretty good description of Valentinus’ teaching.
5These Gnostic heretics just make up name after name to try to justify their insane system. It is utter nonsense, and we need to call them out for being the trifling sophists that they are. Beings with consorts, without consorts, male, female, not male or female, beings that are masculo-feminine hermaphrodites? The ridiculousness never ends.
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Another thing that stood out to me throughout Against Heresies is that in many of these Gnostic systems and teachings there are claims that the truly “spiritual” beings are “masculo-feminine.” In some instances, the “masculine” conceives and brings forth without the “feminine,” and sometimes the “feminine” produces without the aid of the “masculine.” Simply put, given the current climate in the West today, with all the talk about “cisgender,” “transgender,” “queer,” and how everything is a fluid spectrum, I couldn’t help but see a certain amount of overlap between what is being pushed today and what the Gnostics were pushing back then. It seems they taught that the truly “spiritual beings” were on the “gender spectrum.” And Irenaeus mocked them for their insane teaching.
Marcus’ Fun with Wine and Women
Another heretic Irenaeus roasts was named Marcus. Irenaeus goes so far to speculate whether this Marcus was the Antichrist. In addition, he says Marcus’ followers are complete morons who actually believe Marcus could perform miracles through his “magic.” One trick Marcus did that apparently dupped a number of women involved two cups of wine.
First, he took the smaller cup, gave a long-winded invocation over it, then secretly put dye into the cup to make the wine look even more purplish-red. He would then tell the women that Charis, a superior being, had dropped her own blood into the cup, and that they must taste the cup so that Charis could “flow into them.” Then, after encouraging them to consecrate their own small cups, he would bring out the large cup and pour all the wine from the smaller cup into it while making invocations like, “May Charis who is before all things, who transcends all knowledge and speech, fill your inner man and multiply her knowledge within you, like sowing a mustard seed in good soil!” Then, by trickery, he would make it seem that the wine from the smaller cup would fill and even overflow the larger cup. This would whip the women up into a frenzy.
To be clear, Marcus would target rich women, not only to get their money, but to also seduce them. During ceremonies like this, he would whip them up into an ecstatic frenzy and say, “I am so eager to make you a partaker of my Charis, because it’s clear to me that the Father has your angel before his face! And now that your angel is among us, we need…to become one! Receive the gift of Charis from me! You are like a bride awaiting the bridegroom! Be one with me and I will be one with you! Let’s make a spark of light in our nuptial chamber! Receive your spouse from me, and he will receive you. Look! Charis has descended upon you! Open your mouth! Prophesy!”
If a woman said she never had prophesied before, he’d say, “Open your mouth and just say anything that comes into your mind! Prophesy!” The end result is that these women would then think they were prophetesses, they’d give him large “gifts” of money, and they’d agree to have sex with him so they could “become one.”
Irenaeus says that Marcus clearly is demonically-influenced and that he only “prophesies” things that help him feed his own desires (namely money and sex). He says (in 1.13.4) that men like Marcus “might seem to have some great, prophetic authority, but they are only men who have been sent by Satan to seduce and destroy those who are not well-grounded in the faith they first received through the Church.”
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The kind of thing that Irenaeus describes regarding men like Marcus is something that one can see in cults and any religious movement. We can see the darkest examples of things like this with figures like Charles Manson, who seduced impressionable girls and convinced them he was practically Jesus. Also, within charismatic circles, there are many examples of charlatans who claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit, but who are clearly more concerned with money and/or women. Just consider some of the recent examples over the past 30-40 years of men like Robert Tilton, Peter Popoff, and Mike Murdoch. This kind of emotional manipulation and religious shystership has always been around.
Having grown up in the Assemblies of God, even though I never “spoke in tongues,” I knew sincere, godly Christians who did. I do think that speaking in tongues and prophecy are still gifts of the Spirit in the Church. That being said, they are also some of the easiest gifts to fake in order to manipulate people. But whereas Christians today (including myself) will tend to say people like that are con-artists (and they are), Irenaeus is more direct—they are demonically-influenced. We Christians who are so influenced by Enlightenment rationalism might recoil at such “extreme” characterizations, but Irenaeus clearly wasn’t. And the older I get, the more I find myself siding with Irenaeus. There really is evil in the world that really does “masquerade as an angel of light.” We should call it for what it is.
