Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Anti-Marcion/Against the Valentinians/XIX

by Tertullian

Chapter XIX.—Palpable Absurdities and Contradictions in the System Respecting Achamoth and the Demiurge.

And yet there is not any agreement between the propriety of the names and that of the works, from which all the names are suggested; since all of them ought to have borne the name of her by whom the things were done, unless after all^[1] it turn out that they were not made by her.  For, although they say that Achamoth devised these forms in honour of the Æons, they yet^[2] transfer this work to Soter as its author, when they say that he^[3] operated through her, so far as to give her the very image of the invisible and unknown Father—that is, the image which was unknown and invisible to the Demiurge; whilst he^[4] formed this same Demiurge in imitation^[5] of Nus the son of Propator;^[6] and whilst the archangels, who were the work of the Demiurge, resembled the other Æons. Now, when I hear of such images of the three, I ask, do you not wish me to laugh at these pictures of their most extravagant painter? At the female Achamoth, a picture of the Father?  At the Demiurge, ignorant of his mother, much more so of his father? At the picture of Nus, ignorant of his father too, and the ministering angels, facsimiles of their lords? This is painting a mule from an ass, and sketching Ptolemy from Valentinus.

Footnotes

1. Jam.
2. Rursus.
3. This is the force of the “qui” with the subjunctive verb.
4. Soter.
5. Effingeret.
6. There seems to be a relative gradation meant among these extra-Pleroma beings, as there was among the Æons of the Pleroma; and, further, a relation between the two sets of beings—Achamoth bearing a relation to Propator, the Demiurge to Nus, etc.