Marcus’ Fun With Numbers
Another thing Irenaeus tells us about Marcus is his fascination with numbers. In 1.15, Irenaeus says that Marcus claimed that the “all-wise Sige” (or Bythus) revealed to him that there were 24 elements—that corresponded to the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. Originally, there were two elements (Monotes and Henotes), and from them came two more (Monas and Hen). That makes four. Add two to that, and you get six. Multiply six by four and you get twenty-four! The twenty-four Aeons!
And if you add up the letters first four Aeons (Arrhetos, Sige, Pater, and Altheia) you get….twenty-four!
And if you add up the letters of the second four Aeons (Logos, Zoe, Anthropos, and Ecclesia) you get, you guessed it, 24 letters!
And let’s not forget the name of the Savior, Jesus! His name has six letters, but his unutterable name actually has 24 letters! The name “Christ the Son” totals 12 letters, but the unutterable name in Christ contains 30 letters—hence, according to Marcus, Christ is the Alpha and Omega! If you don’t get it, that just means you’re not enlightened!
But wait! There’s more! Irenaeus tells us that Marcus claims Jesus came from that first unspeakable Tetrad…but that when the second Tetrad came along, that totaled TWO TETRADS…EIGHT! That’s an OGDOAD! Then came the TEN of the DECAD—8 x 10 equals EIGHTY! Then 80 x 10 equals EIGHT HUNDRED. Add that 80 to 800 and you get 888! And do you know what the numeric value of the name Jesus is? Yep! 888! That’s the supercelestial Jesus!
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I just want to point out by reminding you that many current so-called scholars would have you believe that all these various Gnostic sects were just legitimate variations of the Christian faith, that there really was no “core teaching” in the early Church, and that there were just a wide variety of Christian beliefs. They say, therefore, that men like Irenaeus (and the later participants at the Nicene Council) were essentially oppressors who sought to grasp power for themselves by demonizing and persecuting these other sincere Christian groups.
Consequently, since these so-called scholars never really articulate just what those “different brands of early Christianity” actually taught, many people think the differences amount no more than minor denominational differences. Nothing could be further from the truth. First, these Gnostic schools were not part of Christianity, ever. They may have co-opted some of the terminology Christians use, but as you can see from just this one example from Marcus, nothing they taught had anything to do with the historical, traditional Christian faith. What they taught was just plan bonkers…but they were able to manipulate people into following these Gnostic teachers because they presented themselves as intellectual and scholarly. And if you didn’t buy into what they were teaching, that just meant you weren’t as smart and enlightened.
I see the same kind of dynamic still happening today with some of the more popular scholars like Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Dan McClellan, Kristen Kobes Du Maz…the list can go on. No, scholars don’t teach the exact same thing those Gnostic intellectuals taught almost 2,000 years ago, but the core of their teaching actually attempts to undercut and subvert the traditional Christian faith. And sadly, many Christians today are easily enticed to swallow such swill for a variety of reasons.
Finally, in specific response to Marcus’ “fascination with numbers,” I can’t help but think of the idiotic fascination among some Evangelical Christians about 20 years ago involving “the Bible Code” and many other similar trends where some “enlightened” teacher claims to find some “secret code” in the Bible that amounts to laughable absurdities. I never understood why anyone would allow themselves to be duped by such nonsense. I never will. But after reading Irenaeus, I do understand one thing: these kinds of cons have always been around. Why? I guess some people just don’t want the clear teaching of the Church to be…so clear. Because that would mean they have to focus on the core issues Christ came to address—the working out your salvation with fear and trembling. Instead, they want intellectual games and “spiritual mysteries” that make themselves feel all excited. They want a spiritual dopamine rush, not a consistent, deliberate working out of their faith.
You can purchase my condensed paraphrase of Irenaeus’ Against Heresies on Amazon.
